THE BOOK OF JACKS
It may be that there aren't that many heroes named Jack in classic fairy tales, but it being a name that I associate with such stories I wrote eight new ones with something of the feel of those golden oldies, in which every main character is called Jack. I wanted all eight stories to appear in a single volume as The Book of Jacks, but the publisher who eventually took them issued them in four volumes, each containing two stories. Lacking a publisher who shared my vision of a single Jacks book, I had one privately printed, with my own cover photograph and design. The cover on the left is for version.
The covers shown below are of the four published volumes, with Tony Ross illustrations.
Jack has always been a popular name for the heroes of legends, fairy tales, pantomimes and the like: Jacks off seeking fortunes, killing giants, climbing beanstalks, canoodling with princesses, tangling with ogres, and generally getting into all sorts of scrapes, sometimes surviving in triumph but often coming out of things rather less well.
THE BOOK OF JACKS is a collection of brand new but fairly timeless stories about boys and young men called Jack. Here we meet heroic Jacks and foolish Jacks, noble Jacks and hopeless Jacks. There's a Jack who's turned to stone by a gorgon but lives to invent a famous cheese, a Jack who sets out to catch a witch and meets more than he bargained for, and a Jack who has three brothers (also called Jack), each of whom is sent off to find the family fortune and meets a disastrous end.
Oh, there should be a Jack for everyone in...
THE BOOK OF JACKS
Here's an extract from one of the stories
FROM A JACK TO A KING
This story takes place in the tiny tucked-away kingdom of Raggedass. Like most kingdoms, Raggedass had a king and queen, and in the course of three decades Queen Twess of Raggedass had given birth to four children. The eldest was Prince Effluvium, the second eldest was Prince Vomitus, and the third eldest was Princess Nettlerash. Only the youngest, the last born, did not bear a royal-sounding name. He was called Jack.
Prince Jack was called Jack for a very good reason. The very good reason was that his parents couldn't be bothered to think of anything more grand for him. Why? Because they were ashamed of him. Ashamed because, unlike them, unlike his brothers and sister, he was very short. I mean really short. No one that short, they decided at first sight of him, could possibly command the grovelling respect of the common people. At the age of seven the top of Prince Jack's head was on a level with his father's knee. By the age of ten it just about reached his father's cod-piece. Three years later it ran parallel with his father's nipples, and there it stayed.
On his fourteenth birthday, still only nipple high, Prince Jack received an unusual present from his parents. A wooden hut. The hut had been specially built for him on the very periphery of the kingdom, between the gate and the steaming cesspool where Raggedass's waste was dumped. The birthday gift came with a royal note ordering him to keep away from the palace from this day forth because the hut was his home now. Besides, the note concluded, someone had to close the gate. The young prince, a lad of generous spirit who only ever saw good in people, felt that a great honour had been bestowed upon him. Proudly he planted flowers round his hut, oiled the hinges of the gate, and every two days, because no one else would do it, put on a gas mask and stirred the cesspool with his rolling pin to stop a skin forming.
In contrast to Jack's humble hut, the royal palace, which stood at the top of Raggedass Hill, was a splendid sight. Quite spectacular it was, all white and gleaming, with lots of towers and turrets and cupolas and flags, and battlements patrolled by dashing sentries in dazzling armour and helmets luminous with peacock feathers. The king and queen, who lived there with the two taller princes and their daughter, had no doubt who would inherit the throne once they kicked the royal bucket. It would go to their eldest son, Effluvium.
So let us now turn to that noble prince. Heir to the throne of Raggedass and tallest of the royal bunch, Prince Effluvium loved hunting. He loved hunting because he loved killing things. He would have hunted his own people if his father hadn't thought it might make them revolt. 'They're revolting enough already,' the king often said, without one whit of shame. So the prince had to content himself with hunting down helpless animals, but it was quite good fun, especially the bit at the end where he leapt from his horse with a princely 'Ha-ha! Now I have you!' and lopped their defenceless heads off. In his time Effluvium had lopped off at least one head of every species larger than a fist in the kingdom. The only head not to grace the walls of his apartments was that of the giant boar, which was almost extinct, so when news came that one had been spotted in Raggedass Forest the prince whooped for joy, called for his saddled horse, and rode down the hill and into the forest with forty bodyguards, beaters, archers and hairdressers.
Little Prince Jack watched the hunting party from the step of his hut between the cesspool and the gate. He would have cheered it on if he hadn't felt sorry for the boar. But he needn't have worried, for when the boar emerged from the forest half an hour later, far ahead of the pursuing entourage, it was quite unharmed. Prince Effluvium wasn't feeling too fit though, lying on the beast's great tusks twitching out the last two and a quarter minutes of his tall life.
'Ho, old boar!' cried Jack as the boar lumbered in his general direction. 'What have we here then?'
'It was him or me,' replied the boar, who'd learnt to speak on his travels in other forests where boars were more respected.
'I see your point,' said Prince Jack. 'Both of them actually.'
The boar's step faltered. A burly prince on your snout can take it out of you rather. 'I suppose you'd better kill me and get it over with,' it sighed resignedly.
