Cocksure (3 page)

Hy bounced to his feet and pulled his shirt up high as his chin, revealing his narrow pigeon chest, his heart hammering, the ribs thrusting through.

“Punch me, luv. Let me have it.”

“Oh, Hy, please,” Diana said.

“No, no. Go ahead. All your might, now.”

“But, Hy –”

“I said punch me.”

Diana pulled back obligingly, grimaced, and simulated a mighty blow to Hy’s tense, flat stomach.

“Didn’t feel a thing,” Hy said, letting his shirt drop.

“But Mortimer didn’t mean to offend you,” Diana protested.

“One day in Holland, at a time when we were bloody short on ammo, the major called for a volunteer to lead a recon into the forest. I stepped forward immediately and you know what one of my
brother
officers said just loud enough for me to catch? ‘They’re all the same,’ he said. ‘Pushy.’ But if I hadn’t been the first to step forward he would have put me down for a coward. They’re all the same, goys, what do I need ’em for?”

“What about me?” Diana asked, nuzzling him.

All at once Hy gathered Diana’s long blond hair in his fist and yanked.

“Oh, Hy! Hy! Please let me go!”

“Come on,” Hy said, pulling her. “Into the bedroom. Let’s put that big goysy ass of yours to work.”

Diana, who towered over Hy, contrived to be dragged, protesting, into the bedroom.

“Oh, I know you in this state,” she said. “You’re going to be too big for me. You’re going to hurt me.”

Hy’s laugh was gargantuan, charged with menace.

“You filthy Jew,” Diana hollered, turning round and stooping for Hy to unzip her. “You always have only one thing in mind.”

“British twat,” Hy said, butting her in the belly and diving onto the bed after her.

“Ikey hooky-nose!”

“Rodean snob!”

In the ensuing struggle, Diana forgot herself and rolled over onto Hy, knocking the breath out of him. “Oh, I
am
sorry, darling,” Diana said tenderly.

“What?” Hy snarled, inflamed, whacking her in the ribs, beating her on the belly. “What?”

In the morning Hy, his mood masterful but lenient, thoughtfully provided a pillow for Diana. “For your butt,” he said. Hy was eating his Fruitifort when the phone rang. He answered it, his voice thick: “Hullo.”

“Hullo, Hy.”

“Oh, it’s you.”

“Yeah. Did I wake you up? I can call back later.”

“I’m up now. I could never fall asleep again. So just tell me what you want.”

“I called to apologize.”

“For what?”

“For last night.”

“What did you do last night?”

“I’m sorry if anything I said gave you the impression – the erroneous impression – that, if it were the case, I would not be proud to be Jewish.”

“What made you think that offended me?”

“Joyce. I told her she was imagining things.”

“She certainly was. I can’t think of anything you’d say that could offend me.”

“Oh.”

“And what ever gave you the screwy idea that I was touchy about being Jewish?”

“Oh, you know Joyce. She’s hypersensitive.”

“Okay, let’s say I’m familiar with your sexually frustrated wife, but –”

“My
what wife?”

“But what about you? I think you’re being very condescending. I don’t go for the idea of this phone call.”

“Look, let’s just forget anything happened last night. Now would you mind repeating what you said about my –”

“Nothing did happen last night. Except in the perversely racial-conscious mind of your wife.”

“Hy, wait a minute. This is dreadful. I didn’t call you up to quarrel. Tell you what. Why don’t you and Diana come up for drinks tomorrow night? They’re doing an old Gary Cooper Western on BBC-2.”

“Some of us have better things to do at night than watch
TV.”

“Now what in the hell do you mean by that?”

“Skip it. Forget it.”

“Gladly. Can we expect you tomorrow night, then?”

“Diana’s coming down with the flu.”

“Oh, I see. I see, old pal. Well, I do hope she feels better soon.”

“Now what kind of a crack is that?”

“All I said was –”

“I heard you the first time, chickenshit. Thanks. I’ll give her your heartfelt message.”

“Well, that’s very good of you. Now would you mind repeating what you said about my wi –”

“Goodbye,” Hy said, and he hung up.

Mortimer shot an apprehensive glance at Joyce, smoking languorously at the breakfast table, her dressing gown falling open over her long coltish legs. Joyce was tall, with naturally curly brown hair, her breasts small. Okay, she’s good-looking, radiating health in a windblown Canadian way, but she’s not beautiful. She –

“How come,” Joyce asked, “you have no Negroes on the editorial staff at Oriole Press?”

