Anita and Me (24 page)

Mrs Mitchell popped her head out of her back window. She had crumbs round her mouth and no teeth in. ‘What’s that yow said, Mrs K?’ she spluttered.

‘My mother! Small woman, bit like me…Have you seen her?’ mama shouted.

‘Ooh I don’t recall…Mr Mitchell? Yow seen anyone small like Mrs K?’

Mr Mitchell’s voice came booming from the outside toilet built into the entry. Mama stepped back with alarm as the door swung open slightly and a cloud of blue cigarette smoke billowed out. ‘Now! I ain’t seen nobody, chick!’ replied Mr Mitchell, who threw his smoking fag butt onto the floor before closing the door again.

I had followed mama out into the entry with Sunil struggling in my arms like an imprisoned rabbit, his legs and arms were surprisingly strong, and I could not prevent him dragging his hands along the entry walls until they were covered with mossy green slime. ‘No! Naughty boy!
Nah ker!
’ I said, hoping the Punjabi phrase would echo Nanima and shock him into good behaviour. I realised I was acting as if she had already left us, and I shivered involuntarily.

Mama looked up as footsteps tap-tapped into the entry and revealed Deirdre, who, for some reason, was wearing a headscarf and a pair of sunglasses, muffled up as if she was a terrorist off on a mission. She jumped slightly as she came face to face with mama, and the two women eyed each other up for a few seconds. Mama had not gone out of her way to be friendly with Anita’s mother, since discovering how she had chosen to name their piddly poodle, but trapped in such a small space, it would have been tantamount to GBH not to at
least greet each other. Deirdre nodded her head curtly, ‘Alright?’

Mama smiled briefly, ‘Hello Mrs Rutter. I wonder, you have not seen my mother wandering around anywhere?’

‘Thought yowr mam was back in Pakistan,’ she sniffed, glancing quickly behind her as if she expected someone.

‘India,’ mama said stiffly. ‘We are from India.’ The tone she used clearly said, not that you would know the difference you naughty tramp.

I gulped and shifted backwards into our yard, feeling I was somehow the cause of this icy exchange. Sunil whimpered in protest and wiped his filmy hands all down the front of my school blouse. I pinched his leg and he burst into tears. Mama shot me a hard look and continued over his wails, ‘She’s visiting us for a few weeks and …’

Before she could continue, Mrs Worrall’s voice came booming from behind me, ‘Ey! Am yow back, Daljeet? I’ve got yowr mom in here with me!’

Mama relaxed visibly and shouted back, ‘Okay Mrs Worrall! Thank you so much!’ and was already on her way back to the yard when Deirdre’s sharp call stopped her in her tracks.

‘Mrs K, have yow stopped yowr Meena seeing my Anita?’

Mama turned round slowly, wearing that dangerously patient expression that always made me want to slink into a corner wearing a conical hat with a D on it. ‘Now why should I want to do that, Mrs Rutter?’

‘Cos we ain’t good enough for yow lot, is that it?’

Mama and I both picked up Deirdre’s tone, which was one not of hostility but disbelief; she was waiting for an answer to the question that obviously deeply puzzled her and upset her, how could we possibly think ourselves better than her?

I had always been a little afraid of Deirdre, with her scarlet gash of a mouth and her backhanded conversation, but now I could see something else, something unexpected in her face – she was frightened of us. Of course it made sense; we were not one of those faceless hordes depicted in the television news,
arriving at airports with baggage and children, lost and already defeated, begging for sanctuary. We were not the barely literate, perpetually grinning idiots I occasionally saw in TV comedies, or the confused, helpless innocents I spotted in bus and supermarket queues whilst they tried to make sense of their small change or the gesticulating wanderers who would sometimes stop my papa for directions, holding up pieces of paper with ‘Mr Singh, Wolverhampton, England’ written on them.

Mama and papa charmed people, they had bought a new car, they held parties, they did not ask for approval or acceptance but it came to them nevertheless. Deirdre had been seeking approval all her life in this village, her village, and I suppose she wanted to know why life was so bloody unfair. Mama must have picked this up, she softened slightly, ‘We have been very busy with my mother lately. Anita, you know, is welcome any time.’ I was so shocked that I did not even feel Sunil sinking four very sharp teeth into my shoulder. Mama had never uttered Anita’s name without adding some derogatory prefix, ‘That Anita Rutter’ or ‘Your Anita Rutter’ and here she was declaring open house. Was she scared of Deirdre? I could not bear that, I did not want her to cower to Deirdre the way I had so often swallowed myself to please Anita. My parents were not supposed to make my mistakes. But mama’s face told a different story, she was smiling, gracious, mama the bounty giver. She felt victorious enough to be charitable, she had won, and Deirdre knew that too.

