Brother of the More Famous Jack (21 page)

‘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.

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.

‘I'd rather pay for my own dinner,' I said. ‘My guess is that your haircuts cost more than three pounds. There's something very becoming has happened to your hair.' Jonathan laughed and pocketed the money.

‘Good thinking.' he said, appreciatively.

For nearly two weeks Jonathan escorted me to and from Jacob's house in this way, like a devoted custodian, sensing that I was a poor convalescent creature fit only for chicken broth and hot-water bottles. Elgar and hot milk. I went with Jacob, at first, to visit Jane each day. Jonathan came in the evenings and walked with me, sometimes with Jake also, on the Heath. I recalled occasions when we had done this before, because Jacob often went for walks in Sussex with Jonathan and sometimes also with me. It was delightful to do what I had done before in a sense. It filled me with a quiet muted pleasure. I cared for Jane, who had come out of hospital but couldn't lift things and needed to rest.

Rosie came one day. A lovely, tall, dark creature with cropped hair and no breasts, wearing vibrant ethnic leg-warmers against a sudden unseasonal chill and matching mittens strung on a woollen cord around her neck. Looking at her made me wonder whether John Millet, before he died, took her to the hairdresser. Rosie fell into my arms with a childish cry of delight. She had brought with her a young man who was neither black nor proletarian of whom she was manifestly fond. He hung back shyly, holding the flowers which Rosie had brought for Jane. Then they went, hand in hand.

I walked again with Jonathan on the Heath.

‘She's very pretty,' I said, ‘your sister.'

‘She's okay,' he said. ‘Would you say she fancies that kid? That little druggie?'

‘Druggie?' I said. ‘He seemed like a nice middle-class boy to me. Jacob claims that she only likes brick-layers' apprentices.'

‘Syringe marks all over his arm, for Godssake,' Jonathan said. ‘Sleeves rolled up especially for us to notice. You are as blind as my mother, Kath. Why don't you wear glasses?'

‘I'm too vain,' I said.

‘Listen,' he said suddenly, rather tensely, ‘can we get the hell out of these parts and go to my place? Can I get you on your own somewhere without my family?'

‘Sure,' I said.

‘Wait for me,' he said. ‘I'm going back to tell Jane not to expect us back till late. Okay?'

‘You don't think I ought to stay with her till Jake comes in?' I said.

‘For Godssake, Katherine,' he said. ‘Can you not understand that if I don't unzip my bloody flies and climb into you, I will go bloody mad?'

Jonathan knew a bus that would take us to Kilburn. It took for ever to come.

‘What's the state of you?' he said. ‘I'm not going to hurt you, am I?' He had touched a morbid fear of mine: that those parts of me, so recently a mess of septic swelling and staple-clips, were no longer capable of functioning.

‘I don't know. I haven't tried since just after I got pregnant. I've been very celibate. Though I haven't always been so celibate,' I tell him, fired by some curious puritanical need to breast-beat, some hangover from the Methodist Sunday School. ‘The year I went to Italy, after your brother dismantled my character, I went through about thirty men in less than a year.' Jonathan, as I ought to have predicted, was nobody's conscience but his own.