Neurotica (5 page)

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 come into the room, she'd noticed
there were tiny glass thimbles of whiskey, sweet sherry and cherry
brandy on Aunty Yetta's serving cart. Unlike the mountains of food,
these were remaining, in true Jewish style, steadfastly untouched.

She reckoned she would need to down at least ten of the
glasses to get a hit and wondered how she could do this without
drawing attention to herself and becoming known as Gloria's
daughter the dipso.

Finally she decided that everybody was too busy eating to
notice her. She made her way over to the cart and picked up a glass
of whiskey. After about five glasses she was beginning to feel much
calmer, and was just about to go into the kitchen to find her mother
when she became aware of a man's voice behind her. It sounded soft
and smooth—as if it spent most of its life doing Kerrygold
butter commercials.

Anna turned round. Every nerve ending in her body capable of
a sexual response, including ones she didn't know about in her
pancreas, suddenly felt as if they were about to take off all their
clothes and step into black silk negligees.

Anna was standing face-to-face with one of the most beautiful
men she had ever seen not on the arm of some Hollywood babe. Her
eyes darted quickly to the buffet table to check that Sharon Stone
and Michelle Pfeiffer weren't hovering by the pickled herrings.

They weren't. The only people lurking by the pickled herrings
were wearing man-made fibers, and there wasn't a Neiman Marcus
carrier bag or an even remotely toned upper body part in sight.

“I was just saying,” came the warm Irish accent, “I
didn't realize it was the done thing to get plastered at a Jewish
wake, but if it is, then I think I'll join you. By the way, I'm
Charlie Kaplan. Henry was my grandfather.”

D
an was getting desperate. He'd decided after such a stressful
day to leave work early. As he lay on the sofa going
through the ads for counselors in
Time Out,
he felt like
a eunuch wandering around an Ann Summers shop. The list of therapies
on offer seemed endless. How the hell was he supposed to know if
astrological Reichian analysis was any better than Jungian crystal
therapy, or if Janovian primal therapy was a safer bet than
underwater rebirthing.

What he did know, on the other hand, was that Brenda had
frightened the life out of him. It had taken her to convince him,
when Anna couldn't, that his health had become an obsession, and
that Anna could leave him because of it. Losing her was
unthinkable.

Finally he came across a very brief and
straightforward-looking ad from a psychotherapist who appeared to be a chartered member of
some shrink institute or other. Dan knew psychotherapy only involved
talking to a therapist a couple of times a week, and he could get
away without buying a snorkel and flippers. He dialed the number and
got a calm, reassuring woman's voice on the answer machine: “I
hope you won't take it as a personal rejection that I am unable to
speak to you just now, but if you feel strong enough to share your
feelings, please break down, cry or let go of your anger after the
tone.”

Dan thought she sounded a caring sort and left a message asking
for an appointment.

If Brenda was right, he was, without doubt, on his way to
saving his sanity and his marriage. He decided there and then not to
mention any of this therapy business to Anna. He wanted to surprise
her by coming home one day and announcing he was cured and that he
was whisking her off for a holiday in the South Pacific.

What caused his positive and determined mood to evaporate in
an instant and made his heart rate shoot up to 155 (he confirmed this
using the second hand on his watch) was the thought that Brenda
might have got it all wrong. What if this therapist woman started
wading into his psyche only to discover that it was too late, that
his sanity couldn't be salvaged and that he was, in fact, completely
and utterly barking? As he imagined ending his days lying naked on
a filthy, piss-soaked mattress in some nuthouse, the strain became
too much. He went upstairs to the bathroom and tested his urine
for sugar.

C H A P T E R     F O U R

A
NNA KNEW THAT IT DEFINITELY wasn't the done thing to get drunk at Jewish funerals. She assumed God would probably wreak his
vengeance on her by making sure the
Globe on Sunday
spiked
her piece on nits. What she also knew was that it was even less the
done thing for a woman, particularly a married one, to pull at a
Jewish funeral. Only after she assured herself that God hadn't
turned her into a particularly horny pillar of salt did she pluck
up the courage to reply to Charlie Kaplan.

