her
cousins digging her in the thigh with a sharpened lolly stick,
because she knew that if she was good and didn't get into trouble,
then Gloria would let her stay up to watch
Sunday Night at the
London Palladium
when they got home.
In a lull during a discussion on that brilliant young Yiddishe
chap Robert Maxwell and the wonderful things he was doing in
business while still being a socialist, Henry chose his moment for
the family announcement he had been planning.
He cleared his throat a couple of times, and like some
diminutive East End brigadier bringing news from the front to his
superiors at the War Office, he announced in an overly loud staccato
voice that it was his sad and regretful duty to inform the family
that their son Sidney was not, as everybody suspected, a
homo—although he had been living a double life. For the last
seven years, without their knowledge, Sidney had been married to a
Catholic woman and they had two boys. They had now gone to live in
Dublin with her family. As far as he and Yetta were concerned,
Sidney was no longer their son, and from this time forth they
considered him to be dead.
From that afternoon, Sidney-the-one- nobody -talked-about was
not talked about even more.
Several years later, when “marrying out” had become more
acceptable, Henry finally accepted his son back into the family and
used to look forward to his trips to Dublin to visit Sidney, Maureen
and the children. The rest of the family, on the other hand,
continued to keep their distance. Yetta's attitude towards her son
never changed. The truth was, she hadn't been given much of a chance
to change. This was owing to the fact that she choked to death on
a nut cluster a few months after the bagel tea incident.
A nna turned right off High Street North and into Sheringham
Avenue. She found Uncle Henry's house easily enough because it was
the only one, in a street full of York stone cladding and aluminum
window frames, which looked as if it hadn't been painted or the net
curtains washed since milk was delivered in churns and one in three
infants died from diphtheria before reaching their first
birthday.
Anna's timing hadn't been too bad. It was just after five,
and there were still relatives, some of whom she vaguely recognized,
arriving back from the cemetery and going into the house. She locked
the car, dropped her keys into her bag and fell in behind two frail
old women who had linked arms to support each other during the
arduous journey up the garden path. Despite the warm weather,
they were both wearing three-quarter-length camel coats. One of the
women had chosen to make hers a touch more funereal by wearing
on her head a short black fishnet veil. On top of this there squatted
a very large black taffeta rose. From what Anna could hear of their
conversation, which was almost everything because they were both
stone deaf and needed to shout at each other to get a response, they
appeared to be from the old people's day center where Henry had
died during a game of kaluki.
“I tell you, Estelle, I saw him lying there dead on the floor.
He looked so well. That two weeks in Bournemouth must have really
agreed with him.”
Finally Anna made it into the lounge, which apart from smelling
vaguely of stale wee was just as she remembered it, with its red
moquette three-piece and Aunty Yetta's gold-and-onyx serving
cart.
The room was seething with arms, hands and elbows pushing
and shoving to get to the buffet table, whose white damask cloth
was, for the time being at least, covered with plates, platters and
silver gallery trays, stacked to Kilimanjaro heights with cakes,
bagels, herrings and fishballs. Anna looked round for Gloria, who
had agreed to help with the catering, but couldn't see her.
Anna was starving, but decided, after the journey she'd had,
that what she needed first was a drink. Various aunts and ladies
from down the road were bringing round cups of tea, but Anna needed
something stronger. As she had
cousins digging her in the thigh with a sharpened lolly stick,
because she knew that if she was good and didn't get into trouble,
then Gloria would let her stay up to watch
Sunday Night at the
London Palladium
when they got home.
In a lull during a discussion on that brilliant young Yiddishe
chap Robert Maxwell and the wonderful things he was doing in
business while still being a socialist, Henry chose his moment for
the family announcement he had been planning.
He cleared his throat a couple of times, and like some
diminutive East End brigadier bringing news from the front to his
superiors at the War Office, he announced in an overly loud staccato
voice that it was his sad and regretful duty to inform the family
that their son Sidney was not, as everybody suspected, a
homo—although he had been living a double life. For the last
seven years, without their knowledge, Sidney had been married to a
Catholic woman and they had two boys. They had now gone to live in
Dublin with her family. As far as he and Yetta were concerned,
Sidney was no longer their son, and from this time forth they
considered him to be dead.
From that afternoon, Sidney-the-one- nobody -talked-about was
not talked about even more.
Several years later, when “marrying out” had become more
acceptable, Henry finally accepted his son back into the family and
used to look forward to his trips to Dublin to visit Sidney, Maureen
and the children. The rest of the family, on the other hand,
continued to keep their distance. Yetta's attitude towards her son
never changed. The truth was, she hadn't been given much of a chance
to change. This was owing to the fact that she choked to death on
a nut cluster a few months after the bagel tea incident.
A nna turned right off High Street North and into Sheringham
Avenue. She found Uncle Henry's house easily enough because it was
the only one, in a street full of York stone cladding and aluminum
window frames, which looked as if it hadn't been painted or the net
curtains washed since milk was delivered in churns and one in three
infants died from diphtheria before reaching their first
birthday.
Anna's timing hadn't been too bad. It was just after five,
and there were still relatives, some of whom she vaguely recognized,
arriving back from the cemetery and going into the house. She locked
the car, dropped her keys into her bag and fell in behind two frail
old women who had linked arms to support each other during the
arduous journey up the garden path. Despite the warm weather,
they were both wearing three-quarter-length camel coats. One of the
women had chosen to make hers a touch more funereal by wearing
on her head a short black fishnet veil. On top of this there squatted
a very large black taffeta rose. From what Anna could hear of their
conversation, which was almost everything because they were both
stone deaf and needed to shout at each other to get a response, they
appeared to be from the old people's day center where Henry had
died during a game of kaluki.
“I tell you, Estelle, I saw him lying there dead on the floor.
He looked so well. That two weeks in Bournemouth must have really
agreed with him.”
Finally Anna made it into the lounge, which apart from smelling
vaguely of stale wee was just as she remembered it, with its red
moquette three-piece and Aunty Yetta's gold-and-onyx serving
cart.
The room was seething with arms, hands and elbows pushing
and shoving to get to the buffet table, whose white damask cloth
was, for the time being at least, covered with plates, platters and
silver gallery trays, stacked to Kilimanjaro heights with cakes,
bagels, herrings and fishballs. Anna looked round for Gloria, who
had agreed to help with the catering, but couldn't see her.
Anna was starving, but decided, after the journey she'd had,
that what she needed first was a drink. Various aunts and ladies
from down the road were bringing round cups of tea, but Anna needed
something stronger. As she had
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