Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido Read Free Book Online

Polytechnic? Earning extra money to buy you elegant sweaters like John’s?’ Jacob turns to fix her with a mixture of caustic resignation and love.
    â€˜I heard all that this morning,’ he says. ‘I don’t need a replay. All I’ve got to say is if there’s any more music brewing in this house, John and I are off to the pub. The rest of you can get your rocks off Nymphs and bloody Shepherds. A highly suitable pursuit, on reflection, for women and children of a Sunday evening.’ He is sitting on the grass at her feet with his head between her knees. She is in an upright wicker chair behind him. Having put down her tea cup, she is running her hands through his hair.
    â€˜As if we don’t all know you can’t sing in tune,’ Jonathan says, rising to him obligingly. Jane smiles. ‘Quite so, Jont,’ she says. ‘There’s never much to be gained from having Jake sing, other than the odd International Brigade song, got out of tune. Sweet husband, why not take John to the pub for an hour? Then he can make us amends and do us some lovely supper on your return.’
    â€˜With the greatest of pleasure,’ John says.
    They go, Jacob and John, in a spirit of attractive but excluding male camaraderie, snatching up cigarettes and keys.
    â€˜We’ll take my car,’ John says. ‘There’s just the two of us.’
    â€˜Call that thing a car?’ Jacob says. ‘I call it an ego trip.’
    We sing ‘O Worship the King’ in four parts unaccompanied. It would be like being back in the school choir, were I not so dazzled by the sonorous depth of Roger’s voice. Jane, who stands beside me, begs me to overlook her sibilant S. Then Roger and Jonathan sing for us. Two beautiful, mournful songs full of black despair and crystal tears.
Christall Teares.
The songs cause me ever after to speak the name of John Dowland with reverence.
    â€˜Here,’ Jane says. ‘These.’
    â€˜I can’t sing tenor,’ Roger says, declining the first with too much nicety for the spirit of the occasion.
    â€˜Oh for Christssake, Rogsie,’ Jonathan says, coaxingly. ‘Jane sings sounding as though she needs a new bloody washer in her larynx.’
    â€˜Thanks, Jont,’ Jane says.
    â€˜I can’t sing tenor, that’s all,’ Roger says. ‘You sing it.’
    â€˜Okay, okay, I’ll sing it,’ Jonathan says. ‘Give us the bloody thing.’ He raises his hands like a stage pedagogue. ‘Quiet, quiet,’ he says preciously. ‘Absolute quiet please. Stick your chewing gum behind your ear, Rosie.’
    Go christall teares
Like to the morning showers
And sweetly weepe
Into thy Ladyes brest.
    The second is a duet. Jonathan, to my very great surprise, flukes his voice up into a piercing alto for this item. I have never heard a post-pubertal male sing like a girl before and it confronts me at first like the shock of meeting a man in drag at a street corner.
Down and arise
goes the refrain.
Down and arise I never shall.
With their respective appearances they contradict the song in its picturesque melancholia. Roger with his jaunty butterfly appliqué’d to his bum pocket. Jonathan with his hairy rugger legs and sockless feet. Both of them so manifestly on top of the heap and very likely to stay there. Jane plays the piano for them. She turns to Roger when they get to the end.
    â€˜Very nice, chaps,’ she says. ‘Get the babies out of the bath will you, Roggs,’ she says, delegating incorrigibly. As he complies, Jonathan fits his flute together, making trial blows over the mouthpiece. Rosie blows a wobbly minuet and shakes spittle out of her descant recorder. The little Goldman twins come in then, standing damp at the gills in their cotton-knit pyjamas, and listen to Jonathan, who plays them ‘Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son’. They try to join in but forget the words, which makes Jane