Thursday Night- Cousin Jacob

There had been a bit of an argument over whether or not Sandy should spend the night at Cousin Jacob’s.  Gran had said that, if he wanted to see her, he was perfectly capable of staying round Caroline and Anthony’s on the same night she was there.  Sandy didn’t know what Aunt Caroline had said about that, but she had overheard Grandad say, “If it’s because you think it’s unseemly for a twelve-year-old girl to stay with a single bloke…”

“It’s nothing like that, Arnold Copstick,” Gran had said sharply, “He’s the last person I’d…  I’m just not sure I’d trust him in an emergency.  That’s all.”

“You don’t need to trust him in an emergency as long as you trust Sandy,” Grandad had pointed out.

Sandy thought she knew why Gran was worried.  Jacob hadn’t lived on his own for that long.  He was going to be twenty-eight in December, but sometimes Sandy found it hard to believe he was that much older than her.  It wasn’t a bad thing, at least not from Sandy’s point of view.  When you were twelve years old, it was hard to find adults who you could trust to take everything you said seriously.

They sat cross-legged on either side of the weird little table that was basically just a cushion with a board on top, drinking herbal tea.  “There’s an old superstition,” said Cousin Jacob, “They used to say that red-haired people would automatically become vampires when they died.”

Sandy thought about this.  “Cool,” she said with a nod.

“I just thought you’d like to know.”  Jacob picked up the little yellow teapot and refreshed their cups.  He was the only person she knew who used a teapot as an everyday thing.  He was also the only person she knew who didn’t have a TV or a computer (he had a mobile phone, but only at Aunt Caroline’s insistence).  “Also, if you were born with a caul- you know, a bit of dead skin across your face- or if you were born on Christmas Day, you’d be able to see ghosts.”

“Well, that’s me out.  My birthday’s in February.”  She sipped her tea.  It was like getting a mouthful of perfume.  “Unless, wait, would that cancel it out?  If I had red hair and a birthday on Christmas?  I mean, you couldn’t be a vampire and see ghosts, could you?  It’d be too over-the-top.”

“I don’t think it cancels out,” said Jacob thoughtfully.  He took a couple of pistachios from the bowl, then pushed it towards Sandy.  “If anything, it would double it up.  Your connection to the supernatural.”

“Is that how folklore works, then?  All mathematical?”

Jacob laughed, eyes screwed up and looking down at the floor.  He did that a lot, when Sandy was around.

They’d had a good afternoon.  Jacob had taken her to a craft fair round the back of St  David’s, stopping at each stall and having fascinated conversations with the people running them.  He hadn’t gone there for Sandy’s benefit- that was just the sort of thing Cousin Jacob did with his days off.  That was probably why his flat was full of odd-looking things- old records (instead of CDs), paintings of unicorns and dragons, a wall of cactuses, a stuffed ferret in a glass case.  It was as if Jacob had turned his flat into a big cocoon by padding the walls with stuff he liked.

“I heard,” said Sandy, “that they used to say that babies would grow up to act like the first person who kissed them.”

“But, wait, wouldn’t that just be their parents?  They’d be the one with the earliest opportunity…”

“Dunno.”  Sandy thought about it.  “Maybe if a woman died in childbirth and her husband wasn’t there, the midwives would have to have a debate over which one of them was most qualified.  Maybe that’s where the fairies giving gifts in Sleeping Beauty come from.”

Jacob went quiet.  Sandy wondered if he was thinking about her parents.  Caroline said he’d always got on well with her mum.  He hadn’t known her dad for as long, even though he was Caroline’s brother, because Anthony and Caroline had only adopted Jacob a year and a half before her dad had died.

Sandy waited for as long as she could, then broke the silence.  “OK, if you could give magical gifts to a baby, what would they be? Say, three things?”

Jacob laughed.  “OK…  Um, three things?”  He stared at the wall opposite him, and thought.  “Well, not beauty.  I don’t think that helps as much as people think.”

“It helps Ewan McGregor,” said Sandy with a grin, “He’s gorgeous.”

