Precious (10 page)

‘It’s just that I’m worried about my spelling test tomorrow,’ I say finally.

‘Anita, why? You’ll probably come top, just like you win everything,’ says Agnes. ‘I wish I could come top in something.’

I feel a wall sliding between Agnes and me, with Agnes on one side, and on the other side the girl Agnes thinks I am. And in between, squashed against the wall, is the real me.

Going Home

‘THIS IS WHAT I gave up, Nin,’ says Nanny, pressing a miniature pork pie into her mouth. ‘I gave up all of this, for love.’

We are parked near a driveway on the outskirts of Selsey. Sitting in Nanny’s car, munching our way through a packet of little gourmet Marks and Sparks pies. Drinking in the sight of the tallest, widest mansion I have ever seen. The mansion is painted white and it has a pointed grey roof. Green triangle-shaped trees are dotted in front of the house, as though guarding it.

‘Nip out of the car and round the side there and see if you can see anything through the windows,’ says Nanny. ‘I’d give anything to know who lives in there now.’

Nanny always seems to be asking me to spy on people (mainly on Agnes or my mother) and then report back on what I’ve seen and learned. Like I’m a walking, talking, tabloid newspaper. It’s not that I dislike spying – I’m a masterful eavesdropper – it’s just that I mind being ordered around.

But of course I have to do as I am told. I trot across the driveway and the loud crunch of the gravel beneath my plimsolls makes me fear the owner will hear me and demand to know what a wild-haired coloured girl is doing darting up his drive.

I smooth down my hair, which for days has not been combed properly, and it springs right back up. I stand on tiptoes, balancing against the side of the house. I crane my neck and try to peer into the lowest of the windows, but the windows are covered by white wooden shutters. I can’t see a thing.

Before her dad lost all his money at the horse races, before she married Gramps, Nanny used to live inside this same gigantic house, with her parents.

Her dad was an engineer, I think, and Nanny and her parents and her younger brother Frank had riding lessons, tennis courts, horses,
money
. Her parents had their own housekeeper. Then she met Gramps, who was poor but kind and who had a movie-star smile. Nanny forgot all about money and from that day onwards she never really had any.

‘It wasn’t easy after I got married,’ Nanny says, staring at the house as she eats another little pie. ‘My dad was a Jew, so he always had a lot of money. At first my father gave me an allowance but that was humiliating for Matt. He said he wanted to be able to support his own wife. But he had no money. Do you remember Great-Grandpa, darling?’

Great-Grandpa was Nanny’s dad and he died when I was very small. I remember a thin man with a long thick nose.

‘Didn’t Gramps have any money?’ I say.

‘No, Nin, darling. He came from a poor family. His mum was just a young girl, a servant, and we think the man she worked for had his way with her. Matt never did know who his father was. There was nothing more humiliating – then – than growing up knowing you were illegitimate. He never got over it.’

‘What does it mean, Nanny? Illegitimate?’

‘It means that your mother and father aren’t married.’

‘Am I illegitimate?’

Nanny doesn’t answer.

‘Are we poor now, Nanny?’

I’m pretty sure we are. We don’t get those little brown envelopes fat with fivers and tenners that the other families get every Friday.

‘Money doesn’t really matter when you’ve got love, darling.’

The time of having odd days off school, going for long drives and then sitting watching things began after Gramps died. There was a funeral for Gramps; my mother and Agnes went to it, but I wasn’t allowed to go – Nanny said I was too young. Instead Nanny and I said our private farewell to Gramps a little while after the funeral. The two of us drove to Lily Pond, one of Nanny’s favourite spots, and spent an hour gazing at a heron. I demolished two packs of salt and vinegar crisps. I tried not to cry, and failed.

Since losing the love of her life, Nanny’s changed. It’s like I’ve become almost a grown-up in her eyes. All of a sudden I get away with a lot. Aunty Wendy says my behaviour’s getting ridiculous and Aggy says my spoiled bitchness is ‘becoming a joke’. But no one can put their finger on precisely what’s wrong with my behaviour – all they know is it’s getting irritating. Nanny’s far too indulgent, everyone says.

