Short Story: Five And A Half Bananas

Short Story: Five And A Half Bananas

"She can't sack you for sawing a banana in half, Ruth. Come on down and have a cup of tea. Tell me all about it."

I glowered at the closed bedroom door.

"No thank you, I'll just get on with my revision."

Outside on the landing, my mother sighed.

"It's not the end of the world, love. You'll get over it."

Her footsteps clumped down the stairs and I was finally left on my own. I groaned with embarrassment as the replay of my very first day of employment flickered through my brain. How could I have made so many mistakes? I pulled the duvet over my head but the technicolour nightmare flashed on and on. The box of tomatoes spilling across the floor between the feet of amused customers. The helpful hands returning their bruised and split corpses to me. The earwig making a bolt for freedom from the cabbages and up my sleeve. My terrified screams as I tried to shake it loose before it got to my ear. The punnets of mouldy raspberries that I had to sift through. The requests for stuff I'd never heard of. If I had asked Stella once more to point out some unknown exotic veggie, she would have hit me with it. And then, to cap it all, those huge clumps of bananas that weighed a ton, and were home to poisonous frogs and spiders - so Stella assured me. I had to cut them into hands with a great sharp knife.

"Five or six to a hand, Ruth, quick as you can," she said.

I was all fingers and thumbs. I managed four and a half, five and a half, six and a half bananas in a bunch, but couldn't avoid sawing at least one of them in two. My only defence was that it was the way they were put together. If God had intended them cut into hands, then they would have come with a dotted line and "Cut here" printed on them. Why couldn't people buy thirty at a time? That's what I wanted to know.

The day juddered on from one disaster to another. I gave customers the wrong fruit, the wrong weight, the wrong change. I have never felt such a failure. At four o'clock, Stella led me through to the store, gave me a cup of hot chocolate, a biscuit and a box of hankies. The relief when she told me I needn't come back was wonderful. For a few seconds it blotted out my feelings of total inadequacy. Stella wasn't terribly angry, but she did ask me to leave the box of hankies as she needed them as well.

Somehow, I managed to walk home past all the competent members of the human race and into my home. I expected sympathy from my Mum. After all, she makes the odd mistake. But to see her trying to keep a straight face as I related my ordeal was too much to bear, so I retreated to my bedroom with as much grace as I could dredge up.

I stayed there fretting till after six, getting hungrier and hungrier. Then the aroma of Mum's lamb casserole wafted into my room. Funny that, she must have left the kitchen door open, and the door at the foot of the stairs. Hunger won out over humiliation. I gave in to my growling stomach and went down.

"Ah Ruth, give us a hand, love, and make the custard, will you? You always make it better than I do."

I suppose that's something I can do right, I thought, as I carefully measured out the milk.

"First job I had," said Mum, "I managed to spoil a whole bale of..."

"Hello there, the master's home, hungry, tired, wanting a bit of peace and quiet. Dinner ready? Smells good!"

I concentrated on making the custard and hoped Dad wouldn't ask about my disastrous day. Fat chance. He waited until I was trapped in my seat at the table before he began the interrogation. I looked down at my lamb casserole, hoping for inspiration. And it came to me. I had three options:

a. Run to my room and hide for the rest of my life.

b. Admit I made a few mistakes.

c. Play to the gallery.

I played. I joked about banana splits, free-wheeling tomatoes, rotting raspberries. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. Afterwards, Dad gave me a hug and slipped a tenner in my pocket. "For the entertainment," he said. "Better than anything on the telly."

When my friend Alison phoned later to find out how I had got on, I recapped the whole performance for her. Once we had calmed down, she told me about the vacancies for the new McDonald's that was opening. She was going to try for it. Did I fancy coming along? I thought about it for two seconds. After the greengrocers, McDonald's would be a walk-over.

"What, just serving chips? I could do that with my eyes closed. Let's go for it!"

We came, we saw, we conquered. Or at least we were accepted. Mind you, the job wasn't quite the walk-over that I expected. But that's another story entirely...