Plums

When I was a little boy, I don’t recall exactly how old I was – maybe six or seven and we still lived in Aberdeen or maybe 10 or eleven when we returned to Aberdeen for a holiday – my best friend at the time, Christopher, and I stole fruit from a box sitting with many other boxes of fruit and vegetables in a display outside a grocery store.  I snatched a handful of ripe plums, purple as a bruised arm and soft,  The grocer called out, hey but I was already running for all I was worth, speeding round the corner  and down the hill to some waste ground where buildings had been demolished years before.  The ground was overgrown with bushes and long grass, like wild wheat had reclaimed the vacant lot.  A rough path cut diagonally across the derelict corner block, stamped out by commuters heading for the bus stop at the main road.  Every morning and evening they marked the path more with footsteps light or heavy with dreams, hopes, successes, failures or the repetitive drudgery of thei nine to five existences. 

I rounded the corner from the grocery store as if the hounds of Hell were in pursuit, two or maybe three ripe plums in my hand.  One fell but who had time to care?  I ran.  Christopher, who may already have pilfered his fruit of choice was waiting for me half way into the block.  So I ran and ran, racing towards him, legs pumping furiously, lungs aching with the strain, oblivious of anything in front of me down the track.  When I reached Christopher I stopped next to him and after  one quick glance back up the path to be sure the grocer had not followed, judging his two plums and whatever my partner in crime had purloined to be not worthy of the chase, offered to him his share of the spoils.  It was just as we split the proceeds, one of my plums for one of his bananas, that my father came up the path from the direction of the main road.  

Hello Douglas, he said, where did you boys get the fruit?

A better liar, someone more skilled at evasion might have pulled it off.  But not me.  I paused, thought too long about what might possibly be a plausible explanation from a boy who would curl up and die before he’d spend precious pocket money on fresh fruit.  I may have blushed as I struggled to find words.  My father didn’t need to ask, of course, but he was a fair and reasonable man so he gave me the chance, at least, to go quietly.

Shall we go up to Mr Anderson’s shop Douglas and talk?   

No could never have been an acceptable answer.   I think the term is ‘busted’.

.