Simon's Diary - Volume One - Love, Hate and Knowledge: Simon's Diary, #1

By Simon Mark Smith

Most autobiographies won't be of any apparent interest unless the author is famous, so, why read this one given Simon Mark Smith is not a public figure? The brief answer is this book will take you on journeys that will resonate with your deepest feelings about love, hate, and knowledge.

Written in a format that jumps between time zones and subject matter, you will be challenged from the moment the book begins right up till its final lines. Volume One was written over a period of 18 years and follows the author's life from birth until the age of 17. Born with severe disabilities and living in care homes until the age of 7, he then moved into a council flat with his mother and her psychotic boyfriend on a rough South London council estate where violence was all the rage. If you're thinking, "This sounds a bit depressing," then be prepared to be surprised. This isn't a typical story about a boy who makes good, but a philosophical and psychological journey of discovery that will have you laughing and crying out loud while also taking you on unexpected tangents through imaginative prose, poetry and mini-plays, as well as the worlds of karate, disability politics, psychoanalysis and love.

With a primary focus on love, along roads full of heartbreak, the stories eventually find their way to a point of revelation, a revelation which for many readers may be life-changing too. 

Covering the period from the 1800s through to the 1980s, the book is filled with many other characters whose stories will touch you to the core as we travel with them across Latvia, South Africa, the USSR, England, France, Israel, and Canada and both World Wars. And through their experiences, you will find places within yourself you didn't know existed.

Brace yourself for the ride of a life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon Mark Smith
• Release date: Mar 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9781738520206

Simon Mark Smith

Simon Mark Smith is a singer-songwriter, painter, digital artist, photographer, writer, teacher, and karate-ka.

Book preview

Chapter 1

No Man’s Land

2005

This evening I was sitting in a Polish restaurant with a friend. I told him I wanted to start this book with a brief history of my family. He said I should start with an impact.

The Greeting

I want you to imagine you’re at a social gathering and someone behind you says, I’d like to introduce you to my friend. You turn around to see a man about 5 foot 3 inches tall, with short, cropped hair, slightly Mediterranean-looking and dressed in black. The man smiles at you, you smile back and put your hand out to greet him. He pulls his right arm forward, but it stops just beyond the elbow joint and just above the end of his arm, a small finger protrudes which forks into two fingers. You’re not quite sure what to do, but politely you take a hold of his arm wondering what it will feel like. He then brings his other arm forward which also ends close to where the elbow would be, this one however doesn’t have any fingers coming out of it at all. As he places it on your hand gently, you’re struck by how normal it feels, even though you’re entirely out of your comfort zone.

He, of course, is me. I say, Hi, I’m Simon, what’s your name?

1914 – 1917 Corners of Foreign Fields – Part 1

My maternal great-grandfather was called John Frederick Smith and as was common back then he named one of his sons John Frederick too. When his namesake son was just 19, World War 1 broke out, so along with many of his friends he joined the march to the battlefield, hopeful of a quick resolution and the chance to prove himself. However, within months the reality of his situation dispelled those expectations, especially when the initial land battles quickly led to trench warfare and a stalemate that would last for years. For him though, his situation enveloped both his external and internal worlds in a darkness he’d never previously faced and as each day passed, his mind increasingly wandered back to the life he’d left behind, and with it the realisation he hadn’t appreciated just how much he loved it.

He woke one October morning to find the sun warm on his face. Though his feet were wet through, as they had been for days, he pretended he was back paddling in the mudflats of a Bournemouth beach a few summers ago, joking with friends in the late afternoon sun, and looking forward to their guest house evening meal.

For all the discomfort of trench life, there was a lot of joking between some of those same friends who’d been stationed with him. Much of their humour centred around the dire food they’d endure, but the daily routine was still marked out by their meals, and the evening one was nearly always looked forward to.

But still, the air was heavy and cold, and the silence of no man’s land continually unnerved them as it reminded them of why they were there.

I can’t tell you why John Frederick found himself in the middle of no-man’s land, but it was nighttime and both the mist and smoke meant he couldn’t see much further than a few yards ahead. Disorientated, all he could do was assess his surroundings as best he could while taking slow, careful, silent steps forward. The fact the Germans were not spraying the air with machine gun fire meant they too had soldiers in the vicinity, so, at any moment he was sure he might be faced by one of them, and then what? Would they shoot at each other, end up on the ground fighting to the death, or just back off into the cover of the night?

In the distance, John heard the crack of a single shot, and as he turned his head to the side, he realised he was on his back in the mud. He tried to sit up but couldn’t and feeling warm liquid running across his neck to his shoulder he realised he’d been shot.

He wanted to try crawling back to the trench, but aside from not knowing which way that was, he could barely move, so, he lay there hoping he’d be rescued. Shouting for help might bring the enemy to him, so he waited in silence.

From the darkness, a figure approached but within seconds he realised it was a German soldier. Desperate to escape the soldier’s bayonet he pushed himself backwards, but there was nothing he could do.

On another battlefield, a much vaguer attack occurs. This time to Samuel Rachailovich, my father’s father. The details are unknown but the resultant trauma, shell shock, still reverberates through history to this moment for me.

The Appearance of Family

In 2005 genealogy via the Internet was in its infancy so my maternal family history only appeared to me as a series of glimpses that came from other family members at first. The earliest were myths of an aristocratic girl eloping with a stable boy and family names being changed as a matter of necessity, but no explanations were ever offered. By the time our family got to the mid-1800s, the memorable figure was a dominant East-End matriarch called Rosa who died in 1961 aged 93. My mother told me she was a buxom, vivacious, and stern character.

