Part 108: Tuesday 1st January 1963, approx. 2.30 p.m.

Booba Yetta and Uncle Sam

E. [Edith Witriol -wife] came out of hospital on Saturday morning. Mum [Yetta Witriol] has been in bed at Sam’s [brother] since Saturday morning. Mum has been in bed at Sam’s since Saturday evening, and Sam himself is staying away from County Hall with a cold. It has been very cold, snowing on and off for the last three or four days. Writing this in the kitchen. E. resting upstairs, kids in hall/lounge. We celebrated the New Year by sleeping through its arrival. The children are delightful, though normally impish, and impery can be a strain, prolonged impery, day after day. They have both come in (after being told not to disturb daddy), M. taking stopper off ink-bottle. Have evicted them.

 

Part 102: Monday 8th October 1962, 9.30 p.m.

Motzei Yom Kippur. A penance, these days. Fasted, but went home for about three hours. Overflow service in marquee adjoining synagogue. Frankie Vaughan ( a top pop singer is the description, I believe) was apparently present in the marquee last night – there was an espalier of people outside the marquee exit looking in, evidently in the hope of catching sight of the T.V. idol.

I sent off my report on the Yiddish novel. It is a saga with the Jewish quarter of Lodz before the first world war as its milieu. I wrote that I thought it would have a succès d’estime but that I could not say how far it would be viable in terms of publishing economics.

Am looking for a job teaching French exclusively, or almost exclusively, with allowance or providing a point d’appui for allowance in another couple of years. Davies gave me a fair (in the sense of just – in both senses, it was not more than “fair”, not “good”) testimonial, but I am afraid my age – 50 – is now against me.

Lily did not go to Mum’s for Rosh Hashono, and as Mum insisted that she did not want Sam on his own, he stayed at Ambrose Avenue. I asked Lily if she would possibly go round to Mum for Yom Kippur, but she said Sam could, she wouldn’t. Apparently, Sam had once said she went round to Mum’s on R/H and Y.K. when it suited her, and this was to demonstrate that it did not suit her to go to Mum’s then. She rang up on Sunday morning (Sunday evening was Kol Nidrei) to say she was going to Mum’s, and Sam was not to “make any business” – he was here at the time. So they did go to Mum for Y/K, at any rate, and I’m hoping that the situation will clear up on this particular front. Halvai.

Had a sensible post-fast meal: Rykings, not the whole buttered loaf I have previously gone in for. Hope this will be reflected on the school scales to-morrow: 90.5 kg. last Tuesday; if I’m not under 90.0kg. to-morrow I shall do my nut.

Part 100: Wednesday 22nd August 1962, 10.35 p.m.

Wally [Walter, colleague from Young Zionist days], and Beverly Gasson collected us and drove us to Watford where we had a very pleasant tea. I got the kids their hair cut this morning –  a feat. Kept waiting while an odious Jewess with blood-red, protruding fingernails, knuckleduster, had her two fat podges given beauty treatment. Anyway, I suppose it’s just as well one does encounter hundred-per-cent vulgar ostentatious Jewry affluence, as opposed to the discreet opulence of Wally & Bev. W. & B. married 28 years; B. to W. apropos of something or other: “you nit.” This is quite characteristic, I think it is fair to say. In justice to E., she sometimes describes a statement or action of mine as “stupid”, but she doesn’t “nit” me in the presence of third parties.

To Sam’s [brother] last night to help him with his books. I took them home with me in an attaché case provided by Sam. The book-keeping required is of the non-urgent kind, but I suppose any accountant would insist on its being done.

Relations strained between Sam and Lily, but Lily herself, invited us round to tea/supper next Saturday…Perhaps this may bring about a reconciliation, though Lily said that Sam had threatened to leave her if she did not go with him to Mum’s over Rosh Hashono [Jewish New Year].  Must impress on Sam that refusal to visit a husband’s mother, however legitimately distressing to the husband, does not justify a husband leaving his wife.

How futile all this weak, anaemic, stilted sentences are. Why the bloody, f — g hell couldn’t Sam be living happily, in a decent job, with a loving wife and two or three or four loving kids. The short answer is he was too good (the past tense is deliberate). He was good and weak, too, unfortunately (too good to leave Mum to my tender mercies, or to fend for herself; but perhaps also too weak to fend for himself). Perhaps now he is less good and is just in no position to be strong.

 

Part 96: Whit Sunday 10th June 1962, 9 p.m.

