Howard Jacobson - Who's Sorry Now?

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‘ “ But I know that my dearest little pets are very pretty, and that my darling is very beautiful, and that my husband is very handsome, and that my guardian has the brightest and most benevolent face that ever was seen …”’

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‘ “ L — d! said my mother, what is all this story about? –

‘ “ A Cock and a Bull, said Yorick — And one of the best of its kind, I ever heard .”’

‘Not quite to my taste, that one,’ Hazel said.

‘Too ludic, for you?’ Charlie asked.

‘Too what?’

‘Ludic. One of your husband’s words. Playful without being funny. This was where he laid the blame for all the facetiousness of twentieth-century literature.’

‘Then read it to me again slowly, my love,’ Hazel, falling back on her pillows, implored sweetly.

The rains fell and Hazel grew anxious. She could count the changes. Charlie no longer marvelled over her soaps and towels. He no longer trembled when she took him in her arms. He no longer asked her to ‘do that thing’ with her eyes, that ‘sly peeping thing’, ascertaining that he hadn’t crept away and left her fatherless again. He was still attentive to her, still loved getting her to put on heels and little else, and he was still generous with his weight, climbing on top of her on the sofa or the floor, letting her feel the full length of him, the moment she requested it. But attentiveness and responsiveness were small potatoes compared to that feast of demandingness and initiation, of watching and waiting, of desperation and gratitude, which in their early days he was up and about preparing, before she had even opened her sly peeping eyes. Funny: there was a time — long, long ago it seemed — when she saw Charlie as the very antithesis to her husband — a man to be avoided at all costs because it would be impossible to be rid of him. A puppy-dog man — shoo! Charlie, shoo! — whose rump sank lower and lower in puppy-dog gratitude the more you kicked it. Now, suddenly, she caught herself wondering what she would have to do to stop him from leaving. She had no instinct for any of this. There was demeaning oneself and there was demeaning oneself. To a fault she had been a pleaser, brought up to go along with whatever a man wanted, but trying to work out what a man wanted, giving your every waking hour to anticipating his desires, to pre-empting or quickening his appetite, to creating novelties for him every time he walked into the house, no, no, that was too low even for her. She remembered her girlfriends at university publicising their stratagems for keeping men simultaneously satisfied and hungry — never wearing pants, dyeing your pubic hair, always being certain to be caught sitting on the edge of the bed playing with yourself when he arrived back from work or from being with his wife. But as Hazel was keeping company with Kreitman for most of her university career, she was never reduced to the vulgarities of second-guessing: Kreitman commanded her not to wear pants. All that had changed since, of course. Now if her daughters second-guessed a man it was in order not to give him what he wanted. Allowing that Charlie was of an older time, Hazel wondered if she shouldn’t be lending an ear to some of the older teaching. It was hard to imagine what, of the basics, they were missing. The pants thing she already did, even though what she wore was so scant Charlie generally preferred her with them on. He had her nipples jutting night and day. He had her teetering on stilts. He had her painting her nails purple. As for playing with herself on the edge of the bed while waiting for Charlie to get back, that was not going to work for the reason that Charlie never went out.

She supposed she could always try incorporating it into their readings. ‘ “… for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs …”’ Oh, Charlie, Charlie, oh, oh, Charlie, ohhh …

And throw in the odd ‘sweet Jesus!’ Wasn’t that what women at their most irreligious, were meant to cry? Oh, sweet Jesus!

Can’t see it, Hazel thought. Can’t see Charlie appreciating my vying with him for climaxes, however low on tides we’re running.

Bizarre, but the person she might most have benefited from a word with was her husband. What would keep you here, Kreitman, if you were him? But where that was bound to lead she definitely could see. First, whisper in my ear, Hazel, everything you have been doing for him so far. Be conscientious. Don’t leave out any detail, no matter how apparently significant. I’ll decide what’s important and what isn’t. My ear is open. Start.

So prolix, her husband, even in his curiosity. Such a dirty-minded prolix bastard. The dirty-mindedness she could almost forgive. But the prolixity!

As for her daughters, who would no doubt have advice of their own to offer — along the lines of ‘Don’t wait for him to go, you be sure to give him the shove first, Mummy’ — they were back, but keeping their distance. They had brought Charlie a beautiful tie-dyed kaftan back from Thailand. And matching slippers so that he should get the message it was for wearing around the house. It did no good. He tried it on once to great applause, decided it was too lovely to wear except on important occasions, and reverted to his blue candlewick dressing gown, bare feet and general air of obscene imminence.

‘What if I asked Uncle Charlie to lend me his dressing gown for one of my sculptures?’ Cressida proposed to her mother.

‘Don’t you dare,’ Hazel warned her.

‘Even if I could promise him it would eventually hang in the Tate?’

‘Leave Charlie alone,’ Hazel said. ‘He makes an old lady very happy.’

‘What about you, Mummy?’

At which Hazel laughed, until her laughter turned to tears.

Shocked to see her cry, for Hazel had always been a dry-eyed woman, especially with her children, Cressida put her arms around her. ‘Is something wrong, Mummy?’ she asked softly, for all the world a mummy herself. Ironic about everything else, they were infinitely patient with grief, artists of Cressida’s generation. In their line of work they had to handle lots of upset.

Hazel let herself go limp in her daughter’s arms. It was the nearest she had got in years, she thought, to knowing who Cressida was. So she was capable of doing this! Wasn’t that extraordinary! She had a daughter who could give comfort. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Juliet too was capable of taking her in her arms and making her feel well.

All at once her spirits roused. She was the mother of a line. A matriarch. In her veins the future throbbed. Of what earthly significance, compared to that great fact, was Charlie Merriweather’s cooling ardour?

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Someone must have walked across my grave.’

But in the night, sleepless, watching Charlie labouring at his dreams, she succumbed again to sorrow. Was his ardour really cooling?

And this time she walked across her own grave.

Not on the same night, for that would be altogether too neat, even for an entanglement made of neatness, but on nights not far apart in time, Charlie and Kreitman dreamed a similar dream. Charlie’s dream concerned Chas, though by implication it also concerned Hazel. Kreitman’s dream was the purer in that it concerned only him.

In Charlie’s dream, Chas came out of the pumping darkness, not looking or behaving much like herself, and straddled his chest. Her hair was long and in his face, but she did not smell of anything. She put her hand behind her back to find his penis which she tried in vain to force inside her. In vain because the position was altogether wrong. Oh, brave new Charlie’s penis, but it wasn’t so brave or so new that it could stretch that far, even in a dream and no matter who was pulling it. But also vain in that his penis was limp. Chas recognised her mistake and shifted her body so that it was better positioned to take his. Again she reached for his penis, but it remained resolutely limp. In her desperation to force him inside her, Chas began to perspire and then to cry softly. How am I going to tell her? Charlie thought. How am I going to break it to her? But when he awoke, in great distress, he wasn’t sure what news he had to break, or who the person was he had to break it to.