There’s a little girl I
haven’t mentioned. We had lessons at the
kitchen table. It was a heavy one, with
a solid glass top, the sort you might find in a dining room.
When
we sat down, her uncle wiped the surface with a damp cloth. Despite the curry stains, it was quite handy
sitting in the kitchen. The little girl
– let’s call her Priya – had access to the food cupboards, and the fridge for
drinks. She was only seven. The glasses were on a high shelf. To get them, she had to climb on a cupboard,
then reach up even further. She was very small. To me, waiting at the table, it looked like rock climbing.
I
remember one lesson. She had made her
favourite drink – she mixed things together – and kept it in the fridge. She had drunk almost all of it. There was only enough for one glass, but she
wanted me to try it, so she filled a glass, and gave it to me. She kept saying how yummy it was.
“Are
you sure you want me to have it?” I asked.
She nodded, but I left the glass on the table. I thought she might change her mind. I wasn’t tempting her.
“Sure?”
I repeated, a moment later. It was too
much. Without a word, she reached
across, and pulled the glass back in front of her.
At
one time or other, I tutored the whole family, the child portion. They came in two
lots: Priya and her parents (she was an only child), and her aunt and uncle, plus
two teenage cousins. In the kitchen, there
were three large plants, one for each child, explained Priya, put into pots when
they were born. The sort you can grow
inside. They had done quite well in the sunny
kitchen, turning into trees and bushes, but I couldn’t help thinking: What happens when they die? I didn’t mention it to Priya.
“Did
R– behave himself?” she asked, after one of his lessons. R– was thirteen. She actually said: “Did W– behave
himself?” She hadn’t mastered the letter
r.
It was another cute thing I’d discovered.
S–,
the other child, had turned sixteen.
Priya came in once during the older girl’s lesson. She brought a pile of books, and
sat opposite, in silence, with a pencil in her hand, looking studious.
“You’re
peeking,” I observed. It was true. She was
keeping an eye on us.
At
the start of her own lessons, Priya was usually asleep. When I arrived, I’d find her on the sofa, out
cold, at five-thirty in the afternoon.
She cried when she had to wake up.
She was, I think, the perfect bawling, little sister, or cousin in this
case. If you lived with her, it might be
annoying.
Once,
before the lesson, she slipped and fell on the stairs. They were steep and narrow.
“Did
you cry?” I asked.
“No.”
“I
bet you did.”
She
confessed. When she was fully awake, the
fun began. There was a telephone on the cupboard by the
sink. It rang at least once every lesson. It had a special melody, and was very loud. She did a dance, “My telephone dance,” she called it. She used to practise during the lesson, when
the phone wasn’t ringing, near one of the big plants. Sometimes, she climbed on the table, and
danced there, in front of me. There was
more room. It must have felt like a stage.
One
day, R– came in late from school, looking for food. Priya was working.
“She
did her telephone dance,” I said.
R–
didn’t know what it was.
“I
only come once a week,” I pointed out. “You
live with her, and you haven’t seen her telephone dance!”