Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud Page B

tried not to show her disappointment.
    Bilal emptied his bag. The tins poured out on to the ground like coins. There were twenty-seven of them. Twenty-seven tins of sardines. Bilal cut one open with his knife and scooped up a little silver fish. ‘It’s good,’ he smiled, as he ate, the oil running down his chin. We dipped our fingers into the tin and broke off pieces of tightly packed fish. Rich and salty and drenched in oil. Even Mum agreed it was good.
    We sat around the fire with plates of sardine chopped with tomato. There was a delicious silence as we all took our first mouthful.
    ‘Aha, so I’ve found you.’
    A man stood just outside our circle of firelight. The flames picked out his bleached hair and the pink of his nose and cheeks.
    ‘Hello, Charlie,’ I said, my mouth full of sardine.
    He stepped a little closer. He held his hand out to Mum. ‘So you must be the English wife?’
    Mum laughed and looked at Bilal. ‘Well, not quite…’
    Bea nudged me with a sharp elbow. ‘See.’
    Charlie sat and looked at our heaped plate.
    ‘Tonight we can actually offer you something to eat,’ Mum said.
    Charlie smiled. ‘Sardines.’ He looked as if he knew what that meant. ‘Thank you.’
    I waited for Charlie to swallow his first mouthful before nudging him. ‘Did you bring my wind-up car?’
    He dug deep into the pocket of his shorts. ‘Here it is.’ It sat in the palm of his hand, the size of a mouse. There was a tiny key that Charlie turned until it was wound and then he let the car drive, ticking, down the length of his arm until it shot over the edge and lay, wheels spinning, in the sand. I reached for it, but Charlie closed his hand over mine.
    ‘I thought you were going to sing me a song.’
    I looked at his expectant face. Between trips to the well, collecting firewood, perfecting my one and only acrobatic trick and preserving the lives of three tick-ridden dogs, there had been no time to practise Charlie’s song. I looked from the toy car to the four faces around the fire. They were all waiting. Waiting for me to sing. I struggled to my feet and closed my eyes. I didn’t know any songs. I had never known any songs. All I knew was that I wanted the car. I opened my mouth and let out a low wailing chant. A poor imitation of Ahmed’s tearful singing. It had no beginning and no end. I added a word. An animal name from Bea’s schoolbook. I half opened my eyes on Charlie’s smiling mouth. I took courage and let my voice rise and fall and catch and quaver. I began to throw in some English, anything that came to mind. ‘Hair grip,’ I wailed. And, ‘Marzipan.’ Then all the sounds that seemed like songs to me flooded into my mind and I sang them. The waterman calling ‘L-ma’ through the city as he clanked his tin cups. The children begging in the square. ‘Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola.’ And the tinkling of Mrs Maynard’s sweetshop door on the pantiles in Tunbridge Wells as it closed behind each customer. My song ended on a refrain of ‘Helufa, Helufa, Helufa’, which was met with wild applause. Charlie pressed the car into my hand.
    I wound it carefully and set it on the ground. Its wheels spun against the pine needles and pebbles, but it moved an inch or two. I thought of the long, smooth terrace of the Hotel Moulay Idriss. ‘Thank you,’ I said and knotted it tightly into the hem of my caftan.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    There were still five tins of sardines left when Bea and I took them to the edge of the Barage and threw them in.
    ‘What are we going to do now?’ I asked her, peering into the empty cardboard box. Mum and Bilal were sleeping in the washing-line tent. It was mid-afternoon. ‘We could visit Charlie,’ I suggested. ‘I think he lives somewhere near the well.’
    We crept away through the trees. The dogs followed, across the road and towards the well. We had given up trying to cure them of ticks and it was days since there had been any food to spare, but they still came diligently to