Relatively Strange (2 page)

Aunts Kitty, Yetta and Grandma, iron-willed women all, lived in a state of armed neutrality, each having married and brought up a family before circumstance brought them full circle, to shared domesticity at the end of their lives as at the beginning. If two women in a kitchen is bad news, three is a recipe for disaster but, to their credit clashes over
knishes
, fierce though they were, died down a darn sight quicker than did the cut-throat threats and long held vendettas over the playing-cards. Yiddish curses are all the more potent hissed through clenched teeth and there were enough stand-offs to make the knees of strong men knock. Mafia shmafia, when it came to tough, the girls as they euphemistically termed themselves, in card-playing mode were merciless, their memories long, their fervour frightening. I don’t think any of them ever met a grudge they couldn’t bear.

On the stove in the kitchen at the Georgian Court flat there was to be found, at all hours, a simmering and apparently bottomless pot of thick, rich chicken soup into which, with much muttering and bickering went any number of essential ingredients along the lines of giblets, saffron and elderly chicken. If ever a Jewish take on Macbeth was required, we could have supplied the three witches, no problem and what came out of the cauldron was so steamingly, aromatically the very chickenest of chicken soups, we’d have had the cast catering angle covered too.

Big bosomed, with a stately if latterly uncertain gait, Grandma had a number of paranoid theories. These included a deep-seated conviction the government was out to get you and therefore you could never be too careful what you said, where you said it and to whom. As it transpired, she wasn’t a million miles out.

“People always like to know your business.” she’d mutter darkly and consequently much of her conversation was conspiratorially whispered, causing no end of irritated confusion as the sisters grew older and deafer. Such sotto voce utterings of course made everything she said mysteriously exciting.

“Who’re you talking about, tell me, tell me?” I’d demand, pulling on her arm.

“Mooley and Ashey.” she’d say. This was satisfactory until it gradually dawned on me that either there was an inordinate amount going on with this peculiarly named couple or I was being given the runaround.

As if constant undercover surveillance wasn’t enough for any woman to deal with, Grandma also suffered frequent, incapacitating migraine headaches. Naturally, she didn’t trust pharmacists overmuch either, “Who’s to know what’s what in a pill?” She did however swear by vinegar and brown paper, overlaid with fresh potato peelings. I can see her now, stoutly ensconced on the sofa, paper and peelings on her forehead, arms and ankles firmly crossed. On a school trip to the British Museum, when I walked into the Egyptian room there was immediate kinship with any number of sarcophagi.

*

Physically, the sisters couldn’t have been more different. Auntie Kitty narrow shouldered; thin-faced; beak-nosed; quick-witted; brim-full of nervous energy topped with thwarted ambition and intelligence. She’d worked all her life and continued, one of the original Typewriters, travelling daily, deep into the bowels of Threadneedle Street until late into her eighties. As each subsequent boss had come and gone she’d ratcheted her age ever downward. By the time she eventually retired she was ostensibly only a well-worn 60, with the powers-that-be too polite or more likely gimlet-glare intimidated to raise so much as a sceptical eyebrow.

Kitty was the most volatile of the three, too quick –
sehr geschwind
Grandma used to grumble – in everything she did. A woman of sharply defined intelligence, impatient with anyone less so, she was an inveterate hoarder and could never, though I don’t think she ever tried, resist the lure of a shop sale. She’d snap up anything if it was reduced, although her particular vice was linen – table or bed, she wasn’t proud.

“A bargain’s a bargain” she used to state firmly, “On the day you need a good tablecloth, you’ll thank me.” For years she waded through bargain basements and bore home with marauder’s delight any manner of items for which no one in the family had any use whatsoever. Cupboard-opening at Grandma’s was always an exercise hazardous in the extreme because you never knew how many of Aunt Kitty’s purchases were stockpiled therein, poised to make a swift, cellophaned descent onto the heads of the unwary.

