Man at the Helm by Nina Stibbe Page B

at the thought of some discarded old daughters and a son turning up for lunch and forgetting the manners he’d taught them in his previous life. Scattering crumbs and chomping at our kitchen table while we were trying to enjoy a new happy life with home-made pineapple fritters and whatever our man at the helm liked to eat.
    Anyway, back to that Sunday lunch: it really did seem that the baby was rubbing it in for Jack. I don’t know what age babies usually start doing that kind of thing, but this baby seemed to be saying ‘I love vegetables,’ which was hard on Little Jack because he had previously been our father’s only son and now he was relegated to being ‘one of his sons’, and added to which he only liked pie and now this new baby could eat a better lunch than Jack even though he hadn’t even walked yet.
    So that’s how it always was – awkward, not enjoyable, and a baby–Jack rift. And as a result, on that day (the daymy sister and I had been in London), on the journey to our father’s house, on his own in the chauffeur-driven car, taking advantage of a stop at Bagshaw Bridge service station, Little Jack absconded and Bernard had had to leave the Daimler on the forecourt and run after him. Bernard had searched high and low, on foot at first, then cruising slowly round the streets in the Daimler, and eventually he’d gone back to our house and had to tell our mother that Jack had absconded. Our mother thanked him for his trouble and said that Jack was home safely and watching telly.
    That night, waiting in the Chinese takeaway, our mother recapped the events of the day. First, Debbie had nipped out of the open gate and stolen a christening cake from Merryfield’s bakery, and then Jack had run off, and as if that wasn’t enough, my sister and I had been in London far longer than expected and Debbie had passed raisins on the slabs all day long.
    ‘What a day!’ she said.
    ‘What a day!’ she said again, puffing away in the waiting area. And it turned out she could say ‘What a day’ in Greek, Latin and German, but that it didn’t always mean the same exact thing – i.e., ‘What a day’ in English meaning ‘What a
strange
day’ but in the other languages you had to add the word ‘strange’ for it to make sense. The lady at the counter told her how to say it in Mandarin.
    To be honest, it all got a bit much, her saying ‘What a day’ in all these languages and dwelling on it like that, but I can’t deny it had been the strangest day.
    It wasn’t long after that strange day that Mrs Iris Longlady called round to firm up on the vague tea invitation she’d issued when we’d first moved to the village. Because people never called round we weren’t used to being called on and we weren’t sure what to do, so we just stared at her. She didn’t mention the tea invitation for some while, and started her visit with a complaint about one of our ponies having stepped on her daughter Melody’s foot on a public highway. Our mother sympathized but quickly related a story about Little Jack being stung by one of their bees and swelling up like a balloon.
    Things must have equalled out then because Mrs Longlady launched into a full-blown chat. Our mother’s lack of interest must soon have become obvious, though, because Mrs Longlady switched her attention to me and held my eye while she rambled, mostly about her twin daughters. We knew the twins already from school. One nice-ish, one less so. Melody (nice) and Miranda (less so). In fact, Melody and I had developed a secret little friendship. Secret for her because her mother disapprovedof our mother and our not having a man at the helm. Secret for me because my sister and I officially disliked the Longlady girls. My sister didn’t know Melody and just lumped her in with her less nice twin, Miranda, whom she did know.
    Melody and I often met up on the way to school and at going-home time we could quite reasonably walk home together, coming from the same