Old Saltie Page 3

  As well as his essential workers from Europe, everyone in England also knows the story of Harry Montford’s de facto family. My Kindertransport brothers and sister lost their immediate families in the camps but, thanks to Harry and Rose, didn’t lose themselves in the chaos of war. All three kept their own names and their own identity, but somehow are also still part of the Montford family. Samuel became a surgeon; Deborah for many years was prominent in the Israeli government speaking out for refugees; Deb’s brother Joshua, the wizened little old man child unclaimed on that cold train platform, showed an interest in music as he grew in health and strength and is now a concert violinists.

  When war came to England and English children were relocated to the safety of the countryside, Dad and Mother found room for Jenny and Joyce, sisters orphaned by the London Blitz and adopted officially into the Montford family, and then Sean when his grandmother died in the Colchester bombings.

  Although he returned to his own family in 1946 when his father returned from the Japanese POW camp somewhere in Malaya, Sean continued to visit us and often his visits extended into weeks when his father was ill or in hospital. Sean’s father died as a result of his war injuries in 1952, when Sean shifted back home with us for good. Sean loves motors, like Dad, but his interest is in racing them rather than fixing them. Another family joke was that Sean won so many races because he knew he could risk crashing, with Sam around to fix his broken body and Dad around to fix the broken machines. Sean didn’t ever need Sam’s attentions, but he did thrash his machines and they often needed Dad’s workmanship to race again.

  Jenny and Joyce, like me, grew up content with the post-war tradition that women worked only until they married. The three of us found jobs in the Montford offices until we found love, when we happily retired from the official workforce to work unpaid raising our children and making homes.

  So when I arrived in 1945, I was the loved baby sister of Sam and Sean, Debs and Josh, Jenny and Joyce. When my older siblings heard distressing news about their respective families, I was the one they could hug and love and cry with, because I was too young to appreciate the full horror of their loss but could pat them with baby hands and love them wholeheartedly.

  I grew up accepting the differences in our family as normal; I thought that all families had children who mourned missing family members and who followed different religions. Ours just happened to have five Anglicans, three Jews and one Catholic in the mix.

  It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I fully realized that I was the only child of Harry and Rose rather than the seventh child in a large family, and that was from something my Mother said when Dad was organizing his affairs when his business grew too big to manage with him as the sole owner and there was first talk of a possible takeover.

  Although Mother disagreed (Your father is always so damned Honourable), Dad was scrupulously fair in his distribution of the new shares. Dad retained the shares to cast a deciding vote at Board meetings, but the other Montford’s shares that paid a dividend were divided by thirteen, with equal shares going to Dad, Mother, Uncle George, Aunt Vi, and nine children including George and Vi’s twins.

  Dad and Mother, Uncle George and Aunt Vi are all dead now but we surviving children are all here, in this big house overlooking the village that Dad bought for Mother when the war ended and that once belonged to the Squire. We, and our families and their families, have gathered here to grieve the passing of Harry Montford and to attend his State funeral.

  Today I am taking some quiet time away from the family to read the diaries Dad left addressed to me. Dad’s diaries offer me a welcome escape from the worries of today, of the threatened takeover of Dad’s business, and especially of the family arguments this has caused.

  My generation wants to sell because Montfords just won’t be Montfords without a Harry at the helm. Our children, and especially the grandchildren, like the status that comes from being a Montford even more than they like the money that rolls in regularly to their bank accounts and argue to keep the family business going.

  Over a cup of tea I browse gently through Dad’s stories of a slower, quieter, time. How the family smithy grew into a garage, the saga of finding finance, of reluctantly accepting a loan from the Squire, of getting the first petrol pump installed.

  I am enthralled by my Dad’s word pictures of his early married life. The young Harry and Rose sound like such fun; I wish I could have met them. I know I would have liked them but by the time I was old enough to know them these gregarious young people who ran to meet life head on had changed into a father who really only came to life when he was working on a machine and a mother I realize now that I never really knew. The young Rose that Harry writes about in his diary is not my mother who was never quiet and whose only goal was to collect the latest and the best.

  I wonder idly for a moment why they changed, when they changed, and whether the change was so gradual that they just didn’t notice but most of all, I am fascinated by my father’s realization of his talent: how he could always hear when an engine was distressed and how he could tune the engine into a perfect balance. I am entertained that the young Harry was surprised to find that everyone didn’t share this skill, not even his best friend George could be shown how to do it. With George managing the front-of-house petrol sales, Harry is free to concentrate on tuning faulty engines and the little garage in the village is always busy.

  In my mind I mourn with Dad over the automobile accident that killed the old Squire and his lady, celebrate with the rest of the village at Vi and George’s wedding, but am surprised to read that the village, that placid safe backwater that I love, changed after the wedding into a vociferous hotbed of fear when an aristocratic German came to live in the cottage adjoining the garage. The vicar and the schoolteacher try to restore peace and my Dad tries to help, as I would expect of my Dad, but still feelings run high and people hate and fear the stranger who sneers at our village’s quiet ways.

