is responsible for colour and carrying oxygen, and white cells are for fighting off disease and so on, and then there are platelets. Very important. Platelets are for clotting, i.e. to stop all your blood flowing out after injury, the blood going from watery to sticky and hard, reminding me of the coating on toffee apples. It’s all very interesting, and pretty soon, listening to Mum, I lose my throw-uppy feeling, waiting out for it keenly, this clotting of platelets, and thinking deeply on the subject of blood flow, and the whole business of ferrying and fighting, and how I am in this O group, Mum says, which will be a breeze to recall in an emergency situation as it is the shape of a mouth calling out after injury, before the clotting part of things, white bandages, some nice toast with Cheddar, and friendly cuffs in the upper arm from immediate family, same as winning a medal. For Valour.
On other days, without a wound to show for it, everything hurts for no good reason, and I want to unzip my body and make a hasty exit, slamming the door on myself, no goodbyes.
‘Mum! Everything hurts!’
‘Growing pains,’ replies my mother who is in the know about such matters.
‘Oh.’
My mother is sitting at her dressing table with the lovely bottles on it, some with little tubes poking out and bulbs you squish, as in Ben’s chemistry set, except these are covered in velvet with golden tassels and are not dangerous to play with. The table has delicate drawers and one of them contains wide silver bracelets that are great for armlets when Jude and I are Romans. Mum lets us borrow them, no problem, and sometimes we invite Harriet to join in, because the bracelets fit right around her ankles and she is so good at slaves, though we tell her straight off she is a mute slave, otherwise she might mess up the game with inappropriate dialogue. We keep her instructions brief. For instance, we make sure not to tell her she had her tongue cut out in torture, or she will go overboard in terms of emotions and take over the whole game and it will be embarrassing. Harriet is not always appropriate but one day, maybe, she will be famous for acting.
Over the creamy gold wood surface of Mum’s table with the design of twigs and leaves carved in it, is a thin sheet of glass, kind of like ice, and there are mirrors at this table, a middle mirror that tips to and fro, and two side ones you can adjust the way my dad does in our car, frowning as he reaches up to twiddle the oblong driver mirror, like someone has done sabotage and moved it on purpose, then he fixes the side mirrors, wing mirrors, he calls them, and plunges out his window, before stretching across the passenger seat to do the other one, huffing and puffing the whole time. They have to be angled just right, so he can see what’s coming, and I suppose Mum can do the same, fiddle about with her wing mirrors so she can see who is coming in the room, such as Dad with a glass of wine, or me, today, with growing pains I am not thinking about any more.
The dressing-table mirrors are framed in creamy gold wood also, reminding me of famous paintings in museums, those three-in-one pictures with a middle bit and right and left bits connected by hinges, but here the famous painting is always Mum. Three of her, one in three. Cool.
When Gus came home that first time, it seemed to me things were just right, no more Weisses required. I’m not saying if Mum left us and bashed off to hospital again, coming home with one more Weiss wrapped in the pink blanket, my dad hovering and shoving us gently not so gently out of the way, that it would be not OK with me, no, it’s only a feeling. Things are just right. Now we are seven, counting Mum and my dad, not counting birds, i.e. two doves, two budgies and two finches so far, and how we might get a dog when Gus is bigger, but not yet, because at present any dog is bound to be bigger than Gus, which would be spooky for him, so we will hang on until he is round about dog-size, no smaller.
King Arthur must have felt this way too one day, thinking, OK, that’s enough knights, no more knights! King Arthur was very welcoming, and anyone brave and fine with good works in mind could come along and be a knight at his Table, and then the other knights would squish up to make room, while, of course, there were a few casualty knights making room for unhappy reasons (demise), but I do not see this accounting for all that many free places. There cannot have been endless space at the Round Table. In Arthur’s heyday, perhaps there was standing room also, but a great king ought to keep track of his knights, otherwise things will get slapdash and he might mix up everyone’s names, simply too tired to pay attention to each knight as is befitting, due to overcrowding of knights, with some of the more complicated ones, the softy knights, growing offended consequently, kind of hurt and dithery and likely to slip up on the job, I don’t know. It could happen so quickly.
I have borrowed Ben’s King Arthur book and it is the real thing, written nearly five hundred years ago and it has a French title, which is quite unusual, as the book is in English. I have read a few versions so far but they are not the real thing, the way those Bible storybooks for little kids with a lot of coloured drawings of animals and flowers and smiley types in tunics wandering about the countryside are not the real thing, and a bad mistake in my opinion, inviting high hopes and confusion. How are you going to break it to little kids as they grow up, that the Bible is not about farmyards in warm countries but a story featuring plenty of death and war and leprosy and so on? It won’t be easy, and I’ve seen it, how when the time comes to talk about strife in the Bible, nuns try to nip on by the strife parts and head straight for the miracle parts, because the bare facts have become a problem for them.
Take that twin brother story, the one about the sons of Isaac, Esau and Jacob. The Esau and Jacob story is really not hard to take for little kids, but the nuns make a right mess of it, thinking the only way to make it OK that the younger brother (Jacob) goes in for a passing phase of criminal behaviour is to say that the older brother (Esau) had a terrible personality and was extremely hairy, resembling a beast, making it OK what Jacob did, buying his land for only a few pence and then disguising himself by wearing a hairy jacket so their father would mistake him for Esau and give him a blessing as the firstborn, which is a top important blessing, and ought to have gone to Esau, but Esau is very hairy and not all that smart, making everything OK but very confusing for kids regarding men and beasts, and land deals, and whether or not hairy = bad. What a mess.
Mum cleared this story up for me in no time and here’s how I see it. Jacob slipped up due to extreme youth. It’s forgivable. He fell into criminal activity because he did not know how to come out with it plain, how he is a leader of men and Esau is not, and maybe Jacob should get the firstborn blessing so he can get on with being a leader of men. Plus, Esau is only interested in hunting, he is not one bit interested in farming and being a leader of men, meaning he and Jacob can shake hands in later life, and bury the hatchet, because Esau is happy with the turn of events, free now to hunt at all hours with no other responsibilities, reminding me of Westerns, where there are two main types of cowboy, the homesteader-farmer type and the hunter-cattleman type, and the homesteader is usually more sensitive, and has a long-term view of matters, whereas the cattleman is always rushing around on horseback and shooting from the hip, as the saying goes. A hunter is prone to rash behaviour, and excitable activities, deep thinking is simply not his bag, and this is how I will break the story to Harriet when the time comes. I cannot leave it to nuns. The Bible ought to be a nun’s best subject, a real thing and not a story about farmyards in warm countries, but this is clearly not the case. Oh well.
Ben’s King Arthur book is definitely the real thing, and it is very good. It is complicated.
‘Jem, you’re a bit young,’ Ben says, handing over Le Morte D’Arthur. He says it gentle, not bossy. ‘You’re not ready’
‘I’m ready, Ben.’
‘Well, remember the glossary at the back, OK?’
‘Glossary?’
‘See? See what I mean?’
‘What? See what?’
Here
