Wild About Harry: A Novel

By Henry Grinberg

In 1938, Harry Glass is a precocious eight-year-old Jewish boy born and raised in London. Unconstrained by obedience, he is as much the despair of his immigrant parents as they are a puzzle to him. As, indeed, are almost all grown-ups—teachers, neighbours, everyone except his Aunt Lily. At times, he manages to appall even her. Just speaking can become a disaster as his schoolmates’ cuss words roll innocently off his tongue at home. The mood there darkens, too, with the news from Europe.

After the fall of France in 1940, Harry is evacuated to Wales and welcomed into a farm family by everyone except the daughter and a young Welsh nationalist farmhand. But the war reaches into Wales, too, with the bombing of shipyards and chance raids. After being machine-gunned from the air while on a class picnic and later witnessing supposed perfidy, Harry suffers a breakdown and is hospitalised. His ward-mates are recuperating survivors from Dunkirk and wounded Spitfire pilots from the now raging Battle of Britain. Both befriended and bedevilled, Harry comes of age as the world fights for its life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Aug 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398492554

Henry Grinberg

Henry Grinberg, born in London, was nine years old when World War II broke out and 15 when it ended. He emigrated to the United States in 1948. He taught literature and writing at the City College of New York and other institutions for 42 years and was a practicing psychoanalyst for 30. Now retired, he lives in New York with his wife, poet and writer Suzanne Noguere. His previous novel, Variations on the Beast, also takes World War II as its theme.

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About the Author

Henry Grinberg, born in London, was nine years old when World War II broke out and 15 when it ended. He emigrated to the United States in 1948. He taught literature and writing at the City College of New York and other institutions for 42 years and was a practicing psychoanalyst for 30. Now retired, he lives in New York with his wife, poet and writer Suzanne Noguere. His previous novel, Variations on the Beast, also takes World War II as its theme.

Dedication

For my children

Alisa McManus and Gordon Grinberg

Copyright Information ©

Henry Grinberg 2023

The right of Henry Grinberg to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398492547 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398492554 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

My everlasting thanks to my friend Robert Jonathan Blue for rescuing the manuscript of this novel from digital perdition. Without his fortitude, perseverance, and expertise in resurrecting it, this book would not be.

Nor would it have been published now without the encouragement of my friend Arthur Mortensen, who remembered the story and still believed that it should see the light of day.

I remain grateful to the late Martin Mitchell, who as guest editor published an excerpt from Chapter 2, Eleanor and the Great Man, in the journal The Same.

To my friend Roger E. Kohn, I again give thanks for his ready support, legal guidance, and wisdom.

My deepest thanks to my wife, Suzanne Noguere, whose unfailing love and devotion have sustained me from the beginning.

Chapter 1

The Seaside 1938

It was the summer of Munich. The grown-ups were more than usually irritable. There was talk of war. They muttered the word to each other in horror and disbelief. It was all because of Hitler. He had marched into Austria. Now he wanted Czechoslovakia as well. Mr Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, said we shouldn’t get upset about Czechoslovakia because nobody really knew anything about it. It was a far-away country of little importance, he said. Well, I knew all about it. I collected stamps.

I know all about Czechoslovakia, Daddy, I said to my father one morning in the lounge of our boarding house.

What? he said absently, eyes fixed on his Daily Express.

I said I know all about Czechoslovakia, I repeated.

I heard what you said. What are you talking about? He rattled the pages in irritation without glancing at me.

Well, you said yesterday that you heard Mr Chamberlain say that we shouldn’t worry about Czechoslovakia because nobody ever heard of it. Well, I heard of it. I stared at him in triumph while he resentfully lowered the paper to his lap.

What are you talking about? he repeated. "What about Czechoslovakia? Why are you driving me meshuggeh, saying the same thing over and over?"

"Tell me what you know, mein yingl—my young one," broke in a nice old lady sitting in a sunny corner, clearly another Yiddish speaker. She was someone’s bubbeh—granny—one of the guests that no one talked to, as though she were a child like me.

Tell me what you know, she said smiling. Remind me. I know about Czechoslovakia too. I remember when the whole place was called Czecky and Bohemia, Moravia and Slovenska. She seemed to enjoy sharing this with me.