From the late eighteen hundreds, the view became more photographic, faded black and white images of the two families, the Ellises and Smiths, both living in Fulham, London, posing in the backyards of terraced houses, next to boats on the Thames, on beaches on seaside holidays, at weddings, and in photographic studios. Even now, there’s a picture of my mother’s father on her living room wall. He’s young, dressed in a soldier’s uniform, his eyes look through the picture at us in the here and now, and next to it, there’s another photograph of my mother’s mother, Ethel May, who sits serenely in a large wooden chair.

These are the pictures they were happy for others to see, but their concern with how the public viewed them and their family had as much impact on me as the bullets and bombs that destroyed a part of Samuel Rachailovich.

2005 – London

A couple of years ago I went to a spiritualist demonstration in Belgrave Square in London. One of my neighbours, Denise, had suggested we pop in on the off chance. As soon as it started the demonstrator came up to me and said, I see an old lady. I wasn’t impressed and thought, ‘Well it’s likely, given I’m not that young, my grandmother is dead, but if you want to impress me, tell me her name.’ As if she’d heard my thoughts she said, Her name is Ethel, and she wants to say sorry, she also says you write a lot, I see you writing music and painting too. Denise and I looked at each other as the demonstrator, who was already walking toward someone else turned to me and added, Well, she wants me to make it clear to you that she’s sorry, can I leave that with you?

My mind jumped back to the moment when in 1976 my grandmother was on her deathbed in hospital after having suffered a stroke. She beckoned me toward her, I hesitated but my mum shoved me forward and as I approached her, she put her hand on my face. I was about 11 years old and some of my cousins were looking on, most likely worried I was going to do something highly inappropriate, but this time I stood there feeling very embarrassed. Years later, I came to realise she was most likely trying to tell me she was sorry. Sorry for letting the public image of our family be more important than my welfare. Back then, I had no idea she had anything to be sorry about, nor did I think my, or my family’s past, had any bearing on my present or future either, but, of course, it did.

March 1965 - Epsom District Hospital, Surrey, England.

Silence falls across the theatre. Two women look up from a child. One of them passes him to his mother. She looks at him and says, Poor thing.

Summer 1964 - London

Angela is late, she’s always late. These words echo through Angela’s mind as the coach pulls out of Victoria Bus Station and sets off on its journey through Europe to Croatia.

To me, timekeeping is a symbol of maleness and those who have problems with organising time are often wrestling with the world of boundaries, the world of the archetypal father. Somewhere in Angela’s past, she decided, as so many harangued children do, to withdraw into her own protective world, to step out of time. At 24 she looked in her make-up mirror, carefully adjusted her hair and finished putting on her lipstick.

Is everybody happy? The tour guide shouted to his audience.

Yes, they shouted back in unison, and indeed for that circus moment, everyone was.

1940s

Angela was born of an unplanned pregnancy. Her parents had already had three children. One of them, Neville, had died of meningitis four years before she was conceived. Perhaps it was Neville’s death and her mother’s sense of mortality that brought about the accident that gave Angela life. But the residue of not being planned for meant her eldest brother resented her, especially when she got to her teens, and he sensed her rejection of the boundaries that meant so much to him and his father. Her sister, on the other hand, became a surrogate mother to her while her mother, though caring, was rarely, if ever, affectionate.

Angela was a pretty child, as was her sister, and her father had a soft spot for her, but that changed as she did. When she started to become a young woman and liked the attention she received, he disapproved. For Angela, ‘home’ was the domain of her controlling father, while the outside world was full of possibilities, desire, and ‘love’.

1964

As Angela glanced over the top of her make-up compact, she saw the tour guide looking at her through the driver’s mirror. Instead of looking away politely, he stared at her. Angela felt a bit drunk for a moment, closed her powder case, turned away and looked out the window.

1964

The tour guide’s ability to see into a woman’s heart, to see an opportunity for seduction, didn’t mean he could see anything more than the opportunity itself. It may have appeared as if he was seeing deeply into her soul, but he could barely see or understand anything of who she was, and what’s more, he didn’t want to. Perhaps this is what fathers instinctively sense about other men approaching their daughters, they know it’s a dance of lies, but try as they might to warn their girls, they still don’t understand that it takes two to dance these choreographed steps. The seducer and seduced are each other’s perfect gifts.

When the tour guide touched Angela with his eyes, he could feel her need to be seduced. She knew he was watching her. She could see his image wavering in the glass of the coach window. She arched her back a little as she stretched for a moment.

The Tour Guide

Every few weeks during the summer, the tour guide would take a new party of travellers around parts of Europe. Each journey would bring him countless opportunities for seduction. Just as a stage hypnotist seeks out the susceptible from a crowd of onlookers, the tour guide could tell within seconds who would be more likely to come his way.

Just as he didn’t see deeply into their heart, they never took in who he was either. It was a thrilling act of love, a playing out of the connection we all yearn for.

On one journey, the tour guide took a party of 45 women and seduced 24 of them. He said no sooner had one left his room than another would be knocking on his door. Like something from a ‘Carry on’ movie, the tour guide, who knew Sid James in real life, would adjust his dressing gown, light up another cigarette and beckon the next, slightly ‘distressed’ woman in.

Telling me this story, years later, its meaning was insignificant to him beyond making me laugh, but I couldn’t help but be impressed and sad all at once.

2005 - Maria

I tell Maria, a friend of mine, about this in Tinto’s Café in Fulham, as we sip on our chai lattes. She says many lonely women want sex so they can feel loved. But for me, I feel some know they are not being loved, and outside of the excitement, simulation, and stimulation, somewhere behind this act of love, there’s also an act of desperate sadness, anger, and maybe some hate too. A cry of frustration for the lack of understanding and acceptance that never came their way.

