improvised a sweet

easybuyall

rritable way, John has assured
+ e& |! Q( U, R( Ghis daughter he'll never remarry and that the chateau will be
: ~8 v' v  ^9 S: Khers, but he refuses to put anything in writing.
- R9 s3 C4 A; P: z* YThat background anxiety will probably be resolved.
Another more forceful reason why they've kept up their
summer visits to the chateau is because Daisy and Theo used
to insist - those were the old days, before John and Daisy
; Q0 c3 }* X7 t  xfell out. They loved their grandfather and considered his silly
: U6 I5 D9 ~: G4 S- I9 fmoods proof of his difference, his greatness - a view he rather
shared himself. He doted on them, never raised his voice
against them, and hid from them his worst outbursts. From
the beginning, he considered himself - rightly as it's turned
out - a figure in their intellectual development. Once it
0 u2 l% e9 o0 T! ^became clear that Theo was never going to take more than
a polite interest in books, John encouraged him at the piano
' H$ `2 ^8 L7 Q  b$ ]and taUGht him a simple boogie in C. Then he bought him
an acoustic guitar and lugged up from the cellars cardboard
boxes of blues recordings on heavy old 78s as well as LPs,
7 n; l- a0 `  w4 r$ _- k+ Mand made tapes which arrived in London in regular packages.
3 S/ U, @, F- m& m2 n# N, F: G! ^On Theo's fourteenth birthday, his grandfather drove
him to Toulouse to hear John Lee Hooker in one of his last
appearances. One summer evening after dinner, Grammaticus
and Theo performed 'St James' Infirmary' under a brilliant
sky of stars, the old man tipping back his head and warbling
in a husky American accent that made Rosalind tearful. Theo,
& H5 n1 f5 c& ]& R; @4 Ustill only fourteen, improvised a sweet