Well, I began, only half pleased, because it wasn’t my father, but a stranger. I’ve got all kinds of stamps from there which I stick in my album.

Yes? And are they rare? Are they worth a lot? she asked.

I screwed up my face, trying to think. This was a grown-up asking me a serious question. That was rare. I don’t know if they’re worth a lot, I said, but I like looking at them and arranging them. They’ve got nice colours and lots of interesting pictures on them.

My father snorted. Catch him knowing what things are worth, he said.

The lady ignored him. Tell me what pictures they show. Are they scenes of the countryside? I’ve probably been to them.

This was amazing. A real conversation. With me!

Well, for one thing, there’s a huge castle with a name I can’t say—it’s too hard.

Try, she said.

Well, it starts with an H, I began. "But there’s an R right next to it. How do you say that? Then some other letters. And it ends with an N and a Y. But I can’t say it."

The nice old lady reared back in her armchair with a look of admiration and wonder. "That’s Hradcany! she cried. How old are you, mein yingl?"

Nine, I responded.

She drew in a mouthful of air. Nine? You don’t say! she cried. She turned to my father. Sir, she said, "this yingl is takkeh a kleegeh yingl—a real clever child, a fine little fellow. It’s right there in his head. He remembers it right, he spells it right. She beamed at me. And now, would you like to say it right?"

I beamed right back. Oh, yes, please! My father lowered his paper and stared.

You start with the H and the R in the throat, she said, "like you were saying khreyn—grated horseradish—except here you say that first syllable—not khrad—but you make two syllables of it: kha-rad. Try it." Because she was gazing at me so intently, she didn’t see my father roll his eyes up to the ceiling.

"Kha-rad," I said with the same kind of good guttural I used to pronounce Hebrew.

Excellent, said the old lady. "And now let’s finish with the rest of it: tchah-nee. Say that." I did so.

And now the whole thing, she said. "You say it like Kha-rad-tchah-nee."

"Kha-rad-tchah-nee," I repeated.

Good, she chuckled. Now you can speak Czech. You know about Windsor Castle where the King lives, yes? Well, now you know about Hradcany Castle in Prague where their President lives.

I beamed at her again.

Now, she continued, what else do your Czech stamps teach you? She looked at my father. Such a pleasure, she said, leaning forward, to talk to this clever child. My children have grown up, and it’s a long way to visit my grandchildren. My father pointedly shook open his newspaper and resumed his reading.

Well, I said, there’s a whole set in different colours and with different prices—

"Denominations, she broke in gently, stressing each syllable. You should say denominations."

"Denominations," I repeated with the same emphasis, as she directed her raised brows at my father, but he was glued to his paper.

Some of them have a man with a beard, I said. His name is on the stamp. Tomas Masaryk. Is that right?

She nodded. Tomas Masaryk. Right.

And, I went on carefully, the money they have isn’t pounds, shillings, and pence, like us, but korunas and halirs.

Ah, she raised her eyes to the ceiling with a smile. "Korunas and ha-lirsh. Ha-lirsshh. She sweetly emphasised the correct pronunciation. I remember."

And, I concluded, they have the word on the stamp for Czechoslovakia, which I think, I said slowly, "is Chesko-sloven-sko. Is that right?"

That’s pretty good, said the old lady. And all this you learned from your stamp collection? I nodded.

Well, that is a delight, she sighed. And just think—all those other countries. You know about those places too? Just from the stamps? I nodded again.

You see, sir? she said to my father cheerfully, there is more than one way to judge the worth of a stamp collection.

My father grunted assent, but you could tell he wasn’t much interested in this conversation. The world was turning dangerous, and he was preoccupied.

Because of the crisis, we didn’t go back to London as usual at the end of August.

We’ll stay in Westcliff for a little while longer and see what happens, said my parents. That was good fortune. School should have begun in early September, but we stayed on at the seaside. That year, the weather was wonderful, as a good English late summer can be: bright, cheerfully sunny, but bracing, and never too hot. I became used to listening to my programme favourites on the boarding house wireless set—The Children’s Hour every evening at five, Billy Cotton and his Band, George Formby, and ‘Yours Very Sincerely, Flotsam and Jetsam,’ the funny duo who sang high and low. All essential radio for me.

