My father-in-law Peter Pallai left me with a cast-iron template for growing older with style

My father-in-law Peter Pallai died last month. My family is in mourning. Of course, there is a hierarchy of grief, and my primary focus is on supporting my wife, who has lost an incredible father, and my children, who have lost a brilliant grandad. I don’t want to make it all about me (honestly).

But as I observe all the protocols of grief, I can’t help thinking (just occasionally, you understand) ‘WHAT ABOUT ME?’ People never think about the son-in-law, do they? He was my mate, my mentor and my role model. And he has left a massive gap in my life.

I first met him 30 years ago, in a pub in Brighton. I suppose he was giving me the once-over to see if I would make a suitable boyfriend for his daughter. But he never made me feel as if I was being assessed. He was funny, engaging and curious. He was in his 50s back then, not much older than I am now. What stood out about him was the absence of self-importance, pomposity or arrogance. These are such prevalent qualities in middle-aged men.

Given the opportunity to leverage a favourable power dynamic (such as buying a drink for your daughter’s callow new squeeze), most men, in my experience, would seize the opportunity to condescend and self-aggrandise. Peter never bothered. He wanted everyone around him to feel good about themselves. And he didn’t ever feel the need to puff out his chest. He would have thought it corny and embarrassing. He was just quietly comfortable in his own skin.

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Peter Pallai was born in 1938 in Budapest, Hungary. When Nazis invaded, he was separated from his parents for two years and hidden – along with a gaggle of other Jewish children – in a fourth-floor flat in the city centre. The building they lived in was bombed by the Allies. Miraculously, he survived. After the war, he had to contend with the occupying Soviets. In 1956, aged 18, Peter took part in an attempted revolution against the Russians. He was captured by the Red Army and faced execution, but managed to escape and flee across the Austrian border.

Soon after, he landed in London as a refugee, where, despite not knowing a word of English on arrival, he managed to complete an economics degree at the London School of Economics within a few years. He then taught at a rough comprehensive in West London (one of his pupils was Labour grandee Alan Johnson, who credits him in his memoir as an inspirational figure), and went on to work for 30 years at the BBC World Service and raise a family.

He was a jazz fanatic who helped start the careers of numerous musicians in both the UK and Hungary. Peter Pallai moved back to his homeland in the mid-90s and continued his high-profile work as a journalist and jazz promoter. Along the way, he was married three times and had three kids. 

Despite the ups and downs of his life, he remained a constant and positive presence in the lives of all his children, as well as those of his four grandchildren. He was always warm, supportive, funny and loving, with a worldview informed by compassion and intelligence. He would discuss it but never force it on anyone. He was interested in hearing what everyone else had to say.

He was never, ever angry. Which, considering what he’d been through, was pretty remarkable. Peter was relentlessly self-deprecating. And despite all of the challenges he’d faced in his life, he never demonstrated a shred of resentment. 

I wrote him an email on his 80th birthday, telling him that he was the person I wanted to be as I grew older. A man without bitterness, without vanity, without conceit. A man who took all of the pain he had suffered and used it to inform the way he treated those around him: with respect, love and encouragement. He replied, informing me that I was full of shit. This is why I loved him. 

He leaves me with an impeccable collection of jazz records and a cast-iron template for growing older with style, dignity and love. I will never be quite the man he was. But if I can be just a tiny fraction of Peter Pallai, I’ll be happy.

Sam Delaney‘s book Stop Sh**ting Yourself: 15 Life Lessons That Might Help You Calm the F*ck Down is out now (Little, Brown, £22).

It is available from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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