by Meera Syal
‘But the accident,’ papa said finally. ‘It definitely affected her. And that boy she was sweet on, she’s never mentioned him since. Do you think …’ ‘Oh don’t be silly, Shyam! She’s much too young to be bothering about such things. She doesn’t even know what a boyfriend is.’ Papa’s silence told me how much better he knew me than mama, at this point.
Ah, my darling parents, how much they had tried to cushion me from anything unpleasant or unusual, never guessing that this would only make me seek out the thrill of the dark and dramatic, afraid of what I might be missing, defiant that I would know and experience much more than them. And now I was reaping the karma of all those lies and longings; I had lost a Nanima, a soul mate and temporarily, a leg — enough excitement for a lifetime already. If mama and papa knew the whole picture, they might have called it punishment. But this was the oddest thing, this is what I realised, standing in the yard, a sweaty eavesdropper holding my breath, that at this moment, I was content. I had absorbed Nanima’s absence and Robert’s departure like rain on parched earth, drew it in deep and drank from it. I now knew I was not a bad girl, a mixed-up girl, a girl with no name or no place. The place in which I belonged was wherever I stood and there was nothing stopping me simply moving forward and claiming each resting place as home. This sense of displacement I had always carried round like a curse shrivelled into insignificance against the shadow of mortality cast briefly by a hospital anglepoise lamp, by the last wave of a gnarled brown hand. I would not mourn too much the changing landscape around me, because I would be a traveller soon anyhow. I would be going to the posh girls’ school where I would read and argue and write stories and if I wished, trample the mangy school uniform tam-o’-shanter into the mud. After all, I had never promised to be good, had I?
As it turned out, my two weeks of revision for the eleven-plus became a fourteen-day siege. At first it started with catcalls as I flew past any corner where Tracey was standing guard. She would watch me trundle past with hard unblinking eyes, and just as my back wheels passed her feet I would hear it, soft enough to be friendly, sharp enough to be a dart: ‘Meeeeenaaaa!’ It was an androgynous voice, too low to be a woman’s, too knowing to be a man’s, and I wondered if the two of them were so close that they had blended into the same person – Sam-ita, Sam and Anita, who else could it be for Tracey’s mouth was always a tightly locked door. Then came the stones; I would be sitting at my open window poring over a multiple choice paper or testing myself on European capitals and a shower of pebbles would land on my book, too tiny to hurt me but thrown hard enough to sting. I never saw anyone actually throw the stones, but sometimes I would hear a low, stifled laugh or catch the heel of Tracey’s bony foot disappearing around the entry.
I began closing my window and losing my concentration. Then came the notes, always left where I alone would find them, pushed into the spokes of my bike or hidden in between the pages of my Jackie when it was delivered every Thursday. They were written on jagged scraps of plain paper, in the kind of anonymous capitals that adorned all blackmail letters in films, and contained strangely conflicting messages, always encompassed in a few short words. One day it would be FAT COW, the next day, NICE TITS, the day after, SILLY BITCH, and then SEXY LEGS, reminding me of the sherbet messages written on love heart sweets which were supposed to tell your fortune for the day. One of them even made me laugh, the one I found curled up inside an empty milk bottle on our front step. Whoever it was, they were, had tried to write chapatti, there were three versions of it all scribbled over angrily, SHUPAT…CHUPIT…CHARPUT…and then the final defeated version, SHITTY ARSE.
I don’t know how my parents ever avoided discovering these missives, maybe it would have been better if they had and maybe…but how was I to know then how it would all end? I stopped my bike rides, not out of fear because I thought he/she/they intended to physically harm me – they had plenty of opportunity to do that effectively—but because the suspense of what they would try next was ruining my revision. All the facts and figures I had assumed were fixed forever in my memory lost their solidity and melted into one amorphous mass of nonsense. If the notes had been obviously threatening, predicting dire accidents and a messy end, I would have known how to react, I would have taken action. But their sweet-sour flavour whetted my appetite somehow; they made me alert, confused and curious because I knew they were merely the first course of some showdown which I felt hungry for, which I had been waiting for as long as I could remember.
