Who's Sorry Now?

by Howard Jacobson

  But Charlie was beginning, in a general way, to smile back. ‘Don’t you think she’s sexy?’ he said, more to the air and its angels than to Kreitman.

  ‘Not to my eye,’ Kreitman said. ‘To my eye she looks seasick. Queasy, like a half-drowned rat.’

  ‘Then there’s something wrong with your eye,’ Charlie said. ‘To mine she’s drop-dead gorgeous.’

  ‘Do me one favour,’ Kreitman said, ‘don’t talk like your children. Dangerously close to whose age, incidentally, she is. So do you know her or not?’

  ‘Not.’

  ‘Then she isn’t smiling at you. Turn away.’

  Try telling that to Lot’s wife. Still convinced her radiance was for him, and dangerously woozy now, Charlie Merriweather shone his countenance across the distance of three tables and gave Nicolette Halliwell the benefit of that trample-me expression which had served him so well with Charlie several decades earlier, and no doubt continued to prove useful, Kreitman thought, in keeping him in her favours.

  In their day a mistake was a mistake and everyone was careful to help one another out of an embarrassment. Things were different now that there was no such thing as society. Public personalities come and go quicker than a burning match, but ideas take longer to blow out and reignite. Thatcherism had fallen off its patent heels, an absurd memory today, like trying to recall Mr Pastry; yet society hadn’t, as a consequence, been fanfaronaded back inside. It suited everyone, even the new socialists, especially the new socialists, to pretend it had gone away of its own accord and wasn’t coming back. Without it, we could be as charitable or as hurtful as we felt like being, for we weren’t on any journey together. Hence Nicolette Halliwell’s too loud snort, her dismissive wave of her bejewelled fingers – funeral rings, she collected, trash from the past, one on each finger – and her zonked ejaculation: ‘Not you, saddo!’ And then, to her company, but for everyone in the restaurant to hear – ‘The leery old prick thinks I’m smiling at him.’

  Sozzled? Freaked out? Who could say. Kreitman couldn’t tell who was on what any more. His daughters came home not themselves for different chemical reasons every night of the week. One of his lovers had taken to laughing during orgasm. Another to weeping on the lavatory. Only their mothers seemed to be together. For two pins he’d have marched over to the artist’s table and beaten an apology out of her (his second imaginary assault that night), however forcefully the stubbly beards that grinned approval round her might have tried to stop him. But why draw even more attention to Charlie’s mortification? He was drained of blood, the colour of mozzarella, and didn’t seem to know what to do with his face.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Kreitman said. ‘We’ll pay at the desk.’

  But Charlie couldn’t, or didn’t want to move. ‘Coffee,’ he said. ‘I think coffee. And I think another bottle of wine. Oh, God!’

  And over coffee and wine and more coffee and more wine he asked Kreitman what he thought the matter with him was, why he was so unhappy, why he was so prone to make a fool of himself these days, why he was forever catching his children giving him long anxious sideways looks, as if they feared he was going to run away or fall over or fall away or be run over the moment they took their eyes off him, why he was sleeping badly, why he seemed to be getting on Charlie’s nerves, why he was ratded by what was going on in his sister-in-law’s love life, why he wished sometimes that it was he who was knocking her off, except of course that he didn’t, and why, in short, his life was fucking falling apart.

  Kreitman put his fingers together. ‘Well now …’ he said.

  ‘Don’t take the piss out of me, Marvin. We’ve been talking about nothing for ten hours. Let’s be honest, we’ve been talking about nothing for twenty years. Just this once, eh? Eh?’

  ‘All right, Charlie, then it isn’t your life that’s falling apart, it’s your marriage that’s fucking killing you.’

  ‘Well, you would say that.’

  ‘In that case don’t ask me.’

  ‘You’ve been wanting to tell me that my marriage is fucking killing me since you first met me.’

  ‘You weren’t married when I first met you.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Charlie, I don’t know what you mean. I promoted your marriage. I would even say, were I given to like marriages, that I particularly liked yours. But this conversation has got nothing to do with what I want to say, or even with what I happen to think. I’m just watching you. You’re behaving like a man whose marriage is fucking killing him. You’ve not stopped looking at women all day. Not even women, Charlie – girls! When a man of your years can’t take his eyes off every under-age bit of skirt that flounces by, that hasn’t even grown tits yet, it’s fair to deduce his marriage is in trouble.’

