Chapter 58
Ludo
A week after he died, we laid Uncle Ben to rest. His funeral was a fittingly theatrical affair.
Rachel Hoffman led the cast of Yentl in “Papa, Can You Hear Me?”—their soft, sweet voices filling the Central Synagogue London and leaving not a dry eye in the room.
Wilhelmina Post told a few of the more legendary stories about Uncle Ben, which had everyone rolling in the aisles—like the time he accused Doris Day of peeing in his kettle (she hadn’t; she’d cleaned it with vinegar) and the time he was evicted from the House of Commons Strangers’ Bar after standing on a table and reciting his favourite party piece, Peter Sellers’s “Setting Fire to the Policeman.”
“The parliamentary police officer on duty had been happy to play along, right up until Benny started flicking lit matches at him,” Wilhelmina said.
Father, the consummate storyteller, did the eulogy.
“We are blessed to have had Ben Diamond in our lives at all,” he said. “History appeared always to have an appointment with Ben. In 1940, Ben’s parents, David and Ester, fled across Europe on foot, with five-year-old Ben and his ten-year-old sister, Ruth.”
Not a noise could be heard as father recounted the story of the Diamond family travelling at night, hiding in barns, fleeing when those barns were set alight by Nazis, and being smuggled across borders and through guard posts by a network of resistance volunteers until, finally, they arrived safely in England.
“David took up a professorship at the London School of Economics,” Father said.
“And young Ben quickly discovered his passion for theatre. Starting with Punch and Judy shows in Covent Garden, before graduating to the West End shows of Shaftesbury Avenue and the theatre district, which would go on to become his life’s work. ”
As Father told of Ben Diamond’s early career in newspapers, including several years editing Stage before finally joining the Sentinel in 1976, it occurred to me just how long Uncle Ben had been in his life too.
“It was my late father, Sir Percival Boche, then editor of the Sentinel, who spotted Ben’s talent and poached him for the paper,” Father said.
“While sitting in a dentist’s waiting room, he’d read one of Ben’s reviews in an old copy of Stage and laughed so hard he nearly swallowed his dentures.
When my father got back to the office, he handed his secretary the review he’d torn out of the magazine and told her to arrange a meeting with the man who’d written it.
Two nights later, my father and Ben dined at the Savoy.
Ben had agreed to join the Sentinel before they’d even finished the soup course.
By dessert, he was an honorary member of our family. ”
Father spoke about Michael, about the AIDS years in London and the terrible toll of the eighties and nineties on the communities Uncle Ben loved—the queer and the theatrical.
“Ben Diamond was the very best of men,” my father said, and there was a crack in his voice, like he might be showing actual human emotion.
“He was the life of the party, the heart of any group of people, and the joy in any room. He was my lifelong friend. My confidant. The godfather to my son Ludovic. In some ways, he was a godfather to me, too, because he gave me the love my own father, brilliant as he was, could not. Ben Diamond was, quite simply, the best man I have ever known. And I miss him.”
Tears were streaming down my face, a balled tissue disintegrating in my hand under the weight of my grief. For the first time in my life, I was seeing my father as a person. Layered on top of everything else, it was more than I could bear.
“Let me leave you with the best piece of advice Ben ever gave me. He said, ‘If you feel something with all your heart, dear boy, go for it. God put it there so you couldn’t ignore it. So that with every heartbeat, you’d be reminded of it. To meet our destiny, we must follow our heart.’”
My father was in tears. I was a wreck. I thought of Sunny.
I thought of the hundreds of calls and text messages he had ignored.
I thought of his hard muscle and his soft skin.
I thought of the tenderness of his kisses and the way we laughed constantly whenever we were together.
I thought of the hurt I’d caused him. How he must be feeling now.
And I thought perhaps, just this once, Uncle Ben might have been wrong.
No good had come from Sunny and me ignoring all the warning signs and following our hearts. No good at all.
* * *
After the service, a smaller group of mourners got into a string of cars we’d booked to take us to the cemetery, which was right across London in East Ham.
I was meant to jump in one with Mother, Father, and Jonty, but I couldn’t face it.
I’d seen enough of their faces in the days since Uncle Ben had died.
Our conversation had run out. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Wilhelmina Post hailing a black cab. I trotted down the street towards her.
“Mind if I bum a lift with you, Willy?”
“My darling Ludo, I can’t think of anything I’d love more.”