‘I think I’ll go and fight,’ said Dovidl.

‘No, Edwin,’ gasped Mother clutching a napkin to her mouth. I wondered if Father had heard her correctly.

A Jewish state had been declared in Israel that week and seven Arab nations had massed armies to destroy it. Marks & Spencer had turned their head office on Baker Street into a weapons procurement centre and British Jews in their hundreds were answering the call to arms. For many it was a fulfilment of messianic longings, an end to twenty centuries of exile. Others sought to exorcise the agony of genocide with the foundation of a Jewish fortress. Never again, was their watchword.

‘I’ll go, too,’ I chipped in.

‘Not yet,’ said Father abruptly, ‘not if the pair of you want to be of any use. At the moment, you would just be cannon-fodder. Go to university, get some qualifications and then, if you want to build a new Jerusalem, you should be able to do so with skills which will be sorely needed when the independence war is over.’

‘But they need men now,’ said Dovidl. ‘All the papers say the Jews are going to be overrun.’

‘Not the Daily Telegraph or the News Chronicle,’ corrected Father, ‘and they have the best correspondents on the spot. Listen to me, David,’ he urged. ‘You were not born with talent in your head and your hands to spill your blood on desert sands. It’s not what your father wanted, and I am bound by my promise to him.’

‘No one asked if my sisters had talent before the Nazis killed them,’ said Dovidl.

That ended the party. Dovidl rose from the table, I knocked over a teacup and saw Florrie weeping as she mopped up beneath Mother’s grim gaze. I never knew whether Dovidl was serious about going off to fight. The plan was not mentioned again. The Middle East war joined the Holocaust, his musical future and all the nocturnal creakings upstairs in a locked family cabinet of unmentionables – until the family fell apart under the strain of suppression.

Florrie was first to go. Her country bloom was fading, along with her zest. A figure that had been sweetly rounded began to sag and thicken as thirty loomed and the search for love yielded diminishing returns. One Sunday at tea-time, Florrie brought into the drawing room a chirpy little fellow whom I recognised as one of her former RAF gear-boxers. She and Derek were getting married, she declared. They were going to sail to Australia on the assisted migration scheme, ten pounds a head. Mother, gazing meaningfully at Florrie’s midriff, offered congratulations, waived the month’s notice and sent the couple off with a handsome cheque. Florrie packed and left the next day. She hugged me tight by the front door, gave Dovidl a kiss on the lips and shed great rolling tears as Derek’s clanking van pulled chokingly out of our driveway. It was, by the still-valid cliché, the last we would ever see of her.