‘So tell me,’ he says, ‘have you completed your homework?’
I feel my body sink down into my mattress.
‘That depends on your definition of “completed”.’
He isn’t amused by the comment, and begins to shake his head with the gravity of a priest at a funeral.
‘Young girl, we have spoken about this.’
His eyes are wide and unblinking as he sits bolt upright. I cower under the covers, lips screwed up in an expression I hope appears sulky rather than afraid. The subject of my academic abilities is a sore point with Mr Chavda. When he offered his services to Amma he seemed quite happy to ‘go back to his roots’ by educating me for a short period until my recovery was complete. Unfortunately for us both, this period was not so short. He taught me right up to my GCSEs, predicting that I’d pass at least five. In the end I passed two. He’s continued teaching me ever since, not just to be close to Amma, but to rectify this ‘clerical error’. Subsequently, Amma has increased her donations from the occasional samosa to full-course meals: dhansaks with rotis, kormas with rice. Mr Chavda seems satisfied with the deal as any time spent with Amma balances out the time he wastes trying to teach me.
‘Complete this probability table,’ he says suddenly.
He flings a photocopy onto my lap with the headings ‘Millipede 1, Millipede 2, Millipede 3’ across the top of the paper, with illustrations of the long, winding beasts beneath. My eyes blur, unable to read the words in the question, the legs of the millipedes wiggling alive. I imagine them scuttling clear off the page as if racing to a predestined finish line, then remember, with sudden clarity, the day of our Great Discovery in the woods.
Another clanking noise comes from next door. The squatter either isn’t afraid of being caught or is ignorant of the fact I can hear him. Even Mr Chavda glances up briefly before looking back at his wristwatch. Eventually he places it upon his knee, looking me square in the eye.
‘How many more legs does Millipede 3 have than Millipede 1?’ he asks.
I look back down at the question. The insects have multiplied, filling up the page. I look up.
‘Lots?’
Mr Chavda’s cheeks expand so wide I think they might pop. He closes his eyes and presses his fingers against his temples.
‘Young girl,’ he says through tight lips. ‘Did you even read the question?’
I look at Mr Chavda as my jaw clenches, wondering if he knows about Amma’s companion and, if he doesn’t, whether I should be the one to tell him.
The Constellation of Slugs
On the morning of our Great Discovery you hit your head on the sideboard and cried out ‘God!’ when you’d meant to cry out ‘Cod!’ The rain poured down soon after and you were convinced this was caused by your blasphemy, even though Jonathan told you it was caused by strong winds travelling over the Atlantic.
We sat and watched the rain through your window. It was the thick type that comes down in sheets, hitting the pavements with such violence we felt sorry for the concrete. The sky was a deep violet that reflected off the wet pavement and steel of the handrails. If you hadn’t believed you’d angered heaven, we’d have stayed in for the rest of the day and played Uno, but you were adamant we shouldn’t suffer for your sin and should go out regardless.
Your brother wasn’t hard to convince. He loved all types of weather and always called us sissies when we refused to go out in the rain. Amma dressed me up in four layers of clothing, a navy mackintosh, red plastic sailor’s hat with matching wellingtons, and a faded black umbrella that was so big I had to drag it across the floor to carry it. I felt (and looked) ridiculous so you decided to copy my outfit to make me feel better. Your raincoat was buttercup yellow, your wellingtons poppy red and your umbrella, when pushed open, revealed the boggling eyes of a ladybird. You looked amazing, without even meaning to.
Amma gave us strict instructions to go no further than the shops, but the rain was so heavy I was sure we could sneak down to the woods undetected. We crouched behind bollards and litter bins, lacing our way to the woods only to find it was waterlogged when we got there. Huge puddles circled the trunks of trees and if we stopped moving for more than five seconds our wellies sank into the mud. We held the top of them as we pulled our feet free, nearly losing our socks on the way.
Jonathan squelched through the mud regardless, attempting to measure the size of the raindrops he’d caught in his palm with a retractable tape measure from his pocket. He stared up at the sky to check the cloud formations.