She wanted to say bloody hell if Uncle Henry was your grandfather then that means you're Sidney-the-one-nobody-used-to-talk- about's son, so how come you're so
tall and screw-me-quick gorgeous when they always said your father
was short and weedy?

But because Charlie was giving Anna the kind of look that
would have forced even the most committed lesbian to reassess her
position on fellatio, all that she could blurt out was: “Hello,
I'm Anna Shapiro. Henry was my uncle.”

She paused to take in the understated navy woolen suit. This
looked as if it had cost an arm and both legs, plus a certain amount
of offal. Underneath he was wearing an equally expensive polo shirt
in a slightly darker shade of navy. “Well, not actually my uncle,”
she continued. “We weren't really related. Sort of adopted uncle.
So if I remember right, you must be from Dublin, then?”

“Yes, from a village just a few miles outside. I bought
m'self a little cottage there last year, but I'm not home that often.
I fly with Aer Hibernia .   .   . long haul,
mainly.”

“So you're Captain Kaplan?”

“It is kind of alliterative, but I live with it.”

Anna knew it was her turn to say something light and
conversational, but she couldn't, because her profound relief that
Charlie Kaplan didn't appear to be living with a wife or girlfriend
had begun to segue into an exceedingly downmarket, but nevertheless
compelling, scenario involving an airline captain, ideally the one
in front of her. In her daydream, Captain Kaplan was sitting at the
controls with his head turned to face her, wearing nothing but his
pilot's cap and a huge erection, while she was sitting opposite him
with her legs slightly apart, in a very short black PVC trench coat
and no panties.

As Anna came back to the reality of Uncle Henry's living room,
she realized Charlie was staring at her and smiling. He couldn't be
more than thirty-two or -three. Anna's hand darted from her side
to the nonexistent loose skin under her chin and then back to her
side again. For the first time she noticed his eyes, which were a
deep Irish blue. They looked especially striking against his Semitic
olive skin and almost-black hair, which was longish and slightly
wavy. He reminded Anna of a very young George Best with overtones of
horny Israeli paratrooper.

“Oh, right, good, great,” Anna spluttered. She downed another
micro-whiskey in one. “Must be fascinating—all that
travel.”

Charlie agreed, it was.

Then there was a pause which was just slightly too long for
social comfort.

“So, Anna, tell me about yourself. What do you do?”

Anna hated telling strangers what she did for a living,
especially if they seemed the sort who might look down their noses
at the tabloids. It always ended up with her having to spend fifteen
minutes justifying her existence as well as the existence of tabloid
newspapers. Nevertheless, over the years, she had developed an
extremely well argued and erudite case for both, and could deliver
it with the force and assurance of a QC on a winning streak at the
Old Bailey.

However, in the presence of a man so ravishing he could
undoubtedly get Andrea Dworkin rushing out to buy lace open-crotch
panties, her intellect and articulacy failed her and she ended up
stuttering out something about the tabloids all being crap really,
but the money was brilliant.

The conversation would have gone on in this stammering,
faltering fashion had Anna not accidentally broken the tension by
asking, “So, how's your father?”

In a voice which was pure hormone, Charlie shot back at her
with, “Well, I'm down for it if you are, but I'm not sure this is
quite the time or place.” Then they both burst out laughing, just
as Gloria was making a beeline for them carrying a tray of milky tea
and looking so anxious even her hair was clenched.

“Good God, Anna, where have you been? We've all been worried
sick.”

“Don't tell me, everybody's been phoning the police and
the hospital,
and the Missing Persons Helpline, and the FBI.”

“Anna, people worry.” Gloria sighed, somehow managing to
shrug at the same time as holding on to the tea tray.

“Mum, I've been stuck in the most horrendous traffic on the
North Circular.” Anna paused to let her irritation at her mother's
kvetching subside.