2005 - The Microwave

I was at the Tour Guide’s apartment the other evening. He told me his microwave was making sparks. I thought it might just need cleaning but when he showed me the bright flame that shot across the inside when he turned it on, I told him he’d need to buy a new one, and if he wanted, I could order one over the Internet there and then. He looked at me slightly bemused. The Internet was as much a foreign land to him as his past was to me. We were from different worlds meeting briefly in the present.

1914 – 1917 Corners of Foreign Fields – Part 2

The German soldier said something, grabbed John and pulled him so they looked at each other face to face.

Chapter 2

Boris

1914 – Fulham

For John Smith’s parents, John Snr and his wife Susan, life continued pretty much as it had done before their son went off to war. There’d be moments when they’d think of him and worry, but, along with most of the country, they expected the war to be over and their son to be back by Christmas.

Susan was preparing breakfast, poaching eggs, and buttering bread, as John came down the stairs of their dark terraced house in Fulham. Just as he got to the bottom step an envelope fell from the letterbox to the floor. The youngest of their children, William, picked it up and handed it to his father, but as he took it he froze.

What is it? William asked.

His father, still motionless, seemed to wake suddenly. Go help your mother.

William pushed his lips together and did as he’d been told while John put the letter in his pocket and joined him and Susan in the kitchen. He sat down and proceeded to eat his breakfast in silence.

You alright? Susan asked.

John looked at her and nodded, but as soon as the children left the house, he took the letter from his pocket and showed it to her. As they sat together, she read it aloud to him.

Their son’s dog collar had been found on a dead German soldier, and that, along with his disappearance, had led his senior officers to register him as missing in action, presumed dead. Susan reached out to John and grabbed his hand, and looking into his eyes said, I’m telling you now, he’s not dead. I’d know if he was, I’d feel it.

1934 – Boris Aged 7 – Rēzekne – Latvia

Boris gathered the last crumbs of latke (a kind of potato pancake) from his plate, then seeing his mother’s back was turned, his mouth still full, he tried for a quiet exit. His eldest sister, Betty, thought otherwise, and grabbed him, Listen you little, she paused to restrain herself, if you make jokes about my finger again you won’t make it to your eighth birthday! She pushed him away and attempted to slap the top of his head. He ducked and roared with laughter as he made a hasty, far less discreet getaway. By the time his mother shouted after him, he was gone. She dried her hands, walked to the front door, and called his name again, but he was up the road, waving from a cart he’d jumped on bound for the town. It was raining so Boris pulled some straw over himself and through it told the cart driver he was going to the theatre.

When I grow up, I shall sing to you from the stage to thank you for this lift.

The driver laughed, If your mother ever gets hold of me, I doubt I’ll be around.

When they reached the town Boris made his way to the theatre, walked past the queue, and took the side alley where, unseen, he scaled the wall to a second-floor window. Once inside he found a single empty seat between two couples knowing both would think he belonged to the other. As everyone joined in the sing-alongs Boris fantasised about being on stage singing, acting, and leading the audience one day too.

After the show, Boris looked out for people from his neighbourhood and casually joined them for the journey home. Again, he managed to hitch a lift where he sang to his captive, but drunkenly appreciative, audience as the snow fell.

When Boris got home the door was locked. He shouted up to the little window in the attic where he knew they’d all be sleeping.

Mum, let me in. I’m freezing.

No answer.

Please, it’s snowing. I am sorry.

No answer.

Boris felt the tears rising, sniffed them back, looked at his inevitable bed for the night, the kennel, got in, and as the temperature dropped further, he pulled the dog close and took refuge in sleep. The next thing he felt was the dog scrambling to get out and his mother pulling both out into the cold. It was then the beating began. As she smacked and screamed at him, he cried for her to stop, but she continued until eventually, he could only surmise she didn’t love him anymore.

Boris’s mother, Esther (nee Berzin), had dark piercing eyes and long black hair with roots that went all the way back to the Jewish tribes of the Levant. When Boris was a kid he’d walk the streets in Rēzekne where sticks, stones and hurtful words would be thrown at him for being a Jew. He’d hurl those stones and hurtful words straight back at them, but no matter how hard or far he flung them, they’d burn a hole in him that could only be filled by a yearning for justice.

When Esther beat him, she would scream, Boris why do you do these things to me? He would tell her he loved her, but the more she beat him the more the lure of the external world, the intrigue of the night, and the excitement of danger carved a path for him to follow.

If Boris was a child in today’s world he’d probably be labelled as having some kind of syndrome such as Attention Deficit Disorder and most of the other mothers in the school would be thinking what he needs is a good beating, but for Boris, the beatings were bad and certainly didn’t make him good.

1928 - Rezekne, Latvia

Boris’s earliest memory was of being two years old when he was carried into a dark room to see his dead grandmother, Yudas, (Judy/Nechama), who was covered in a sheet and surrounded by candles. The significance of this death wasn’t apparent at the time, but her passing set off a chain reaction that links to my own first memory, this being one of sitting in a hallway, looking at the doors of a nursery waiting for my mother to pick me up. As soon as the doors would open, my mother would walk in, pick me up and I’d nuzzle into her neck and hair as she hugged me.

When Esther’s husband’s parents had been alive the whole family lived in one of many houses the family owned. But when, in 1928, Boris entered the blacked-out room of his grandmother’s wake, darkness fell upon the whole family. Boris’s grandfather had died shortly before Yudas, so, she’d thought it a good time to release the capital in the properties and share it amongst the family members. Within days of doing so, though, an exceptional rise in inflation meant all that money wasn’t worth the paper it was written on and within weeks they moved from being landlords to land-poor.

