by Meera Syal
Afterwards, I could not find Anita anywhere and felt too tired and dispirited to bother to call at her house. Sam’s words remained with me, I felt as if I had been spat at, that there were gobs of bile hanging off my cheeks, the ends of my hair, and I had to be on my own to wipe myself clean. I made my way to the abandoned pigsty from where Anita and I had once commanded a makeshift gang, which we had gradually abandoned as we formed a mutual admiration society with only two members, ourselves. There were still remnants of our little empire, a few mouldering copies of Jackie in the corner, a pile of empty Coke bottles, the old tartan blanket which when shifted, sent silverfish shimmying into corners like mercury.
The television news was just finishing when I finally arrived home. Nanima was feeding Sunil a bowl of rice, sugar and milk as he played with her Kara, making satisfied sucking noises, whilst mama and papa sat on the settee, absentmindedly playing with each other’s fingers.
‘It was on the news, what happened to the school,’ mama said without taking her eyes off the screen.
‘What? What was?’ I said, ready for the onslaught of insults about Sam Lowbridge and the general standard of low life that I insisted on hanging around with in the Yard.
‘The diggers, you know, just a few seconds it was …’ Mama trailed off, and I took the opportunity to slink away to my room.
I sat on my window sill for a long time, watching the sun set as it always did, over the roof of the Big House. My favourite part was when the sun dipped behind the old pithead and became a rosy disc imprisoned briefly in a gilded cage before it sank thankfully into the horizon. I needed someone to talk to, I needed to talk about Sam. Anita, being my best friend, should have been with me. But I knew, as I thought this, that she would not have understood that there were some things that we would never be able to share. I climbed into bed and for the first time in years, said a prayer. I told God I was sorry for blaming Pinky and Baby for stealing Mr Ormerod’s tin and I wished fervently that they were lying next to me in their matching pyjamas and co-ordinated bed socks, listening to me telling them about Sam, because I knew that they would understand.
The next morning, the cracks appeared which would finally split open the china blue bowl of that last summer. They began when papa read out a report from our local paper to mama over breakfast. It was tucked away on page eight, under the headline MAN ATTACKED IN TOLLINGTON. ‘The victim, a Mr Rajesh Bhatra from Tettenhall was found in a ditch on the side of the Wulfrun Road. He was suffering from head injuries and broken ribs and had been robbed of his suitcase and wallet. Mr Bhatra cannot recall anything about the assault and is presently in a stable condition in Tettenhall Hospital.’
For a while there was silence in the kitchen, save for the sizzling of a parantha on the griddle and Sunil’s stage slurps as he downed the last drops of milk from his bottle. Nanima asked for a translation, but papa shook his head and told her, ‘Kuchh Nahin hai Byi, Kuchh Nahin Kas.’ Nothing special, papa said. But mama, papa and I knew just how special this was—we betrayed ourselves in the way we avoided each other’s eyes. This was too close to home, and for the first time, I wondered if Tollington would ever truly be home again.
It all started because of Anita’s new bra. We were sitting in the stable whilst Trixie chewed at a bag of oats – she actually preferred the bag to its contents – and all four of us lounged on the musty hay sharing crisps and a big bottle of Creme Soda. Anita lay back languorously, bubbles still fizzing on her lips, and as she went down, her chest seem to rise up and say hello.
‘Nita!’ shrieked Sherrie. ‘Yow’m not!’
Anita smirked and slowly, slowly, rolled up her T-shirt to reveal a contraption that resembled two paper doilies strung on an elastic band, and beneath them, two barely discernible poached eggs.
‘Ooh, fab!’ sighed Sherrie. ‘What size am yow?’
‘Thirty A,’ said Anita airily.
‘Oh, I’m thirty-one B,’ sniffed Sherrie, whilst Tracey and I exchanged peeved looks, annoyed that they were now excluding us by using these technical terms.
‘I went down to Larsons on me own and just bought it. I woz fed up of em flying in my face when I’m riding Trixie,’ said Anita.
‘Oh I get chafing me, after a day’s riding,’ said Sherrie. ‘I probably need a bigger size.’
Now I knew they were simply showing off and I flipped away from them, lying on my front in case they started asking me breast-related questions which I knew I was not qualified to answer. ‘I love them cups,’ said Sherrie, leaning over Anita for a better look. ‘Am they poly-cotton or nylon?’ and she fingered one of the straps curiously. Tracey jumped forward and slapped Sherrie’s hand away, the thwack made Trixie start a little and shift in her stall. Sherrie was holding her hand to her stomach, too astounded to speak.
