Second Violin by Lawton John

Author:Lawton, John [Lawton, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: UK
ISBN: 9781611859874
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd
Published: 2006-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

§ 96

Not knowing how long he might be gone, Billy thought it a good idea that certain of his company papers be burnt. If his wife was right about this Blitz thing, nobody would ever know and the next time the taxman came knocking he could just blame Hitler.

He and his daughter Lena sat by the hearth at midnight and fed papers into the fire.

‘Nice,’ Lena said. ‘Some of these summer evenings you can start to feel a bit of a chill.’

‘Sure,’ Billy said, non-commital.

‘Mum’s takin’ it better than I thought she would.’

‘Yeah, well. She’s got Danny to think about, ain’t she.’

‘He’ll be OK. You can call him stupid if you like, but he volunteered for the REME, didn’t he? If he’d waited for the call-up, what choice would he have had? Electrical Engineers won’t be sloggin’ it out in France will they? More likely some cushy little billet in the West Country guarding army surplus radios.’

A pause.

They slurped tea. Billy favouring cup over saucer for once.

‘Dad? Why din’t you tell Mum about the tribunal?’

‘Why? ’Cos I felt a total pratt, that’s why.’

‘Eh?’

‘Havin’ to say how British I was.’

‘There’s people in this street’d’ve paid good money to see that.’

‘There’s worse . . . I had to point out I was Jewish . . .’

Lena giggled. Even Billy began to smile.

‘I mean, how thick can these toffs get? Not knowin’ a Jew when they see one. They might have known from the name, ’cos they kept referrin’ to me as “Mr Jakobson”. Like you get Jakobsons in Surrey or Hampshire. Jakobson, my arse. I even sign cheques as Billy Jacks. But . . . it was a farce . . . me sittin’ there remindin’ them of things I ain’t give a toss about in donkey’s years . . . bein’ British . . . bein’ Jewish . . .’

‘I never seen you so much as open a bible.’

‘Ain’t one in the house. Not since your zayde came back from the Somme with one of his balls shot off. Wasn’t exactly godfearin’ in the first place, but that made him a screamin’ atheist, that did. He’s lost one . . . therefore there ain’t no God . . .’

A pause.

They slurped.

‘Still,’ Lena said. ‘It gets yer.’

‘Eh?’

‘You can play the sarcastic old sheeny for all it’s worth, Dad. But I’ve seen twenty years of your act . . . grumpy, stingy, whiney . . . you’ve played most of the seven dwarfs . . . but this has really got to you.’

‘I never thought about bein’ Polish much. And not once did I ever think about bein’ German. I was two when we left Danzig. Don’t remember it at all. For the next couple of years we lived wherever your zayde laid his hat. A few months in Cracow, almost a year in Rotterdam. Pogromed here, pogromed there, old Macdonald had a pogrom . . . and that ain’t strictly true neither . . . we just moved . . . moved before it happened.

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