by Meera Syal
In fact, whilst my parents did their dance of welcome around Anita all evening, my Nanima remained singularly uninvolved and unimpressed. She stood in front of the television, apparently unaware of Anita’s sighs and craning neck, she slumped next to her on the settee, making Anita sink into the cushions, and gradually edged towards her until she gave up and moved to the floor, allowing Nanima to lie at full stretch, massaging her feet which she occasionally waved under Anita’s nose, making her jump and hold her breath. I only began to suspect her exaggerated old lady behaviour was perhaps deliberate when she made Anita look up for the second time from her food, by letting fly the longest, loudest burp I had ever had the privilege to witness. I swear Anita’s blonde bangs flew up in protest against the velocity, and even mama uttered an involuntary ‘Hai Ram, mama!’
Anita looked like she was waiting for an apology, so papa hurriedly chipped in with ‘We often take a good burp as a sign of a good meal, Anita. Also, you know old ladies are a bit freer with their…um…expressions. Does your granny suffer in this manner?’
Anita thought for a moment and said carefully, ‘Me dad’s mom died ages ago. Mom’s mom used to leave her toenail clippings in our plant pots though.’
I sighed with relief, now we were equal, and just to prove it, Anita finished her last chip, steeled herself and finally did thank my parents with a window-shattering belch. Mama did not bat an eyelid. ‘My pleasure, darling,’ she replied.
By the end of the meal, it was obvious to me that Nanima had not taken to my best friend. She talked over Anita to my parents in loud Punjabi. I recognised one or (wo phrases which were usually applied to me when I’d done something wrong, and Anita soon picked this up. ‘Is she talking about me?’ she whispered fiercely.
‘Who’s She?’ I spat back. ‘The cat’s mother?’
‘No, your gran,’ she continued. ‘What’s she on about?’
‘Oh, just saying how nice it is to meet one of my mates,’ I said, fairly confident this was one porkie I could get away with. But Nanima’s glowering looks and the way she wiped around where Anita sat with a wet cloth, made me feel we should perhaps move somewhere else, especially when I remembered that she might have a Kirpan concealed about her person, but it was now far too dark to go out and where else was there?
‘Let’s go up to your room!’ nudged Anita.
‘Okay, I’ll ask…tell me mom,’ I replied, hoping mama would say NO loudly. I desperately did not want Anita to see my room. I had seen hers, a teenage den of old laddered tights, make-up, posters of pop stars, locked diaries, all of which she had lost the keys to, even a few records, in other words, a proper girlie hang-out with all necessary accessories. My bedroom, on the other hand, was a place to sleep, bereft of fripperies such as cosmetics (not allowed, tarty), posters (not allowed, plaster hazard), records (only had one, a single of ‘Chim Chim Cheree’ from Mary Poppins which came free with a pound of Stork margarine) and worst still, I shared it with my baby brother and my old gran.
Unfortunately, mama said yes, and I found myself leading Anita up the dark winding stairs, trying to think of excuses for my lack of taste. I could tell she was disappointed when she saw there was no lock on the door, and cast a critical eye over the functional dressing table and the stacks of Treasure comics I had preserved in a pile near the huge double bed. But Anita’s boredom turned to amazement when she flung open my wardrobe door and found my entire collection of Indian suits. ‘Bosting clothes, Meena!’ she shouted, immediately pulling the suits and scarves off their hangers, as silks and satins and cottons of deep purple and sea green and saffron yellow and cinnamon brown unfurled a world of possibilities before her. ‘Oh I love this one!’ she said, shaking out a cerise salwar kameez. with gold embroidery at the cuffs. ‘All you have to do is cut this bit off, it’d make a fab mini-dress!’ She really liked the dupattas, the long flowing scarves which accompanied every suit, a supposed veil of modesty which you had to drape over your bust but which I had discovered made excellent slingshots or in an emergency, skipping ropes, also.
‘Look at these! I mean, they’m miles better than Fat Sally’s poxy Biba scarves…How come yow never wear these then?’