Heat wave yesterday, to-day cool but fine.  Geoffrey & Hélène Stalbow picked us up and took us down to the old man – 84 – at Harpenden. We all stowed in  – Hélène & Geoffrey’s two girls, Ruth,12 and Judith, 9, and Philip & Max – in a four-seater car, but Geoffrey kept up a continuous patter which made the journeys there and back pass quickly. Max behaved unexpectedly well. They are a fine couple, Geoffrey squat, sturdy, bull-necked, like his old man; Hélène slim, trim, quiet, still pretty at – 36? She drove, Geoffrey apparently doesn’t drive. Strange, since he’s very much an aggressively – almost -virile type & was a captain in the R.A. The old man lives alone in his house with garden – he lives for Zionism and his garden…he’s an extraordinary character. He spends half the year in Rehovot & the summer at Harpenden…

Domestic trouble at Ambrose Avenue. Tension between Sam & Lily because Sam said some weeks ago, in front of Mum, that Lily hated/disliked/did not like us & the kids (the exact words are not certain…). Lily denies – what have the children done to me? Sam talks of leaving her, but I don’t see how he can….he’s nowhere to go to except Mum, and I told him he must try to imagine Mum’s in a single room & he can’t use Moresby Road as a bolt-hole. He says he’ll find somewhere else, but he can’t afford to keep up the house at Ambrose Avenue & pay £3-10-0 a week for a room. Basically the trouble is due to the fact that Lily, au fond, sticks to her conception of you-bring-in-the-money-and-I’ll-keep-a-nice home and is unwilling to recognise that to keep up her nice home…she needs a husband earning at least £1500 a year…I’m hoping…things will take a turn for the better. It seems all wrong, a more harmless, inoffensive chap than Sam it would be hard to find – a sod like me one can understand these things happening to – but he has to suffer because of his mother and brother…

Mum says she can no longer cope. Her geyser has conked out, it will cost £38 to replace. She will come round here for a bath to-morrow. Lily says Sam throws in her face that Mum lives alone…thousands of people live alone, thousands don’t so – more or less – what, Edith says I didn’t worry about Mum living alone before I married her. One can only hope, and this is of course my mother’s prayer, that she will be able to look after herself to the last. In any case, the spare bedroom at Ambrose Avenue is now used as an office/stock room… And — wait for it  — E. is pregnant once more. The safe period has not been so safe. Extraordinary thing about E. – one has only to breathe on her and she becomes pregnant. Extraordinary thing about J. – always feared he was impotent, and told the girls after he had more-or-less proposed to them that he was afraid he might be impotent. Ah well, sweet mystery of life. I hope Edith has an easier confinement than the previous two, and that No. 3 is as bonny as Max. “Bonny” is not an adjective one can apply to Philip, he’s too thin, but touch wood he is a healthy, if perhaps somewhat nervous and highly strung child.

Part 89: Saturday 3rd March 1961, 8.45p.m.

Sam [brother] is giving up his business. He has been pouring money down the drain into it for the last three years. He will be 56 in April, Lily is 53. What will they do? I went round there this afternoon. Lily says she realises she has got to earn her living. I said Mum ought to live with them, thereby releasing her flat at Moresby Road [Hackney], from which £5 a week net before tax could be got, but she says no – they will manage. “Your mother is difficult to get on with.” As my mother says, one prays to God for old age…

[Sam] is eligible for employment as a clerical officer by the L.C.C; starting at £575 p.a; but I am not sanguine about his chances of getting in. He is also entering a Civil Service over-40 competition, but here again I am pessimistic.

It’s galling; he’s done everything for me – coached me for my Junior County Scholarship, kept the family going, let me live like a lord when I was demobbed…All I can do is to hope they keep in good health, or healthy enough to go out to work each of them.

S.B. has walked out on his wife M. after twenty-five years of what Mum always described as a model marriage. They were her tenants – men hat nischt geherrt kenokker vertt fin zey. They had adopted a girl, now 14. S apparently is impotent, or at any rate sterile – perhaps they’re not the same thing – his seed is like water, says Mum. Mum had a fenster hartz off zey because they adopted V. and brought her into the house without telling Mum…Sam says it is possible M. may go to live with her Mum…If she went, I suppose I ought to give serious consideration to the possibility of our moving in…

Meanwhile, my own situation is such that I have borrowed £50 from the bank…I suspect that in about three months’ time I shall again be insolvent, or rather unable to maintain this house. In that case should I try to force the issue by moving into Moresby Road – perhaps M & V could free one of the two rooms they now occupy?

My article appeared – cut – in the Jewish Chronicle but has aroused no comment in the correspondence columns as yet. One Dr Ruth Cohen wrote to me from the German Hospital to say that an Irish ward sister had assured her that “neebeech” was Gaelic for frail, puny person. Coincidence, pure coincidence, as I wrote to Dr. Cohen.

An unexpected commission from D.F.Long – an article on man-made fibres in Israel to translate. Will net me about £6. O.K., so I had about £5 pinched from me the other morning at Camden Road. Zoll zahn de kupoora. Half my report books missing on Friday, doing my nut (thinks: everybody must think this chap Witriol is just impossible, he can’t hold a thing — I could have sworn I’d left ’em all in the staff-room, with the work-sheet inside the top book – Anderson’s – at 5p.m. on Thursday, 1st March — I could have sworn, but would I have sworn? No, I wouldn’t, honest Joe). About 3.15 p.m. Mrs Read presents me with the missing books – Martin, the woodwork man, had taken them home and just returned them to her. I am reduced to !**!

From the photo albums

This gallery contains 14 photos.

Photos of dad as a Young Zionist, a college goalie and with the family Continue reading →