Anita shouted, ‘What yow do that for, yow silly cow?’
Tracey’s voice was so intense, so vindictive, it made my neck crinkle. ‘Don’t yow touch my sister, Sherrie!’
‘Yow gerrof my farm now!’ Sherrie said, a catch in her throat. She was scared too and I felt relieved.
Tracey actually took a step towards her, ‘Don’t touch her I said!’
‘Who am yow, me mother?’ Anita hissed back, shoving Tracey up against the side of the stall, pinning her scrawny neck under her strong tanned arm.
‘I’ve seen yow,’ Tracey choked. ‘Seen yow with him! Yow let him touch yow as well! I’m telling …’
She was silenced by Anita’s hand which clamped over her mouth, squashing her words. ‘Yow say one more word, our Trace, and I swear I’ll kill yow.’ She pushed her into the hay where Tracey landed on her knees and yanked her head up defiantly. For one terrible moment, I thought she was going to get up again and I was poised to throw myself in between them because I believed both of them capable of anything at this moment. Instead, Tracey burst into loud retching sobs and ran out of the stable, whilst Sherrie went over to Trixie who was stamping about fitfully, her ears up and swivelling like radar. No one spoke for a while, Anita gulped down some more Creme Soda and forced out a belch which no one laughed at. Eventually Sherrie asked the question that had been whirling around my head, making me dizzy and disorientated. ‘Who’s He then? Gorra fella have ya, Nita?’
Anita raised a forefinger and tapped it slowly against the side of her nose, the way we always said, ‘Mind it, yow!’ But her smile told me everything I needed to know.
Now Anita’s recent absences made sense. My best friend in all the world really did have a boyfriend and had never told me. My best friend was sharing me with someone else and I knew whatever she had been giving me was only what she had left over from him, the scraps, the tokens, the lies. I had fought for this friendship, worried over it, made sacrifices for it, measured myself against it, lost myself inside it, had little to show for it but this bewildered sense of betrayal. Now I knew that I had never been the one she loved, I was a convenient diversion, a practice run until the real thing came along to claim her. I got up unsteadily and muttered, ‘I’ll just see if Trace is okay,’ and walked slowly out of the stable. I sat with my back to its cool damp wall and wished it would rain.
Anita and Sherrie must have thought I had followed Tracey home. They were still talking and although Sherrie’s voice was a muffled drone, Anita’s was high and sharp with excitement and I could hear every word. ‘So I just jumped on and went with him…he asked me too, cheeky bugger. I knew he’d always had his eye on me…And we went Paki bashing, it was bosting! This Paki was standing at a bus stop, he was in a suit, it was dead funny! Nah, I only watched, the lads like did it, you know, and us wenches, we just shouted and held their lager…They really did him over and you know what, the stupid bastard didn’t do nothing back! He didn’t even try, he just sort of took it…and after we kissed and kissed and kissed, with tongues and all…Nah you silly cow, not me and the Paki. Me and Sam. Sam Lowbridge …’
I remember retching quietly into the open drain outside the stable and watching lu
mps of chapatti sailing slowly away from me in the dirty water. I don’t remember fetching Trixie from the stable, I must have passed Anita and Sherrie but if I try and recall whether they looked surprised or guilty, I see nothing except my shaking hands as I fastened the bit into Trixie’s foam-flecked mouth. I smoothed out the hair on her back before placing the saddle carefully, tightened the girth gradually so the tension was just right over the drum of her belly. Trixie stood patiently as I mounted her, encouraging me to settle myself and to feel for the stirrups with my plimsolled feet.
I pressed my knees into the soft sofa of Trixie’s haunches, the way I had watched Anita do it a hundred times, and she responded so immediately, so trustingly, it intensified my sense of loss. ‘Hey! Meena! Hey! You daft cow, gerrof!’ Sherrie’s voice was already being whipped away by the rushing of air which filled my ears, my eyes and nose, entered my open mouth like a flock of birds, my cheeks flapping in time to their wings. The reins felt heavy and stiff in my hands. I loosened the slack; Trixie felt the surrender in the gesture and speeded up from a trot into a gallop, the fields and farmhouse and tarmacked road, the distant motorway lights and the rooftops of my village all sped by like a revolving painted backdrop, time rushing past me again, but this time I was going to catch it up. I yanked hard on the left hand rein and Trixie swerved sharply towards the series of jumps leading up to the paddock fence where Anita and Sherrie now stood, their arms jerking in terrified semaphore. My feet were slipping in minutes off the metal stirrup bars, my backside had not made contact with Trixie’s back for several years, the first red-and-white-striped jump bar was coming up, at least a century away.