And naturally, when it came, it took me by surprise. It was the night before my eleven-plus exam, and my parents had been fussing over me all day. As soon as I got home from school, a tense expectant day in which everyone reacted hysterically to the slightest incident, mama ran a bath for me in front of the fire in the TV room and left me in there with a cup of tea, giving papa and Sunil strict orders to keep out until I had finished. The rest of the evening took on a ceremonial air, mama laid out my pyjamas and dressing gown, even though it was barely seven o’clock, and sat me in front of my favourite meal of paratha and homemade yoghurt, watching me eat as if every mouthful would go straight to my brain and plug a hole to stop a European capital from falling out. Then she massaged my hair with coconut oil whilst I ate chocolate ice cream, made me sit with Sunil on my lap with papa next to me whilst she settled down at my feet.
Sunil struggled away from my grip. ‘No, didi!’ he shouted crossly. ‘No like! Stopitt now good boy!’
‘Sunny, be nice to your didi! She has a very important day tomorrow!’ said mama, relieved that she was able to mention the eleven-plus in what she thought was a casual, unconnected way.
‘I’m fine, mama,’ I said cheerily, and I really was. I knew when I got into the hall tomorrow and turned over that dreaded exam paper, I would not be able to remember my name, never mind the square root of ten or the difference between an adjective and an adverb. I knew how much was riding on this paper – my parents’ hopes for my future, the justification for their departure from India, our possible move out of Tollington. None of this was ever said directly to me but I knew them well enough to read the conflict in their attentive faces: ‘Don’t worry about this but you’d better pass…so what if you fail but please don’t…you’ll still be our darling daughter but you’d look so lovely in a tam-o’-shanter …’
And then the telephone rang; mama went to answer it and came back looking drained and older. She told papa in Punjabi that Uncle Amman had had a heart attack, that Auntie Shaila had just rung from the hospital very upset and could we please go over and sit with her until he came out of the operating theatre. Mama was doing her old trick of disguising bad news by using Punjabi, perhaps forgetting that since my year with Nanima, she and papa had very few secrets left. Nevertheless I let papa translate the whole crisis into English, selfishly more concerned at this point by the distress on my parents’ faces than the thought of sweet Uncle Amman lying on an operating table with his generous heart exposed to the air.
‘I’ll go,’ said mama, reaching for the door. ‘You stay with Meena, she needs her rest tonight.’ ‘Nay, Daljit,’ papa stopped her. ‘How will you drive all that way in the dark?’ This was a genuine worry, mama had only ever driven in the day and still found roundabouts a traumatic experience. There were several roundabouts on the way to the hospital, not to mention a couple of flyovers and the notorious Coal Hill. Papa was reliving the whole journey in his head, I could see his nostrils twitching with alarm as he imagined mama in various night-time scenarios on her own, sailing right over the island of a roundabout, reversing up a slip road the wrong way. He stopped himself when his imagination reached Coal Hill, it was too horrible to continue. ‘You go with mama,’ I said to him, ‘I need to work anyway.’
Mama and papa looked at each other for a decision. Papa checked his watch.
‘If I take Sunil with us,’ mama was thinking aloud, ‘he’ll fall asleep in the car anyway …’
‘Tell Mrs Worrall to come and sit with Meena, if she doesn�
��t mind,’ papa said, searching for the car keys.
‘But we don’t know when we’ll be back, Shyam!’ Mama was changing her mind now. ‘I mean, she can’t leave Mr Worrall too long …’
‘Look,’ I said firmly, finding the keys under a cushion and tucking them into papa’s trouser pocket. ‘I’ll lock the doors, I’ll have the telly on, I’ll just knock on Mrs Worrall’s door if I need anything …’
Papa was convinced, he was already bundling Sunil into his ski suit. Mama chewed her lip fitfully, ‘You promise not to open the door to anyone? ANYONE?’
‘Yes! Now go on, I’m fine.’