“Oh, and I'd like you to meet Charlie Kaplan,” she went on.
“Henry was his grandfather.”

Anna thought her mother smiled at Charlie for a second or two
longer than was decent for a woman of her age. It turned out that
the two had already met at the cemetery. Gloria was just saying
what a shame it was that Sidney and Maureen weren't able to make it
because they were on a Saga holiday in Oslo, when she spotted Aunty
Millie at the other side of the room. Gloria looked round for
somewhere to put the tea tray and finally handed it over to a passing
Kaplan great-niece in red platforms, matching acne and a nose stud.
Then she went to fetch Aunty Millie who, before Anna arrived, had
been bragging to Gloria about her grandson the top West End
accountant.

Gloria wanted to get her own back by introducing Millie to
Anna, whose journalistic achievements she had embellished considerably
over the last few hours to the extent that Anna had not merely
interviewed Maureen Lipman, but they had become best friends and
now even shared the same gynecologist.

A
unty Millie, who was in her eighties but seemed to have been
in them for as long as Anna could remember, had, along with an
arthritic hip and a mustache, the white powdery lips people get from
sucking too many indigestion tablets, as well as traces of lipstick
on her teeth. With one arm in Gloria's and the other leaning heavily
on a three-pronged metal walking stick, she maneuvered her way slowly
and deliberately across the room towards Anna and Charlie. On her
arrival, she gave Charlie the kind of haughty look old Jewish
ladies give to the sons of fathers who married out. Charlie's
response was to give her a sexy wink, which she pretended to ignore.
Millie then squeezed Anna's cheek, gave her a kiss which was all
Rennies and mustache, and said she too had begun to put on a little
weight round her hips in her late thirties, but made no mention of
Anna's relationship with Maureen Lipman. She did, nevertheless,
register a modicum of interest in what Anna did for a living:

“Anna, darling, I want to ask you about something that's been
troubling me for a while,” she said, a tiny bolus of airborne
spittle accompanying her inquiry. “These journalists who work for
Sunday newspapers, tell me, so what do they do the rest of the
week?”

With that Aunty Millie let out a very lengthy and very noisy
fart. Instead of allowing her to stay to hear Anna's reply, Gloria
put her arm round the old lady's shoulders and began steering her
gently towards Uncle Henry's downstairs bathroom.

A
nna had never met an airline pilot, but judging by that
old-fashioned Roger-Wilco-and-over voice the British ones always
used to welcome passengers, an accent which invariably sounded like
a cross between Kenneth More doing Douglas Bader and the Radio 3
cricket commentary, she had always suspected they fell into one
distinct personality type. They were private school chaps on that
indefinable cusp between Purley and Prince Andrew, who didn't own
an emotion to speak of and were, fundamentally, dull. By rights,
they should have been driving company Scorpios back to
five-bedroom executive houses with up-and-over garage doors, except that because
of some weird genetic fluke, they had been born with an extra
derring-do chromosome, and a Ray-Ban Aviator fixation.

As Anna and Charlie sat chatting and nibbling on bagels and
fishballs in the corner of Uncle Henry's lounge, as well as
working their way through what remained of the thimbles of whiskey,
Anna was forced to admit that Captain Kaplan didn't fit her
stereotypical image of an airline pilot, although she suspected
that should the need arise, he was perfectly capable of assuming
full Dambuster mode and landing a sick 747 in a South American
jungle clearing no bigger than a squash court while at the same
time removing his own appendix. For a start he'd been educated at a
public secondary school in Dublin, followed by drama school and some
time living on a hippy commune in Cornwall.

“I spent a couple of years helping to run—wait for
it—the King Arthur Crystal, Dowsing and Tarot Co-operative
in Tintagel. You should have seen me. There I was, this emaciated
New Age vegan weed with a ponytail and crushed velvet flares,
sitting behind the counter burning joss sticks and reading up on
corn circles, then one day in came a gang of shaven-headed
Cro-Magnon look-alikes straight off the beach, each of them wearing
little more than a chest full of tattoos and a can of Special Brew.
Like a fool, I told one of them I could unblock his chakras and did
he know that amethyst was traditionally believed to cure
drunkenness. His response was to call me a fucking fag. Then he
pissed over a box of amethyst I'd just had delivered, after which
he and his six mates took it in turns to hit me over the head and
generally beat the bejasus out of me with a giant piece of
Brazilian quartz.”

