Howard Jacobson - Who's Sorry Now?

‘On her own in the taxi?’ Kreitman enquired.

‘On her own, Mr Kreitman. Not counting the driver. I followed her all the way.’

So that ruled out an excursion with Kitty, followed by an excursion with Timmy. But then you could say it also ruled out an excursion with anyone else, were anyone else staying over at her place.

Kreitman listened to the beating of his heart but held himself in suspense. This was the wrong way, but there was no right way. He knew himself. He knew what transfixed him. The next week Maurice reported Mrs Merriweather taking a phone call in the car and being upset by it. And the day after that Chas rang, uncharacteristically for her, to cry off an evening which they’d earmarked as romantic.

‘You’re tough to be with at present,’ she’d said. ‘I’m giving myself a little holiday from you. Be kind to yourself’

‘Tomorrow, then?’ Kreitman had hoped.

‘All being well. Maybe.’

A little holiday. At least she hadn’t called it a sabbatical.

But that settled if for Kreitman. He put himself in her position. Where would he go to pursue an amour with a dough-faced cocksucker, a man more rattishly and motivationally , blah-blah, safe from the scrutiny of his children, his friends, his lover, and whoever else he did not wish to shame himself in front of? The Eye, 135 perpendicular metres beyond the reach of discovery. The Eye from which you could see trouble coming, twenty-five miles in all directions. The Eye, that great 2,100-tonne bicycle in the London sky.

Armed only with binoculars, Kreitman climbed on to the roof of the hotel and, at a cost of £290 a night, excluding breakfast, waited for the giant wheel to run over him.

‘What do you call those holdall letters that people copy to all their friends?’ Hazel asked Charlie.

‘Drivel,’ Charlie said.

She had brought him tea in his study. He had been sitting at his desk, writing nothing, listening to the leaves drip, watching the garden rot.

‘I didn’t ask you for a judgement,’ she said — if I’d wanted a judgement, she thought, I could have stuck with you-know-who — ‘I asked you what they’re called.’

He shrugged. He had barely looked at her when she brought his tea. Once upon a time he’d have dropped to his knees and buried his nose in her belly and she’d have laughed and warned him not to make her spill the scalding liquid. ‘Charlie, mind!’ That was once upon a time.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘A round-robin letter, maybe.’

‘And isn’t that something you send when you want to bring everybody up to date with your fascinating life?’

‘I’d have thought so,’ Charlie said, looking at the rain. ‘Why?’

‘I’ve just got one in my e-mail — and don’t ask me how he came by my address — from that Nyman person.’

‘Who’s that Nyman person? ’

‘The cyclist who upset my husband.’ She didn’t add, the one whose sexual games precipitated me into your arms.

‘Oh, him.’ Charlie seemed in no hurry to remember. ‘And?’

‘And it’s uninteresting beyond belief.’

Charlie put his tea down and looked at her at last. ‘Wasn’t that the point of him? Inverse sophistication. Wasn’t he trying purposely — in a way that drove your husband to distraction — to be as uninteresting as possible?’

‘Everything drove my husband to distraction. Pity he isn’t here to read this.’

And she left the printout on Charlie’s empty desk.

With the more than averagely inversely sophisticated bits taken out, Nyman’s e-mail read:

Dearest Friends,

My twenty-sixth birthday! Another year in which nothing has been happening! How quickly the sands runs through the hourglass of our lifes! My milestones will be few compared to yours, but I tell them because they are my story.

For sixteen weeks I work behind a counter in shop in Berwick Street, selling porno things. Must I say it was the most educating time of my life? We made competitions, behind the customer’s back, guessing what he was come in to buy. Or she. Oh, yes, don’t be shocked — many shes too come in the porno shop! But whether a he or a she, we never guessed right. She wants whip, he wants frilly pantys. Never judge a book by its contents — that’s my motto now!

As they say, one thing leads to another, and by a contact I made in this shop I am suddenly out of there and working as courier for an advertising firm. It was a lucky strike to get there. They needed a runner, but I replied only if I could use my trusty bicycle. My fingers nearly wrote ‘rusty’ bicycle! You may have heard I had a ‘spillage’ on my bike, with a captain of industry. Insignificant person, significant person — bang! How do you like that! Now I am close to the family and to friends of the family. Never look where you’re going — that’s my motto now!

On the future front, a fairground palm-reader has been reading my hand and prognosticating I will be famous and in love. When? Soon. But can’t be certain because the lines on my hand are faint. For another five pounds she will read my personality and tell the future from that. I tell her impossible because I have no personality. Goodbye, fame! Or maybe not. But hello, love, I think.

‘Nowhere Man’ is a well-known song by the Beatles. On the occasion of his birthday, this Nowhere Man wishes you health and wealth.

Your friend,

Nyman

‘Close to the family!’ Hazel thought. ‘The cheek!’ Unless he was close these days to Kreitman. Which could easily mean, for she knew her husband, close to Chas.

Poor Chas! Hazel hadn’t been surprised when her husband exacted his revenge, as she saw it, and squared their little circle, however an unlikely partner for him Chas was. There was no ‘likely’ where Kreitman was concerned. No likely and no unlikely. The idiot boy Nyman had got under his skin by finding a virtue in being no one, an almost personal affront to a man for whom being someone, for whom being distinct and aloof and outstanding, was a sort of mania. But in the end Kreitman was as much a no one as anyone. There wasn’t a woman he wouldn’t cry over, not a woman that couldn’t disarrange him, therefore — this had to follow, didn’t it? — there was no ‘him’ at home. Between the two — between Kreitman and Nyman — there was nothing to choose. If anything, when it came to self-possession, Nyman just edged it.

Mulling it over, she wished Kreitman were here to say it to — ‘He just edges you, Marvin — when it comes to self-possession, he just edges you.’

Hard to believe she had cried over them both. It went to show how low a woman could be brought. Well, she wouldn’t be doing that again. It was only Chas she was sorry for now. Not only on account of the wrong she had done her — though Charlie was a grown man when all was said and done, and desperate, at his wits’ end with being married, a fish that was out of the water gulping air long before she cast her hook — but also because she knew how horrible it would be for Chas — if not today, tomorrow; if not tomorrow, the next day — lying by Kreitman’s side. There was a subtle sisterhood of decency in these matters: you might steal another woman’s husband but that didn’t mean you wished Marvin Kreitman on her.

Hazel listened to the old anger welling up inside her and knew what was amiss. She was coming apart again. She was being expelled from the mother ship. Any hour now, any minute, she would be left spinning in the silent immensity, on her own.

I can’t bear it, she said.

I can’t bear it because I have been there before.

Better never to have been rescued? Better never to have redo eked? No.

She urged herself to avoid bitterness and be thankful. Look at it like this, she said — you have had an unlooked-for holiday, a lovely time you never expected to have. Things have been said to you which you won’t forget, which you mustn’t allow yourself to forget. Hoard your memories. Store up treasures.