A few years after Yudas died, Samuel decided to go to South Africa to find work with the aim of establishing a new home for his family there. He left his wife to look after Boris and the two elder brothers Rudie also known as Hymie, (I know, it’s confusing) and Eliezer. There were also two daughters, one, Betty, had been born in 1914 and was already grown up. The other, Batia, was only six. Before leaving for South Africa, Samuel took Batia to Riga, the capital of Latvia, to visit an aunt and exhausted by the long train journey she fell asleep soon after their arrival. Riga was an exciting city for a six-year-old girl and her father had promised her a tour the next day, but when she woke, he was gone. Later that morning her aunt informed her she’d be staying with them for a while. Of course, Batia was devastated, but I’m getting ahead of myself here. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you more about her another time.

Shortly before moving out of their old, previously owned house, Boris, who slept in the attic, fell down the attic stairs and damaged his testes. Thirty-two years later this accident would be used to try to deny the accident that created me, but a court-ordered blood test denied the denial and a settlement was agreed upon.

Within a few months, Esther had lost her home, her financial security, and a husband who’d left her with three sons to care for, one of whom seemed determined to command, demand and self-harm!

August 2005 - The Microwave

I’ve ordered a microwave for Boris, the Tour Guide, now. It’s taken me a few days to get around to it, however, there’s a pleasure in buying for other people. Like casual sex with no consequences.

1930 - Rezekne, Latvia

The disappearance of Samuel meant Boris’s waywardness would go unchecked further and consequently triggered a chain of absentee fathers that stretched through me and possibly beyond.

When Samuel arrived in South Africa, he immediately shirked his responsibilities and acted like a single man once more. As Esther was left to fend for herself, she slowly grew ill while at the same time, Boris and his brothers experienced their childhood under the encroaching clouds of World War 2.

1936 to 1939 - Rudie

Rudie, aka Hymie, was Boris’s eldest brother and in many ways was his opposite. Boris once told me he was his father’s favourite because they were both the black sheep of the family, but when it came to white sheep, none were ever as luminescent as Hymie. Fortunately for the rest of the family, Hymie sensed their need to escape Europe, so, he decided to make his way to South Africa where he’d join his father and remind him of the original plan.

Six years had passed since Samuel had left his family to fend for themselves but within two years of Hymie arriving, they’d saved enough money to buy tickets for Esther, Eliezer, and Boris to join them. Meanwhile, Boris’s sisters had both settled in Riga, so, they chose not to go to South Africa.

1938

Soon after arriving in Johannesburg, Boris’s mother, already emaciated and ill from the journey, collapsed and was diagnosed as having breast cancer. Boris told me that in her last weeks, she screamed in agony and begged to be put out of her misery. If there was pain relief, they couldn’t afford it.

Her desire to get her children to safety, to a better life, had been fulfilled, but for her, beyond that, there was no consolation and within days she died.

Soon after, Hymie told Boris a psychic had told him they would come to South Africa and their mother would die before 1940.

Why didn’t you tell me? Boris asked.

Hymie sighed, What good would it have done?

2005 - The Homeless

I often have people say to me that because I have short arms it makes them appreciate their lot is not so bad after all. At one time I used to work with homeless people, and I’d occasionally hear them say they thought they’d had it bad ‘til they saw me. Yet, I’d be thinking about how much better my life was compared to theirs. But when I think of the likes of Esther, her mother, or her 13 dead siblings, I realise just how lucky most of us are.

One advantage I have found of appearing burdened with a tragic life is homeless people begging on the street rarely ask me for any money. Instead, they wave at me and greet me as a brother in arms, even if it’s a shorter one than normal.

On my first day working in a homeless people’s resource centre, I even got away with hurrying everyone away at closing time with, Come on you lot, haven’t you got any homes to go to?

1930s - Johannesburg

Once Esther died, Samuel had Boris put into a local orphanage, but Boris ran away, so, his father let him live at home, even so, he spent most of the time on the streets. Sixty-two years later I sat and watched Boris cry because he couldn’t stand to be kept in hospital any longer as he recuperated from a stroke. For Boris, feeling restricted was an anathema. Ironically, he didn’t find the army restrictive, so by the time he was 14 and World War Two had broken out, he leapt at the opportunity to join the struggle.

Along with a lot of other young men, he queued in the heat of the Johannesburg midday sun and eventually stood in front of Colonel Molineux who asked him his age. Boris told him he was seventeen, but he was informed he’d still need his father’s signature, at which point Molineux handed him the form. Boris went away for a couple of hours, signed it himself, then returned it and within weeks was serving as a medical orderly on the front line in Kenya and Abyssinia against the Italians.

I have a photograph of Boris taken during this period, and he looked like me when I was 14, only he was wearing a soldier’s uniform that looked too big for him, while I dressed up like Fonzi from Happy Days. We both looked seventeen by the way, but I just used my mature looks to get into pubs, rather than battlegrounds.

As the weeks went by, Boris befriended another soldier from Johannesburg who sent a letter back to his girlfriend expressing his concern that Boris didn’t seem to have anyone back home. Feeling sorry for him she sent Boris a parcel for Christmas. Perhaps this act of kindness jogged Boris’s feelings of connection to his family and noticing this, his friend got his girlfriend to let Boris’s father know where he was and reassure him he was safe. A few weeks later Boris’s captain, Finley Edgington, entered Boris’s tent and told him they’d received a report that Boris had signed up fraudulently. Boris went very quiet. Edgington said, I know you don’t want to go back, and we all like you and don’t want you to go either, but if you say nothing, we’ll have no alternative but to send you back immediately. But if you say this is true and you want to stay then we can send a request back to your father asking for permission for you to continue in the army. If he says no then we’ll have to send you back but that might take weeks before we get the orders, which will be better than going today. Boris opened up to him, and after several weeks of waiting, he was indeed ordered to return home, which he did so, begrudgingly. However, as soon as Boris turned 16, he re-enlisted but this time was sent to India, where at first he was in the Tank Corps and later involved in moving horses and mules.

