The Making of Henry by Howard Jacobson Page A

what’s yours for half your life. Down, Angus! Angus, stop that!’
    Henry feels under the table for what’s licking him. He finds a long velvet ear and then the wet spongy innards of Angus’s mouth, purple to the touch. It is like putting his hand into warm trifle.
    â€˜Don’t know if you’re planning to move him in with you,’ Henry says, cantankerous as befits his years, ‘but there’s something you need to know about your stepmother’s block – it operates a no pets bigger than a goldfish policy.’
    â€˜Not a pet,’ Lachlan says, swallowing air and banging his chest. ‘Sorry, indigestion. He’s a friend, this one – aren’t you, Angus? I don’t imagine they operate a no friend smaller than a wolfhound policy. And you’re not going to mind, are you?’
    Unable to reply directly, unable to ask a mute for his change or to tell a man with a dog that dogs are definitely not to his taste, Henry steals another look at Angus. The dog rolls his liquid eyes upwards, as though they have never before alighted on anything so wonderful as Henry. Like me at seventeen, Henry thinks. In love with whatever crosses his field of vision. ‘Is he noisy?’ Henry asks.
    â€˜Angus, are you noisy?’ Angus twitches a balaclava ear, then scratches himself. ‘There you are, not a peep.’
    â€˜What is he?’
    â€˜What is he! What does he look like? Red setter.’
    â€˜Is that good?’
    â€˜I’m not sure I understand your question.’
    â€˜Is that a good breed . . . a red setter?’
    â€˜A good breed?’
    â€˜I don’t know dogs,’ Henry has to explain. ‘I never had a dog. I’m just wondering if a red setter is a good one to have.’
    â€˜Depends what you want him for. They’re excellent gun dogs, but I doubt’ – looking at Henry’s unweathered complexion – ‘that it would be a gun dog you’re after.’
    â€˜Oh, I’m not after one,’ Henry says, wishing he’d never got into this. ‘I’m just’ – what is he? – ‘curious.’ Which he isn’t.
    â€˜Well, I’ll tell you what,’ Lachlan says, leaning into Henry and inconsiderately bringing up the air he swallowed earlier, ‘you can “doubleyou ay ell kay” Angus any night you fancy, and get a feel for him.’
    Henry is suddenly vouchsafed a vision of his future. I am to become a dog doubleyou ay ell kayer. I am to become an old codger who doubleyou ay ell kays dogs for another old codger who’s got ulcers.
    â€˜Is he trained?’ he asks.
    â€˜Of course he’s trained. That’s what he’s trained for – to wait for his walk. Oh Lord, that’s torn it. Now he’s heard walk he’s going to want one.’
    And right on cue, Angus makes a little whining noise, stretches his shoulders and sniffs something on the wind being blown in from the Canaries. ‘See,’ Lachlan says, doing the same. ‘Come on then, boy. Off we go.’ He tucks the figurines under one arm and the brass fire tongs under the other. ‘Oh, by the way,’ he remembers, ‘you aren’t free to come along to the service, are you?’
    â€˜The dog’s having a service?’
    â€˜No, the old woman’s. Day after tomorrow. If you could, I’d appreciate it. No one else, you see. Just me. It would be nice if we could muster something a bit more like a congregation. You won’t have to do anything. Just clap.’
    â€˜Clap?’
    â€˜It’s what she wanted. No flowers. No memorials. Just applause. She worked the halls in her younger days. That’s her story anyway. “And we all went up up up up up the mou-ow-ow-ow-ountain” – remember that? – “then we all came dow-ow-ow-ow-own again.” That’s how she got my father, singing him that rubbish. She was past it by then but