Deirdre actually stuttered, ‘Yeah…well yeah…th…that’s okay then, in’t it? I mean, the girls gorra have mates to play with. Keeps the bloody monkeys off the streets, don’t it?’

Mama nodded, ‘Monkeys, yes indeed!’ her waving hand indicating that the meeting was over and hurried past me, scooping a now sniffling Sunil into her arms as she made her way towards Mrs Worrall’s open back door. Deirdre took off her sunglasses for a moment, her false eyelashes made her look like two crows had landed for a chat on her cheeks, and
squinted down the entry past me. From the road, just visible in the square of distant light at the end of the entry, a car horn tooted faintly. She replaced her sunglasses quickly and teetered past me as if I was invisible.

Mrs Worrall was bouncing Sunil in her arms whilst he chewed on a piece of rock cake. There was an open tin of biscuits on the kitchen table, its lid depicting an idyllic snowy landscape of mountains and chalets, in the foreground two cute and unreal children skated arm in arm on a glassy lake. I could not remember ever seeing ‘social snacks’ in Mrs Worrall’s kitchen; we of course had a whole cupboard devoted to nibbles – masala peanuts, crisps, pakore and savoury vermicelli – which would be handed round as pre-starter starters to our visitors. Mrs Worrall did not have visitors, as far as I knew, and I noted that the label on the biscuit tin said ‘December 1965’. She put a fat finger to her lips and cocked her head towards the sitting room. Mama was standing in the doorway, rapt.

I pushed past her and saw Nanima sitting opposite Mr Worrall whose wheelchair had been parked next to the settee. Nanima was speaking to him rapidly in Punjabi, in between scoffing large mouthfuls of still warm rock cakes. Every so often, when she paused to chew, Mr Worrall would try and open his mouth in response, his limbs jerking excitedly, the moans coming from his throat sounded almost like speech, the way the wind made words in the trees round the Big House. ‘Them two been getting on like an house on fire,’ whispered Mrs Worrall, not wanting to disturb the conversation.

‘But what are they talking about?’ I whispered back. ‘Mr Worrall doesn’t speak Punjabi, does he?’

Mama and Mrs Worrall didn’t hear me, they were too busy eavesdropping on this meeting of minds, looking on like two proud parents whose infant had just taken its first stumbling steps. I decided there must be a language called Grunt, remembering how Nanima often asked for things or replied to
questions with a series of tonal explosions which, funnily enough, we all understood, even Sunil. Watching them both huddled next to the coal fire, which burned every day in this room of perpetually drawn curtains, they did not seem to need the rest of the world.

‘She’s been telling me she ain’t been nowhere, yowr mom. Yow should tek her out more,’ Mrs Worrall admonished mama.

Mama arched her eyebrows. ‘She told you that, did she?’

‘Well, I can mek it out, what she means. Show her round the village, up the shops, anywhere. I’d tek her meself but, well, you know …’ Mrs Worrall trailed off.

So it was that ten minutes later, I found myself struggling through our front gate with Sunil’s perambulator, and Nanima waddling behind me, swathed in two Kashmiri woollen shawls. I had never taken Sunil out for a walk on my own before, he would not have got further than the end of the road before yelling for mama, but now he was screaming excitedly as I struggled with the unwieldy pram which looked like a waltzer car on wheels and seemed just as heavy. I tried out some of my recently acquired Punjabi on her, which I had absorbed with bad grace after realising that Nanima and I would spend our days in silence unless I made some effort. ‘Nanima!’ I puffed. ‘You don’t need them shawls. It’s warm! Um,
tunda hai
…oh no, that’s cold, isn’t it…er HOT! Phew!’ I mimed, wiping the very real sweat that was pricking at my temples.

Nanima harrumphed in agreement, gathering her shawls more tightly around herself. ‘Hah beti,
bowth sardi hai
,’ she said, agreeing that it was freezing, oblivious to the bees buzzing lazily around the gate post and the heavy may blossom which filled the air with its sickly sweet smell.

I checked in my pockets for the shopping list and change mama had given me. I did not want to visit Mr Ormerod’s shop, for obvious reasons. Not just because of the Collection Box incident but also because of the Spring Fete Happening
when some of his church cronies had added their nasty heckles to Sam Lowbridge’s now notorious outburst. However, applying a boycott was useless in a village with only one shop. How could I get away with not going inside?

