Howard Jacobson - Mothers Boy

Howard Jacobson has written sixteen novels and five works of non-fiction. He won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award in 2000 for The Mighty Walzer and then again in 2013 for Zoo Time. In 2010 he won the Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question; he was also shortlisted for the prize in 2014 for J.

Coming From Behind

Peeping Tom

Redback

The Very Model of a Man

No More Mr Nice Guy

The Mighty Walzer

Whos Sorry Now?

The Making of Henry

Kalooki Nights

The Act of Love

The Finkler Question

Zoo Time

J: A Novel

Shylock is My Name

Pussy

Live a Little

Shakespeares Magnanimity (with Wilbur Sanders)

In the Land of Oz

Roots Schmoots

Seriously Funny: An Argument for Comedy

Whatever It Is I Dont Like It

The Dogs Last Walk

The Swag Man (Kindle Single)

When will Jews be forgiven the Holocaust? (Kindle Single)

To Jakey and Neetie

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.

Michel deMontaigne

My mother died today. It is 3 May 2020. She is ninety-seven years old. I have had premonitions of her dying for the last seventy of those years, on occasions hearing her calling my name in the night. But last night she was silent and today she crept under the radar of my forebodings.

Many are succumbing to Covid-19 but my mother hasnt died of any virus. Two days ago, she complained of a bad pain in her head and fell almost immediately into unconsciousness. My sister, who lives with her, and her daughter, who lives round the corner, were quickly by her bedside. My brother and I are locked down in Portishead and London respectively and have been unable to get to Manchester to see her. Quietly and unobtrusively, she drifts out of this world altogether. This was always her chosen way of going, without fuss or notice. I dont know whether shed have wanted us to be with her given her bodily compunctions, probably not but she would definitely not have wanted us to take any risks getting there.

I am upset that the pain she complained of was in her head. She feared for her head. I too, when I was small, feared for her head. As a young woman she suffered migraines so badly that when she went to bed with her hands over her eyes I was afraid she would not survive the night. Ours was a mental relationship. It was our heads that joined us. I dread dying with a pain in mine.

Wed spoken on the phone a few days before she died and, but for my having to repeat everything I said twice three times if it was a joke wed had a good conversation. At the beginning of the year, when the virus was first mentioned, she had expressed surprise I was taking elaborate precautions. Oh, Howard, you arent worrying about that, are you? As though she hadnt schooled me to prepare for eventualities undreamed of either by the wildest dystopians or the most minute obsessives.

The day I left home to go to university shed reminded me to take enough toilet paper.

What, for three years?

Until you settle in.

I think Cambridge will have toilet paper, I said. But I took a roll just in case.

Yet now that we really did have to contend with a calamity equal to her anxieties, she had turned perversely carefree. Oh, Howard It was like having Mr Micawber for a mother. One minute sunk in the deepest gloom, facing imminent catastrophe, the next sitting up on the back of a coach, cheerfully eating chestnuts out of a paper bag. Had she not been ninety-seven and bedridden I might have imagined her doing cartwheels.

By the time of our final conversation, however, she had rethought and was back to her old apocalyptic self. Ive worked out what this virus is up to, she told me. It wont be happy until its taken everyone and everything. After which, she moved on seamlessly to cheese. Id been sending her gifts of mature Cheddar cheese because we all like mature Cheddar cheese in our family, ideally grilled on toast, and because she cant eat chocolates and doesnt much care for flowers. This Cheddar grills especially well. But I dont want you to send me more, she insisted. It must be costing you a fortune.

I told her I could afford it. Her reasoning wasnt always easy to follow but I thought I could see what led her to ask next how my book was going.

OK.

What is it again?

A memoir.

Whats it about?

Me, Ma, what do you think?

She sounded concerned. Is that a good idea?

Probably not.

What about you?

Was she worrying Id write about my failed marriages? The bad job Id made of being a father? The friends Id let down? My gift for unhappiness? Her?

About how I became a writer.

You were always a writer.

I know, but I was forty before I wrote anything.

You couldnt have been!

Well, I was.

I dont believe that.

Well, its true.

So what was stopping you?

Thats one of the questions Im asking in my memoir. But the short answer is being Jewish.

Being Jewish! Oh, you arent going to be horrible, are you?

I hope not. After all, if it was being Jewish that held me back it was being Jewish that got me going.

I have said her reasoning took unexpected turns, but what she said next soared into the realms of the fantastical. She told me she loved me.

Im ashamed to say I roared with laughter. Ma, I said, thats not the kind of thing we say to each other.

And it wasnt. Love talk was not us.

Well, I do love you, she said.

I should have known then that she was dying. Id laughed but I was overwhelmed by feelings I didnt recognise. Im glad, I said then plunged into the deep, dark chambers of the hitherto unexpressed, because I love you.

There. Said it. She nearly a hundred, I in my seventies, and wed finally said that we loved each other.

It astonishes me.

What that wed said it, or that it had taken so long?

Both.

Since I began writing these reminiscences while she was still alive, I will keep her as though alive throughout them. Tense doesnt matter that much when youre remembering, anyway. Things that didnt happen could have happened or could happen yet. You can be too fussy about the actualities. Best to throw open the windows and let the winds of peradventure blow through as they will.

I am born. It is August 1942. My father steps out of his barracks in North Wales, puts out his hand and feels no rain, looks up and sees no bombs, hopes the quiet sky augurs well for my mother who is due to give birth to me any minute, indeed might already have done so, and hops onto a train. Men didnt feel it necessary to witness the miracle of creation first-hand in those days; it was enough to be in the vicinity. I think he will be pleased to discover I am a boy. Many years later he buys me boxing gloves and he may already be imagining going a few rounds with me as he settles back in the compartment and goes to sleep. For an active man he sleeps a lot. I will inherit this gene from him. Alas, not the boxing gene as well. Its a bit early to be confessing I was a disappointment to him. But I cant introduce him without also introducing the remorse in which I clothe every memory and thought of him. Im sorry, Dad, I wasnt the boy youd have picked had you been offered an assortment.