Feed My Dear Dogs

Jude is staring out the big bay window. ‘Let’s go outside,’ he says.

‘Lost causes, Jude, please!’

‘When you work very hard even though you’ll never win, you’ll never change a thing.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well. Like wars, there will always be wars.’

‘Why, why will there?’

‘That’s how it is, Jem. But you fight anyway, even if it’s a lost cause.’

‘Why, what’s the point, I don’t understand.’

‘It’s good to try, it makes you good – forget it, Jem, ask Mum, it’s hard to explain, I’m tired.’

‘OK, sorry. We can go outside now. I think I’m better.’ I start to climb down the ladder. ‘Know what? Dad might be a lost cause in the mess department. We can try to help him be less messy, but it’s no good. We can say, Oh Dad, when he drops food between the plate and the pot and make little suggestions like Wait till I get a bit closer with my plate, Dad, or Slow down there! or some such thing, but it’s no good, he’s a lost cause, right? And Harriet! She –’

‘Jem. You have to stop making everything to do with us. We are not the world, the Weiss family is not the world, you have to learn the big things, science, history, all that. And you can’t stay in your family for ever, I mean, you don’t even know what you want to do.’

‘I do!’

‘What then?’

‘I’ll tell you later. I’M TIRED.’

‘Yeh-yeh.’

‘I have ideas. I might do what Dad does.’

‘See? Just because Dad does it. And you can’t anyway. Sports writing is not a girl job, I want you to do a girl job.’

‘It was just one idea, I have others. I’m only ten, Jude, it’ll be OK.’

I get it all wrong with Jude sometimes, nothing I say is right, and I hate it when he is cross with me, why can’t he explain properly, what does he mean about the world and our family, what did I do wrong? I have this bad-news feeling now, a locked-in-the-attic feeling and I need to get rid of it fast.

‘Let’s drink milk!’ I say.

‘Don’t say milk.’ Jude hauls on his blue rugby top and I have one too, one that is a bit too small for him and I think to grab it from my room but he might not be in the mood for me to wear the same top as him so I decide to wear something else. We are going outside. We’ll play some game. Great.

‘Jude? Just one thing. Is it good, do you think, going to Dad’s country, changing countries like that?’

‘Sure. It will be fine. We have to travel.’

‘Why? Why do we?’

‘We just do. It’s important, travel is important,’ he says in a voice meaning this is the end of the talk we are having, it is time to move on.

‘MILK,’ I say, stepping up to him with a horror film killer look. ‘MILK.’

I am running now, Jude chasing, both of us scrambling down the stairs and I forget about other Judes, there is only one, not lost, no saint, not obscure, but my own brother who is only fifteen months older and so nearly my twin, it’s scientific, it’s historical, it’s nothing to do with me.

‘Mum! Mummy!’ I am kind of cross, and stomping all over the house, where is she?

I ask Lisa who is feeding Gus in the kitchen. Lisa comes from Portugal and she lives with us. She wears a shiny blue dress with buttons down the front like our painting smocks at school, same colour, same arrangement of buttons and pockets, different feel. Convent painting smocks are matte and soft, not slidy and shiny, and they are for ART ONLY. Lisa is sometimes friendly, sometimes not. She is not very friendly if some item has gone missing and you ask her about it. If you ask her if she knows where a thing might be, she grabs the edge of one pocket of her shiny blue dress open and holds it like that until she has finished saying, IS IT IN MY POCKET?!

I like Lisa even though she is grumpy. Also, she needs me. Some days, when she is having a rest in her room, she calls me into her room and we do one of two activities, sometimes both. 1) Photographs. Lisa shows me the same old photos of her family every time, pictures of scowly boys with dark floppy hair standing near big white walls and old men with pipes and dark hats on, black hats with little brims. Then there are ladies in dark dresses and black napkins wrapped around their heads though it is not raining. The focus is not all that great but I don’t remark upon it. It would be rude and clearly it is not a problem for Lisa who tells me the names of all the people and I pretend I remember some of the names that go with the people, though this is hard because they all look pretty much the same to me and because Lisa covers each face as she goes, kind of lingering there a while and mumbling soft things in the Portuguese language. 2) Football Pools. I help Lisa choose which football team to bet on for the match on Saturday and I fill out the forms for her. My dad says little kids are not allowed to bet, it is against the law and I am now on the slippery slope and had better watch out, etc. Yeh-yeh. I like to help Lisa out and I know quite a bit about football and I can spell Sheffield Wednesday and Norwich no problem whereas it is not so easy for her without checking every single letter and still getting it wrong. English spelling is a bit weird, I tell her in a comforting manner. And hey, Dad can’t spell! I do not want her to get depressed. Lisa comes from Portugal.

