J by Howard Jacobson Read Free Book Online Page B

around the ankles. He waist was too thick as well. And her neck. She had become, she realised, as overgrown as the garden in which he’d been rude to her and told her it was a joke. She was grateful, by the way, for having the principles of comedy explained. She hoped she would be better able to get a joke the next time he was rude to her.
    Anyway, if it was of the slightest interest to him – and why should it be? – she had decided to take herself off to Weight Watchers on whatever day they set up their scales in the village.
    That’s me. And now you. What do you intend to do about the thickness of your head?
    She didn’t laugh in order to make it plain that she too had comicways. She wasn’t going to make herself easy for him. If he couldn’t read her, he couldn’t read her. She didn’t want to be with a man who insisted she got his jokes but wouldn’t make the effort to get hers. Nor did she want to be with a man who didn’t hear how much she was risking. Without risk on both sides, why bother?
    Goodbye, she said. Then feared that sounded too final. Or should that be adieu? Unless that came over as desperation. No, goodbye, she said. And wished she’d never bothered.
    What good came of love, when all was said and done? You fell in love and immediately thought about dying. Either because the person you had fallen for had a mind to kill you, or because he exceptionally didn’t and then you dreaded being parted from him.
    That was a joke, wasn’t it?
    And she got that well enough.
    Kevern picked up her message. Relieved and reluctant at the same time – mistrustful of all excitement – he rang her back. He was surprised when she answered.
    Oh! he said.
    Oh what?
    Oh, I never thought you’d be there.
    Good, she thought. He imagines I am out and about.
    They could hear each other swallowing hard.
    Don’t go to Weight Watchers, he told her. It’s a free-for-all. And besides, you are fine as you are.
    Fine? Only fine ?
    More than fine. Perfect. Lovely. She should take no notice of what he had said. There was something wrong with him.
    Something wrong in the sense that he said what he thought without thinking through its consequences, or something wrong in the sense that he saw what wasn’t there?
    He thought about that. Both, he said. And in many more ways besides. Something wrong with him in every possible regard.
    So my ankles aren’t thick?
    No, he said.
    And would it matter to you if they were?
    This he had to think about too. No, he said. It wouldn’t matter to me in the slightest bit. I don’t care how thick your ankles are.
    So they are thick! You have simply decided that to humour me you will turn a blind eye to them at present. Which is generous, but it might mean you will mind them again in the future when you aren’t feeling generous or you are in the mood to be funny. And then it will be too late.
    Too late for what?
    She had said too much.
    He waited for her reply.
    Too late for us to part as friends.
    I promise you, he said.
    You promise me what?
    That we won’t ever part as friends ? No good. That we won’t ever part, full stop ? Too good. That I won’t mind your ankles in the future, was what he decided to say. Promise.
    And now?
    Kevern sighed. You win, he said.
    I’ve won, she thought.
    She’s going to be hard work, this one, he thought.
    His other thought was that she was just the girl for him.
    ii
    The morning after the call he sat on his bench and wondered if he was about to experience happiness and, if so, whether he was up to it. He could have done with someone to talk to – his own age, a little younger, a little older, it didn’t matter, just someone to muse with. But enter someone you can muse with and enter, with her, heartbreak. They were as one on this, he and the girl whose ankles he would never again object to,although they didn’t yet know it: to think of love was to think of death.
    He rarely missed his mother, but he did now. ‘What’s for the best, Mam? Should I