Feed My Dear Dogs

Then my dad pushes my left hand, which is protecting my face from head injury, right into my face.

‘Hey!’ I shout. ‘You can’t do that! Unfair! And that hurt!’

‘Ha ha ha! You were holding it too loose! It didn’t really hurt, did it?’ he says, ruffling my hair. ‘I said hold your fist up but don’t forget about it, or that’ll happen every time. I didn’t need to punch you! You knocked yourself out! End of lesson!’ he adds, turning away to collect his drink, walking close to Mum and standing next to her with his back against the kitchen counter and his legs crossed at the ankles, reminding me of one of the dark-haired boys in Lisa’s photograph, leaning up against sunny white walls, and feeling jaunty. My dad tricked me and he feels jaunty and he has gone right back into boyhood, I think so.

‘Not fair, Dad,’ I tell him, settling in at the table with my Tintin book. I’m not mad though.

‘That’s right, Jem! Not fair!’ he says, real pleased. ‘Tough bananas!’

‘Thems the breaks?’ I ask.

‘RIGHT!’ he says, sliding an arm around my mother and squeezing her tight.

I’m not mad at my dad, though I have changed my mind about this being a good time for another boxing lesson. I’m not in the mood. And my dad knows I am not going to join the boxing profession, he is just training me in cowboy toughness, he trains us in games and by other methods, by way of documentaries and little speeches. When he mentions the Holocaust for instance, he gets a grave look which is a warning to us, that’s all, a reminder to keep on our toes and hold that non-writing hand up in front of the face, don’t let it go loose and limp, keep it in a fist shape, just in case.

My dad reminds me of another commander. He reminds me of Julius Caesar in some ways. In his prime, Caesar was a soldier and then he became the first emperor of the Roman Empire whereupon he messed up and lost control of things. Julius had no time out between commanding legionaries and ruling a whole empire and he got that lost feeling when it was just not timely.

When Caesar was a soldier and at his best, his men were devoted, as Mum would say, meaning they would do anything for him, go anywhere, no matter what, no questions asked, no Who started this war? or What are we doing here? or Maybe we should just go home. No doubts. There was fear of the sensible kind but no cowardice in Caesar’s army because of trust and devotion on the part of the men, and because Caesar had great expectations. On the eve of a battle, he exaggerates the might of the enemy, that is Caesar’s trick, and suddenly his men have twice the might, out of pride and so on, and they smite the enemy in half the time, a breeze for them since they expected to be smitten themselves by an enemy so much greater, Caesar had said, in numbers and in might. It’s a good trick.

Smite. This is a little bit like wot, having two meanings to bear in mind, usually very easy to tell apart. Smite is largely an olden times battle term so when Mum says I was smitten! there ought to be no confusion. She does not mean she was assaulted by battleaxe, halberd, poisoned arrow, javelin, sabre, scimitar, crossbow or mace in a field of battle, of course not, she means she had a very nice feeling due to something a person said or did in her presence. I hope she will be smitten by me one day, for something fine I do or say, because she is so happy when she says it, I was smitten! like she is about ready for song and dance.

My dad and Caesar are the same in some ways, not all. Dad may exaggerate the might of the enemy but he is in his prime as ruler, with no lost feelings, quite unlike Caesar who kept looking back in a wistful manner during his days as ruler, days that came upon him too quickly, and spent musing on the good trick he played on his men and on his prowess in commanding soldiers who were smitten by him and his leadership of soldiers. He wants his old job back. He can’t have it.

The Caesar method of facing the enemy is not uncommon. My swimming master has the same idea. In his opinion, the enemy here is fear of water, a fear he supposes to be lurking in every girl. This belief is the main influence on his teaching method. It could be worse. My friend Lucy White told me something very interesting one day on the way to swimming lessons and I summon up this thing she said when I am in the middle of a swimming lesson and am suffering horribly from the Caesar method. I am not sure I had fear of water before, but I think it’s coming.

It strikes me swimming baths would make a very good setting for a horror film, what with the non-stop scary echoes and shrieks giving me a pain in the ears, and shards of light bouncing off the water and ceiling and walls, hurting my eyes, sharp as needles. Swimming master prances up and down, always laughing and yelling out instructions, no pausing, and I wonder if he is like that at home, yelling and laughing and giving his kids a headache because he thinks maybe if he falls quiet no one will know what to do any more, or how to do it, his family now a gaggle of lost souls wandering the house in a state of perplexity, sometimes stopping in front of him to gaze his way in a pleading manner, just waiting for him to start yelling and laughing instructions.

