Hang in there.
That is rule number ten. HANG IN THERE.
I practise it, the gunslinger squint.
Hang in there.
I am eight years old and I am home from school. I’m at my first convent, the one where the nuns are Irish. Harriet comes with me now, she is five. I have to look out for her because she is a little wild and gets scuffy knees and her fair hair flies about in an unruly fashion. It’s like angel hair. Despite her likeness to an angel, the nuns prefer her to be neat and not run around like a wild thing. They like neat angels at my convent. So I look out for Harriet at my school, I keep my eye on her, in the playground, in the echoing corridors and hallways and in the high-ceilinged dining room, places where there are dangers for Harriet, things such as stones and puddles, sharp bits of moulding and hard tiled floors. I saw her fly right into a French window once, as if she could dance right through it into the courtyard. Harriet feels that if you can see through glass, you can skip right through it to the other side, why not. I have quite a lot of tolerance for this behaviour in my sister because I know how she thinks. She is high-spirited. The nuns say this, ‘Your sister is high-spirited,’ meaning can’t you stop her from running all over the place, especially out of bounds. The grounds at my convent are pretty extensive and you can easily stray into out-of-bounds areas, especially if you are Harriet and pay no attention to instructions regarding out-of-bounds areas. Never mind. We are home now, we got here safely and she is out of my hands for a while. Harriet dashes off to find Mum, who is probably with Gus. She drops things on the way, hat, gloves, satchel. Even in summer we wear gloves at school, white ones. Harriet does not like a lot of extra haberdashery. Angels are not keen on heavy clothes, I guess.
I need a snack. Oh great, binoculars. Mum has been to Zetland’s. This is a bakery and they make fantastic rolls that resemble pairs of binoculars. When Jude and I are World War II British commandos, we use them as binoculars until we get tired and need a snack, whereupon we eat them.
I take half a binocular. Ben is standing near the kitchen table, his feet crossed, one of them bent at the ankle and splayed out to the side. I like the way he tangles up. He has one hand in the nut and raisin bowl which Mum always puts out for him as he is crazy for nuts and raisins and likes something you can eat steadily but is already in small pieces.
He is looking at me expectantly.
‘Hey,’ I say. ‘Hey, Ben.’
‘Hey,’ he answers, with staring eyes.
Ben is not ready to tell me what he wants to tell me. Okay. I am patient. I decide on the other binocular half and sit down at the long white oak table, on the chair I learned to make bows on, so I could tie my own shoes. We all did this. We sat on the floor while Mum cooked and she’d tie a shoelace on the strut of a chair back and we’d tie and untie until we got it right. She’d feed us little slivers of vegetable or something while we practised.
Eating my binocular and waiting for Ben to come out with it, I think about finishing up my homework in time to watch The Wizard of Oz with everyone tonight. This film is free, in other words, we do not have to pull out time from the bank to watch it. We are only allowed one hour of television a day and have to save up for things, except free things such as The Wizard of Oz or To Kill a Mockingbird or The Grapes of Wrath. The Grapes of Wrath is an old film and pretty depressing. I didn’t really want to watch the whole thing. It featured scrawny types at campsites surrounded by horrible dilapidated vehicles spilling rickety belongings and little kids in flimsy clothing. They huddled around fires and ate sloppy food out of tin saucers and kept driving to different sites, working all day and getting more and more depressed and saying brave things in short gloomy sentences. I had to stay and watch though, because Dad was sitting up on the sofa, instead of lying down, meaning, this is an important viewing experience, Jem. You stay.
Other free programmes are documentaries about Nazis. Now I cannot look at anyone wearing up and down stripy pyjamas. Clearly they have not watched as many documentaries about Nazis as I have.
Here is one thing my dad always asks me whenever we watch documentaries about Nazis.
‘Jem?’
I break out of my reverie, which has to do with wanting to play Action Man with Jude right now and not watching a gruesome documentary featuring death.
‘Yes?’
‘You’re not making the sign of the cross or anything like that at school, are you?’
He gives me a stern look, his dark brown irises fixing me from the corners of his eyelids, the skin bunching up there for emphasis. How can I say yes to a look like that, daring me to say yes but expecting no? My dad has brown eyes and all the rest of us are various shades of blue. At school, they said in biology that women carry the dominant genes for eye colour. Mum has blue eyes. My dad is Jewish. My mum is Protestant. I am wondering who carries the dominant genes for religion.
‘No, Dad.’
I do, though.
Sometimes, when no one is looking, I make the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, ah-men. Then we learned to say Holy Spirit, not Ghost, due to modernism. I liked Ghost better. Never mind. I watch the girls do this at assembly and I never join in. I am Jewish, can’t they see that? It’s cool, being different. On my own though, sometimes I try it out, this cross in the air, touching forehead and shoulders and heart, just to see, and it feels spooky, like lying or stealing, neither of which I am good at, betraying myself with blushes and a racing heart and a stark look in my eyes. My mum is a Protestant but I am pretty sure she does not do any of that stuff, signs of the cross and genuflection and so on. I don’t think she needs to because she may not come from Earth like we do, she may come from elsewhere, where they do things their own way. I’ve been watching her closely and I am on the case. I am gathering clues all the time.
‘Ben?’ Come on, Ben.
‘Yeh?’
‘Do you think they’ll let me stay up to see the whole thing? Do you?’
‘Oh yes,’ says Ben. ‘It’s a classic. You know.’
Oh. I am beginning to worry there may be Nazis in this film because besides being a free film, I will not, it seems, have to go to bed in the middle of it. This is the other impediment to sheer viewing pleasure in our house. Bedtime. I have huddled on the sofa with Jude, watching some war film not classic enough, such as The Great Escape, not even able to concentrate, knowing bedtime was a few paces away, listening out for the gentle swish of my mother and those two words from the doorway, ‘Jem. Bedtime.’
Once, when my dad was watching with us, I tried to argue, to fight for my rights. Most kids I knew stayed up all hours and there was no TV rationing. They did not have to smuggle sweets into their homes, either, no, and they could even read Enid Blyton books, forbidden in our house due to prejudiced views expressed in dodgy writing.
‘Please can I stay up?’
‘“May I,” do you mean? Anyone can stay up,’ my mother says gently.
‘Yes. May I? Please.’
‘Oh, darling. It will come round again.’ I hate this. Promises to do with days and times beyond contemplation. You’ll feel
