Brother of the More Famous Jack

by Barbara Trapido

  ‘Perhaps he goes for the plainsong,’ I say.

  ‘Time was when he went for the plainsong, Kath,’ Jonathan says, ‘but now he goes for the hard stuff. The Body and the Blood. It’s the real McCoy with Rogsie, I assure you.’ Rather successfully, he takes the pain out of the thing for me. I never heard anyone call the transubstantiation the real McCoy before, though I am accustomed to irreverence.

  ‘He’s very generous with it,’ he says. ‘Made me his child’s godfather. A little archaic do around the font. He knows I intend to be an altogether secular godfather, of course. I deal in icecream and treats, not in the word of God. None of it could really surprise you, Kath. Didn’t he always behave like Savonarola?’

  ‘Bloody Jiminy Cricket, more like,’ I say, provoked a little by Jonathan’s indulgence towards him.

  ‘Oh, come,’ Jonathan says reproachfully, ‘you can’t mean to be so nasty.’

  ‘He used to wear that hat,’ I say, ‘that dead grandfather’s hat. That morbid Hamlet hat.’ Jonathan is clearly delighted to be reminded of it.

  ‘The hat,’ he says, ‘exactly so. A Hamlet hat. “Lay not that flattering unction to your soul that not my madness but your trespass speaks.”’

  ‘Other way round,’ I say, ‘else it doesn’t make sense. “Not your trespass but my madness speaks.”’

  ‘Right,’ he says. ‘He’s a poor, sweet, loony Jew. File him away. I expect you have. He was never all that nice to you.’

  ‘He couldn’t cast me off without unloading blame,’ I say. ‘He made me a devastating heap of my iniquities. All nice and symmetrical. Everything, Jonathan. You wouldn’t believe. How I’d disappointed him reading Good Housekeeping when I had a brain to feed. How I was hick enough to knit.’ Jonathan grins.

  ‘I did try laying him a bet once, that you’d knit your own graduation robes,’ he says, ‘but Rogsie was not amused.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear a word in his favour,’ I say. ‘He was a pig to me, your brother. He made me feel like Mrs Weetabix. I was so under his spell I believed him in a way. He buggered up my self-esteem. I didn’t have his advantages, did I? He got me where I was most vulnerable and all because I wouldn’t dress like a kibbutznik for him.’ Jonathan laughs.

  ‘Don’t be humble, Kaffrin,’ he says. ‘You’ve no cause to be humble. It might comfort you to know that the last time I saw Roggs he was making a violin from a paper pattern. Crosslegged, he was, on the floor, like the Tailor of Gloucester. He’s Mr Fixit, is Roggs. He makes little red lights go on and off on the cooker for his wife. It’s like Star Wars in there. You know that he’s married, do you? A sweet Christian wench, part-time Maths tutor for the Open University.’ I pull a sour face, to cover the fact that I find this threatening.

  ‘Don’t let that trouble you, Kath. It’s a putting-out system for dons’ wives. It isn’t the big time.’ Jonathan has inherited Jacob’s ability to air a good prejudice without inhibition.

  ‘Is she flat-chested?’ I ask, because, to my shame, this is important to me. Jonathan can obviously not believe what he hears.

  ‘What?’ he says.

  ‘Is she flat-chested?’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘Did you want her to be?’

  ‘I am sorry to say that it would have been a great comfort to me,’ I say.

  ‘Good God, Kath,’ he says, ‘the woman is an innocuous parsonage-educated school-marm with pretty boobs. Since she troubles you so much, I will be good to you and tell you that she wears a crucifix in her cleavage.’

  ‘Thank you, Jonathan,’ I say, ‘that’s a big help. A crucifix in the cleavage is more hick than knitting, isn’t it? Don’t you think so?’

  ‘I confess it’s not a great turn-on for me. It says to me, I know you want them, but I have committed them to Jesus. It mixes the sacred and the profane in a manner which doesn’t excite me.’

  ‘Yes, exactly,’ I say.

  ‘Sally wouldn’t see it that way,’ he says. ‘She’s not devious. She’s just a nice little Maths bod. She’s not a creature of subtle charm like you.’

  I find Jonathan’s brazen and extravagant compliments rather enjoyable.

  ‘Are you married, Kath?’ he says. ‘Are you committed?’ I reach instinctively for signs of commitment around the cleavage but I have none. Neither cleavage nor commitment. Jonathan notices and tries not to smile.

  ‘No,’ I say, ‘why?’

