Tom was pretending to be a baby because the dog was looking for him. He had a milk bottle to suck on, but Jerry had a safety-pin for the nappy, and when he stuck it in you could see Tom’s tonsils. The dog caught Tom coming down and rubbed his back to burp him, but it was still a dog looking up and down for a cat and checking the nappy to see if that was the cat in there. It didn’t smell right. Jerry put a clothes peg on the dog’s nose and passed him a new nappy. The dog nodded to thank him and stuck in a safety-pin. He had to hold on to the nappy until the baby came back from hitting the roof while keeping an eye out for the cat and thanking the mouse for his help. Then he stuck the milk bottle back in the baby’s mouth. Because cats like milk, Tom kept sucking. Jerry tossed him a fish out the fridge, and Tom snapped it up, and gulped, and swallowed. Which was fishy. The dog was holding the milk bottle with a look on his face about the baby, seeing himself sat in a wet nappy, holding a smelly cat dripping off the end of a fishing rod. So Tom stuck the milk bottle in the dog’s mouth, and went after Jerry, and the dog dropped the milk bottle and nappy and went after Tom. Only this time Jerry got caught, bumping into a bottle of baby powder and a white cloud of it fell on top of him, followed by a wobbling pile of nappies. All you could see was the white sheet of a nappy staggering about like a lost ghost. Tom stopped, and put out his hand to stop the traffic. The dog stopped, and a tear dropped from Tom’s eye. Tom pointed, and the dog looked as the nappy sneezed and the powdery white ghost of the baby he’d dropped stepped out from under the sheet. Wings appeared and a halo as Jerry flew up, and the body of the white mouse baby fell down flat. Busola started making the sound of the funeral march, and the dog’s face crumpled up. But something else went wrong with the projector, as well as no sound, the film stuck and burned brown and black into blinding white.
‘What’s going on?’ my dad said, switching on the light. We heard him come up the stairs from work while the film was running but my mum had Busola on her lap and didn’t move. He came in and stood by the door. So we went on watching what happened with the two social workers. They didn’t know who he was so they just nodded and turned back to watch the film. Only they weren’t really watching it, they couldn’t make the sound work or even operate the projector properly. They were watching us. ‘It’s burning?’
‘No problem,’ the man said, jumping up to the projector and switching it off. We sat there blinking at the white of the screen with the film rattling, ‘I’ll have it fixed in a minute.’
The woman was sitting with her legs crossed in a long woollen skirt and cowboy boots. She had both hands over her knees with rings on her fingers and bangles on her wrist, and was wearing big glasses with her hair pinned up at the sides. She was looking at us like we couldn’t see her. She saw me looking out the corner of my eye and smiled, but it made her lips look thin. I fixed on the man’s trouser leg, it was caught on the back of his short boot and bell-bottomed out. He had on a brown corduroy jacket and had long reddish hair and a dark moustache that made him look like a detective off the telly. He was fiddling at the projector like he was in charge, but she was.
‘I think, Johnny, that’s all we need to show them just now. Would you like to come to the youth club? We’ll be showing films Mondays and Wednesdays after school? Would you like that?’
‘Yeah,’ Johnny nodded, ‘it was a cliffhanger.’
He was pretending to be stupid. What was interesting was it was in colour, Tom and Jerry was black and white on the telly. We looked at our dad.
‘Which youth club is this?’ my dad said.
‘For the young people in the area,’ Johnny said. ‘We’re opening one.’
‘This area?’ my dad said.
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s being knocked down?’
‘This is a priority area for us,’ the woman said. ‘We can see the need.’ And as Johnny nodded and started disconnecting the projector, ‘Are you the father?’
My dad looked at my mum. She let him see she wasn’t going to say anything, and moved Busola about on her lap.
‘Yes, and they must go to bed, I won’t offer you tea,’ he said.
‘Our concern is the children,’ the woman said, uncrossing her legs and standing up to go. ‘This gives them something to do. It must be a difficult time,’ and she gave her thin smile.
My dad gave her his charming smile back and said, ‘All of you, thank them and go.’