  I revel in Dad’s story that shows a whole new side to my Mother, as Dad tells of the argument that erupts between the autocratic new neighbour and Rose over who owns the apples falling from the apple tree that leans into the yard behind the garage. Finally Rose throws her freshly-baked pie onto the ground in front of the neighbour and exclaims in temper “there, now the ground has the apples back again”.

  I read how frustrated the vicar and the schoolteacher are when their peacemaking efforts in the village fail again and again as the German can not and will not accept our village traditions, and then how even the gentle vicar leaves from his visit to the cottage next door, shaking with anger, wheeling his bicycle down the road because he is so upset by his visit that he can’t mount safely yet. My Dad brings him inside the garage and Rose makes him a cup of tea, talking to him until the vicar is calm again and able to forgive himself his unaccustomed anger and to laugh and ride his bike away, but my Dad is obviously upset in this entry in his diary.

  Dad writes how his new neighbour decides to earn a living by offering music lessons. The schoolteacher encourages this initiative by encouraging her pupils to learn music and their parents to pay for lessons. This causes arguments in some village families; I laugh to find that while the butcher is vehemently anti-Nazi, the butcher’s wife quietly pays for her daughter’s lessons in advance which incenses the butcher to an incandescent incoherence in the pub.

  Unfortunately, the German isn’t a very good teacher or his pupils are not natural musicians and Dad’s workshop echoes through the shared wall with the wailing dissonance of a violin, played atrociously by the butcher’s daughter. The grocer’s son prefers the piano, banging out tunes without any musicality but with much vigor. Amused, I read on that the worst of all was when the kind-hearted schoolteacher herself decides to lead by example and to learn the tuba.

  My amusement ceases when Dad’s diary records sadly how he found he could not hear himself think during the day when the music lessons are in progress much less hear his beloved engine
s, and he can no longer tune engines as successfully. Dad’s neat handwriting deteriorates as he describes how he visits his aristocratic neighbour and tries to explain his difficulty, and how the music teacher sneers at the mechanic who listens to engines and who is distracted by music lessons, and ignores Dad’s attempts to find a workable compromise.

  The German suggests abruptly that if Dad can not appreciate music, maybe the garage should close. It will be quieter for the music students to concentrate, and maybe their music will improve without the noise of motor engines in the village street.

  I read with anger how Dad’s placid life disintegrates around him. His business is stagnant; his vibrant marriage to his bright-eyed Rose lapses into silence which Rose fills with mindless chatter; George and Vi worry about their future and the future of their newborn twins; Dad accepts the impossibility of shifting the new pump to another location without a huge financial loss.

  Despite this, it is fascinating to follow my Dad’s thought processes as he realizes his once-thriving business is failing because the business is built on his skill with motors rather than on the sales of petrol. I always accepted Montfords Mechanics as the logical result of Harry Montford being born; it is absorbing to read Harry’s thoughts and to witness the birth of a huge business from Harry’s recognition that if he can’t show people how to hear the song of an engine, he can at least train them to be the best mechanics they can be.

  I am eager to know more and turn the page to those old days, those halcyon days when my parents were younger than my grandchildren are today, when life’s only problem was to persuade an annoying neighbour to stop or to shift or to soundproof and to find how my gentle, other-worldly Dad solves his problem, when I read the words “Today I killed the German” - and I realize I never knew my father, not until after he died and I read his diary.

  Fear

  I hate the dark. The real dark presses on you, like earth in a grave. It suffocates as it presses, so you can’t get a deep breath safely.

  I look up, trying desperately to see a star, somewhere, some point of light that I can use as a focus, to stop this panic building. But there is nothing there. It is a dark, dark night, with a sky that I know is still full of storm clouds to block any light from getting through, to save me from in this horrible dark.

  All I have is myself, bobbing up and down in a turbulent sea, held up by a fallible, man-made lifejacket.

  I hate the sea too. It’s bearable on a sunny, shining, laughing, cloudfree day, but I am always aware of the fragility of the boat deck under me, my only protection from the heaving depths full of horrors that bite you, like sea jellies and blue ringed octopus and sharks

  Sharks. Oh bloody hell. Sharks. Here I am, young, healthy, tasty, an appetizing mouthful for the great white shark that is probably zeroing in on my position in this horrible, big, heaving ocean right now. I must have said shark out loud, or Josh is reading my mind as he often does because Josh starts talking at me again.

  “Hey, Hannah, don’t worry about sharks. Its night, they’ll all be asleep.”

  Great. They’re asleep. All I have to worry about is the jellyfish, and the octopus, and my lifejacket springing a leak, and the dead black of the night pressing down on me. Why did I come on this trip? Because I love Josh, and Josh loves adventure. We are here, bobbing around in the ocean waiting for a shark to find us, because this mad bastard loves adventure.

  “I know I’m a bastard, Hannah, getting you into this. but just stay awake love, stay awake and we’ll be fine.”

  That’s what Josh said when he wanted to hire the bare boat. “It’ll be fine. C’mon Hannah, it’ll be great. We can hire a bare boat and cruise around the islands. We don’t have to take a day trip and stick to anyone else’s itinerary. We’ll go where we want, stop when we want.”

