Chapter 12
The following day there’s news – the second missing child has been found, and somewhere on Stamford Hill a family has been spared the torment Mrs Friedmann is going through. I try to be happy about this, but the truth is I’m worried that yesterday will now turn out to be wasted effort and we are back to square one. But no, it seems the change of heart has stuck and I need to get down to setting up the film. We’ve got just under two weeks to sort out locations, props, crew, script and cast. It doesn’t seem like the best time to mention that I need a couple of hours off to take my parents to the lawyer’s. I put it off until mid-morning when the witness statements arrive on a bike from Stoke Newington nick. The job has been assigned to Bill, one of our most experienced directors and I’m hoping that now he’s got all the information, he’ll be busy writing his script all afternoon. I’ve phoned the casting agency to set up auditions for later in the week, faxed over a full list of the principal roles, got the contact details for the best available crews, and sorted out the car hire.
Then, as Bill is bent over his computer, I tap him on the shoulder.
“I just need to – um – pop out for a while. Is that OK?” He looks at me as though I’m talking a foreign language.
“Things are red hot right now, kiddo. I can’t really spare you.”
“I need to meet someone – for lunch.”
“You can pop down and grab a couple of sandwiches for both of us. And a packet of crisps as a reward for good behaviour. That’s all the lunch either of us are going to get today, kid.” There’s no way round it. I go across the road and get two lots of cheese and pickle on wholemeal. My parents are going to be arriving at Paddington station any time now, and I won’t be there. I’ve failed them again.
I put Bill’s sandwich on the edge of his desk, and while he’s eating, I run through the list of what I’ve done, and what’s left. He seems pretty impressed by my efficiency, but just as I’m thinking he’s going to let me slide off, he starts with another long catalogue of things that need doing by the end of the afternoon.
I’ve just got started when my phone goes. It’s Dad from a payphone at Paddington.
“Look,” I say, “I can’t really get away at the moment. You might have to get in a cab and go round to the lawyer’s without me.”
There’s a bleep bleep bleep, followed by some shuffling and the sound of coins being loaded. “What you mean? This won’t take long. Surely they can spare you.” It’s always been a bit difficult to get Dad to take my work seriously, mainly because I’m not an engineer. On some level he still thinks I’m in some kind of nice job for a girl to do until she gets married. He thinks I’m “helping out” with a bit of filing.
“Well, actually they can’t,” I snap. Silence, more bleeping, scuffling and coins being loaded, and then the murmur of my parents talking to each other. Mutti comes on the line.
“Darling. Please come, we appreciate it.” Wheedling.
“Look,” I say, “If you really think I am essential to this meeting, then just have a coffee and hold on. I’ll do my best to get away.” Even as I say it, I think why am I bothering? We’ll be here until ten tonight, at the very least.
As I put the phone down I look over at Bill. He looks up at me, and I make like I’m terribly busy doing lists and things. Shit. For once, just cut loose. Do your work, I say to myself, do your very important work. Let them get on with their thing, you do yours. Ha. I can’t even concentrate. Then the brainwave.
“I’ll have to see this bloke about the suits for the actors,” I say to Bill. “It’s not the kind of thing you can do on the phone.” He looks pretty distracted by now, and hardly takes his eyes off the computer, scrolling up and down the script he’s writing.
“Sure, kiddo,” is all that he says. And I’m pretty sure he winks at me.
Tottenham is only a few miles up the road from my flat, but I never go there. It’s a place I pass through on the way to somewhere else, moving on as fast as the traffic allows. Until now. I’ve managed to scoop up my parents and get them in the hatchback, and now we’re edging up the High Road, a confused litter of fried chicken joints and emporia devoted to hair products for black people. This is the land the high street chains forgot, but it doesn’t care, surviving on its own brand of visceral energy, and dominated by a huge police station.
After we park, my parents walk along the pavement clinging to each other, with the uncertain look of people who think the borders of civilisation stop at Swiss Cottage. Above a shop selling roast nuts appears to be the office of the legal practice of Mr L Zoltán.
This is not a solicitor’s office as we know it. There’s no brass plaque, or coiffed receptionist, just a stained stair carpet and wood chip wallpaper painted cream a very long time ago.