“What?”

Joyce lit a cigarette, inhaling with immense satisfaction.

“Because we’ve never had a Negro apply for an editorial job. Should I search Camden Town for one?”

“That would hardly be necessary. I could introduce you to one or two candidates.”

Joyce worked for the Anti-Apartheid League. And Oxfam.

“Could you?”

“We never have any for dinner. It might make for a change, you know.”

“Yes. Quite. Um, men or women? I mean that you could introduce me to.”

“Oh, are you ever prejudiced! You’re just a cesspool of received
WASP
ideas.”

Doug, hearing their voices raised, suddenly stood at the kitchen door, beaming.

4

N
OTHING FLUSHED DOUG OUT OF HIS ROOM LIKE A
quarrel; he even tried to provoke them, for the truth was he had a gripe. Nearly all of Doug’s fabulously rich classmates at Beatrice Webb House came from broken homes, which gave him reason to envy them. Take Neil Ferguson, for instance. He had been a nervy kid, a bed-wetter, until his parents were divorced two years ago, remarried almost immediately, and began to compete for Neil’s affections. So that now, come the Easter hols, Neil could create traumas in two households while he vacillated between Bermuda with his mother and stepfather or Paris with his father and stepmother.

Doug was being misled, Mortimer knew, he was clearly better off in a happy – well, reasonably happy – home, but all the same Doug and two or three other Beatrice Webb boys felt deprived because they only had two parents each.

Damn that school, Mortimer thought.

No sooner had Mortimer driven Doug to school and turned into Regent’s Park than he developed a puncture and had to change the tire himself. In the rain.

At Lloyd’s bank, on Oxford Street, a day begun badly took an anguishing turn. Ahead of Mortimer in the queue there was an attractive, elegantly dressed girl.
Colored
. Now, Mortimer was certainly not
prejudiced, but even so he had to admit that the first thing he noticed about the attractive, elegantly dressed girl was that she was colored. When Mortimer had first entered the bank, there she was standing in the queue with
nobody behind her
. There were shorter queues leading to other tellers, there was even one teller with nobody to serve, but Mortimer, remembering Sharpsville, remembering Selma, Alabama, immediately fell in behind the attractive colored girl.

Well, she certainly was a jumpy one, obviously unsettled by his waiting behind her, possibly because there were now two other tellers with nobody to serve or maybe because he had edged too close behind her. Not that he could retreat a step now – that would be insulting. Finally the girl endorsed all her checks, eight of them, each made out for twenty-five pounds, handed them over (somewhat nervously, it seemed to Mortimer) and turned to go, which was when it happened. The attractive, elegantly dressed colored girl dropped one of her white gloves, and for an instant the two of them were suspended in time, like the frozen frame in a movie. Mortimer’s first instinct was to retrieve her glove, but he checked it. She was, after all, colored, and he did not want her to think him condescending on the one hand, or sexually presumptuous on the other. And then her smile, a mere trace of a smile, was ambiguous. Was she waiting for him to retrieve the glove or was she amused by his dilemma? His ofay dilemma. Or perhaps she wasn’t a militant and she thought it prejudiced of Mortimer not to retrieve the glove as he would have done instantly had she been white. Yes, he thought, that’s it, but by this time she had scooped up the glove herself, cursing him in parting. “Mother-fucker,” the elegantly dressed colored girl said; Mortimer was prepared to swear she called him mother-fucker.

But I’m not prejudiced, he thought, outraged. Scrutinizing his own attitudes as honestly as possible, Mortimer felt (Joyce be damned) that he could objectively say of himself, coming out of Lloyd’s bank on Oxford Street on a windy morning in October 1965, that, considering
his small-town Ontario origins, his middle-class background, he was refreshingly free of prejudice. Even Ziggy Spicehandler would have to agree. Ziggy, he thought, how I miss him.

Joyce phoned him at the office. Before she could get a word out, he said, “If you ask me, almost all of Doug’s problems can be traced to that bloody school.”

“Would you rather that he was educated as you were?”

Mortimer had been to Upper Canada College. “I don’t see why not.”

“Full of repressions and establishment lies.”

Establishment. Camp.
WASP
. She had all the bloody modish words.