‘Cumulonimbus,’ he said.
He could have been speaking Swahili for all it meant to us.
Already I was starting to see the root of Amma’s concerns: even through a mackintosh and four layers the damp was seeping onto my skin. I shuddered, knowing I was further from home than I’d promised. Ready to turn back, I searched for your image through the blanket of rain. When I caught sight of your hunched body it was by a tree stump, the boggling eyes of your ladybird umbrella looking back at me. It was only as I got closer that I heard you yelp.
‘Oh my Cod!’
Jonathan and I looked at each other before wading to your side in a manner that would have been highly inadequate in an emergency. I looked over at Jonathan, prepared to push him in the mud so I could be the one to save you from whatever imminent danger was about to swallow you up.
But there was no danger; there were slugs.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say the slugs were everywhere because they were. Upon the rocks, over leaves, climbing up thick, wide stumps. They were grey and glossy, slithering and squirming in all their translucent glory. Perhaps it was the rain that made them look so magnificent. Or the way they moved; so slow, so considered. Whatever it was, we weren’t repulsed or frightened as we had been with the scuttling creatures from Jonathan’s rock. We were charmed by this army of fat-bodied beasts and found their every movement fascinating. We picked them up and placed them on our palms, ordering Jonathan not to squish them. We prodded them with our fingers and compared their smells. We attempted to feed them moss and dead leaves, investigating their slime tracks while deciding which ones were adults and which were babies.
‘Look at the size of this one,’ Jonathan said, pointing to a slug so big that even he seemed reluctant to touch it.
We ran over to him, followed the direction of his finger and examined the monster glued to the base of a stump. It was the size of a chocolate bar and just as brown, with thick, wiggling tentacles and two giant balls for eyes.
The moment I saw it I felt sick. It was different from the other slugs, slimier and peculiar in shape with a humped back that made it seem even bigger than it already was. Because of its size, all its details were magnified. The gloopy gunge, the wiggling veined pattern across its body, the ribbed edge of its foot. It wasn’t an endearing creature but you fell in love with it nonetheless, prying it from its chosen home and placing its chubby body on the length of your palm.
‘We should call it Walter,’ Jonathan said with a smirk. ‘Because it’s fat.’
You flashed your brother a sharp glare before looking back down at your new companion.
‘I’m calling him Stanley,’ you said. ‘Stanley Slug.’
You stroked the slug as if it were the type of animal that enjoyed being stroked. I felt a pang of jealousy. It was ridiculous, I know. But I was young and egotistical. I thought I’d been replaced.
After a few more seconds of needless stroking you stood tall. ‘Slug race at the hideout! Last one there is a giraffe!’
You ran off at such a speed that we barely had time to choose our own slugs. I picked up an orange creature, small and inoffensive, while Jonathan chose four at random. When we arrived inside the hideout you made your brother choose between them. He stuck out his bottom lip.
‘Only if I can keep the others as reserves.’
He placed three on a log before naming his chosen slug Storm. I looked at the orange sheen of my minibeast and dubbed it
Tangerine.
‘That’s wrong,’ Jonathan told me. ‘It hasn’t got alliteration like mine and Marianne’s.’
I pulled out my mini dictionary, searching for the word alliteration.
‘Ravine Ravine Dictionary Queen,’ I heard him mumble under his breath.
I read the definition.
‘Sangerine, then,’ I said, shoving the book back in my bag.
Your brother slapped his forehead. ‘Shit, Ravine, that doesn’t even make sense.’
You reprimanded Jonathan for his language. He rolled his eyes.
‘Get on with it, then,’ he said, as though we were keeping him from his business.
We positioned our umbrellas to form a tripod – underneath was the finishing zone – then knelt in front of a log with our slugs held between pinched fingers as we placed them on the tarpaulin. When we counted down ‘three, two, one, GO!’ the slugs didn’t seem to know the race had started. They remained in their positions with only the occasional wiggle. Jonathan tried to flick his slug to victory but even this didn’t seem to make much difference. We watched the slugs for a total of five minutes that felt like five hours, until we realized the rain had stopped.
