Anita and Me (17 page)

‘This all you want, chick?’

‘Yes please, Mr Ormerod,’ I said confidently. I did not dare to look at Anita who was standing, legs akimbo, hands in her pockets, checking her booty, a knowing grin plastered on her face.

Mr Ormerod swivelled round to face her and his polite smile became an obvious sneer. ‘Don’t suppose you will be buying anything, will you, Miss Anita Rutter?’

‘Nah, got no money have I, Mr Ormerod,’ she grinned back.

A muscle in Mr Ormerod’s cheek began twitching slightly, he gripped the edge of the counter for a moment and the tips of his heavy-lobed ears went bright red. He was looking straight at Anita’s bulging pockets and she knew he was; she was daring him to challenge her. Mr Ormerod was having a moral crisis, that was obvious. He had to somehow square Thou Shalt Not Steal with Suffer the Children to Come to Me, his desperation to be the most holy and charitable man in Tollington with the strong desire he now felt to smack Anita Rutter into the middle of next week. For a horrible moment, I
feared he was going to keel over, but then he exhaled noisily and turned to me briskly with an open palm. ‘Ha’penny please, Meena chick.’

Of course I had not brought any money with me, I never had to whenever I went out with Anita, and I suddenly felt cheap and childish that I had lived off her for all this time and had never appreciated all the risks she had taken to keep us both in pop, sweets and comics. I shifted my feet and let my gaze wander away from Mr Ormerod’s still waiting palm until it rested on a small tin can next to the cash till on the counter. It was not a proper collection box, you could tell it was a former soup can masquerading as an official charitable receptacle, and besides, the slot in the top for coins was far too big. Someone had clumsily gouged the slot with a knife, so it was just as easy to take money out as put it in…It was when I read the label that I decided to do it; a homemade label on lined paper in blue biro and Mr Ormerod’s tense, tiny scrawl, ‘
BABIES IN AFRICA; PLEASE GIVE
!’

‘Mr Ormerod, I’ve just remembered,’ I said clearly. ‘Me mom wanted some Brasso…yow know, that polish stuff. Have yow got any?’

I could feel Pinky and Baby at the back of me who had suddenly gone completely still, sniffing trouble in the air, and from the side, I felt Anita’s knowing smile warm up my face like a spotlight.

‘Ar, I have got some…It’s out back, just a mo chick …’ said Mr Ormerod, his voice back in its usual chirpy chappie mode, reassured that I was buying something else besides the marzipan banana. The minute the tailcoats of his brown overall disappeared into the stock room, I plucked the can from the counter and began emptying its contents into my skirt, which Anita, unbidden, held out like an apron.

‘Get the shillins! Quick, Meena!’ she whispered.

I shook furiously but there was some kind of logjam round the slot. I could see a fair bit of silver inside, sixpences and florins in amongst the threepenny bits and pennies, but all
that came out was two shillings and a couple of farthings. Then I heard a muffled clang from the stock room. Mr Ormerod was replacing the small foot stool he kept to get to the high shelves, so I pocketed the two shillings, grasped the tin and stuffed it down the back of Baby’s soft pink jumper. She was about to squeak in alarm but swallowed it as I brought my face inches from hers. ‘Yow say anythin, and yow’m dead, Baby.’

Mr Ormerod was back behind the counter, brandishing a small pot of Brasso. I handed him the two shillings and he smiled as he gave me back the change.

‘Giz a couple more bananas then please,’ I added nonchalantly.

As he counted the sweets into a small brown paper bag, he looked over my shoulder, from where I could hear Baby breathing heavily. ‘You okay chick?’ he asked suspiciously.

I turned to see large silent tears coursing down Baby’s cheeks; she was standing as if someone had a gun to her back and one hand was clamped over her crotch.

‘Oh, she needs the toilet, we’d better get home,’ I said hurriedly and put a protective arm around Baby’s shoulder, clasping the tin to her and did not let go until we were all halfway down the hill. Baby cried the whole way to Sherrie’s farm, and was still snuffling when Anita and I settled down in the long grass to count our booty.

‘Eighteen shillings and eight pence!’ I breathed, enjoying the feel of the coins in my hand. ‘We could buy all the top ten singles for that!’

‘We could buy a ticket to London,’ added Anita. ‘We could just get up now and goo to London and no one would ever see us again.’

At this, Baby broke into fresh sobs and clung to Pinky’s leg. ‘Don’t want to go to London, didi!’ she wailed. ‘Mummy will be angry! And I’ve got a maths test tomorrow!’