My Auntie Yetta was a bigger woman altogether, broad at hip and shoulder with tightly permed grey curls lurking uneasily if immovably. She was more domestically inclined than the others, struggling always to balance the housekeeping which suffered terminally from Auntie Kitty’s bargains and Grandma’s tendency, after her stroke, to pay for things and walk off without waiting for change. Auntie Yetta dedicated herself to evening the odds and on the principle of every little helps, used to snatch the OK Sauce bottle mid-dollop with a brisk, “Enough already!” She also had a tendency to come and yell at you through the toilet door “Don’t use so much paper, you think it grows on trees?” Disconcerting for us kids, even more inhibiting I imagine, for visiting adults.

Convinced financial disaster and penury leered and lurked round every corner Yetta, whilst watching the pennies, wasn’t going to take her eye off the pounds and expended endless energy trying to counter the spendthrift tendencies of her two sisters. Who could forget the row when it came out she’d been conducting a flourishing cut-price linen business, flogging Aunt Kitty’s purchases to the neighbours and putting the proceeds away for a rainy day. Kitty was incandescent with rage, Yetta stolidly unrepentant and Grandma so exasperated with both that she opened the window – they were third floor -and started hurling out even more of Kitty’s stock. None of the sisters spoke to each other for weeks but communicated via fiercely underscored notes on a pad.

There’s no doubt my mother’s family veered towards the matriarchal. The views of the mothers being not so much handed down, as thrust firmly into the psyche of the daughters. It didn’t do, they maintained, to wash your dirty linen in public, what happened in the family stayed in the family and what people didn’t know couldn’t ever hurt you. This of course was taken to the nth degree by Grandma, who wouldn’t tell her left hand what her right was up to, even in an emergency. But, as a general rule and certainly when it came to my own little idiosyncrasies, perhaps they weren’t so far wrong.

*

Auntie Edna was my mother’s sister, older by five years. My Uncle Monty was warm and generous; argumentative yes; eccentric certainly; unpredictable – invariably. His party trick was bending his leg so his foot reached his mouth, a fascinating but ultimately not hugely useful achievement. Like Grandma, Auntie Edna wasn’t one for wearing her heart on her sleeve and was, also like Grandma not over comfortable with physical demonstration of affection, “Oh get off.” she’d say, only half joking, “Enough with all the kissing – making my face all wet.” Individually, Auntie Edna and Uncle Monty were wonderful – combined, a somewhat uneasy alliance.

When I was about four, my mother was hospitalised with a bad back and I stayed at Auntie Edna’s, awed to be in the company of my two, eight and ten year older cousins. Whilst for me, this sojourn was a time of unalloyed bliss, Auntie Edna never quite got over the experience, although I don’t think I was a particularly wayward child. In fact, she never knew quite how wayward I could have been if I’d set my mind to it – fortunately at that stage neither did I.

Life at their house was a far more formal and structured affair than at ours. Auntie Edna was a great one for routine. Every morning in her pink, quilted satin dressing gown which zipped up at the front, she’d cook soft boiled eggs for us, precise consistency guaranteed by the trickling sand in an hour-glass held by a little wooden Dutch boy with grin, clogs and a room thermometer in his other hand. He was set on the shelf next to the gas stove and I wasn’t allowed to take him down. I soon discovered however that I could make the little red line of the thermometer zoom up and down in a very satisfying way, so no need to take him down at all.

The very first morning of my stay the toaster exploded. It was all really rather noisy and spectacular. Wires, trailing bits of melted plastic and slices of blackened bread shooting every which way, accompanied by shrieks of fright from my aunt and cousins. I don’t remember being particularly perturbed, the self-same thing had happened to my mother’s iron, just a few weeks before.