If Nanny catches me with my light on, still reading when it’s close to midnight, she just says, ‘You still awake then? You’ll be ever so tired in the morning if you don’t go to sleep soon, Nin.’ And leaves me be.

One night, having read all of the books in my bedroom at least twice, I wander downstairs. Nanny is asleep upright in her blue armchair. The phone receiver, wrapped in a piece of kitchen towel, is resting in her lap.

I slip into the kitchen, open the cupboard, take a Wagon Wheel and slide the whole biscuit into my mouth. I linger by the sink, feeling like a well-fed cobra and I just can’t take my naughty little eyes off the taps. I reach up and turn on the cold water. I long to know
why
Nanny won’t touch the taps without a piece of kitchen towel being present to protect her skin. Would her skin melt if the tap touched her?

I rub my hand against the cold tap again and again. Nothing happens. Any minute now I am sure to hear Nanny’s voice hissing,
What the hell are you doing touching things in my kitchen, you dirty little bitchie
? Or Aggy might spring down the stairs and call me a weirdo. But my curiosity won’t let me stop.

I run my hand along the back-door handle. I slowly turn it and it makes a sound like the grating laughter of an ancient man, making me leap back. Then I skim my fingers over the rubbish bin lid and smear them across the fridge door. Nothing happens.

I tiptoe across the room and peer round the sitting-room door to check Nanny’s still asleep.

But her eyes are wide open. Tears are oozing out of them.

I rush to her side and pat her arm. I often find her crying to herself nowadays – I think she’s crying because she still misses Gramps.

‘Don’t worry, I wasn’t doing anything, Nanny,’ I say, feeling very mature.

‘What are you on about, Nin?’ Her voice is cracking, her eyes averted.

‘Your mother,’ she says finally. ‘She rang up just now and told me, Nin. Darling, she’s gone and bought you a ticket to Africa. You’ll be there before Christmas.’

‘
Africa
? Will I ever come back?’

‘I don’t know, Anita. I don’t know.’

‘But she’ll probably forget to come and get me anyway and go to Africa by herself, without me. Won’t she?’

‘I doubt it. Who could afford to waste the kind of money she must have spent on your aeroplane ticket? Must have cost her five hundred pounds for a journey like that.’

An icy little thrill runs through me at the thought of somebody spending five hundred pounds on me. And then, just like that, the thrill is gone.

‘But I don’t want to go,’ I say, my voice quivering.

I absolutely do not want to be alone with the maniac who calls herself my mother. Ever since she tried to slash up Agnes’s boyfriend, Barry, I’ve had this feeling that my mother, or one of her sisters, might just knife me next time I annoy her.

‘I know, darling. I know,’ says Nanny. ‘It breaks my heart to even have to think of letting you go. I feel so helpless . . .’

Nanny’s voice disintegrates into an inaudible whisper. She begins weeping again and I sit on the edge of her armchair, holding her hand. I feel an unnatural, dazed sense of calm. I sit holding Nanny’s hand, wondering – in a detached, disinterested way – what piece of my life is about to be ripped off my back next.

Early the next morning, Nanny rings up Mr Clifford, my headmaster. She tells him in a shrill, on-the-verge-of-tears voice that I’ll be missing the last week of term because I’m going to Africa for who knows how long.

Mrs Pope, the art teacher with the free-flowing greying blond hair, the flapping corduroy flares and the cheesecloth smocks, just cannot keep my grim news to herself. ‘One lucky little girl here is going somewhere very special and exciting for Christmas this year,’ she announces to the class.

Sitting cross-legged on the classroom floor, everyone turns their heads to spot the kid she’s talking about and I keep a neutral expression on my face, hoping nobody will guess. If only Mrs Pope would shut up . . . But Mrs Pope is thrilled. Not because she wants to get rid of me and lose me to Africa but rather because she thinks my ‘links’ to Africa are a wonderful thing. She’s said, before now, that I’m exotic. She’s told me I need to get into expressing my ‘roots’ in my artwork.

‘Anita is going to Nigeria in Africa for the holidays!’ Mrs Pope exclaims, grinning like crazy. ‘Can anyone point out Nigeria on the map?’

