‘Come on,’ my mum said.
I was stamping puddles on my own in the backyard as she leaned out the window. She was changing the rooms round now Marie had moved out with her mum and her dad had gone back to Guyana. Marie’s room down by the front door was my mum and dad’s, and that was where my mum told me to come when I bent down and shook my head. She was gonna ask me to carry the shopping with her and I didn’t want to.
She sat on the bed with the door closed and pulled me down beside her in a cuddle so I’d have to give in. The room was still crowded with the stuff she hadn’t packed away, and the curtains were pulled so it was half dark, but now her Kennedys were up on the wall beside the Nigerian army calendar and underneath was a picture of the sacred heart, its blood on fire. I hardened myself up to stop her getting round me.
‘I’ve been watching you,’ she said. ‘What’s the matter?’
I shook my head. Even my dad was going easy on me and I could feel they were thinking I wasn’t well, but I just didn’t have anyone to play with. There wasn’t anything to say, only a feeling that I couldn’t carry any more and if I did I was going to burst.
‘When I was growing up,’ she said, ‘there was a girl, and whenever her mummy wanted her you could hear her name being called, Precious! Precious! And you should see the pretty dresses, because she had relatives in America sent them over in boxes. But one day she became sad. She used to love playing out, skipping along the road, and hadn’t a care in the world. One day she was happy and the next she was sad, and we didn’t know why. No one ever told us. But her mummy went on calling, Precious! What do you think of that?’
I shrugged.
‘Can you say?’
The thought of Marie saying it was my fault she was sad came back and I squashed it, but not completely. ‘What happened to her?’ I said.
‘She caught cold and died of pneumonia.’
‘Are you making this up?’
My mum shook her head. ‘In those days people didn’t know. They should have been cooling her down, but they wrapped her up and she overheated and died.’
‘I don’t want to die,’ I said.
‘Then you shouldn’t dwell on it,’ and she looked into my ears to see were they clean. She scraped her nail in to see if she could dig something out, ‘You may have to do without me one day.’
‘You just want me to carry the shopping on my own,’ I said. ‘You never ask them to do it, always me.’
‘Who’s them?’
‘Connor and everyone.’
‘They’re not moping around the house with nothing to do,’ she said. ‘You are, and I’m not going to wrap you up in cotton wool. You’re a big boy now.’
There was an edge in her voice that she was getting ready to push me over and I had to cling on to something, so I clung on to her. She took off my arms from round her waist and said, ‘Ah no, you’re not getting round me, come on.’ She held my hands up between us and said, ‘God knows what’s in your heart, even if you won’t say. So what’s it to be? Are you going to help me or are you going to be idle?’
It was my chance and I grabbed it. I was going to do whatever my mum told me, so I nodded, ‘Can I have a treat?’
‘You’re my treat,’ she said, ‘so I can be yours.’ I must have looked disappointed because she bent over and got one of the bags up off the floor. I leaned over to see what was in it – the bag was silver and had four handles and looked heavy. She got out a coin, with a chain attached, and poured it into my hand. ‘That’s yours,’ she said, ‘don’t lose it,’ and she started to get ready to do the shopping. I looked and saw a man with a beard up to his legs in water. I moved it around in the half light from the window, and there was a baby on his shoulders, frowning, the water was up to the man’s knees and he was leaning on a crutch. I wanted to know was that me, not wanting to carry the bags? ‘Do I have to wear it round my neck?’ I said. ‘What is it?’ I looked up and she was facing me, pale and white by the window. ‘To keep you safe,’ she said.
