posted on 24 Sep 2019

When I Grow Up by Bernice Rubens

Sometimes a memoir of this kind – it was the last book Rubens wrote before her death in 2004 at the age of 81 – can tell you more about the writer in the way it’s told rather than in the contents. That is certainly the case with this one – Rubens’ personality pops out in full three-dimensional form and she’s entertaining and indiscreet but don’t expect to get too much insider detail or insights into her talents as a writer or film-maker.

Rubens was a Booker-winning novelist, documentary film-maker, tv playwright and part-time would-be musician. Although I was aware of her reputation, this is the first thing of hers that I have read and it was rather like finding yourself in the company of a garrulous, pocket-battleship of a woman who has reached an age when there’s no point in holding back on your true views about life and relationships and is ready to unload.

She was a great friend of Beryl Bainbridge, who has provided the introduction to this book and I suspect that these sentences will give you an immediate sense of what I mean when I say Rubens was formidable:

“To be with Bernice was always exhilarating, if sometimes nerve-racking, for in social circles I was a coward and she was a warrior. If some poor soul embarked on an appraisal of South Africa, or mentioned that so-and-so was very nice even if his name was Finkelstein, she would waste no time in sorting them out.”

Bainbridge and Rubens had a friendship based on never talking literature and especially not their own books. They sustained a close relationship based on two things: the plot developments of soap operas and the fact that each had a failed marriage to a man they could never quite shake off. And it’s her marriage to the oddly unlikable Rudi that runs through the book like a holiday resort name runs through seaside rock. The result of the relationship was two daughters who we get to know only in outline but we do get to find out about Rudi’s womanising and alternative family in some detail. Rubens’ cold distain for the second woman who gave Rudi the boy-child he craved comes through like a cold, steel stiletto.

Rubens was also very close to her siblings throughout her and their lives and in many ways it is family that provided her with her truly stable emotional ties. Her father had come to Cardiff as a Jewish refugee from Lithuania, expecting to arrive in New York until he realised he’d been swindled by the ‘agents’ arranging his passage. Here he met Rubens mother, another Jewish immigrant, and settled to build a family life. Music filled the house and Bernice was probably the least talented with both brothers going on to have a career as professional musicians.

Bernice’s talents were more diverse but in her early years her real talent seemed to be an instinct for the iconoclastic. After an abortive but not unsuccessful attempt to forge an independent career as a teacher in Birmingham she moved to London and was fatefully introduced to her future husband by her friend and poet, Dannie Abse.

Rudi seems to have been a tempestuous, self-centred man who she soon realised was always potentially on the edge of eruptive anger. His parents clearly hated the relationship and there was very little warmth or understanding between Bernice and them. Despite all the treacherous adultery and self-aggrandising insensitivity of her husband, Rubens was always tied to him and even after their separation she found herself able to cut him out of her life.

Ultimately she is a writer, director and artist who was always on the move – emotionally, intellectually and physically. She moved house in an almost compulsive way as if her inner sense of being unsettled manifested itself in the outside world. Her easy reference point for when to move was a pretty arbitrary one – how dirty the cooker had become – and this tells you quite a lot about her I think.

As I said at the beginning of this short review, you will read this book to know the woman rather than the writer. You will have to decide whether that’s a focus that interests you or not – for me it’s a disappointment that the artist remained in the shadows.

 

Terry Potter

September 2019