We all stood up and said thank you on our way out. But we couldn’t go quickly because when they knocked on the door it was us who bullied our mum into letting them in. We didn’t think he’d be back till later and she knew we were bored. ‘It’s your own fault,’ she said, but there was nowhere to go and only four houses left between us and where they were knocking down. Most of the rest of the street was boarded up. So we mobbed her, saying it wasn’t fair not letting us see a film in our own house, and got her to let them set up the screen and projector in the front room. It was only when they started asking questions and he couldn’t get the sound to work that we said we’d watch the Tom and Jerry anyway, and hoped it would finish and they’d go away. They didn’t speak like real people, he was pretending to be one of us and she talked down like she was being nice but had other ways of thinking about us than the ones she was saying. So it was a shock for my dad when he heard it.
‘I can see you keep them under control,’ she said. His smile stopped being charming.
‘Thank you for coming,’ my mum said. ‘My husband will see you out. Children, let’s go and brush our teeth.’ She came down the stairs with us to the backyard, and put a finger to her lips at the back door so we could listen to them going.
My dad was asking on the stairs how they heard of us and the woman was saying lots of agencies were involved to help people with the move and that we were well known to them. Johnny was telling my dad where the youth club was in the old Beaufoy Institute on Black Prince Road, and would we be coming? We could hear him getting open the front door and them lugging the equipment out. She was asking if he’d like to set up a meeting to discuss it. As the door closed we heard him saying, ‘Please, thank you, and don’t come back.’
He couldn’t wait till we’d gone to bed, he came straight out the backyard, ‘What are you doing letting them in?’
She had us around her and said, ‘The children need something to do.’
‘You can’t see they are targeting the children?’
Busola had her arms wrapped round my mum’s waist and I took hold of my dad’s hand, and we let Manus tell him it was our fault wanting to see cartoons in colour and first we thought they came through school because they knew our names. Connor wasn’t getting involved, he was kicking loose bits of brick off the wall. Mrs Banacka had moved out next door and stopped mending it, but he was making it worse because he wanted to go more than anyone and was saying we lived in a house that was falling down.
‘How do you expect me to protect them?’ my mum said, ‘They can see themselves what’s going on. Those people won’t stop till they bring the roof down on top of us.’
‘What can I do? We have to hold on. They won’t pay, I won’t move.’
‘It’s hard on the children, that’s all I’m saying. We have to do something to stop him kicking bricks, otherwise they’re the ones paying the price.’
We all looked at Connor. He stopped like he’d been caught and couldn’t see why he had to be dragged into it. My dad let go my hand and went to pick him up until they were looking into each other’s faces. Connor dropped his eyes but you could see the anger, and my dad lifted him up more so he could look up at what Connor was feeling. He shook him gently and said, ‘Look up.’
Connor did, but he was telling my dad off. They were like each other losing their temper, but it was hard to see how they could meet up. Connor was letting himself go limp and hard to carry.
‘Tomorrow is the weekend,’ my dad said, putting him down. ‘We can go in the car and drive round.’ My dad had just got a car again, which was all right for making him feel good but Manus and Connor were calling it a pile of junk because it was old and worn-out and kept breaking down. ‘All of us can go,’ he said, ‘and do the day out.’
Even Busola let her mouth drop open that he wasn’t getting it, but my mum said, ‘That would be lovely,’ and moved us all into the bathroom to brush our teeth. I could see Manus was laughing and trying to hide it in case Connor found out. But my dad was looking at us with his face crumpled.
‘Thank you, Daddy,’ I said.
‘What you thanking him for?’
I didn’t answer because that would be dangerous and Manus wasn’t there, he’d already moved in to the room upstairs next to my mum and dad, and it was only Connor and us alone in the bedroom. I got in under the covers on the top bunk and shrugged.
‘Shut up, then,’ he said.
‘What’s that there?’ said Busola.
‘What?’ Connor wasn’t nice about it because she was just trying to put him off blaming someone else for having to spend all day in the car with our dad instead of being free to go off. It served him right for kicking bricks. He was the one who put us all in it. He was just trying to be a bully now Manus was gone.
‘That, there,’ she said.
There was scrabbling on the lino so it was mice. The light was off but there was still light coming in through the curtains.
‘Lots of them.’ She sounded like she wasn’t making it up. ‘They’re coming on to the bed!’
I looked down at the floor. There wasn’t a carpet but it looked like there was, a dark one coming from one corner of the room and spreading. I looked down at Busola, she was kicking her legs in the bottom bunk and the whole bed was shaking.
‘Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!’ Connor was trying to tuck the blankets into his mattress to stop them climbing up. He shook the covers and some went flying into the air.
