thrusting a flyer into papa’s hands with his change. ‘Lovely speaker we’ve got for the Harvest celebrations, Mr Delaney has just come back from Rhodesia. In Africa. We’re having a collection. They asked for a plough but we thought a few tins and preserves would tide them over for a bit.’ You could see it in his face, he’d made the connection, Africa was abroad, we were from abroad, how could we refuse to come along and embrace Jesus for the sake of our cousins? Papa always did refuse but with such grace that Mr Ormerod never lost hope; he just filed us away under ‘Waverers’, rearranged the pens in the breast pocket of his brown overall, and waited for next time.
‘Now,’ said papa. ‘For the last time, did Mr Ormerod give you those sweets for nothing? Or did you take that shilling from mummy’s bag and spend it on yourself?’ I was mute with shame and anger. I hated him for forcing me to stoop to such a grubby act; if he had listened to me in the first place and just given me the sodding money, I would not have had to steal anything. I lifted up my head slightly, saw the ice in his expression and felt doomed. If papa was so angry now, what would he be like when he found out what had happened to me at school only last week?
I had been publicly beaten in front of all my class mates whom I now hated without exception. It had been during a Modern History lesson, when our bullfrog-faced teacher, Mrs Blakey, asked us if we knew why the area we lived in was called the Black Country. Peter Bradley, who had a stammer and a predictable habit of deliberately dropping pencils so he could peer up the girls’ dresses, raised a sleeve covered in snail trails of snot and said, ‘B…b…because so m…many darkies…live here, miss?’ I laughed along with everyone else but the next time I heard Peter snuffling around under the desk, pencil in hand, peering optimistically past reinforced gussets and woolly tights, I aimed a quick kick and was surprised to see him emerge with a fist clamped over a bloody nose. As Mrs Blakey karate-chopped the back of my legs with a splintered wooden ruler, I tried to explain that we were the only Indians that had ever lived in Tollington and that the country looked green if anything to me.
My humiliation had been compounded by the fact that mama was an infants’ teacher in the adjoining school; we were separated by a mere strip of playground, and I knew it would only be a matter of time before she got to hear of my behaviour. I knew I should tell papa everything now, Confess said the Lord and Ye Shall Be Saved. Papa’s expression made me wonder if this only ever worked with English people, but I had to say something because if we entered Mr Ormerod’s shop, my crime would become public shame as opposed to personal failure and that, I knew, was something papa hated more than anything.
Somewhere a front door slammed shut. It seemed to reverberate along the terrace, houses nudging each other to wake up and listen in on us, net curtains and scalloped lace drapes all a-flutter now. Everyone must have been watching, they always did, what else was there to do?
‘Right then. We’ll ask Mr Ormerod what happened.’
Papa pushed open the door of the shop, the brass bell perched on its top rang jauntily. Its clapper looked like a quivering tonsil in a golden throat and it vibrated to the beat of my heart.
‘I was lying,’ I said in a whisper.
Papa’s face sagged, he looked down and then up at me, disappointment dimming his eyes. He let go of my hand and walked back towards our house without looking back.
I sat on the front step and finished the rest of my sweets, feeling the bile rise as I chewed with the pace and rumination of a sulky cow. I knew I would end up feeling ill but I had already paid for my haul in shame and saw no point in wasting good food. It would serve them right if I did choke on a raspberry poppet and had foaming convulsions right here on the step. As I tried to unstick my jaw, I remembered the mad dog that had wandered into our communal yard some years ago, whose drunken walk and white-flecked muzzle had sent the mothers screaming for cover, clutching their protesting children to them. I managed to find an airhole in the folds of mama’s trousers and had gazed on the object of all this terror, a mottled, scrappy mutt of a dog who seemed proud of his madness, freed by it, whose expression was one of unconcerned, off-the-planet bliss. I really envied him, or rather the effect he was having on the local harpies who, in normal circumstances, would arm wrestle each other for a parking space. If what that dog had was madness, I wanted some of it. Even then, I felt I spent most of life saying sorry.
I also knew what it was like to almost choke to death. It had happened two years ago, we had celebrated my seventh birthday with a trip to Wolverhampton, where we saw Bedknobs and Broomsticks and then went for a rum baba in the nearby Stanton’s cake shop. I had been promised a party but at the last minute, my mother had been taken ill. Papa found her lying on her bed, crying. He’d said it was a migraine and then talked softly to her in Punjabi, which I knew was a sign that something was a secret and therefore, probably bad news. I still recognised a few words in between mummy’s sobs – mother, money, and then a furious invective in Punjabi with ‘bloody fed up’ stuck in the middle of it. (Swearing in English was considered more genteel than any of the Punjabi expletives which always mentioned the bodily parts of one’s mothers or sisters, too taboo to sit on a woman’s lips.)
But I was relieved; I did not want a party as I would not have had anyone to invite, anyone interesting anyway. In the village I was stuck in between the various gangs, too young for Anita’s consideration, too old to hang around the cloud of toddlers that would settle on me like a rash every time I set foot outside my front door. Going out with the grown-ups was much more exciting, although lately, mama’s moods had begun to intrude upon every family outing like a fourth silent guest, whom I saw as an overweight sweaty auntie with lipstick-stained teeth and an unforgiving expression.
In Stanton’s, after the film, I could tell that whatever had been upsetting my mother was still going on. She sat silent and moist-eyed, looking down into her cup of weak tea, running her finger round and round the edge of its rim. She was dressed in a dusty pink sari with small silver lotus blossoms on its borders, whilst my father wore his blue serge suit and a tie striped like a humbug. Whenever we went ‘out’, out meaning wherever English people were, as opposed to Indian friends’ houses which in any case was always ‘in’ as all we would do was sit in each others’ lounges, eat each others’ food and watch each others’ televisions, my parents always wore their smartest clothes.
My mother knew from experience that she would get fewer stares and whispers if she had donned any of the sensible teacher’s trouser suits she would wear for school, but for her, looking glamorous in saris and formal Indian suits was part of the English people’s education. It was her duty to show them that we could wear discreet gold jewellery, dress in tasteful silks and speak English without an accent. During our very special shopping outings to Birmingham, she would often pass other Indian women in the street and they would stare at each other in that innocent, direct way of two rare species who have just found out they are vaguely related. These other Indian women would inevitably be dressed in embroidered salwar kametz suits screaming with green and pinks and yellows (incongruous with thick woolly socks squeezed into open-toed sandals and men’s cardies over their vibrating thin silks, evil necessities in this damn cold country), with bright make-up and showy gold-plated jewellery which made them look like ambulating Christmas trees. Mama would acknowledge them with a respectful nod and then turn away and shake her head. ‘In the village, they would look beautiful. But not here. There is no sun to light them up. Under clouds, they look like they are dressed for a discotheque.’
But she was quiet now, no light in her face. Papa said, ‘Have something to eat. A cake. Have one of those…what you like…those meringue things.’ ‘She won’t,’ I chipped in, scraping my fork into the spongy belly of my rum baba. ‘You know what she will say, I can make this cheaper at home.’ My mother never ate out, never, always affronted by paying for some over-boiled, under-seasoned dish of slop when she knew she could rustle up a hot, heartwarming meal from a few leftover vegetables and a handful of spices. ‘I bet you couldn’t make this at home,’ I continued. ‘How would you make a cake? How would you get it round and get the cream to stand up and the cherry