Short Stories
Watermelons
A light-hearted story featuring a minor character from my novel, When the Tree is Dry.
Mrs Chipfumbe is blessed with eight children--and cursed with a fussy neighbour. Can she use an encounter with a lady of easy virtue to solve her problems?
Too many Cooks
Another not-too-serious story. This time I'm trying for an English background.
On the Run
A longer, more serious short story. On the Run features one of the main characters from my novel, When the Tree is Dry.
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Florence finds Niki, a runaway teenager. She's forced to choose between Niki's welfare and safeguarding her own hard-won security.
On the Run is free for members of my mailing list. Sign up for your copy!
Watermelons
If Dorcas Chipfumbe lost her temper, her house quickly became as deserted as a shebeen when the beer’s run out. Children sidled out of doors and windows, trying to make themselves as small and unnoticeable as possible. They disappeared into the kind of places where cats hide, and since cats hide really well, few people know where those places are.
Luckily, Mrs Chipfumbe was seldom angry. She treated life as a series of jokes: a comedy show staged for her own personal benefit. Life in Harare’s high-density suburbs wasn’t easy, but Mrs Chipfumbe could usually find something to laugh about. But today, an ominous frown hid the laughter lines around her eyes.
Only one person remained unaffected. Herbert Chipfumbe, immersed in the football pages of the daily paper, paid no attention to the screeching and thudding until a hand snatched the newssheet and threw it on the floor.
"Chipfumbe! We need to talk."
He adjusted his glasses, his eyebrows lifted in mild inquiry.
Mrs Chipfumbe plonked herself on the sofa, causing an ominous groan as the ancient piece of furniture attempted to bear her weight. "That . . . that . . . Mr Takawira! Why am I cursed with a fussy old bookkeeper for a neighbour?" She pointed a shaking finger in the direction of the neat, freshly painted house visible through a small window. "I don't think that man has laughed since his mother tickled his tummy when he was a baby. All he cares about are his things. 'My house, my car, my fruit trees, my clothes.' Pshah! How does Mrs Takawira put up with such a man?"
Mr Chipfumbe diagnosed the root cause of the problem in less than a second. "What have your children done now?" His eyes focused on the scattered pages, but he knew better than to pick them up until the storm had passed.
"My children? They are your children too. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with the children. They just do the things children do. Farai and Fadzai only wanted to have a bit of fun."
He sighed and removed his glasses. "What kind of fun this time?"
"They wanted to see what would happen if you shot rotten tomatoes from a catapult. They didn’t break anything, and I told them they must clean Mr Takawira's windows."
"And last week Lucy only wanted to practise her drawing. Why must she choose the windscreen of Mr Takawira's car? And before that . . ."
"Ok, Ok." Mrs Chipfumbe sighed. Children would be children, but when you had eight of them, and an old fuddy-duddy with no sense of humour living next door, life could be difficult. She thumped her fist on the arm of the chair. "Do you know what that Mr Takawira says? He says if we can't control the children, he is going to make trouble. He is big friends with the headmaster of Tonderai's school. He told me maybe next year there will be no scholarship for Tonderai. And that is not all. He is friends with your boss too."
Mr Chipfumbe forgot about the newspaper. "He will make trouble for me at work? Surely he would not do that?”
“Why do you think Tino Chifaro now has no job? Did you not know it was Mr Takawira who arranged for him to be fired?”
“He arranged for him to be fired? Why?”
“Because . . . no, I promised Rudo Chifaro I would not tell the story. But it was not Tino’s fault. It was just Mr Takawira being mean, because Tino had annoyed him.”
“And he says he will make trouble for us?” Mr Chipfumbe leant forward, frowning. ”Why can't you watch what the children are doing?"
"I can't always be there. You know our money would not be enough if I didn’t go out to buy and sell things. Things are tough in Zimbabwe."
"Saffina must watch them. She is sixteen now. Almost grown up."
"Saffina has her schoolwork. I want her to do well in her exams. Get a good job and then maybe she can find a husband with money. I don't want Saffina to always be looking for where the next meal . . .” She broke off as a loud thud preceded an agonised wail from the yard. She leapt to her feet. “What now?”
A small figure erupted into the room clutching a torn dress. Blood poured from her knee and her elbow showed an ugly scrape. Mrs Chipfumbe scooped the figure into her arms. “Alright, Edina, my little one, Mummy will make it better.”
Mr Takawira and his iniquities were forgotten as she stroked the curly head pressed tight against her shoulder and headed for the bathroom.
Mr Chipfumbe picked up the newspaper.