It felt good to be seeing them off for a change; as they drove away in the sputtering Mini, I had an image of me as a mother standing in the same doorway with a child holding onto my knees, waving two old people off, mama and papa with grey hair and Nanima’s slow shuffle, overwhelmed with protective love, shouting after them to button up tightly and mind the road. Mind the road. The last thing Robert had ever said to me. I held onto that, it comforted me as I went around all the three downstairs rooms, switching off lights and sockets, checking for chinks in the curtains, glad that I’d already been for a wee and did not have to venture out again into the close summer night.
The knocking awoke me with such force that I literally fell out of bed and found myself tangled in a duvet nest, my heart hammering twice as fast as the blows coming from the front door. Mama and papa have got a key, I reminded myself as I fiddled with the stair light switch and crept downstairs. I recognised the silhouette through the frosted glass of the porch door, amazed that she was solid enough to cast a shadow. It is okay, I told myself as I unfastened the Yale lock, I know her, at least I used to. Tracey stood shivering in a dress I recognised as Anita’s summer cast-off, her cardigan hanging off one arm, her face contorted with grief and fury as she sobbed incoherently at me for a few seconds. ‘What?’ I said, grabbing hold of her arms which felt like twigs in my big hands. ‘I don’t understand…Where’s your dad? What’s going on?’ ‘He…he’s killing her! He’s g…g…going to kill her!’ she hiccupped, wiping a hand across her face which made no impression in the slime of her snot and tears.
So that was it! It made sense of every thing, their dad was beating her up, Roberto was a child beater and that’s why Anita was so cruel and mixed up. These ramblings filled my head as I threw on some clothes in my darkened bedroom, Tracey’s wailing calling me like a siren. When I slammed the door behind me, I remembered I did not have a key and knew that if my parents returned and found me missing, I would set off a police hunt, complete with helicopters and tracker dogs. I glanced at Mrs Worrall’s window; the light was always on but I knew she would be watching The Champions repeat till late. I had time. It was only when I felt the cool air hit my face and inhaled the scent of the sleeping may blossom, that I realised I had abandoned every promise, every good endeavour in a second to accompany the sister of the girl I had sworn to renounce forever. But at the same time, I had a strong feeling of déjà vu, as if I always knew it would come to this, whatever it was.
Tracey was already running ahead of me as noiselessly as a fox. Although the sky was bright with stars, a near-full moon and the yellow glow of the motorway lights, I had the feeling she could follow any trail in pitch darkness; she moved like a nocturnal animal. I was ready to turn into the entry that led directly to Anita’s house when Tracey veered off across the road and towards the Big House, which was, as always, shrouded in darkness. ‘Tracey!’ I called, thinking maybe her distress had made her confused. She paused for a moment, only to beckon me furiously with an imperious hand, and continued running until she reached the old pit yard where the new low-roofed building now stood, its windows still without glass, vacant like empty eye sockets.
‘Trace!’ I called weakly. She had pushed through a gap in the fence which was buckled in places from the building work, and waited for me in the gap, her head poking out impatiently. I was trotting right past the Big House gates — I thought of the witch that was supposed to live there, the same witch who had drowned Jodie Bagshot in the tadpole ponds and drained every last drop of blood from her body, leaving her blue and lifeless in the water. I thought of the huge silent bear that had watched us from the shadows whilst my Auntie Shaila sang her Punjabi lament to the night sky. I thought of mama’s diamond necklace being examined clumsily in fat scaly paws and coming to rest on a thick furry neck. I began to mutter the old prayer to myself, ‘For what we are about to receive …’ and then swallowed it down, refusing to give in to these ancient superstitions from another era, from my childhood. If I started to believe in just one of them again, I would have to believe in everything else I had tried to discard or disprove. I would not go that way again, I had an exam tomorrow, that was my mantra and I repeated it over and over again. I Have An Exam Tomorrow. Tomorrow I Have An Exam …
‘Quick!’ Tracey pleaded. She had stopped crying but was trembling so much that her teeth chattered as loud as castanets. I unthinkingly whipped off my sweatshirt and pulled it over her head; she did not help or resist me, a mannequin enduring my tugs. I could have turned back then, Roberto was twice my size, what could I do? Why had Tracey called for me? And then she was off again, sniffing her trail through the scaffolding and piles of bricks, and when she took the dirt path which ran to the side of the old pithead and through the small gravelly hills of shale, I knew where we were headed. The ponds, the tadpole ponds. I Have An Exam Tomorrow, Tomorrow …
We reached the top of the rise which looked down over the largest pond, one of a series created naturally over the years by the rain filling the old mine shaft, fringed with bulrushes which housed thousands of tadpoles, wriggling commas you could scoop up by the handful. But not in the dark. Now the bulrushes stood on silent guard, furry bearskins around the still water, water with no end, no bottom because the shaft ran into a whole labyrinth of tunnels and if you fell in, you were lost forever.
