Feed My Dear Dogs. Emma Richler

Waste Lands, ‘made the Round Table in tokening of roundness of the world, for by the Round Table is the world signified by right, for all the world, Christian and heathen, repairen unto the Round Table; and when they are chosen to be of the fellowship of the Round Table they think them more blessed and more in worship than if they had gotten half the world …’

      When Ben first read this part out to me, when he said, ALL the world, Christian and heathen, I had a second thought to do with nuns. It was about Mean Nun and the creatures speech, with heathen meaning dodgy, i.e. Jews and Africans and aardvarks and maimed types. Since I corrected her on that little matter of countries and religions, Mean Nun will sometimes say LOST SHEEP OF ISRAEL instead of Jews, thinking she can fox me with this line about runaway sheep in Israel when I know full well this is merely code for Jews, because I checked it out with Jude who is very learned in many departments, something not many people are aware of, seeing as Jude is not forthcoming, he is more the silent type. I drew up a list of his departments of learning so far: history / inventions / explorers / Latin / prejudice and wars / mythology / pollution / football / rugby / brass rubbings / Roman digs / criminals / spies / trains and locomotion. Oh. And boxing, I forgot boxing.

      Anyway, the round business is very interesting and Ben says it is a holy shape and astronomical also, the table with all the knights around it akin to the Earth in a firmament of stars, and he says round is symbolic of wholeness, the way a straight line is not, because a circle has no beginning and no end, and everyone is equal around it, all the world, Christian and heathen, etc., and I think how my dad would hate that, as he needs to sit at the same place always, at one end, and he would be downright confused at a round table.

      If you sit in my dad’s place, he will pull up short and look at you like this is the wildest thing he has ever seen, same as if he went upstairs to bed at night and you are lying in his bed next to Mum, ruffling up a newspaper and saying, What, dear? That’s how weird it is for him. No one sits in Dad’s seat, not even in extreme circumstances such as illness or temporary loss of mental faculties.

      Another reason I thought that’s enough knights, no more knights! is that my dad needs about three or four people’s worth of space everywhere he goes, though he is a regular-sized man and not very tall. I watch him walk along in our big house, and he will get tangled up in things like books or shoes or one of his kids lying around on the floor, in spite of the fact there is plenty of room for him to step in, reminding me of Westerns again, how a sheriff, or some top important cowboy in a Western, my dad’s favourite type of film, walks straight down the middle of a main road if he feels like it, even if there is tons of traffic. When he strolls into a saloon for a wee drink or a spot of steak and beans, and coffee in a tin cup, everyone nearby shuffles over, no problem, no protest. They know he is a top important cowboy and needs all this space. They make room.

      The whole journey up the stairs to Mum and Dad’s room, my dad keeps batting us away and running his hands through his hair in a ragged manner, nearly ready to fall apart in his effort to protect Mum from us, though he is the one in need of protection and a lie-down in a quiet room, it seems to me, not Mum who is calm and smiling, and once we all make it to the bedroom, she perches on the end of the bed and lays the pink bundle down.

      ‘Say hello to Gustavus,’ she says.

      Suddenly we are shy and helpless. We don’t know whether to move in close in a single huddle like Roman legionaries locked tight with oblong shields overhead in what is called a turtle formation, or to nip in one by one, single file, and Dad is no help, looking cross without meaning to, merely trying to get everything right and protect Mum. It’s a hard time for him.

      ‘Shake a leg!’ is all he can think to say, one of the two things he might yell at us in the morning when we are messing about with duffel coats and satchels and pieces of toast, not really in the mood for school. The other thing he yells is Make tracks! I hope he does not do so now, as it would be a bit rowdy in the circumstances. You have to be quiet around a baby. Settle down, Dad.

      Gustavus. How is it the last of the Weisses has a weird name, a centuries-old name with a strange sound of snowy countries, countries with kings at the helm, a name too big for a baby unless you know he is headed for kingship of a snowy kingdom? Gustavus.

      ‘He can’t see you. Not yet,’ Mum says. ‘You can come closer,’ she adds, turning to Gus and reaching a long finger towards him and slowly pulling the pink blanket away from his head so we can get a better view. Gus is definitely bald. ‘Hello, Gus!’ she says, which is kind of an invitation for us to get going with the greetings and stop standing around all shuffly-toed and pathetic.

      Ben gives Harriet a little shove, a tiny one so Harriet will keep her cool and not have one of her unusual reactions to very usual things, a small shove, a slightly raised voice, minor events that will send my sister reeling as if she has just been shot by firing squad, or stumbling about in a desperate fashion in the manner of Oliver Twist’s mother at the beginning of that black-and-white film. Oliver’s mother is pregnant and lost in a storm at night. She has been abandoned or some such thing, and is on the run and has to give birth in a workhouse, the only pit stop on that stormy night, and Oliver is of unknown origins forthwith, because his mother dies from childbirth moments after kissing him gently on his bald head, falling back on her pillows with a sad and painful sigh, whereupon her identity locket is stolen by an old woman who is suffering from poverty and grave human failings, and now Oliver is in for a lot of hard knocks, all because of this sleight of hand, this one small flutter in a darkened room, passing too quickly for pause.

      I don’t like it, this business of death and childbirth and I am stricken suddenly, even though I can see Mum right here on the edge of the bed, completely alive, with a completely alive baby in her arms and there is simply no cause for grief and anxiety. Stop it, Jem. Everything’s OK.

      I watch my sister trip forward a step or two, very courteous and everything, leaning forward at the waist, and bending a little at the knees, her hands slipped neatly between them and her fluffy head dipping Gus’s way like she is smelling flowers in a flower bed. I just know she is struggling with some instructions I have given her lately in the run-up to Gus’s birth, advice regarding unseemly comments and how not to say them, beginning with, Isn’t that my pink blanket?

      ‘Hello, Gustavus,’ says Harriet in a fine display of seemliness. I feel proud. Here is why.

      Walking to school is a much bigger job than it used to be for me since Harriet joined me at the convent in the year 1 BG. Before Gus. The bare fact is Harriet rarely moves in a straight line or at regular and unchanging speed, so the main thing is to keep her in my field of vision. I pretend I am a commando with a pair of binoculars, concentrating hard on a fellow commando. I watch him with my binoculars and I am ready to cover him with gunfire (Thompson sub-machine gun) and nip in close, if need be, in a hand-to-hand combat situation (Colt 45, Fairbairn-Sykes knife). It is the year of the Great Raids in France, 1942. In that same year, Jude says, Hitler ordered the execution of captured commandos, an order some German soldiers refused. Some, not many. I made a note of this. I try to keep an open mind about German soldiers and not give in to prejudice, recalling what Jude said. Some, not many, because for most, orders are orders, even if the chief is crazy, reminding me now of Mean Nun who is in charge of clocks and tidiness and being on time for school and so on, no excuses. No prisoners.

      Where is Harriet?

      I try not to boss my sister. She needs to stray a little and explore the flora and fauna on her way to places, though she will come across a sad sight now and again, mashed up wildflowers a person has stomped all over by mistake, or a limping bird or some such thing, and this is grievous for my sister though not so grievous as it is if I boss her, calling out, Forward march! or, Move it! Instead, I keep a 1½ oz box of raisins in my pocket and call out, Raisins! if ever she strays too far and, mostly, this reels her in like a fish. Raisins are second best after chocolate, her favourite comestible, which we are not allowed except on special occasions, and definitely not in the morning apart from Christmas Day. Raisins are permissible at all times.

      ‘Harriet! Raisins!’

      Harriet scuffles out of the bushes in a shivery sad state like she is a small animal herself, with no mother animal around and no animal homestead