“Well, I –”

“We’ll discuss it later. Just please please don’t be late for the rehearsal.”

Mortimer had only been invited to the rehearsal for the Christmas play because he was in publishing and Dr. Booker, the founder, wanted Oriole to do a book about Beatrice Webb House. Drama was taught at the school by a Miss Lilian Tanner, who had formerly been with Joan Littlewood’s bouncy group. A tall, willowy young lady, Miss Tanner wore her long black hair loose, a
CND
button riding her scrappy bosom. She assured Mortimer he was a most welcome visitor to her modest little workshop. Mortimer curled into a seat in the rear of the auditorium, trying to appear as unobtrusive as possible. He was only half attentive to begin with, reconciled to an afternoon of tedium larded with cuteness.

“We have a visitor this afternoon, class,” Miss Tanner began sweetly. “Mr. Mortimer Griffin of Oriole Press.”

Curly-haired heads, gorgeous pigtailed heads, whipped around, everybody giggly.

“Now all together, class …”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Griffin.”

Mortimer waved, unaccountably elated.

“Settle down now,” Miss Tanner demanded, rapping her ruler against the desk. “Settle down, I said.”

The class came to order.

“Now, this play that we are going to perform for the Christmas concert was written by … class?”

“A marquis!”

“Bang on!” Miss Tanner smiled, flushed with old-fashioned pride in her charges, and then she pointed her ruler at a rosy-cheeked boy. “What’s a marquis, Tony?”

“What hangs outside the Royal Court Theatre.”

“No, no, darling.”

There were titters all around. Mortimer laughed himself, covering his mouth with his hand.

“That’s a marquee. This is a marquis. A –”

A little girl bobbed up, waving her arms. Golden head, red ribbons. “A French nobleman!”

“Righty-ho! And what do we know about him … class?”

A boy began to jump up and down. Miss Tanner pointed her ruler at him.

“They put him in prison.”

“Yes. Anybody know why?”

Everybody began to call out at once.

“Order! Order!” Miss Tanner demanded. “What ever will Mr. Griffin think of us?”

Giggles again.

“You have a go, Harriet. Why was the marquis put in prison?”

“Because he was absolutely super.”

“Mmnn …”

“And such a truth-teller.”

“Yes. Any other reasons … Gerald?”

“Because the Puritans were scared of him.”

“Correct. And what else do we know about the marquis?”

“Me, me!”

“No, me, miss. Please!”

“Eeny-meeny-miny-mo,” Miss Tanner said, waving her ruler. “Catch a bigot by the toe … Frances!”

“That he was the freest spirit what ever lived.”

“Who
ever lived. Who, dear. And who said that?”

“Apollinaire.”

“Jolly good. Anything else … Doug?”

“Um, he cut through the banality of everyday life.”

“Indeed he did. And who said that?”

“Jean Genet.”

“No.”

“Hugh Hefner,” another voice cried.

“Dear me, that’s not even warm.”

“Simone de Beauvoir.”

“Right. And who is she?”

“A writer.”

“Good. Very good. Anybody know anything else about the marquis?”

“He was in the Bastille and then in another place called Charenton.”

“Yes. All together, class … Charenton.”

“Charenton.”

“Anything else?”

Frances jumped up a again. “I know. Please, Miss Tanner. Please, me.”

“Go ahead, darling.”

“He had a very, very, very big member.”

“Yes indeed. And –”

But now Frances’s elder brother, Jimmy, leaped to his feet, interrupting. “Like Mummy’s new friend,” he said.

Shrieks. Laughter. Miss Tanner’s face reddened. For the first time she stamped her foot. “Now I don’t like that, Jimmy. I don’t like that one bit.”

“Sorry, Miss Tanner.”

“That’s tittle-tattle, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Miss Tanner.”

“We mustn’t tittle-tattle on one another here.”

“Sorry …”

“And now,” Miss Tanner said, stepping up to the blackboard, “can anyone give me another word for member?”

“Cock,”
came a little girl’s shout; and Miss Tanner wrote it down.

“Beezer.”

“Pwick.”

“Male organ.”

“Penis.”

“Hard-on.”

Miss Tanner looked dubious. She frowned. “Not always,” she said, and she didn’t write it down.

“Fucking-machine.”

“Putz.”

“You’re being sectarian again, Monty,” Miss Tanner said, somewhat irritated. “Joy stick.” A pause.