Poor Bernard … a fellow of, alas, very finite jest. One of his jests was a stunt he performed with his car. He had received this vehicle, a fancy Wolseley, from his father on his 18^thbirthday. Papa Fisher appeared to be very rich.

    The car had a sturdy metal roof, but part of it could be slid back to let in air and sunlight.  Bernard would sit on this roof, his feet down on the steering wheel, apparently driving the car. Pedestrians would stop on the pavement, open-mouthed, to stare.  What they could not see was that there was a second youngster in the car. Lying across the front seats, manipulating the car’s foot controls with his hands. It was Eliot, Bernard’s cousin. Bernard, from the roof, called down instructions.  Eliot, unseen, carried them out.

    Had the police spotted them, both would have been in trouble. But they were never detected. Good luck was on their side …. at least at this stage.

    Bernard lived not very far from where I was living but his was a much posher suburb with larger houses and larger gardens. There were three cars in their garage: An American Cadillac for Papa Fisher, a Wolseley for Bernard and a little French car for Mother.  She could not or would not drive, so attached to the garage was an austere room plus shower/toilet for her African driver. He had a cushy job. He was only called out two or three times a week to drive her to do her shopping. Bernard told me the driver frequently smuggled in different girlfriends.

   Many a night Bernard would drive over to see me. He would park around the corner, tap at my window and suggest I join him for what was called a “minute-steak”.  I often made excuses: I still had – I said- to finish an essay for university. Frequently this was not true. I did not have the one-shilling-and-tickey (I/3d) that this small steak would have cost. In Johannesburg, the City of Gold, being white but poor was a disgrace and one did not admit to it. I am sure Bernard would have been willing to “stand” me, but I could never have accepted nor admitted my poverty.

     I was a child of refugees from Nazi Germany. Three charitable lawyers had donated half the funds for my university education. The Northern Rhodesian Education department had advanced us a loan for the other half. That’s how I managed to get a university education.

    Bernard married a girl from what was still. at that time, the Jewish East End of London. It was where Papa Fisher had himself come from, many years earlier. As we heard later, Papa had been engaged to a girl there but had gone to South Africa, promising to return when he had made some money.  But time and distance separated them, so Papa Fisher married a girl in South Africa. He married money. She was a Mauerberger and her brother was a millionaire. A real millionaire! Big man M. owned canning factories all over South Africa.

     When Bernard arrived in London, he looked up his father’s old contacts, and – surprise, surprise – he married one of their daughters, a schoolmistress. I thought she was a rather plain looking girl but, as I found later, a very good person. And intelligent too. She soon became a headmistress.

       Then, for a while, I did not see Bernard. I phoned to arrange a meeting.

   His wife answered. No, he was unwell. He did not want any visitors, but she would tell me if he changed his mind.

   Several phone calls later she clarified: He was losing the use of his limbs, one after the other. Motor neurone disease!

    Before long a phone call announced his death.

   It was I who threw a first shovel-full of soil onto his coffin. It thudded like a kettle drum.

    Alas, poor Bernard!

   The memory forces itself upon me though I try to resist it. I would much prefer to remember Bernard as he was, sitting on the open roof of his car, feet on the steering wheel, waving to open mouthed onlookers and laughing … laughing!

 

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