One of the other members of his company had also been a school friend named Barney Smith. One day they were summoned to a meeting at the transportation depot. Their Commander asked for volunteers to go on an expedition that involved travelling by boat. Barney stepped forward, no doubt anticipating a pleasant day out, but Boris grabbed him and told him not to go, so, Barney took his advice. The boat was sunk and everyone on it died, including the Commander. One day I met Barney, and Boris said, Hey, Barney, remember when I saved your life?

Barney said, Of course, I do.

Well, Boris added, When you die leave some of your money to my son Simon here.

Barney looked at me and said, Don’t you worry Simon, I’ll remember you.

But he didn’t.

1997 - Psychic or Psycho-Neurotic

Incidents such as Boris saving Barney’s life are possibly just coincidences to which we attach greater significance than we should. Still, there have been many such coincidences in my life that I find hard to dismiss so readily. Consequently, I can’t help but be a little open-minded to there being more to them than meets the eye. I shall share some of these incidents with you as we go on, but in the meantime here’s one, and yes, it’s a bit tenuous, but it’ll do to get started with.

I didn’t get to meet Boris until I was in my mid-thirties and had only ever written one poem which mentioned him. In it, I wrote the line, Am I psychic or neurotic? During our first-ever meeting, I videoed Boris who looked at the camera and said, Am I psychic or psycho-neurotic? And as he said those words the poem came back to me. I can’t prove there’s such a thing as telepathy, or pre-cognition, or the ability to speak to the dead, but this aspect, the world of the sixth sense, is one that both Boris and I seem to have had some experience of, yet both of us doubt it is real too.

While we may share that gene, there are two others that he didn’t hand down to me. One was his aptitude for languages, he speaks around 12 of them to a practical standard, (which means he speaks them well enough to chat women up with), and the other is his thick mop of hair. I used to think I’d like to have his linguistic skills. OK, I speak English, a bit of French, a tiny bit of Japanese and a lot of Rubbish, but now, as I’m balding I think I’d prefer the hair!

2005 - Radio Show

Yesterday evening I went to a Radio 4 recording of a comedian called Adam Bloom. During the warm-up he interacted with the audience and at one point pointed out my hair was receding, I nodded at him and agreed it was. As I looked at him, I thought he looked Jewish, and his name was probably a shortened version of Bloomberg, although I may be wrong, and because of that, I felt there was some kind of kinship between us. Of course, I am not Jewish, especially in terms of Jewish doctrines, because my mother was not Jewish, but to a Nazi, I’d be one. Even among my non-Nazi-non-Jewish friends, once they’re aware of my Jewish heritage, they often treat me as if I am Jewish. The issue of being Jewish has had very little impact on me, still though, I enjoy the idea of having links to such a contentious part of the world’s population, even if I don’t wholly belong to it either. Ironically when I was a child, I was quick, along with everyone I knew, to use the term You Jew! in a derogatory manner, never suspecting I was, technically speaking, Jewish too.

July 2005 - The Hilton

A few years ago, I walked onto the balcony of my room at the Hilton Metropole in Brighton and spoke to my mother on my mobile phone. As we chatted, she told me about a time when she’d stood outside the same hotel as a child and heard her father spit out the words, See that woman coming out of that place, the one in a fur coat and all those jewels, she’s a Jew! And another time, when she shopped in London’s Oxford Street, her parents would warn her not to go into some of the shops there as they were owned by Jews who would drag you in and not let you go until you’ve bought something.

1940s - Unknown Soldiers

Boris shoots his gun at a soldier’s head. This is the real unknown soldier, the one soldiers know they’ve killed, who they will know for the rest of their lives even though they’ll never know who they were. They are the ones they do not mention, who they try to forget but remember, who they hope will greet them at Heaven’s gates and forgive them.

When Boris returned from the war, he knocked on his father’s door and an English woman answered, it turned out she was Samuel’s new wife. Boris told her who he was, but she wouldn’t let him in and suggested he come back later when Samuel was back. Boris went up the street to his aunt’s house and returned later as requested. As he approached, he could hear the English woman and Samuel arguing about her not welcoming his son in, which to him was tantamount to a mortal sin, even if this was a tad hypocritical given, he hadn’t helped Boris when he was a child. It wasn’t long after this incident, and partly because of it, they divorced. However, maybe all wasn’t as it seemed because a short while later, Samuel married for a third time. This time it was to a large German woman whom Boris seemed to like, which must have been a bit of a relief to Samuel, given his new policy on getting his kids’ approval when it came to wives.

Boris, like so many soldiers after the war, found he was at a loss when it came to what to do next. He was unqualified, inexperienced and restless. At first, life became a series of exciting adventures, bouts of drinking, gambling and getting women to sleep with him. As hard as he tried, he wasn’t prepared to fit into ‘civvy-street’, so, he joined a fun-fair and worked as a showman in a gambling tent.

If you’ve seen the film Big Fish, you might think there’s a similarity between my father’s story and the main character’s. The significant difference though is that Big Fish wraps itself around a love story, but I don’t have one to share with you about Boris. Boris and I occasionally argue over whether I should give as much as I do when I love someone. It is an abomination for him to feel needy, let alone tell a woman about such feelings. Perhaps it was his dislocation from such feelings that made him so attractive to women. After all, it can be very off-putting to experience neediness in another, as I’ve often found out and still haven’t learned to curtail. So, maybe it was the brief, fun, and non-entangling relationship Boris offered to most of his prey that drew them to him so readily, except of course, when things didn’t go to plan, and they fell pregnant.

1946-48 - Moving On

The fun-fair work was seasonal, so Boris decided to join the merchant navy during the winter months, and for the next few years migrated back and forth between these two worlds.

