Catch a thief

Have I imagined the clip clop of horses’ hooves, as the milk cart delivered its morning load? Fresh milk, in glass bottles, with foil tops, delivered to our front garden. In this picture I am watching through my leadlight window from my gabled-roof room. The slap of hoof on road floats up to my bedroom eyrie. After the horse and cart, the bottles were delivered from a van with open sides, with the milkman jumping down to place our order outside our home.

The bottles of milk were set down on the edge of our gravel driveway as the first light of morning was arriving. At times, the milk was a little warm when we brought it in, the icy coldness having melted down to cool. The cream at the top was sometimes a little clumpy, but a shake was all it needed. The pint bottles became 600ml bottles, but I feel as if the foil lids stayed the same.

At some point, our milk began disappearing. Not the lot of it, just a bottle or two. Most weeks there would be milk taken, and eventually a pattern emerged. So we devised our little suburban espionage project, directed by mum who seemed to delight in the hatching of it. We’d catch these milk thieves in the act, and solve the mystery of the disappearing milk!

We lay in wait in our garden early one morning: one person at the tap, another on the hose end, and others in readiness for pursuit. Our cousins were staying, so our troops were bolstered and our bravado boosted. We heard voices coming around the side fence, and crouched low in readiness for the ambush. It was a long front boundary, and as we stayed silent under our trees, we heard the male voices talking. ‘One, or two bottles today?’

Time passed in slow motion as they got closer to their target, the four glass bottles set down on the garden’s edge. I glanced across at my brother on the tap. We were all frozen. I held the hose end tight and readied myself to spring from under the overhanging branches of my leafy dugout. As the thieves bent down and helped themselves to our milk, we set the hose off at full strength and ran charging towards them. ‘Give us back our milk!’ we yelled, as the water sprayed them and we ran towards them. They bolted and began running away past the park with a stream of youngsters pursuing them. ‘Milk thieves!’ we screamed and the bottles crashed to the footpath, shattering and throwing milk skywards. I see this in slow motion now, but it was at full speed then. We had spotted our prey and we were hunting them.

As they ran, their get-away car came around the corner, and slowed to collect them. The little white car had an unforgettable number plate: G-O-M 140. ‘Got Our Milk!’ I yelled. They were marked now. I felt like a character from the Famous Five, as our little gang of brothers and cousins brought this mystery to an end. Our milk never went missing again, but we continued to see the little car in our neighbourhood. ‘Got our Milk!?’ we’d yell. 

In my memory I see this gang of milk thieves, running from the kids in the bushes. We were younger than teenagers, they were old enough to drive. They ran from us and off to new adventures. As I write this, my children roam the streets on bikes in this seaside town, their boundaries opening up, their adventures widening. One just called to ask me ‘Mum, can I buy a milkshake?’ Sure, shake it up. I am watching them run off into their own lives, peeling the foil off bottletops. 

Edited version published in The Guardian, February 2018
(c) Anna Sublet