A Life of Unintended Consequences
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A Life Of Unintended Consequences I never felt driven by ambition to be this or do that; I seemed content to let life find its own path. It’s a long path full of excitement, sadness, happiness, bewilderment, success and failure. I’ve travelled afar; I’ve lived in different countries, had quite a few love affairs, marriages and other ill-advised forays into dangerous liaisons. I had career successes in advertising, fashion photography, film making and writing. Part 1: The way it ought to be 1957. Eleven in the morning the doorbell is ringing. I’m on the divan reading. Not expecting anyone I don’t move. Insistent knocking on the door. I give in. I roll off the divan, limp across the room and open it. Two suited young men, one with a briefcase. They smile. The one with the briefcase politely asks if I am Meneer Hart. I nod. He announces they are from the Special Branch of Police. They show me credentials. I stand aside allowing them into my one-room studio apartment. They look around the room. I invite them to sit. I wasn’t expecting them on this particular day but knew they would pay me a visit sooner or later. The one with the briefcase does the talking. He’s sympathetic; knew I was off work on account of a minor case of phlebitis in my left leg so took this opportunity to beard me in my den. Wishing me a speedy recovery, he opens his briefcase and takes out several sheets of paper. Reading from them in accented voice more used to speaking Afrikaans than English, he enumerates every event in my life from the time I landed in Cape Town four years ago, a complete and altogether accurate account of where I’ve lived, where I’ve worked and the political radicals with whom I’ve associated. He knew I had, during the four years, gone back to London returning to Johannesburg with a wife… who no longer lived with me. The officer looks up; something else on his mind. There are one or two details he’s uncertain about. “Where is my estranged wife living now?” Where is my estranged wife living? In contravention of one of Afrikanerdom’s most sacred laws Jean is actually living with her lover Can Themba, the African deputy editor of Drum Magazine. Miscegenation is regarded throughout white South Africa as a crime as heinous as treason or even murder. I lie; tired voice sighs, “God knows.” This was the first time she’d actually packed up and left me to move in with a lover. Until now she’d been satisfied with one-night stands. 2. I’m a South Londoner, born close by the Oval Cricket Ground, the third of four sons of a liberal-minded Jewish family. Dad is ambitious and hard working. He has a large hairdressing salon in Clapham and a small factory in Brixton that manufactures products for hairdressers; his premier product is a freestanding, domed, hair dryer he named Monarch; he also produces chemicals and paraphernalia for permanent waving, stuff like that. Mum is warm, loving and honest; brooks no nonsense from the kids or anyone else; she divides her time between helping Dad with business and looking after us. We live in a quiet, leafy part of a London suburb called Streatham; we have a house with a large garden and a tennis court at the back. We also have a bungalow on a beach estate on the south coast where we spend our school summer holidays. We have a car. By and large we’re pretty well off. For six years World War 2 filled the timelessness of my growing up. In the summer of 1939, as in previous years, we are on holiday at the bungalow. Young as I am, I detect a change in atmosphere around the place, the usual cheeky light hearted banter has given way to an air of unease, the adults are discussing uncertain times ahead. On the third of September of that year, while we’re still down there, Britain declares war against Germany in accordance with its treaty with Poland, the Nazis began the aerial bombardment of Warsaw and, in accordance with our treaty, we declared war on Germany and the processes of mobilization began. There’s a strong surge of jingoism and patriotism, newspapers and wireless programmes tell us we are the best and not to be messed with; the British Lion is shaking out his mane getting ready for the fray. In the village school where we’re now temporarily lodged we sing from the heart, “There’ll always be an England, and England shall be free…” There are soldiers everywhere; gun emplacements are dug, barbed wire rolled out across the beaches. Gas masks issued and, breath held, we wait. I’m eight years old, excited by all that’s going on around me, disappointed nothing’s actually happening, no foreign soldiers invading our beaches to be mown down by our machineguns, nothing on the horizon, no enemy planes in the sky to test our anti aircraft preparations, guns snugly nestled in the emplacements I’d watched being dug. Mum and Dad are faced with a dilemma. They fear for the safety of the children but their minds are also troubled by the safety of our home and business in London. They hire a Nanny to look after us and we remain in the relative safety of the bungalow. Nanny is Scottish, takes her job very seriously and is excessively strict. We called her Battle Axe. Mum and dad thought she was exactly what was wanted; we would be safe with her. They stayed on for a few days, then, with a shrug of the shoulders, more a salute to fate than anxiety, Mum and Dad return alone to London. I guess they fear the worst, arriving back in London, but they find very little is happening. Air raid sirens are being tested and there are a few air raids. Everything seems to be near to normal. The air raids are light and nowhere near Streatham so they decide to bring us home and get us back to school and to as normal a life as possible. They have little idea of what’s going on. Nobody does. That was the worst of it. The waiting. Not knowing what we were waiting for. We wait. We’re in London nearly a whole year waiting. We go to school not knowing. Perhaps the war has fizzled out with barely a shot fired. 3. On the Continent the German army has already reached Paris. In 1941 the Luftwaffe turned its Blitzkrieg on London, dropping thousands of bombs on us; not only on London, on all our great cities. The government announces that should an air raid last beyond midnight, school would be cancelled the following day. Fantastic. In the calm of the days we children search blitzed streets for war’s detritus, spent bullets, bits of aluminium blasted from fallen aircraft, valuable swap stuff. It’s the nights punctuated by noise of sirens, when the action really begins; the throb and drone of heavily laden aircraft, searchlights criss-crossing the night sky looking for them, anti aircraft guns blasting away at them as their bombs explode seemingly haphazardly around us. Now in real fear for our safety, Mum and Dad hurriedly evacuate us, older brother Basil, younger brother Robert and me. Oldest brother John stays on in London; he’ll soon be of military age and drafted. The bungalow is not the best option for our evacuation, dangerously on the south coast where invasion might be expected. Dad drives us to Tilsworth, a village in the Bedfordshire countryside. Going door to door, he and mum find families to board us. Young Robert, not yet five years old, is billeted with a family of chicken farmers in the village; Bas and I are left to share a bed at the home of a modest middle-aged couple and their teenage son. With their kids satisfactorily settled, heartfelt farewells and Mum and Dad are off, back to London. Without the noise of sirens and exploding bombs, life returns to some kind of normality. But at night I can see London burning on the reddening horizon. We make friends with the local village boys. We divide into two groups and play chase across the fields. At night we’d call out to each other, “Holler, holler ‘r’ the hounds won’t foller!” At weekends we’d open five-bar gates for sixpence to let the local gentry’s hunt and their hounds pass through. I got a Saturday morning job muckin’ out a local farmer’s pigsty for three pence for a days work. A few months later, Bas and I move to Dunstable four miles away where we’re enrolled as borders at Dunstable School, a minor Public School. With all its teachers of military age away in the war, its academic standard is not what it might have been. Courage, sport and gentlemanly behaviour are important and are conscientiously enforced along with some miserable kind of education. Being a Jew at school can be a problem. Children can be unkind to each other and are quick to derogatorily label others and then fight them on account of their difference. But two-fisted brother Basil scares away any bullying anti-Semites. He has a formidable reputation. He isn’t much good in the classroom but on the sports field he’s a star and receives the entire school’s affection and respect on account of it.