Howard Jacobson: J

No one had lived in the house for several years. The pipes leaked, there were spiders still in the baths, slugs had signed their signatures on all the windows, believing the place belonged to them, the garden was overgrown with weeds that resembled giant cabbages. It was like a children’s story cottage, threatening and enchanting at the same time, the garden full of secrets. Kevern had been sitting holding hands with Ailinn on broken deckchairs in the long grass, enjoying an unexpectedly warm spring afternoon, the pair of them absent-mindedly plugged into the utility console that supplied the country with soothing music and calming news, when the sight of her crossed brown legs reminded him of an old song by a long-forgotten black entertainer his father had liked listening to with the cottage blinds down. ‘Your feet’s too big.’

On account of their innate aggressiveness, songs of that sort were no longer played on the console. Not banned — nothing was banned exactly — simply not played. Encouraged to fall into desuetude, like the word desuetude. Popular taste did what edict and proscription could never have done, and just as, when it came to books, the people chose rags-to-riches memoirs, cookbooks and romances, so, when it came to music, they chose ballads.

Carried away by the day, Kevern began to play at an imaginary piano and in a rudely comic voice serenade Ailinn’s big feet.

Ailinn didn’t understand.

‘It was a popular song by a azz pianist called Fats Waller,’ he told her, automatically putting two fingers to his lips.

He had to explain what azz was. Ailinn had never heard any. azz, too, without exactly being proscribed, wasn’t played. Improvisation had fallen out of fashion. There was room for only one ‘if’ in life. People wanted to be sure, when a tune began, exactly where it was going to end. Wit, the same. Its unpredictability unsettled people’s nerves. And azz was wit expressed musically. Though he reached the age of ten without having heard of Sammy Davis unior, Kevern knew of azz from his father’s semi-secret collection of old CDs. But at least he didn’t have to tell Ailinn that Fats Waller was black. Given her age, she was unlikely to have remembered a time when popular singers weren’t black. Again, no laws or duress. A compliant society meant that every section of it consented with gratitude — the gratitude of the providentially spared — to the principle of group aptitude. People of Afro-Caribbean origin were suited by temperament and physique to entertainment and athletics, and so they sang and sprinted. People originally from the Indian subcontinent, electronically gifted as though by nature, undertook to ensure no family was without a functioning utility phone. What was left of the Polish community plumbed; what was left of the Greek smashed plates. Those from the Gulf States and the Levant whose grandparents hadn’t quickly left the country while WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED was happening — fearing they’d be accused of having stoked the flames, fearing, indeed, that the flames would consume them next — opened labneh and shisha-pipe restaurants, kept their heads down, and grew depressed with idleness. To each according to his gifts.

Having heard only ballads, Ailinn was hard pressed to understand how the insulting words Kevern had just sung to her could ever have been set to music. Music was the expression of love.

‘They’re not really insulting,’ Kevern said. ‘Except maybe to people whose feet are too big. My father never insulted anybody, but he delighted in this song.’

He was saying too much, but the garden’s neglect gave the illusion of safety. No word could get beyond the soundproofing of the giant cabbage-like leaves.

Ailinn still didn’t comprehend. ‘Why would your father have loved something like that?’

He wanted to say it was a oke, but was reluctant, in her company, to put two fingers to his lips again. She already thought he was strange.

‘It struck him as funny,’ he said instead.

She shook her head in disbelief, blotting out Kevern’s vision. Nothing to see in the whole wide world but her haystack of crow-black hair. Nothing else he wanted to see. ‘If you say so,’ she said, unconvinced. ‘But that still doesn’t explain why you’re singing it to me.’ She seemed in genuine distress. ‘Are my feet too big?’

He looked again. ‘Your feet specifically, no. Your ankles, maybe, a bit. .’

‘And you say you hate me because my ankles are too thick?’

‘Hate you? Of course I don’t hate you. That’s just the silly song.’ He could have said ‘I love you’, but it was too soon for that. ‘Your thick ankles are the very reason I’m attracted to you,’ he tried instead. ‘I’m perverse that way.’

It came out wrong. He had meant it to be funny. Meaning to be funny often landed him in a mess because, like his father, he lacked the reassuring charm necessary to temper the cruelty that lurked in okes. Maybe his father intended to be cruel. Maybe he, Kevern, did. Despite his kind eyes.

Ailinn Solomons flushed and rose from her deckchair, knocking over the console and spilling the wine they’d been drinking.

Elderflower wine, so drink wasn’t his excuse.

In her agitation she seemed to tremble, like the fronds of a palm tree in a storm.

‘And your thick head’s the very reason I’m perversely attracted to you,’ she said. . ‘Except that I’m not.’

He felt sorry for her, both on account of the unnecessary unkindness of his words and the fear that showed in her eyes in the moment of her standing up to him. Did she think he’d strike her?

She hadn’t spoken to him about life on the chill northern archipelago where she had grown up, but he didn’t doubt it was in all essentials similar to here. The same vast and icy ocean crashed in on them both. The same befuddled men, even more thin-skinned and peevish in the aftermath of WHAT HAPPENED than their smuggler and wrecker ancestors had been, roamed angrily from pub to pub, ready to raise a hand to any woman who dared to refuse or twit them. Thick head ? They’d show her a thick fist if she wasn’t careful! Snog her first — the snog having become the most common expression of erotic irritation between men and women: an antidote to the bland ballads of love the console pumped out — snog her first and cuff her later. An unnecessary refinement in Kevern’s view, since a snog was itself an act of thuggery.

Ailinn Solomons made a sign with her body for him to leave. He heaved himself out of the deckchair like an old man. She felt leaden herself, but the weight of his grief surprised her. This wasn’t the end of the world. They barely knew each other.

She watched him go — as at an upstairs window her companion watched him go — a man made heavy by what he’d brought on himself. Adam leaving the garden, she thought.

She felt a pang for him and for men in general, no matter that some had raised their hands to her. A man turned from her, his back bent, ashamed, defeated, all the fight in him leaked away — why was that a sight she felt she knew so well, when she couldn’t recall a single instance, before today, of having seen it?