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

smile.
    â€˜Darling babies,’ she says, allotting them a moment’s casualattention. They appear on the whole to be the successful product of benign neglect. Jane is nothing if not eclectic and has her family make chamber music of the ‘Yellow Submarine’ on the flute, violin, piano and descant recorder. They end prematurely in laughter.
    â€˜You’re too good for the rest of us, Rogsie,’ she says. ‘How do you bear with us?’ From Roger’s expression, it is clear that he does so only with difficulty.

Eight
    Fish fingers and beans from a tin is what Jacob crams into his three youngest children upon his return. It is his weekly gesture towards domestic involvement. He processes both food and children very fast, giving orders like a genial Scout master. I observe him at it, because I am in the kitchen participating in John Millet’s prodigious soup-making. He makes a soup with Jane Goldman’s excess tomatoes, donning her butcher’s apron and pushing up his sky-blue wristbands to reveal the bronzed sinews of his lovely wrists. He requires, for his creation, the addition of ground rice, egg yolks, a great deal of grinding in a stone mortar and some careful sieving. Jonathan and I are delegated to dip strips of bread first into a pool of melted butter and then into Parmesan cheese which Jane draws out of her larder in a large caterer’s pack. These are then toasted in the oven and are to be eaten with the soup. Roger is at the table, once again in the cap, reading a Swahili phrasebook.
    â€˜Jont,’ he says, ‘listen to this. “Boy, I asked you to bring
all
my bags. You have brought me only three.”’ There is more levity in his dealing with Jonathan than with anyone else. Jonathan laughs.
    â€˜Jesus,’ he says.
    â€˜Who writes this drivel, Rogsie?’ Jacob says. He takes the book from his son and examines the fly leaf. ‘German missionaries,’ he says in disgust. ‘What can you expect?’
    â€˜The sieve is most important,’ John Millet says to me. I have done with the bits of bread and have taken on the sieve. ‘Don’t put it back on the heat, child, or we’ll have scrambled eggs.’
    â€˜Twiddled egg soup,’ Jonathan says, playing the fool. Jane is sitting at the table with Roger, looking tired and pregnant. We eat at the kitchen table when the children have finished, and all agree that the soup is quite delicious.
    â€˜These infants must go to bed,’ Jacob says. ‘And you too, Mrs Goldman. You look like a corpse. You bang at that
klavier
all day when you should be in bed with your feet up.’ He initiates the process of getting the children to bed by enacting an evening burlesque, making jokes and uttering threats which creates a crescendo of boisterous indignation. He is a great prima donna over precisely which bedtime stories he will and will not read. He vetoes everything the little ones propose.
    â€˜Ameliaranne Stiggins!’ Annie screeches excitedly.
    â€˜Ameliaranne Stiggins?’ Jacob says, affecting stern, incredulous disgust. ‘Backwards is the only way I will consent to read Ameliaranne Stiggins. Now John here – he’s your man. He’ll do you Ameliaranne Stiggins translated into Italian.’ John smiles. ‘Give us “Mrs Stiggins sat bump upon her favourite chair” in Italian, John.’ John doesn’t rise to it.
    â€˜Children are your fix, Jake,’ he says, ‘not mine. I’ve left my cigarettes in the car.’ He leaves to get them. Jane selects Jonathan to wash the dishes.
    â€˜Come on, troops,’ Jacob says. ‘Go on ahead of me. Ten seconds is all I need to finish my coffee. We’ll have the
Just So Stories
or the E. Nesbit.’ Surprisingly, Jacob is a traditionalist, it seems, when it comes to child literature. He swats his twins on the rump with Roger’s Swahili phrasebook. ‘Move,’ he