‘Let’s start again,’ my dad said.
The telly was off and the homework tables were out with their flaps up. I could feel chewing-gum stuck to the underside of the wood, round and smooth and hard, not even sticky, so it must have been there from the last time. Or maybe the time before, because it came off in my hand, and I was trying to get it back but it wouldn’t stick. I would have tried licking it but he might see me, and I didn’t know whose it was.
‘Twelve nines?’
Manus and Connor had their heads down on the other table doing long division, and I was being tested with Busola on our times tables. It was her turn with number nine and she was getting it wrong.
‘Nine times twelve?’
Times ten was going to be easy, she was times eleven, and I was going to be twelve. I didn’t have twelve in my head and I knew it was coming. I could feel the knuckles coming to knock on my head already, but that just made it harder. It tumbled over in my mind around sixty, then twelve nines was a hundred and ... He didn’t even ask the sums in order. It was at random.
‘A hundred ...’ Busola said, ‘No, ninety ...’ She was counting on her fingers, that was a bad sign. ‘...eight?’
‘Let’s start from the beginning.’ It was all right, he wasn’t angry, he just pushed up his glasses and went back. ‘Two nines are ...?’
‘Eighteen,’ she started, and went on, ‘three nines are twenty-seven. Four nines are thirty-six ...’
It was like a drum beat – six dah-dah fifty-four, seven dah-dah did-dee dee, ah dah-dah did-dee do ... She gave it a bounce, because she could dance and that’s what she wanted to do, not numbers, and by doing it that way you don’t fall and the steps keep coming ... nah-nah dah-di dah ... I’d drifted off because the next one was ‘Twelve nines are a hundred and eight.’ That was it – twelve nines, nine twelves – only now it was me going over the cliff because she’d stopped. I had a panic but I calmed it, there was still times ten and eleven to go.
My dad was patting her on the head and saying she must know it off by heart for next time, but he could see she was working hard. He looked back at the sums and I thought he couldn’t see me, because I put the chewing-gum in my pocket and made a sign at Busola with my hands over my head that she was a big-head and a show-off. Only it was too quiet, I could hear Connor scratching his head and Manus counting numbers under his breath, but my dad wasn’t moving and Busola was staring at me.
‘What are you doing?’ my dad said.
The window was reflecting in his glasses and I couldn’t see until I leaned back that even though his head was bent over the sums he was looking at me.
‘Be careful,’ he said in a voice telling me to get ready.
Manus looked up, checked my dad had his back turned, and gave me a warning with his eyes not to get it wrong.
‘Now, we won’t bother with ten, eleven,’ my dad said. ‘Your turn, twelve.’
It wasn’t like a headache. It was my head feeling thick and heavy so my neck had to bend down, and everything was slow. It was like I could see all the numbers swimming like flashes off the edge of my eyes but I couldn’t catch them.
‘Seven twelves?’
That’s seventy and two sevens ... ‘Eighty-four,’ I said.
He looked at me like he saw me working it out and said, ‘By heart.’
My head was hurting, like it was burning, but I couldn’t be ill.
‘Twelve twelves?’
‘Hundred and forty-four.’ It was the last number in black on the back of the red exercise books that had all twelve of the times tables on and I remembered because it was the biggest number and if I could learn that –
‘Nine twelves?’
‘A hundred and ...’ What was it? It was gone. I couldn’t work it out because Busola had just told me and I’d forgotten. It was blocked. It was her fault turning numbers into a song so I’d forget the words, twelve dah-dah ... dah-dah ... It wasn’t my fault there were numbers that didn’t want to be learnt, that jumped about and swapped and disappeared.
‘Twelve nines?’
There wasn’t time and I’d had to help Mummy do the shopping, and clean the stairs, other children could play out, they were shouting outside the window, I couldn’t think when the telly was on, and I didn’t know it. I hadn’t made time, but I could have all this time that was empty to look round at Manus and Connor who were both looking at me with their mouths open, Manus trying to count out for me by nodding his head until I lost count how many times he’d done it. I had lots of time because I didn’t know what twelve nines was, and even more to look back at Busola who was trying to blink at me, and time to get ready because I was the only one who knew my head was empty until my dad stepped in and said, ‘You don’t know?’
I shook my head.
