Chapter 1
Cardiff, 1997
It’s the middle of the night and my mother’s gone AWOL in a field wearing patent leather loafers.
Two years after my father sells his business at a loss, Mutti has been despatched to Ibiza on a mysterious mission to do with their prized holiday flat but never gets any further than Rhoose, and is reported missing near the airport perimeter. It later turns out this isn’t just another one of her little mishaps, it is the beginning of a whole new chapter in all our lives.
Dad’s at home warming up the paprika chicken when the police ring to say she’s been thrown off the flight. Sorry? At first it doesn’t seem to make sense. The person at the airport end hesitates, and finally mutters something about excessive alcohol consumption. In plain language, my mother was drunk. When you reflect on the yobbish behaviour air crews actually do tolerate, for them to dump a sixty-something woman brought up to believe that ‘we’ always act like a lady however many gins we may have sunk, she must really have been giving it some. But Dad doesn’t waste time thinking about that as he rushes down there, and to his credit he does manage to manhandle her into the car. But just as they are driving off, she leaps out of the door and disappears into the dark.
So here I am now, sitting in the passenger seat of Dad’s decrepit Datsun as we cruise the airport approach road. The midnight pips sound on Radio 4. By the time we glide past the terminal, a newsreader is intoning the details of Tony Blair’s new cabinet in prayer-like cadences. The fifth time I’ve heard it today. I jab the off button and the whole complex begins to recede behind us. I gaze vainly into the gloom, but there’s no sign of a woman in a car coat with a handbag over her arm, who might happen to be ambling about in the bushes, giving the wildlife the fright of their lives.
“We’ve definitely been along this road before,” I protest.
“Nein, looks the same, but was coming from other side. Porthkerry Road,” says Dad, crunching the gears as we cross the A4226.
“Honestly, we have been here before. An hour ago.”
“So, in an hour she can go a long way.”
“She can barely walk from the car to the supermarket. She’s just not up to walking a mile in the dark.”
“What zatt?” He stops the car.
“What?”
“See, over there.”
I jump out, stride across the verge and peer over the fence. The mulchy grass sucks in my boots. I can’t imagine her lasting long here in patent leather heels. I lean over the fence, and stare into the gloom. Away from the streetlights, everything looks grey. On the charcoal expanse, there’s an ashen shape moving about. It could be a person lying on the ground, writhing in pain. Why on earth didn’t I bring the torch? Then, as my eyes adjust, I make out a pile of bin liners disgorging their half-digested contents onto the grass, the empty bags flailing in the wind. We retreat to the car. At least Mutti’s not dead in this field. We drive onward.
I phone the airport police again. Straight through to voicemail. “I can’t go on like this,” mutters my father. “I will, I will…” I think his lip trembles, or is it a streetlamp passing over the car? “…I will take a powder.” It’s probably the wrong moment to point out that the powder thing doesn’t actually work in English, unless you are talking about Beecham’s but that’s not what he means and it’s irritating. I’m thinking for God’s sake you’ve been here long enough to learn the language now, get the idioms right for once. Of course I don’t actually say anything, but grind my teeth. However grim things have been before, I’ve never heard my father threaten suicide. That’s her style not his.
“Don’t be silly,” I say, trying not to snap. “We’ll get her home, and by tomorrow morning, you’ll feel a whole lot better.”
“Tomorrow I feel better, ja, but then it happens again, and again. I am too old for all this,” he rasps. “You don’t know what it’s like. I finish it now.” He jerks to a halt in the middle of the road, and starts banging his head against the steering wheel. His white mane shudders with each thump. If he carries on, he’s going to concuss himself. I lean over and wrap my arms around him.
My parents have long given the impression to outsiders of having perfectly matched eccentricities. People think of them as sweet but slightly dotty European émigrés. It’s a smokescreen.
“Why don’t you get help?” I ask, as he subdues.
“We’ve had help. What do you think she was doing schlepping to London for years and years to see Dr Hellman? Cost a fortune.”
What a complete waste of money that was. Lies of omission. I bet my last fiver there was never a word about booze in all the hundreds of hours on the couch. Darling Ilse may well have been best mates with Anna Freud, but she was into therapy, not telepathy. There’s a price for being so economical with the truth.
“That was years ago. You need help now.”
“You take her. You try. She won’t listen to me.”
“How bad is it?”
“You’ve seen her.”
“What about your doctor, can’t he help?”
“She doesn’t like him.”
“And?”
“It’s not the same since Ernest retired. He’s just a run-of-the-mill GP.” He screws up his face.
“So she’s right.”
“To be honest he’s a complete arschloch.”
The thunder of an airplane taking off directly above us cuts our conversation. If I can get him over this, then everything will be back to normal. A few rounds of bridge and some Sachertorte could do wonders to restore their sense of equilibrium.
“Why don’t we go back to the airport?” I suggest. “At least we can get a cup of coffee, and talk to the police again – maybe they’ve heard something.” I don’t want to be the person that finds her in a ditch. Whatever mess she’s dragged us through, she deserves better than that.