  ‘That’s different. Marriage in trouble is not the same as marriage killing me.’

  ‘Then go fuck one of these titless girls and get your marriage out of trouble. Give yourself a little leeway. I’ll get up and have a word with the trash queen for you. I doubt she holds to any position for very long …’

  ‘If I were to “fuck one of those girls” Chas would never forgive me. It would break her heart.’

  ‘Don’t tell her.’

  ‘She’ll find out.’

  ‘How will she find out, Charlie?’

  ‘She finds out everything. She knows me backwards. I can’t dream about a fuck without Chas knowing.’

  ‘There you are – your marriage is fucking killing you. And I’ll tell you which part of it is killing you – the nice-sex part. Fantasy, Charlie. Sex isn’t nice.’

  ‘Maybe not for you, Marvin.’

  ‘Leave me out of it. It isn’t nice for you, otherwise …’ Kreitman made a weary, exasperated gesture with his hands, taking in the waitresses, the sculptor and every other damn distraction that had made a monkey out of Charlie Merriweather this night. Made a monkey out of him as well, because even late and in the company of men he hated marriage talk, wife talk, love talk, fuck talk. For he too was a good husband in his way, and believed he owed it to Hazel not to discuss her. Or her interior decorator. Or his daughter’s curator. Or his one-time lover and her mother. ‘Look, Charlie,’ he went on – in now, in for a penny, in for a pound – ‘why don’t we have this nice-sex thing out once and for all? You think I don’t get it. OK – I certainly don’t get it. And if I don’t get it we can’t talk about it. You started this. You said your life’s falling apart. I’m saying you can chalk that down to nice sex. So you go ahead and prove to me why I’m wrong. You explain to me what I’ve been missing all these years.’

  ‘Deprivation.’

  ‘Paradoxes now. I could surprise you, Charlie. I’ve done plenty of doing without.’

  ‘Yes, but not systematically. Nice sex is about agreeing to do without. It’s a trade-off. In return for relinquishing everyone else – and that doesn’t mean not having an eye for everyone else, Marvin – you enjoy a closeness you wouldn’t otherwise have. I’m not talking about trust only. Partly the closeness is contingent on the sacrifice …’

  ‘You get hot thinking about everything you both haven’t done? It’s like talking dirty, is it? Only it’s talking clean? Tell me about it, darling, whisper it in my ear – Who didn’t you fuck today?’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘I don’t think. About nice sex I have no thoughts. You’re the expert.’

  ‘You might not remember this, Marvin, but when we were first married and living in Market Harborough you and Hazel used to stay with us for weekends. You two weren’t married yet. It’s possible you weren’t even thinking of getting married at that stage. One night we gave you our bedroom. I can’t remember why, maybe you’d just got engaged or something, maybe it was Hazel’s birthday. Maybe it was mine. Anyway, you slept in our bed. We were both astonished by the noises you made. Like creatures in pain, Charlie said.’

  ‘You were listening to us?’

  ‘No, we weren’t listening, we heard. We couldn’t not
hear. The dead would have heard. And when we got our bed back in the morning we couldn’t believe what you’d done to it. You’d ripped the sheets. You’d mangled two pillowcases and somehow shrunk a third. You’d torn the headboard off the bed. You’d bitten chunks out of the mattress …’

  ‘I’ll buy you another mattress.’

  ‘Marvin – just once in your life, shut up! Believe me, there were bloodstains on the ceiling. If that’s what your friend does to someone he loves, Charlie said, I wouldn’t want to be in the next room when he’s with someone he hates. I know, I see it on your face – what right did we have to sit in judgement on sex Marvin Kreitman-style? But we weren’t sitting in judgement. We were just frightened for you.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Chaiiie, frightened?’