He took off his glasses, ‘The only thing you will inherit from me,’ he said, ‘is your education.’ And he put his glasses back on.
Connor leaned back in his chair like he didn’t think anything was going to happen. My dad turned round to them on the other table and said, ‘Oya! You can finish.’
They closed their books and we were out of trouble.
‘Not you.’
I was getting ready to go, and stopped with my arm on the table.
‘Two twelves?’
I didn’t know. My head was blocked, I couldn’t do it. I could a minute ago, but I couldn’t any more. I looked at him.
‘Two times twelve?’
I didn’t even want to shake my head.
He took off his glasses again, and wiped his eyes with both hands and looked at me. He wasn’t going to explode but no one moved. I could see a vein throbbing over his eye.
My mum looked in the door. ‘We’ve to go,’ she said.
He nodded, and she went away and closed the door.
‘You have to know,’ he said. ‘You don’t like numbers, still you have to know. And you can’t fool with numbers. They will say no, it’s not true, you’re not counting them.’
‘They’re hard,’ Manus said.
My dad turned round to look at him and put his glasses on, ‘Hard and fast. They won’t change. That’s something you can build on.’
‘They don’t do this in school,’ Connor said.
‘So we have to do the building at home.’
‘The top of the street’s been knocked down,’ said Busola.
It was like the houses had been eaten from the inside. They just had the wall of them facing the street with the sky through the windows. And then they knocked that down.
‘Like a bomb hit it,’ a man said, passing by in the street as my dad was locking the front door. My mum was beside me putting her coat on and looking up at the flattened houses – you could see through to the back of the school playground. Bits of brick wall were standing, but the houses just weren’t there any more. And they’d knocked down the first two houses on the corner of our street next to the bomb site.
‘The council,’ my dad said over his shoulder.
‘Why?’ The man paused on his way and shook his head, ‘Because they got outside loos?’
My dad shrugged, putting the keys in his pocket, ‘They want the land. Big Ben is just there.’
‘We’re being slum cleared,’ Manus said.
My mum looked embarrassed and tried to hide it by taking hold of Busola’s hand to go. But you couldn’t hide it, the houses were gone.
The man looked at us closer and I looked at him. He was sunburned but his face was smooth except for the bald lines in folds on his forehead, his ears were too big and he had sandy hair in wisps off the top of his head. He wasn’t a tramp, he had old clothes on and they were dusty but he knew where he was, and his eyes were blue like the sky.
‘They didn’t put down foundations under these houses,’ he said. ‘They got put up like tents on top of Vauxhall Gardens. There was always a storm gonna blow ’em down.’
My dad put a finger up in the air, ‘What wind?’ My mum shifted on to the other foot and pulled Busola closer. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ and he put his chin out like he didn’t care what anyone thought.
The man nodded and a grin came over his face, ‘I used to live here. Loved it.’ He nodded at my mum and went on up the street towards the missing houses, only turning back over his shoulder to call out, ‘Good luck.’
‘OK, we can go,’ my dad said, and my mum made us hold hands to go down to the main road.
I was holding on to Manus at the back and whispered, ‘What’s slum cleared? Did you know they were gonna knock down those houses?’
‘Open your eyes,’ he said.
I looked back and saw the man climb on to the mound of broken bricks and stumble down the other side holding on to a wall with part of the windowsill in it, like that was where he lived and he was going home.
‘They gonna do that to us?’ We turned the corner towards the train, the cars were louder on the main road, so I stopped and pulled Manus’s hand when he didn’t answer, ‘Are they?’
He looked at me and pulled me close so he could say it loud in my ear, ‘Nine twelves, a hundred and eight!’ He ran dragging me by the sleeve to catch up the others, ‘You have to learn it ... if you don’t want the house to fall on you.’
I couldn’t wake up. Everyone was telling me wake up. My dad was telling me and the man with blue eyes was looking at me from the bomb site. Manus was shaking me and everyone was saying he’s asleep. I could see everything really clearly, the clouds in the sky through the empty windows, my mum’s face in the window at Sainsbury’s, the girl looking down at me through the net curtains, the black eyes of the man at the door of the off-licence, but it wasn’t what people wanted me to see, and I didn’t know the answer. ‘Open your eyes,’ Manus was saying, and I thought if I could close them, I could get them open. I blinked and we were getting off the train into the open air. ‘Time to go,’ my mum said, and my dad lifted me off the seat and carried me on to the platform to find my feet. I was feeling everyone was talking at me and I didn’t understand, but they were speaking about which way to go for the way out.