‘Oh I do,’ I told her. ‘I mean I ain’t gonna wear them to ride a horse, am I? I just wear them for special occasions …’
‘Oh, and we’re not special enough, is that it?’ she remarked, draping at least ten of them around her head and shoulders, holding them up to the light, making them sparkle and breathe—she looked as if she was wearing a constellation of stars as a hat. For the next few hours, we tried every suit and dupatta on, posing in front of the fly-blown bevelled mirror, practising our catwalk style, giving each other marks out of ten for poise, charm and sexiness. The bold colours that suited me, often drained her face completely, yet the pastels that made me look sallow and old, lit up her skin and threw her features into defined relief. There were at least ten suits she recommended that I should never wear again, and as I had no further use for them, it seemed natural to give them to her.
We would have got away with it had it not been for mama’s social graces. Anita was wearing my old green duffle coat, (‘…cos she’ll get cold on the way home, mama.’) and came down the stairs carefully, planning to make a quick exit through the back door. But mama was waiting at the foot of the steps with her arms outstretched. She clasped Anita quickly to her and said, ‘It has been lovely to have you here, Anita. Do come again soon …’ Anita’s shock at finding herself in another mother’s bear hug must have broken her concentration. She opened her mouth to say something but nothing came out, just a sort of feeble croak which, for some reason, moved mama so much that she hugged her again and that’s when all ten suits, carefully rolled up, came tumbling from beneath Anita’s coat. I was as surprised as mama was, because accompanying them were a bundle of my Treasure magazines, my Chim Chim Cheree single, a silver choker I thought I had lost last year and, unaccountably, a pair of my blue wool netball socks, none of which I had included in the official booty.
‘I was borrowing them,’ said Anita quickly. ‘Meena said I could!’
‘Well, Meena should have asked me first then,’ said mama, a hint of flint in her tone. ‘Could you put them back please? Except the magazines which you may borrow for a while.’ Mama had on her infants’ teacher’s voice, pleasant enough with no room for argument. This was not a good move as Anita reacted to the slightest sniff of authority with mindless violence. Anita glared at mama and stamped her foot hard. ‘Now, Anita!’ mama said, incredibly. I closed my eyes and waited for this Clash of the Titans that I had been torturing myself with since the day I met Anita. When I opened my eyes, Anita had gone, and emerged a moment later down the stairs again, clutching a single Treasure magazine. ‘I’ll have this then,’ she said moodily.
‘Of course, darling. See you soon …’ Anita had already gone, I heard the back door slam defiantly. ‘Well Meena,’ mama said, turning to me. ‘That was fun.’
‘Can we ask Anita to come again,’ I asked.
‘Um, of course,’ mama replied carefully. ‘But let Anita call you over to her house first. That’s how we do it with your Aunties, take it in turns so everyone is treated fairly. Yes?’ I thought this was a good idea and dropped several hints over the next few days about the kind of food I liked, none of which Anita ever picked up.
11
If I had known what was going to happen in my tenth summer, if the Mysterious Stranger had forewarned me that my childhood would begin ebbing away with the fall of the autumn leaves, I could have prepared myself better. I would have taken photographs, pressed significant trophies in a scrapbook, been kinder to some people and harder on others, I would have kept a diary. Instead, I treated time with my usual jaunty contempt and let the days drift by unmarked, content to bob aimlessly along in the current, not bothering to appreciate the landscape because I assumed it would always be there.
But for a while, that summer was idyllic and papa was the first to be bl
essed, coming home late one evening singing loudly to himself and carrying a bag of sweets in one hand and a bottle of perfume in the other. Mama seemed to know that he would be delayed, and had primped and fussed over the meal and the house, tidying and arranging furiously like a VIP was coming to visit. As papa entered, mama rushed to him and flung her arms around his shoulders, which made Nanima snort and shade her face with her dupatta. They had a brief tender exchange in Punjabi and then papa handed round his goodies, the French perfume for mama of course, I think the sweets were meant for me and Sunil but Nanima grabbed the bag and hoovered up half the contents before I could stop her. ‘Your papa has just got a promotion,’ mama beamed proudly. ‘What’s that?’ I mumbled through a handful of jelly babies I’d managed to salvage, just missing losing a finger to Nanima’s chomping jaws. I looked up at papa who had slightly deflated faced with this question, and then it struck me that I still did not know what exactly my father did for a living.