  ‘Because I’d like to chance my arm,’ Jonathan says. ‘I fancy you. I always have.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ I say. Listening to Jonathan talk has left me slightly high. It is like watching somebody relentlessly winning at ninepins.

  ‘It’s the truth,’ he says. ‘From the moment you walked into my parents’ house wearing those sexy fantastic shoes, I said to myself, Jesus, Goldman, you were born too late.’

  ‘What a shameless, filthy liar you are, Jonathan,’ I say, but I enjoy the game. ‘This is all complete rubbish.’

  ‘It’s not rubbish,’ he says. ‘Roggs had the advantage over me, didn’t he? He was older, and turning your head with his pretty face and cultured talk. Always impelled to improve your mind, he was. If it wasn’t Thomas bloody Morley and the broken consort, it was the chemical elements or some other damn thing. You wouldn’t even come fishing with me, that day. You chose to listen to Roger playing Stravinsky.’

  ‘I was scared of you, Jonathan,’ I say, blushing foolishly. ‘You were a very bolshie, menacing adolescent. I must say that I noticed how you pined and gave up eating for me.’

  ‘Did you want homage then?’ he says. ‘Yellow stockings, cross-gartered?’

  ‘Not on those butchy rugger legs of yours,’ I say. Jonathan casts an eye over a section of grey sock protruding below his trouser hem.

  ‘Oh, come on, Kath. Tell me at least that you know I’m no mean Philistine jock.’

  ‘Of course I know,’ I say.

  ‘Rogsie was the one who played rugger, you know,’ he says. ‘I was the gentle arty one who wrote poetry. I wrote a poem about you once, for a competition, but the Head wouldn’t have it.’ I enjoy this flirting over doughnuts and tea. The last time I did it was in the Tate Gallery with John Millet.

  ‘How is John Millet?’ I say.

  ‘Dead,’ Jonathan says. ‘Lung cancer.’

  ‘Dead!’ I screech hysterically, for my nerves are not yet quite what they should be. I keep my Valium in a little tin box with my initial on it which Rosie once gave me when I visited the Goldmans at Christmas. Jonathan is puzzled, even a little alarmed, by the vehemence of my response. Protectively, he puts a hand over mine on the table.

  ‘Nothing and nobody lasts for ever, Kath,’ he says, watching me carefully as my tears fall. Sensing that he is kind, I pour out to him my sadness and my loss, dripping tears and snot on to the formica and wiping my nose crudely on the back of my hand. He does nothing but hears me out, as I tell him of my overwhelming urge to carry the little creature out under my coat and bury her in the geraniums; of the standing in queues and signing things, the listening to bureaucratic telephones ring; of my months communing in the evenings with the bulge; of the strong urge to hold and possess something after the jarring and violent assault on the cervix.

  ‘The man left before the baby came, you see,’ I say.

  ‘Was that the man I met?’ he asks. ‘I called once, remember? But you weren’t there.’

  ‘That was the man,’ I say. ‘He was nice. He was reasonable. He’d just seen too much of it already.’

  Jacob approaches us unnoticed.

  ‘Feeling lachrymose, Katherine?’ he says suddenly, a little too heartily perhaps.

  ‘Leave her, Jake,’ Jonathan says.

  ‘The poor child has been mixed up with Catholic foreigners. Has she told you?’ Jacob says.

  ‘Leave her,’ Jonathan says again. ‘Tell me what Jane’s consultant says.’

  ‘He says four days and he reckons she can come home,’ Jacob says. ‘But what’s this Jane tells me about your book, Jont? You
actually bunged it in?’

  ‘The money is nice,’ Jonathan says.

  ‘The whole thing is absolutely marvellous,’ Jacob says, ‘and very much as you deserve.’

  ‘Not so,’ Jonathan says modestly.

  ‘Well,’ Jacob says, laughing, clapping him on the shoulder, ‘if it’s not what you deserve that’s even better. Good for you, Jont. Most of us merely cough in ink. You’ve done the real thing.’ He takes out a bunch of keys and removes one which he hands to me.

  ‘Have a house key, my dear,’ he says. ‘Don’t let her disappear, Jont, will you? Take care of her. I must do some quick chores in the department. Shall I see you chaps at home?’

  ‘Thanks, Jake,’ I say. As I watch him go I notice, squeamishly, that he walks more slowly than I remember, and that his balance is slightly out of alignment.