But this did not appeal to little Jack. In fact, the very idea boared him silly. 'I wouldn't dream of killing you,' he said. 'I love animals, even animals as ugly as sin, like you. Anyway,' he added philosophically as his parents' tallest son gasped his last, 'I have another brother.'
And so he had: Vomitus, new heir to the throne of Raggedass.
Now Prince Vomitus wasn't much like his slightly taller but rather late older brother. He wasn't as surly for one thing, though what he lacked in surl he made up for in girth. In other words he was fat. Very fat. Stupendously, ridiculously, out-of-all-proportion fat. The reason Vomitus was so huge was that he ate too much. As Effluvium had lived to hunt, Vomitus lived to eat. Nothing in all the world was as important or interesting to this prince as food. He liked to eat and eat and eat, and when he'd finished eating he liked to eat and eat and eat some more.
But about a fortnight after he took over the position of heir-to-the-throne something happened to make Prince Vomitus lose weight dramatically. It started with the horse-drawn cart that pulled up one morning outside the hut between the cesspool and the gate.
'Pigs' eggs!' the driver cried. 'Finest fresh pigs' eggs for sale!'
Prince Jack came to the door. The tradesman looked down at him and smirked at his smallness. If he'd known he was in the presence of a prince he might have shown more respect, but Jack didn't look much like a prince. His clothes were ordinary, his hair was uncombed, his fingernails were bitten and dirty. He didn't even speak royally. His parents had bothered so little with him while he was growing up that he'd played with whoever he pleased – the stable lads, the royal cat skinners, the dung collector's apprentice – with the result that at fourteen he was as common as muck on a bad day.
'Since when did pigs lay eggs?' Jack said, inspecting the cartload of large pink eggs with curly little tails.
'Have you never heard of genetic engineering?' the tradesman answered. 'Now listen, Shortstuff, I'm willing to let you have this load – that's about three hundred eggs – for just forty coin of the realm. What do you say to that?'
'I say I haven't got forty coin of the realm,' said Jack. 'And even if I had what the blithering heck would I do with three hundred pigs' eggs?'
'They boil well,' said the man. 'Five minutes from boiling point to eggcup and you never tasted nothing so rich and satisfying in your little life. Five thousand calories per yolk. Just one will keep your stomach quiet for a whole day. Two, and you'll feel that you've eaten like a prince, or even a king.'
'And if you eat three?'
'You spend the next forty-eight hours on the bog wishing you'd never been born.'
'You could try the palace,' Jack suggested, pointing it out in case he'd missed it.
'I'll do that,' said the pigman, and headed for Raggedass Hill.
Now by chance the new heir to the throne was looking out of a third floor window as the tradesman drove up. Noticing the three hundred large pink eggs with curly little tails, his pupils dilated.
'I say!' he bellowed out of the window. 'You! My man! What hev you got thar?'
The eggman tugged the forelock he'd bought at the joke shop in the next kingdom. 'Oi got pigs' eggs, moi 'oighness,' he said, in that idiotic way that peasant tradesmen speak to royalty or the disgustingly rich. 'Three 'unnered on 'em, oi got.'
'Hev you, bay Jove,' said Prince Vomitus, who had speech problems of his own, but royal ones. 'Are theeeey... taysteh?'
'Lor luv yer, sorr,' said the jolly eggman. 'Tasty? Oi should say so. An' on'y two 'unnered coin o' the realm the laat.'
'Stay rate there! Dewn't move a muscle!' The prince unjammed his shoulders from the window and went through the loose change in his piggy bank. 'Ketch!' he said, tossing down a hundred and ninety-eight coins and two buttons.
The man tucked the loot into his shirt, tugged his new forelock once more, delivered the eggs to the kitchen, and drove back down the hill at a rate of knots, chuckling. Prince Vomitus, meanwhile, sent word to his disgruntled cook to boil the three hundred eggs to 'ebsolute parfection' and serve them in his personal dining room in forty-five minutes flat.
In forty-six minutes flat (rebellious lot, these peasants) the three hundred freshly boiled pink eggs were neatly arrayed on a pristine white cloth in the prince's dining room. Vomitus slapped his overweight lips and tucked a napkin the size of a sheet into his collar. He placed a footman on either side of him to whip the tops and tails off the shells as fast as they could so he could shove the contents down his gullet without pause and save himself from starving.
The first egg went down in a fraction of a trice. 'Yum!' cried the prince, and popped another in. 'Double yum!' cried he then, blithely reaching for a third, then a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, and so on, letting rip a right royal belch after every other one.
While the rest of the world went about its business with varying degrees of sanity, Prince Vomitus continued to shovel calorie-rich pigs' eggs down him as if there was a reward for stuffing yourself silly. There was, in a way. When Vomitus gulped down the 32nd egg his poor abused stomach gave a great gurgle, then a great ripple, and his body unzipped all down the front, flipped inside out with a sharp ssshlup!, and the royal innards slapped against the opposite wall, where they bubbled and steamed messily all the way down to the floor.
Vomitus of Raggedass had pigged out once too often.
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