Whilst their whole house was full of delights, the pinnacle of pleasure was the downstairs toilet with its swinging, liquid-soap dispenser, a glass-spouted silver globe supported by two metal arms. It was suspended over the sink, below the mirror. Inverted, it deposited a respectable dollop of soap onto expectant hands. A sharp little flick however, administered at just the right point and it spun several times, with a rewarding amount of soap flying in all directions, highly entertaining. As indeed was the very smart wooden, flower-painted, toilet-paper holder which played
Edelweiss
every time you pulled off a sheet – Uncle Monty always said thank goodness it didn’t play the National Anthem! The gospel, according to Aunt Edna was that I once locked myself in that toilet for two hours and refused to come out. I really don’t think it was anywhere near as long as that, but I would add that no toilet I’ve been in since has given me half such a good time as that one.

Chapter Two

Family, back then, seemed to encompass many more people than it does today. It was also assumed and accepted that at every opportunity we’d want nothing more than to be together. On Saturdays we’d foregather at Grandma and the Aunts’ converging about 3.00 o’clock to be lubricated by strong dark tea for the grown-ups, Nesquik or cordial for us and for all, sticky, nutty cake called, for unfathomable reasons, Stuffed Monkey.

In the midst of all this conviviality, at around 6.00 o’clock, there’d be a lot of inter-sister muttering and bustling and all at once the huge table in the living room, around which we were crowded, was groaning with what Grandma and the Aunts called deprecatingly, ‘A little something’ as in, “Stay, have a little something – just what we had in the fridge”. And they’d dismiss with a modest wave of the hand, a week’s worth of choosing, shopping, chopping and cooking. Why on earth such store should be set by not seeming to have gone to any trouble, was just another of life’s little mysteries.

At these gatherings were always honorary family additions, fixtures by tradition if not blood. People like Auntie Esther, she of the certain aim, of which more later, and Aunties Hannah and Ginnie spinstered by the ’14 -‘18 War, sweet-faced and patient. Morrie Schwartz was another. In a shinily shabby grey suit, infused with the scent of the eye-wateringly strong peppermints he’d manoeuvre ruminatively from one cheek to the other he’d sit, still and vacant in the armchair by the window, watching traffic pass on the road below. He was treated gently, with kindness and spoken to loudly and slowly. We were told we must always smile at but not bother him. He was, Grandma mystifyingly told us sixpence short of a shilling.

His entire close family mother, father, twin brothers and a much older sister had been lost to a V2 one bloody night in the East End. He’d received a severe head injury but survived. His mind wasn’t like other people’s. It was divided by a rigid barrier. In front of this wafted random thoughts – might another piece of cake spoil supper? Was that the third or could it be the fourth Morris Minor to drive past? I once, with curiosity probed beyond the barrier and in a few shocking seconds understood why it was there. Fire rained, gobbled and spat. A miasma of brick dust and ashes coated and clogged throat and lungs and overall and over and again someone was screaming. I was unspeakably shaken and for a good while afterwards, fearful of going anywhere near him.

On the opposite landing to Grandma and the Aunts and therefore included much of the time in family gatherings were Mr and Mrs Kalter. Kind, accented, short and plump, Mrs Kalter was always
Baruch Hasheming
(tanking Gott) for everything from a portion of Stuffed Monkey to their timely pre-war flight and their continued health in the face of so much adversity, “So, I hev a little pain in the choints, what’s to complain about?” and she would mime spitting into the wind three times,

“Peh, peh, peh.” to ward off the evil eye – it never did to sound smug and tempt fate. Of all the many benefits of their adopted country for which she was so grateful the Royal Family, “Gott bless und keep”, ranked pretty high on the list. To them she had formed a fanatically loyal attachment and throughout the Kalter abode, newspaper and magazine shots of H.R.H. and family sat in egalitarian chumminess, side by side with equally carefully framed and cherished Kalter clan wedding and bar mitzvah shots.

“This mein brother Aaron,
oveh sholem,
at our wedding, this Elizabeth, Gott bless, learning to fix an engine, don’t she look lovely in that uniform?” Mrs Kalter’s main occupation when not dusting the royals was frying fish and at any hour she could be found, wrapped in a voluminous red and white check overall, hair hygienically scarfed, manically frying enough
gefülte
fish balls to sink a battleship.