Cocksure (15 page)

Ah, Ziggy.

Ziggy Spicehandler, née Gerald Spencer,
was
six years younger than Mortimer. His grandfather, Meir Spicehandler, had emigrated to Leeds from Odessa, and opened a tailor shop in the Leylands. His father, Cyril, had changed the family name to Spencer, married a Yorkshire shiksa, and over the years developed the basement tailor shop into an immensely successful clothing factory. Ziggy had not immediately reverted to the old family name. He was known as Gerald Spencer at Rugby and Oxford. Oxford, where Ziggy was sent
down in his second year, for systematically picking up homosexuals and extracting love letters from them for the purpose of blackmail. Ziggy’s profits, though not inconsiderable, were hardly the point. In a brilliantly argued defense, later published as a broadside, Ziggy explained that he had acted as he had to demonstrate that if God were dead, everything was indeed lawful. In Paris, a year later, Ziggy published his first novel, a pornographic tour de force. The lechers and harlots in Ziggy’s fiction, the perverts and whoremasters, went by the names of his mother, his aunts and uncles, his
baba
, his
zeyda
, and Jewish community leaders in Leeds. It was in fact rather more than just another novel of rebellion against Jewish middle-class values. “I acted out the family’s fantasies for them,” Ziggy was still fond of saying. But Ziggy’s father, to whom the novel was dedicated, never got to read the book. He got no further than the dedication, which read:

FOR DADDY

But For The Grace Of Whose Cock,

Ever Big and Stiff …

Even at
RADA
, a few years later, Ziggy still went by the name of Gerald Spencer. However, coming out of
RADA
in 1954, Gerald, as he still was, discovered that his Anglicized name, his expensive middle-class education, his knowledge of stage classics, Latin, Greek, his unexcelled elocution, had all contrived to make him singularly ill-equipped for life in modern England. Ziggy, making the rounds of the agents, soon found out he was only fit for comic relief parts in the new school of the kitchen sink. In 1954, all the real people were working-class.

So Ziggy went to Paris, where he fell in with the Americans in St. Germain des Prés; from there, logically, he drifted to Greenwich Village by way of Ibiza and Mexico, and then even as far north as Canada, where he flourished briefly, impregnating French Canadian
girls, raising babies to the age of three months, and then selling them to childless couples in Manhattan. Settled in New York again, he soon overcame the handicap of his upper-crust British accent sufficiently to return to London, a hipster, knowledgeable about jazz talk, Yiddish slang and drugs. He was reborn Ziggy Spicehandler, a self-confessed Renaissance Man, poet, film maker, actor and painter.

21

T
SSST-TSSST
.

“Griffin, a question, please. It –”

“Not now, Mr. Shalinsky.”

Shapiro brought Segal, and Segal dragged Sam Klein and his boy along to the lecture. Whenever Mortimer made a little joke in passing, Sam Klein slipped two fingers into his mouth and whistled, beckoning for applause. Flushed and stumbling, raising his voice against whispers and yawns, Mortimer rumbled on and on.

“Louder,” barked a voice in the back row. So Mortimer spoke louder.

“What does he say?” somebody called Takifman shouted.

Mortimer waited while Segal translated what he had said into Yiddish.

“Nonsense,” Takifman said.

“Ah, Griffin, a question please –”

“This is not the time, Mr. Shalinsky.”

“– It seems to me that in your appreciation of Shakespeare –”

“May he rest in peace,” Daniels said.

“– we have so far failed to discuss one of the bard’s major plays,
The Merchant of Venice
. I wonder if you could tell me why?”

“Look here, Shalinsky, I do not intend to put up with your insolence for another minute. There are other problems besides the
Jewish problem. This is not the Jewish Thought Literary Society, but my class in ‘Reading for Pleasure.’ I’ll run it however I please and damn your perverse Jewish soul.”

“We’ll see about that,” Shalinsky said, sitting down. “Won’t we,
chaverim?”

Tssst
.

The following morning Mortimer discovered, to his consternation, that Dino Tomasso had hit it lucky again. Three days before the second title in the Our Living History series, the biography of the faded film star, was to be published, the star died from an overdose of heroin. He left a note saying he had done himself in because he had got a fifteen-year-old girl with child, his granddaughter as a matter of fact.

Tomasso asked Mortimer to stay behind after the morning conference. “Mort, I’m not exactly sure how to put this,” he began, when the phone rang, interrupting him.