In the normal course of things, my mother, father, and I lived in a three-storey attached house in Stamford Hill, North London, a lower middle-class, largely Jewish, neighbourhood, part of the great borough of Hackney (where, I later learned, the famed carriages and the stale expressions come from). Every summer, we took two-weeks’ holiday at south coast resorts like Brighton, Bournemouth, or Westcliff-on-Sea, the last a down-to-earth, no-nonsense sort of place.

This year, my mother’s youngest sister, my Aunt Lily, came with us to Westcliff. She was my favourite: youthful, pretty, full of fun and vitality. Not at all like a grown-up.

So we sat tight in Westcliff and awaited developments. My mother looked stricken as she held up the front pages. Crisis Worsens, they proclaimed—and more:

Dig Trenches In Hyde Park

Air Raid Shelters In St James’s

Barrage Balloon Sites In Kensington Gardens

Arrange Gas Mask Distributions

Kiddies’ Evacuation Scheme: America And The Empire

Every House To Get Its Own Bomb Shelter, Vows Home Sec’y

Anxious Crowds At Number Ten

My family had reason to worry, what with brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and old friends all over Eastern Europe, in Warsaw, Vilna, White Russia, and the Ukraine—to say nothing of what was happening to Jews in Germany.

As if these headlines were not enough to alarm people, there were others:

Ira Outrages: De Valera Deplores Deaths, But Insists That ‘His Majesty’s Govt. Shares Blame’

Arabs Clash With Tommies In Palestine

Gandhi Vows New Hunger Strike

Wales: More Miners Idled—Misery Widens

Blackshirts Attack East End Jews

Catalonia: The End Is Near, Says Franco

Once in a great while, a grown-up would explain what these headlines meant. But the only ones no one would talk to me about were those in the weekly News of the World:

Jealous Wife Slays French Cabinet Minister & Folies

Bergères Dancer

Mutilated Nude Woman Found In Leamington Spa Cellar

Glasgow Lorry Driver Discovers ‘Wife’ Is Really A Man

Whatever their reactions to this news from home and abroad, most grown-ups were united in their impatience with children.

Be quiet, snapped my father if I spoke, the news is on the wireless.

Not now, begged my mother, Daddy’s listening to Mr Chamberlain. But I was apparently incorrigible, always fidgeting, always noisy, always underfoot, always presuming to join in the conversations of my elders. They could do nothing with me. I was their curse, a punishment inexplicably visited upon them.

On this particular Sunday afternoon, near tea-time at the boarding house, my father fetched me a ringing smack across the face for scattering sand and seaweed on the lounge carpet. I hadn’t wiped off my sandals after coming in from the beach. Frantically trying to dodge a second blow, I hurled myself under the table and crashed into a folding gate-leg that supported an extension leaf laden with tea things. It collapsed, and down everything cascaded: large brimming teapot, steaming hot-water pot, milk jugs, lumps of sugar, biscuits, egg and watercress sandwiches, sliced cake, sticky buns, much jam—all went flying everywhere. By some miracle, nothing touched me.

Such cries and consternation from the grown-ups! Present were my parents, a room full of guests, John the waiter, Elsie the parlour maid—and, of course, Mr and Mrs Zelkovitz, the owners, terrible in their rage. Not, of course, that they were terribly pleasant when tranquil! Both stood at five-foot-four, both were enormously fat, but could move quickly—as was the case now. Mr Zed rushed to the centre of the carpet, shaking his fist and shouting; Mrs Zed also, but at a higher pitch: both in horror as the servants scrabbled at the broken crockery and mopped the dark, spreading fluids, wrecked sandwiches, and sticky fragments—in outrage at my humiliated and obviously delinquent parents, who dragged me from the wreckage and fiercely held on to me, vowing dreadful punishments.

With a massive wrench, I broke free of their grasp and ran out of the boarding house down the sunny street that led to the Promenade and sea front. I saw by the Tower Clock that it was well past five. There seemed little point in returning too soon. I would have no tea—that was all right. It also seemed just as unsafe to return for supper. I well knew that what had just happened was a serious crime, involving not only damage but also my parents’ having to do what they hated most: ‘explaining’ me to strangers. Once again, they would have to face a board of enquiry made up of outsiders, all appalled, asking just what sort of child I was.

