Howard Jacobson - No More Mr. Nice Guy

‘What kind’s that?’

Did Mel want to be talking to Clarice about Frank? Was that a good idea? ‘The receiving end kind.’

‘Frank likes you to bully him?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Do you bend him over the desk?’

‘Of course not. It’s more mental than that. It’s his mind he wants me to damage.’

‘And how do you do that?’

‘Well I don’t do it. That’s the trouble. The trouble for Frank, I mean.’

‘But what would you be doing if you did do it?’

How? What? Why? Redder than the evening sky, Clarice’s avidity. Hungrier than the sea.

How smart was this, Mel wondered. She rose from the bench, turning her eyes from the burn. ‘You want to know what Frank wants of me?’

Silly question. Forget Molly Bloom. Molly Bloom had time only for her own itch. Clarice’s unpunctuated curiosity embraced the itch of everyone she encountered. When it came to sexual tittle-tattle, she was the Jane Austen of Little Cleverley. One day a sign would be erected on the west bank of the Tamar, welcoming you to Clarice Country. In the meantime, of course Clarice wanted to know what Frank wanted of Mel.

‘What I think Frank wants, and has always wanted, is to feel ill. I think he’s wanted that with every woman. But I’ve been privileged — with me he believes he can feel more ill than he’s ever felt before.’

‘Ill while you’re fucking?’

‘In a way, yes. Ill around the whole business. Either that, or he’s a moron. Only a moron, or someone who thrives on trouble, would do what he does …’

Thinking about her life with a moron, or someone who thrives on trouble, Mel allows her voice to drift away into the immensity of the sky, where the first of the evening stars is waiting to swallow it up.

But Clarice’s needs are greater than any faraway prick of light’s. ‘Which is what? What does he do?’

‘He invites torment. He comes at me when I’m bound to turn on him. He knows exactly what rubs me up the wrong way but he won’t learn from the experience. He would rather lay himself bare to my impatience every time. That can only be because he likes the humiliation of rejection, wouldn’t you say? Unless he’s a moron.’

‘Sounds like you make him very happy.’

Mel thinks about it. But not for long. ‘No, I don’t make him happy. No one can make Frank happy. It doesn’t matter how hard a time I give him, it’s never hard enough. I’m still not able to deliver him the final blow he craves. You know how men are always terrified that you’re going to show them up in some way, embarrass them or betray them in public, make fools of them before the world? I think Frank wants me to do it once and for all. Hit him with the killer blow. Deliver him from the fear of it.’

Now it’s Clarice’s turn to have a little think. ‘Is that what I’ve done to Elkin? Hit him with the killer blow?’

‘You may have. Though I have to say that Elkin has always struck me as more self-sufficient than Frank. He isn’t sitting there waiting for it to happen. He has other preoccupations.’

‘Hasn’t Frank?’

‘Frank? No. Frank has only one preoccupation. Feeling ill and waiting to feel iller. The masochistic little bastard.’

‘Frank’s a masochist?’

‘Oh God, yes.’

‘So why don’t you just pull out all the stops and give him what he wants?’

‘Give a man what he wants!’

How they laughed. How they cackled.

But Mel, conscientious Mel, wasn’t altogether satisfied with her answer. ‘But I guess the real reason is that it isn’t what I want.’

‘Which is what?’

‘What do I want? Oh, I suppose I want the same as him. For me, I mean. That’s the trouble. I’m a masochist too.’

Clarice opened her eyes wide, then tapped the space on the bench which Mel had vacated. Come back here, Mel. Talk to me. Tell me. Spill all to Clarice.

Under the shower in Mel’s cottage Clarice washed away the last of Elkin’s impetuous seed.

Frank was out for the afternoon. Faxing his column from St Austell. No machines allowed in the cottage. Mel sat in a rocking-chair by the low leaded window and tried not to look at the steam ghosting out from under the stripped pine bathroom door. She could hear Clarice still laughing in the shower. It reminded Mel of the sound of a school playground. A warm milky odour, reminiscent of a kindergarten, filled the cottage — everyone stretched out on their little beds for a mid-morning nap. Mel fought not to let herself be overwhelmed by any of those mothering instincts she’d painstakingly excluded from her life. She wanted to warm a bottle. No she didn’t. She wanted to inhale the smell of brand new life from Clarice’s scalp. No she didn’t. She wanted to give Clarice pocket money. Yes, she did. Here, a nice bright new-minted one pound coin, now go home.

When Clarice emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a towel like a boiled sweet, pearls of water sitting on her skin like icing sugar, Mel turned away.

‘I could kill a gin,’ Clarice said.

But there was no gin in the cottage. Not allowed. No machines, no alcohol. Want to fax? Go to St Austell. Want to drink? Go to the pub. Compulsiveness — that was what she was trying to beat. The noise and riot of habituated appetite.

If Clarice wanted a drink it would have to be The Poldark.

No, not The Poldark. Elkin would be in his corner of The Poldark, grinning into his tankard.

She was frightened of Elkin?

Of course not. No one could be frightened of Elkin. She was punishing him, that was all… Giving him a hard time.

So they decided they would go, the two witches, to The Frenchman instead. More of an emmet pub. Children’s room. Bottled lagers. Scampi in a basket. Just the place to be if you wanted to gossip unheeded.

What impulse was it that made Mel think twice after she had locked the cottage, sent her back inside, told her to leave, at the very least, a terse note for Frank on the scrubbed pine table? — IN THE FRENCHMAN.

A loving impulse.

And what impulse was it that made Mel ask for champagne, in a bucket, and two, no, make that three glasses?

The same.

They sat facing each other across a round brown table, deaf to emmet commotion, and raised their flutes — you didn’t get a flute at The Poldark, but then you didn’t get champagne at The Poldark either — in a toast to Elkin.

‘And to Molly Bloom,’ Mel laughed.

‘Did I overdo it?’ Clarice asked.

‘Not if you were happy for the whole of Little Cleverley to see everything you’ve got.’

Clarice shrugged and swigged. The whole of Little Cleverley already had, that was what her shrug denoted.

She loved flashing herself. She looked at Mel through the bubbles of her champagne, swirling it in the glass to keep it frothing. She just loved flashing. Didn’t Mel?

No, Mel thought on the whole she didn’t. But then Mel acknowledged that she had become a prude. Where her own body was concerned, she meant. She wasn’t a prude for Clarice.

What Clarice loved best was showing herself to men when Elkin was there, but just out of eyeline. She flashed in the shop sometimes. She’d select a man she knew she could embarrass, someone wearing badges or mountaineering boots, someone with five kids in tow, someone carrying National Trust literature, and just as Elkin was getting to the bit about the antique value of the slates he painted on, whoosh! up would come the skirt and out would come the cunt. It was terrifically good for business. They would always return, the men she’d flashed at. Next year, on the dot, there they’d be in their badges and their toggles, their eyes soft and pleading like those of a favoured pet. Over time she grew to recognise some of them. And those she recognised she teased the hardest, making them wait for hours before she whipped her skirt up, forcing them to wander round and round the shop like connoisseurs of slate-art, up and down until they knew every particular hair on the head of every particular field-mouse on every particular slate. And then, just as they thought it was not to be and maybe never had been, was nothing but a filthy figment of their fevered imaginations, a Cornish chimera, a vapour, a wispy illusion … whoosh! there it was again.