Tracey did not need to grip my arm so tightly because I could see them in the clearing, a patch of scrubby grass on top of an overhang, a favourite picnic spot where you could sit on the rocky ledge and scare yourself by dangling your legs in the air above the deepest part of the pond, a straight drop of fifteen feet into nothingness.
He was on top of her, moving slightly, and pulled away almost immediately, zipping up his flies in short sharp jerks. Anita was lying motionless on her back, her knees up, her eyes closed, her knickers around one ankle. I squinted through the gloom, willing the moon to shift position because I could not see her breathing. Tracey began to sob in her throat, her fingers loosened their grip on my arm, defeated. ‘No,’ she said. And then, ‘Is she …’ I was lost completely for a moment, because the moon had heard me and brushed a cloud from her face and threw a silver spotlight upon his. He was lighting a cigarette now, the flare picked out the tips of his stubbly scalp, and I was right, he did have a scar, a neat crescent running from temple to cheek.
How had he earned that? I pondered. Was he really Sam Lowbridge the Hero, as I had secretly cast him all these years, the misunderstood rebel with a soul? Was he sliced by a mugger whilst he ran to rescue a fragile old lady from a beating? Was he caught by the flailing claws of a fox he had whisked from under the huntsman’s hooves? He exhaled noisily and I knew suddenly how he got his warrior mark: Sam the Drunk, staggering round the back of a pub with half a broken beer bottle in his hand; Sam the Idiot, playing ball with his own flick knife, throwing it against a wall and catching it with his face; Sam the…why couldn’t I say it, Sam who cornered someone like my Auntie in a urine-soaked alleyway and unravelled her sari, laughing himself sick, her resistance leaving no mark except the crescent scar where her diamond wedding ring caught the soft skin of his cheek.
Sam took another drag and kicked Anita’s leg with the toe of his boot, her body rolled away uselessly from the blow, her head lolled on her neck, her eyes remained shut. ‘Gerrup you tart,’ he said. He kicked her harder and she lurched onto her stoma
ch, spreadeagled now, still. ‘Oy! Nita!’ Sam’s voice had an urgent snap to it. He went to kick her again and the night became a long murderous scream as Tracey ran down the hill towards him, teeth bared, eyes wild, nails out like claws. ‘Bastard!’ It was then that Anita opened her eyes with a jerk, her first reaction anger because her joke had been spoiled. I ducked down instinctively behind a tree stump and held my breath. Anita jumped up and then fell over again, entangled in her twisted knickers. Sam caught Tracey by her hair and picked her up like a rag doll, jumping back from the manic, chopping limbs.
‘Yow stupid cow!’ Anita shouted, managing to get her legs in the right holes and finally yanking her pants up. ‘When yow gonna stop following me around, eh?’
‘Yow are the stupid cow!’ Sam chuckled back. ‘What yow pretending for? Did I shag yow out that much, eh?’
Tracey’s movements became slower, weaker, Sam plonked her onto the ground and she ran immediately to Anita, arms outstretched. ‘I thought yow were dead!’ she shouted back.
