George

My mother, George and me

'Excuse me, Madam, you were going to pay for that, weren't you?'
I have always wanted to shoplift something and my mother said you
should try to fulfil all your ambitions because life is just too short
to keep doing things you hate.
'No, but you've caught me, and that spoils the game,' I explain
sadly.
The shop assistant narrows her eyes suspiciously. Then, all of a
sudden, she spots George, and scuttles backwards jumpily. 'I'm going to
have to take you to the manager,' she says, her eyes fixed on George,
and reaches for my arm.

I knew George would look after me. George makes it his business to
protect me from things like teachers, Mormons, and shop assistants.
'They seem to employ only bad-tempered people in shops these days,' my
mum would say, 'Where do you think all the nice ones work?' But since
George arrived, shop assistants look at me funny and walk around me in
a big arc. George has lived in my hair since my mother died, flat on
her back and smelling of Estee Lauder. Smiling. Sane as the day she was
born when the doctor spanked her.

I was standing beside the hole in the ground containing my mother in
mahogany and brass; standing beside Christopher and my mother's sister
Margaret in a wheelchair, and suddenly there was a tickle on my
forehead. I could see a black smudge and I picked it up and there he
was, running around on my palm in circles. So I put him back, it was
comforting, and since then I kept him there. He lives in my brown
curls, sometimes behind my ears, sometimes running down my back, or
sleeping in the roots.

The store detective looks a lot like Shannen. I remember standing on my
mum's bed when I was nine; being zipped into a red party dress and
lifting it to look with pink pride at my pretty pink party pants.
Whispering my secret to Shannen who giggles at my party pants when I
lift the dress to show them off later. I remember the story that me and
my best friend kept going for weeks in junior school, adding a bit
every lunchtime, full of passionate clinches and smudged lipstick,
featuring Shannen as the hero. He has the same bit of hair sticking up
from his hairline, above his left eye, like a dog licked it and it
stayed that way.
'What's the problem?' he asks the assistant.
'I got caught shoplifting,' I tell him, helpfully I think. He scowls at
me.
'She was trying to steal this,' the assistant says, holding up a red
headscarf. 'She was almost out of the door.'
'We could prosecute, you know. It's entirely my decision,' the store
detective says, and he starts to circle my chair slowly. I feel like a
proper criminal, and he's the mafia boss. I giggle.
'Do you find this funny?' he asks. I can see that he takes his job very
seriously.
'But I didn't even get away,' I remind him. 'I failed. You can't
prosecute me for wanting to commit a crime. That's like getting fat for
looking at a cake. It's silly.'
'I can see you're a difficult customer,' he says. 'Is there someone we
can call?'

My brother says I have difficulties with boys, although they aren't
boys anymore, with their shiny shoes and detergent hair. I could run
faster than any of them in kiss-chase, but I don't think the people who
make high heels thought that we should be playing that anymore.
Christopher lives in a wooden flat and his girlfriend buys pretzels
from Marks and Spencer for guests. They don't invite me much and when
they do he apologises as soon as I walk through the wooden door, 'This
is Emily, she doesn't mean to be rude,' and his dinner friends in
purple ties smile as though they'd forgotten how. The girlfriend, I
call her Cilly with a C which is short for Priscilla and which is a
stupid name anyway, peeps out at me from their ice-cream sofa
nervously.

Christopher sighs when they call him, I can almost hear his sigh, like
a door opening on a windy day. I love bad weather, but he never did: he
always grumbled and tried to get Mum to drive us to school if it was
windy or wet or cold. He works in a bank of course, it fits like a
clich?. Christopher fits any number of clich?s: swotty child, watched
Johnny Ball on Children's TV, bullied for dinner money, Cambridge
accountancy degree, average-looking girlfriend, modern flat, desperate
bid to fit in, dinner parties and Trivial Pursuit with coffee. How do
my credentials match up? Never attended school, pneumonia from a storm
when I was 6, child modelling contract for Next catalogue at 14, red
shoes, cream cheese from my fingers for tea with George and video-taped
soap operas in my flat until I fall asleep.