But one single thought kept repeating itself over and over, All that time I wasted waiting for something to happen, when all I had to do was make something happen, it was waiting for me, it was as easy as this. I held onto Trixie’s mane but she knew before I did that we would be parting company soon. She scrambled to a halt, inches from the jump, her hair streaming through my hands like a waterfall. I clutched air, then metal, then slapped palms with dark solid ground and heard a sharp loud crack. There goes the jump, I thought, and opened one eye, how heavy it was, to see the striped bar swinging in its grooves, complete and unbroken.
I should have been in a film; in a film everything would have dissolved into hazy lines and I would open my eyes to the sound of distant birdsong and my tear-stained but relieved loved ones in a circle around my bed, a stage sticking plaster artfully arranged on my temple. But no, I was awake for every awful painful moment; I saw Anita and Sherrie shimmering around my head. ‘Oh fuck, seen her leg? It’s pointing the wrong way…Fuck …’ I sent a message to my body to get up and only my mind obeyed, I smelt my own pee and the clover stalks tickling my nose which I could not turn to see or lift a hand to brush away, I saw feet running towards me, mixed up with Trixie’s skittery hooves, felt calloused hands on my head and a scratchy horse blanket adding to the layers of numbness settling slowly over my limbs, I heard crying, I knew it could not be Anita’s, I endured strangers telling me ‘lie still, chick’, as if I had any choice, I closed my eyes to a familiar car engine racing dangerously up the narrow lane, I wished I could have had my hands back to block out the voices I knew so well, which were distorted with horror and false courage. ‘Meena, beti? Meena!!’ I better let them know I’m not dead at least or they’ll go crazy, I thought, and was surprised to discover that I could no longer control my eyelids to oblige them.
12
I was in the Good Hope Children’s Ward, whose peeling yellow walls sported Mickey Mouse posters and cardboard cut-outs of various soft fluffy creatures whose mouths emitted balloons with sayings like, ‘Helga the Hippo Says Get Better Soon!’ and ‘Duncan the Duck Says Smile!’ Luckily I did not have a full frontal view of these annoying creatures as my bed was at the far end of the room near the isolation booths.
On my left side was a dopey looking girl called Angela who had something wrong with her liver and whose skin tone varied from bloodless white to pansy yellow, depending on the time of day and what medication she had swallowed. On the other side was Robert in his glass walled isolation room, who on my first day breathed on the window and wrote ‘Hi!!!’ backwards for my benefit. The worst part was when I woke up from the operating theatre, still woozy from the anaesthetic, and saw my leg encased in plaster from toes to thigh, lashed to what looked like a four-poster bed made of dull grey metal. ‘Alright, Mary?’ shouted a sharp featured female doctor into my face, making me jump. I was about to correct her pronunciation of my name when she barked, ‘Can’t say your real name so Mary will do, ha ha! Can you feel this?’ she said, jabbing what felt like a small dagger into my plaster-clad toes. I yelped in reply and she nodded, satisfied. ‘Lovely. You’ll be out of this by Christmas, if you’re lucky. Tell nurse if you want to use the bedpan …’ and she marched off, ticking me off on her clipboard.
I thought I must have misheard her – Christmas was over four months away! Maybe she had meant my Christmas, Diwali. That was only eight weeks away or so, round about Sunil’s first birthday which we had planned to celebrate with a big party and round off what had been, up until now, a very successful year for our family. But mama’s ashen face when she came to visit confirmed my worst fears. ‘Meena, oh my beti,’ she said, stroking my hair, trying not to look at my leg, which was difficult as it was propped up at a forty-five-degree angle and took up most of the bed. ‘Meena listen, it was a nasty break, but you must not worry, it will heal. But it is going to take some time, the doctors think that anyway …’ Tears were already sliding out of the corner of my eyes, dropping quietly onto my starched pillow. Mama swallowed and gently tried to stem the flow, it was useless, I could have cried an ocean. ‘Don’t worry about school,’ she continued jauntily. ‘I have spoken to your teachers, I’ve got your curriculum books and we’ll study together every day. Good job I am a teacher as well, hey?’