‘That’s the way we were here, weren’t we, the last time?’ my mum said.
‘Follow me,’ said Connor, and he led us off along the platform with my dad smiling to my mum at him taking over.
I grabbed hold of Manus not to get left behind and get the strength back in my legs, but he shook me off. Then I got a surge back in my legs because I felt the edge of the platform pulling me towards it and I had to keep to the wall to stop myself going over. I hurried up past him and Busola who was holding my mum’s hand and took hold of my dad’s. I could see he was wondering what I was doing as I looked up.
‘Hundred and eight,’ I said.
It took him a moment and then he burst out in surprise through his nose and his eyes, letting his mouth open wide. He reached down round my waist and swung me up under his arm and carried me down off the platform.
‘Jump!’
She wouldn’t, she was sulking because it was superstitious and she didn’t want to.
‘Jump, now, it’s good for you,’ my uncle said.
‘Arrah, that’s old hat,’ my mum said, and crossed herself with a worried look on her face.
‘And a cup of tea’s idolatry – jump!’ He grabbed her round the waist and jumped with her over the fire. They both scattered the smoke and I could see she had her eyes closed. Everybody burst out clapping and she got busy patting and smoothing down the long skirt she was wearing as though she didn’t want any smoke there and it might catch fire. Uncle Eamon patted her on the back, ‘Didn’t hurt, and now that’s done you’ll have a drink.’
‘I won’t,’ she said.
‘Ah, you will. Tess, the invalid has a thirst on her.’
My aunt moved in and gave her a hug, and they spoke to each other but I didn’t hear what they said.
Uncle Eamon and my dad started handing out drinks to everyone. Nana was there, and our cousin Sean, who was older than all of us, even Manus, and Paul who was Connor’s age, and their sister Carmel, but there was lots to go round.
‘Put the kettle on,’ Tess said. The backyard had grass and a fire and no one wanted to go in, so we sat round with our drinks watching the fire crackle with smoke. It burned with long flames that settled down into a red and yellow glow before another log got put on and sparks flew up and the flames started catching hold again.
Nana was sat under the tree on a chair with her yellow drink and my mum was on a kitchen stool beside her with a glass of Guinness she wasn’t drinking because she put it down and let it spill into the grass beside her. Tess was smoking on a blanket on the ground beside Carmel, with Busola across from them on a rolled-up carpet beside Sean who was teasing Nana about the colour of her drink. Nana was looking at him with her head on one side to hear what he’d say because he was wearing a yellow Beatles jacket from Sgt. Pepper. Busola and Carmel weren’t playing, just sipping their Coca-Colas and looking at each other across the fire. The rest of us were sitting on the grass or running round for things to poke and throw in the flames. The dogs had been locked up in their kennel with a stick through the cage handles to stop them getting out. They were making loud snuffles and pants with their wet tongues out, lapping up water and letting their eyes join in. Uncle Eamon said they were guard dogs and he wouldn’t let them in the house. They crouched low and wouldn’t bark if he was around, but I didn’t go near them just in case. He was standing up with my dad by the table with drinks at the back door, talking about what happened in Ireland.
‘They knocked it down, Arthur’s Quay,’ he said, with a sweep of his arm, ‘and you wouldn’t mind, the houses were haunted!’ He turned round, ‘Isn’t that right, Nana?’
She looked up. ‘What?’
‘You’d to leave that house?’
She looked round at everyone, and shook her head.
‘Back home!’ He was raising his voice like she couldn’t hear him. ‘You’d to lock up the door and go!’
‘Is he deaf?’ she said, and turned to Sean. ‘Your father, tell him put in the hearing-aid.’
He looked round at Uncle Eamon and pointed to Nana’s drink, ‘She says put in the lemonade, Dad.’
‘And a whisky while you’re at it,’ Tess said, holding up an empty glass.
‘I’ll lemonade you!’ he said, getting off his elbow where he was leaning on the window ledge and bringing the bottle over to Tess. It made a loud pop! as he pulled out the top and it started glugging into the glass. ‘Haunted!’ he said in a deep, breathy voice like he was trying to blow out the fire.
