Emma Richler - Feed My Dear Dogs

‘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.’