Howard Jacobson - The Making of Henry

‘Are you sure?’ she says, looking sideways at him, taking one hand off the wheel and resting it on his knee.

‘I am sure.’

His voice is grave, as befits the gravity of the day. Grave and brave.

Suddenly, he discovers an impulse in himself to laugh. What is he doing being grave and brave?! The effrontery of me, he thinks. Pretending to feelings there is every chance I do not have, because if I had them I would not be questioning their whereabouts. What a fraud!

He turns to look at Moira, squint-eyed at her wagon wheel, driving as always like some vengeful charioteer, fired with vendetta. ‘Do you know what?’ he says, not at all sure that he can prevent the laughter erupting from his chest. ‘Do you know what?. . I think I might be too all right.’

‘That’s normal,’ she says. ‘It’ll take time to sink in.’

‘No,’ he says. ‘I mean more than that. I think I might be relieved he’s dead.’

‘Well, that too is a normal feeling,’ she says, rubbing the palm of her hand into his knee, making absent-minded circles of condolence, ‘if he’s been suffering a long time.’

‘You’re not hearing me,’ he says, knowing he can’t stop it now, knowing that the laughter must have its way with him. ‘What I’m saying — ha! — is that I’m glad, for me . .’

But when the laughter comes it isn’t what he thinks it is. It is, after all, an outpouring of grief.

Which gives Moira the opportunity to swerve from the fast lane to the slow lane without acknowledging the middle lane, and bring him skidding on to the hard shoulder, where, on her shoulder, and for the second time in as many days, he sobs like an abandoned baby.

And then there are the obituaries for Henry to contend with. Full-blown obituaries too, big pictures of ‘Hovis’ at his most loaf-headed, some of the eulogiums three-quarters of a page in length. Call no man happy until he’s dead. Well, you can say that again, muses Henry at his little table on St John’s Wood High Street, immured in newsprint. Who will ever speak this warmly about a man until he’s cold? Osmond’s illness bravely borne, his beautiful devoted wife, the children in whom he took, etc., etc., and who took in him blah blah, the grandchildren in whom he took still more, his going where others had not dared, his unparalleled contribution to neo-realistic cinema in a country which, before he had the foresight, heigh-ho, an intellectual among entertainers, an entertainer among intellectuals. .

Yes, yes, Henry thinks, a giant among dwarves, a dwarf among giants, a man among girls, a girl among men — except that that’s him, Henry, about whom not a word will be written when his turn comes. So call no man happy until he’s dead, and not very men happy even after that.

‘This a good idea?’ Moira asks him. She is serving him this morning, as in the old days of their courtship, harassed in her maid-of-all-work flatties. Only she has a better understanding today — now that he has divulged all to her — of his unpleasant nature.

Though having coming clean in the car, Henry is in denial on the pavement. ‘Is what a good idea?’

She flicks his paper. ‘That.’

‘Why shouldn’t it be? He was my friend.’

She leaves him to it.

He has a reason for going through each obituary painstakingly. Spare his blushes, but Henry is looking for some mention of himself. ‘ As Belkin said in his last recorded interview, the unseen influence on his work was and always had been Henry Nagel, the childhood friend without whom. . ’ That sort of thing. Insane, he knows it. But madder hopes are realised. People win lotteries at however many millions to one. How many millions to one against Belkin expending his dying breath on Henry? Or against an obituary writer who has done his homework coming up with Henry’s name — school friend, rival, sometime critic, and so on. Fewer, surely. Easier to be remembered in an elegy to an old mate, at least, than to thread a camel through the eye of a needle.

Whether or not, there is no mention. As he was removed from Osmond’s life in life, so Henry is removed from Osmond’s life in death.

The which being the case, there is nothing to stop Henry sliding into a broiling ravine of resentment and left-outness.

Doesn’t being alive help the smallest bit? The daylight? The soft air? The blue of the sky? The warm populousness of the street? The sounds of voices, footfalls, music, traffic, honking? The fact that he has Viennese coffee and sachertorte on a china plate before him? Moira? Whereas ‘Hovis’ is deaf and blind now, without touch, without smell, without future, a disgrace?

No, nothing helps. What Henry wants is a mention. Or better than a mention, an obituary of his own. His photograph in the papers, his life told and retold in all its epic heroism, his dates commemorated as though history is not complete without them. Osmond Belkin — 1943–2003 . There it is. Irrefutable. The span of time arched like a bridge over obscurity. Sure, it’s time passed, time done with, but those years have passed for Henry too, and who would bet on his bending history to his will in the years that are left?

Even vanished, ‘Hovis’ has the beating of him.

Moira comes out again and sits with him. ‘Look how lovely the day is,’ she says.

‘Yes,’ he says.

‘We could go for a walk after lunch. Do the park.’

‘Yes,’ he says.

She means well. She is the voice of life to him. But what does life have going for it when the sirens are calling you from the other place?

‘Snap out,’ she says.

‘Yes,’ he says. He would like to. But he’s in deep trouble. He might not know much about much, as they used to say in the Pennines, but he does know that once you start envying the dead you are in deep trouble.

A letter arrives from Cleansing. They cannot tell him who donated the bench in his mother’s name. Data protection. If, however, he can show exceptional circumstances. .

‘We’re going round in circles,’ he says to Moira.

‘Write to them again,’ she tells him.

‘Saying what?’

‘Saying that if they will not make you acquainted with the donor, would they please make the donor acquainted with you. Normal business practice, Henry. You make your address available to the protected party. You can even send them a stamped addressed envelope.’

‘And what if the protected party’s dead?’

She is losing patience with him. Him and death. ‘If he’s dead then that’s the end of it.’

‘What makes you think it’s a he?’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Henry.’

Time was, a bit of horseplay might have followed that. But Henry’s gone ghostly on her again.

So she takes him to the salt-beef bar for dinner. When all else fails, salt beef does it for Henry. Red meat, yellow mustard, green sweet-and-sour cucumbers. Primary colours. Make sure everything’s bright and keep the appeal simple, she’s discovered that.

She has her salt beef lean. ‘In which case,’ Henry requests, ‘can I have your fat?’

See? Already he’s cheering up.

Henry doesn’t tell her that a dead friend can affect you like that. One minute you’re down, the next. . well, the next you’re not.

As it is, today he is half tempted to ask for ‘Hovis’ Belkin’s fat as well.

He is even teaching her a game they used to play in the salt-beef bars in Manchester when they were boys, he and ‘Hovis’. Spot the Wej. She’s Jewish. She’s Jewish. He’s Jewish. So’s he. That’s four points to me. Those two, however, aren’t, so that’s two points to you!

‘Not much of a game in this joint,’ she said. ‘Everyone’s Jewish who comes here. Except me.’