The market was up Tyers Street at the top of the road, round past the shops then a long straight stretch between the blocks of brown flats on both sides of the road. All the blocks on the Vauxhall Gardens Estate were good for playing run-outs up and down the stairs and round the balconies, but it was a long walk anywhere if you had to lift shopping. My mum had the wicker trolley and she had me, so she was jollying me along and swinging my hand in hers, getting me to sing Oh, I am a jolly ploughboy as we went. There was a pub up the top on the corner with Black Prince Road before you crossed over into Lambeth Walk called The Jolly Cockneys. It was always busy with people spilling out on the pavement in between doing the shopping, and I liked it because the man and the woman with hats and feathers and white buttons sewn all over their clothes were doing a dance on the painted sign over the door, and my mum said they were the Pearly King and Queen. Because not everybody thought we should be holding hands, my mum let me go and walked ahead, only holding my hand again to cross over the road into the market. But then because I was looking back over the road at the sign and dragging my feet, she had to go on keeping hold. ‘Come on,’ I said, and she knew I wouldn’t move until she sang with me Any evening, any day ... She didn’t want to because lots of people were going past looking at us and she thought it was silly. I dug my heels in and slid on the wet pavement and caught hold of the lamp post on the corner with my other hand so she couldn’t go in under the awnings between the shops and the wooden stalls.
‘Will you come?’ she said, stamping her foot.
‘You’ll find them all ...’ and I looked at her.
‘Doing the Lambeth Walk?’ said Lottie. It was her and Charlie, our neighbours, on their way home with Charlie pulling the trolley. Charlie grinned and said, ‘Oi! You should be helping your mum, not dragging her back!’
My mum shook her head at them and let go my hand. She didn’t want people to notice us but the man on the first stall was peeling off a cabbage and looking at her.
‘How are the boys?’ Lottie said. They didn’t have children and Manus and Connor were their favourites.
‘Fine,’ my mum said. ‘Not as much trouble as this one. Not long now?’
‘Two weeks,’ Lottie said.
‘Sorry to see you go,’ my mum said. ‘Will I get them to write?’
She shrugged and said, ‘We’ll be staying with Charlie’s sister first down in Swindon, until we get our own place.’
‘Shame it’s all going,’ Charlie said, looking back at the market.
I didn’t know they were moving. They’d always been there, two doors down from us. They had the whole house to themselves. And even though they were old they both had pearly teeth and their clothes were clean. They made you feel they were always going to be happy living there and watching you play.
‘It’s easy for us, just renting,’ Lottie said, ‘We haven’t got to sell up and deal with that council.’
‘You going?’ I said.
Lottie looked at me, but I didn’t know what she was thinking because she said, ‘You look after your mum.’
‘Look at that,’ Charlie said.
They all looked up where he was pointing over the tops of the awnings at the houses. Most of the windows were empty and boarded up like some of the houses round by us. Some trees were growing out the bricks along the roofs, their top branches almost touching the low clouds moving like grey smoke across the street. A gust of wind shook the awnings and spilled rainwater on the pavement, and another one came down and made the striped screens of the stalls flap like boats.
‘They don’t care,’ Lottie said, but I didn’t know who she was talking about. Charlie looked back at her and shook his head, ‘End of an era.’
‘I must be getting on,’ my mum said, ‘before it rains again. Say goodbye to Charlie and Lottie,’ she said to me.
I looked at them and said, ‘What’s it the end of? Why you going?’
‘Come on, we’ll be late!’ my mum said.
Charlie scratched his head, and Lottie shook her head at me and looked at my mum, ‘Life goes on.’
As my mum pulled me along, I looked back and saw them holding hands and watching for cars going across, Charlie was limping and pulling the trolley. Manus said he was a soldier in Italy, and he had to change his leg when it hurt, but I didn’t know what to make of that.
