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Chapters (27)
  1. Contents
  2. About the Book
  3. About the Author
  4. Also by Howard Jacobson
  5. Dedication
  6. Title Page
  7. Prologue
  8. Part One
  9. Chapter I
  10. Chapter II
  11. Chapter III
  12. Chapter IV
  13. Chapter V
  14. Chapter VI
  15. Chapter VII
  16. Part Two
  17. Chapter I
  18. Chapter II
  19. Chapter III
  20. Chapter IV
  21. Chapter V
  22. Chapter VI
  23. Chapter VII
  24. Chapter VIII
  25. Chapter IX
  26. Chapter X
  27. Copyright

‘And that’s what you’d do now if you had a Horace Moule to introduce me to?’

‘I might.’

‘Well find one, Barney, and let’s see just how much pleasure it gives you.’

‘I might,’ I threatened. ‘I just might.’

I ought to say that menace has never really suited me. I’m good with scorn or derision, but I’ve never been at home with threats. And it’s the same with anger. When I lose my temper, or try to, I feel that I also lose my stature. I seem to give way at the wrists and ankles. My head drops into my shoulders. Towards the end of this disagreement with Sharon I could actually feel myself shrinking by the metre. Whereas Sharon always rose on the back of her rage and flashed divine fire. Her bosom didn’t so much swell as burgeon. Her hair hissed. And tonight she positively snarled, as no heroine had snarled for a hundred years – I swear she ejaculated, as no modern heroine would ever be allowed to ejaculate – ‘Ha!’

Looking up at her from the little pile of myself on the floor, I recalled the night she swung from a rope outside Dorset County Prison doing her Sophie Tucker imitations for Joseph Poorgrass and Grandfer Cantle. Lacking language they had expressed their approbation in low grunts; but even those had made a wild music in my ear. How much the more so, then, was I eager to see Sharon appraised, apprized, by one of Horace Moule’s discernment and worth – a slightly older man of learning and refinement, the son of a good Christian family, a classical scholar, a mentor, a bringer on of the young, a reviewer yet.

‘I might,’ I repeated, long after there was any need to. ‘I very well might.’

Chapter IV

CHAPTER IV

[1]

‘HORACE, MY COUSIN Tryphena. Tryphena, this is my esteemed friend Horace. If you two must get together clandestinely in London while I’m slaving away for a better life in an architect’s office in Weymouth – and I have to tell you that I do not consider the hottest summer in living memory to be a justifiable provocation – but if you must, then I trust that you will at least have the decency to report to me everything that happens in some detail.’