  Somewhere in Josh’s enthusiasm I point out that neither of us knows how to sail a boat, but Josh is insistent. “We can learn. They’ll show us when we hire their boat. What fun it will be, Hannah.”

  And looking at his sapphire blue eyes, blazing with the joy of life and of love, suddenly I knew it would be fun.

  It was fun, until the storm. We sailed from island to island, we fished for our dinner. We ate tropical fruit and drank local wines and spent every waking minute on the deck, enjoying the beauty of clear water and clear skies, of sun and salt and occasionally sand, when we parked by a deserted beach to explore or just to lie in the sand. We made love on numerous beaches in the blazing sun or on the deck under the stars, sometimes even in the deceptive safe haven of our cabin where I could sometimes forget that we were out on the dangerous ocean if it was calm enough, but it was always such fun.

  Josh’s eyes remained sapphire blue all though our bareboat adventure, the blazing blue of interest, rather than the slate grey of his eyes when he was bored by his surroundings.

  I’ve seen his eyes turn grey at work, with fatuous clients, or at parties, when the crowd didn’t live up to his expectations. Especially at the theatre, when the play wasn’t well produced and Josh knew he could have choreographed the action better, Josh’s eyes blanded out into grey. I never wanted to see his eyes turn grey when he looked at me, so I swallowed my fears when I could, and joined him in his life of fun.

  Most of the time, it was fun. With Josh, I took a deep breath and somehow faced down my fears to learn how to ski, both water and snow. We abseiled. We went orienteering. I navigated for Josh on car rallies. Over one summer we both worked in the evening as life models for an art class, just to see what modeling for artists was like. Before our bareboat adventure, we took time off from our normal routine to work as extras on some big, extravagant movie being shot in the rainforest. Funny, Josh didn’t mind the grinding boredom of being an extra on a movie, he was so fascinated by the process of movie making and so interested in the history of our fellow extras, and what made them want to be in a movie. Everyone talked to Josh, because Josh was such fun.

  Life with Josh was always fun, until the storm. And now here we both were, bobbing like wet, salty corks in this big dark wet world, full of horrors with teeth or stingers or whatever jellyfish and octopus have. Josh is talking to me again.

  “Hannah. Hannah, love, stay awake. We need to stay awake. They’ll be looking for us at dawn. Just stay awake until dawn, my love.”

  Who’ll be looking for us at dawn, the bloody sharks? Great future we have. I know Josh follows the everything natural is good philosophy and he’s even planned his own funeral, to be buried naturally in a shroud that decomposes and is ecologically friendly, but I think I’d rather go to sleep in this big dark then stay awake for the sharks at dawn.

  “Hannah, are you awake? Answer me, Hannah.”

  I must have answered him, because Josh kept talking.

  “They’ll be looking for us at dawn, Hannah, when they can see.”

  Sharks need to see you? I thought they could smell you, through those gland things on their top lip. What was it I read – a shark can find one drop of blood in six miles of seawater, despite both being salty. Bloody hell, I hadn’t thought of that. Had Josh or I cut ourselves anywhere in our wild scrambling into life jackets, while we were trying to save the boat, when I was hurled off the deck by a rogue wave, when Josh followed me immediately and grabbed hold of my jacket. Was either of us bleeding a beacon for a shark to find, come dawn?

  “Come dawn, Hannah, they’ll find us. They’ll have boats out, and probably helicopters too. They’ll find us, Hannah. Just stay awake until then.”

  Boats? I could imagine a shark in a boat, or even riding a jetski, but why? Why wouldn’t the shark just swim to us? Why would a shark need a boat, or a helicopter, or a jetski? And why could I hear a helicopter? The whoop, whoop, whoop of the blades was faint, but it was there. And the light was faint, but it was there too. Dawn had come, and with it light, and with the light, rescue.

  What about the sharks? Would they be waking up now too, and looking for us?

  “Don’t worry about
sharks, Hannah. I lied before, sharks don’t sleep. But if they haven’t found us yet, odds are they won’t find us before that helicopter does.”

  Suddenly the helicopter was there, right above us, the whoop, whoop, whoop of its blades echoed beside me with Josh’s exultant whooping.

  “They’ve seen us, Hannah. We’re safe.”

  A young man plopped into the water near us, and we somehow swam to each other. I looked up at the flimsy blades of the helicopter, all that was keeping the machine and the pilot and crew from joining us here in the water, and I remembered that I was frightened of small space aircraft too. And I hadn’t particularly enjoyed abseiling either until it was all over, hanging off a breakable rope over certain death.

  Our rescuer and Josh insist that I go first, so I am strapped into the harness dangling from the helicopter and swung up and over.

  I make the mistake of looking down as I am winched up, and see how big and empty and wide the ocean is, and how small Josh and our rescuer are in this big salty wet. Then I am dragged into the helicopter and unstrapped from the harness, waking up enough to apologise for not helping. My hands are swollen white blobs, incapable of grasping or undoing or helping.

  “Never mind,” says my rescuer, as he wraps me in foil and sends the harness back down. “Never mind, you’re safe now.” Suddenly Josh is beside me, waking me from my drowse. His hands are in the same state as mine and he is shivering constantly, but his eyes are blazing sapphire.