My mother had known the answer to that for some time. I had treyfe blit—meaning that I was not a genuine Jew, I was not her child. Unknown, impure, non-kosher blood had somehow made it into my veins. For all she knew, I was a changeling, planted on her by a demon in place of the sweet, pure babe to which she had given birth and which, because of the workings of the Evil One, had been stolen from her. There could be no other explanation. It was an ordeal for my mother to acknowledge this awful fact, but under the constraint of high emotion, as would be the case today, she would restate her conviction.

So I decided not to return to the boarding house just yet. It was not late, just getting on for six o’clock, and the sun was still bright, the crowds on the Promenade thick and cheerful. Street entertainers were everywhere you looked: tumblers, jugglers, painted clowns, performing dogs, sword swallowers, and little ponies to ride. Small strolling groups of men and women in floppy black and white silk as Harlequins, Pierrots, and Columbines were playing violins and saxophones, strumming long-necked banjos, announcing to all that they’d be joined by many more artistes later at seven, at the concert party on the Pier.

Farther down the Promenade, in the bandstand, the local regimental musicians commenced their usual evening hour. Their leaflet announced ‘gems’ from Chu Chin Chow, The Quaker Girl, and to finish up, The Gondoliers. It was partly glorious ‘oompah’ music and partly sweet, sentimental ballads. The girls sighed over the handsome, moustachioed sergeant who played solos on the cornet. The nattily uniformed conductor invited us all to sing along. I loved it.

To make things complete, a young soldier standing nearby with his girlfriend decided to buy me an ice cream—just like that—from a Walls’s man (‘Stop Me and Buy One’): Just ’cause you ain’t got a gel of your own, as they chuckled. I happily accepted and said Ta, politely, defying yet another strict instruction from home—never to take anything from a stranger, no matter how nice.

Time passed. I roamed all over. Down on the beach, I took off my sandals and paddled in the warm, gentle surf. The sun went down glowing all red. The coloured fairy lights and Chinese lanterns that lined the Promenade came on. Out to sea, normally unnoticed lattice towers borne on moored rafts began to shimmer with lights and were transformed into shapes and huge illuminated tableaus: green and red Spanish galleons, purple Chinese junks, silver dragons and other beasts. To the delight of the crowds, from other rafts and towers emerged the huge faces of favourites like Charlie Chaplin, George Robey, Harold Lloyd, Puss-in-Boots, Aladdin, and even Shirley Temple—all sketched in strings of coloured light against the deepening sky. Then, when darkness was complete, the fireworks began, as they did every Sunday night at nine, cascading red, green, and golden bursts over our heads, flinging up chains of screaming rockets and whirling stars against the black sky, making our stomachs shudder with the deafening explosions. I shouted in happiness, and the thousands gathered on all sides shouted with me.

All too soon, it was over. The final bursts echoed and died away, leaving the air filled with drifting smoke and burned gunpowder. The crowds broke and wandered off in all directions, chattering under the magic lanterns. I looked about for my friends, the soldier and the girl who’d bought me the ice cream, but they had vanished. How could they have disappeared so completely? I would search for them. Between the sands and the Promenade was a fifty-yard stretch of shrub and flower garden. Just a few steps into this greenery, I found my friends, almost hidden under bushes, and—as I noted with curiosity—lying down, quite wrapped around each other.

Hallo, I called out cheerily, so there you are! What shall we do now?

Barely visible in the gloom, their faces turned up to me. After a silence, the soldier sighed and heaved himself up on an elbow. The girl giggled. He reached into his trousers pocket, handed me tuppence, and urged me to get another ice cream because he and the girl had ‘something important to discuss.’ When grown-ups said that, I knew that children were to make themselves scarce. I said Ta again and turned to leave, not understanding why the girl giggled once more while saying good night.

You notice that I obeyed the soldier’s request instantly, not uttering one word of protest. This is how I automatically behaved with adults other than my parents—a fact my mother noted with bitterness. She would shake with fury as ‘other people,’ whether strangers, neighbours, or members of the family, expounded to her on my good qualities: how I would cheerfully run errands for them, would be willing to carry messages, to go shopping, to make purchases and return promptly with the correct change. Tales from others of my good will, cheerful politeness, reliability, bright mind, clever observations, maturity, if not precocity, would make her shudder and grimace, quite astounding those who imagined she would be gratified to hear them.