It was Frankfurt on the line, the efficiency team. They told Tomasso, Mortimer gathered, that the next title in the Our Living History series was to be a biography of a most attractive political crusader. A junior minister in the Labour Government, who was at present campaigning for a new and possibly punitive tax on gambling casinos.

“But he’s so young,” Tomasso protested.

Somebody on the other end of the line began to shout in German. The book, Tomasso was told, had already been commissioned. Tomasso hung up, sweaty, agitated. “I must be getting soft,” he muttered.

“I don’t understand.”

Tomasso, who had quite forgotten Mortimer was still in the office, started. “Never mind,” he said, opening a file on his desk.

Letters from Katansky, Takifman, Segal and others in Mortimer’s “Reading for Pleasure” class had arrived in the first post, complaining about him. It was also rumored that a position demanding Mortimer’s expulsion was being circulated by a noted general practitioner from Golders Green, one I. M. Sinclair. “It’s well-known that Oriole
sponsors those lectures. All this could be bad for our image,” Tomasso said, “if it ever leaked out to the newspapers.”

“The newspapers? Who in the hell would take such a story to them?”

“Mort, are you an anti-Semite?”

“No.”

“Are you Jewish, then?”

Mortimer leaped to his feet.

“It’s a joke,” Tomasso said, “just a joke, for Christ’s sake!”

A buzzer went, interrupting, and Tomasso was summoned to his outer office. Quickly Mortimer scooted round the desk and opened the file, usually locked in the safe, on the Our Living History series. He read two pages, then another. Oh, my God, he thought, no, it can’t be true. Biting back nausea, he shut the file.

“Well,” Tomasso asked, returning to the office, “what are we going to do about it?”

“About what?” Mortimer asked in a small voice.

“These letters. The petition. Your pal Shalinsky.”

“I’m not sure …”

“The Star Maker abhors bad publicity.”

“Does he?”

“Tell you what. You sleep on it,” Tomasso said, brushing an imaginary bit of dust off the Our Living History file, “we’ll talk about it again first thing in the morning. Why, you look terrible, Mort. Anything wrong?”

“Yes,” Mortimer said, averting his eyes from the file. “I must speak with the Star Maker.”

“Easier said than done. The Star Maker is off to America the day after tomorrow.”

The instant Mortimer had gone, Tomasso, enormously pleased with himself, got on the phone to the Star Maker. “Well, well,” he said, “I was right about Griffin after all.”

“How’s that?”

“I left the Our Living History file out –”

“You what?”

“On purpose, Star Maker. He couldn’t wait to bury his nose in it.”

“You Goddamn fool.”

“Me, I’m a fool. Weren’t you the one who said, when I first warned you about him, that he was just another intellectual? Typical sour grapes?”

“All right. Griffin strikes me as an ambitious young man. I’m sure I can handle him.”

“I wonder. He’s got integrity, you know.”

“Has he? Oh, Dino, I think you ought to come over here. I’ve got some wonderful, wonderful news.”

“For me?”

“You said it to me first, Dino. Remember?”

It can’t be true, Mortimer thought, it’s just too incredible.

After the carol service with Agnes Laura Ryerson and the others at Paddington Station, Mortimer did not go directly to his lecture. He went from pub to pub, drinking heavily.

“Ah, Griffin, there is something I would like to ask you –”

“There is something I would like to ask you, Mr. Shalinsky,” Mortimer said, swaying a little.

“And what is that, Griffin?”

“Do me a favor, Shalinsky. I’ve only got four more lectures to give. Don’t come. Stay away. You and your aggressive friends.”

“What?”

“I’d be grateful to you for the rest of my life.”

“But your lectures are marvelous, Griffin. A delight.”

“Some delight.”

“Why, some of your epigrams I have marked down in my notebook to cherish. To memorize, Mr. Griffin.”

“I’ve got news for you, Shalinsky. They’re not mine. I stole them from my professor at Upper Canada.”

“So what? Didn’t Shakespeare –”

“May he rest in peace.”

“– steal from Thomas Kyd? The oral tradition, Griffin, is –”

“Shalinsky, I beg of you … you and your friends … quit my lectures.”

“Absolutely no.”

Emptied, undone, Mortimer said, “all right, then. I regret to announce that this class is now adjourned. There was to have been one more lecture before the Christmas break. I hereby cancel it.”

Stunned faces here and there. Some angry ones too.

