Simon Mark Smith
Autobiography Chapter 1
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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.
* * *
1940s
Angela was born of an unplanned pregnancy. Her parents had already had three children. One of them, Neville, had died of meningitis 4 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.
End of Chapter 1
