Elspeth Barker on Jealousy, Truest of Human Vices

If the human infant is primitive so is its earliest vice, jealousy—probably the most innate vice of all. First comes love, then jealousy, an unholy, uninvited symbiosis. Once there was a great gaunt dog called Griselda, who lay, snarling softly, in an alcove beside the blacksmith's furnace. With clash and with clangor he shod Bonny and Beauty, colossal Clydesdales, and Griselda's yellow eyes narrowed and flickered in the spark light. One day she had a litter of squally pups. In the late afternoon, as darkness gathered and Mr. Gould shook the sweat from his hair and damped down his fires, she ate them. You could see she did not want them. I told my mother and she said, “No, it was Mr. Gould's fault, they should not have been near all that noise and disturbance.” That was clearly rubbish. If it were true, why had my mother not eaten her babies? I wanted her to eat them. I stumped about shouting. She smacked me hard. “Don't be ridiculous,” she said. “What on earth's the matter with you? The trouble with you is that you have a nasty jealous nature.” How very true. I longed to be called Griselda, and it was with intense relish that I read the ballads of my native land. They have a swift way of dispensing with nuisance. “The elder came and pushed her in. / Sister o Sister, sink or swim” or the betrayed wife, Annie: “Gin my sons were seven rats / Rinnin oer the castle wall / And I mysel' a great grey cat / I soon would worry them all.” My brother and I tried and failed to despatch one sister; for a while I considered losing others in the forest. It became obvious, not that it was wrong, but that there was no point. The world expanded and it contained greater attractions than self-laceration over siblings. Even so, the occasional frisson lingered. Contemplating a roast suckling pig in a wondrous shop in Soho, called, I think, King Bomba, I considered the possibility of my youngest sister served thus, with an […]