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####
Mrs Chipfumbe always looked forward to Saturday evenings. Wearing her favourite dress with the big red flowers, accompanied by a scrubbed and polished Mr Chipfumbe, she could forget her troubles for a little while at the nearby beerhall.
This evening, her particular friends had not yet arrived, and she glanced around the room as she sipped a mug of thick, foamy African beer. Her gaze stopped at a table directly opposite, and she muttered something impolite. It was bad enough having Mr Takawira live next door. But why, when she only wanted to relax for a little while and maybe gossip with a few friends, did she have to find herself looking straight at his miserable old goat-face?
Mr Chipfumbe and his friends were engrossed in the big TV screen on the wall, where a bunch of English people in red jerseys tried to wrest a football from others in green jerseys. Mrs Chipfumbe glared at her neighbour and drank faster.
Mr Takawira swayed a little in his seat. His eyes were muzzy. Mrs Chipfumbe suppressed a laugh. He couldn't hold his drink.
He got up and weaved his way across the room and out onto the verandah. She followed him to see what he would do. He tripped on the step and clutched one of the supporting poles for balance. How she would laugh if he fell with his grumpy face in the dirt. He recovered and made his way through the outside tables—going the wrong way. The exit gate lay in the opposite direction. Confused, he swayed on his feet, then collapsed onto an empty oil drum that had been discarded at the edge of the yard. He sat with his head in his hands.
Old fool. Served him right.
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Mrs Chipfumbe felt a call of nature, and made her way to the restroom. Five minutes later, her business done, she washed her hands and dried them on a grubby towel. Two or three people had queued up waiting for an empty cubicle. One of them was a tall, full-figured woman of about thirty. Her shiny black trousers stretched precariously over well-rounded hips, and a skimpy red top showed a cleavage big enough for one of Mr Chipfumbe's footballs to disappear inside and be lost forever. The woman put her bag on the counter and reached inside for a lipstick. As she painted her already cherry-red lips, Mrs Chipfumbe saw a movement in the mirror. She swung around and snatched at a hand as it lifted a fat wallet from the cherry-lipped woman's bag.
“Hey, you!" Mrs Chipfumbe gripped hard, but the hand slithered from her grasp.
The wallet fell to the floor, and Cherry Lips made a grab for it.
A flurry of movement, and the purse snatcher flew out of the door. Mrs Chipfumbe followed, but the thief ran fast, and had already disappeared in the crowd by the time she reached the verandah.
"Eh. You have saved me. If I had lost my purse . . . You are wonderful. Thank you." Cherry Lips stood beside Mrs Chipfumbe, her bosom heaving.
"It is nothing."
"No. I owe you. My name is Juliet."
Mrs Chipfumbe hesitated, breathing in Juliet's overpowering cheap perfume and remembering her mother's strong warnings against ladies of a certain profession. But Juliet's laughing eyes and friendly smile won the day. Mrs Chipfumbe held out her hand. "I am Dorcas."
"I wish I could do something for you in return."
Gazing at the painted face, the alluring figure and the assorted silver bangles, Mrs Chipfumbe said slowly, "Well, maybe you could. If you really wanted to."
​
####
A voice pierced Mr Takawira's stupor.
"Such a handsome man, and sitting all on your own."
He raised his head, and the swirling world resolved itself into two very large, rounded appendages and a pair of pouting cherry-red lips. He blinked.
"Whew. All that dancing is hard on the feet. Do you mind if I sit here for a minute?" the voice continued. "My name is Juliet."
Mr Takawira's vision cleared, and the full glory of Juliet's opulent figure took his breath away. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. Was he dreaming? "I . . . er . . ."
She sat down gracefully in the small space between Mr Takawira and the edge of the drum, her left thigh pressed close against him. She swung around, and since she was a large lady, her enticing cleavage rested a few inches from his face. "What's your name, gorgeous?"
"Er, Jacob. Jacob Takawira." He edged away a little. Perhaps a gentleman would give her some space to sit comfortably.
"Jacob. I like that name, so manly.” Juliet’s bosom swayed as she settled herself more comfortably. “What's wrong?" She inched a little closer. "Don't you like my, er, blouse? Is there something wrong with it?"
"No, No. It, they, they are beautiful." His eyes grew rounder as he took in the glorious view. "Just like watermelons!" He gulped. The combination of Juliet’s overpowering womanhood and a bloodstream full of alcohol made him forget his surroundings. He edged a little closer.
A new voice. raucous in contrast to Juliet's soft tones, assaulted his ears."Ayee!. What will Mrs Takawira say when I tell her about this!"