“As I will not be seeing you again before the Christmas holidays, I’d like to take this opportunity of wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.” Smiling sardonically, he added, “And to those among you who do not celebrate the birth of our Saviour may I, in any case, wish you a Happy New Year.”

Turning smartly, Mortimer started out of the lecture room.

Tsst-tsst-tsst
.

Mortimer fled, fled as far as the nearest pub, then continued to another, another and another. “Hullo.”

“Hullo, my darling.”

Joyce, worse luck, had not only elected to wait up for Mortimer, but she was tricked out in what he glumly recognized as her seduction robes. A blue chiffon negligée.

“Would you be kind enough to pour me a drink?” Mortimer asked wearily.

“Certainly.”

Then she was in his arms, rubbing against him, kissing him with uncharacteristic passion.

“My darling,” she said unconvincingly.

It was astonishing – humiliating – but Mortimer was unable to manage an erection. My God. This, he grasped instinctively, was more than drunkenness. What Mortimer had secretly feared for
years had come to pass at last. He was not only small, but impotent as well.

“You’re crying. Oh, my darling, please.”

Rocking his head in her arms, smiling inwardly, Joyce understood that she now had the ultimate proof. Mortimer was incapable because he had just come from the other woman, Rachel Coleman.

“Sh,” she said merrily, licensed, she thought. “Sh,” she said, stroking his head. “Sh.”

22

M
ORTIMER AND JOYCE WERE AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE
when the doorbell rang.

“Ziggy! Its Ziggy!” Mortimer embraced his old friend. “God damn it, Ziggy, but I’m glad to see you. If only you knew how glad!”

“Um, sure,” Ziggy said, disengaging himself, glancing apprehensively at Joyce over Mortimer’s shoulder, wondering what manner of reception she would give him. “Look, man, I’ve only got French bread on me. Like there’s this taxi waiting …”

Mortimer hurried outside to settle with the taxi driver.

“Coffee?” Joyce asked noncommittally.

“You’re looking very well,” Ziggy said.

Which was when Joyce realized that she was still wearing her chiffon negligée. “Oh, dear,” she said, her cheeks reddening. “Excuse me a minute.”

Joyce returned buttoned up to the throat in her brown velvet dressing gown, hand in hand with Doug.

Ziggy grinned at the boy. “Remember your Uncle Ziggy, kiddo?”

“Y-y-yes.”

Mortimer poured Ziggy a vodka-on-the-rocks and explained, “This is terrible, Ziggy, but I must go to the office this morning. There’s something I simply must straighten out. Look, don’t go out, will you? I’ll hurry back.”

Ziggy nodded graciously. Joyce poured him another coffee.

“What’s bugging Mortimer? I’ve never seen him look so lousy.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Joyce said, pushing her chair back from the table and fleeing to the kitchen.

Oi, Ziggy thought, oi, as he heard sobs coming from the bedroom. He finished his coffee and poured himself another cup. There was no household money in the coffee tin. Or the sugar canister. Suddenly Doug stood before him, beaming.

“Daddy’s got a popsie,” Doug said.

“Mortimer! No shit?”

“Quite,” Doug said, getting into his coat. “I think it’s rather super, don’t you?”

“You cutting out, kid?”

“I thought perhaps you’d like to speak to Mother alone.”

“I see.”

“I won’t be back until three. I haven’t got a key so I’ll have to ring, actually.”

“You’re a swinger, kid.
Ciao”

“Ciao.”

Ziggy rubbed his jaw pensively. He slipped a hand under his armpit, withdrew it, and smelled. Foo! He reached for the kitchen towel, wet it, and wiped under both armpits. He found the cutlery drawer, took out a paring knife, and methodically cleaned his fingernails. Then Ziggy went into the hall, studied himself in the mirror, and ruffled his hair. He started for the bedroom, where she was still sobbing fitfully. Wait! Ziggy lowered his hand into his underwear, took a good grab, and had a whiff of his fingers. Pig! He went back for the kitchen towel.

“May I come in?” he asked in his tippy-toe voice.

Naturally she didn’t answer. So Ziggy turned the door handle softly and sat down beside her on the bed, where she lay face down. “Joyce?” He began to stroke her tenderly, from top to bottom. “Stop crying, Joyce.” He raked her more slowly now, lingering where it was
warmest. “I hope you’re not contemplating the bitchy thing, the obvious thing …”