Lotte

I was, the other day, in a taxi crossing Regents Park towards Swiss Cottage, passing her flat. The flat where she lived and where I had visited her so many times as a child. Staring out the window, I was caught by the memory, by the pains and the pleasures of reminiscence.

I always had difficulty explaining exactly what relation Lotte was to me. None, technically. Not a grandmother, certainly. My own paternal grandmother was quite clear on this. Something closer than a family friend, more senior than an 'Auntie', the collective name for my grandmother's friends. She was really just Lotte.

Lotte was, in fact, my grandfather's partner. My maternal grandmother had been murdered (my mother makes this point, not died, murdered) in the Shoah, so my grandfather, Alfred Wiener, known to us as Opi, was a widower. Opi had died when I was very young. My memories of him are distinct but fragmentary. Some of these memories are so close to the drawings that my aunt, an artist, had made and that were on the wall at home, that I remain unsure if they play me false.

They met on a boat, not long after the war, from where to where I am uncertain. My grandfather asked for the time, or more probably a light for his cigarette. I think of 'Brief Encounter' with my grandfather played by Trevor Howard. Their shared background, something of common character and, I guess mutual attraction, built the relationship (they never married, a matter of pensions I believe). What is unusual is that the bond extended to my mother and her sisters.

After my grandfather died we would visit Lotte in her flat. Mostly on Friday evenings for a family eve of Sabbath celebration. My parents, my brother, my little sister and I, and my grandmother, would squeeze round the large round table and, in the usual fashion, sing, eat and argue politics or philosophy. Lotte was a very good cook, though failing sight sometimes made the presentation approximate. In later years Lotte, who had injured an eye in an accident, had cataracts removed and spent a couple of months joyously, but rather tactlessly, remarking on the things she could now see: 'my goodness you are getting old', 'I did not know you were so fat', and so on. There was love and warmth around the table.

It certainly could not have been taken for granted that my paternal grandmother and Lotte would get on. Both were strong characters, inclined to frankness, but they did. Over the years they became closer. I think the roots of their relationship were shared values, a shared experience of displacement and a love for my mother but it became something much more, a real friendship born of mutual respect.

Before dinner we, the children, were allowed access to an old suitcase containing children's books and games. Many of the books were in German but I still remember being fascinated. I was particularly drawn to Struwwelpeter with its gruesome illustrations, perhaps also because my mother disapproved, and a 'flap' book in which different comic characters could be assembled by mixing different heads, trunks and bodies. The adults chatted in the adjacent room with segues into German when the topic or the joke, or a favoured quote from my late grandfather, required.

It is difficult for me to think of Lotte now, and to see her through my adult eyes, to pull her out of my childhood. There was about her a sense of realism, unclouded either by either pessimism or optimism, an inner toughness and determination captured well by the photograph. This is a trait I strongly associate with the refugee generation amongst which I grew up. A trait born of circumstances, the product of dislocation and survival. Her experiences gave her a particularly acute sense of the importance of bonds of family and of friendship and an understanding of the anchoring value of love, even as a child I understood this.

These are poor reflections and the real woman, warm, funny, direct, fades away. I loved her. I miss her now.