‘Who said yow was coming anyway?’ snapped Anita.

I could see she was getting bored of having the moral
majority following us around. Pinky finally spoke, she sounded so calm and grown up I wanted to gob on her T-bar sandals. ‘The man in the shop. He will soon find out you have taken the tin. Then what will you do, Meena?’

‘Then what will you do, Meena?’ Anita mocked her, in a bad parody of Pinky’s accent which came out as adenoidal Welsh.

‘He won’t know it was us. Unless you tell him,’ I added, staring at Pinky.

‘Us?’ she blinked. ‘But me and Baby …’

‘Baby carried the tin didn’t she?’ I continued. ‘That means you helped us doesn’t it? That’s what I’ll tell the police anyway.’ I finished off with a wink to Anita.

Pinky gulped and blinked rapidly for a few moments; I had not noticed before how long and luxuriant her eyelashes were, she looked like Bambi with a nervous tic. ‘We will not tell, Meena,’ she said finally. ‘But we want to go home now.’ And with that, she turned on her heel and led Baby through the long grass, both of them picking their way carefully through the cow pats and nettles like two old ladies negotiating a slalom.

‘Hey, our Meena,’ Anita said softly. ‘Yow’m a real Wench. That was bostin what yow did. Yow can be joint leader with me now if yow want, you know, of our gang. Want to?’ I nodded stupidly, too overcome to speak. I had earned my Wench Wings without even trying, and it had been so simple and natural, and what thrilled me most of all was that I did not feel at all guilty or ashamed. I had finally broken free, of what I did not quite know, but I felt my chest expand as if each rib had been a prison bar and they had all snapped slowly one by one, leaving my heart unfettered and drunk with space.

‘Let’s goo and buy summat, right now!’ I said, heady with my triumph and Anita’s praise.

Anita laughed wryly, ‘Where? There’s only one shop round here and we’ve just robbed it. We’d have to gerra bus into town and …’ She glanced down the hill towards Pinky and Baby’s retreating figures.

‘Yeah, I know,’ I sighed. ‘I’d better go with em…you know, in case they say summat,’ and heaved myself to my feet whilst checking my bum for burrs.

‘Yow gonna keep the tin then…till we get to some proper shops?’ Anita asked. ‘Oh yeah, no problem,’ I said, taking her arm in mine. No one would come looking for me. Only the ones who fell bad got caught, everybody knew that.

The knock at the door came just as we were about to serve supper. We kids, as usual, had been fed first and I was just wiping up a final mouthful of spinach with the favourite end of crispy chapatti that I always saved till last. The Aunties and mama were lining up a battalion of plates for papa and the Uncles who hovered around the entrance of the kitchen like hopeful domestic pets at a banquet. Pinky and Baby had not eaten anything, despite Auntie Shaila’s loud protestations. ‘You know how long it took me to puree this methi? Three hours, just because I know my betis like it smooth-smooth. And now you just sit there with a Pite-Moo …’ (This was one of Auntie Shaila’s favourite expressions, which meant the object of the insult had a face curdled up like the top of a yoghurt.) And indeed it was the perfect description of her daughters, who had both studiously avoided me since we had got back home.

I had hidden Mr Ormerod’s tin amongst the rows of canned tomatoes in the bike shed, a perfect camouflage I had thought proudly, and had enjoyed a whole evening of being pinched and fussed over whilst opening my presents from the Uncles and Aunties. It had not been a bad haul either – the usual sick-making selection of frilly girlie dresses which all made me look like a biker wearing a collapsed meringue, but amongst these were a couple of books (
Look And Learn Compendium
, a
Jackie Annual
, a collection of Indian folk tales), and best of all, a bottle of perfume called Summer Daze, The Teenage Fragrance from Auntie Madhu. ‘Now you are getting such a big lady, Meena, and maybe you won’t come to my house smelling of cow’s muck anymore,’ she said kindly as I
unwrapped it. Pinky and Baby had sat in a corner, regarding me with mournful moon-eyes and I knew they were hoping I would suddenly break down in filmy tears and confess my crime, to save all our souls. But their disapproval only made me more manic; the more they stared, the harder I giggled and quipped and chattered excitedly about nothing. I basked in their fear and bewilderment, it fed me and I welcomed it for it reaffirmed I was nothing like them, would never be them.

And then Mr Ormerod was standing at our front door and talking in whispers with papa, both of them throwing me sidelong glances, papa’s face set like stone and Mr Ormerod’s expression somewhere between wonder and disapproval as he scanned the glittering array of silks draped over the Aunties’ magnificent bosoms.