  ‘Come,’ Jonathan says, ‘let’s go.’ On the way I go in again briefly to see Jane, while Jonathan waits for me at the door. We embrace quickly because visiting time is over. She gives me, with furtive enjoyment, the last Guinness bottle. Under the eyes of the nurse I stuff it up my jumper. Guinness in the cleavage.

  ‘Stay with us, dear Katherine, won’t you?’ she says. ‘I insist on it.’ When I return to Jonathan I give him the bottle. He is amused.

  ‘What kind of a woman are you that keeps the Pope’s piss stuffed up your jersey?’ he says.

  We walk fairly quietly towards the underground station. Jonathan gives me a kindly arm, an arm sleeved in brown Marks and Spencer knitwear worn into a sizeable hole at the elbow.

  ‘Do you like holes in your elbows?’ I say. ‘Would it be overbearing to offer you a tasteful patch?’ He doesn’t altogether hear me.

  ‘I’ve been sitting at a typewriter a lot,’ he says. ‘I’ve gone into holes.’ It is only at the Underground station a few yards further on that he stops suddenly. ‘Tasteful, did you say?’ he says. ‘Tasteful or useful?’ I tell him I said tasteful.

  ‘I offered you a tasteful patch. But I could do you a tasteless one if you insist,’ I say.

  ‘Kiss me,’ Jonathan says. I kiss him by the cigarette kiosk at the entrance to the Underground station, feeling the sudden shock of the unfamiliar mouth.

  On the platform we stare across at the ads on the other side of the track. Jonathan has his hands in his pockets and is silently whistling.

  ‘Jacob says you got married,’ I say. Jonathan raises his eyes momentarily to the seeping barrel vault of the tunnel roof.

  ‘He decided to predispose you in my favour, I see,’ he says, with some amusement.

  ‘He did, as it happens,’ I say. ‘He said that I would like you, and I do.’ Jonathan smiles.

  ‘Let’s say that we’ve both done some fairly thorough anthropology on the extended family,’ he says. ‘And what exactly did Jake tell you?’ I tick the items off on my fingers.

  ‘That you taught in a school in Athens, that you got one of the students pregnant, that you married her and subsequently divorced her. You know how Jacob likes to give one the nitty gritty.’ Jonathan nods.

  ‘That was some school, Kath. The one I taught in. English, French, German and volleyball, I taught. I even taught some of them to play the flute. Sweated labour, it was. A truly corrupt old boozer ran the joint. A German war criminal, I suspect.’ Jonathan always did have a good ear for mimicry. On this occasion he throws himself into the role of Teutonic headmaster with a truly Hitlerite zeal.

  ‘I teach only Rainer Maria Rilke,’ he says. ‘YOU VIL DOZE REST.’ On the strength of his power to amuse me, I forgive him his transgression.

  ‘The wonder is I ever found the time to get the girl pregnant,’ he says. ‘My son is very sweet, Kath.’

  ‘I’m sure he is,’ I say. A yearning for our babies is a thing we have in common.

  ‘Is. Was,’ he says, resignedly. ‘I’ve ceded him to the kinship network. He is being reared by his besotted grandparents, and he enjoys a great excess of Athenian male relations who do instead of me. I was there briefly two months ago. I do know what you mean about wanting to hide them under your coat. My wife, as was, has gone back to school. There she is, giggling over icecream cones with her chums. Unbelievable. She’s the same age as Annie, but more girlish. Her family extends into the Fulham Road, I may say. She’s coming to a language school in Knightsbridge this September. Knightsbridge isn’t my beat.’

  ‘Were you ever in love with her?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I liked her. She liked me. I’d have liked her a lot better if she’d known how to count. I showed her how to calculate her menstrual cycles and she messed it up, of course. February has twenty-eight days, not thirty-one.’ I resist the temptation to remark that he also taught biology.

  ‘I like them all,’ he says. ‘They’ve always been very decent to me, her family. God, but they don’t half eat a lot of sweet stuff, Kath. Have you ever eaten that Greek nougat? Jesus, it has your teeth out in seconds.’ It is apparent to me that in a paste of nuts and honey he sees epitomised his desperate claustrophobia.

  ‘I’m one of those incompetent women who got pregnant, Jonathan. I forgot to take a pill,’ I say.

  ‘Kath,’ he says, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Do you find it a relief being home? – seeing the map of the London Underground on the wall?’ I say, thinking as much of myself. ‘Do you think maybe it never happened to me?’ Jonathan nods his recognition.

  ‘Even more so when they say “Inside Only” on the buses,’ he says.

  ‘And when the fruit vendors’ barrows have those notices that say “Please do not squeeze me until I am yours”,’ I say.