I won't tell the store detective my name. It's driving him mad. 'Three
guesses,' I tell him.
Christopher spoils the game, marching in with the assistant.
'I'm sorry about my sister, she does things like this without
thinking.'
'What are things like this, do you think, George?' I ask blindly to my
hair, where I can feel George unhelpfully spinning a web.
'Can we just sort this out? I do need to get back to work,' Christopher
says.
'Can I call you Shannen?' I say to the store detective. I don't want to
go home until I get a kiss.
I hear Christopher murmuring to him, 'She's a bit strange. We can sort
this out though, can't we?'

'Quirky,' my mum called me. 'Not strange.' The little boys belonging to
my next-door neighbour, when I moved out of mum's house and into my
little red flat, called me weird and poked their tongues out at me, and
they weren't afraid when I growled my teeth back either.

'I am under strict instructions, in cases like this, to call the
police, sir,' the store detective informs Christopher.
'But you can see that she's not really a typical case. She's certainly
not malicious. No intent,' Christopher cajoles.
When I was about ten I had a phase when I wanted to solve all the
problems in the world. Now I let things swirl over me, que sera sera,
that was what my mum sang to me at bedtime. I sidle up to the store
detective's desk and sit on it cosily next to his pen holders and paper
arrangers. He glances at me cursorily.

He really does look like Shannen, and if he smiled I am certain that I
would see, under his pink lips, his two lopsided teeth, like chunks of
coconut, unstained and delicious. If he kissed me there would be that
soft tongue like a mouse running over my molars and pre-molars and
tickling the roof of my mouth. If only he smiled, his eyes would
glitter as though they were having fits of laughter just to themselves.
If I'd known he would be here, I'd have worn my party dress and my
party knickers, and painted my nails too.

'I'm sure that it really doesn't need to go much further than this
room,' Christopher says to the store detective, 'I think it would be
silly to make more out of this than is absolutely necessary.'
I smile an expensive smile at the detective, the one I use when I want
to convince a shop assistant that I am rich enough to try on a posh
wedding dress or a diamond ring. In his eyes I can see a memory of
laughter, but he would have to struggle to find it again.
'Well, I expect we can come to an arrangement,' he says, more to me
than Christopher. Christopher sighs again, with relief. I bend down and
peck the detective on the cheek, a thank-you for making my brother less
cross with me.

Christopher was always, always cross with me: I can't remember a day
ever when he wasn't. When we were little he was cross because I spent
most school hours in the park swinging higher than anybody else, and
when Mum got poorly he was cross that I didn't phone him until it was
too late, and when I got George he was cross with me for smiling at the
funeral.

The detective is surprised that I kissed him and looks shy suddenly,
and even more like Shannen.
'I am going to take your name, in case we have any more trouble with
you,' he tells me.
'Her name is Emily Margaret Evans,' Christopher spells everything. He
gives the detective his phone number and then says to me, 'Come on,
I'll drop you home before I go back to work.'
'Alright,' I sigh and roll my eyes. 'Time to go home, George?'
I can't feel George.
I fall to the ground and pull Christopher's knees frantically.
'Help me look! George!'
He isn't on the carpet, under the desk or in the soil beneath the fake
palm tree.
'I'm really very sorry about the whole thing,' Christopher talks in
sighs to the store detective above the desk.
'George!'
'She has a pet spider,' Christopher says, and I can feel his
embarrassment radiating in waves through the room.
He isn't on the walls, on the desk or nestled in the red headscarf I
wanted to steal.
'George!' I find him in the tipped-out rubbish from the bin, crawling
hopelessly in the creases of an old cheque. I put him carefully into my
thick hair and he buries himself quickly in the roots.
'Right then. Please, Emily, can we leave now? Thank you again,'
Christopher says.
'That's quite alright,' I grin, leaving the room with Christopher. I'm
sure that the detective winks at me as I peep around the door for the
last time. Shannen's wink.

I will get back to my flat and my cream cheese. With the headscarf
safely in my pocket, I leave the shop, me and George, both smiling
secretly. You people can carry on ignoring me, because I am strange and
honest, and sweeping me under the carpet when I am difficult; you carry
on being bad-tempered, because I have George.