‘HOLD ON!’ he shouts. ‘LINE UP! KICK! KICK! KICK! PUT SOME LIFE INTO IT!’

This means it is time to swarm against one edge of the pool and hold on to the edge and kick up a storm of water. This is quite a horrible experience. Clearly, life for swimming master = a great deal of frantic activity and noise. Jude lying on his back and staring at the ceiling in deep thought, for instance $ life. Now swimming master strolls up and down the deck doing his favourite thing, filling a bathing cap full of water and dashing it over our heads from a great height. Filling and emptying, filling and emptying. Why? He wants us to overcome our fear of water by all-out exposure and heavy attack by water. Soon we will all be cured of water fear.

‘WATER IS SAFE AS HOUSES!’

I have a different feeling though, involving a desire never to be in a swimming baths again while I walk this earth.

In the next part of the lesson we have to about face and let go. ‘LET GO!’

Off we go into the open, grappling on to a white polystyrene slab and kicking like crazy. The slab is a life raft but this is only an afterthought, the main thought is how it is meant to lead you into real swimming so that before you know it, you simply cast off your slab and there you are, swimming, like in a miracle involving crutches then no-crutches. Yay! There is probably something wrong with me because this never works and I am still very far from the miracle stage. My polystyrene slab flips up in the air in a grotesque manner and bops me on the head on the way down, falling out of reach so I have five or six near-death situations a lesson, with swimming master hauling me out of the water each time, by one arm only, laughing and yelling and nearly wrenching my limb out of its socket.

‘TRY AGAIN! THERE’S A GIRL! DON’T GIVE UP!’

Why not? I can’t wait to get home. I can’t wait for the whistle signifying the end of the lesson and friendly cuffs and slaps on the back from our teacher who is so pleased to be battling fear of water on our behalf. He must be proud of Harriet. I am. Harriet swims like a fish. I see her in all the commotion, floating and flipping around happily, no struggling, just about ready to pass up on the polystyrene, an amphibian perhaps, a duck-billed platypus, I have learned about those, equally happy on land and water, amphibian. My sister swims like a fish.

I do not. I just don’t see it, this business of floating and so on, of larking about in water like it is a proper home for a human, water see-through as air but SAFE AS HOUSES! Maybe the Caesar method is a problem for me, simple as that. It could be worse though, it’s what I tell myself ever since the day Lucy White informed me how some kids learn to swim, a day we were waiting with Harriet at the convent gates, waiting for Mrs White to meet us and take us to the baths.

Harriet is on a wee wander roundabouts. I keep her in my field of vision.

‘Kids are thrown right into the pool,’ says Lucy. ‘Or the sea. And they swim because they must. Otherwise they sink and die.’

‘That can’t be right,’ I say, frowning.

‘Oh yes.’ Lucy knows.

This would definitely save a lot of time, I think. One lesson. And Mum would not have to come on a bus and collect us once a week. Maybe we could even skip out on the single lesson and learn only when truly necessary, in an emergency situation such as a sinking ship, or a fall from a Hawker Hurricane shot down over the ocean in a dogfight whereupon we wait for rescue in the freezing waters, doing the dog-paddle. You swim or die, it’s a mechanism, coming naturally as breathing, unless you are not a regular person and are missing this mechanism, in which case you die. It is not always easy to tell who is regular and who is not which is why we need lessons, I guess. Just in case.

‘Anyway,’ says Lucy. ‘It’s a bit cruel but it happens. In some cultures.’

Lucy knows about cultures, she is half-Indian. I am half-Jewish, maybe more than half.

‘Please don’t tell Harriet, OK? The swim or die thing. Please.’

Harriet is sitting under the conker tree, perched on her towel with her bathing suit furled up neatly within, elbows on knees and her little face in her hands and her straw hat hanging by the elastic around her neck and tipped right back over the shoulders like she is a Mexican in a Western. My sister clearly is not bothered by elastic. She doesn’t get that strangly feeling. She calls out to me suddenly.