Charlie had decided finally that, because neither his
astrological chart, the tarot nor his palm had predicted the attack
in the shop, there was, without doubt, a lot less to life than most
people could possibly comprehend. One night in September, he took
all his New Age books, crystals and paraphernalia and threw them into
the sea. A few weeks later, he began studying for a degree in maths
at Trinity. Three years on he came out with an upper second and was
accepted immediately by Aer Hibernia for pilot training.

“So, what about your parents?” Anna asked. “The family
certainly seems to have given them a rough ride over the years.”

“Just a bit, I suppose.” He sighed. “But it got better once
Grandad started coming over to Dublin for visits. After that a couple
of the aunts and cousins began to send Jewish New Year cards, but we
never got invited to weddings or bar mitzvahs or any family
celebrations. It was strange as a kid, growing up and the truth
slowly dawning that you were pariahs. But to be honest, I find it
hard to get angry. What could you expect from a Jewish family in the
early sixties? The war had been over barely twenty years, and in
their eyes Dad going off with a Roman Catholic was simply finishing
Hitler's work.”

“That's an astonishingly generous attitude,” Anna said,
feeling anger on his behalf. “I think if I were in your position,
I would have found it very hard to come here today and make polite
conversation with the family who had ostracized me.”

“I needed to do it,” he said thoughtfully. “Even if he
hadn't been on holiday, Dad would never have had the courage to
come, and he wouldn't have considered bringing my mum. Even after
forty years of marriage, he still can't bring himself to introduce
the shikseh to the family. For me, turning up at Grandad's funeral
has been like coming out of the closet. I think it's about time this
family started to acknowledge my existence. I'm fed up with hiding
in the shadows .   .   . and to give everyone their due,
they've been remarkably friendly today.”

Anna had been extremely moved by Charlie's story. As she
watched him knock back the last of his whiskey, she realized her
eyes were filling with tears. She was desperate not to let Charlie
see her cry, which for the woman who sobbed when Pebbles Flintstone
went into labor took some doing. It wasn't that she was afraid of
showing her emotions, it was just that tears would make her
foundation go streaky and she was buggered if she was going to let
Charlie Kaplan see her thread veins.

“And the other reason I had to come,” Charlie continued,
apparently oblivious to Anna's watering eyes, “was because I felt
it was only decent there should be a blood relative here to say a
prayer for the old fella.”

“Speaking of which   .   .   .” Anna said, nodding her
head towards the rabbi who'd just arrived to conduct evening
prayers.

As copies of the battered black funeral prayer books were
passed round, the atmosphere at once became more somber. Gloria ran around collecting up the last of the dirty plates, the old people heaved themselves out of their seats and brushed their crumbs onto the carpet, and the men put their hands to their heads to adjust their yarmulkes. Charlie, who up until now hadn't been wearing a yarmulke, produced a brand-new black velvet one from his pocket and placed it self-consciously on his head, just a touch too far forward so that it looked like something he had just pulled out of a rather expensive Christmas cracker.

Rabbi Hirsch cleared his throat a couple of times to indicate
that he was ready to begin as soon as he had complete silence.

Anna opened her book at the mourners' prayers, and then handed
it to Charlie, who was struggling to find his place, having opened
his from the left rather than the right. As was usual on these
occasions, the prayers proceeded in breakneck-speed Hebrew, with all
the men and a few of the women bent over their books, rocking and
swaying and reciting the words out of sync, as if each of them was
doing their head in to some totally arse-kicking heavy-metal track
which only they could hear. The result was that one person's amen
could be as much as three minutes behind or in front of
another.