Of course, she would moan, to them you are a golden child. To them you are an angel. To them you always say yes. Why don’t you say no to them the way you always say no to me? The way you always say ‘must I?’ when I want something from you? Do you know what it does to me, hearing the whole world praise you to the skies, while I know what you really are?

What I really was! I was an only child of nine and blissfully self-centred, seemingly uncaring about my parents. As many an aunt, uncle, or other visitor to the house was always observing: Look, he’s got no brothers or sisters to worry about, has he. Of course, he can’t help being spoiled. Then they’d smile fondly at me and proceed to spoil me further: a penny here, a sixpence there—once in a great while, a shilling. Of course, I could say no to my mother and father; we knew each other. But I was a dark pit of agonised shyness with everyone else. I would not—I dared not—say no to these others. So to my mother I was, as she accurately avowed, a hypocrite, a strange child full of that treyfe blit, and what’s more, eingeshpart—perversely stubborn.

How unlike my cousins, maddeningly and perpetually held up to me as shining examples of virtue and obedience, ready in an instant to spring to errands and other service with loving good cheer. But I knew better. When summoned from another room or the garden, my cousin Wendy might respond with an audibly bright Coming, Mummy, but I saw her eyes roll upwards in annoyance as she abruptly had to leave our game of Monopoly—or even our delightfully daring talk of what it might be like to see each other naked. My mother was right: I wasn’t that kind of outwardly obedient child. At least, not to her.

I attempted to make my way back to the Promenade, but now it was almost completely dark. Unless I stuck strictly to the obscure, narrow paths through the shrubbery—and I didn’t know how—I would trip and stumble over entwined, stretched-out soldiers and their sweethearts—dozens of them, it seemed—who had silently materialised and who now carpeted the area, occupying every possible available surface under every possible available bush, clinging, kissing, and sighing, oblivious to my blundering about, so blissfully glued to each other that, whenever I paused, tottering over these crowded, panting lovers, not knowing where to plant my foot next, they would abruptly turn their pale, dim faces up to me, like clusters of great flowers in the night. Once, I fell right onto one couple and as I fell, my legs kicked another. I was good-naturedly set back on my feet by strong hands.

All right there, young chap? enquired one soldier, while his girl, indistinct in the gloom, smiled at me. Somehow I scrambled across the bodies back up to the Promenade, using half my tuppence to buy another Walls’s ice cream, this time a vanilla cornet. I heaved myself up and perched on a railing, a solitary gazer, staring out at the illuminated barges, whose reflected red and gold lights gleamed in the black water. The air was warm, people still strolled and laughed, there was music all about me, but softer now.

But as I looked out over the tranquil sea, I suddenly thought of the boarding house, of my parents, that once again I had ‘just disappeared,’ as so often before, that there was going to be music of a different sort to face. I heaved a deep sigh and walked back up the hill.

I had a shock when I stepped through the front door and caught sight of the tall clock in the dark-panelled hall. Twenty to eleven! This was serious. Very late for me. My flesh began to tingle unpleasantly, and I hesitated before opening the door to the guests’ lounge. What would I say? How might I explain? Explain! I knew from bitter experience that some things could not be explained. We hadn’t even settled the matter of the upset tea table and the ruined carpet. I took a deep breath, turned the doorknob, and stepped into the lounge, looking at the armchairs by the windows where my parents liked to sit. They weren’t there, but others were.

Conversation ceased, and the eyes of the half-dozen or so guests still up fixed on me. Immediately, my kind and loving Aunt Lily, my mother’s youngest sister, young enough to be a sort of contemporary, dropped her magazine and rushed over to me.

Harry, where on earth have you been? she wailed. Your mother’s been going crazy, and your father’s ready to kill you—especially since Mr Zelkovitz told him he would add three pounds and eight shillings to his bill for the smashed crockery, the broken table, and cleaning the carpet. I must have looked badly frightened because she knelt in front of me and seized me in a fierce hug.

Are you all right, Harry? She peered with concern into my eyes and gently stroked my face. Oh, I loved my Aunt Lily. As