I let out a stifled sob; mama taught four-year-olds. I had visions of her bringing in flashcards and stickyback plastic, and me sitting on the bed crayoning laboriously with my tongue stuck out in concentration. ‘What…what about…the eleven-plus?’ I juddered. ‘Sunil’s birthday…Nanima? …’ And then it hit me, the awful bitter consquences of my moment of madness: ‘India? We were going to India!’ and I gave in to a loud howling fit which brought a nurse scurrying to draw the curtains hurriedly around my bed. Mama held me as well as she could around the wires and pulleys and supports. She was calm now, in control, she would not let me down. ‘We will all come and visit you, we’ll take it in turns. We can cut a cake for Sunil right here, and bring his presents as well…India is not going anywhere. We can always go next summer, and Nanima …’ She hesitated, and then added, ‘Nanima is coming tonight with papa! Okay?’
But the thought of Nanima’s visit did not console me. For days there was no room in my head for anyone except Anita, and my need to relive my last glimpse of her. She was sitting on the gate, watching me being stretchered into the back of the ambulance and was nonchalantly swinging her red patent heels, the way Sam Lowbridge had swung his boots against the crumbling village wall. I thought of those boots smashing into the skull of the Bank Manager, I imagined those red heels skittering in the mud at the side of the ditch, jumping for joy. Anita and I had never been meant for each other: Sam and Anita, Anita and Sam, it sounded as natural as breathing. And me and the Bank Manager, we both lay in hospital beds whilst the boots and the heels rode the highways of Tollington together, turning us into drunken, boastful anecdotes. Whilst Sherrie and her parents had seen me off with gentle words and concerned expressions, Anita had merely looked bored. She did not speak to me, she did not even wave me off, she closed her face like the end of a chapter in a long epic book, a dying cadence, a full stop.
For the first few days of my confinement, I blamed her so totally for my state that whenever I thought of her I shook hard enough to rattle my metal cage. But a few hospital meals of runny mashed potatoes and gristly pies
soon broke down my resistance, as did the deadening routine of being washed and bedpanned and jollied along by the brisk, efficient nurses, and always the throbbing pain in my suspended limb, as if tiny sharp-clawed creatures were trapped underneath the plaster and scrabbling to escape. After a while it took a huge effort simply to recall Anita’s features, or her catchphrases, or the way she shimmied when she walked. I began to realise I could use this enforced separation wisely, I could gradually erase her like a child’s pencil drawing, begin with the top of her head and work my way down – today I’ll rub out her eyebrows, tomorrow the bridge of her nose, next week I’ll remember nothing but the hems of her summer dresses and by the end of four months, I calculated, she would be nothing but a smudge, a faint outline caused by an inexperienced, uncoordinated hand.
My nearest neighbour, Angela, was not a chatty person at the best of times; she would lie on her stomach across her bed eating family-sized packets of crisps mechanically whilst she flicked through magazines. Our longest conversation went like this; ‘When’s your birthday, Mary?’ ‘July the sixth,’ I said, and she nodded her head wisely. ‘Typical Cancerian you are.’ ‘Oh yeah?’ I replied, interested now, maybe she had already picked up my acute sensitivity and vivid imagination. ‘Fat,’ said Angela. ‘I’m Gemini so I’ll never put on weight …’
I turned my face to the wall, as much as I could do to get away from her, and became aware of an insistent tapping at my right shoulder and shifted myself to see Robert banging on his window with a hospital spoon. His painfully thin frame held up a pair of stripey pyjamas but his face, framed by curly brown hair, was illuminated by a pair of energetic, electric blue eyes. He breathed onto the window and began writing, ‘Is…she …’ and then changed his mind and dived out of sight for a moment, reappearing with a sketch pad and marker pen. He wrote down his message quickly and held it against the glass. ‘Is she driving you mad?’ I nodded wildly and rolled my eyes. He laughed, wrote again, this time the message said, ‘Has she told you she’s a Gemini yet?’ I nodded again, infected by his soundless chortle. It startled me, the realisation that he was not only handsome but that he was talking to me. He does not have much choice, I told myself. He’s bored, you’re the nearest. Trust you to end up next to a dishy bloke when you’re in your oldest nightie with no lip gloss and your leg in the air. But I was definitely feeling better, feeling something which was not boredom or pain or misery, all of whom were my bedfellows at night when the radio was finally switched off and I lay awake longing for my own bed, my family, my freedom.