Why can’t the grey classroom floor be made of quicksand so that I can be swallowed up? Why can’t God stop Mrs Pope from unwittingly reminding all my classmates that I should be holding a spear, not a paintbrush.

‘Does anyone know where Nigeria is on the map?’ asks Mrs Pope again.

You’ll never catch me sticking my hand up and drawing attention to myself. When I was five I once wet my knickers in class rather than ask for permission to go to the loo. My school reports say, ‘Excellent potential but needs to participate more in class.’ Sometimes I am so ready to speak up that I can
taste
the answer on my tongue. But I stay quiet. I’m afraid that my truth is not the accepted truth.

‘Anita, do you know the answer to this question?’ a teacher will ask. ‘You look like you’re bursting to say something.’

I’ll shake my head.

‘Can nobody show me where Nigeria is on the map?’

Someone pipes up, ‘No, Miss.’

The rest of us shake our heads. We either don’t know or don’t care to say where Nigeria is on the map.

‘Nigeria must be where all the nig-nogs come from,’ whispers Andrew and I feel too embarrassed to turn around and glare at him.

At the end of our lesson, Mrs Pope asks me to stay behind. I sit there watching her wipe off the blackboard. I adore our classroom when it’s empty. There is silence, apart from the sound of our class hamster creeping through the shredded paper in its cage.

‘Why the long face?’ she says. ‘Africa will be wonderful, fabulous – especially at Christmas – how exciting! And Nigeria! They have incredible rainforests there.’

The next day in Art, I take a huge piece of paper and begin to paint. To me, paint-brushes are magic wands and I love letting my hand meander. I paint a forest of trees, like the ones in the woods in Fernmere but with pineapples hanging off them instead of green leaves. I paint myself standing underneath one of the pineapple trees, crying my eyes out, with my little navy suitcase at my feet. Four trees behind me is a fat orange tiger, waiting to pounce, its red tongue hanging out from its sharp-toothed mouth. At the bottom of the picture, in wide pink letters, I scrawl ‘Miss Biafra in the Rainforest’.

Mrs Pope pins my painting up on the wall. Every day, I look up at it and think of hideous Africa. I look at my picture so many times that I can taste the sweetness of those pineapples and feel the sharpness of the tiger’s teeth and nails. It’s the opposite of an Advent Calendar: a daily reminder that I’ll soon be facing the worst day of my life: the day I leave for Africa.

Agnes is the only one of us who likes the thought of going to Africa. The excitement mounts in her as the dread grows in me. But ironically Agnes may not be able to go to Africa: my mother’s refusing to buy her a ticket until she promises never to see unsuitable Barry ever again.

Two weeks before I’m due to leave for Nigeria, Nanny and I kneel side by side on the floor at the foot of my frilly pink bed. My bedside lamp is on and I can see little beige cake crumbs caught in the grey whiskers that grow from the corner of Nanny’s mouth. I’m worried that if I open my mouth to say a prayer out loud, one of the dangling cake crumbs will drop into my mouth.

‘Who do we ask when we want something badly?’ says Nanny, the crumbs moving as she speaks. ‘We ask Gentle Jesus. We have to pray, Nin. Let’s pray that your mother doesn’t turn up and that you won’t have to go to Africa.’

I don’t see the point in saying prayers out loud; if Jesus really is the son of God, I’d have thought he could simply read our minds. I bet Jesus already knows about the things I pray for silently: to live in the United States of America with my dad, to have my own typewriter and to become so pretty that strangers grow jealous and people who know me whisper, ‘Bugger me that Anita’s grown into a pretty girl.’ I pray to become one of those clean, prized girls. Like a private-school white girl. Never touched against my will, never even laughed at.

And I silently beg Gentle Jesus to send my father to the rescue.

I close my eyes and bow my head and an image of my father floats into my mind. My father will look very much like Huggy Bear, the coloured man in
Starsky & Hutch
. My father will have a helicopter, which will be filled with Puffin paperbacks. (The one detail my mother’s shared about my father is that he loves to read and was always surrounded by books when she knew him). Before my mother can whisk me off to Africa, my father will open his helicopter door, take off his sunglasses and reach out his hand to me.