In 1948, partly as reparations for the Arab anti-Semitic position throughout World War 2, and partly due to Zionist pressure on the League of Nations to find a solution to the Jewish problem, along with a whole host of other factors, it was agreed to create the State of Israel.

The surrounding Arab States of Jordan, Syria and Egypt made it known they wouldn’t tolerate this, so, as the date for Israel’s independence approached tension mounted on all sides. Boris’s brother Eliezer lived on a kibbutz in the middle of Israel and was also a member of the Palmach, a strike force set up in 1941 to protect Palestine from the Nazis by the British Military and Haganah. The British trained some of them as special operations soldiers to help the British invade Syria and Lebanon, but in 1942 the British victory at El-Alamein meant the Palmach was no longer of any use, so it was officially disbanded. As a result, the whole organisation went underground.

The call to arms came to Boris who jumped aboard the Danish-owned and Israel-bound ship, the Birkalandis, which was mainly a cargo ship but also carried 15 other passengers who also had the same intention. As soon as they arrived, they were all loaded onto a truck and taken to a camp. Within days, Boris was given the position of machine gunner, firstly on the back of jeeps but later in armoured cars.

Whatever one’s position regarding Israel, one can’t help but admire that in this instance the Israelis fought off a three-sided attack by opponents who seemed to have the upper hand.

2005 - Research

I am around at Boris’s drinking tea and writing notes about this time in his life. My partner and I have decided we ought to split up, so, I’m spending more time with my family and using writing this as an excuse to go around more regularly than normal. Finally, I think, I can get some exciting war stories from Boris, but he’s not having it. Next time I’m going to bring a bottle of Scotch and some truth drugs!

1946 - Boris and the Seamen Strike

After World War Two, Boris went back to the navy mainly bringing Jewish refugees to Israel from Morocco and Marseilles. While waiting on the docks Boris noticed that all the black Jews were being turned away from working on the boats. He’d become involved in the Communist party in recent months, thinking that it might help his sister Batia who was trapped in Russia if he was seen as part of the system, and due to this involvement, he’d become more aware of some of the social injustices around him. Watching these men being turned away left him seething with anger so he decided to do something about it.

Most of the waiters, cleaners and general dogsbodies on his ship were non-Jewish Italians, so, Boris spread a rumour about a possible attack by an anti-Semitic organisation on the route back to Israel. The casual staff thought better of the risks involved and didn’t come to work on the departure date. When the ship got back to Israel Boris went straight to some of the local left-wing papers and got a few articles published calling for a demonstration demanding that black Jewish people should no longer be discriminated against by these companies. Within hours of publication, the local hotels were warned off letting Boris reside with them and told him so. As a result, Boris managed to wangle spending the next few weeks sleeping in the prostitutes’ quarters.

When he told me this bit of the story I did wonder if this was all an elaborate tale to explain why he spent so much time with prostitutes during this period, but he showed me a few newspaper articles relating to this incident so just to be sociable I’ll take his word.

Come the day of the demonstration he and a few hundred striking seamen started their protest. Two policemen approached Boris, both holding sub-machine guns at their waists pointing toward him. He walked up to them and filled with anger said in a hushed but vitriolic tone, You can kill me but these guys all have long knives, and it won’t be long before you feel one go through your back if you do! Their guns lowered slowly, and they backed off as one said, You can have your say, but make sure there’s no trouble. Soon afterwards a few black Jewish people started to be employed by the shipping companies involved. But for Boris, it was time to lay low, that’s if you don’t consider laying in the prostitutes’ quarters low already, so he sailed to England. Nowadays, telling such a story would probably have levelled at it, ‘white-saviour syndrome’ but for Boris, that sense of injustice had come from his own experiences of being persecuted, rather than a need to feel virtuous while simultaneously diminishing the power of those he was trying to help. Remember, no good deed goes unpunished.

1952 - London at First Sight

When it came to London it was love at first sight for Boris. It was exciting, it was grimy, and it was full of potential, so it wasn’t long after he arrived that he discovered a scam where he could use people he knew who worked in South Africa House to help him develop a fast-track system for those with the cash to not only get their immigration papers sorted but also a place on a boat. For this Boris would get the fee from the clients and a commission from the boat operators. A good little number, but the secret of a long life is knowing when it’s time to leave, so, Boris cut his profits and took a ride upon a boat bound to Canada.

1940s - Canada

In just a few days upon arriving in Canada, Boris arrived in Nova Scotia, took a train to Montreal, found accommodation in a religious Jewish family house, and got a job in a factory. After week one the foreman sacked him for shoddy work so Boris went to the boss and gave him a sob story that his work was shoddy because he hadn’t eaten for days so the boss gave him another chance. The factory was making parts destined to be used in the Korean war so it was working 24 hours a day. Boris came in on the night shift and watched how they did it. He asked how many of these items they’d make in an hour and was told about 20. So when Boris was creating 28 per hour by the end of his first educated day he got a sharp warning from his fellow workers. Ever the communist, Boris thought, Fuck them, I need the dough and compromised a bit by dropping down to 26 units per hour. At the end of the week, he was called into the boss’ office. What now? he thought, but to his surprise, he was given a pay rise and an apology from the foreman who sacked him in the first place. Needless to say, Boris still wasn’t popular with his workmates.

It was a bad winter; work relations were frosty, and his hosts were not much warmer. Boris would lie in bed at night and could hear:

Mary, you like it?

Don’t bother!

Mary, you like it?

Don’t bother.

Mary, you like it?

Yes, I like it

Boris laughed and blew smoke rings up to the ceiling.

After a few months, Boris realised he didn’t like working in the factory anymore and decided it was time to sail off into the sunset.

