I know she can play, it doesn’t matter how I do. And I know not to ask her to play, or why she never touches the keys, not ever, even when she is helping me practise, sitting there at the far edge of the piano with her hands in her lap, sometimes counting out beats for me in a soft voice and when it is very bad, she will reach my way, gently shifting my hand to the right keys, her long fingers covering mine and I can hear the music in her, I swear it, like she is playing, no hands, and all the sounds come out right, beautiful, the kind of tune that makes you down tools and stop breathing because you may never hear it the same again, a sound like everybody you are crazy about calling your name all at once. This is the only good thing about piano practice and why I stick with it for now, all because of Mum and this feeling I get, making me forget my trouble with clefs and joined-up notes and one notes, and pedals I slam like a racing driver, I can’t help it, and most gruesome of all, my non-nun piano mistress who stabs me in the hand with a pointy pencil when I make a mistake, going in for fisticuffs when I get slouchy, winding up like a boxer before crashing her fist into my vertebrae and smiling at me in a shifty manner thereafter. Once, when I came through a whole tune no problem, she gave me two sweets, one green, one yellow, boiled sweets in see-through paper, the kind I hate, but never mind, I was so surprised, I stared at them in my palm for a while before saying thanks, still quite depressed by stabbings and thumps and thinking about secret agents captured by Nazis, fingering suicide capsules in their pocket, coloured capsules perhaps, wrapped in see-through paper. This woman definitely comes low on my list of favourite persons in life, and I am very glad Harriet has prowess in piano and a fine posture, and an improving effect on people in general, no doubt bringing out the sweetie handout mood at all times. I don’t tell Mum about piano mistress because it will upset her and anyway, pretty soon piano mistress and Jem will be in separate countries, no goodbyes, and Mum has too much on her mind right now, everything is messed up in our house.
Jude is staring out the big bay window. ‘Let’s go outside,’ he says.
‘Lost causes, Jude, please!’
‘When you work very hard even though you’ll never win, you’ll never change a thing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well. Like wars, there will always be wars.’
‘Why, why will there?’
‘That’s how it is, Jem. But you fight anyway, even if it’s a lost cause.’
‘Why, what’s the point, I don’t understand.’
‘It’s good to try, it makes you good – forget it, Jem, ask Mum, it’s hard to explain, I’m tired.’
‘OK, sorry. We can go outside now. I think I’m better.’ I start to climb down the ladder. ‘Know what? Dad might be a lost cause in the mess department. We can try to help him be less messy, but it’s no good. We can say, Oh Dad, when he drops food between the plate and the pot and make little suggestions like Wait till I get a bit closer with my plate, Dad, or Slow down there! or some such thing, but it’s no good, he’s a lost cause, right? And Harriet! She –’
‘Jem. You have to stop making everything to do with us. We are not the world, the Weiss family is not the world, you have to learn the big things, science, history, all that. And you can’t stay in your family for ever, I mean, you don’t even know what you want to do.’
‘I do!’
‘What then?’
‘I’ll tell you later. I’M TIRED.’
‘Yeh-yeh.’
‘I have ideas. I might do what Dad does.’
‘See? Just because Dad does it. And you can’t anyway. Sports writing is not a girl job, I want you to do a girl job.’
‘It was just one idea, I have others. I’m only ten, Jude, it’ll be OK.’
I get it all wrong with Jude sometimes, nothing I say is right, and I hate it when he is cross with me, why can’t he explain properly, what does he mean about the world and our family, what did I do wrong? I have this bad-news feeling now, a locked-in-the-attic feeling and I need to get rid of it fast.
‘Let’s drink milk!’ I say.
‘Don’t say milk.’ Jude hauls on his blue rugby top and I have one too, one that is a bit too small for him and I think to grab it from my room but he might not be in the mood for me to wear the same top as him so I decide to wear something else. We are going outside. We’ll play some game. Great.
‘Jude? Just one thing. Is it good, do you think, going to Dad’s country, changing countries like that?’
‘Sure. It will be fine. We have to travel.’
‘Why? Why do we?’
‘We just do. It’s important, travel is important,’ he says in a voice meaning this is the end of the talk we are having, it is time to move on.
‘MILK,’ I say, stepping up to him with a horror film killer look. ‘MILK.’
I am running now, Jude chasing, both of us scrambling down the stairs and I forget about other Judes, there is only one, not lost, no saint, not obscure, but my own brother who is only fifteen months older and so nearly my twin, it’s scientific, it’s historical, it’s nothing to do with me.
‘Mum! Mummy!’ I am kind of cross, and stomping all over the house, where is she?
I ask Lisa who is feeding Gus in the kitchen. Lisa comes from Portugal and she lives with us. She wears a shiny blue dress with buttons down the front like our painting smocks at school, same colour, same arrangement of buttons and pockets, different feel. Convent painting smocks are matte and soft, not slidy and shiny, and they are for ART ONLY. Lisa is sometimes friendly, sometimes not. She is not very friendly if some item has gone missing and you ask her about it. If you ask her if she knows where a thing might be, she grabs the edge of one pocket of her shiny blue dress open and holds it like that until she has finished saying, IS IT IN MY POCKET?!
I like Lisa even though she is grumpy. Also, she needs me. Some days, when she is having a rest in her room, she calls me into her room and we do one of two activities, sometimes both. 1) Photographs. Lisa shows me the same old photos of her family every time, pictures of scowly boys with dark floppy hair standing near big white walls and old men with pipes and dark hats on, black hats with little brims. Then there are ladies in dark dresses and black napkins wrapped around their heads though it is not raining. The focus is not all that great but I don’t remark upon it. It would be rude and clearly it is not a problem for Lisa who tells me the names of all the people and I pretend I remember some of the names that go with the people, though this is hard because they all look pretty much the same to me and because Lisa covers each face as she goes, kind of lingering there a while and mumbling soft things in the Portuguese language. 2) Football Pools. I help Lisa choose which football team to bet on for the match on Saturday and I fill out the forms for her. My dad says little kids are not allowed to bet, it is against the law and I am now on the slippery slope and had better watch out, etc. Yeh-yeh. I like to help Lisa out and I know quite a bit about football and I can spell Sheffield Wednesday and Norwich no problem whereas it is not so easy for her without checking every single letter and still getting it wrong. English spelling is a bit weird, I tell her in a comforting manner. And hey, Dad can’t spell! I do not want her to get depressed. Lisa comes from Portugal.
Lisa is never grumpy with Gus who is taking his time right now over some squashed-up bananas, eating slowly, with a thoughtful expression, holding his right foot in his left hand and flexing the toes to and fro, a habit of his I believe will stick with him. I can see it. And I see a day when Gus will catch up with me and be at an age when the difference between us doesn’t count any more, we are grown-ups, and we sit in a bar and have drinks, wine for me, like Mum, and Scotch for Gus, like Dad, Scotch he will sip with a thoughtful expression, maybe reaching for his foot now and then, he