Leif the Unknown 1896-1935
I didn't know that my father had had a brother called Leif until that family portrait turned up from somewhere when I was about ten. All that I know about him comes from my dad and he didn't have much to say, none of it cheerful.
I have a theory that the younger members of the family felt the impact of Olaf's deterioration more sharply than the older ones and that their problems stemmed partly from this. But then Rolf survived it well, though not unscathed, and Paul the eldest boy made out none too well; so maybe I'm wrong. (My mother's view of it was that the trouble with that family was that they weren't sufficiently well nourished, as she proceeded to pump every known vitamin into us.) Leif's story as far as I know it is as follows.
Born in Norway, he came with the family to South Africa at the age of about seven and so had most of his schooling there. At the age of fourteen he ran away from home. Presumably he had good reason to. They scoured Capetown and eventually he was found serving behind a bar, and taken back home. I suspect that even in 1910 he was under age for this kind of work.
If he was under age, how come he managed to get the job?
He must have lied about his height. Stop interrupting me.
I don't know what he did then. But come 1914 (I assume) and World War I he lost no time in enlisting in the army and was sent to Europe. He survived Passchendaele and returned.
This is where I get vaguer. Much of my impressions of what used to be called the Great War come from my Dad. I'm fairly sure that some at least of what he told me he got from Leif. I think he once told me that Leif came back from the war with some toes missing, these having rotted away in the mud of the trenches. But he might have been repeating that from general hearsay about what happened in that war. I also think that Rolf felt that his brother Leif was not 100% right in the head, "tickey short of a bob" as people said. Whether Dad attributed this to the war or to other causes I'm not sure.
I don't get that "ticky-short" business. What's it mean?
A bob was a shilling, the twentieth part of a pound in British and South African money until they went decimal. There were twelve pence to the shilling. A tickey was a South African word for a three-pence piece - known in Britain as a thrippenny or thruppenny bit or a "Joey". (I believe "tickey" still survives in SA in the phrase "tickey box" for pay-phone.) So "tickey short of a bob" means "not the full shilling", which I suspect is an Irish expression, meaning "not all there". God, you are ignorant! They should have stuck to the old currency; it was so much easier to understand.
How Leif occupied himself between the Great War and 1935, I have no idea. He never married and left no children. In 1935 he was found drowned in Table Bay. It was presumed to be suicide. (This could be checked.) Why did he do it? Or was he just pissed and fell out of a boat? Suicide would explain the reticence of the rest of the family. He doesn't seem to have had a great life. But who knows? He may have had a real ball during his 39 years. Let's hope so.
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This page was last revised in January 2005