“The airport?” He’s shouting again now. “Why should she go back there?”
“Because there’s nowhere else to go,” I shout back at him. “Unless she asks the nearest sheep to do her a favour and run her down to the Savoy for a spot of dinner!”
At the terminal, I trip over a familiar looking shoe. Patent leather slip-on with two-inch heels and decorative gold buckles. It stands alone, on the granite floor, orphaned. A few feet away, my Mutti is sleeping with her mouth open, on a row of chairs near to the police desk. She’s bathed in the pale green glow of fluorescent light, her suitcase and handbag propped next to her. As I lean over, the smell of sweetly decaying booze breath swills over me. The Madame Rochas she’s wearing is no match for it, and has thrown in the towel.
* * * * *
The following day, I wake in my old bed with the alarm going off. I force myself up. I can’t afford to be too late for work, and there’s a hundred and sixty miles of M4 motorway between me and Shepherd’s Bush. I pull on my jeans and stumble down to the kitchen. Mutti’s sitting at the table, cleaning the sticky black nicotine goo out of her cigarette holders with little torn-up twists of tissue, reading glasses pushed down her nose. She’s smoking while she does it, poring over the congealed tar. The bitter smell of nicotine and fresh smoke mingles in the air with the acrid aroma of mocha. A long, quilted dressing-gown of stained rose-patterned fabric is gaping over her round belly. Next to the ashtray full of brown-stained tissue twists lies a pile of crosswords cut out of the Daily Telegraph, and a pencil, which she picks up now and then to write in an answer.
“Good morning,” she says with a bright smile. If she’s got a hangover, she’s hiding it well.
“Morning,” I mumble.
“What do you want for breakfast?”
“Just coffee.”
“Go on – I make you an eggy.”
A peace offering. For my mother, food has always been love on a plate. She brought me up on streuselkuchen with schlagsahne and when I was fifteen told me I was half a stone overweight. Her. The one in the Crimplene tent. I etched my anger in blood red ink into my diary. I stopped eating. I thought that’ll show her. She can do her thousand calorie a day diet from now until Christmas, but I’ll drop half a stone before she’s even opened that can of Weight Watchers soup. So what if my periods stop. Then she hoiks me off to the doctor, and it turns out they all think I’m pregnant. As if.
I look at her puppy pleading eyes. “No, honestly,” I say, “I’ll have something later. But I’ll have some of that fresh coffee.”
I want to scream at her for forcing Dad and me to patrol the airport in the early hours, for making me late for work, and then pretending nothing happened. But I find myself submitting to her forced warmth. It’s easier. She puts the kettle on, and clucks around tidying things away and wiping green patterned splash-back tiles with a damp J-cloth. My father comes down the stairs. I wait to see whether he says anything about the ordeal she’s put us through. But he just makes himself a cup of lemon tea and pads off into the other room to watch the headlines on breakfast television, stopping only to give my mother a reassuring pat on the bum. I realise that it’s always been like this.
The following day Mutti gets on a flight to Ibiza. She’s called Customer Services at the charter company to complain about the outrageous way she was treated. After all, she’s been a loyal customer for many years. With profuse apologies, she’s been put on the next convenient flight out. She phones me, triumphant, to announce her victory. I wish her bon voyage and am left sitting in the office. She gets away with it every single time.
When I next visit my parents they seem more united than ever, and there’s something new going on – they are strangely secretive. I notice their eyes meeting when they think I’m not watching. As usual there’s nothing much to pass the time, apart from shopping. My mother loves the supermarket. She parks in the disabled parking bay, though there’s nothing whatever wrong with her. “They can’t give you a ticket,” she points out.
“What about the genuinely disabled people who come to the supermarket and discover you’ve taken their space?”
“I come here at least three times a week, and there are always spaces. Ridiculous, the number of disabled spaces. It would take an epidemic of polio to put so many people in wheelchairs.”
“Just because you can get away with it, doesn’t make it right.”
“What is wrong, is they make too many disabled spaces.”
“There are plenty of others.”
“But they are further away.”
“Being lazy is not a recognised disability. Anyway you need a bit of exercise, it would do you good.” I become stern, “And it would stop you becoming disabled in the future.”
“Ha!” says Mutti, letting go of her trolley and putting up her two index fingers. “I must do my exercises, exercises, exercises,” she chants, bending and straightening her fingers up and then pointing them towards each other in unison. It’s an old joke. She uses it to divert attention from the argument, laughing and looking at me coquettishly, as though she was twenty-five instead of nearly seventy.