Lisa is never grumpy with Gus who is taking his time right now over some squashed-up bananas, eating slowly, with a thoughtful expression, holding his right foot in his left hand and flexing the toes to and fro, a habit of his I believe will stick with him. I can see it. And I see a day when Gus will catch up with me and be at an age when the difference between us doesn’t count any more, we are grown-ups, and we sit in a bar and have drinks, wine for me, like Mum, and Scotch for Gus, like Dad, Scotch he will sip with a thoughtful expression, maybe reaching for his foot now and then, he doesn’t know why. I do.

‘Lisa, have you seen Mum, please?’

‘IS SHE IN MY POCKET?!’

Bloody.

Lisa is not coming on the ship with us due to love and sex. Mum says she has a boyfriend here but I can tell Mum is worried about the boyfriend situation. Dad says, He’s a ganef! Shiker, shmuck! This sounds bad. In my opinion, though, Lisa will go back to her old country with scowly dark-haired boys standing against white walls and old ladies with napkins on their heads, that’s what I think.

‘Mum? Mummy?’ I’m calling a lot louder now, reminding myself of Joey in Shane, my dad’s favourite Western he took us to the cinema to see. A revival, he said, whatever that means. I never saw him so excited. At the end of the story, the boy Joey calls out for Shane, he calls his name many times, Sha-ne! Shane! Come back! Etc. He runs after him a long way, running with his dog, but Shane is not coming back, not ever, he is not coming back even though part of him would like to stay because he has a big feeling for little Joe’s family and they have a big feeling for him, but he rides off anyway, maybe thinking like Jude. Travel is important.

When we came home from the cinema, Ben, Jude and I were a bit giddy from going, Sha-ne! Sha-aane! in the same voice as the boy, the whole way home in the car, flopping around in hysterics in the back seat and driving Dad a bit crazy. At supper, any time anyone stood up for a glass of water or something, one of us would call out, Come back! in poignant tones and I believe Dad was a bit disappointed as Shane is a favourite film of his, and this was a little traitorous on my behalf because I remember feeling a bit desperate at the end of the film, tears rising up in me when Joey chased after Shane who is not coming back, Shane who is a hero and ought to stick around. I don’t tell Jude or Ben, they might think I am a bit sissy, which is strange, as my dad certainly has a big thing for Shane and he is not a sissy. Oh well.

‘Mum!’ Where is she?

‘Jem!’ My dad is calling for me from the living room.

‘Yes?’

‘Come here!’

‘I’m busy!’ My dad always wants you to get real close when he has a thing to tell you, especially if he is about to send you off on a mission, like he needs you to travel the greatest distance, go a long way for him, even for some little thing he wants. ‘I’m looking for Mum, what do you want, Dad?’ I try not to sound too cross, it’s bad for my dad, he gets rattled.

‘Come here,’ he says, lowering the mess of newspapers to his knees.

I can hardly stand still. ‘What, Dad? What? I have to go now.’

‘I am taking your mother out to dinner, I want you to let her be while she gets ready and you can’t eat those before dinner.’

He means my packet of crisps I am clutching, chicken curry flavour, not the ones I wanted, but Jude said I couldn’t have smoky bacon due to being Jewish and pigs are not allowed for Jews, even half-Jews. I’m not sure about this. I think smoky bacon flavour is just fake bacon, not from real-life pig juice or anything like that and also I think Jude is just being mean but I am too tired to fight him today. Dad sent us across to the shops saying we could have crisps for later which usually means he is taking Mum out to dinner, a time when we all need some kind of treat to make up for her not being around, I guess. Fine with us. Crisps are very nice.

‘I know that, I know both those things, can I go now? May I?’ Damn and bloody, I’m always getting this wrong. Mum says anyone CAN go, do you see, Jem? You are perfectly ABLE to go, MAY I is different, it’s permission, right, OK. I do not think my dad notices what I say.

‘So. Leave Mum alone,’ he says, raising his newspapers.

Like I’m about to hurt her, like I would do that.

‘Dad? You eat bacon, right? I’ve seen you.’

‘Yup.’

‘Isn’t there a rule or something?’ I ask. ‘For um, if you’re Jewish?’

‘Well, yes. It was about order and purity, I’ll explain some other time. Pigs eat everything … it’s not godly, you understand? But I’m not kosher, this is not a kosher house, we are not Orthodox, don’t eat those crisps before dinner.’