‘A straight line is the shortest distance between two points! Sister Martha said!’

Though she does have the swim mechanism, my sister is definitely not a regular person.

‘Great, Harriet!’ I call back.

‘Why not?’ asks Lucy. ‘Why can’t I tell her?’

Not can’t, I think. Shouldn’t. Anyone CAN tell her. Anyone could. ‘Just don’t,’ I say. ‘She won’t like it. Please.’

‘OK – oh! There’s Mummy!’ says my friend and we pile into the car, Harriet in front where she will chirp away at Mrs White the whole journey. Harriet and Mrs White are friends. I feel glad we are learning to swim in a lessons fashion and not the toss into a pool and hope for the best fashion. I am also glad my dad is not apprised of this last method, as it might fit into his style of teaching. Maybe he does know. Maybe he suggested it to Mum.

‘No, darling. I don’t think so. No,’ she says.

Mum is the only person he obeys at all times, no problem, and that is the third thing I am glad about.

If I lose my grip up here without Jude, if I give in to the force of gravity, I will fall splat on to the stone terrace below, falling in a straight line, unless of course I am thrown off this line by a protruding branch on the way down. I doubt it. I think I will fall in a straight line which is the shortest distance between two points. If this happens, there will be a lot of crying plus a funeral and then maybe no one in the Weiss family will go to my dad’s country, the place where he has roots, because the Weiss family will be in shock and travel will not be that important any more.

I may skip dinner. I may just stay up here all night until someone finds me. I may have to scoot down and grab my chicken curry crisps from the bushes in case of starvation and climb back up again. Maybe Mum is saying, ‘No, I cannot go out to dinner without saying goodnight to Jem! No! Jem? Jemima? Je-MIII-ma!’

No answer.

Soon comes the search party and men in uniform spraying torchlight all over the back garden and dogs sniffing the air and pulling hard on the leashes so the men lean backwards as they walk, digging their heels into the dark ground, arms at full stretch. The dogs are hunting me, like I am an escaped prisoner of war and have nearly made it to Switzerland and when I am found, there will be bear hugs and everyone will stick by me, everyone will stick together, a little lost for words, thinking deeply, counting lucky stars, it’s been such a close shave.

I recall stitches under my chin, six of them, three years ago, and a car ride back from hospital and a big white bandage and everyone speaking soft when I got home and giving me careful looks, kind of shy. Harriet even did me some dance steps, a jig, a celebration, because my six stitches, I suppose, could so easily have been two hundred. Do you need anything? I’ll get it! Don’t move, stay right there, Jem. It was a close shave. It can happen so quickly. Sometimes people need reminding.

It’s really not much of a drop. I’d get a few scrapes, that’s all. Or I might mess it up and things will end in maiming and paralysis and being pushed around in a wheelchair whereby there goes my career in sports writing, a roving type of job, though not a girl job according to Jude, who may be wrong for once.

I think about supper and how if I am not there Harriet will be oppressed by broccoli because Lisa will try to make her eat the tops as well as the bottoms and Harriet will not know what to say. If I am there we can do a broccoli exchange, my bottoms for your tops. Without me, it’s a problem. Here’s another. A picture of Mum with a worried look – Where is Jem, where is Jem? – a picture that gives me a rushing pain in the chest. And one more problem. I have to pee.

Someone’s coming. It’s Jude.

‘When are you coming down?’ he says.

Whoa. I watched him all the way since hearing the back door slam, all the way along the path and he never once looked upwards. He just knows I’m here. He knows.

‘Why?’ I ask, sounding breezy.

‘Just wondering,’ he says, strolling to the edge of the terrace to gaze deep into the back garden, stuffing his hands in pockets. ‘Oh yeh. Forgot to say. Got something for you. Black Cat, two pieces, all yours.’

Black Cat gum is my favourite, liquorice-flavoured. It is very good gum. Jude probably stole it when Ben was paying for the crisps.

‘I might come down in a bit. Well, I was coming down anyway, actually.’

‘We need to sort our Action Man stuff,’ he says. ‘For the ship. I’ve already started.’

I climb down. I pick up a twig and swish it about and don’t look at him. I try to sound as bored as Jude. ‘I’m free now. I could help.’

‘OK, let’s go,’ he says and we head for the back door.

