Howard Jacobson - No More Mr. Nice Guy

Such questions are driven by serious professional considerations. Already, and there are another three weeks of August still to be negotiated, he has come within a single advertisement break of missing an early-evening programme it was imperative he watched. Bourton-on-the-Water — no room at the inn. Lower Slaughter — no room at the inn. Stow-on-the-Wold, Moreton-in-Marsh, Bourton-on-the-Hill — forget it. ‘I’ll pay you,’ he offered at last, ‘just to let me sit on the edge of someone’s bed and watch their telly for half an hour.’ No go. He went so far as to count out money from his wallet, notes, the stuff itself, rubbing them together to release their irresistible odour the way you do when you’re asking a bellhop to turn a blind eye in downtown Panama City. Money talks, sister. Not in Stourton-in-the-Mire it doesn’t. ‘What about the telly in the lounge?’ Fine, so long as the programme he wants to watch is an Australian soap. They’re in there as well, lying about in their shorts, watching Australians in their shorts. Is this where they get the idea from? Do they think they’re in fucking Melbourne? In the end it was a lay-by on the A429 that saved him. Roof up on the Saab, Hitachi running on its batteries and his laptop plugged into the cigarette lighter. Not good reception, but at least a moving picture. And a fond old sensation of misbehaving in a motor.

So who is it to be next?

He tells himself he’s taking time around the peripheries of the Cotswolds because they suit his temper. The yellow of the stone — the yellow of his dying sun. The misty distances of the slumbering hills — the story of his fitfully rumbling life. Their calm reserve — his extinguished fervor. But in truth he is slowly, inexorably, nudging towards Cheltenham.

Where there are ashes to stir. Who knows, maybe even coals to poke.

His heart is leaping in his chest. The bones of his cheeks ache like ice. His eyes sting. He can’t speak. He can barely breathe. He opens his arms. Arms are opened to him. In he goes. All the way in, all the way back. Everything blackens and fades — his trespass, his sorrow, the years.

Kurt!

Frank!

He holds on. Is held.

Is she there?

The question that spoils it every time. Is she there?

Liz!

Frank!

He can’t keep it just between the two of them. Never could. Neither of them could.

Try again.

Kurt!

Frank!

Hold still. Hold very still. The time before her. Boys. Boys on backs. Boys on backs in summer parks looking up at sky. Aeroplanes, one a day, maybe fewer, pure white in the clear heartbreak blue, like the future. Where will you be? Where will I be? Boys boating. Boys rowing, knee to knee, on creaking seats. Fingers skimming the water, gloves of seaweed, mermaid’s oily tresses. Who’s down there? Boys on lakes, boys in gardens, grounds of stately homes, ruined monasteries, abbeys, priories, castles, smelling time. What will you do? What will I do? Boys waiting.

Is it only about girls? Even when it’s about chemistry sets and telescopes and chest-expanders and boxing-gloves and bikes and skates and buses to sites of ruination is the waiting only ever really about girls, birds, keife, nekaiveh, polones, call them what you like?

‘I’ve been waiting to be in love all my life,’ Kurt admits, on a train they have taken to Harrogate, to find love in the rose gardens.

They are fourteen and haven’t found it yet.

Frank can’t call it love. What he’s been waiting for all his life is an affair. ‘It’s a shtup I’ve been after, Kurt.’

‘But that’s what love is, you berk,’ Kurt corrects him. ‘Love is a shtup.’

‘Who’s the berk? I’m talking about shtupping outside love. Cruelty and possession; the sacred terror — all that stuff. I’m talking a walk on the wild side, Kurt.’

‘A walk on the wild side? Do me a favour. Where’d you get this shit?’

‘Morecambe.’

‘Morecambe! When were you in Morecambe?’

‘When I was six. I was there on holidays with the deelos. We were stuck in a boarding house. It parneyed the whole time. There was nothing else to do, so we just sat around in the breakfast room all day, doing jigsaws. Four o’clock in the afternoon we were still scoffing corn flakes and sorting straight bits. There was this geezer staying there at the same time. A Spaniard or a Turk or something. He had a sort of semi-shvartzer keife with him. Thick lips, huge Hottentot aristotle, but totally shtumm. They’d come down for breakfast, then they’d go back to their room. Then they’d come down for more breakfast, then they’d go back to their room. All day, up and down. But whenever you saw them he’d have his hand on her Gregory Peck. Not on her shoulder but actually round her neck, pinching it between his thumb and his fingers. The only time he took his hand away was when he needed it to butter more toast, and then you could see the marks on her.’

‘And she didn’t object to this?’

‘Of course she didn’t object to it. That’s how they do it over there.’

‘In Morecambe?’

‘In Africa, shmuck.’

‘So what are you telling me? That you’re looking for some dumb shvartzer with a huge aris who’ll let you pinch her black and blue?’

‘I’m telling you that every time they came down into that breakfast room I felt my kishkes go klop…’

‘Listen, boychick — stop moodying me. You were probably just hungry.’

‘Hungry? I was eating six breakfasts a day. Lonely was what I was. Lonely and longing. I saw what the Turk had — I saw the look of devotion in the keife’s mince pies — and I longed to be looked at like that.’

‘And that’s what you call the sacred terror?’

‘Yep.’

‘You’re a sadist, Frank.’

Better to be a sadist, Frank thinks, than a shmuck. But he doesn’t acknowledge this to Kurt. To Kurt he denies the charge. ‘I was six. How can you be a sadist when you’re six? I just knew I wouldn’t be happy until I had a keife of my own to hold by the neck.’

‘Only you couldn’t find one.’

‘’Course I couldn’t find one. I was fucking six, Kurt. If I’d found one I wouldn’t have been able to reach the neck.’

‘Because you wanted a big girl.’

‘Like you don’t, all of the sudden?’

In sight of Harrogate station, Kurt caves in. Sure, that’s what he wants. That’s what they’ve come to Harrogate for — to find a couple of big girls. Zwei shtarker keife. Big in the sense of grown-up. Grown-up in the sense of knowing that you go to a rose garden when you are looking for love.

And the miracle is — they find them!

It’s Kurt who does the pulling. This has never been discussed between them but the assumption is that as Kurt has the looks of the hour — a sallow Elvis complexion, easily-hurt Elvis eyes, something Red Indian somewhere in the genes — he should be the one to bait the hook. Once the catch is landed, Frank gets his chance. Jokes, risks, nobbels, fannies, moodies, lunges — whatever it takes. Since they haven’t done this many times before, they don’t know what it takes.

One of the girls is exceedingly tall, one isn’t — that’s the first thing Frank notices. The second thing he notices is that Kurt has angled for himself the one that isn’t.

‘Thanks,’ Frank whispers. ‘So I still don’t get to reach the neck.’

‘Forget the neck,’ Kurt whispers back. ‘Just concentrate on the tits.’

But it’s a moot point, as even Kurt concedes, whether Frank will be able to reach the tits either.

They sit on the grass and lie about their age. Kurt says he is in the army. Frank is reading psychology at Basle University. Soon he will explain their dreams to them. The girls are nurses. Soon they will make Kurt and Frank better.