‘Get them off! Get them off!’ Swarms of them were spreading across the floor and climbing up to Busola like a dusty grey blanket pulling itself over her head. She pulled the sheet over and started screaming from underneath, ‘Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!’
Connor was standing up in the bed with his back to the wall doing a dance with his feet moving. My dad burst in and put the light on. The mice were scattering everywhere and my dad froze. My mum came in behind him and screamed, ‘Oh my Jesus!’
My dad leapt over and pulled the sheet off Busola and started beating them away. Connor was clinging on to my mum with his arms and legs, sobbing with his face pressed up against hers and his eyes wide. I was holding on to the top bunk in case I fell off.
The room emptied and I watched everyone standing there, Busola in my dad’s arms with her bottom lip going and her chin wobbling and Connor with his face wide open against my mum’s. I saw stray mice scurry into a hole in the corner and I was worried everyone would go out the room and forget about me.
‘Daddy?’ I said.
He looked at me kneeling on the top bunk and started to laugh. He shook and Busola held his cheek to steady him. My mum bit her lip and frowned, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Fela! What’s there to laugh at?’
‘At least one of you is safe up there,’ he said.
‘Thank you, Daddy.’
I said it to annoy Connor as they were tucking us up into their bed. Busola got in the middle between us and wouldn’t move, my mum and dad were gonna sleep in the front room because there wasn’t space at the sides. Manus hadn’t come out his room and wasn’t making a sound.
‘Don’t put the light out,’ Busola said.
‘It’s over now, it’s over,’ my mum said, but it wasn’t like a dream and I’d woken up, and I didn’t see anybody else look like they were going to sleep to get over it.
‘Was it real?’ I said.
My dad smiled like I was asking for a bedtime story and sat on the bed. ‘They are just passing through,’ and he reached over and put his hand through Connor’s hair. ‘They are mice on the move from the other houses.’ He pinched Busola’s toes through the blankets, ‘At least they’re not rats.’
My mum slapped his hand away and sat down next to Connor, ‘I’ll not have you worsen the plague, settle them down.’
She leaned over and started whispering Our Father, who art in heaven to Connor who was nodding his head. Busola made a big sigh and burst into tears. My dad looked at me and winked, ‘It’s time now we need that Tom.’
But my dad didn’t think it was doing its job and said it was lazy. He got really good when he came home and sat down in front of the telly at suddenly throwing his work boot and knocking out a mouse. The mouse would be stunned and he’d have to heave himself up out the chair again and go and finish it off, ‘ Where’s that bloody cat?’ But we thought it was frightened. There was a big mouse with a long tail sitting up one night watching the television with us. My mum and dad were out and we had to run out the room but the cat didn’t want to go in, even though Manus tried to throw it in and close the door. It scratched his hand with its bottom feet and then bit him, its body wriggling out from under his arm, and I felt sorry for it. ‘Let him go,’ I said.
‘It’s a she,’ he said, sucking his finger as it pelted down the stairs.
That cat didn’t stay, so we adopted another one, Bluey, which was wild and browny-yellow and scrawny so I didn’t know why it got that name. We left saucers of milk out for it and propped open the bathroom door so it would have somewhere to go in out the rain. My dad said milk would attract visitors we didn’t want and my mum shivered and told him to stop, we didn’t want any more social workers. But Bluey knew it was a bargain and started to leave mice out by the back doorstep and I saw him once by the back wall shaking a big one by the back of the neck. So my dad had to be quiet and let us have Bluey as our pet.
He had bluey eyes as you started to look. He wasn’t for stroking but he followed you with his eyes down from the wall like what you were doing was going to be a spell to turn him back into being a prince. But he wouldn’t come into the house. He was wild and wet and walked alone along the walls of the backyards, smelling the drizzle on his nose and stalking the rain for small birds to be holding their wings in his teeth.
Missus got brought home by Manus in his jumper to be a cat for inside and he kept it locked up in his room for days to get it used to being there. I first saw it peering out his V-neck like it wasn’t ready to be born even though it was older than a kitten and had a deep cut by its nose just under its eye.
‘How’d it get that?’
‘She got in a fight,’ he said. ‘I’m rescuing her.’
‘She’s not really a mouser, is she?’ my mum said, but she changed when Missus reached out a paw to touch Manus’s nose and mewed at him like she was asking her mum what to do next. ‘We’ll have to let your father decide.’
She had soft white markings that made her look like a girl, and browny-red and black fur in swirls up to her tail which waved and twitched like a flag in the breeze, my dad said.