‘It’s the pressure of an audience,’ you said.
‘Stage fright,’ I agreed.
‘Whatever,’ Jonathan said. ‘Let’s go outside and race each other in the mud.’
We conducted a total of eight races, three of which I sat out to adjust my wellies and seven of which you won. On the last race I’m sure you slowed down to let Jonathan win. As he swaggered back to the hideout I restrained the urge to kick him in the shin.
When we walked through the entrance, Storm was where Jonathan had flicked him, looking decidedly shrivelled and motionless. Closer examination confirmed he was dead, a fact that didn’t seem to bother your brother half as much as we thought it should. Sangerine was nowhere to be seen but, after a quick search, I followed her tracks to the large metal ashtray where I found her perched on the base. Stanley, on the other hand, was clearly on view. His big fat body was sitting smugly in the finishing zone under the tripod of our umbrellas. He was so smack bang in the centre that Jonathan contested the win. But the evidence was there in the silvery trail leading across the plastic to Stanley’s gigantic frame.
‘This is a shitty game, anyway,’ Jonathan said, kicking one of the logs.
He didn’t speak to us all the way home. The rain had begun to spit again and you balanced Stanley on your palm, trying not to let the champion invertebrate slide off. I trailed behind, Sangerine wrapped in four layers of leaves held in the ball of my hands. You told me to hurry up before Mr Eccentric came, but I knew that he never ventured out when it was raining. I was wrong.
A few days later Mr Eccentric came banging at your door. The knocking was so loud that Amma ran to our doorstep convinced that someone had come to harass her. She opened her mouth ready to hurl abuse only to find an empty landing. I stood beneath her arm, the two of us craning our necks round the doorframe to see Mr Eccentric shuffling back and forth outside your door. He was wearing a dusty blue suit with flared trousers, his ash-coloured hair combed over the bald spot on his head. He punched his hands down as he shuffled, muttering to himself in an incomprehensible fury. As soon as Uncle Walter appeared, he stood still.
‘They’ve been at it again!’ he yelled. ‘Today I found slug trails all over the floor. It’s sacrilege, I tell you. Sacrilege!’
I pulled out my dictionary as your uncle tried to soothe Mr Eccentric.
‘The girls I don’t blame so much, but the boy. If only he knew, Walter. If only he knew!’
I strained to listen but there were only mumbling noises from your uncle.
‘So what if we’ve already talked about it?’ cried Mr Eccentric. ‘So what?’
We heard Uncle Walter trying to quench Mr Eccentric’s fire.
‘You make deals in this life, Walter, but they get broken just as easy as they get made. Your sister taught me that!’
Mr Eccentric’s body flashed past us, a haze of dusty blue.
‘The goddamn witch!’ he roared before disappearing.
I heard the shuffling of his feet as he hopped down the stairs two at a time.
Of course, on the day of the slug races, I didn’t know what the consequences of our actions would be. Would I have avoided Bobby’s Hideout if I’d known that Mr Eccentric would come banging at your door? Would I have told you both that we needed to stay home if I’d known what I was going to see that day?
It’s easier to think that I’d have been a kinder, wiser person if I had been given all the facts. But really, I don’t think I could have changed what happened. You were always going to run after Jonathan that day. I was always going to sulk behind, convinced that my role as best friend had been usurped. I was never going to listen to your cries to hurry up. I was always going to drop further and further behind. And what happened next, it wasn’t so much destined as inevitable. The rustling of leaves behind me, my head turning towards the noise. Me catching sight of an image that would fill my nightmares from that day onwards. A dark shadow of a man looking down upon me. Raincoat swirling at the hem as he spun away. The black soles of his shoes as he ran. And his eyes that rooted me to the spot as my wellingtons sank into the mud. Bright. Yellow. Flashing straight into mine.
That was it, Marianne, that was the first time I saw the Soul-drinker.
