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The Goldberg Variations
The Goldberg Variations
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The Goldberg Variations

My own analyst, Dr Woodhead, was a proper Freudian, old enough to have known the great man and grown up with the passion of a new faith. I’d lie on the couch while she sat behind me, white-haired and elegant in county tweeds, stopwatch ticking for fifty minutes, both happy with silence, and content to bounce questions back at me with a sure forehand. Our sessions were twice a week. I was ferried from school and then home by Douglas ‘Buzz’ Wells, an ex-racing driver, golfer and boxer with a toothbrush moustache who referred to her as Timbernut. The expensive navel-searching must have seemed indulgent to a man who’d resolved his own frustrations in the ring or on the racetrack. Our laddish conversations lifted the damp, analytical gloom my sessions left me wrapped in. A couple of visits a week to his place in Norland Square, just round the corner from my parents, might have benefited me more.

To the left and to the right of Sigmund Freud stood Groucho Marx and Lenny Bruce. Together they comprised a Jewish atheist’s trinity. A diet of the sayings of these three topped up with a daily Holocaust catechism constituted our religious education. Hatred of our enemies defined my Jewishness as we weren’t kosher, and didn’t observe any of the holidays or festivals. In fact adherence to the central part of the Trinity deprived me of the sacred B’rith, the covenant of circumcision that binds all Jewish men to God. My Freudian parents thought it would lead to a castration complex. Dad certainly had one. He regularly informed me that Jewish women were domineering shrews to be avoided at all costs. He could get away with saying this as Mum was only half Jewish.

A central event in family lore was the Kossoff trial. The broadcaster, David Kossoff, had accused Dad of writing anti-Semitic handbooks, a slander that deeply upset both my parents. Mum’s tears drove Dad to a court action which he won, conducting his own defence. It was a case that made the front page of the Evening Standard. Kossoff’s main target, The Bankrupts, was in fact an unremittingly scathing and negative account of the idolatrous, philistine suburban Jewish world of ritual without religion that public school had allowed Dad to escape. ‘Who likes the Yiden? The goyim hate the Yiden, the Yiden hate the Yiden. Nobody likes the Yiden,’ my great-grandmother apparently used to say.

The only Jews I knew were Dad’s friends from the literary and intellectual world like Frederic Raphael and Isaac Bashevis Singer, fascinating, charismatic people I could listen to for hours who would have shared his view of the environment he’d had to escape in order to define himself. Jewishness seemed synonymous with non-religious values and aspirations (embodied by these people) which I cherished and admired. We saw little of Dad’s family. His beloved father had died when I was a baby and his mother lived in Hove with her second husband Bobby, known to us as Uncle Booby, and there, as far as Dad was concerned, they could stay.

There had been plenty of Jewish kids at The Hall. At Pimlico I couldn’t name one, which might explain why the words Jew and Hymie were bandied about so readily, demonising the absent race, substituting the Jew of anti-Semitic gentile folklore for the reality.

‘’Ere, Froggy! Gi’s back that twenty pence wot I borrowed yer!’

‘Ain’t go’ it, Dave?’

‘Nah. Course you ain’t, ’cos yer a fackin’ Jew, incher?’

‘Don’t call him a Jew.’

Alan and Froggy stared at me, bemused.

‘Why? ’O says ’e ain’t?’

‘If you want to say someone’s mean, say so, but don’t say they’re a Jew.’

A smile stole across Alan’s podgy, red face.

‘Alright, Hymie!’

‘Can we have silence over there, please?’ yelled the teacher.

‘Hymie, Hymie Goldberg.’

The silly, and basically harmless refrain spread across the row behind me, but I’d made them conscious of a usage that came too trippingly off their tongues. Now I’d got it out in the open there was more chance of being able to tackle it. It amused me they’d actually hit on my real name. I turned round.

‘Just don’t call someone a Jew if you want to say they’re stingy.’

Again the refrain.

‘Oy, Hymie!’ Alan smiled. ‘Comin’ out to play football?’

As the pips went for the end of break and the drudgery of geography beckoned, I heard someone call out ‘Nice goal, Hymie!’

It was Klewer. Twice the size of anyone else in the class, well liked for his friendly, open nature, but considered to be one of the best fighters in the school.

‘Shame you ’ave to be so Jewish with the ball, though.’

