Howard Jacobson - No More Mr. Nice Guy

Ha, ha, ha. Turned out nice again.

He bangs at the brass door knocker. A yacht. Poor Liz, to have thrown herself away on a Yuill. He puts his nose to the ridged and frosted pane of glass. A common front door to a common little cottage. What’s the point in having a holiday place by the sea if you can’t see the sea? Was it his fault? Did he ruin it for her with Kurt, and by confiding their subterfuge to Billy Yuill did he leave her only Billy Yuill to run to? Poor Liz. He can’t see or hear anything. He puts his eye to the letter box and is just able to make out four matching green wellingtons on a sanded floor. Nothing is easier to imagine than the life of a couple. One inanimate object, the spousal equivalent to a stool or a thimbleful of urine — that’s all you need to tell you everything there is to know. A single green wellington would have been plenty. But four! The odour of cohabitational hell wafts through the letter box. So is Billy Yuill at home or isn’t he? Frank doesn’t care now. He feels as if he’s been drinking. ‘Liz,’ he shouts through the letter box. ‘Liz, let me in!’

Apart from the sound of water running, the cottage remains silent.

He goes around to the side of the house where a lime-yellow gate gives access to a small yard. No garden in which to enjoy the Gulf-stream clemency of the climate. Poor, poor Liz. He hasn’t told himself what he’s actually about, but it appears that he means to rescue her. He climbs the lime-yellow gate. Not difficult. It’s no more than four feet high and has cross-beams that help him with his footing. When did he last climb a gate? His heart is thumping with the irresponsibility of his actions. It could be forty years since he last climbed a gate, that’s if he has ever climbed a gate at all.

There is a broom in the yard, leaning up against a wall. And a pile of logs, axed to go into an Aga. So there’s an axe about. He tries the latch of a small brick lean-to. Locked. Of course locked. Billy Yuill wouldn’t leave an axe where anyone could find it. Precise husbands always know to lock all sharp and pointed implements away. They live with women who would separate their heads from their shoulders given half a chance.

He sees hot sudsy water coming out of the down-pipe. Someone’s taking a bath. He steps back and looks up. It’s a low cottage. If he had a footstool he could just about see into the upper storey windows. He calls out again. ‘Liz! It’s Frank. Let me in. We have to talk.’ Again there is no answer. Only an increase in speed and volume and soapiness, he reckons, in the water coming out of the down-pipe. So she isn’t taking a bath, she’s taking a shower. There’s hope in that.

He locates what has to be the bathroom window. He scours the unlittered yard for something to throw against the pane, but can find only fine slivers of masonry. If he could lay his hands on the axe he’d be able to chip away whole corners of bricks. Alternatively he could throw the axe. He gathers up what he can find, throws underarm, misses, throws again, but the best he can achieve is a feeble pattering, like light rain on the canvas roof of his Saab. No one showering would hear that.

What he needs is a ladder. He tests the down-pipe to see if it will take his weight but he knows he isn’t serious. Even supposing he gets to the steamed-up bathroom window, he is not going to be able to climb through it. He could get her attention perhaps, but he wouldn’t be well situated to press his suit. And he isn’t looking for a conversation. He’s looking to help her out of the shower, take her in his arms, and dry her. And mustn’t that, in some corner of her consciousness, be what she’s looking to happen as well? Why else the shower? A showering woman is commiting her flesh to flux. A showering woman is consigning her anterior life to the plughole, inviting the waters of change to have their way with her.

It’s while he is peering into the kitchen, looking for a ladder, that he notices that one of the windows is not locked. He applies only the slightest pressure to the frame and it opens. Easy. Easy, even for a drunk. Easy, too, to wriggle in, climb over the sink, and land lightly on his feet like a cat burglar. He isn’t sure what’s exciting him more, his recklessness or his athleticism. Either way, he’s in new territory. Liz might be an old flame, but there’s nothing old about his ardour, or about the risks he’s taking. Nor is he, in the old stale way, merely submitting to the caprices of his pancreatic juices. Yes, he feels as though the lining has come away from his stomach, but it’s not the usual negative obverse of morality lurch that motivates him to hunt whores. This is more what is meant by heroism. His heart is engaged. He has a lump in his throat. It’s only an hour ago that he was up on the cliffs grieving for Mel. Well, just as a man grieves for all women in the single woman, so he redeems all women when he redeems one. In that sense, what he’s doing he’s doing for Mel. He hasn’t been able to order her a memorial bench yet. So he’s stealing Liz for her instead.

Sit on a bench and cry, sit on Liz and cry — it’s all one to a man with a breaking heart.

It’s so distressingly uplifting all round, that by the time he has climbed the stairs and pushed open the bathroom door he is weeping again.

At that very same moment a figure steps out of the shower. It is not Liz. Nor is it Billy Yuill. Nor is it some mysteriously unidentified third party. Unexpected, certainly. Unidentifiable, no. Would that it were. The person who steps out of the shower is Kurt.

Kurt!

Frank!

Only that’s not how it is. Not how it ever is. Not how it ever will be. Not ever ever ever.

Perhaps because he is naked, perhaps because his face and hair are wet and there is water glissading down his chest, glossing his skin, washing every sort of advancement off him, Kurt looks the same to Frank today as he has looked in his memory throughout the last twenty years. A boy still. Sallow and self-sufficient, like an Indian brave. An Indian indian too. Sabu, that’s who he has always looked like. The boychick on the magic carpet.

And perhaps because Frank is always pestiferously with him, Kurt is not as surprised as Frank would have imagined him to be, to see him standing there in the steam, caught out again. Sad for Frank to face, that Kurt will never be astounded by any infamous act of violation he commits, will never expect anything else of him but trespass and treachery. And fake tears.

‘I’m not going to ask what you’re doing here,’ Kurt says. His mouth is unsteady — this is to be Frank’s only consolation. That Kurt, too, was upset. That Kurt, too, couldn’t keep it together. ‘I don’t want to know. I’m just asking you to go. Don’t say anything to me. I won’t listen. I don’t want to fight you. I’m not angry with you. I don’t have any feelings towards you. I just want you to go.’

No swearing. No shouting. No shut the fuck up and get the fuck out. Just the grave consideration of an old friend who wants only to wipe you from his life. Just go. Just vanish.

And Frank goes, vanishes, his leaping heart shot down as though by a deadly hunter. His eyes gushing tears the colour of plonk.

‘SO YOU RECKON that Hamish told you Kurt was in America in order to get you to leave Cheltenham?’

‘No. I think Hamish believed Kurt was in America. Yes, he wanted me to leave Cheltenham; no, he was not party to any deception.’

‘Deception in relation to you?’

‘Deception in relation to Billy Yuill.’

‘Remind me who Billy Yuill is.’

‘Billy Yuill is the person to whom Liz is now married.’

‘Hamish told you that?’

‘Hamish told me that his mother has remarried. I made the connection.’