‘Dad? Are you in a bad mood?’

‘Not yet. How about a head rub for your old Dad?’

‘No, sorry, I have to do my homework, I’m going now.’

It’s scary saying no to my dad, my insides go all fluttery but I don’t feel like getting my fingers all greasy in his hair, not today. I don’t mind mostly. I like the smell of Dad’s head and how his hair sticks up at the end of the head rub and how now and again he goes, Ahhh, that’s great, Jem! while I am in the thick of it. Ahhh! he says, making me quite happy and proud when I leave him, even though my fingers are a bit slippery and the tips of them are all tingly and worn out, like I have lost a layer of skin maybe.

I have noticed something about him, how he is more prone to telling a person what not to do instead of what to do, unless it’s a mission, such as go get me a tomato and a knife on a plate, etc. He says, Don’t bother Mum, Don’t eat those crisps yet, Don’t read in the dark. And how does he expect me to know all the rules for being Jewish when I go to a convent, a school I think makes him mad at me because of nuns who are possibly contaminating me with nun-ideas and turning me into a kid who is not his all-out daughter, confusing him and giving him a cross look like when he can’t find something in the fridge, a thing that is usually right in front of his eyes. It’s there, Dad. It’s me, Dad.

I think my dad sees nuns and being Catholic, or even Protestant like Mum, as kind of weak, full of fancy clothes and secret things, quiet voices and angel paintings and his religion is big, with tough rules to do with comestibles and other matters, and full of beards and dark clothing and loud praying and calamities in history, in World War II for instance, the Holocaust, a calamity he is very worried about, like it is not all over yet and we must not forget it, we must be prepared for all eventualities, and his religion is maybe better for that, for readiness. Dad is happy I am a girl but I have to be ready also, cowboy-tough. Shane has put away his gun, it is for emergency purposes only and he will only ever need one shot. I don’t know what religion Shane is, it’s a private matter with him, but he has readiness.

What kind of school will I go to in Dad’s country, do they have convents over there? If I go to a convent, will he give me that speech about signs of the cross and spiritualities and not joining in, a speech I know by heart? Of course he will. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, say the girls in time with one another, looking a bit depressed and all sounding the same, like zombies. Then comes the prayer part, the sad one about daily bread, and I can’t help but say it in my own head, just because I have heard it so often and because it puts me in mind of tribulations and of Oliver Twist in his workhouse days, days of bread truly unworthy of the name and in far too meagre allowances for a boy not yet fully formed. Give us this day our daily bread. Please can I have some more? Daily.

After the prayer, the girls speak those same words and sign off once more, like this is code for Hello God, Goodbye God. In the name of the Father, they say, and I say it too, seeing my dad every time, my father with a cross face because I have joined in by mistake when he asked me not to. It’s not a catechism thing, it’s a Charles Dickens thing, it’s really not a problem.

Don’t bother Mum.

I don’t call her name out, I do not want Dad to hear me, I just nip in close to the door of their bedroom which is nearly but not shut, they never fully close it though that does not mean waltz straight in, it’s not polite. I speak through the open part of the door, squishing my face into the space she left.

‘Mummy?’

‘Just one minute, darling.’

I count. She doesn’t mind this, it’s a thing we do. I sit with my back to the door, on the long raised step outside, the landing she calls it, like a railway station platform. I sit there with my crisps, my crisps for later. ‘One, two, three …’ Maybe I could go back to the shops and swap for smoky bacon. No. ‘… fifty-eight, fifty-nine, SIXTY. Ready now? Is it OK now, can I – may I come in?’

I think about Oliver for a moment, and how he gets it wrong. Please can I have some more? This is sad too, and maybe no mistake, just something to do with duress and despair, that he simply cannot tell the difference any more, the space between capability and permission. I step into Mum’s room.

‘He-llo!’ she says, like she is all surprised to see me.

She is striding in from the bathroom that connects her room to Gus’s and she heads for the dressing table. Her bathroom contains a bidet, a bidet is for women although she lets Gus play with it, watching him peer over the side and faff with the taps, giggling like a wild man when the spray goes in his face. I walk over to my mother and stand next to her.

‘I’m going to stand right here and watch, is that OK?’

‘You know it is, what’s wrong, Jem?’

‘Jude said I couldn’t have smoky bacon crisps, Dad wouldn’t like it because of um, kosher rules.’

‘I think Jude was joking, what do you think?’

‘Yeh, well. Anyway, that’s not it, I heard something bad.’

