a short story by Austin Mitchell
Jacqueline shed a torrent of tears. She had left her purse with her lunch money in her bag and after she came inside from morning recess it was missing.
“My mother is going to punish me,” she wailed. “It’s her purse and she told me to take good care of it.”
None of us in the class had any idea as to who might have stolen the money. We had all left the room at the same time. We had returned at just about the same time too.
Miss West, our class teacher, was adamant that she was going to find the thief.
However, nobody owned up and she had to give Jacqueline money to buy her lunch at the canteen. There was another problem, the money stolen wasn’t only to buy lunch, but to buy groceries at Jackson Chung’s shop when school was over.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do. She’s waiting for those groceries, make our dinner and breakfast, tomorrow.”
None of us grudged Jacqueline the prospect of going without dinner tonight and breakfast in the morning. Miss Ruby, her mother and Clifton, her father would be sure to punish her. They were both coal burners and casual workers, plus occasionally they got a little produce to sell off their small piece of land. We were in Grade Five at the time. At lunchtime we all went out and Jacqueline made her way to the canteen to get her lunch. Most of us didn’t eat at the canteen, instead we would buy fritters, dumplings, salt fish, patties and bag juice in Jackson Chung’s shop or from sellers at the school gate. Keeble Reid and Danny Cole were buying patties and soft drinks. I bought what I came for and sat on a bench in the school yard and ate it.
I didn’t see either Keeble or Danny, maybe they had their lunch at the shop which had a few seats for customers. I began to wonder where they got so much money from. They normally had lunch at the canteen. I was just about to join a game of cricket when Mark Barnes and Winston Lloyd came over. Both of them were my classmates.
“Livingston, I just saw Keeble and Danny spending a lot of money. Where do you think they got it from?” Mark asked.
“Bet it’s Jacqueline’s money they stole,” Winston remarked.
Keeble and Danny were our classmates. Sometimes they went on a spending binge and we wondered where they got the money from.
I knew that Keeble sold cashew nuts, which he got off several trees in his yard. Sometimes we would buy them from him and use in our marble games. When lunchtime was over, we reported Keeble and Danny to Miss West. Both boys denied stealing the money. Miss West threatened to carry them to the headmaster but they still denied it. Keeble told us that he had sold a lot of cashews and Danny said he had sold some marbles he had won in a game the previous day.
Miss West gave Jacqueline the money she would need to buy the groceries for her mother. We all thought that it was very kind of her.
When school was over both boys went down to Jackson Chung’s shop where they again bought food and drinks.
When they left the shop, we were behind them, but at a safe distance. I saw Keeble going into some bushes to retrieve something. He then threw it further into the bushes.
When they had gone a safe distance we went into the bushes after the object. It was a purse, I’m sure it was Jacqueline’s! There was no money in it.
The next morning we reported what we had seen to Miss West and gave her the purse as evidence. Jacqueline identified the purse as belonging to her mother. Both boys again denied stealing the money. Miss West again threatened to go to the headmaster. With the evidence mounting against them, both boys confessed. A search by Miss West revealed that they had only spent half of Jacqueline’s money. Both boy’s parents were called. They agreed to punish their children, themselves. They also agreed to repay Jacquline the balance of the money. They appealed to the headmaster not to expel their children.
Around one thirty the next day, Miss West left for a staff meeting and left Jacqueline to take down the names of all the talkers. Surprisingly, my name, Mark and Winston were first on the list. Miss West returned just before evening recess, got the list of the talkers and started giving each person two slaps in our hand-middle. Winston and Mark got theirs first, I got one slap and Miss West who suffered from dropsy fell asleep and I ran outside. When she awoke, she gave the other children their punishment.
I always felt that Jacqueline could have pardoned the three of us by not writing down our names as talkers. After all, we had found her money for her. We asked her about it, but she said that if she hadn’t put down our names she would have felt that she had been bribed. She also said that she didn’t care what we had done for her, we had been unruly in class and deserved to be punished. We still felt that she had been ungrateful. Imagine that Miss West wasn’t going to ask her back for the money she had given her and the two boy’s parents were due to give her back the money their sons had stolen. It was due to us why she had come into so much money of late. But maybe she didn’t see it that way.
The End.