The nearest contact I had ever had with papa’s place of work had been five years ago, when mama had bundled me up in my best red woollen coat one frosty morning and told me excitedly, ‘Now you are five, you can go to your papa’s party!’ I felt extremely proud that my father was so powerful and popular that a party was being held in his honour as we pulled up outside a Victorian swimming baths on the outskirts of Wolverhampton where several other similarly swaddled children were being hauled out of cars by twittering, fussing parents. ‘Is it a swimming party, papa?’ I asked as we negotiated the wide stone steps to the entrance whose festive decorations stretched to an anaemic strand of tinsel and two pinched balloons.
‘No, beti,’ papa smiled. ‘This is a Father Christmas party. You want to meet Father Christmas, don’t you?’
‘I thought this was your party!’ I wailed. ‘Mama said it was!’
‘Your mama,’ said papa, tight-lipped, ‘says too much sometimes.’
I had expected a welcoming committee of some sort; a row of men in suits clapping papa as he brought me in to show me off, streamers falling from the ceiling, a big chocolate cake with sparklers fizzing on top and letters in white icing which said, ‘MR KUMAR! THE WORLD’S BEST BOSS!’ But instead, I found myself in a huge draughty hall, standing in a long queue of moaning children which led up to a bare stage upon which I could just make out a fat white man in a bad false beard. Through the planks beneath my feet I detected movement, glimpsed the rise and fall of a smooth black skin, and only then I realised we were standing above the covered swimming pool. I reached out for papa, who was talking to a man in front of us. ‘So Bill,’ papa said matily. ‘Looking forward to the break, eh?’
‘Oy ay, Mr K,’ said Bill, who was squat and short, and had carefully brylcremed his few remaining strands of hair into an interesting thatch pattern over his pink shiny dome. ‘Cor wait, two days away from that bloody place ain’t long enough though, know wharr-I-mean? Mind you, I do bloody rivets in me sleep, me missus says …’
Papa smiled faintly. ‘My wife says I do long division in mine. What can you do?’
Bill grunted companionably and glanced down at his daughter who had not stopped staring at me during this exchange. She looked like one of those porcelain dolls I had seen in Beatties in Wolverhampton and longed to own, all blonde ringlets and peachy smooth skin. She had on a curiously old-fashioned coat with a high velvet collar and complicated fabric buttons, but what really impressed me was her hat. It was not like the hats mama forced onto me, functional suffocating contraptions which continually moulted fine fluff and made me sneeze. This was a hat to be looked at, a bonnet with bows and ribbon ties which sat on top of the glossy curls at a self-satisfied angle, useless in a Tollington gale and proud of it. The little girl slowly extended one chubby pink finger and stroked the only inch of flesh I had exposed, where my glove did not quite meet my sleeve. Maybe it was the sense of ownership with which she touched me, maybe it was the regret and resignation in papa’s voice when he talked about his work to Bill, but when she extended her forefinger for the second time, as I knew she would, I bit it as hard as I could.
