Do we believe in coincidences? I was all set to write a Turbine Blog post for the lovely people at Windmill about a familial coincidence I uncovered whilst researching the true murder case which features in my novel, The Finest Type of English Womanhood, but now, to be frank, I’m confused. (By the way this subject has been politely negotiated between Harvey and myself, as I had an urgent desire to share with the world the dramatic highs and lows of my search for a suitable dress to wear to the Costa Book Awards; Harvey however remained polite, implacable but firm on the subject).

So, I was going to spin out my tale, with its surprising and shocking ending, but I find that I’m sitting here suddenly unconvinced that it’s in anyway astonishing or odd or even unlikely, and the more I think about it, the less outlandish or accidental it becomes. I’ve now (almost) decided that it isn’t a coincidence at all but utterly understandable, in fact, if it isn’t too dramatic to say so, inevitable. Not only because of banal common-place factors such as time, incident and place, but also, I’m realizing, because of my grandfather’s extraordinary Zelig-like character. But I’m racing ahead.

Firstly the ‘coincidence’ under question.

When I was researching the history of the Union Castle steamer line - the ships which travelled between Britain and South Africa - I came across the story of Gay Gibson, a young actress murdered aboard the Durban Castle in 1947. The deck steward James Camb was accused of her murder.  Now, the reason I was doing the original research, the fact that I wanted to write about two girls journeying to Johannesburg in that immediate post-war, pre-apartheid era was not coincidental. My grandparents, and my mother, had emigrated there in 1946. As a child, I had been both entranced and disturbed by my grandparents’ photograph albums; my beautiful grandmother in a large hat and scoop-neck dress, my grandfather in a dapper silk suit at a party, holding a glass of champagne, but then, turning the page, a photograph of my mother sitting in the strange garden of her new house in Johannesburg, one hand up to shade her bewildered face, dark circles under eyes, blinking in the sunshine. You could feel the shock of the sun on her pasty, war-rationed skin.

Gay Gibson - just the idea of her - tied in beautifully with what I was interested to write about too; young women trying to figure out who or how you ought to be and what goes wrong when you don’t know.

I went to the British Newspaper library and read on microfilm the newspaper coverage of the trial. I read Denis Herbstein’s “The Porthole Murder Mystery’ and the published transcript of the murder trial of James Camb.

Here was the coincidence. My grandfather was mentioned in the trial transcript. Weird, huh? I was shocked at the time, his very name there in print, being discussed as a ‘known associate’ of Gay Gibson. One witness said they’d seen them having lunch, and that he had written her a reference for a theatrical agent in London, which she took on to the Durban Castle in her handbag.

Coincidence, right?

Or is it. My grandfather  had been born in London’s east end to Hugarian-Jewish immigrant parents. From this modest start he had made himself up, literally, to the degree that nobody quite seems to know the truth. He said he was picked off the streets by philanthropists and educated, that he ran a socialist underground press, that he joined the army and learnt how to box. All of these could well be true, and probably are.  One thing that is true is that all families have and like to weave their stories and myths about themselves - mine possibly more so than others - and one abiding story in my family is that you could walk into any room or, more accurately, any bar in the world with my grandfather, anywhere, anytime, and someone there would look up, smile and say, ‘Hello Mike! Why are you here?’

The second most relevant thing I can think to tell you about my grandfather is that all around his dining-room hung photographs of him posing with Hollywood stars - John Wayne, Bob Hope, Henry Fonda, Mike Silver and Debbie Reynolds, laughing and clutching one another smiling into the camera. See, Zelig. I said to him once, ‘But why are you with them?’ and he shrugged, smiled and winked at me.

By this I don’t mean to suggest he was a charlatan, he wasn’t - he was, to name a few attributes, brilliantly clever, hard-working, politically energetic, insightful, complex, charming and a surprisingly graceful dancer, friend to thousands but, I suspect, known to very few.

So, when I think that my grandfather, who had just arrived from his army post in Israel to run a commercial radio station in Johannesburg, knew Gay Gibson, I just can’t be surprised by this fact.

And because The Finest Type of English Womanhood is also a story of outsiders wanting to belong, but making it up as they go along and trying - in this case, disastrously - to find their place in the world,  it doesn’t seem unlikely or coincidental that my grandfather might have an off the page walk-on part in this tale, indeed it is characteristic that he should.

Puzzling over writing this blog, I looked up ‘Coincidence’ on Wiki and was struck by this quote from Plutarch, ‘It is no great wonder if in long process of time, while fortune takes her course hither and thither, numerous coincidences should spontaneously occur’ . If Plutarch had known my grandfather and, you know, there is this tiny, crazy part of me that wouldn’t be entirely boggle-eyed about that either,  he might have added, ‘Especially if Mike Silver were involved.’

So, do we believe in coincidences or not?

P.S. I wore a black dress, with kick ass shoes.

The Finest Type of English Womanhood by Rachel Heath is out now. Buy it from Amazon, Play, Waterstones.com, or from your local bookshop.