Emma Richler - Feed My Dear Dogs

I think Sister Martha will like my clothes. They are pretty cool. I have my suede desert boots on plus my favourite jeans plus my BRITAIN IS GREAT T-shirt, all white except for those three words in black and the Union Jack below it which is our flag, depicting the union of crosses of saints, of St George (red) and St Patrick (red) and St Andrew (white). Nuns are quite keen to teach the flag story due to the saints part. The Union Jack has a blue background and this also has to do with St Andrew. I cannot remember why. Andrew was the big brother of Simon Peter, meaning the apostle skills and fishing skills clearly ran in the family. Andrew died by crucifixion, so maybe blue is for sky, the background against which he died, and for blue waters, because he was a fisherman and because he was a witness when Jesus was baptised in the river. Andrew did some good works in Russia, met his bad end in Greece and his bones are in Scotland. St Andrew is patron saint of Russia and Greece and Scotland. Saints have very busy lives and often do a lot of travelling.

I am wearing my best jacket, my General Custer jacket for special occasions. I love it, I mean it’s lovely or whatever. It is coloured light brown suede, almost gold, a lot like Gus’s hair. It has snaps for doing up and fringy suede on the underside of my sleeves and another nice row of fringes at the back across my shoulder blades. There is a silky lining, same as the borders of Harriet’s ex-pink blanket. There are two problems with this jacket. 1) I once fell into a bog while wearing this jacket and it bears a small dark stain of bog on one cuff no one will notice except upon close inspection or else if Jude sees me in the jacket and reminds me how I fell into a bog while wearing this jacket. In a showy voice.

‘Hey, Jem. Remember when you fell in the bog?’

‘Yeh-yeh,’ I usually reply, like who cares.

I do remember though. I remember trying not to cry, not because I hurt myself and was going in for bravery or anything, but because this is my favourite item of clothing and I didn’t want it wrecked, and I wanted to hide it, my grief over stains and possible rips in the fabric, because I know things are not important, that’s what they tell you. People are important, not things, you don’t cry over things. Still, when you own a suede jacket like General Custer’s, it can feel quite important.

Everyone had quite a good time when I fell in the bog. I did not incur injury so it was permissible to crease up like this was the best comedy moment in my family’s lifetime so far, especially in the case of my dad who loves this type of event, a person tripping himself up on the cuffs of his very own trousers or walking slam into a lamp-post while reading a book or losing a battle with a trayload of tippy objects, crash! Ha ha ha ha! This is quite an interesting reaction in my dad, seeing as he is the singlemost unsteady person I have ever met. It is possible he is just happy not to be the only one crashing into things. Now there is me to keep him company. Yay!

We were on holiday when I fell in the bog and Harriet needed some airing in a field because of throwing up all over Mum in the car on the way to a fishing village. I’m not sure there are cities in that country, only towns and fishing villages and rivers and fields in between, some of them with booby traps. It was raining pretty hard and Harriet had been staring at the windscreen wipers for some time, whipping her eyes from right to left like she was witnessing a duel about to start between two people in a frozen landscape. I felt a bit sick myself just watching her. We stepped out for some air, feeling bad for Mum who kept trying to make Harriet perk up and get back on the road to health, etc., which was very friendly on Mum’s part, considering she was all covered in barf. That is when I fell in the bog, cheering everyone up no end, and that is also when I thought of Lawrence of Arabia crossing the desert with two small boy guides and one of the boys slips into quick sand, never to reappear, despite Lawrence’s long white scarf and a lot of goodwill and encouragement, don’t let go! When there is suddenly no more pull on the scarf and it comes away with no boy on the end, Lawrence drops his head in the dune. He is pretty depressed. He has one less boy.

Jude and my dad like to remind me of Bog Day, though for Harriet it is probably Windscreen Wiper Day, a day she recalls being hypnotised by two wipers making a groaning sound on glass and clearing up half-circles of space for Dad to see through, spaces obscured by rain almost as soon as they are wiped clean, a game with no winning in it and a bad sight for Harriet, maybe as if she were waking up on a Monday and wishing it were Saturday, opening and closing her eyes to change the picture, squeezing them tight shut with this high hope, but every time she snaps them open, it’s Monday, still Monday.

Jacket problem number two. Growing. A day will come when I must pass on the Custer jacket, but not to Harriet, no, it will have to skip right on by Harriet and wait for Gus. She will not look seemly. She looks seemly in girl things. Why, she even has a little furry jacket and a furry bonnet and muff to match, and in this finery she resembles the child of a Russian king (tsar) and his wife (tsarina) which pleases her much when I tell her so as she has a particular fondness for Russian history involving finery and big chandeliers and revels in fine houses as well as the dark side featuring prejudice and the sudden uprisings of serfs, and the fleeing of Jews in ships, a dark side brought to her attention by my dad when he discussed his roots, some of which are in Poland where we are not headed, Poland that was once in Russia and once in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now out there on its own. It sounds a bit dodgy over there and I am glad we are not going to Poland. Russian history, however, is now on Harriet’s list of dear subjects and she is prone to questioning my dad thereupon, out of nowhere.

‘Explain about the fleeing and the ships!’ she demands, out of nowhere.

‘When you’re older! I’ll give you a book.’

My dad has books on everything.

‘Big fur trade in Russia,’ says Jude. ‘For hats and muffs and coats. Little animals jumping in the snow. Then nothing.’

‘All quiet in the forest,’ I say.

‘Stop it!’ says Harriet.

‘Sorry,’ says Jude.

‘Yeh, sorry,’ I add.

I see it for a moment, a Harriet vision of Jude’s little animals jumping around in snow, scurrying across winter forests in a light-hearted manner, but leaving tiny footsteps for fur traders to trace, leaving footsteps when they ought to have fled in ships, to clutch the rails of tall vessels on billowy seas and take in deep breaths signifying safety, sailing farther and farther away from Russians waving angry weapons in the air and shouting terrible oaths.

‘They ought to have fled in ships,’ I tell Harriet.

‘Yes, my dear,’ replies my little sister in a small sad voice, patting my hand in a soothing manner like I am the one having the bad vision, not her.

It’s kind of hot for my jacket today.

Maybe I should find Jude before I go. He will need to know where I am going and how long I’ll be, even if he has no outright plans for us.

There are so many ways to leave this house, different paths, and it’s weird now, how the house and all the ways to leave it seem like new things and not old things I have known all my born days. I don’t know if we will ever come back, though Dad says if things do not work out over there we can come home, except he didn’t use the word home, he said here, because this may be home for us but not for him, not really, his roots are in other places, he has to find them.

What does he mean, if it doesn’t work out? I have dangers in mind again, things such as criminals in snowstorms and snow-blindness and our ship smashing up in a tempest and my having to learn to swim as fine as Harriet, to swim like a fish or die. And I think about boxing lessons, how they have come to a halt because of the too many questions I ask and how I am all at sea when it comes to facing up to dangers because of insufficient training in the ring. All I have is a stance and it is a bit out of date. I don’t think Jude will box me any more. Last Christmas, which is a PAGAN HOLIDAY! according to Dad, Jude and I both got the same gift of red boxing gloves, one pair each, proper lace-up ones with black elastic on the cuff part and the rest all red, and such a blazing red, I believe I was more excited than Jude, though it was strange too, to get boxing-glove gifts, like we were enemies or something instead of twin types in a field of gravity. We have only had one match together. It’s too hard fighting with Jude. Here’s how it went.