He noticed an Israeli ship was coming into the local port and needed a qualified oiler, (whatever that is), so Boris contacted the boat company and made his way to meet it, but the ship was nowhere to be found. Boatless and cold Boris looked through the telephone directory and called a local Rabbi. He told him that there was a boat coming in a few days which was the first to come to this port from Israel and what a wonderful gesture it would be to throw a welcome party for them. The Rabbi, probably feeling somewhat cornered agreed. Boris met up with, befriended and lodged with him for the few days wait.

When the boat arrived it only had a few Israelis aboard, the rest were English, however, the gesture didn’t go unnoticed, and Boris had in the process ingratiated himself with his new crewmates. One of them, the boson, was a black Jew whom Boris had previously got a job for, but as he went to greet Boris, Boris put his finger to his mouth because he also recognised the chief purser as someone he’d antagonised during the strike. The Purser half-recognised Boris but couldn’t place him at first but a few days later he did and immediately telegraphed ahead that he was on the boat.

Boris was in the engine room when the boat pulled into Haifa. Four police officers came down and started to arrest him, but Boris informed them that because he was sailing on Canadian Articles, they couldn’t arrest him until he was on shore. In fact, he told them to fuck off, but he did present a good legal case as well.

He was put on open arrest and the shipping company boss came to see him to ask what he was up to. He explained that he didn’t intend to cause any trouble, so an amnesty was agreed.

Advert Break

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For high productivity and low popularity $1000

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End of Advert Break

Leaving South Africa

With an adventure under his belt and a wad of money in his pocket, Boris flew to South Africa. If travel makes you look at your hometown with a different perspective that is especially true when there have been dramatic changes in the meantime. In the intervening years, South Africa had brought in Apartheid which essentially legalised racism. It came as quite a surprise to Boris who had suffered at the hands of anti-Semitic peers as both a youth and adult to suddenly find that he was part of the oppressive regime. In an attempt to make amends, Boris endeavoured to have sex with an equal number of women from all ethnic groups. This, however, did not go down well with the authorities.

One evening, Boris visited a black neighbourhood, got a bit drunk and started to make his way home alone. Ahead of him, two young black women were being noisy, laughing and shouting at boys. Then a small group of police officers turned towards them and one of them shouted, Shut up you black bitch.

Hey, don’t talk to them like that! Boris retorted.

And within seconds the police officers started to beat Boris with their sticks. Even though being inebriated meant Boris didn’t feel the full force of the law at that precise moment, he was bedridden for several weeks as a result of his injuries.

When Boris eventually came out to play again, he was preoccupied with this incident. So much so, that he decided to seek out his revenge. As it turned out though, it wasn’t to be as calculated an affair as he’d probably hoped for. Instead, just by coincidence, he saw the officer who’d shouted at the women walking towards him down a side street. Boris ducked into an alleyway where he saw a metal bar and decided to make the best of a bad job. No one else was around so as the officer passed the alley Boris stepped out and smashed the bar across the back of the officer’s head. Fortunately for Boris, the officer did not turn around and ask what he’d done that for but conveniently dropped to the floor where Boris crashed the bar down upon his collar bone, which he heard a crack from and then hit him a third time across his back. Boris looked around for witnesses, but there didn’t seem to be any, so, he walked away calmly.

Boris’s eldest brother still lived in Johannesburg and was a minor celebrity as a long-distance (100 km) runner and jewellery shop owner. Also, Boris had become quite well known to the police when he worked in the fun fair as he’d been the one bribing the police to let the fair gamble. The hot-headed and radical Boris knew he wasn’t anonymous enough to get away with this act of retribution, so, he decided to go back to England.

He’d often tell people he left South Africa because of Apartheid, but the fear of being prosecuted for attempted murder was the real one.

1914 John Smith Jnr – Fulham

After the letter arrived John’s parents tried to hide the truth from the rest of the family, but it was obvious something bad was in the air, everything felt loaded with more than its own weight. The kids spoke amongst each other and surmised something may have happened to their older brother, but they knew that if he’d been killed, they’d have been told by now, so this left them a little perplexed.

Crookham Road was one of many that angled off Fulham Road, so consequently was generally a quiet residential street. But 4 days after the letter arrived the clatter of horses’ hooves and the sound of a soldier giving orders in the early evening brought the family to the front room window where, given it was already dark, it was hard to make out what was going on. But what was now clear was two of the soldiers were marching up to the front door. John Snr and Susan, now filled with dread looked at each other. When the soldiers knocked on the door John and Susan took each other’s hands and made their way to them.

As the door opened the soldiers took off their hats and asked if this was the residence of John Frederick Smith, father of John Frederick Smith. When John nodded, one of the soldiers asked if they could come to the cart to identify their son before the orderlies brought him in. John and Sarah looked at each other and almost knocking the soldiers off their feet bustled past and rushed down to what they hoped was their son. When they got to the man, they looked at him, his face was swollen and bearded and for a few seconds they wondered if there’d been a mistake, but as the man opened his eyes he quietly said, Mum, dad, what are you doing in France? Susan, crying now looked at the orderlies, Yes, it’s my son John. Please bring him in. As they did, Susan held his hand and talking to the cold winter night sky kept repeating, I knew he wasn’t dead.

It would be a few days before John became strong enough to tell of what had happened, and of course, there was no explanation as to how he’d become registered as missing in action, but his last memories from the battlefield included being shot, falling into the mud and a German soldier approaching him. He thought he was just about to be killed but instead, the soldier, who was tall and had a big beard, helped him get comfortable, gave him some water and took one of his dog tags with him when he left.

I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but I knew he didn’t want to hurt me. I don’t think he wanted to hurt anyone. And… and when I realised that at that very moment, I knew I didn’t want to hurt him either. If I could have, I’d have shaken his hand and hugged him in thanks.

