Jack and Barbara

On the days I look after my two year old grandson Jack, we sometimes cross the road to visit my friend and neighbour Barbara.  She’s the senior resident of the street. She’s lived here for over sixty  of her eighty four years and can tell anyone around what went on in their house before they got into it.  She can tell you about sousing a brawler with the contents of a chamber pot and boiling up lead to make sinkers for Chas, her husband’s fishing rod.  They raced pigeons from the back yard then.  It all sounds much more interesting than today.  Now Chas has died and Barbara still misses him a lot.

I started taking Jacob over when he was a tiny baby.  I was rather in awe of him and I think Barbara was too.  He had black eyes and a furious cry.  There was nothing pleading or pathetic about it.  Whilst I did all I could to identify the cause of his rage and calm him, Barbara had a different approach.

“Let it all out boy” she’d say, “Let him get it out”

I couldn’t do that of course and went on trying to sooth him.  Eventually he’d exhaust himself and go to sleep and we could both relax with our tea.

As Jack grew there were more divergences in our approaches.

“What’s he eating?”

“Just his mum”

“Well there you are,  He’s hungry.  You should give him some sugar and water in a spoon”

A shiver of horror passed through me.

“Oh no his mother wouldn’t allow that” And nor would she.  Likewise when he began to crawl and touched a plug

“You need to give him a little smack for that.”  I held my own and didn’t.

When he began to make sounds but not known words she’d interrogate him fiercely

“What do you mean?  Talk English can’t you.”  She was joking but formidable all the same. She has a shock of white hair and the deepest voice of any woman I know.

But Jack has taken her in his stride and until recently I’ve managed to resist all attempts to undermine the modern parenting style I try to copy from his own exemplary  mother and father. Healthy food, no sugar, no snacks, gentle guidance on to the safe right path.

However, when Barbara got the biscuit tin out I began to lose my grip.

“No,” I said.  “He doesn’t have biscuits

“What!”

“His mother doesn’t want him to have sweet things”

“Look at him. He’s hungry .  You’re starving him.” She’d say. “He’s got to eat.  He’s growing”

Jack was in fact fixing the tin with a beady eye.  He looked at Barbara with trust.

“It’ll spoil his lunch” I parried with an old phrase taken from my own grandmother.  But I lost.

“Only a plain one”

What?  You think I’ve got anything else.  I’m a pensioner.” She said smugly.

And after that Jack would go and stand by the biscuit tin shelf every time we visited and watch the battle commence.  When I realized  it was their  two wills against my one and I wasn’t going to win, I thought I’d try at least to minimize the damage.

“Could we call them something else Barbara,  If he starts saying the B word at home his parents are going to wonder where he learnt it.  Lets call them peacocks – and only one. ”

 Last time he’d wangled two.  I was especially anxious as now Jack would joyfully say as we crossed the road Barbara - Bikkit.  I hoped the peacock ploy would at least confuse the issue a bit.

Barbara’s house is nice for me and Jack.  It is a small terrace  with no doors so I can watch him as he ranges through the rooms, right out to the bathroom at the back where Fred, the parrokeet  lives in his cage . While  Jack  checks out Fred , Barbara and I catch up on the local goings on.  Who’s been burgled and how.  Who’s selling up.  Then he’ll come back and play happily with Barbara’s many childproof bottles of pills and supplememnts which rattle and roll pleasantly and he’ll turn on the torch which she uses to check which ones to take.

Sometimes we go out into the yard where Barbara grows some lovely orchids.  I can never get mine to flower and am always asking how she does it.

As well as Fred the parrokeet in the bathroom there are  two other birds who occupy cages in the  yard.  These parrots joined Barbara’s household decades ago  in one way or another. One of them, an ancient  corella, had been owned by a workmate of Chas  way back in the nineteen forties.  The friend was going on holiday and moaning about what to do with the bird.

“My old woman’ll take care of him for you” said Chas helpfully.  The man never came back and Barbara has the parrot still.

When you open the back door into the yard there is a clatter of wings as about a dozen pigeons take flight from around the cages where I like to think they.ve been passing the time of day with the parrots or maybe they are even descendants of the old racing pigeons.  But Barbara says it’s just the seed that brings them.

Jack was not keen on the  garden parrots.  Both are very very old.  The sulphur crested cockatoo screeches horribly as he furls and unfurls his yellow topknot.  The corella  has a decidedly weatherbeaten appearance not improved by putting his head into a rusty old tin can and banging it on the bars of his cage.  There was nothing about either likely to appeal to a small child but in the beginning I tried anyway.

“What’s that one’s name?” I asked pointing to the cockatoo.

“Charlie” said Barbara

“He’s called Charlie, Jack.  Say Hallo Charlie”

But he just looked from a safe distance and wouldn’t.

“And that one?” There was a silence and then Barbara said

“He’s Charlie too”

It was only on a later visit that I asked why both the parrots were called Charlie.  Barbara looked to see that Jacob was down in the kitchen communing with Fred and then bent towards me “His real name’s Bastardhead” she said “But I couldn’t have him hearing that.”

I was relieved that Barbara had decided to keep that dark. Not just one but two taboo B words in Jack’s rapidly increasing vocabulary would have really brought my grandmothering skills into question.