A mismatched, collapsing set of filing cabinets is spewing out its contents. There are files on the desk, piled up on the floor, pushed against the wall in great heaps. There is nowhere to sit because there are files on every chair. An inappropriate tasselled lampshade in scarlet dangles above, casting a boudoir tinge over proceedings.
Mr Zoltán greets us with theatrical formality, kissing my mother’s hand in an exaggerated display of Austro-Hungarian etiquette and uttering an elaborate multilingual torrent starting with “Gnädige Frau”. He shakes hands with me and Dad, adding something which is I think is supposed to be English. The accent is thick as the legendary cherrysoup at the Gay Hussar restaurant in Soho.
As we are now looking round for somewhere to sit down, Mr Zoltán moves files off some of the chairs. There is a lot of puffing involved, because he is a large man well into middle age, bursting out of his clothes, as though they are unable to contain his exuberant personage. He sits down, mopping perspiration from his face with a crimson handkerchief, which clashes violently with the rust-coloured locks of hair, draped in Bohemian fashion over his right eye. He addresses my mother.
“So, my dear lady, where shall vee begin?” Dad is nodding encouragement at me, so I butt in.
“As I think you know from your phone conversation with my mother,” I nod towards her, “she would like to find out about the possibility of – would like to know whether she can make a claim for compensation from the Hungarian government.” Zoltán nods gravely, as I add, “For things that happened to her and her family, during the war.”
“Yes, yes, many tragic events swept our homeland during these difficult years,” he says grandly, and Mum looks at him with an expression of extreme respect. He sweeps onward.
“This is a subject vizz vitch I am very much conversant. I, László Zoltán, am a very rare professional – fully qualified in legal practice of both British and Hongarian jurisdictions, and of course bilingual. You vill find that I am at the forefront of legal developments in this specialist field, and I am fully up-to-date vizz all the very latest letchislation.”
He surveys his domain with a regal demeanour, and our gaze followed his around the room. The ramshackle surroundings did not appear to reflect well upon his bilingual legal expertise.
“Do not be deceived by the appearance. Zoltán is at this moment residing in a temporary premise, while new office being refurbished. In Finsbury Park,” he says with a flourish as if the aforementioned location was anything other than a public toilet en route to Arsenal football ground.
“Mr Zoltán,” I say in my best business manner, “could you please summarise the legal situation, as it currently stands, and give us some examples of cases which you have successfully concluded?
“Of course, of course, young lady, no problem. But first let us talk about the dear lady’s case. Excuse me, but vill be best if I discuss the matter in our mother tongue.” He turns to Mutti and addresses her in rapid fire Hungarian. She looks ready to dissolve with gratitude. I have not heard her speak what is supposed to be her first language since my grandmother died twenty years ago and it doesn’t seem to come easily. She is struggling for words, responding to Zoltán’s questions in hesitant, stuttering phrases. He prompts her benignly at intervals.
After ten minutes she seems to have got the hang of it, and is making up for lost time. I am beginning to feel at a loose end. What exactly are they talking about? Now he seems to be expounding at more and more length. I catch a few Latin phrases amid Zoltán’s billowing Hungarian. She is saying less and less, listening reverentially to his dramatic declamations.
“Mutti – could you tell us what’s going on?” I say.
“Wait a moment, I tell you in a minute.”
She and Zoltán are getting more and more animated. At one point she sheds a ladylike tear, and he proffers the red handkerchief to her, which she takes despite her usual concerns for cleanliness. But the sadness does not last. Minutes later, they are both roaring with laughter, and then again expressing surprise and shaking hands vigorously.
“Is good, is good,” exclaims Zoltán to Dad and me. “Vee vill have a great victory – Hongarian government will pay for the terrible crimes committed against your family.” How this victory is to be achieved remains vague, as after we leave Mutti seems unable to fully explain the legal advice Zoltán gave her. Despite this, she maintains a high opinion of him. And best of all, I manage to slip back to the office by way of Stamford Hill, dropping off measurements and selecting fabric, but still get back into the office just at Bill is writing the final scene. Job done.
That evening, I’m hanging round at Dave’s, my parents having retreated back across the Welsh border to my overwhelming relief. We’re in the dark room, immersed in the blue glow of the safety lamp as he processes a roll of film. I’ve given him the rundown of today’s legal encounter, but now he’s concentrating on his pictures. The conversation has petered out amid the sloshing of liquids. As I watch him, my last phone call with Jon is still washing around in my head. What was it he said?
