‘You did that very well, Jacob,’ I said. ‘You looked like the real thing.’ Jacob smiled manfully.
‘It’s the last time I give away a daughter,’ he said. ‘I’m planning to sell the next one.’
That was the last time I saw Jacob. Shortly afterwards he fell down with a fatal heart attack one Sunday morning in his beautiful kitchen, attempting to mouth words, which Jane couldn’t catch. I will say, to honour his dear and glorious memory, that I never think of the dialectic without glottal stops; that I never think of Women in Love without heavy breathing in the bracken. I have thought, at times, of Jacob’s preface which so impressed me, because since then Jonathan has given me a mention in his own. Jacob’s is, of course, a pretty piece of dishonesty, through and through. As always, he has his cake and he eats it. It manages, under the guise of a pretty compliment, to take shots both at his fellow academics and at Jane. What he is really saying is that his colleagues have inferior wives. Poor humdrum creatures who edit and annotate, while his own wife is a goddess, who is above such things. What he is saying, also, is, ‘Dammit Janie, why the hell can’t you be a proper wife to me?’ The greatest dishonesty of all lies in his assertion that he never ‘presumed to expect’ her continuing presence. Of course he did. He took it for granted, as he took for granted that the milk and the Guardian came around breakfast. Jonathan’s mention of me, by contrast, says only:
‘My thanks to Kath, whose earnings have kept me in socks.’
THE END
A Note on the Author
Barbara Trapido was born in South Africa and is the author of
six novels – Brother of the More Famous Jack (winner of a Whitbread
special prize for fiction), Noah’s Ark, Temples of Delight (shortlisted
for the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award), Juggling,
The Travelling Hornplayer (shortlisted for the 1998 Whitbread
Novel Award) and Frankie and Stankie. She lives in Oxford.
By the Same Author
Noah’s Ark
Temples of Delight
Juggling
The Travelling Hornplayer
Frankie and Stankie
By the Same Author
Noah’s Ark
Ali Bobrow is an other-worldly single parent with a fraught
nine-year-old daughter, a malevolent ‘ex’ with a grabby new wife,
and an underused artistic talent. A pushover when it comes to
needy neighbours and uninvited children, she allows her house to be
the local drop-in centre, until she collides with Noah Glazer, who
falls for her pale red hair. A solid man of science, Noah walks into
her over-populated life bringing good sense, order and security. But
ten years on, Ali is drawn back into the complexities of her past:
an old lover, two ex-spouses, a colleague from clown school
and a small smuggled cat all help to rock the boat.
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Praise for Brother of the More Famous Jack:
‘I adored Brother of the More Famous Jack. It is redolent of classics like The Constant Nymph with both its true voice and wonderfully sage and sanguine heroine’
Sophie Dahl
‘Brother of the More Famous Jack remains in my mind as a moving, intense, earthy and witty book, both illuminating and extraordinary as a first novel’
The Times
‘A highly promising debut – fast, inventive, and funny’
London Review of Books
‘More Ms Trapido, rapido’
New Statesman
‘A pleasure… full of excellent things, enormously exuberant, carried along for the most part on vivid dialogue for which Ms Trapido has an uncannily perceptive ear’
Evening Standard
‘An unpretentious and very funny book… a complex and highly polished work’
New York Times
‘This is a first novel for Barbara Trapido, but if established writers could get this good on a seventh try, readers would be the richer for it… What a lovely novel – charming, intelligent and a happy ending too. Barbara Trapido, where have you been?’
USA Today
‘Very funny, very English, very sad’
Daily Telegraph
‘Written with quite exceptional assurance and control. Barbara Trapido is a novelist to look out for’
The Scotsman
‘Shines with off-beat charm and sprightly intelligence’
San Francisco Chronicle
Copyright © 1982 by Barbara Trapido
Introduction copyright © 2007 Rachel Cusk
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4088 2272 2
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