The Lubetkin Legacy

Berthold: L’Heure Bleue

Inna, bless her, spent two hours in the kitchen with her pinny on labouring over the menu for my birthday, while I took myself off to the bathroom for a fragrant relaxing soak, taking care to keep my injured eye dry. Without its pink cupcake cover, the wound and surrounding bruise looked ghoulish — but ghoulish is sexier than comical, I surmised. Though of course you can never tell with women.

I splashed myself with Eau Sauvage and put on my cream M&S 100 % cotton shirt, freshly washed and pressed (by Inna) after its last outing at Mother’s funeral, but the suit wasn’t back from the dry cleaner’s yet, so I wore my black jeans. Inna wore her black skirt and silk blouse, with her pearl earrings and her hair pinned up with a tortoiseshell comb for the occasion. She had put on lipstick and sprayed on some of Mother’s perfume to cover up the smell of cooking. The moody musky fragrance of L’Heure Bleue awoke in me a sentiment of nostalgia and longing akin to love, and I poured us a little aperitif of sweet sherry from Lidl in memory. Then we sat down at the table to await the arrival of the woman who, I felt in my bones, would change my life. As the minutes ticked by, my eyes strayed more than once to the brass casket on the mantelpiece containing Mother’s mortal remains and I even imagined I heard her whisper a tender admonishment to get married again, and to keep always to the sunny side. I felt her presence in the room, certain that she was glad and excited for me on this important evening as I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

At half past eight I said to Inna, ‘Are you sure you invited her? Are you sure she said she’ll come?’

‘Definitely I ev invited. Half of seven. She said no vegetable okay.’

‘God is dead! Shut up, Indunky Smeet!’ Flossie was anxious too, and sounding off randomly.

At nine o’clock I said, ‘Hadn’t you better go and find out what happened?’