‘Stop!’ Tess pushed the glass up to clink on the bottle and stop it spilling on Carmel.
‘And wasn’t it the fright, Nana,’ he said, ‘turned your hair white!’
I looked at Nana, her hair wasn’t white. She had it back in a bun and it made her glasses look big reflecting the fire as she kept still and looked at him. ‘I’ll be dyeing again tomorrow,’ she said.
‘Give us a song, Nana,’ said Tess, pushing Uncle Eamon away by the leg.
Nana shook her head and smoothed her dress down over her knees. She had on a white woolly cardigan, I couldn’t remember her in light-coloured clothes before. I had my white Sunday shirt on, we all did, everyone was in white, except Sean who was in yellow and my dad who was wearing his white flowery Nigerian clothes spotted with round holes edged in red stitches with a silver-blue cloth hat folded over. Busola and Carmel were in the same white, flouncy dress with a round collar and short puffy arms, except Carmel had white shoes on. That’s why they were looking at each other. I suddenly felt something was going on. I looked at my mum in her white blouse and black skirt, Tess barefoot in a cream miniskirt. All the lights were off in the house, and I could see everyone beginning to be bright by the fire as the light was going.
Sean jumped in, ‘Picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies ...’ He had a croaky voice, but Tess said, ‘Tch!’ because it wasn’t an old song. He carried on anyway, ‘Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly ... a girl with kaleidoscope eyes ... ‘ Manus had joined in and they both knew the words, ‘Cellophane flowers of yellow and green ...’ By the time they got to the duh-duh-duh bit, Connor and Paul were standing up playing drums and the guitar with sticks and singing along, ‘Lucy in the sky with diamonds, Lucy in the sky with diamonds ... ‘ Nana was roaring out laughing with her yellow drink held up away from her and her glasses bouncing. Only Busola and Carmel weren’t moving, Tess had her hand up shielding her eyes and my mum was nodding her head along to it. I looked round at my dad, he was just watching. I couldn’t see Uncle Eamon, he’d gone inside.
He came out wrestling two giant logs he threw on the fire so sparks flew up into the sky, and everyone settled in to the warm, with my dad bringing up two chairs for him and Uncle Eamon. I stopped listening to what people were saying and looked at the fire. Paul and Connor had their knees tucked up facing each other over by the dogs, swapping Arsenal football cards of Charlie George, Bob Wilson and Eddie Kelly. My mum was chanting ‘Football crazy, football mad’ but they couldn’t hear. Even the dogs looked bored, ‘Charlie George, I’ll give you a gob-stopper’, Paul said. ‘2-1,’ said Connor. It didn’t even make sense. I stopped, and listened to the fire crackling.
It started to roar. My face was hot. It changed shape rushing out into the air, bright hot yellow and black, with hands, fingers, tongues, wings folding and flying off into smoke, then orange flames and ash as the logs collapsed back into black and red-hot rubble, and white flakes peeled off and flew up into the night. I shifted round to Busola on the carpet to get out the way of the smoke, but I had to wait to breathe so she shifted away from me and held on to Sean. Nana was singing and my mum was holding her hand. Manus was up on my dad’s lap. It was old-fashioned, there wasn’t a tune, but she made the droning sound of something you feel when you’ve lost your way and have to sit down on the ground. Everyone was listening. I looked back at the fire. The flames were alive, licking their tongues to speak to me. Somebody had to, they were going to knock the house down and no one was saying. They leapt up and flickered together, like they’d been telling me all the time this is it, this. Is it. I heard my mum and dad talking. Charlie said it, and Lottie. Susan with her cats – her name wasn’t Susan. That was someone else. Was there a Susan? I looked at Busola leaning on the arm of Sean’s yellow jacket with her thumb in her mouth. Perhaps she wasn’t saying because Susan was someone who had nowhere to be, who only came if you talked about her. Manus said we were being slum cleared – they were coming to knock us down. And I didn’t see it. My eyes were wide open, but it took for the houses up the top of the road to get knocked down. They didn’t want us, and we didn’t have anywhere to go. It was too bright, my face was burning and my back was cold. My eyes felt dry and hot from the smoke, like they were going to melt in the cold breeze that came across, and I could feel I was going to shiver.
