Howard Jacobson - The Making of Henry

From henceforth, he told himself, I shall be a man.

But at next morning’s assembly when the headmaster announced a black day in the history of the school, citing behaviour that would have been unacceptable at a prison for the criminally insane let alone at a direct-grant grammar, it was Henry who was the first to blush.

‘You’re giving yourself away, Henry,’ Osmond whispered into his ear. ‘You’re lighting up like a lamp-post.’

Henry dug his knuckles into Osmond’s arm and twisted. But that only spurred his friend on. ‘He knows it’s you,’ he whispered. ‘He’s looking at you right this minute. You’re stuffed, you shmuck.’

In fact, they were all stuffed. Later that morning everyone doing fifth-form English lined up for an identity parade in the gym, their heads down, their hands hanging like empty nooses by their side, waiting for Miss Rawlins, producer of the play, to come across from the girls’ school and pick out the guilty. She wasted no time. ‘All of them,’ she said. ‘But this one,’ extending a finger, ‘most guilty of them all.’

The person at whom she pointed — and here was the surprising thing — being Osmond ‘Hovis’ Belkin.

Changing buses, Henry is surprised to discover the power this recollection still has to upset him. Osmond, of course, protested his innocence vociferously. ‘What did I do?’ he wanted Miss Rawlins to tell him. ‘What did I do that was different from what we all did?’

‘That’s enough, Belkin,’ Allswell warned him.

‘I don’t mind answering that,’ Miss Rawlins said. She was a ripplingly voluptuous woman in her forties, large-breasted, pulled in at the waist, her hips rounded, only the heaviness of her legs stopping the boys falling in love with her — though when she pointed her painted finger and said ‘But this one’, who cared about the legs?

Osmond Belkin, bred to be unafraid, looked at her evenly.

‘What this one is guilty of,’ she said, looking just as evenly back, no matter that she was addressing him in the third person, ‘is letting down his family. I know the Belkins. I know their standards. Of those who should have known better’ — and there is no mention of Henry here, no glance in his direction either — ‘Osmond Belkin should have known better than any.’

And what could Henry say to this? What about me? Shouldn’t I too have known better? And didn’t I, though knowing better, as I most assuredly did, not only wreck your play but fuck your entire school? Credit where credit’s due, Miss Rawlins. It’s me you should be pointing at. I’m the ravisher.

Henry gives the pound coin he’s been holding to the bus conductor, who has to juggle it in his hands, so hot is it. ‘Where have you had this, mister?’ the conductor asks.

‘In the fires of Hell,’ Henry says.

Credit where credit’s due, Miss Rawlins. This could be the only play I ever wreck. Have a heart.

‘Pisses me off,’ Henry had said to Brendan O’Connor after the line-up.

‘What she did to Belkin?’

‘I’ll say!’

‘You’re a good friend,’ Brendan told him. ‘When she said “Of those who should have known better” I was certain she was going to point to me. And then when she didn’t all I could feel was relief. And there you were not thinking about yourself at all, but worrying for Belkin. You’ve taught me a lesson in humility.’

They shook hands. It would have taken Henry too long to disillusion him. And anyway, he liked being bathed in Brendan O’Connor’s liquid stare. The pools of black that were his eyes, the extraordinary lashes. If he does become a priest, Henry thought, I’ll confess to him like a shot. Just not today.

Since she was going to find out about the fracas anyway, Allswell having warned the boys he was writing to their parents, Henry took his mother into his confidence.

‘Well, I won’t tell your father about it,’ she said, ‘but it’s possible you were nothing like as naughty as you thought you were.’

‘I wasn’t naughty, Ma, I was bad . I ruined the first night of that play. Half the girls left the stage in tears. Some of them will never act again.’

She made him tea directly from the strainer. Hot water over a cold wodge of tea leaves. Sometimes the same tea leaves sat in the strainer for a week. ‘I understand what you’re telling me,’ she said. ‘But I know what you’re like. You shouldn’t have done what you did, that goes without saying, but you shouldn’t take all the responsibility either. I know how susceptible to outside influence you are. You’ve always been easily led, Henry. That’s why I worry about you. The first girl that comes along —’

‘Ma, listen to me. Nobody led me, I led them. That’s what I find so unjust. I do the work, “Hovis” gets the credit.’

‘It’s hardly credit, Henry. It sounds more like blame to me.’

‘That’s my point. I’m the bad one and he gets the credit for the blame.’

She smiled at him. ‘“The credit for the blame” — that’s good, Henry.’

‘Ma, I get cheated out of everything. Is that because no one notices I’m there?’

‘It’s the best way to be, Henry.’

‘What if no one ever notices I’m there?’

‘Then you’ll live a happy life and die a happy man.’

In the end, he’d have been better off talking to his father. Though his father would have belted him for getting into trouble, then stormed off to the school to get justice for him. And who knows, might have ended up running off with Miss Rawlins. Would have eclipsed Henry, anyway, whatever he’d have done.

To make things worse, Osmond Belkin took him aside the next day and said, ‘Coward!’

‘Me, coward? Who wrecked the fucking play?’

‘You didn’t say that though, did you? You didn’t stand up for me, when the fat cow pointed her finger.’

‘You were enjoying it, that’s why.’

‘And why do you think that was?’

‘Because you’re a greedy turd who likes stealing the limelight.’

‘And you’re a coward.’

‘No I’m not. I’m your friend. That’s the difference between us. I didn’t want to steal your glory.’

‘I’d like to see you try.’

Henry threw his hands to heaven. ‘Which way do you want to play this, “Hovis”?’

‘All ways.’

And he did.

One week later, pressed and polished in their best shirts, Henry, ‘Hovis’ and all the other offending fifth-formers turned up to see Miss Rawlins, each carrying a bunch of bluebells. Henry’s idea. He had read that bluebells connoted sorrowful regret. ‘Hovis’ had wanted orchids. Too sensual, Henry had argued. We aren’t here to flirt. You might not be, ‘Hovis’ said. But if it was Henry who carried the day — mainly on account of bluebells being cheaper — it was ‘Hovis’ who delivered the sorrowing address. ‘What we would also appreciate,’ he said, rubbing his nose in patent duplicity, though no one but Henry seemed to see it, ‘is the opportunity to appear before the whole school so that we can apologise personally to all the girls we upset.’

What Henry had not read was that bluebells wilt soon after they are taken out of the ground. ‘Hovis’ made the best of this, bearing his drooping posy as though it were a clue to the condition not only of his wallet but also of his heart. A poor boy spending the last of his pocket money on his conscience. A waif of remorse.

It was ‘Hovis’ who delivered the apology to the girls’ school as well, a masterpiece of abjection in the manner of Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock, of whom all the boys could do passable imitations, though it was a toss-up whether ‘Hovis’ or Henry did him best. But today ‘Hovis’ had the stage. Henry remembers the ovation his friend received. And the invisible kiss, blown like a smoke ring, from Miss Rawlins.