John Snr interrupted, I’m sorry to tell you son, but I think he might be dead. They found your dog tag on his body and that made them think you’d been killed.

John Jr pushed his tongue under his bottom lip and barely able to speak, whispered, I owe him my life.

Susan stroked his forehead, We’ll always be thankful for his kindness John, and we’ll say a prayer for him every night for the rest of our lives. We'll never forget him.

John Jr nodded, bit his lip, and furrowed his brow."

Chapter 3

Angela

1942 - First Memories

Angela’s first memory was being held in her mother’s arms while she pointed at the distant anti-aircraft gunfire glistening amongst the stars. For her first three years, most nights were spent sleeping in the air raid shelter which, shaped like an old gipsy caravan, caused her to imagine travelling to mythical worlds as she’d fall asleep, and some nights she was sure she did. But one morning the ground shook her awake as a bomb fell nearby, when a badly damaged Luftwaffe plane kindly emptied its payload as it descended, blowing in the windows of her house, and knocking a few tiles off the roof. Angela’s brother, Sydney, came back a few hours later saying he’d found the burnt-out plane and removed the papers from the bodies of the crew. No doubt his ability to act with such cold efficiency also contributed to his later success as a bank manager.

1940s - The Cost of Bombs

Between 1985 and 2004 I lived in a flat in a terraced house in Fulham, London. During World War Two it was bombed when, once again a shot-up German bomber careered towards the river Thames. As with the one that crashed near my mum’s place, this one’s crew also emptied their bombs as well, etching upon the landscape a line of craters, fires and tales of devastation that ended in the ultimate crash course of arrivals.

One of the bombs they jettisoned, an incendiary device, landed on the house I lived in on Bronsart Road, which set it on fire. This was forty-two years before I moved in, I hasten to add. The fire brigade turned up, extinguished the smouldering roof, and found the air raid shelter in the backyard full of black-market petrol. The owner was summarily arrested and charged while the bodies of the crew were buried in the cemetery just behind the house.

My next-door neighbours in the mid-1980s, Nellie, Elsie, and Claude, told me this story. At the time they were still shuffling to the outside toilet through wintry nights and cleaning themselves at the kitchen sink. For them, the 1940s and 80s were but a moment apart from each other. World War Two did not end in 1945 but continues to fade around us today. Just as the Big Bang Theory proposes there’s a background hum of radioactive noise crackling around the universe as a direct result of the initial singularity, the same goes for most of our traumas. There’s a symphony of hums within us that continually reminds us of the sufferings that originally touched us.

During the last years of Elsie and Claude living together, having been married for fifty years, he became demented and abused his wife verbally. She would come around to my place crying in her nightgown because she didn’t know how to cope, saying she’d had fifty wonderful years with him, but never imagined it would end like this. That’s the thing about endings, apart from us being sure there will be one, the ‘how’ and ‘when’ tend to come to us very unexpectedly.

2005 – Our Unappreciated Potency

Many of us feel we have no potency or effect on others, but even when merely passing someone we may enter their mind’s internal dramas and affect them without us ever doing or saying anything apart from just being there. To think, a look we give someone, or the words we say have no effect, isn’t realistic at all. We’re continually affecting the world and those around us, even if we believe we’ve gone completely unnoticed.

I used to hide my arms when I was in public, but now I think people seeing me will probably provoke some questions and feelings in their minds. Of course, I can’t control where their thoughts go, or if it’s ultimately a good or bad thing, but just as if I’d skimmed a stone across a pond, I know I’m sending ripples out, and there’s something very satisfying about that.

Angela – 1950s

Angela didn’t do particularly well at school. From puberty onwards, she had the added complication of an undiagnosed condition, Narcolepsy, which manifested itself as sudden periods of drowsiness. This combined with her lack of interest in a subject made learning very difficult, however, where she did have some talent was in her artistic pursuits, especially dancing, ice skating, and painting. When I was at Art College, I had a lecturer who said that make-up artists were latent painters, so, I’d better add to Angela’s list latent sculptor because at 15 she left school to become a hairdresser.

When Angela was nine years old, she noticed a boy called Ian and immediately fell for him. He was older than her but by the time she was fourteen, they started seeing each other. Ian, who was studying art, adored her, as she did him, but one day, as if a comedy songwriter was pulling the strings of fate, the son of the local greengrocer caught her eye too, so she dumped the Artist and pulled out a plumb. A short while later realising the mistake she’d made, she dumped the greengrocer’s son and got back with the Artist. This time though the Artist’s vision of his muse was damaged, so, while still enthralled by her beauty, he began to notice the differences between reality and his dream girl. Then one day, as they made love, she felt like he was no longer thinking about her and sure enough, a short while later he left her and moved on forever.

Angela was devastated. If one of the first stages in dealing with trauma is denial, then it was here she became stuck. For Angela, the dream became one of her and the Artist reuniting but while she harboured this, she couldn’t accept that he was gone. The space in her heart for a new love was still occupied by her dream man and as Freud phrased it, she was trapped in the grave of a relationship. Unable to move on to pastures new. With her heart still engaged to an absent ‘other’, her body found solace in acts of love and hate, and this is where my father came in.

If Angela represents the face of a coin that doesn’t let go of those we love, then Boris represents the other, the one that can’t ever hold on to anyone. This is the bad penny that’s passed from one generation to the next, the hard currency of love between parents and their children, and when some of it is counterfeit, then it may be perceived as a lack of love. If both my parents had their issues, then my perception of not being loved enough was about me, but in reality, it was all about them. Even so, there was no way I was ever going to get away with it unscathed.

Angela – 1958

When Angela was eighteen, she became pregnant. Knowing full well her parents would have been mortified, she went to a back-street abortionist who used a syringe to