‘Come away out of the fire,’ my mum said. I skirted round to get up on her lap with her arms folding me. The song had finished and everyone was looking into the flames. My mum felt warm. I looked across at Manus, leaning back safe on my dad’s lap. The flames were going down, and my shirt smelt ironed. I was glad to be folded on my mum’s lap because what I got from the fire was still shaking me. Busola was leaning in on Sean’s arm, Carmel was watching her. There was just the afterglow and the feeling that everyone was together. I looked at my dad’s face, glistening in the light, the blue hat threaded with silver, and up at the night sky, dark blue with stars in it. I wasn’t worried the house was going to fall down. My dad was holding on to Manus and keeping the house safe. I could look up and breathe. A satellite moved out the stars into the blue.
‘Will I tell this fella what’s gone on?’ Uncle Eamon said, and he leaned forward. They all called my dad Fela, because that was his name and they could say it like fella. No one spoke, so he leaned back towards my dad, ‘Eviction’s a dirty word.’
My dad nodded, he was listening to my mum shift with me on the stool. He smiled and said, ‘They are calling this one compulsory purchase.’
‘They’d put the blinkers on you. If it wasn’t Irish fellas in the council we’d never got hold of this house.’
‘Ah, that’s enough of that now,’ Tess said, ‘there’s children about.’
‘The house wasn’t haunted,’ Nana said, ‘that was the story when they wanted us out.’
‘Ah, Nana, no, it was,’ Tess said.
‘Did you see a ghost?’ Nana said.
‘Carmel has school in the morning,’ said Tess, and she started to get up. ‘Eamon, they’ll only be five in the back, run them home?’
‘Now the banshee,’ Nana said, ‘I heard that. And so did your sister.’
I was sitting on my mum’s lap in the back, the others were squashed up. My dad and Uncle Eamon were talking in the front as we drove into our road. The streetlamps were out and it was dark through to the lights by the school. The missing row of houses at the top was an empty gap that had stars pouring into it through a dark funnel of the rooftops narrowing towards each other along the street. I’d never seen so many stars.
‘Holy Mother of God ... it’s a ruin.’ Uncle Eamon got out on the pavement to look and opened my mum’s door. She put me out off her lap and let me stretch while my dad got the others out on the roadside and sent them round to the pavement. My mum wasn’t moving for a bit so we waited for her. My uncle shook his head again, ‘They’ll speak no word and they’ll curse you.’
My dad came round to the pavement and shoved his chin at them knocking down the houses, ‘They can do their worst.’ He leaned down over the car door to my mum.
We all stood up by the front door and I put my hands in my pockets because it was chilly and watched Uncle Eamon taking it in. He shook his head once more, and turned to look at my dad helping my mum, ‘The stitch, is it?’
‘I’ll be all right,’ my mum said.
‘Terrible squeeze, the lot of you there in the back,’ and he held open the car door while my dad lifted my mum out on to her feet. She stood for a moment holding on to the door to get her breath back.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said.
Manus went over and put his shoulder under for her to lean on. She laughed but it hurt, so she took it and came towards us, telling my dad over her shoulder, ‘The keys.’
He started to look for them in his pocket, and said to Uncle Eamon, ‘Please, come inside.’
‘No, there’s work in the morning, a clear head or a brick’ll split it.’ He was looking at Busola and she stopped in the middle of a yawn and frowned. ‘It’s not any old ugly duckling gets to be a beautiful black swan, I’ve to sleep.’
No one moved as he got in the car, turned round in the road and drove off, waving out the window. I saw my mum look at my dad until he shook his head and said, ‘School tomorrow.’
He opened the front door and took my mum over from Manus, letting her go in first and holding her arm, but she said she was all right and just let her go slowly. I hung back behind Connor and Busola, looking out at the stars in the dark. No one was saying anything, but I didn’t know if Uncle Eamon thought I was ugly. And Busola didn’t look like a swan. She looked like a girl in a white dress, and she was yawning. The light was off in the hall again and my mum said, ‘Everyone to bed.’ Manus was holding the door open, but I didn’t want to follow in because I liked the feel of the dark, the way the sound of the street had changed and the stars were coming down. I could feel the chewing-gum in my pocket, the stars were so close I could almost reach up and stick it there. Manus frowned and started closing the door. I stuck my foot in to stop him, and flicked the gum up like an asteroid at the stars as far as it could go.