‘Jude, do you think I’m a lost cause? I might be a lost cause in everything, do you think so?’ I forget to sound bored. I sound lively.

‘Yeh … probably. Hey. You left your crisps in the bushes.’

‘Oh right, thanks,’ I say, dashing back for them. ‘Wait for me.’

Jude waits. ‘Don’t eat them before supper,’ he says.

OK, Jude.

Hope is not a problem for the starmen any more and pride is not a problem for them either. It is never a problem. They have no time for modesty, which is very time-consuming. Pride is definitely not a problem for many scientists and this is a help to them because there ought to be no distractions in this business of making discoveries which is a full-time job chiefly requiring hope and foresight, and it is why the men at NASA fell apart only very briefly when they discovered a flaw in the most perfect mirror in the world and were able so soon to turn calamity into triumph, instead of slamming the door on NASA and maybe wandering off into forests without shoes.

Edwin Hubble, champion boxer! war hero! publishes a paper with his colleague Milton Humason in 1929 on what he discovers to be an expanding Universe, based on thoughts to do with redshift and distance, and in it he is largely removing the vagueness in previous speculations made by Georges Lemaître two years earlier, but he never mentions Georges, not once, Georges who was an ordained priest before taking up astronomy, a pursuit interrupted by the Great War in which he won La Croix de Guerre avec palmes, a great distinction in my opinion, though he may well have preferred something else, a telescope in his name, a theory, rules and laws.

The recession velocity of a distant galaxy, its redshift, is directly proportional to its distance. Hubble’s Law. The number representing the rate at which the Universe is expanding = Hubble constant. There is Hubble time and a Hubble radius and a Hubble diagram and there is the HST, the Hubble Space Telescope.

Milton Humason went to summer camp near Mount Wilson in 1904 when he was fourteen years old and he fell in love with the mountain, quitting school shortly thereafter and taking on joe jobs when they were building the dome of the observatory at an altitude of 1,750 metres to house the Hooker telescope designed by George Ellery Hale. Milton begins as donkey driver, hauling equipment up the slopes and then he is janitor, then night assistant, until Harlow Shapley takes note of Milton’s great skills of observation and his ability to make photographic plates of faint astronomical objects, and offers him a post in 1920, putting him to work with Edwin Hubble.

Humason is shy about his lack of education but he is a great observer, one of the best ever, even Shapley says so, and Hubble certainly knows it, making him do a new kind of donkey work, Humason the one spending long dark nights in winter which are best for star watching, freezing in an observatory open to the sky and lit by a dim red bulb only, so as not to mar the photographic plates, and unheated because currents of convection can blur the field of vision. Because of the Earth’s rotation and the vagaries of the clockwork tracking system, Milton must never let go of the telescope if he wants to hold one same object in his sight across the sky, the telescope becoming an extension of him, in step with him, it is him.

There was quite a lot of fighting in the astronomy community of the 1920s, the heat of argument, say, tending to blur the field of vision. In science, these are called debates. Here are men arguing about the distance to the stars based on the observation of variable stars, measuring absolute magnitude and periods of luminosity, unsure whether the nebulae they see are part of the Milky Way or galaxies out on their own, confused by stellar outbursts of light and power they don’t yet know are supernovae, signifying the gravitational collapse of massive stars that can shine briefly, each one, as hot as a hundred billion suns. How can a star so bright be so far away? Or so close?

Wishful thinking can blur the field of vision.

When Milton Humason compares plates he has taken of the Andromeda Nebula, he finds minute specks of light in some plates and not in others, variable stars he believes, variable stars Shapley insists do not exist in the Andromeda and so when Milton brings him his finest photographic plate with the careful ink marks mapping what he has seen, specks of light he has been told are not there, Shapley takes the plate away and wipes it free with a white hanky produced from a pocket, making a little nothing out of something, setting his own limits on the possible, an example perhaps, of how pride is not a problem for him.

I don’t see it, it’s not there.

