Howard Jacobson - The Act of Love

We sat silently through Exiles , not exchanging glances, though if Marisa knew anything of me yet there was much in the comedy of the husband’s lewd catechisms (‘On your mouth?’ ‘Long kisses?’ ‘And then?’) to exchange glances with me about. But the closing lines of the play took us back to where we had left off. ‘I have wounded my soul for you,’ the would-be cuckold husband says, ‘a deep wound of doubt which can never be healed. I can never know, never in this world. I do not wish to know or to believe. I do not care. It is not in the darkness of belief that I desire you. But in restless living wounding doubt.’

We did not say a word to each other, but our eyes met in a nakedness of knowledge that was rare between us. A restless living wounding doubt . .

Marisa did not ask me whether that was the condition of wounding doubt in which I had no choice but to long to live. And I did not ask her— how could I? — whether, like the wife in Joyce ’s play, she would create or permit the circumstances in which my living with that wound would be allowable. Not that she would have told me, anyway. She was a hider, as I have said. Not dishonest, just wedded by the circumstances of her nature to concealment. But I thought I detected something akin to a resolution in her eyes — a resolution which, now I think back to it, was sombre to the point of tragedy — that I was who I was and she would not seek to change me, but that I would be bound to the logic of my desires. If desiring her in the darkness of belief, as men usually desire women, was not my way, if I chose the rather to live restlessly in wounding doubt, then I would have to live in doubt of whether she was wounding me or not.

Thus did the early years of our marriage pass in a sort of cliff-hanging harmony, with every conversation we almost had or refused to have pressing in on our precariousness, but without any resolution in event. For my part I did not solicit salacious circumstance, and for hers Marisa gave me no cause for jealousy: a freedom from anguish which, until I grew accustomed to it, was anguish enough. But there is a hunger to know whereof you don’t know, which no amount of tearing at the wound of doubt can ever satisfy.

And so, at last, I did solicit salacious circumstance. A better way of putting it might be this: seeing it coming, I met it halfway.

A relative of mine, a Quinn but too far removed a Quinn for me to work out how exactly we were related, wrote to me requesting a period of work experience in the firm. Though I was unimpressed both by his handwriting and his manner of expression, I had no choice but to agree. In matters of business a Quinn does not refuse a Quinn. A queer loyalty, given what brutes the men of my family have all been to their wives, but then the wives weren’t born Quinns.

Quirin was his name. Quirin Quinn. QQs were not unknown in our family, I suspect as much for the elegant gold monographs they made on leather suitcases and trunks as for any other reason. I had heard mention of at least three different Quentins among us, a Quinton, a Quintus, an earlier Quirin, and, though it is hard to credit, a Quilp. This Quirin turned out to be from the tall branch of the family. There are no half measures if you’re a Quinn — you’re tall or you’re short. And you scintillate or you don’t. Quirin flashed like a lighthouse. Which marked him as from the lazy as well as the tall branch of the family. He was as gold as his monograph, personable, handsome in a languid, milkmaidish sort of way, with soft skin and yellow curls, a penchant for bootlace ties and floral jackets, and an utterly untrustworthy air. He wasn’t a student, as I’d feared from his reference to ‘work experience ’, though after a stint in advertising and public relations, he was still unable to decide what to do with himself. Some cock and bull story about his being kicked out of a house he shared with an old girlfriend was the prelude to his asking if he could lodge with us for a day or two while he sorted things out. No, was my first response, then something made me say yes.

Ours was a big house, built in the 1770s by an architect called Johnson in the Adam style, but much interfered with since then, primarily by my grandfather, who returned from cruising to New York on the Queen Mary — I believe he was on the maiden voyage in 1936, by that time a more grossly sensual man than he ’d been in 1919 — with the conviction that a house should resemble a ship. Hence the loud, louche semicircular saloon staircase he installed, its extensively patina’d brass bannisters, the vast tinkling chandelier swaying above it, all of which no member of the family had since been able to find the money or the will to tear out. Though the house looked, on this account, far more spacious than it actually was, there were still bedrooms enough to sleep a handful of puppyish relatives with QQ on their luggage and not notice they were there. So how could I say no to Quirin?

I checked, of course, with Marisa first. She shrugged. She didn’t expect him to be in her way. She had a lot on that week: a hair appointment, dinner with a girlfriend, her once a month all-nighter for the Samaritans, a reception at the art gallery, another reception at her favourite shoe shop— that was how they sold Marisa her shoes: over a martini and canapés — and an all-day and all-evening course that was in some way related to her Samaritans work and for that reason not to be discussed. By the time she was able to look up, he would be gone, would he not?

What she didn’t say was that it would be nice to have some young company about the place when she was home. But then there was much Marisa didn’t say.

When it was that I decided Quirin would be light relief for Marisa, and heavy exercise for my imagination, I don’t recall. Perhaps the minute he moved his stuff in. There is something about the sight of a flaxen-haired stripling unbending himself from a taxi with a leather grip on his shoulder, looking for somewhere to lay his head, and trying a little too hard to please, that is bound to move a man like me. Move him on behalf of his wife, I mean.

He went his own way for a couple of evenings — he claimed he was talking to people about accommodation — then Marisa went hers for a couple of evenings more. He must have been in the house a week before we all sat down to eat something together. As a consequence of my grandfather’s desire to feel at sea when he was at home, we had to ascend the staircase for drinks, a jest which Quirin entered into by taking Marisa’s arm (Marisa in a belted, short-sleeved linen dress, the colour of squashed plums) before they began the climb.

‘The captain awaits,’ he laughed, and Marisa, though she could not have found that funny, laughed with him.

I felt as the hounds must feel before the kill. But as the fox must feel as well.

When we reached the top I remembered aloud I had a catalogue to proofread before morning. I drank a claret with them, made my apologies, and descended.

Leaving my study door open, I was just able to hear the ebb and flow of their conversation, not anything that was said, only the music of their intimacy. Any silence was of course interpreted by me as an embrace. You do not, when you are as I am, grace people with the usual build-up to impropriety. They talk. They stop. They kiss. Anything longer you do not have the patience for. Yes, waiting is of the essence. But you have already waited an eternity to get to this. Now the actors are assembled, it’s action.

As it happened, the silences were few and far between. Unless they were kissing while they were speaking, they were not kissing at all. Once or twice I stepped into the hall and listened hard. I thought I could hear Quirin quizzing Marisa about her work with the Samaritans and Marisa, as always, giving little away. Secrecy was in the nature of what she did and she did it well. If I wasn’t mistaken, Quirin asked if she knew how many people she had lost in her time manning the lines. I didn’t catch Marisa’s reply, but Quirin said, ‘Gosh.’