I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, so I grinned but he didn’t smile back.

‘What’s the matter, Hymie?’

The rage began to fill my chest. Before me stood the embodiment of the abuse and savagery inflicted on my people for two thousand years, that I heard recounted daily, that had led to Mum’s cousin Theo being gassed at Auschwitz. I spat full in Klewer’s face. I’d never seen him look angry before. He lurched towards me, a big brown bear.

‘Fight! Fight!’

Other boys alerted the ones who hadn’t made it back to the classrooms and I was aware of figures scurrying towards us. My only chance against this giant was to do a Muhammad Ali, so I moved in fast, through his cumbersome blows, and hung over his shoulder, not giving him the chance to swing, reducing his punches to pats and paws. If Klewer broke free I’d be in hospital.

‘Come on, Klewer. Smack ’im!’

‘Belt ’im!’

‘Cam on, ’e’s a wanker!’

I wondered how long I’d be able to hang on before the crowd’s incitement mixed with his anger would cause the explosion to free him, but the blows began to peter out and eventually we separated. Klewer gave me a cold, unforgiving look.

‘You’re lucky!’

‘Klewer could’ve killed yer!’

‘Yeah! Knock sixteen colours o’ shit aht o’ yer!’

‘Finish it later!’

My passion was spent. I looked at Klewer. He just seemed fed up.

I couldn’t wait to tell Dad how I’d fought a bigger opponent in defence of my Jewishness.

‘Filthy anti-Semitic bastard!’

‘He’s not. He’s just ignorant.’

‘Is he a Polack?’

‘No idea.’

‘With a name like Klewer?’

‘Could be anything.’

I didn’t need to forgive Klewer. I could have embraced the boy who’d allowed me to focus my sense of being Jewish so keenly.

Conversation at the court of King Brian flowed as normal that evening.

‘You know what my friend the Irish watchmaker says, “Oi’ve always worked on the principal that every Goy is an anti-Semite, and d’you know what, Brian, Oi’ve never, never been proved wrong.”’

‘Oh, Brian,’ Mum sighed. ‘You’re so filled with negativity.’

‘Have you heard what happened to Mark today?’ he answered, as if in explanation.

‘Yes,’ Mum sighed.

‘It’s always there, ready to rear its ugly head. I just thank God for the blacks and the Asians. They’ve taken the heat off us.’

‘Visible targets,’ I chimed in.

‘That’s right. As long as I don’t show my profile,’ Dad chuckled through his chicken. ‘You know what your godfather says? “Er, nobody knows I’m Jewish, er, until they see me.”’

We did, but we laughed anyway.

‘At least you don’t have that to contend with.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you don’t look Jewish.’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Darling, you don’t.’ Mum’s sweet tone heightened the provocation.

‘You should be grateful for that,’ Dad continued.

‘For what? I’m not going to hide. They can all know I’m Jewish as far as I’m concerned.’

‘But, my dear, you’re not Jewish.’

‘What do you mean? Of course I am.’

‘By Jewish law you’re not. Your grandmother was the Ethiopian in the fuel supply.’

Mum chortled.

‘Seventy-five per cent of my blood is Jewish. It’s what I am.’

‘The wrong seventy-five per cent, schmendrick!’

‘And why are you, who never goes near a synagogue, so keen on upholding Jewish law? Only when it suits you, so you can have a go at me, undermine me, take the things I care about away from me.’

Dad simply sat there laughing, his poultry-filled belly heaving. It was always the same when he was cornered, his last defence. I pushed my chair over and kicked it aside, slamming the glass-panelled door behind me as hard as I could in hope it might break.

Upstairs I lay on my bed, watched from above by my own Holy Trinity of Best, Law and Charlton, centrepiece of a shrine dedicated to the saints and apostles of Manchester United. Silk and woollen football scarves pinned to the picture-rail framed the altar. Although this wasn’t a great time to be supporting United, that only intensified the passion. To me being a United fan meant suffering, assuming the stigmata of the martyrs who’d died at Munich. I’d been too young to fully appreciate the glorious sixties that culminated in the European Cup triumph of 1968: my most cherished memory was of their winning the National Five-a-Side championship in 1970. Ever since dubious refereeing had disallowed a perfectly good Denis Law goal that would have sent us into the 1969 European Cup Final, the club had been in decline. Watching them on their trips to London was a joyless experience; regularly drubbed at Spurs and Arsenal, usually beaten by Chelsea and QPR, sometimes squeezing a draw at West Ham. Worst of all was the 5–0 thrashing at the hands of co-relegation strugglers Crystal Palace that left me weeping bitterly into my hand-knitted scarf. Ironically, we stayed up while they went down that year, but it felt as if it wouldn’t be long before the bottom of the First Division opened and we were received into the maw of the Second.