They didn’t say anything for days while Manus kept her up in his room except to ask where he was going with the white bits of his fish fingers. When she came out to us she was his cat, and you didn’t want to do anything in front of her because she’d tell him. She must have been deaf, though, because she didn’t hear any scrabbling and thought all she was supposed to do was play a bit with us while she waited for him to come home so she could sit on his lap.
‘How you going to feed her?’ my mum said because she was keeping the fridge closed. He bought tins of cat food out his own pocket money and my dad said it wasn’t fair but she had to start catching the mouse because money was short.
We all joined in training her to chase balls of wool, or when my mum complained about her knitting, to go after pieces of string and people’s shoelaces. She was a natural, curving her paw to catch at things, but we didn’t see her claws come out and everyone looked at Manus like we could see it was gonna end badly. ‘Get Bluey to teach her,’ Busola said. We weren’t sure how they were gonna get on, Missus was a luxury cat and Bluey was a smelly old tramp. He got in a bad temper, hissing down at her from the wall. So Manus kept her inside and used toilet paper to pick up Bluey’s mice by the tail and take them in to her on a plate to have a sniff and wrinkle her nose up. She’d got used to fish fingers and tinned food, and it smelt like Bluey was telling her to get lost.
‘What you gonna do?’ we said.
Manus arranged it like there’d been a murder and it was Missus who did it. There were body parts all over the hall when my mum and dad came in, he’d rubbed her nose in it to look red. They looked at him, and my dad shook his head. How could they tell, when you could see Missus licking her paw and wiping it off?
‘Clear up this mess and come, we want to talk to you.’
We all squeezed in the front room with Missus looking up at Manus like she was on trial and he had to save her. ‘First,’ my dad said, ‘no one is on trial here for the murder. The wild cat has done this.’ He looked around to make sure we could all see he had the evidence and was going to bring it out the bag. ‘In the first case, if you don’t know, the difference between rat and mouse, it’s not just big and small. And ... what’s her name?’
‘Missus,’ Manus said.
‘Eh-heh, she has no chance. Before she can sneeze the rat will bite her nose.’ We all sat there absorbing it. It was a rat, and Manus had smeared it, and he had to clean it up. And Missus was licking rat blood with her tongue. And there was a problem with rats and only Bluey was keeping them back. ‘In the second case,’ my dad went on, ‘I won’t mind when we can afford. But for now ...’ A mood came down over us that Missus was innocent, and guilty at the same time. And it wasn’t fair, but that was what happened if you were a cat. She half closed her eyes and sniffed at the teardrops running down Manus’s nose, got ready in his lap and licked them off.
‘Ah, no,’ my mum said, ‘we’ll find a good home for her, don’t worry. It’s just we can’t afford it right now.’
My mum put on her coat and was going out with a shopping bag while Manus was out with my dad. We didn’t let her get out the front door. The bag was moving and she was holding it closed tight in her hand.
‘What you got?’ Busola said.
‘Never you mind!’
‘You gonna drown it?’ I said, like what if she’d done that to us.
‘Out of my way!’
‘Let it stay, Mum,’ Connor said, but he sounded like he was helping her run the taps when he should have been pulling the plug out. ‘We’ll look after it.’ He wasn’t getting on with Manus and left it late to do anything. ‘I’ll take it to school, they’ve cages for pets on the roof.’
‘It’s decided,’ my mum said, ‘she can’t stay. Don’t make it hard, she’ll be better off where she’s going.’
There was a lump in my throat and a look of distrust in Busola’s eyes, and even Connor was shaking his head at how cruel she was being.
‘For the love of God, I’m just going over the park, it’ll have to learn to climb trees!’ and she pulled the front door shut behind her so we were left in the hall with light flooding in from the glass above the door, and the feeling that we couldn’t even blame Connor who had his head hung down for failing to stop it.
‘Don’t tell Manus,’ Busola said, and we both looked at her. She had a glint in her eye like Bluey getting ready to pounce, but scarier, ‘I bet she drowns it.’
Manus didn’t say anything after his day out and no one else did. But after three days Missus was back. She was changed in that she looked draggled and used to being outside and a bit thinner. We saw her on the back wall and called Manus out to look. She was lying down on her front paws with her back to Bluey who was sitting the same way further along, looking like they were married.
‘It’s a fairy-tale ending, Mum,’ Busola said, changing her tune. ‘Bet you didn’t think of that!’