‘What did you hear?’

‘Ben’s not coming on the ship with us. Why not, I want him to.’

Mum lays down her little eye make-up stick, it’s like a conductor’s wand for orchestration. Not wand, baton. She turns my way on her little piano-type bench, the one with gold legs and a little cushion with a pattern of pale stripes and wispy leaves, the cushion attached to the legs by way of posh drawing pins with rounded ends coloured gold also. It’s the nicest bench I’ve ever seen. Mum holds her arms out and I lean in there and I want to cry suddenly. I swallow hard the way Harriet does when she is eating something undesirable and wants everyone to know about it and mark the occasion so it will never happen again. Do not ever press a sardine on me again. Thank you.

‘Do you remember I told you Ben has special exams to write, O levels, and then he’ll join us, he’ll come by air?’

‘No. Maybe I wasn’t listening, maybe I forgot, maybe you just said O levels, I don’t know what that is, are you sure you told me?’

‘Yes, Jem.’

‘Why can’t we wait for him?’

‘We have to find a house and furniture, all kinds of things, it will be fun, I’ll need your help.’

‘Everything’s changing, it’s all different, I hate it – will Ben stay in the house by himself?’

‘No,’ my mother says. ‘He’ll stay with Chris, with Chris and his family.’

‘Well, do they know he needs nuts and raisins in a bowl when he comes in from school, do they?’ I feel right pathetic now, I can’t do much about it, and the tears fall, kind of leaping out of my eyes, it’s weird. ‘Do they have binoculars where we’re going? You don’t want to go, do you, Mum, I know you don’t!’

‘Jem. Sometimes we do things we don’t want to do because we love someone.’ Mum wipes my tears away, her long fingers brushing my cheeks like windscreen wipers on a car.

‘Dad, you mean Dad. Because he has to go, right?’

I think of learning to change Gus’s nappies, trying to copy Mum, how she raises his ankles with one hand and slides the old nappy out from under him with the other, then swabs the decks with damp tissues and pats him dry and bundles him up neatly again, all the while having a friendly chat and tickling him in the ribs. It’s not so smooth an operation with me but that is not the main thing, the main thing is how it does not feel like a poo situation, usually quite grievous and appalling, situations such as walking slap into a mound of poo on the pavement or in a field and having a doomy feeling for hours thereafter. Gus’s poo is not a problem for me at all, just as Harriet barf is not nearly so bad as stranger barf and the day she marched up to my table at the convent and spewed a wee pile of swedes at my feet like I was the only person who could handle the barf situation with poise and even temper, that was not a problem for me either. In my opinion, Harriet displayed fine judgement that day. No one should have to eat swedes in their lifetime. I had a conviction swedes are nun food only and do not exist in the great world so I looked them up and I was nearly right. Brassica napus: used as a vegetable or as CATTLE FOOD. Hmm. This is possibly a catechism issue with nuns, how we should all eat off the same menu, cows and girls, the whole zoo. We are ALL God’s creatures.

The main thing is, not everything that spews forth from a person is lovely and charming, poo, barf, blood, but depending on your feelings for that person, this will or will not be a problem for you, and fine feelings are likely to predispose you to cheery mop-up operations, and willing journeys by sea to uncertain destinations.

‘Can Ben bring some binoculars when he comes?’

‘Maybe,’ says my mother, turning back to face the mirrors, ‘or maybe we can go out hunting for something you will like as much, something new. We will look until we find it. What do you think of that idea?’

I am not hopeful. A not-binocular, just as good? I don’t know.

‘OK,’ I reply because I don’t want to let her down. She needs me, she said so.

Mum loops that cross around herself, the one with the pale stone at the heart of it. It is art, she says, made by an artist, a man from Ireland, and I wonder about him, whether he is prone to cracking jokes and doling out hugs or whether he is too caught up with the forging of silver and the embedding of pale stones for such things. Mum tucks the cross under her clothes because of Dad and Judaism, or else she hangs other stuff about her neck, shimmery silver chains or a wispy scarf so the fine cross is kind of hidden, like seeing a person you know standing under a weeping willow in a slight breeze and the picture keeps breaking up. Kaleidoscopes give me the same feeling, part excited, part depressed. I twist the tube and the pattern comes, marvellous, and just as I get an idea about it, close to recognition, it turns into some new pattern and I have to start all over again, like nothing is clear for long enough, there is nothing you can swear to. Hey, you, standing there, do I know you? Is that a cross I see?