At that time United fans were regarded as the most violent in the country. In reality they were no worse than many others, but there were so many of them. Ten thousand regularly travelled when the club played away, swamping rival supporters’ ends. It was an environment considered too dangerous by my parents, so I’d watch them from the stands, part of me terrified by the red-and-white-clad northern hordes, a lot of me yearning to be in there with them.

Twenty minutes’ walk from home we had one of the best sides in the country. The years since I watched Rodney Marsh score his hat-trick against Watford had seen QPR’s fortunes wax as much as United’s had waned. Stan Bowles was a worthy heir to Rodney, and the club had a plethora of fine players to carry on the good work of the late sixties. My parents thought (wrongly) that QPR’s terraces met their safety standards. It wasn’t the Shed, it wasn’t the Stretford End, but I soon got to know the hundred or so regular faces that made up the Loft. I didn’t really support them – love for United brooked no rival – but I was becoming hooked on the thrill of being accepted by clubs that wouldn’t have me as a member, and on the adrenaline that flowed from fear and aggression.

‘You’ll never take the Lo-oft!’ was one of the emptiest chants ever heard at a football ground. Chelsea, United, Arsenal and West Ham regularly did. Spurs were the most fun. There were so many of them we never had a chance, but we had a go anyway, holding the citadel just above the entrance while they repeatedly charged, trying to overwhelm the blue-helmeted line that separated us. Inevitably the dam would burst, sending wave upon wave of Doc-Martencd skinheads pouring over us, boots and fists flailing indiscriminately. The big thing was not to go down. We’d retreat, leaving a sinister no-man’s land while the coppers formed a new line and the Spurs fans filled the vacuum. Then we’d regroup and charge back at them, knowing it was futile, but the sheer exhilaration of racing across the terraces, not knowing quite what to expect, made it worthwhile. Eventually we’d merge into the crowd, little pockets of rebels for the Spurs fans to seek and destroy, and the game would continue to the accompaniment of the sporadic explosions that followed whenever they found us.

If the opposition were less well supported we might go hunting ourselves, though it normally ended in farce, as in the home Cup tie against Orient.

‘The only way we’re going to get the Labour Party back into power is by hanging onto our pipes,’ announced one of our main faces, pipe between his teeth, in an imitation of Harold Wilson worthy of Mike Yarwood, but we were supposed to be looking for the opposition firm at the time. A small mob suddenly appeared on the other side of White City Way. They charged into us and a few seconds of the usual indiscriminate kicking and punching ensued until we realised it was Paul O’Reilly’s firm and we were fighting our own side. Occasionally we’d run into individual fans who seemed up for it, but a code of fairness operated and it normally ended up one on one, even if our one tended to be the top boy.

Music was the catalyst for my first trip to Old Trafford. United v Spurs was my reward from Dad for gaining a distinction in my Grade Five clarinet exam. I practically had to run to match his pace as he headed for Holland Park station like an Olympic walker in training.

‘Come on, panther!’

Just as I’d learned to eat and talk fast, so I’d been forced into an unnatural stride.

‘But Dad, the train doesn’t go for an hour and a half!’

I was speaking to my accompanying breeze.

By the time I turned into the station he was standing by the lift gate, green cardboard tickets in his hand, blue 1964 Olympics bag over his shoulder crammed with pink Italian sports papers and our packed lunch. As the lift operator pulled the heavy gates apart we heard the vacuum-cleaner sound of a train leaving the platform. And Dad was away, like a sprinter off his blocks.

‘Dad! The train’s gone!’

I was left, talking to a backpacker. There was no sign of Dad. As I reached the platform he was scurrying awkwardly towards the far end in anticipation of the change at Oxford Circus.

‘Come on!’