It’s been over a week and still no pain. I want to cartwheel across the rooftop, sing operatically at the top of my voice. Instead I wait for Amma to go out to the cash-and-carry and put on my stereo at full volume. I listen as trumpets blast out Stevie’s ‘Sir Duke’, rocking my hips from side to side, working my arms in a swaying motion as he sings. As the drums speed up, my body erupts into a wild dance, limbs tossing up and down, head twisting in such a violent movement that my hair whips against my cheeks. A thud comes from upstairs. I freeze mid-twist and jump under the covers of my bed. The blood booms loudly through my ears, my cheeks burn. As I realize the thud was a warning from the people above I smooth down my hair and smile.
When Amma comes home she brings Sandy Burke in with her. Apart from Mr Chavda she’s the only one who comes to see me now. Even though her voice leaves me with earache, I look forward to her visits. If I was Noah sailing through the floods, she would be the dove, twig in its beak, showing me land was nearby.
When she walks in I can see a small roll of fat protruding over her belt. Sandy used to blame her weight gain on age.
‘Age,’ she told me, ‘is an unforgiving bastard. The older you get the more your body forgets what it’s about. Your skin sags. Your sight goes. Your joints conk out like an old car engine. Before you know it your hair’s turned white and your fingernails have fallen off.’
Fingernails. If this is ageing then let me stay young for ever.
Sandy opens the window as soon as she comes into my room. She smokes roll-up cigarettes because the factory-made kind always make me cough and leave a strong, chemical smell on the bed linen. When Amma comes in, the butt having already been flicked clear out of the window, she lifts her nose and sniffs for evidence. The last time Amma smelt smoke she pulled Sandy’s packet of cigarettes from her pocket and confiscated them in the waistband of her petticoat.
‘The girl is ill enough without your second-hand smoke!’ she yelled before dragging her out by the arm.
When Sandy returned she was full of remorse, promising that she’d learnt her lesson. She looked so sincere with her deflated afro and her girls by her side that Amma let her in. But Sandy has learnt nothing other than techniques to prevent her being caught. The rollies, the window, the chewing of mints after she’s finished. Maybe no one learns their lessons, just ways to skirt around them.
As soon as she’s comfortable Sandy begins telling me about her new nineteen-year-old lover who works at Poseidon’s fish and chip shop.
‘And he’s not only handy around the house, he’s a wizard in the bedroom,’ Sandy
says as she dangles her cigarette out of the window. ‘Holy mother, sometimes I can’t even keep up with the lad.’
I try to act indifferent but can feel the burn of embarrassment sting my cheeks. Sandy talks as though I’m as sexually experienced as she is. How she expects me to be anything but virginal after a decade of confinement is beyond me. Does she imagine me sneaking in salesmen when Amma’s out feeding ducks? Or canoodling with Mr Chavda during our lessons (the image of this alone could put me off sex for life)? But still, I like the fact she doesn’t patronize me. Sometimes, when Sandy Burke comes over, I almost feel like an ordinary person.
‘How are the girls?’ I ask before she can give me any more details.
‘Being little sods as usual,’ she says. ‘Faith’s hair’s cut at a wonky angle since she decided to do that experiment. And Hope, well she came first in her class for spellings this week.’
She looks at me expectantly as she lets the fact trickle from her lips. I ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ enough to wangle a smile. I remember the times I used to come first in class for spellings. It was the only thing I was ever good at.
‘So Rekha says you’re getting out the flat soon,’ Sandy says, reaching her hand out of the window to flick her cigarette ash. I watch the embers sail away on the wind.
‘Did she now?’
I can’t help sounding glum. Sandy raises her eyebrows.
‘She seems set on the idea.’
‘I’m fine as I am,’ I say.
She cocks her head back. ‘Stuck in here all day?’ she says. ‘It must drive you loopy.’
The birds on the wallpaper begin flapping their wings as the My Little Ponies on the curtains laugh. Shiva uses one of his fingers to make a swirling action at his temple.
My body stiffens. Sandy looks away.
‘You heard from Walt at all?’
Every time she visits, Sandy asks me the same question. I thought she’d given up the ghost of your uncle years ago but, even with her new wizard of a lover, she can’t let him go.
The Things We Thought We Knew Page 8