  ‘You didn’t hear yourself. Anyway, whatever the rights of it, whatever you meant by half-throttling Hazel or letting her half-throttle you, and whatever we were doing having any sort of attitude to it, that wasn’t nice sex. I trust you will at least agree to that. Nice sex, Marvin, isn’t about finding another form for murder. I couldn’t have raised a hand to Charlie even in play, nor she to me. What is it Hamlet says about his father’s lovingness to his mother – ‘he might not beteem the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly’? That was me. That was us. Even a vulgar slap and tickle would have been impossible between us. Is impossible between us. It’s not for me to enquire about the hows and whys of it now, but you and Hazel used to make no bones about it – you fought like tigers, and then you fucked like tigers. Your own phrase, Marvin – the clash of mighty opposites. Well, Charlie and I didn’t feel opposite, we felt the same. We weren’t reconciling differences in sex, we were confirming congruences. In bed together, sometimes, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you where I ended and she began. My cock, her … What’s wrong, Marvin. Why are you gagging?’

  ‘You know darn well why I’m gagging.’

  ‘Of course I do. I’ve drunk too much and you hate sex talk that isn’t adversarial.’

  ‘You’re wrong. What I hate is the word cock. Watcha, cock! Use dick, it’s more respectful.’

  ‘Yes, yes, the famous Kreitman niceness around the organs. Nice around the nomenclature, less nice around the usage.’

  ‘You’re the nice one, Charlie.’

  ‘Well, you’re certainly not. Listen, you asked, so I’m telling you. Nice sex – it means what it sounds as though it means. Sex that is all consideration. Smug too, if you like. An expression of how much you like each other and everyone else can go to hell. And that’s why I’ve always found it impossible to do anything if I’m away from home, in a foreign country or wherever – I know I wouldn’t be able to think of anyone but Charlie. So what would be the point? Then when I got back I would be guilty, and when we made love I would be unable to think about anything but my guilt, lying there lewdly between us like a third party each of us thought the other had invited. Three in a bed. Something you’re not averse to, I know. But not me. I don’t judge it, I’m not against it, I just can’t do it. So that’s something else about nice sex – it’s sex strictly for the two of you. Sex you don’t go round experimenting with …’

  ‘Sex that’s not sex, you mean?’ Unbidden, Erica, his wife’s interior decorator, sitting on his chest in nothing but black hold-ups, her hands crossed on his throat, saying ‘Make me!’ Unbidden, but he bade the apparition go. ‘Sex that’s no fun, you mean?’

  ‘Wrong. That wasn’t fun you were having with Hazel all those years ago. That wasn’t even play, Marvin. That was hang, draw and quarter. And you both looked like you’d narrowly escaped the mob when you came down to breakfast. You’ve always looked like that after sex. Another close shave. Got away with my life again – just. Don’t forget how many times I’ve seen you after you’ve been fucking. And you never once looked as though you’d been having fun. People smile when they’re having fun. When did you last smile at Hazel, Marvin?’

  ‘This morning.’

  ‘After sex?’

  Marvin Kreitman put his elbows on the table and supported his chin on his fists. ‘Charlie,’ he said wearily, ‘Hazel isn’t the person I do the deed with these days. Decent men don’t badger their wives of twenty years for sexual satisfaction.’

  Charlie waved away any imaginary imputation that he might be curious who, in that case, Kreitman did badger for sexual satisfaction these days. ‘The last time you smiled at anybody post-coitally, Marvin? Or even pre-coitally, come to that?’

  Kreitman thought about it. ‘Do you want the year or the day?’

  ‘The year will do.’

  ‘Nineteen seventy-three.’

  ‘Then that was the last time you had nice sex.’

  And in such a manner, had the discussion been about Kreitman’s misery and not Charlie’s, would the evening have ended. Go home and sleep on that one, Marvin. He was quite prepared to. Nice sex, eh? Well, why not. Two in a bed, no thought of a third, and a smile before and after? Thinking of the smile worried him by virtue of its unlooked-for allure. Forget the rest, but a smile wouldn’t have gone amiss. Nineteen seventy-three was a lie. Kreitman had never smiled before or after sex. Or, if he had, he had forgotten, and where was the point of a smile you couldn’t remember?

