New life
Hot pursuit
Zenga Longmore
Miss Marple never got into a fix like this,' I said to myself, as I grimly pushed my way into the gloomy Stonebridge estate of Harlesden, a detective in search of her quarry.
'Please, Mummy, Benjamin is sitting on my head,' Omalara said plaintively. 'It's a bit hurting, though.'
For those who cannot remember how I got into this fix, I shall briefly recapitulate. Conned into babysitting for a charming Nigerian couple, Omalara and I found our- selves faced with two boisterous girls of ten and 12, together with the infant Benjamin.
As soon as the parents had left, both girls firmly announced that we were to play Murder. I was assigned the role of detec- tive, a job I imagined to be easy, as only two other players were present — Ben- jamin, three, and Omalara, two, being merely spectators. One girl would play a corpse, so the other must be the killer. Easy-peasy-Japaneasy, as my niece Kuba might have remarked. Scarcely a job to overstretch the brains of Sherlock Holmes.
But I' was wrong. Oh, how wrong I was! For no sooner had the lights gone out when a scream and a slam announced that a crime had been committed: a crime not of murder, but of going Absent Without Leave. A quick search of the premises revealed that the girls had bolted. So now I was a detective in earnest. Those children must be found! The difficulty was that I could only manage one pushchair, into which the surprisingly compliant toddlers had been placed, one above the other as related. It was a freezing dark night and I did not know the neighbourhood. Here we go again!
Constantly rearranging the toddlers, I made for the Harrow Road. Here I studied the layout of the Stonebridge estate. An immense high bridge crossed the busy road, leading to even more Stonebridge Estate on the other side. I could see a raised piazza a-slump with drunk young men holding lager cans. No children could he seen amongst them, thank goodness, so we proceeded downhill. A lamp-lit pathway zig-zagged towards menacing tower blocks. Residents in ones and twos stayed firmly on this path, walking rapidly with their heads down, looking neither right nor left. Suddenly I heard shouts and cries.
Granny Granny Grey, They have taken you away!
They've put you in the Old Folks' Home And there you've got to stay! • Softly we wheeled up to a group of beefy schoolgirls who were playing noisily around the forecourt of a garage. The game, a new one to me, seemed to Ihvdye capturing a person and putting her in a corner that did duty for an old folks' home. Each `granny' resisted capture forcefully, kicking and punching. At every opportunity, the granny would escape with cries of, 'You'll never catch me alive!' and be brought to the ground with a fearsome rugby tackle. There, beating up a supposed granny, were my two charges, Enid and Betsy!
`My days! The detective!' Enid shouted, and both ran pell-mell homeward. I reached the flat, with Omalara and Ben- jamin, only minutes after them. Too tired to remonstrate, I collapsed in a heap of children. Then wearily I girded my loins and pushed everyone in through the door, which I had guiltily left on the latch. Sec- onds later, the parents returned.
`Everything all right? Good, good! I knew there'd be no trouble. You see, our children have been brought up to respect adults.'
Previous page