The market was full of noise in a tunnel under the awnings, and I liked the way they were filling out and blowing in the wind. The light made it look like a long room everyone was in, with crowds going in between the shops and the stalls. The traders were calling out loud and fast in that way of talking that moved their jaws a lot and sounded like yawning. ‘Keep up,’ my mum said, and she let go my hand. I felt alive and started to enjoy it, watching all the people talking and shopping. I ran ahead to keep up and then wanted to know why we were rushing, so I stopped, ‘Is the market closing because it’s late?’ She stepped by me and said, ‘It’s closing because it’s closing.’ She had a tight way of walking which wasn’t like her, so I shut up and kept close. ‘Wait here,’ she said, going into a butcher’s she liked. She gave me a penny because there was the boy outside the shop who was blind and I could put the penny in his box. We used to be the same height but now I was taller than him and his paint was flaking – he had a white shirt, blue shorts, black shoes, yellow hair and orangey-pink skin. ‘You’ll always be the same and never grow up,’ I said. His eyes were shut and he didn’t know what to do with my pity. I shook my head, ‘There’s something wrong with you,’ and dropped the penny in the slot. As soon as I did, I wanted it back to put in a slot machine for bubblegum, but he wasn’t going to give it. I looked around to see if anyone was watching and gave his shoulders a shake. An old lady went past and said, ‘Stop that!’ I knew I was in the wrong, so I didn’t look up and said, ‘He’s my friend.’ As soon as I said it I could feel she thought there was something wrong with me. She walked off, and I didn’t know why I was acting like that, except I always did. I looked at the boy again, he was blind and I was stupid. He wasn’t real and I couldn’t go on pretending I was like him.
‘Come on,’ my mum said, walking on ahead with the extra meat the butcher gave because he liked her. He always did and she moved off because she didn’t want me to see her counting up the money. She waited for me two shops up and put the meat in the wicker trolley. ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘can I have my treat?’ There were only two shops I wanted to go in, Micklejohn’s, the blue toy shop on the other side of the road, and Sainsbury’s because there was sawdust all over the floor and big mirrors up on the walls, you could see everyone from different angles. But she said we were only buying vegetables from the stalls and to look at what was being dropped on the floor because all those greens got eaten up by the rats, which was what made their coats so glossy and black and I should eat up my greens. She stopped to look at onions and carrots, but moved on while I was crouched down trying to look underneath the stall to see what was going on. The man standing in the road behind came round through the gap between the stalls and jingled his money, saying, ‘She’s a looker!’ I stood up and saw he was wearing a leather pouch on a belt in front and talking to the old man with white hair on the pavement looking after the fruit stall. The old man pulled him round by the elbow to look at me, ‘That’s hers.’ It took me a moment to realise he was connecting me to my mum, and the man with the pouch let his mouth fall open and looked down the stalls at her, ‘Fuckin’ black man’s mattress ...’ I looked at both their faces, it was me standing there but they were ignoring me, one with his hands in his pouch looking at my mum and the other one turned back to his fruit stall. It was like I was a wooden post. They were treating me like I wasn’t real. They were treating me the way I treated the blind boy, as though I wasn’t a proper person. I didn’t know what else to do, ‘I’m a real boy,’ I said. They both turned to look at me, but it didn’t make any difference, they looked at each other and shook their heads and turned away.
I was looking in the window of Sainsbury’s, thinking about it. I wasn’t worried what they thought. Both of them had weaselly faces and I thought of saying to the vegetable man, ‘You look like a rat!’ But it was my face I was looking at ghosted in the window. I pressed my nose up against it. People were passing behind me. I wasn’t like them, but it didn’t matter I was small, I was big enough to see my head in the window. I saw my mum go by and turned, ‘Mum, my treat?’ but she swerved into the shop and I followed her in because she was gonna get me a cream cake or a custard tart. The sawdust was trampled in with wet feet, and there were gaps where you could see the black and white marble pattern on the floor. ‘What do you want?’ she said. ‘What you get me!’ I said, because that was what was gonna get the most, and she laughed. ‘All right, wait here,’ and off she went.
I was standing on my own in the middle of the shop. It was a big hall, and the people serving had long white aprons on. I looked in the mirrors and saw crowds of people going round the counters, with me keeping still and holding heavy bags of shopping in both hands. Everyone was going round me and not looking, and the smell of the sawdust was rising off the floor, and the noise was bouncing off the walls and ceilings. I looked round and could see myself from lots of different angles in the glass, but no one else could because they didn’t see what I saw. I was growing up and my paint wasn’t flaking. I was staying still because everything was moving. I was invisible but I could see everyone. And what I saw in between the mirrors was a boy with brown bushy hair and blinding eyes being watched by the best mum in the world.