  ‘Those especially,’ Jonathan says, smiling. ‘Victims of cultural shell-shock, aren’t we? Hot milk and Elgar for us both at bed-time.’

  ‘Ugh!’ I say. Across the track the Union Jack is displayed upon the cheese ad. Someone has risked life and limb to scrawl ‘NF’ across it. Jonathan takes my hand in his own.

  ‘And what think you, coz, of the Flag?’ he says. ‘The Flag that in our innocent youth belonged to Carnaby Street, you see, and now belongs to the National Front.’ Lots of water under the bridge.

  ‘What’s your baby’s name?’ I say.

  ‘Alexis,’ he says. ‘I mean to pitch a tent with him one day on the Sussex Downs.’

  ‘Do you still go fishing?’ I say.

  ‘When I can. Not all that much.’

  I no longer care much now for the routine sufferings of fish. My heart has grown older. I have embraced a dead baby.

  Forty

  Jonathan returned with me to Jacob’s house where we sat for a while on one of the sofas.

  ‘I thought your mother looked well,’ I said. ‘I was relieved to see her look so well.’

  ‘I think she’s perfectly okay,’ Jonathan said. ‘She’s a tough old bag. Jake was paralysed with anxiety last week. He was convinced she was three-quarters dead.’

  ‘Poor Jacob,’ I said. ‘Dear Jacob. Ought we to cook him something, do you think?’

  Jacob evidently didn’t cook much with Jane not there. He had one onion, one egg and a few withered potatoes sprouting at the eyes. The cupboards contained a sparse collection of useless and rather way-out tins from the delicatessen. We sliced the potatoes and the onion between us and baked them in Jake’s wonderful oven with some milk and black pepper. Jacob came back with his arms full of Hampstead afterthoughts. Pate and salt beef and rye bread and apfel strudel.

  ‘We cooked your spuds,’ Jonathan said. ‘Your cupboards are full of Polish earlobes in tins. Why do you keep nothing edible, Jake?’

  Jonathan left us early, saying he would come for me the next day. Jacob found me some puce Habitat sheets and directed me to Sylvia’s bedroom. A nice little room with Abba posters and little woolly souvenirs. Hanging on the door of her cupboard was a shimmering cerise disco suit. We were none of us getting any younger.

  ‘I’ll leave you one of my Mogadon, shall I?’ Jacob said thoughtfully, before we turned in.

/>   ‘I’ve brought my own, thanks, Jacob,’ I said.

  We made for Kentish Town the next evening, Jonathan and I, which was a lot smarter than I remembered. When I lamented this, Jonathan undertook to find me the last greasy spoon in the area – which he did. We ate kebabs stuffed into unleavened Greek bread, and washed them down with beer. Then we ate pastries oozing sugar syrup. At least I did. Jonathan said no thanks, it reminded him too much of his mother-in-law. I told him Roger’s story about the Holy Ghost and the blackberries and the wrath of God. Jonathan couldn’t remember the episode.

  ‘But I’ll tell you why not,’ he said. ‘Why the Holy Ghost didn’t descend. ‘Tis my belief that Rogsie is the Holy Ghost.’ Then I said that I could drink some of that Turkish coffee, that sweet Turkish mud.

  ‘Greek mud,’ Jonathan said, ‘if you please. Unless you want the waiter to up and black my eye.’ I felt very comfortable with him. I was impelled to confide in him.

  ‘It’s not altogether true that I’ve just come back,’ I said. ‘I’ve been with my mother for five weeks. In Dorset. I’ve been in the outpatients’ clinic. I’ve been very sad, Jonathan. I may have seemed rather high yesterday, I know, but I’ve been a heap. I cry very easily. Ignore it, won’t you?’ My tears began to ooze a little. ‘In the trade it’s called “discharging’,” I said, ‘all the snot and tears. It’s called discharging. That is what the psychs call it.’

  ‘Let’s call it crying,’ Jonathan said. ‘Use the paper napkins. It’s what they’re for.’

  At Jacob’s door I remembered my debts to him. I drew three pounds out of my purse and handed it to him.

  ‘This is yours,’ I said. ‘You paid for my supper.’ Jonathan declined to take it.

  ‘Come off it, Kath,’ he said. ‘No need to be scrupulous over the price of a kebab.’

  ‘Oh, but there is,’ I said. ‘I’d like us to have proper financial arrangements. I’ve had some most improper ones in the past.’

  ‘Pay for my next haircut,’ he said.