“He’d probably be just as happy if he wasn’t.”

“I wouldn’t!”

Jacob laughed again, leaning back in his chair and looking up at the ceiling, as if asking the heavens what on earth he was going to do with Sandy.  “I don’t know,” he said, “What would you pick?”

&&&

They’d just finished dinner (pizza delivery) when Jacob realised that the pottery snail was missing.  It had been the first thing he’d bought at the craft fair- a chunky, ten-times-life-size snail statue painted in glistening green and brown- and it had been packed in a white paper bag that Jacob had been carrying around for most of the afternoon.  Except that now, neither Jacob nor Sandy could remember where he’d had it last.

“You definitely had it when we left the fair,” she told him, when he’d paused for a moment in between looking through the cupboards, “I remember asking you if you wanted me to carry the bag.”

“Yeah…” said Jacob, gently biting one of his knuckles.  Sandy had seen him do that a few times before.

“And we walked here, so you definitely wouldn’t have put it down anywhere.  It’s definitely somewhere in the flat.”

“Yeah…” said Jacob.  He didn’t sound as if he believed it.

Sandy wanted to help him look, but she didn’t know where to start.  If she just started pulling at the nearest pile of things, she’d probably end up breaking something without meaning to.  All she could do was stand around and try to say encouraging things.

Jacob was still biting his knuckle.  It made Sandy think of the time she’d broken her glasses and got stuck in the tunnel during the Adventure Weekend her Year Five class had gone on- wanting to scream or cry, but knowing that it would make everyone think she was a stupid little kid and wouldn’t even get her rescued any quicker.  Maybe he was asking himself why he cared so much about a snail statue that had only cost five pounds.  But asking that didn’t stop him caring.  It had been his.  He’d bought it because he liked it.  And he hadn’t even been able to keep it for an hour before it disappeared.

“Maybe I put it over here,” said Jacob, turning round to look down the side of the table.  As he did that, Sandy closed her eyes.

She thought about the pottery snail, the way its horns went up at a funny angle, the way its scales had felt when Jacob had handed it to her, the little white chip on its tail.  She thought about it, and the world moved and shifted around it, as if it was the only real thing falling through a black vacuum.  It was somewhere open.  Somewhere quiet and grey.

“Hey, Jacob?”  Sandy opened her eyes.  “I think you might have left it down by the front door.”

That’s where it was, alright, down in the foyer, just where they’d come into the building, halfway between the front door and the steps.  If Jacob had left it any closer to the door, it would have been smashed the next time someone had opened it, and if he’d left it outside instead of inside, there was no telling what might have happened to it.  But here it was, down on the speckled grey lino, still in its paper bag and still in one piece.

“I think you put it down when you opened the door,” said Sandy, as Jacob took the snail out of its bag and sighed with relief, “Then you must have picked all the other bags up, but left that one behind.”

“Yeah.”  Jacob put the snail back in the bag, and smiled at Sandy.  “Sorry for scaring you.  I know I freaked out a bit.”

“Nah.  I’m just glad we found it.”  Jacob started up the stairs back to the flat, and Sandy followed him.

As Jacob opened the door to his flat, he paused and looked at Sandy.  “Hey, when you closed your eyes just then…  When you were trying to work out where it was…”

Sandy felt as if she’d been caught doing something shameful.  “Yeah?” she replied, not meeting his eyes.

“Were you…  Um…”  Jacob fidgeted with the door handle.  “Well, my mother…  Not Caroline, the other one…  When she lost something, she used to pray to Saint Anthony to help her find it.  Is that what you were doing?”

Sandy had never heard Jacob talk about his biological parents before, and the surprise chased away her embarrassment.  She didn’t know if he’d never talked about them before, or just not while she’d been around.  She’d have to talk to Caroline about that.  “Something like that, yeah.  Not exactly, but similar.”

Jacob nodded, and unlocked the door.  “Do you want some more tea?  I’ve still got half a box left.”

Sandy shut the door behind her.  “Sounds good to me, yeah.”