Howard Jacobson - The Making of Henry

Is he to allow Moira, a mere pastry chef who as like as not has never opened Nietzsche in her life, to demean the memory of his mother further? Does being with a woman who fishes for his member on a motorway matter that much to him that he would cut his mother’s heart out on her say-so?

Well, does it?

Well?

What Henry needs is a man to talk to. Is this what you do? Is this what we all do?

Then it occurs to him that Lachlan is only next door.

‘I’ve still not entirely got rid of the witch,’ he tells Henry, pouring port. He is in a pink candlewick dressing gown, presumably hers. Around his throat a Highland scarf, worn like a cravat. His legs, Henry notices, are badly veined. Like many men his age, he will soon be able to pass for an old woman. And in me, too, Henry wonders, is the old woman in me too beginning to show?

As for the persistence of the other old woman, Henry is in no position to have an opinion. ‘I’ve never been in here before so I wouldn’t know,’ he says.

Lachlan wafts the air. ‘Can’t tell if it’s death I can smell or her thirty years of illegal occupation.’

Henry doesn’t have the heart to tell him it’s the dressing gown.

He looks around the room. The apartment is the mirror image of his own. If Henry understood more about the architecture of mansion blocks he would realise that the two flats were once one, extending the full depth of the building. But other than in shape and proportion, they do not resemble each other. The old lady’s place is all heirlooms, heavy, dark, patina’d with the mustiness of a long invalidism. Pictures of flowers on the walls, a bad painting of an elderly gentleman looking stern (Lachlan’s father, Henry presumes, before Norma Jean got her playful hands on him), and a small amount of Robert Louis Stevenson memorabilia: ‘Requiem’ in a chipped brown frame –

Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

— and a photograph of the grave itself, the famous sepulchre built, as the author had requested, atop Mount Vaea, in a jungle of flame trees and banyans, and snapped so that you can see down to the blue waters of Samoa. On a bronze plate, the poem. Here he lies where he longed to be; / Home is the sailor, home from sea . .

Sad, bardic Henry sighs. He has a soft spot for the graves of writers. Words and death, there’s no beating the combination.

‘Signed by him,’ Lachlan says, noting Henry’s interest.

‘Signed by whom?’

‘The old boy himself.’

‘Your father?’

‘No, not my father, of course not my father — what would that be worth? — by RLS.’

Henry peers at the signature. Illegible. Then realises it’s nonsense. ‘How could he have signed a photograph of his own tomb?’

Lachlan makes a noise in his stomach. Umbrage. ‘That’s his signature,’ he says. ‘Know it anywhere. We’ve got letters from him. See that S, see that funny L, leaning backwards — his without question.’

‘Spirit writing, you’re saying?’

‘They buried him according to his wishes, who’s to say he didn’t design the tomb before he died. Brain haemorrhage, you know. Terrible thing.’

Very likely, Henry thinks. Designed the tomb, erected it on the top of a mountain, pointed the camera, wrote ‘wish you were here’ across the print, and haemorrhaged in his servant’s arms. Though he has never been to Samoa, Henry can see it all in his mind’s eye. Who needs to travel when you have a lively imagination.

He shifts his attention to the marks on the walls, handprints almost, trails, anyway, leading from one doorway to the next and stopping at light switches, where the old lady must have paused to get her breath and see her way.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Lachlan says. ‘Sad, the poor old girl, living on her own, having to save on heating and lighting. Don’t let that fool you. She slept with the heaters on in summer. See these?’ He shows Henry the blackened linings of the curtains. ‘Scalded from the heat. And she never turned off a light. There are light bulbs here that are welded into the sockets, they’ve been on so long. I’m still waiting for some of them to cool down. She didn’t need to worry, you see. It wasn’t her money she was burning.’

Henry would like to sit down, but he has spotted Angus curled like a cobra in love in his wicker basket. He eyes the dog. The dog eyes him back, lost in the melancholy of sexual desire. Only reduce yourself, the dog says, only meet me halfway, on the couch if not the floor, and I will give myself to you.

‘Maybe she didn’t realise what she was doing,’ Henry says.

‘Didn’t realise! I think you realise when you’re going through someone’s inheritance.’

‘I mean maybe she didn’t realise how you felt about it.’ Henry wants to say maybe she didn’t realise your desperation, but there are some liberties you can’t take in the matter of another person’s fortune, however indiscreet that other person is himself. The other thing Henry wants to say is what the fuck does any of this have to do with me.

‘Oh, she realised how I felt about it,’ Lachlan assures him. ‘She made me check the balance of her account every day and then ring her up and read it out to her, so she could hear how I felt about it. Think of that — every single day of the week. The only time she let me miss was a bank holiday. When I came up to visit she insisted we go to the bank together so she could see how I felt about it. She wanted me to count it dripping away, penny by penny. And she wanted to be there while I counted. There’s a word for that.’

‘Sadism,’ Henry ventures.

‘Sadism. Thank you.’ He secretes bile. Henry can smell it. Hear it. Like the central heating switching on. ‘Sadism. Yes.’

Henry shakes his head. It’s difficult for him, in Lachlan’s presence, remembering how to make his face show sympathy, so he just shakes it to be on the safe side.

‘Have I told you about her suite in the Imperial in Torquay?’ Lachlan asks.

‘Not that I remember,’ Henry says.

‘Ten years she had it. Concurrently with this place. How do you like that? Two homes while I had none. Best view in that building as well. She used to invite me up for tea, to show me the sea and make me eat what was owing to me in scones and cream. “Have more, Lachie,” she’d say. “Don’t deny yourself. Your father wouldn’t have wanted you to go without. I’ll ring up for more cream.” I was so down on my uppers I used to have to work there myself in high season.’

‘Nice place to work though, isn’t it, Torquay?’

‘Might be if you’re collecting deckchairs, but I’m talking about the hotel.’

Henry tries to imagine Lachlan working in a hotel. Guest relations? Baggage? The kitchens? ‘As what?’ As a waiter, Henry decides even as he asks. He must have been a waiter. One of those who never lets you catch his eye, unlike Angus who lives for nothing else.

‘As a gigolo.’

Henry’s mouth falls open. At least he hasn’t forgotten how to do surprise. ‘You were a gigolo?’

‘I was better looking in those days.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. It’s just that I’ve never met a man who has actually slept with women for money.’

‘Slept? Chance would be a fine thing.’

‘So what did you do if you didn’t sleep with them?’

‘Waltzed with them.’

Henry is disappointed. ‘But after the waltz,’ he says. ‘Presumably there were occasions. .’

Now it’s Lachlan’s turn to shake his head. ‘Never. Too old, most of them. It was hard enough work just getting them back into their chairs.’