Who's Sorry Now? by Howard Jacobson

which he’d actually caught as it flew from Kreitman’s pocket in the fracas, and checked if it really was Hazel he had rung earlier in the evening to say he’d be late home. Home? Where
was
home? And how
many
homes did Kreitman have?
    Sexual curiosity can be a terrible affliction when it gets its teeth into a grown man. Charlie Merriweather believed it was slowly separating him from his reason. No, not slowly – rapidly! How long does it take to go mad? Overnight, if you’ve been putting in the groundwork for thirty years.
    When he was a boy Charlie had wondered along with every other boy how things worked, where things went and when he was going to get his turn to find out. They were in it together. It was all part of the fun. He remembered one boy who was more precocious than everyone else, who had a moustache when he was eleven and was locked into a serious relationship with a girl when he was barely thirteen. Simon Lawrence. He wore a locket containing his girlfriend’s picture round his neck and was reputed to have inside knowledge of oral sex. The others enviedhim crazily, as goes without saying. They stole the locket and put shoe polish on his balls so that his girlfriend wouldn’t like the taste, though there was some controversy in the matter of whether tasting balls formed a part of oral sex. Charlie Merriweather had thought not. Why would any girl want to taste Simon Lawrence’s balls? Simon Lawrence sealed his own fate on that one. ‘Why shouldn’t she?’ he said. So on went the polish. They also wrapped a turd in silver paper and hid it in his schoolbag. With a bit of luck his girlfriend would find it and think it was a gift to her. End of relationship. That much they
did
know about girls. But their envy was equivocal. Simon Lawrence’s experience put him offside, excluded him from the group. He seemed to spend every break reading letters, biting pencils and then composing answers. It was like extra homework. He looked sad most of the time, frowning, burdened by his dark knowledge. It was better to be with the others and know nothing. Knowing nothing was at least a laugh. But now Charlie felt he was the one cast out, the last one left standing in the playground in the freezing dark, wondering what hilarity drew the others to the pavilion. And kept them there.
    He had been a shy boy. Up to a point they had all been shy boys. Being a boy is a shying business. Over and above that, though, he’d been an unlucky boy. He was the child of odder than usual parents. The son of a more handsome than usual mother. And of a sadder than usual father. Few of his friends went home to happy households at the weekend, but Charlie knew of no one else who went home to find his father quaking under the kitchen table in his raincoat.
    Long before then, when Charlie was little, his father used to embarrass him by turning cartwheels in public places, standing on his head while reciting ‘You are old, Father William’, and otherwise playing the eccentric English schoolmaster. Sometimes, for garden parties or village fêtes, he wore a mortarboard, sometimes plus-fours and a shirt with a frilly front. ‘
Mon jabot
,’ he calledit. ‘
Mon jabot du Jabberwock
.’ Who was he being? Charlie didn’t know. Just someone from the past. Someone harmless. Someone curiously learned. And ineffective. Charlie’s father had golden hair and a cherub’s face. Even the wrong way up he looked angelic. Outside the family, Charlie noticed, everybody acted as though they adored his father and couldn’t get enough of him upside down reciting nonsense. But a child takes his cue from his mother in matters of embarrassment, and Charlie Merriweather’s mother was abashed, therefore so was Charlie.
    Back home after another spontaneous recitation in the park –
    O My agèd Uncle Arly!
Sitting on a heap of Barley
Thro’ the silent hours of night, –
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