Feed My Dear Dogs. Emma Richler

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СКАЧАТЬ English. Mum is cooking.

      ‘As soon as there is a passenger ship to the Moon, Jem, I will be at the head of the queue for tickets! How divine!’

      This idea of being first in the queue has me worried, my insides feeling all hot and empty at the same time, like when I arrive at school and realise I have left something very important at home, such as homework and money for tuck. Oh no. Does she want to leave us? Would she rather be up there where the Moon is? I hope the passenger ships do not start up any time soon and I am going to have to look in my dad’s newspapers for news. Which part of the paper will that be in? I will ask Ben, who is well up on weird stuff most people are not yet apprised of. Right now, though, I try to forget this worry about passenger ships.

      ‘Maybe I’d like to go too,’ I say. ‘And, Mum? Tintin went on the Moon way before the Apollo, Apollo, what number?’

      ‘Apollo 11,’ Mum says, no thinking required, no pausing and eyes lifted skywards in reflection or anything.

      ‘Right! 11, and they landed in, um …’

      ‘1969, the 20th of July. They stepped out at 9.56 p.m.,’ she says in a gentle voice, chopping things with a big knife and stirring up stuff.

      ‘Yes? Well, Tintin was there in 1953. So there.’

      Here’s how it goes playing the Why game with Mum.

      We are going to Zetland’s in town and this is a favourite bakery of the Weiss family’s. OK.

      ‘Mum?’ I say. ‘Where are we going?’

      ‘Well now, that’s quite a philosophical question. I’ll have to think about it. Is that all right with you?’

      End of game.

      We ride a bus and if I lean forward too far as I gaze at things out of the window, Mum lays her hand on the metal bar of the seats in front of me, she wraps her long fingers right around the spot where if the bus stops suddenly, I would go crashing into it and smash my chin or bite my lip and get into a casualty situation, the way a lot of kids do if someone like Mum is not looking out for them. Mum has long arms so she can do this without making a big thing of it, lifting her arm slowly and resting her hand there like it is nothing to do with you, and this way you do not end up feeling pathetic and helpless. Also, she never says, Be careful! or, Don’t do that! or, Lean back! or anything because I think she wants us to be free and move around and gaze at things in a spirit of investigation, so that even if you do something kind of crazy like test out the sharpness of a knife by running your finger over the edge, she won’t yell at you which can be downright spooky for a kid, no, she will open up a discussion about that knife and pretty soon you find something a little less crazy to do, as well as having a few new thoughts on that particular experiment, and how to go about it if you feel the urge again, to test the sharpness of knives. Mum is a very cool person, and has special ways.

      I am pretty keen to get to Zetland’s and Jude is going to be happy when we bring binoculars home, it is a favourite comestible of Jude’s and mine. A stranger might not be able to tell Jude is happy, watching him open up a paper bag with Zetland’s written across it and containing binoculars, a stranger thinks you ought to crease up in a big smile and say how happy you are, etc., but you do not, not always, not if you are Jude who will go ‘hmmm’ in a slow and quiet manner, and raise one, maybe two eyebrows, and push out his lower lip, that is to say, he is happy about the binoculars, even though he may not want one straight off. When you know a really fine thing is around, such as a binocular in a bag, you don’t need it straight off, sometimes it is better saving it for later, and just knowing it is there.

      A binocular is a roll with a crunchy crust in two parts and a crease in the middle but connected, therefore resembling binoculars. They do not call them that at the shop. They look confused if you say, Whoa! binoculars, and point to the big wicker basket they are heaped in, they won’t know what you mean, although it is pretty easy to work out. Never mind. There is a lady there who never smiles and is a bit scary. I decide she is Mrs Zetland because she seems in command, the way a teacher does, or an officer in a war film. She wears a white ribbon around her head like a bandage, and most of her hair is on top, sort of growing up out of the bandage, so her hair reminds me of candyfloss on a stick at the fair except hers is grey not pink. I look at her and I kind of want to get the scissors out and do some trimming. Topiary work.

      Mrs Zetland is OK and does not scare me any more ever since Mum sent Jude and me in once, on our own, to pay the bill and collect some rolls, whereupon Mrs Zetland slipped us each a lemon tart. Jude and I have been in a few times now. Two lemon tarts, every time, slipped to us like she is a World War II spy and we are two other spies on the same side. I don’t like lemon tarts much or any kind of tarts and just about two bites is all I need to be sure of this, and then I pass it on to Jude who likes a lot more stuff than I do, adventurous is what Mum calls him. I would never tell Mrs Zetland though, or she might be hurt, and I think she has a thing for Jude and me, something probably Mum knew all along, which is why she sent us on the solo mission with no fear in the first place.

      After the bus ride, we walk. Mum is a great type to go out walking with. Here is why. Sometimes you will see a little kid out walking with a grown-up and you can tell right away he is having a hard time. He is reaching up high to squeeze his hand into the big grown-up hand and he is getting a bad shoulder ache, plus he is stumbling along with loose crazy legs like a drunk, just trying to keep the pace, and carry the flag, and not let anyone down. He is sending a few frantic looks upwards at the grown-up as if to say, Whoa, can’t you see what’s going on here? I’m in trouble. And each time he sends that frantic look skywards, he nearly trips himself up and sometimes there is no choice but to tip right over in a messy sprawl in an effort to put the brakes on the grown-up, which is when you might see the little kid dangling like a stuffed animal, his limbs making no contact with earth at all, just swinging there pointy-toed and skimming the surface in a desperate and foolish manner. This can happen when the grown-up is mad about something, I believe, which is why he is barrelling along at high speed with scanty regard for the kid, and nothing can stop him. Or else he does not know that a regular pace for a long-legged person is racing speed for a kid. You have to explain some things to grownups you would not think necessary. It’s disappointing, but those are the facts.

      My dad walks slow. He does a lot of thinking when he walks, requiring a slow pace, which is perfect for our Gus, who is new at being upright and walking to and fro in the earth, but it is too slow for me at times, so I find myself drifting ahead of my dad, I can’t help it, and I do this until I get a wrenching feeling in my wrist and have to pause and hang back a little, and go at my dad’s pace, looking all around, and staring at the pavement, and doing some deep thinking. You can learn a lot from the different walks of people, the speed they move along at, and the way they hold your hand, and all of this is interesting and surprising if you are crazy about a person and want to fit in with their pace and way of doing things when you are together and out for a stroll, instead of struggling and trying to do everything your own way which is already familiar and not very educational or surprising at all.

      When I walk with my dad, I do not say, ‘Dad, do you mind holding my hand the way Mum does? You are mashing all my fingers and my thumb is trapped and it feels bad.’ No, I don’t. I don’t even wiggle my fingers to restore the blood flow, or just so I can recall how they are separate digits and not one single clump of fingers like that crazy feeling I get if I have to wear mittens for school regulations, a feeling of being impaired and suffering from leprosy or something, only having a thumb available for active duty. I try to steer clear of mittens in life, and when my dad holds my hand, I get a mitten feeling and it is pretty terrible, but the thing is, I don’t mind, because it is cool to be with him, and to see how he is so different from Mum, and everything on our walk is different, and newish, even if I have walked the same ground with her, and this is what I mean by СКАЧАТЬ