Howard Jacobson - J

The wool descended further over Kevern’s eyes. Soon he would not be able to breathe for it.

‘ They being. .?’ he just managed to ask.

But the doctor had lost patience. No longer a father figure to either of them, he rose, bowed in an exaggerated manner to Ailinn, and left the breakfast room.

A moment later, though, he popped his head around the door and pulled a clownish face. ‘The gone but not forgotten,’ he said.

The phrase seemed to amuse him greatly for he repeated it. ‘The gone but not forgotten.’

‘I don’t think Ferdie likes me,’ Kevern said, after he disappeared a second time.

It was to become a refrain between them whenever Kevern sniffed a predator — ‘I don’t think Ferdie likes me.’

And Ailinn would laugh.

iv

That afternoon, with a light rain pattering against the scratched Perspex, they decided they would get Ailinn’s phone fixed. The best places, the concierge told them, were in the north of the city and he didn’t advise driving.

‘Is it dangerous?’ Kevern asked.

The concierge laughed. ‘Not dangerous, just tricky.’

‘Tricky to find?’

‘Tricky to everything.’

He offered to call them a taxi but Ailinn needed a walk. They wandered aimlessly for an hour or more — Kevern preferred wandering to asking directions, because asking meant listening, and the minute someone said go straight ahead for a hundred metres then take a left and then a hundred metres after that take a right, he was lost. Occasionally a tout, dressed like a busker or a master of ceremonials at some pagan festival, stepped out of a doorway and offered them whatever their hearts desired. ‘Do you have anything black?’ Kevern asked one of them.

The tout looked offended. He was neither pimp nor racist. ‘Black?’

‘Like a black tee-shirt or jacket?’

The tout missed Kevern’s joke. ‘I could get you,’ he replied. ‘Where are you staying?’

Kevern gave him the wrong hotel. He wasn’t taking any chances.

Finding themselves in a part of town where there was actually construction going on, they went into a café to escape the dust. A beefy, furiously orange-faced builder in brightly coloured overalls, covered in plaster, raised his head from his sandwich and looked Ailinn up and down. ‘Tasty,’ Kevern thought he heard him say. But he could have been clearing his throat or referring to his sandwich. The gesture he made to a second builder who entered the café, however, slowly twirling a probing finger in Ailinn’s direction, was unambiguous. The new arrival took a look at Ailinn and fingered her impressionistically in return.

‘What’s that meant to signify?’ Kevern asked them, looking from one to the other.

The builder with the inflamed, enraged face made a creaking motion with his jaw, as though resetting the position of his teeth, and laughed.

‘Take no notice,’ Ailinn said. ‘It’s not worth it.’

‘You tell him, gorgeous,’ the second builder said, opening his mouth and showing her his tongue.

The first builder did the same.

These are the gargoyles I missed in Ashbrittle, Kevern thought.

‘Come on. Let’s leave them to dream about it,’ Ailinn said. She took Kevern by the elbow and led him out.

They were both strangers to the city, but Ailinn felt she could cope better in it than Kevern ever would.

Back on the street the rain was falling more heavily. ‘Let’s just jump in a taxi, get it sorted and then go home,’ she said. ‘I think we’ve been away long enough. I have a migraine coming on.’

It was a vicarious migraine, a migraine for him, a man who didn’t have migraines.

Kevern felt guilty. His idea to come away, his idea to mooch about looking into the windows of ill-lit shops and see where they ended up, his idea to go into the coffee shop — his idea, come to that, to ask Ailinn out in the first place, his idea to kiss Lowenna Morgenstern, everything that was making life difficult for Ailinn — his idea.

There were few taxis and those that passed were uninterested in stopping. Kevern wasn’t sure if their For Hire lights were on or off, but he thought some drivers slowed down, took a look at them, and then sped off. Could they see from their austere clothes, or their hesitant demeanour, that he and Ailinn weren’t from round here and did they therefore fear they couldn’t pay or wouldn’t tip? Or was it simply something about their faces?

Ailinn had turned white. Seeing a taxi, Kevern made a determined effort to hail it, running into the street and waving his arms. The driver slowed, peered out of his window, drove a little way past them, and then stopped. Kevern took Ailinn’s hand. ‘Come on,’ he said. But someone else had decided the taxi was for him and was racing on ahead of them. ‘Hey!’ Kevern shouted. ‘Hey, that’s ours.’

‘What makes it yours?’ the man shouted back.

He was wearing a striped grey and blue cardigan, Kevern noted with relief, as though that made him someone he felt confident he could reason with. And wore rimless spectacles. A respectable, soberly dressed person in his early thirties. With a woman at his side.

‘Come on,’ Kevern said, ‘be fair. You know I flagged it down before you did. Didn’t I, driver?’

The driver shrugged. The man in the cardigan was blazing with fury. ‘You don’t have to yell and scream,’ he said.

‘Who’s yelling and screaming? I flagged the taxi down before you, and I expect you to accept that, that’s all. This lady has a migraine. I need to get her back to our hotel.’

‘And I have a wife and tired children to get home.’

‘Then you can get the next taxi,’ Kevern said, seeing no children.

‘If it means so much to you that you have to behave in this insane manner, then take the taxi,’ the man said, raising an arm.

Kevern wondered if the arm was raised to call another taxi or aim a blow. He felt a hand on his back. Was it a punch? In his anger, Kevern wouldn’t have known if it was a knife going between his shoulder blades. ‘Take your hands off me,’ he said.

‘Calm down, you clown, you’ve got what you want. Just get yourself into the taxi and pootle off wherever you belong.’

‘Get your fucking hands off me,’ Kevern said.

‘Hey,’ the man said. ‘Don’t swear in front of my children.’

‘Then don’t you fucking lay your hands on me,’ Kevern said, still seeing no children.

What happened next he didn’t remember. Not because he was knocked unconscious but because a great sheet of rage had come down before his eyes, and behind it a deep sense of dishonour. Why was he fighting? Why was he swearing? He was not a fighting or a swearing man. And he couldn’t bear that Ailinn had seen him in the guise of either.

It was she who had pushed him into the taxi and got them back to the hotel. ‘Your hands are ice cold,’ she told him when they were back in their room. Otherwise she said nothing. She looked, Kevern thought, as though made of ice herself.

He didn’t know what time it was, but he fell into bed.

‘I don’t think Ferdie likes me,’ he said before he fell asleep.

Ailinn did not laugh.

It was her suggestion, when they woke in the early hours of the morning, that they drive home without even waiting for breakfast. It was clear she didn’t want a conversation about what had happened.

‘Do you hate me?’ he asked.

‘I don’t hate you. I’m just bewildered. And frightened for you.’

‘Frightened?’

‘Frightened of what might have happened to you. You didn’t know who that man was. He might have been anybody.’

‘He was a family man who didn’t want his children to hear foul language, that’s if there were any children. Though he didn’t mind them seeing him pushing a stranger. There was nothing to be frightened of.’