The Times Magazine 39February 2018 Henry’s 95th birthday,
seven years after we first met
In years gone by, before age put an end
to it, Henry and Ingrid would already be
waiting outside to greet us by the time we
turned onto the street. Framed by the door,
side by side, waving and smiling. Dressed in
the carefully chosen and cared for clothes of
people who know how to live a good, stylish
life. A photograph come to life, the kind you
might find jumbled up with old postcards in
a 50p box in a flea market. At the door an
affectionate but restrained hug would take
place, the straight-backed kind reminiscent
of so many fathers of a certain generation
and their children. Then we would
disappear into the house together.
On this occasion Henry is waiting
for us in the conservatory, where a small
afternoon tea has been laid out. He is
recovering from a desperately needed
and valiantly fought for hip operation.runs around charming everyone with her
irrepressible one-year-oldness, blowing
kisses to a digger on the hills. My son, who
is five, goes straight upstairs to play in a
bed. He is autistic and not in general a fan
of parties, however small, significant or
hard-won. This is all three. Only weeks
earlier, Hilary, Henry and Ingrid’s older
daughter, phoned to ask me if I would be
willing to write Henry’s obituary if the hip
operation was unsuccessful.
Later my son agrees to join us in the
conservatory. He instantly spots the room
divide between conservatory and lounge as
not just a potential train track but an actual
train track. He drops to his knees with his
head on the ground and runs an imaginary
train back and forth along it.
He makes train noises. He demands a
ticket. Henry watches with great interest.
I watch Henry. Then he gets up slowly and
shuffles over to my son. He stands thereatrocities committed against humankind in an
atmosphere suffused with generosity, warmth
and love. I was felled by their humanity. Their
grace. Their kindness. Their humour. “One
thing I always say that Hitler did for me
is this,” said Ingrid that day, directing a
mischievous smile at her husband. “Without
him, I would never have met Henry.” And
they looked at one another and laughed.
We don’t often talk about falling in love
with friends, but, to borrow a signature Henry
turn of phrase, that’s how it was. I fell in
love with the Wugas that day. With their
unwavering love of life in spite of – perhaps
even because of – the most unconscionable
hatred. I walked out of there on air.
The next morning I started writing about
Henry, and a decade later I’m still telling
his story. The times seemed to dictate it.
As Henry and I got to know each other, the
levels of antisemitism, Holocaust denial, white
supremacy, racism, nationalism and populism
rose. It became a cliché to compare our era to
Thirties Germany. Polarisation spread like a
virus. When, in the summer of 2016 the UK
voted by the narrowest of margins to leave
the European Union, Henry and Ingrid were
heartbroken. The decision to leave was so
personal for them. So frightening. “We should
all be able to live together,” said Ingrid after
the results were announced. “If there is going
to be a war again, I don’t want it.”
Yet this, too, was the world in which our
friendship bloomed. Henry invited me back
to Giffnock for lunch. Poached salmon, boiled
eggs in marie rose sauce, warm bread rolls,
cheeses and homemade cake. Delicious.
That lunch turned into many more, and
one day Henry asked if I was married. “No,”
I tentatively said. “But I’m in a civil partnership.
With a woman. I’m bisexual.” “Ah,” he replied
without skipping a beat, “next time you must
bring her.” And so I did.
Henry, Ingrid, my partner Claire and I
started meeting at the Edinburgh International
Festival, which the Wugas have been attending
ever since its inception in 1947. Or at the
chamber music festival in the pretty little
fishing villages of East Neuk, Fife, where
we would listen to the songs of their childhood- Schubert, Schumann, Mahler – in the
parish churches studding the coastline.
Sometimes, I would see Ingrid mouthing
along to Schubert, the forbidden words of
her homeland silently resurfacing.
In the summer of 2013, my son was born.
Five days later, we took him to meet “the
magnificent Wugas”, as Claire and I were by
then calling them. He was passed around and
we were filled with the softness, hope and
rectitude induced by a newborn’s presence.
“Good to see you and that lovely BOY,”
Henry emailed me afterwards, moved as
he often is to capitals. “It’s been a long time
since we held babies in our arms.”
Four years later, I gave birth to our
daughter. I vividly recall my newborn daughter
awakening something deep and instinctual in
Ingrid, who by that time had been diagnosed
with vascular dementia. The 94-year-old was
transfixed by the 13-day-old that day. Ingrid
brimmed with presence, memories and words.
I can’t remember when I started
referring to the Wugas as my adopted
Jewish grandparents. At first it was a joke- the kind that tends to mask an unspoken
depth of feeling. Then Henry started to
give cards, sometimes picture books, to
my children on their birthdays. And Henry
always signed off with “Opa”.
Eventually, my beloved parents met my
adopted grandparents. It happened only once,
during the interval of a morning recital at
the Edinburgh International Festival. Almost
a decade later, during the first pandemic
lockdown, my mother, an NHS doctor, was
dying of breast cancer in London. I was in
Edinburgh. Grief-stricken. Unable to go to her.
Trying, in the midst of the storm, to write a
book about Henry’s life, my life, our lives.
And then I got an email from Henry.
“We remember well meeting your parents,”
he wrote. “Just a short hello but so good
to meet this lovely Indian couple. We were
impressed. What a medical career your
dear mum had. As you say, one of many
immigrants in the NHS.
“Be brave,” he concluded. “We send our
love – your adopted grandparents.”
On June 3, 2020, during the first lockdown,
my mother died.
Four months later, Ingrid died too. n
He stands up to greet us and takes a few
careful steps towards me, flashing his
trademark grin, the one he switches on like
a bulb for photographs. We all cheer. Ingrid,
who is a few months younger than her
husband, remains sitting on the sofa blinking
amused eyes behind thick glasses. She keeps
asking, “Why are we here?” and, “When are
we going home?” Both excellent questions,
the answers to which, in this moment, are,
“Because it’s Henry’s birthday weekend,”
and, “Not today.” Ingrid by now has vascular
dementia. Sometimes when I see her she
remembers a little more, sometimes less.
Wading into her deep past is more reliable
than staying in the shallows. And what
remains, in Ingrid’s case, is life distilled to
its poetics. Humour, music, family, childhood
and beneath all this, like an anchor lodged in
the seabed of her past, Henry.
Also present at this celebration of one
man’s life are my two children. My daughterDIARY OF A FRIENDSHIP ‘I FEEL WE ARE FAMILY NOW’