His jaw dropped as he turned to look into the unwelcome features of Mrs Chipfumbe.
She stood with her hands on her hips. "And you a deacon in the church, too. What will Pastor say?"
"You wouldn't . . . it's not what you think . . . this lady is just resting her feet. You wouldn't tell them stories that are not true. Would you?"
"It looks true enough to me. Sitting there with your nose in this lady's bosom! And why would I not tell, when you are the one threatening to cause trouble with Tonderai's headmaster, and Mr Chipfumbe's boss?" She stepped closer, pointing her finger at him.
"The headmaster? The boss? Ah no, that was just my little joke. Of course I would not make trouble." He attempted a smile. "After all, we are neighbours. We are friends."
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Two days later, Mrs Chipfumbe returned from the store, her arms laden with groceries. As she turned into her street, a movement caught her eye. A tree stood close to the fence between her house and Mr Takawira's, laden with guavas. Mr Takawira’s precious guavas. A long pole with a hook on the end bobbed up and down on her side of the fence.
Mr Takawira came out of his house, bellowing, "Stealing my guavas again! Horrible children!"
Two of Mrs Chipfumbe’s brood, Josef and Rudo, ran out of the gate and disappeared into an alley. Mr Takawira strode from his yard, ready to give chase.
"Good evening, neighbour and friend," said Mrs Chipfumbe.
He came to an abrupt halt. "Those children! They're always stealing my guavas!"
She smiled. "Guavas are not such a good crop to grow. Why don't you think of something different? Maybe . . . watermelons?"
His eyes bulged.
“I think I should tell Mrs Takawira how fond you are of watermelons. I’m sure she will plant some for you.”
But Mr Takawira had gone.
Too many Cooks
There was nothing much in it to begin with. It all started off by accident, really. I was punching in a sale, and got my fingers muddled up pressing the keys. Somehow or other I fooled the computer and it gave the customer too much discount. The computer's not supposed to let you do that, see, but maybe it's not as clever as it thinks it is.
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Anyhow, I got to wondering afterwards how I did it, and maybe played with it a little, and figured out which keys to press to scramble the computer's little brain, so to speak. Just for fun really, to see if I was cleverer than the computer. But then my mate Charlie from the pub came in to buy some stuff, and I thought, why shouldn't Charlie have a discount, he's a good bloke after all and if anyone deserves a discount it's Charlie, not these rich blokes that spend thousands and don't notice the difference.
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So as I say, there wasn't much in it - just giving a bit of discount to a mate here and there. If they don't want you to do that, they should get a better computer, shouldn't they? Well, OK, Charlie did buy quite a lot of stuff, and sold it on, and cut me in a bit on the profit. You know what it's like when the missus wants something - maybe a new oven because the old one's driving her round the bend, or maybe a bit of jewellery she's set her heart on - you just have to find the money somehow, don't you, if you want any peace at home? It wasn't a lot, and what do they expect if they don't pay you enough to live on?
Well, there it was. I was happy, Charlie was happy and the missus was happy, and it could've gone on forever. And so it would've, if that bloke Tony who worked at the next counter had've minded his own business. But he's got his nose into everything, Tony has, and one day his nose just happened to be leaning over my shoulder when I was doing a sale for Charlie.
"Twenty five percent discount?" he says, "How'd you make it do that?"
I wasn't going to tell him, but he caught me down the pub later, and he wouldn't let it go. You know what it's like after a couple of beers. Ok, Tony's not a bad bloke, why don't I just tell him, I thought. So I did.
And of course, he had to try it out, didn't he, so he did a sale to one of his mates, and gave it a go. But Tony's greedy, see, and he had to go giving his customer eighty percent, which isn't reasonable, is it? And next thing we knew Tony's computer's grassed to another computer upstairs, and that computer's snitched to the management, and we had the management sniffing around wanting to know who and why and whatever. I thought they were going to fire Tony there and then, but he can talk his way out of anything. Even I don't know when he's lying, and that's a fact, he does it so innocent-like. It was a mistake, he said, and he didn't know how it happened, and yes, he should've noticed, but he didn't, and he's sorry, and yes, he'll be more careful in future.
So they found the customer and got the money back off him, and it all died down. And Tony'd learnt his lesson, he kept it to twenty-five percent like I did. Things went well for us for a long time after that. Tony's missus bought a new dishwasher, and I took mine for a weekend in Paris, all romantic-like. Yes, that was a good year.
But Tony can't just leave a thing like it is, he's always got to try to go one better. He made pals with one of those computer whizz-kids upstairs, and took him down the pub a few times. Darryn, that was the kid's name, bit of a wimpy bloke if you ask me, but he's got brains, or so Tony says. So Tony bent his ear about how Tony's computer grassed to the one upstairs, and asked him can't he stop it doing that, if he's so clever.
