They sat in the waiting room of the ‘special clinic’ for what seemed hours before David insisted that his friend, who was dancing at the Opera House that evening, should be seen by a doctor. The anguished Russian was examined. He had gonorrhoea. The word was written on a scrap of paper for him, and he shook his head in bewilderment. He was given an injection of penicillin. David accompanied him to the underground ‘special clinic’ on three more occasions, and when the Kirov were due to leave the grateful dancer embraced him to the point of breathlessness and kissed him on both cheeks. ‘You friend. You good friend. You give me help.’
David’s father was a drunk, a womanizer and a spendthrift. Major Healy was stationed in South Africa at the start of the Second World War, and David and his brother Arthur grew up in Amanzimtoti, near Durban, cared for by a black nanny whom they adored. Their mother, Adza, hated the socializing duties expected of an army wife, and tried for a while to ignore her husband’s constant infidelities. The couple returned to Britain in the late 1940s, and divorced in the following decade. Major Healy disappeared from their lives, only to reappear at the stage door of the London Palladium after a performance in which his eldest son had been ‘hoofing’.
‘I’m your dad, David. Don’t you recognize me?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m on my uppers, David. Can you lend your old dad a fiver?’
‘No.’
That was to be their last meeting. The major’s demand for money and the sentimental reminder that he was his ‘old dad’ caused David considerable misery, even though he turned the encounter into a comic anecdote. I think this was the reason he was happiest in the company of women, especially those who were having trouble with men. His ‘dad’ came to represent everything he despised in a certain kind of heterosexual man – the kind who regard their wives or lovers as a subspecies, available at all times in either the bedroom or the kitchen.
Adza was brought up as a Roman Catholic but alienated her devout relatives when she married the major, who called himself a Protestant. She was cut off by the Williams family, who were Irish despite the Welsh name. After her divorce, her cousins contacted her, letting her know that her marriage hadn’t really been a marriage in the eyes of the one true church. Now she was free to marry a Catholic, who would raise her boys in the faith. Adza, who was now living in Abergavenny, chose another Protestant as her second husband. This was too much for her cousins, aunts and uncles, who informed her in a single, outraged letter – signed by them all – that she would not be welcomed if she had the nerve to turn up in Dublin.
Adza was petite and pretty in a doll-like way. She bore a close physical resemblance to the writer Jean Rhys. She dressed elegantly on modest means, a knack her eldest son inherited. Although her second Protestant husband, George, was a retired labourer, Adza still acted like the major’s wife she once was. She considered my sister, who spoke with a pronounced Cockney accent, ‘frightfully common’.
George’s false teeth were rarely in his mouth. He was comfortable with his puckered appearance. Every visitor to the family bathroom was confronted by his Everest of a denture, gleaming unnaturally white in a glass on the shelf above the washbasin. Adza was always chiding him to put the teeth where they belonged, and he invariably responded that his gums were strong enough to chew the roast beef he loved to eat.
George reminded me of Joe Gargery, the honest and sweet-natured blacksmith in Great Expectations. Like Joe, he was not at ease in ‘polite company’ and like Joe, too, he found London an intimidating place. The traffic unnerved him, and so did the crowds. The tall, gangling man (he was well over six feet) had to depend on his tiny wife to guide him through the bustling city streets.
They stayed with us for a long weekend and gladly accepted my mother’s invitation to Sunday lunch. I warned them that her lunches were mountainous, and George expressed pleasure at the prospect. We took a taxi to Battersea, with Adza hoping that George hadn’t been teasing her when he said he had lost his teeth. It wasn’t until we were on the doorstep of my mother’s house that George removed the denture from his jacket pocket and popped it into his mouth. The effect was startling. The mouth was hugely expanded, the sculpted molars rendering him incapable of comprehensible speech. His tongue was trapped behind them. He was suddenly a ghoul, with a ghoul’s smile to match.
Joan, my sister, opened the front door. She was transfixed by George’s smiling teeth, the like of which she had never seen. Introductions were made, and the five of us proceeded up the stairs to the second-floor landing where my mother was waiting anxiously. She sensed immediately that the diminutive Adza, in her picture hat and tasteful summer dress, was a woman of a certain class and said ‘How do you do?’ and ‘Pleased to meet you’ in the voice she assumed for her wealthy or titled employers. Adza, having winced at my sister’s dropped aitches and elongated vowels, shook hands with a kindred spirit. George, looming behind her, tried to say something but could only manage a strangled noise that ended in a whistle.