He turned round anxiously as another train clattered into the station and I was forced to sprint the final yards. Shuffling along the edge of the platform as the train came to a halt, he secured a position by the opening doors and long-jumped on ahead of the opposition to reserve a couple of seats. A copy of The Times was thrust into my hands. It was several stops before I’d managed to restore it to its original, pre-breakfast form, and I’d barely established that Bobby Charlton was fit when we were at Oxford Circus, leaping like TV detectives through the opening doors into the crime scene.

As the escalator at Euston finally brought us back into the light 1 noticed groups of lads scattered about the concourse, most not wearing scarves, a few sporting tiny badges on which I could just about make out the United ship motif. Scars and earrings complemented the donkey jackets, bovver boots and drainpipe jeans they wore; one or two had United tattoos etched onto the sides of their heads and necks. Amidst them stood a group in dark grey jackets, and creased brown pin-stripes, looking, for all the world, like accountants, but as the mobs dispersed to a far-off platform, they fell into line with them.

‘C-O-C-K-N-E-Y, Cockney Reds will never die!’

The war cry rang round the station.

‘Like something to eat, dear?’

We’d scarcely sat down when out came lumps of food wrapped in silver foil, and a couple of cans of lager. Dad’s wolf-like teeth tore at a chicken breast. He wrenched the metal ring from one of the cans with the sound of a piston firing, and a fine Heineken mist descended over my hair and face.

‘Lovely grub!’ he enthused.

The succulent pink flesh seemed to invite a ferocious response and, as I bit through the bone into the marrow, the shards splintered into the roof of my mouth. I was about to open my beer can politely in the direction of the window-when I noticed a silver-haired man in suit and tie glaring at Dad, so, in filial solidarity, I turned it towards him and released it, to my disappointment, not with a whoosh but an unnoticed phip.

‘Looking forward to it, dear?’

Such a tame phrase could never adequately describe my feelings. I was heading for the seat of my religion.

After Stoke the weather changed. Sheets of pine-needle rain frapped against the window.

‘Here we go!’

Dad stuffed the silver foil and newspaper detritus back into his satchel and began heading up the train, bumping past scruffy, long-haired locals as the terminus came into view. I jumped off the moving locomotive onto a wet platform, the impetus carrying me into a sprint towards the ticket barrier. For once I was ahead of him.

As we made for the bus stop, rivulets of grime ran down the dilapidated brickwork of abandoned buildings. But to me, everything was transformed by association with United. Even the orange and white of the double-decker, so different from the plain red of the London variety, seemed as exotic as the singsong local accent that Dad seemed to hate so much. The bleak urban landscape and scattered housing estates glimpsed from motorway bridges looked like futuristic relatives of the Emerald City.

People began to leave their seats. I looked in vain for floodlights and wondered how long it would be before I saw Old Trafford. It seemed hours before the police let us cross Chester Road, and suddenly, there it was. The headlights embedded in the roof of the stand helped to conceal the stadium’s glory until the last possible moment, the glistening red brick radiant against its sullen surroundings as the clicking turnstiles filtered off the ocean filling the vast forecourt.

‘I’ll see you after the game, darling.’

He gave me one of his my-little-son smiles, and I moved away abruptly in an effort to separate myself from him and the ill-ease it engendered. Once inside the ground with the programme in my hand, I felt I’d arrived. I examined its cover, the figures shaking hands, the number, the date, the fixture, just to make sure it really was happening, then ran up the steps of the stand, unable to wait any longer for my first view of the ground I’d seen so often on television. I was shocked by how much the sight of what was, after all, only a football pitch moved me, as I visualised the heroes and their exploits on the turf. It didn’t matter that most had gone or that those who remained could never repeat their great deeds, that just lent the occasion poignancy, but as the teams ran onto the pitch and chants of ‘U-NI-TED’ rang round the ground, the football itself didn’t seem to matter at all. I felt I belonged here as never before, as I joined in the singing, knowing I was as passionate about this club as anyone there. The state of the art electronic scoreboard read Manchester United o Tottenham Hotspur o. I hoped that would change soon. It did. When Martin Peters put Spurs one up, looking round, I noticed that Mecca had been infiltrated as about one hundred Spurs fans celebrated. A handful of United promptly steamed into them from the back of the Scoreboard End terrace, whacking a few before being arrested. Then Peters scored again, reducing the usually deafening Stretford End to the level of a village church congregation. I joined in the chants of ‘You’re gonna get your fuckin’ ’eads kicked in’, just to give myself a bit of a lift. By the time the referee blew his whistle, Peters had added two more. I had the compensation of seeing the great Bobby Charlton score, but this current team were just men. No mist swept round their feet as they left the pitch with their heads hanging after what turned out to be the worst home defeat of the season.