  He sat with his chin still on his fists, staring into the blood-red lake of his wine glass, listening to the long silence of Charlie’s triumphant refutation. He was head over heels in love with five women – discounting the other four he loved in a calmer fashion – and he couldn’t drag from the bottom of the wine-dark Brunello sea a single recollection of a sex-related, sense-drenched smile. Not on his part anyway. What he could see, if he concentrated, were sometime smiles directed to him. A fatalistic but comradely creasing of the eyes only the day before yesterday from Bernadette, mother of his wife’s interior designer’s former husband, registering the black folly of life. A playful grin after the theatre, because she scarcely knew him yet, from Shelley, nursing Kreitman all of a sudden when a violent cramp threw him howling off her. Did they count? If you inspired a smile did that mean you were the reason for nice sex in others, even though you were not a participant in it yourself? Could just one of you have nice sex?

  What do you think, Charlie?

  No, was what Charlie thought. No way, no how. Just as nice sex couldn’t be for more than two, so it couldn’t be for less.

  ‘You’re a stickler for numbers,’ Kreitman said.

  ‘Rich, coming from you,’ Charlie said.

  ‘You know what this is all about?’ Kreitman said, as though struck by it for the first time. ‘Sentimentality. Masculine sentimentality. We both love ourselves in the love women bear us.’

  ‘Women don’t bear me anything,’ Charlie said.

  ‘It comes to the same thing,’ Kreitman said. ‘You love the image of yourself as a nice man which Charlie reflects back to you. I love the image of myself as a bastard which Hazel and the rest reflect back to me. That’s why you can’t betray Charlie – she has a sentimental hold over you. She is the monster guarding the labyrinth where your other selves are hidden.’

  ‘So I have to behead her to find out who else I could be?’

  ‘That’s only if you want a fuck, Charlie.’

  ‘I want a fuck, Marvin.’

  ‘Then behead her.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’m happy as I am.’

  ‘You aren’t. You’ve let me see you aren’t. You’d like to smile before you die.’

  Would he? ‘Then who do I behead?’

  ‘That you must tell me. I don’t know who’s guarding your labyrinth.’

  ‘I have told you. They all are.’

  ‘Then behead them all.’

  ‘Ah,’ Kreitman said, ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Then choose one,’ Charlie said, ‘and give her to me.’

  Kreitman threw his head back and laughed. A waitress in a short black leather apron, whose pants you could see when she cleared a table, whose pants she was no doubt co
ntracted to let you see when she cleared a table, came to check how they were for wine. ‘Gendemen?’

  ‘We’re all right,’ Kreitman said. ‘But my friend’s in love with you.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Charlie said, ‘I love my wife. I only take advantage of other women. And we’ll have two brandies. Any. The best.’ Then to Kreitman he said, ‘So?’

  ‘So what, Charlie?’

  ‘So which are you going to sacrifice?’

  ‘You’re drunk, Charlie.’

  ‘Maybe, but I’m clear. If it’s the women who are stopping us from doing what we’d like to – in my case from fucking someone else; in your case from finding out what it’s like to be fucking only one – then we change the women. Exchange the women. What’s wrong with that? You have Charlie, I have whichever one you’re prepared to part with.’

  ‘I have Charlie!’

  ‘You don’t want Charlie?’

  ‘What do my wants have to do with anything? Do you honestly envisage Charlie leaping into bed with me? Have you forgotten that she nearly had me arrested by the RSPCA? She blackmailed me out of my own cat. She thinks I’m a brute.’

  ‘You are a brute, Marvin. But I’m not offering you the cat …’

  ‘No, that’s right, you’re offering me Charlie. Who is of course renowned for her easygoingness in matters sexual. Look how she’s taking Dotty’s indiscretions. If she finds those silly, how’s she’s going to react to this? Sillier still, Charlie. A lot sillier still.’

  ‘Why don’t you just leave Chas to me. I have a feeling you’ll be surprised by her. Now who do I get? I’d be happy with Hazel but if you’re not fucking her and she’s not expecting you to, there might not be any point. I want whichever one will best reflect back to me the image of myself as bastard.’

  ‘Oh well, in that case, any one of them would do,’ Kreitman said. ‘They all know about bastards. Why don’t you take the lot?’

  For the first time since the quick consumption of his elicoidali, the ever hungry prep-school boy with a gob full of lollies appeared in Charlie Merriweather’s place. But only fleetingly. ‘No,’ he said, after giving Kreitman’s offer a decent period of consideration, ‘I think it’s important you should choose. Make it equally costly. Who’s it going to be, Marvin?’