Saturday, and you watch the clock you have placed at the kitchen table. You are going to the cinema, you don’t want to be late, you are never late. You love the way time works, how one same stretch of time can take for ever to pass or else slip by in a reverie, you love this, it’s lovely. Your books are spread out. Homework. Everything is lined up neatly, the edges of books parallel to the rim of the table or at perfect angles to your right and left, leaving fine triangles of table in each corner. You appreciate geometry, straight lines, hospital corners, perfect folds in white linen, you learned this, you have a Brownie badge in bed-making. You are nearly a Girl Guide, the youngest ever. Most of all though, you appreciate words, you can travel with words as with music and the seasons. Change. You even love this word change, it’s a travelling word and travel is important.

The soldier marches around the kitchen, keeping busy, he doesn’t want you to know he is watching you, he can’t help it, he loves to look at you. Frances. He wants to say I won’t let you run late, let me do this thing, watch the clock for you, but he stays quiet, tamping the tobacco down in the pipe he will not smoke inside, no smoking indoors, it gives Emily a headache. My wife, my wife, my old pal. In bed now, always in bed, his fault. He tamps the tobacco down, a sound like ticking, sound of the clock you are watching, it’s nearly time. The soldier is on the move, fiddling with the stove, stealing glances, like he is more than your father. Soldier, labourer, husband, father. What else? Nothing. Sometimes it hurts to watch you, what does it mean, forget it. Keep moving.

At times like this, he has a sudden urge to travel, not anywhere special, just to ride a train. A friend tells him a person can ride for whole days across this country and see nothing but fields of snow or corn until coming upon sea again, but mountains first, mountains like the edge of the world to stop you falling straight off, or the wall of a trench perhaps, craggy with things, limbs sometimes, and over the wall, noise, a sea of it. Stop that. It would be a fine thing to ride a train for whole days across this country he was not born in, a place he can fit his old country into twelve times over at least, but he walks instead, he walks for hours, fast, because the outdoors is good for him, for his lungs and everything else that hurts him indoors, a pain that can pass as he strides the city, passing sharply, quickly, a view from a train window.

He doesn’t see it though, making that train journey, not as long as you are here. He made choices, he is husband and father and he will not leave. He is not sure how long you will stay, it can all happen so quickly, comings and goings, the sea maybe his enemy, and all the things you know, his enemy too, each badge on your arm one step farther away from him, there is hardly any more room on your arms to show all the things you know, that you have learned so quickly, so easily, and meanwhile he knows one thing only, no one goes hungry in his house. He is not sure if that is an achievement, no one says anything, my wife never says anything.

Watching her is different. How can she be right here and so far away? He misses her. She is right here and he misses her. Watching you is different, special and fearful at the same time, a church feeling, there is a word for this, why does there have to be a word for everything? The soldier taps his pipe out and plugs it again. A church word, Creation, Incarnation, what’s that word, damnation, ha! Damnation. Bless my soul! Damn and blast it. No swearing, Bert, she won’t have it. Don’t swear, Albert. Damnation, bloody hell, Salvation … Salvation Army. He chose you, he remembers it, marching in, eyes right, eyes left, not at ease but proud, erect, and halted by you because you looked at him, you really did. Yes, please. That one. Sign here.

You are already beyond him, too much for his arms, though he could carry you if necessary, he has carried men, for heaven’s sake, dead weight. He thinks he ought not touch you somehow, it’s a feeling, that’s all. Don’t touch. You sit close some days, you are teaching him to read and you are so beautiful, he could never have made you. Don’t touch. Awe. That’s the word! As long as you stay, he will try to learn but he knows he will not do as well with words as you hope and this kills him, the way the sight of you does sometimes. He remembers signing for you with an X, a leaning cross, and he worries it is not good enough, it might not count at all and someone will be coming to take you away. Coming soon. He knows also that in history, kings sign with a seal, he has no seal, and he knows that all kings are soldiers but not all soldiers are kings.

‘I’ll be outside,’ he says. ‘I’m just stepping out. I’ll be right on the balcony.’

He is cross today, have you done something wrong? Is it Mummy? It’s so dark in there, she can’t take the light, she is in bed, hospital corners. Bed-making. Daddy, I can do it for you, lots of things, stoke the stove. Fire-lighting. Nearly time. You have a new ribbon, red, rose red, and you can tie it in your own hair, cleat, half hitch, sheepshank, bow. Knot-tying. You love the cinema, especially right before the beginning when everything is black except for tiny specks of light, electric candles on the walls, faint like distant stars. You have been to a planetarium, twice! It made your heart race, your blood rush. There is so much to learn.