As Dad phoned his report through, the name Peters was polluting the press box air.

‘Your team were lousy!’

He saw how dejected I was.

‘Sorry about that,’ he smiled sympathetically. ‘Not much of a present.’

I felt bad. I remembered why I was there, and the pleasure it had given Dad to bring me to Old Trafford, but there was no way a fanatical United supporter could have enjoyed it. It was impossible to dissemble. I shrugged my shoulders.

In the pressroom I was introduced, with mutual disinterest, to several of his colleagues. Then a handsome, dark-haired man turned and gave Dad the warmest smile he’d yet received, and all the joy knocked out of me returned. Pat Crerand, one of the gods who looked down on me as I lay asleep at night, had stepped down from his picture. The pain when he squeezed my hand confirmed he was real.

‘They could have done with you today, Paddy.’

‘There’s a lot happening here, Brian.’

‘Do you think we’ll stay up?’

I was surprised to hear myself speak.

‘Of course, son. Just going through a bad patch.’

His words reassured me for a moment, but I’d seen enough to realise that the situation was dire.

Outside the ground the streets were dark and empty, strewn with bottles, cans, half-eaten burgers and torn-up programmes cast aside in disgust, but I felt good, bonded with Dad in a way I hadn’t been for a long time, part of his world. Although we discussed the game as equals, he felt more like a father than ever. On the journey home he reminded me of how alike we were. It was said with affection, inspired by the feelings that had been kindled in us both that day, but, like the smile he’d given me before I entered the ground, it seemed to imply ownership. I felt ambivalent about the prospect of turning into another version of him; on the one hand I was filled with admiration for a man apparently so successful professionally, financially and with women, on the other afraid that I might never achieve that success, and that if I did, I might, in that last respect, grow up to hurt someone as much as I felt he had my mother.

Beta was from Berlin; more confident and mature than most of our other au pairs, her English already very good. She’d been working as personal assistant to one of the editors in a German publishing house and now she would be cleaning ours. Where others faded at the court of King Brian, Beta flourished. Poking fun at Dad and quick enough to return fire in the nightly shoot-outs, she slipped into our family like a long-lost older sister.

One evening she failed to come down for dinner. Liz offered to look for her. Ten minutes later she was back.

‘Beta’s in floods of tears. She’s really upset.’

‘Did she tell you what’s wrong?’

Mum looked anxious.

‘She won’t say.’

‘You’re very quiet, Brian. Anything the matter?’

‘Nothing, mutteler. Okay kids, I’m going up to watch Kojak. Coming anybody?’

‘Be nice if you stayed and helped with the washing-up for a change.’

‘Why, dearest daughter, when I have four wonderful children?’

He picked several newspapers off a pile by his seat, and left.

‘I’m going to see how Beta is.’

Liz followed Mum upstairs. By the time Mum returned I was alone, finishing the drying.

‘Don’t you want to see Kojak?’

She was scowling.

‘Where’s Liz?’

‘Upstairs talking to Beta.’

She picked up a tea-towel and began drying the plates vigorously, as if she were wiping the nose of a petulant child.

‘God, he makes me sick!’

‘Who?’

My question was faux naif.

‘The poor girl’s in a dreadful state up there. Your lather tried to seduce her. He just can’t control himself. Even shits on his own door-step.’

‘He’s done it before?’

Mum wrinkled her forehead. I knew the answer. My question had been prompted by a prurient fascination with the minutiae of Dad’s indiscretions.

‘Sylvia: I caught them snogging on the sofa. Fat lump of Swiss lard!’

I remembered Sylvia, bad-tempered and unfriendly with long black hair. I used to lift her skirt to see her knickers, which really irritated her. Now I was glad I’d humiliated her, but annoyed that while I was indulging in horseplay it appeared that Dad had been getting the real thing.

‘What did you do?’

‘I was furious with him.’

‘What about her?’

‘Oh, that silly tart! She didn’t have long to go with us.’

‘So you let her stay.’

‘I needed help, Mark.’