Papa shouted at me, he kept asking me Why? Why? to which I simply answered Because Because. By the time we finally trudged up onto the stage to meet Father Christmas, I was in no mood for social chit-chat. ‘So, chick, what would yow like for Christmas then?’ I shrank back under the acrid gale of Santa’s bad breath; his forehead was shiny with perspiration and his beard, which was flecked with ash, had slipped slightly to one side so he appeared to have half a mouth. ‘I wanna bike,’ I said sullenly, edging away from his embrace. ‘Well, if yow’m a good wench, yow get one, but for now, have this,’ he said quickly, reaching into a big bag at his side and handing me a present which was the same shape and wrapped in the same paper as the one given to the blonde girl before me. I had unwrapped it before I got to the end of the stage. It was something called Little Misses Beautiful Hands, which comprised a cardboard sheet wrapped in cellophane upon which rested a fake bottle of nail varnish and ten rubber fingertips all topped with perfectly manicured, tapered nails. I did not try them on until I was sitting in the car where I held up my hands to the window. I looked as if I had been the victim of some awful mad doctor’s experiment, holding up ten brown fingers topped with pink, latex skin and bright red talons. ‘I hate my present!’ I cried as I threw them out of the window. ‘I hate your party, papa!’ But papa was not angry with me, surprisingly. And when he asked me the following year if I wanted to go to his office party and I declined, he never got angry then either.
The memory of this filled me with a sudden surge of affection and I said through a mouthful of jelly babies, ‘Promotion is dead good, isn’t it, papa? What do you get for it?’
‘Well, it means more money, a bigger office …’ mama butted in quickly.
‘Are we going to be rich then? Can I have a pony?’
‘Hah!’ said mama. ‘We will never be rich, Meena, we’re too honest. But we will always have enough to buy all the important things, food, heat, a car …’
I began to switch off. I did not want mama to remind me of all the things we had for which I had to be eternally vigilant and grateful, I wanted us to have enough money so that we could be selfish, ungrateful, and spoil ourselves shamelessly without having to do rapid sums in our heads as if we were permanently queueing at some huge check-out till.
But papa cut her off mid-flow. ‘Of course we will have some fun with the money, that’s what it’s for, eh?’ Mama pursed her lips and sighed inwardly. ‘What shall we get first, Meena?’ he continued. ‘A bathroom, or a trip to India?’
‘India! India!’ I shouted, jumping around him madly as Sunil waggled his head in imitation.
Mama grinned in spite of herself. I knew she must have been as thrilled as I was, I knew that my parents had not been back there since before I was born, that was obviously a lifetime and a half to me. ‘But when, Shyam?’ mama said. ‘I mean, the holidays have started already. I only have one week half-term, then three weeks at Christmas …’
‘Christmas,’ decided papa emphatically. ‘We will take Nanima home ourselves.’ I felt strange that he used that word ‘home’ so naturally, did that mean that everything surrounding us was merely our temporary lodgings? But this note of disquiet melted into the symphony of anticipatory joy we all felt now, and we recalled the tune and hummed it to ourselves secretly for the rest of the holidays.
Sunil was the next beneficiary of this seasonal good fortune. A few days after papa’s promotion, Sunil was left on his own in the back yard, whilst mama, Nanima and I pottered amiably around the house. Mama often plonked him out in the sunshine with some toys, having swept and cleared the yard of small foreign bodies and dirt, locked the back gate and alerted Mrs Worrall to his presence, leaving Sunil to crawl about in his own private playpen, his knees gathering moss and dandelions on the way. At first we thought the noises were coming from some kids passing through the entry, or maybe from the Mad Mitchells’ radio which was always tu
ned to the World Service and left at full volume on their kitchen window sill. But then Nanima came and fetched mama and me, her finger on her lips, and we all crept onto the back step and marvelled. Sunil was focused on a large spider which was sitting in the middle of its web hung between the drainpipe and the wall, shiny and flat as a button. He had a handful of grass in each fist which he offered to his confidant as a gift, chattering all the time. ‘Pider…eat…good…aja…chaat!…Na-mi-naa…papa…mama…Meen-ee …’
Mama clutched my arm, her eyes welling foolishly. My brother was not even a year old. ‘Now tell me my son is stupid, you bloody doctor-saab!’ mama whispered intently to herself.
I was most impressed that Sunil was a bilingual baby and suffered a few pangs of regret that Nanima had not been around when I was learning to talk. After we had fussed and cooed over Sunil and telephoned papa with the good news, I caught Nanima creeping round my now sleeping brother with a woolly black thread dangling from her fingers.