Although she has hobbled through the revolving doors leaning heavily on her trolley, once we are inside the supermarket Mutti scampers along the aisles with the playful energy of a Labrador puppy chasing a roll of toilet paper. She compares similar products, hunts for unusual ingredients, and examines new lines with great interest. It’s an endless, amusing game. Items can be substituted for one another or combined in different ways. She is particularly pleased to discover that there is a promotion for a new type of cheese. A pretty girl in a bright green sweatshirt is offering samples on a tray. Mutti helps herself to two, then does a circuit round the tinned vegetable section and has another couple. I study the contents of our trolley in a desperate bid to avoid eye contact with the promotions girl. And pray she has a memory impairment.
The numerous choices available in the savoury cracker section seem to hold an improbable fascination for my mother, and I think she could write a doctorate on the multiple uses of tinned tuna. At the fresh fish counter, Mutti asks for some mackerel. The shop assistant has difficulty understanding, and asks her to repeat her order three times. Mutti’s now getting irritated by having to repeat herself to a girl who speaks one language badly, when she herself speaks four fluently and two others well enough to make small talk over the bridge table. The girl tries to make up for it by being apologetic to the point of servility. She’s got that right, anyway. Mutti pulls herself up to her full imposing height and gives a benign smile. As the girl is wrapping the fish, she says to my mother,
“Where to you from then, sweets?” There’s a frozen moment. Mutti’s expression, which was beginning to thaw, now drops to minus fifty. She seizes the package and throws it into her trolley.
“Rhiwbina,” she barks, and stomps off leaving the girl looking baffled.
Her favourite section of the shop is refrigerated goods. She is lingering there, studying the ingredients of a type of fruit yoghurt that I am certain she has never bought. Then she replaces it, and starts scrutinising some pots of salad. I know that she would not consider buying shop-bought coleslaw, when it is “so easy”, and “so much cheaper and better” to make your own, and therefore it’s puzzling that she is so interested in these products. And now I really want to get out of here.
“Do you really want that, then?” I ask. “If we get back in time I’ll be able to go for a swim before lunch.”
“Wait a minute, won’t be long now,” she says looking at her watch.
“What won’t be long?”
“You’ll see.”
After a while, a shop employee arrives with a ticket gun and a clipboard. He starts going through the chilled section, marking down prices. Now a small crowd of jostling pensioners has collected around him. Mutti’s tactics have put her in pole position. She loads the trolley with low-fat soft cheese, wafer-thin sliced ham and hummus, all reduced to a fraction of their original price. Then, as she is bearing down on a carton of marinaded olives, they are lifted from the fridge by a white-haired woman with a walking stick. I see a tiny flicker of annoyance pass over Mutti’s face. She eyes the frail-looking woman with all the concentration of a sniper taking aim. Then her trolley suddenly lurches forward, apparently out of control. It misses the old lady, but flips the walking stick out of her grasp, knocking her off balance. As she clutches on to the edge of the fridge for support, she lets go of the olives. Mutti manoeuvres the package into her own trolley, while simultaneously putting her hand out to “help” the old lady.
She bends over nimbly to pick up the walking stick and places it in the lady’s hand with a solicitous pat. As she takes it, the old dear makes a point of saying how rare it is these days to come across people with “good manners”. She has no idea. Satisfied with her haul, Mutti pushes on to the checkout.
“Is it really worth it?” I ask, while we are waiting in the queue.
“Is what worth it?”
“All that faffing around just to save a few pennies.”
“Ja, you know darling. Things are not easy, I do what I can.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ach, you know, since Daddy sold the business, we have to be a bit more careful,” she says.
She starts emptying her trolley onto the conveyor belt. I look at what she’s chosen, and realise how meagre it is. Of course, she used to feed a family of four plus my grandmother and a constant stream of other guests. Now it’s just her and my father. But even taking this into account, the lavish excesses of the past have evaporated. Seeing that she has been reduced to scavenging for cut-price bargains silences me.
But then I notice that there are a couple of bottles of vodka in the trolley – I didn’t see those going in. Of course. Mutti “forgot” the mayonnaise, and asked me to pop back. I wonder if she really believes I won’t notice what she’s done while I was gone. She must think I’m really stupid. What is the point of indulging in that ridiculous rigmarole for a few cut price items from the delicatessen when she’s going to pour twenty times the amount she’s saved right down her throat? I’m ready to explode with indignation, but the evident desperation as she stands stooped next to the trolley pulls the rug right out from under my fury. I don’t ask any more questions.
On the way home, Mutti breaks the silence. “Daddy spoke to Onkel Bernhard yesterday.”
“Oh yeah?” I know what’s coming next. She might as well be jabbing me with a size six darning needle.
“Apparently Hanni is engaged.”
“To a nice Jewish boy, no doubt.” I snap. If she picks up on my irritation, she pretends not to.
“Apparently he’s a lawyer.”
Lawyer is code for a decent income and prospects for the future. My parents would so love me to get engaged to a nice lawyer, doctor or accountant. In this respect they are traditional. Unemployed photographer is not on their list. But they are eternal optimists. “How is David?” she asks.
“Good, good. Dave’s good,” I reply. That’s code for we are still together. And he’s still not Jewish.