‘Please do come in Mr Ormerod,’ said mama, wafting over to him holding out an empty plate, unaware of the gravity of the men’s chat. ‘We cannot allow a guest to leave hungry…there is so much food, mountains!’ she continued cheerily.

‘Not now, Daljit,’ said papa softly, staring hard at me.

The chapatti in my mouth suddenly turned to a clump of barbed wire and I could not swallow. I hurried into the kitchen and spat out the end of my meal into the bin, running my tongue over my teeth which felt as if they were covered with a sour, greasy film.

Papa appeared at my elbow. ‘Meena, I am going to ask you something and you had better not lie …’

I affected an innocent expression, vaguely aware of Mr Ormerod, who had advanced a couple of feet into our front room and was gingerly holding a pakora between his fingers as if it was a small, sharp-toothed rodent.

‘A collection tin has gone missing from Mr Ormerod’s shop, a tin full of money for charity. Charity, Meena. Do you know anything about it?’

I opened my mouth to allow the story sitting on my lips to fly out and dazzle my papa, but stopped myself when I saw how furious he was. Both his eyebrows had joined together so
he had one angry black line slashing his forehead like a scar and his usually light brown eyes were now black and impenetrable, glowing dark like embers. Then the enormity of what I had done hit me and a fear so powerful that I felt a few drops of wee land in my knicker gusset. I did the only possible thing and burst into tears.

‘It was Baby!’ I wailed. ‘She wanted sweets and I didn’t have money! I told her not to take it! She put it…put it down her jumper! Honest! Ask her!’

I upped the volume of my wails and forced more snot out of my nose, waiting for papa to take me in his arms and tell me how sorry he was to have falsely accused me. Instead there was an endless pause and then, ‘Are you lying? Because if you are …’

‘No papa! I swear! I got the tin! I hid it and I was going to take it back tomorrow! Honest!’

At that moment, Mr Ormerod rushed into the kitchen and flung himself at the cold tap, turned it on and stuck his mouth under it, gulping like he’d just come back from a long desert trek. Mama bustled after him, wringing her hands fitfully. ‘Oh please, Mr Ormerod! We do have glasses you know!’ she fluttered, and then to papa, ‘He bit on a green chilli…poor man …’

When Mr Ormerod stood up, there were beads of sweat on his nose and he spoke in a breathy whisper, ‘Please don’t worry, Mrs Kumar…I’ll be right as rain. I mean, I eat English mustard but this has never happened to me before …’

‘I should have given you one of the children’s snacks, they don’t take to chillies either. Oh I feel so bad!’ mama continued, until papa whispered something to her and she backed out gracefully, shutting the kitchen door behind her.

‘Mr Ormerod,’ papa said in a businesslike tone, ‘I’m afraid one of our friend’s daughters may have taken your tin and I don’t want to embarrass her parents…you understand.’

Mr Ormerod nodded, taking deep gulps of air, waving his hand in assent.

‘But Meena said she managed to get the tin off her, so if I refund you the difference, maybe we can say no more about it, eh?’

Once Mr Ormerod had counted the contents, he told papa, ‘It’s just a couple of bob missing…Let’s leave it at that, shall we?’

But papa insisted on giving Mr Ormerod a ten-shilling note, pressing it into his hand in a fervent manner that left no room for disagreement. I mentally calculated how many sherbet saucers I could have got for ten shillings and felt aggrieved.

We must have been in the kitchen for a while because when we came out, the Uncles were finishing off their meal and the Aunties whispered curiously behind papa as he bade a still perspiring Mr Ormerod farewell. Mama raised questioning eyebrows at papa but he waved her away, indicating he could not talk whilst Auntie Shaila was at her side. That was a mistake because Auntie Shaila had radar built into her sari blouse and she collared papa soon afterwards in a corner, demanding to know what had gone on. Pinky and Baby were cuddled up together on the settee, testing each other on the capitals of Europe from one of the encyclopedias I had been given at Christmas and had never read. They were completely unaware of Auntie Shaila’s murderous glances and trembling gestures in their direction, but when it finally came to everyone to leave, Auntie Shaila merely threw their coats at them and shouted, ‘Car! Now!’ Pinky and Baby fumbled with their toggles and hoods nervously, now wide awake and alert.

Papa stopped Auntie Shaila at the door and pleaded with her in Punjabi, I caught the words for ‘Gently…children…finished …’ none of which made any impression on Auntie Shaila.