‘I love that,’ I say, pointing to the cross, trying not to say the word though my dad is downstairs. ‘And in the middle, the –’

‘Moonstone,’ says Mum drawing it out from the tangle of chains, willow. Binocular, moonstone. Memento. Where she’s been, where she is headed. Mrs Yaakov Weiss, destination Moon.

‘Well, I love it.’

‘It’s lovely, but you don’t really love it, Jem. You love people, not things.’ She says this gently, stroking the top of my head and taking the opportunity, as per usual, to untangle some of the mess up there. Like my dad, I do not have a big thing for combs and combing.

Here comes my dad. You can hear him coming a mile off. Is he worried about spooking people, is that why he goes in for all that shoe scuffling and throat clearing? I don’t think so. He finds it very funny indeed if you suddenly leap in the air limbs akimbo because someone has just spoken loudly in a quiet room or you are watching a film and there is a gunshot out of nowhere. Ha ha ha, he goes, watching you try to recover your senses. He loves this, people losing their cool. So that’s not the reason. He wants to make an announcement, that’s all. It’s a long hello. When an important cowboy enters a bar, he will pause a moment at the swing doors, stopping short in a slap of heels so everyone has a moment to turn round and get the picture before he bats the doors open, and this is no show-off thing, but a courtesy and a greeting, the only kind he knows, because he is an important cowboy and a man of few words.

Dad is carrying two glasses, white wine for Mum, Scotch for him. It is time for him to slap soapy water under the arms and put on a new shirt and tie it up with a tie. This will take him about three and a half minutes and there will be a lot of commotion.

‘Jem,’ he says. ‘We’ll have another boxing lesson soon. Maybe tomorrow.’

I think he has forgotten about telling me not to bother Mum. Anyway, why can’t I be in here if I want to?

‘Tomorrow? OK.’

My dad pulls on my hair, two tugs, like my hair is a bell pull and he is ringing for servants. It’s a show of affection and now I feel guilty about skipping out on his head rub, something I hope he has also forgotten.

‘Tomorrow we’ll do the rope-a-dope!’ says my dad, putting his glass down and shuffling from foot to foot like he is doing a war dance or some such thing. I have no idea what rope-a-dope means, or whether I am supposed to shuffle around also. I don’t bother. ‘Put up your dukes! Ha ha ha! And don’t eat those before dinner,’ he adds, prodding my bag of crisps and picking his glass up again.

Bloody. Not again. It is possible Mum asked him to look out for this tonight, the eating of crisps before dinner, because she is always in charge of health matters and that can be a full-time job when there are a lot of kids roaming around like in our house. The thing is, when Dad takes on a task of this kind, of handing out advice or rules, he is a lot bossier, clearly believing a kid will not get the message unless you yell out the advice and make a cross face and repeat it eight or nine times. We are not spooked, but if one of us has a friend around when Dad is marching through the house, poking us in the ribs in passing and yelling out advice, or going Heil Hitler! ha ha ha, the type of friend who is a bit jumpy near my dad, wondering if he is a crazy person or dangerous or something, for a moment I think I should explain to the friend that my dad is not scary, he is funny, that’s how he is, he’s not mad or anything, and then just as quickly, I feel clapped out and know it is time to get a new friend, because some things are too hard to explain, and I am real choosy about friends now, finding ones who can relax around Dad, which is a lot easier than trying to explain things to people who will never really understand. This may be an unusual way to pick friends, I don’t know, but that’s how it goes.

I pause on the landing outside Mum and Dad’s room. Where are you headed, Jem? I’m not sure. I am not wild about this time of day, it’s kind of lonely, too soon for supper, long since school, what’s it for, this time of day? I am skipping homework as it is Friday, which is my day off from homework and tomorrow is Saturday, Harriet’s favourite. She gets so excited about Saturday, she will rise up quite often in the night to tell me the latest in her departments of special expertise, or fill me in regarding what happened to her on Friday and what she aims to do on Saturday. A lot happens to Harriet, so there is a lot to say and sometimes she will also ask me to sing in my no-good singing voice or else we make beastie shadows on the wall in the light of passing cars. Saturday will never be as great for me as it is for her, but I would never have learned this were it not for Harriet waking me up all night to tell me stuff, waking up and chirping at me like a bird just so she can have that fine moment over and over maybe, of falling asleep with this exciting idea she will be waking up on a Saturday, a feeling like rewrapping your own present late at night at the end of your birthday, and unwrapping it slowly to have the surprise again, or something close, never quite the same, but not too bad and definitely worth a go on a long night.