Like our mother, my brother suffered with bad teeth and gums.
Mum had a false set which were entirely presentable but she never managed to break a lifetime’s habit of waving a self-conscious hand over her teeth when she laughed. I only ever saw her once without them and the horror of that visage still lives with me. A different bird altogether.
My brother, Jeremy, had gingivitis and whenever I used his bedroom toilet, I found the sink crammed with different pastes and liquids of green and pink and blue, together with several toothbrushes, frayed by brushing too hard, like miniature paperback books that had laid too long, face down on a bedside table.
Come to think of it, another writer, Martin Amiss, suffered with bad teeth too.
His description of bad teeth is hilarious:
‘It struck you, or it struck me, that Ronda was a place that had yet to experience dental self-consciousness. Many a perfectly moulded visage would inadvertently open out to you- revealing a bag of mixed nuts or, more typically in Andalusia, a bag of mixed nuts and raisins.’
My brother also suffered from fungal infections of the feet and had ointments and oils for that too.
On one occasion, as we sat and talked in the thick-walled kitchen at our mother’s house in Strete, he pulled his socks off and liberally applied oil between his toes with a cloth.
If I disguised my distaste of this activity in an area used for food preparation-that was not the worst of it: perhaps seeing that the top of the AGA cooker was dull, he proceeded to use the same oiled cloth to polish the top around the cooking rings.
It seemed like a sort of test, but I ignored it. He even offered to cook me bacon and eggs immediately afterwards, but I politely declined.
It was typical of the way he saw things and did them: without a trace of propriety.
Family meals, especially Sunday lunches, were equally entertaining. Dad was fastidious about table manners; particularly that the cutlery was properly laid and that we -my brother, my sister, Vivien and I – should all use it in the correct manner: outside to in, with elbows tucked to the side, without indecent haste and to chew with mouths closed.
Jeremy, as always, saw this simple instruction as a challenge.
The ‘Amen’ after our mother had said grace was as the starting gun to the runners and riders of the Stayers’ Hurdle at Cheltenham.
His hands and elbows worked at invisible reins with furious intensity in a dizzying blur.
I glanced sideways at my brother, then towards the head of the table, where my father’s face glowered in stern disapproval.
Oblivious, Jeremy snatched the food from the fork like a hungry owlet and making good use of the whip he rounded the first turn into the back straight.
Peas and broad beans were early casualties at the first, as they scattered across the table.
I looked sideways at his plate without moving my head and winced at the sight of a large roast potato that was now speared on the end of his fork.
Almost revelling in the moment, he shot the hot potato into his gape and shoved it in whole, slowly removing the fork like Excalibur from the stone.
What followed was a series of puffs, sucking noises and an awful flicking of the tongue as he rolled the steaming contents around his mouth in an effort to avoid blisters.
Dad threw down his napkin in disgust and left the table.
Jeremy’s lack of table manners remained with him all his life. I sometimes wonder what Baroness Trumpington made of them at The Spectator Summer Ball. I’m told that the former Bletchley Park code breaker had a great sense of humour and I suppose she’d seen too much to worry about it.