“Fuck the goy and marry the Jew.” How bloody cynical is that, anyway. Does that mean I should marry a pig-headed, arrogant, self-centred guy just because he’s Jewish? With stupid tassels on his shoes?
“This Zoltán character sounds like a complete chancer,” says Dave, immersing some photographic paper into a tray of liquid and jolting me back to the here and now.
“Sorry? Oh yeah, aside from the accent and the overly dramatic manner, he’s probably OK,” I say, pulling myself back to the present. “Anyway, he’s the best hope we’ve got so far.”
“Don’t defend him, you just said yourself he was untrustworthy.”
“I didn’t say that. I said that we need to check out his credentials. Is he as well qualified as he says?” Dave picks a dripping sheet, holds it up for a moment and then slides it into the next tray. “By the way,” I add, “Zak’s given me the contact details for a picture editor at an interiors magazine who might, apparently, be interested in your work.”
“Really? Are you sure the picture editor at this glossy doesn’t just want to keep his star photographer happy? And if it means he has to spend half an hour flicking through a portfolio he has absolutely no interest in, then it’s a price worth paying.”
“It’s a she, and does it matter? Once she sees your work, then she’ll be won over. Don’t worry about how you got there.”
“She won’t like my work. I’ve been there so many times before. It’ll be too dark, too moody, too this or that. Like they think I couldn’t do chic interiors too if I really wanted to.”
“Go and see her, or at least put in a call.”
“Look, Elizabeth, if you want to marry someone with a fabulous career, why don’t you do what Mutti wants, and find yourself a nice doctor?” I look at Dave. He glares back. There’s some kind of other meaning there in the narrowing of his eyes. Oh Christ, does he know? How on earth did I manage to give myself away?
I shut my mouth tight, sifting through what I’ve said for the fatal clue. Down in the tray of chemicals, an image is resolving itself onto a sheet of photographic paper. From the opposite side of the table, I’m looking at everything upside down and blurry from the rippling liquid. Even so, as it begins to take shape, I realise what I’m looking at. Dave lifts it out and dunks it in the next tray along.
I come round to his side, to see a photograph of a Hasid in full kit and fur hat hoisted out of the liquid and pegged up on a line. Chin out, barrel chest, full lips one stop short of a sneer, he’s radiating attitude into the lens. Reb Stern.
“I know that guy,” I stutter.
“They don’t all look the same, Liz. You’ve met a few of them, doesn’t make you the big expert on Stamford Hill.”
“No, they don’t all look the same. That’s Stern, the guy who stopped me from filming. I told you. Now my best buddy and filming contact.”
“The so-called Tevye?”
“The very guy. How did you get to meet him?”
“I didn’t exactly meet him, I went up there with a camera.”
“It’s a great photo. You are so good, I just wish you weren’t so fucking temperamental about it. What made you go there?”
“Well…” He’s dunked another photograph in the bath now. It’s a group of women in headscarves with overloaded double buggies, stopping to chat. I recognise the spot, near the supermarket at the crossroads. One woman is laughing, another is looking down, blushing. There’s a kind of relaxed intimacy, very unselfconscious.
I suppose I should be thrilled, but it’s such a sudden change I’m still trying to get my head around it.
“Come on. You’ve never been interested in reportage since I’ve known you.”
“It was just when you were talking about the people… I dunno. Curiosity or something.” The line starts filling with pictures now. People shopping, picking up children, carrying those velvet embroidered bags I’ve seen them all with, women perched on the front step of terraced houses. That sitting on the stoop is so old world but it really captures the atmosphere of Stamford Hill, a place that seems decades behind the rest of London. Elsewhere most people just go home and watch television, but here there’s real life out on the streets. He’s captured the feel of the place in a handful of shots.
“You drive me mad, sometimes, you know.”
He puts his arms round me, and kisses my neck. “I know. But Elizabeth?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I have Tevye’s phone number?”
And I feel as though I’ve been dipped in developing fluid myself, the image of who I am and who I want to be is coming into sharper focus as I stand there in the dark. I’m watching Dave dipping and dunking and looking and I’m thinking How can I have been so stupid? I just want to expunge any memory of Jon and that awful night. I kiss Dave on the cheek and leave him sorting out his chemicals.