Rabbi Solomon Perlman and his wife, Rebekka, escaped Germany in 1936. His congregation, recognising that he was in dire danger having spoken out against the Nazis, smuggled them, with their four year old daughter, Bente, into France. When they realised France was likely to come under German rule, they moved again, wearily, to England where an immigration clerk unwittingly renamed them Pearlman and the weary, frightened refugees couldn't be bothered to put him right.
When I spoke to her for an article I was writing last year, Professor Bunty Pearlman (her first name another casualty of the beaurocrat's ineptitude) she told me a little of her story.
"I don't remember much about our escape. My parents seldom spoke of it and, on the rare occasions when they did, they spoke merely of the relief of arriving here in England. There was plenty of anti-semitism here too, of course, but in the main, people were kind and welcoming, especially the small Jewish community in this part of Somerset.
"My father eventually became Rabbi to the local synagogue, my mother, who had taught in Germany, became a teacher here too and we avoided internment during the war, although exactly how I never discovered."
I interviewed her in her home; an imposing Georgian town house in the better quarter of the city. When I arrived her assistant, Celia, opened the large, black front door and invited me inside quickly to get away from the pelting summer rain. I was then in a large vestibule and Celia took my coat. She was about my age, 30, and 5' 8" with long, very silky black hair and startling blue eyes. She was wearing denim dungarees, cut on the shin and with a white cotton shirt under. She led me to Bunty's study where I met for the first time the small, bird-like academic, with gimlet eyes, close cut silver hair and a warm smile.
My article was about social polarisation and Bunty, as she instructed me to call her was a sociologist of huge renown and had often written abut the subject.
When Celia was politely despatched to bring us tea, I sat in a comfortable leather chair and Bunty sat facing me in another, a small table between us. I used then, as always, my phone to record our conversation but I also took shorthand notes. She approved, telling me that correctly recording an interview was crucial to accuracy.
"And I have always admired your accuracy."
"You've read some of my work?"
She smiled. "Most of it, I imagine. I don't always agree with your conclusions but I like that you don't either." Her eyes fixed me. "You recognise doubt in yourself and others, don't you?"
"Yes, I do."
"We all should." She was, I could tell, a rigorous academic but my main reason for interviewing her was that she was outspoken about gender, courting hostility and threats which she fearlessly ignored. "I've been queer as long as I can remember," she said. "We know about hostility. Imagine, a queer, jewish immigrant. Any one of those three was enough to make the English middle class rise up. Curiously, the upper classes were far more relaxed, particularly about sexuality."
Was she afraid she'd be attacked? "I'm 90, Eleanor. I think any opponent with an ounce of brain would simply wait. I'll be out of their hair soon enough."
Celia, who'd been a silent, occasional party to our conversation as she brought tea and cake, said, "Please don't talk like that." She put her hand on Bunty's shoulder and I saw affection, maybe more.
Bunty covered Celia's hand. She smiled at me. "Celia is a dream who came into my life too late but, better late than never."
I stayed far longer than I intended, finding her engaging, funny, easily angered but swift to calm down.
A week or so later, I went to see her again. I took my finished article for her to read and approve. I felt like I was back at University in a tutorial as I sat facing her desk while she read it. My prof used to lie on a couch and have me read it, but Bunty sat at her desk, glasses half way down her nose and read. I was inordinately proud that she didn't find a single spelling error, but then, I'd proofed it several times to make sure she didn't.
When she'd finished, she looked up at me and studied me for a bit, then congratulated me. "Accurate, sensitive, thoughtful. Thank you. I'm speaking at the University Union on Thursday. Would you like to come. I suspect there might be some amusement. I'm talking about wokery. It's a particular loathing of mine and I suspect a few of my critics will be delighted to have a chance to give me a hard time. It might be fun."
Before the speech and while Bunty was in a meeting with her fellow speakers and chair, Celia and I had a glass of tepid white wine in an ante room. She looked fabulous, her hair tied back, and wearing a long, floaty dress that emphasised her great body. I said, "You love her, don't you?"
"I do. She tried to stop me falling in love, but, well, what can you do?" I freely admit I felt a pang of jealousy. I have no idea if she saw something in my eyes, but she put her and on my shoulder and said, "You've felt her strength too, I know. I'm not remotely jealous so please don't be worried. Our love is platonic. That's her choice. She thinks that sex between women so far apart in years is, in her words, revolting. I know she loves me and I'll take whatever she is prepared to give."
She clearly thought I was jealous of her. I didn't say anything to disabuse her.
The meeting was great for a reporter. I recorded, using my rusty shorthand since recording devices were banned, the highlights and my own thoughts. There was vitriol, hideous rudeness, hostility, heckling. Bunty seemed to revel in it. Celia, at one point when Bunty was being attacked viciously, if only verbally, took my hand and squeezed it, almost as if she was saying, don't worry, she'll be ok. I glanced at her and saw how she was staring, bright eyed at Bunty with adoration and admiration.
I wrote an article about the meeting and, as before, sat while Bunty read it. She called for Celia to join us and told her to read it too. I was astonished when, having read it, Celia kissed me!
"I thought you'd like it," said Bunty. "Sentimental nonsense some of it, of course." Her smile reassured me she was acknowledging the admiration I had expressed for her bravery, her incisive thinking and her simple humanity.
I became a regular visitor to their home. I began to feel more a friend than a guest and often, as I walked through that district, I'd drop in. Usually Celia was there, sometimes alone and we became close. We'd sit in her kitchen and have tea or coffee, sometimes brandy which I discovered Celia loved and that Bunty made her buy the best because 'she deserved it.' If Bunty was there, we'd all sit at the table and enjoy a conversation. Relaxed, they were both warm and funny and serious and I could easily see how they had mentally and emotionally if not physically become lovers. I was slowly drawn into their warm embrace but as a friend and no more.
At night, I'd masturbate, imagining Celia's fingers were there, her lips on mine, her breasts under my hand. My legs would spread for her, my cunt moisten then flood as she brought me to a delicious orgasm. As I was imagining her touching me, I was also imagining my fingers on her and in her, my lips on hers, my tongue between her lips and on her cunt, deep between those lips as it had been in her mouth. I could feel her body, see her clench and arch and cum, loudly.
I wanted so much to see her hair spread, like a silken fan, across my white pillow, her eyes half open, their blue jewels sleepy with post-orgasmic content.
Bunty's funeral was I think one of the saddest days of my life. For a ninety year old to die can hardly be considered tragic but, as I walked away from the crematorium with Celia I felt her pain. She looped her arm through mine and the two of us, dressed in sober black dresses, made our way slowly back to the house for the wake. Celia did not cry, her pain was too deep and intense for that. My tears were for her but I said nothing.