Darryn said, well, I could make it let you have thirty percent before it grasses, that would be easy. At least, he didn't say it quite like that, he used a lot of words Tony and me don't understand, but that's what he meant. So Tony said why can't you make it eighty percent, and we can all make money on it. But Darryn said something about selling below cost and affecting the trading reports. He said a lot of other stuff, too, but that was just to show how clever he was. Well, they argued for a bit, and in the end they agreed on forty percent.
So we were making an extra fifteen percent, Tony and me, but it wasn't as good as you would think, because we had to give Darryn half of the extra money for fixing the computer. Still, we did well. The missus and I had a holiday on one of those Greek islands in the summer, and very nice it was, too. Lying about in the sun and drinking ouzo - it beats going down to Bournemouth, I tell you.
It was all well and good for a while, then we had another little glitch. Darryn couldn't have fixed the computer as good as he said he did, or maybe it was just bad luck. It was a Monday morning, if I remember rightly, that one of the bosses from up the top floor came sniffing around. He knew something was wrong, but he just didn't know what. He was the finance manager or some such thing, and he was in a right state, ranting and raving and carrying on.
Down he came into the sales office, all posh suit and briefcase, asking questions and annoying everybody. Then he went after Darryn, and the pair of them disappeared off into a spare office with a pile of printouts. You could see Darryn wasn't happy, and Tony and me weren't too happy either.
We didn't see Darryn all day. Come 5:30 Tony and I’d had enough, and we stopped by the pub on the way home to cheer ourselves up. We were on our second pint when in walked Darryn. Would you believe, the little twirp was smirking all over his face. He bought his pint, and off he went over into the corner like he hadn't seen us. We weren't having that, coz we knew he'd seen us, he just didn't want to talk to us. And we wanted to know why, see. So we walked over and acted like we were surprised to see him, and he couldn't just walk off, now, could he?
Well, as you may have noticed, Tony's pretty good at wheedling secrets out of people. And the kid's got no head for alcohol, none at all, so by the end of the evening we had the story out of him. The manager bloke, Mr Falkner, he was nobody's fool, it seems, and he had it all worked out. He accused Darryn straight of fiddling the computer. Of course Darryn denied it, but this Mr Falkner ear-bashed him for half a day, and in the end Darryn admitted it, like the right Charlie he is.
Now comes the interesting bit. Once he'd got the truth out of Darryn, Mr Falkner did a right turn-around, and suddenly he was Darryn's mate and he stopped shouting. You see, it turned out that Mr Falkner'd had a good scam in mind for a long time, and all he needed was a computer boffin who could give him a hand with it. So the two of them put their heads together, and they worked it all out, and Darryn was going to be rich.
It worked, too. Next thing we knew, Darryn's driving a flash car, and Mr Falkner's bought a big house in Hampshire, and they've got it made. Don't ask me what the scam was, because I didn't understand a word of it. But it's their scam, see, and Tony and I didn't get to see a penny of it. Well, just a bit on the side, then, for keeping our mouths shut, but it wasn't much.
But they got too clever, didn't they. A while later a bunch of blokes came down with smarter suits and bigger briefcases than Mr Falkner's. Auditors, they were. They pulled everything apart and before you know it, Mr Falkner's been nabbed by the rozzers to assist with their enquiries, like. Then the rozzers came for Darryn. And those kind of blokes have got no loyalty to a mate, have they, and they snitched, and so the rozzers came for me and Tony too. So there you have it. It'll be a long time before Mr Falkner sees daylight, I tell you, and Darryn'll be there for a good while, too. Me and Tony got six months, which was bad enough.
Some blokes'll bore you for hours with all the bad stuff that happened to them in porridge, but I'm not like that. Just let me tell you that I suffered, I really did. The missus suffered too; you wouldn't believe how bitchy some of those women can be when you're on a downer. And you think everything will be fine when you get out, but it's not. Who's going to give you a job when you've been in the slammer? Nobody, that's who. And the missus is upset coz now the washing machine's broken down, and how am I supposed to buy her a new one on my job seeker's allowance?
So I've learnt my lesson, and learnt it good. And I'm telling you this, Jerry, because a wise man learns from the other bloke's mistakes, and I want you to learn from mine. So what I'm saying is, this little scheme we've got for juggling with the benefits system stays strictly between you and me. Nobody else, not even your best mate. Too many cooks spoil the broth, Jerry, and don't you ever forget it.