Nanima interrupted my reverie with a shout of warning. I turned and saw Cara, the mad Mitchells’ daughter, doing her usual stint of jaywalking along the white lines in the middle of the road, whilst Shandie, the perky white terrier from a few doors down, yapped at the fraying hem of her long velvet cloak. Nanima seemed alarmed and shot off a stream of very fast Punjabi. I put a forefinger to my temple and screwed it in. ‘She’s a bit soft, Nanima, it’s okay. Soft but Nice, yeah?’ It was only when Shandie came over to my clicking fingers that I realised who was making Nanima nervous. She pulled me away from Shandie’s eager tongue and wiped me down furiously with her
chunni
before aiming a swift kick at the dog who fled yelping down an entry. ‘Nanima!’ I gasped, frantic that someone might have witnessed this assault, ‘You don’t do that to dogs. Not in England! Um,
Gore Lok
, the white people, um, they love their
Kutte…
like
Bachhes
, like kids, see?’

Nanima looked at me as if I had grown horns and then let off one of her wheezy laughs. ‘Junglee!’ she said affectionately, and ruffled my hair. Sunil moaned in protest so she pinched his cheek hard which left fingermarks, but he seemed to love it when she did it.

As we passed the cottages leading up to Mr Ormerod’s shop, it seemed a welcoming committee had gathered to greet us. I don’t know whether it was coincidence or curiosity, but every one of the Ballbearings Women happened to be shaking out their front doormats and all of them stopped me, demanding an introduction. ‘Oooh, is this your nan?…In’t she sweet!…Look at that material, is it silk?…Lovely colour ain’t she…She’s seventy odd? Ooh, don’t look a day over sixty, does she?…Them all her own teeth?’ I half expected one of them to forcibly separate Nanima’s lips to have a look, the way I’d seen them check over Misty, when
she’d grazed in the field opposite our house. It was a strange kind of compliment they paid Nanima, wanting to touch and feel her like an imported piece of exotica.

‘Look at them eyes…Oh, just like Meena’s mom, eh? Just like Johnny Mathis, you mean…Oh, I could give him one…Shurrup, you daft cow, not in front of this lady…She doesn’t understand anyway, does she? Do you love?…Does she speak English, Meena love?…Your mom and dad speak it lovely, don’t they? …’

I felt confused. Sunil was protesting now, trying to pull himself out of his pram, aghast that his usual fan club was completely ignoring him, and I did not know whether to swat the ladies away or say thank you. I knew they were being friendly, but it was not somehow a meeting of equals, I felt like we were suddenly the entertainment, so I concluded I might as well put on a jolly good show. ‘Oh, she does speak English,’ I piped up, ‘and French, Russian and a bit of Latin. But she’s really shy, an’ she’s got a bit of a sore throat at the moment …’ I bundled Nanima further into her shawls to illustrate my point whilst the women fell respectfully silent, doing a double-take on this little brown O A P.

‘Russian eh? That’s great, in’t it, Irene? What’s she over for, an ‘oliday is it?’ ‘Oh no,’ I continued, remembering how much I enjoyed doing this, ‘she’s looking for gold.’ You could hear their collective jaws drop. I quickly pulled back Nanima’s sleeve, she gave in to my insistent tugs, revealing the thick
kara
she always wore, a silver bangle denoting her Sikhism, and the two ornate gold bangles which many married women wear to denote their wealth and status. The Ballbearings Women stretched forward for a better look. ‘It’s what she does back in India. Precious mineral mining …’ (Thank god I’d flicked through my oft neglected
Children’s World Dictionary
last night…) ‘But her biggest mine was destroyed by a volcano last month. She and my grandad had to flee a sea of foaming lava. They managed to save most of the jewels though. Lucky she knows how to ride a motorbike eh?’

And then my coup de grace. I felt in my pockets and they were still there, a handful of junky glass stones Nanima had bought for me at some Indian market, dazzling but worthless, the kind of fake costume jewels the careful women wore when they ventured to weddings in dicey areas. I chose a moment when the hubbub of whispering had abated a little, and slowly brought them out, turning them over in my palm so the sunlight made miniature rainbows dance on my rapt audience’s faces. ‘Oh will yow look at them!…Worth a bloody fortune!…Yow can’t get them here!…A volcano, yow say?…How did yow escape, Mrs er…what yow say yowr nan’s name was?’ Now everyone was firing questions at Nanima which she parried expertly with an enigmatic smile.

That would have been the perfect moment to make a dramatic exit when Mr Topsy muscled into the group, his voluminous trousers billowing with excitement. ‘Alright, Topsy!’ he grinned, yanking at my bangs. Last year I thought this was cute, now I wanted to poke him in the eye. Then he pushed forward to face Nanima and greeted her with a long exaggerated ‘Namaste!’ which made the women ooh and laugh with delight. Nanima put her hands together and politely namasted him back. I thought she might be getting bored so I took her arm but Mr Topsy stopped me. He turned to Nanima again and said, ‘
Mera Nam
Mr Turvey
hai
!’