Perfectly Ordinary People(67)

I’m so sorry.

She must have run out of money, waiting, that’s the thing . . .

She must have found herself alone, living under German occupation with no man, with hardly any income – her cleaning didn’t pay that much – with just these stupid, stupid postcards coming from her stupid daughter saying how wonderful everything was in Cannes.

That must have been so hard.

It was hard. In the end it was too hard.

Too hard?

Yes. She wasn’t strong enough to cope.

I’m sorry, I . . . ?

She, um, killed herself in ’41.

Sweet Jesus.

It . . . <Coughs> It was a neighbour who found her. She was on the floor with her head in the oven.

It was quite a common way to do it, in those days. They changed the gas in the sixties, I think, but in the old days, when it was coal gas, it was perhaps the most common method people used to do that sort of thing.

God, I’m so, so sorry. I can’t even imagine how awful that must have been for you when you found out.

No. There are no words. There are still no words.

For a while, I liked to convince myself that Dad had escaped and that he was living it up in Switzerland or on the Riviera or something. But the truth is that he probably died in a ditch at the side of the road. My guess is he ran out of petrol and came across some angry Germans who worked out that he’d lost his leg in the First World War, and they shot him at the side of the road or . . . I’m sorry. It’s just that . . . well . . . I suspect that he knew when he left us there . . . that he didn’t have enough petrol to get home, I mean. So I . . . God . . .

It’s normal. Getting upset is totally normal. How could you not get upset?

I know.

But . . . Look . . . This is an awful thing to ask, and I’m sorry to be the hard-nosed journalist, but was he never found? Weren’t you ever able to bury him or . . . Do you have anywhere – a place, I mean – to visit, to grieve?

No, he just disappeared. My mother was buried in Mulhouse, and I’ve been there. I’ve seen her grave, and I tend to think of it as where they’re both buried even though that’s not the case. But no. Dad just vanished. Thousands of people in Alsace just vanished and no one knows where they went or what happened to them. It wasn’t even that unusual. But I didn’t know so I just kept on sending those damned postcards.

For the longest time, I hated myself for having sent them. And I blamed myself for my father’s death. I blamed myself for both their deaths, really. Because of course, if he hadn’t driven us . . . And then if she hadn’t lost my father, then she wouldn’t have done what she did either.

But you know, I think that’s enough for today. I’d like to stop now, if that’s all right? Can you turn that thing off, please?

It’s about to run out any— [tape ends].





Ruth. Part Four.

A week after my meeting with Ethel it was Dan’s birthday and as, for once, he had Saturday night free, I took him to a swanky restaurant called fu:d near Clapham Common. It was all white starched tablecloths, silverware and branding.

There we ate a selection of delights such as asparagus tartlets and avocado and hazelnut verrine, and though the prices were as eye-wateringly excessive as the portions were tiny, Dan was thrilled to bits. His great passion in life was cooking, after all, so all those mini jabs at his tastebuds turned out to have been the perfect gift.

Over dinner, he asked me about my meeting with Ethel, so I told him the little I’d learned.

‘So did you find out why they came to England?’ Dan asked, once I’d finished.

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I actually forgot to ask.’

‘Or why your grandparents divorced?’

I shook my head. ‘Her answers were pretty minimalist. She said they wanted “different things”.’

‘Wow,’ Dan said. ‘Different things. There’s a non-answer, if ever there was one.’

‘Perhaps she wanted to move to the seaside and open a café,’ I offered.

‘Yeah, I suppose,’ Dan said. ‘I quite fancy the idea myself. And the thing she wants to give your dad?’

‘She wouldn’t tell me that either,’ I said. ‘She wasn’t the easiest person to talk to, but I liked her all the same. There was something calm and kind about her, if that makes any sense. Something very solid, too. The kind of person that’s lived through so much shit, she’s not taking any now. Do you know what I mean?’

‘I do,’ Dan said, ‘but she sounds cagey.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘She was a bit.’

With dinner, we downed a bottle of Prosecco, followed by another of white wine, so by the time I came to pay, I was sufficiently sloshed that I didn’t think too deeply about paying ￡270 for two meals – two meals that had left us feeling hungry.

But like I say, Dan was happy – ecstatic, almost – and, as I slumped against him in the taxi home, he burbled on about various dishes and how he was going to try this or that combination himself.

‘You know, it might be easier if we didn’t have to decide,’ he said, after a pause, and I twisted my head backwards to look up at him. His smile, seen upside down, looked a bit horror-filmy.

‘I’m sorry?’ I asked. I was thinking about food and menus and wondering if he’d come up with some new concept whereby customers wouldn’t have to choose what to eat.