‘Oh no, it’ll take a cat to get from A to Z,’ my mum said, shaking her fist like she told it to stay in the park. She put her hand on Manus’s shoulder, ‘Tell your father we’ve two cats and that’s as much as I’m having to do with it.’
She went in and we watched Manus get a scratch on his hand before Missus let him lift her down off the wall. But that’s all she did to tell him off, and Bluey watched like he didn’t mind she went in sometimes so long as she came out. So we had a cat for outside and a cat for inside we could feed on scraps, who went outside for the night and had kittens in the downstairs kitchen, which Mr Ajani didn’t like until they all disappeared except for a ginger one we called Ginger. And Mr Ajani said that was the one that was going to catch the rat.
Mr Ajani was staying on in his room on the ground floor, the big downstairs room was empty except for junk. It struck me I didn’t know what he was doing there.
‘Is he studying?’ I said, because that’s what lots of Nigerians who came to stay were doing, and my dad liked that and helped them.
‘Life-long learning,’ my dad said.
‘Why’s he down in that room?’
‘It’s on the ground.’ That was all I could get out my dad until he looked at me like I shouldn’t be asking and kept his eyes wide, ‘He keeps the house safe.’
‘Fuckin’ ridiculous!’
One of the neighbours opposite was in the front room when I got home with my mum from shopping. He hadn’t been in our house before, except when he came in and got Busola out the fire – it was Mrs Ralf’s son.
‘Cut yer lights off! Throw rats at yer! Just to get yer out?’
The council wouldn’t do anything about the rats, he was saying, and they were the cause of it, knocking the street down before we moved out. My dad was getting him to talk, and nodding.
‘Cat and mouse game, ain’ it? To them. My mum’s old, don’t do that. They won’t spend no money, they’re knocking it down. Well, they broke open the sewer. No, you move out or you’ll get condemned – you won’t get rehoused, you’ll get evicted. We pay our rent. Don’t matter, non-compliant, you’ll get moved round all the dumps, at her age, door’s closing, think about it –’
My dad interrupted, ‘Who’s saying that?’
‘Council bloke – private like, tells me, that new estate up the Oval, get two more wanna move we can fit you in, what about a garden? Fuckin’ ridiculous!’ He looked round at my mum leaning up on the door handles, ‘Ooh, sorry!’
Busola laughed, she’d been sitting next to my dad watching. My dad shushed her and let him go on, and my mum listened because she wanted a garden.
‘Think we’re stupid? I work bins for the council, that’s not stupid to you got no one collecting ’em! I won’t take no rubbish where I live!’
‘What do you want to do?’ my dad said.
He had a piece of cloth bunched up in his fist and was shaking it like he wanted a fight, but then he slowed down. ‘Got my guv’nor get the lights back on, we don’t pick up bins in the dark. Had to get police on ’em! Oh, they say, like no one’s reported it. Take yer energy, dunnay?’
He rubbed the back of his neck, his hands were thick, with big fat fingers and broken fingernails. He frowned and there was a low line across his forehead where his short, curly brown hair came down and made him look even more bulky than he was. He was big, but his face looked soft and upset.
‘Like for like they’re saying, two-bed, fourth floor. How long we lived that ground floor? Dug our heels in, no estates, we won’t move for that. She can’t do stuck up a tower block. That new estate’s maisonettes, modern – wallpaper walls, ceiling on yer head, but inside loos and it’ll last her out.’
He shook his head and blew his cheeks out into dark red and purple knots that made him look like the wind had gone out his sails and he couldn’t blow any more. ‘We’re giving up,’ he said. ‘We have to, it’s not far. If you wanna go and have a look, she says,’ and he looked round at my mum again, ‘let yer know, it’s up to you. It’s on offer.’
They were asking us to come with them. My mum and dad looked at each other. I didn’t think his mum liked us, there weren’t any children, it was just them. But then I didn’t know why I thought that, we didn’t have anything to do with them.
‘My mum says she’ll miss this lot,’ and he looked at me, ‘watching ’em get up to no good.’
I suddenly felt everyone had been watching me. I didn’t know what I’d done but they’d seen me do it and my mum and dad were gonna find out. I felt like something was coming to get me.
‘She don’t want you kept out – she don’t want ’em closing the door on you cos yer coloured.’
Busola looked up at my dad, I couldn’t see what he was thinking, she leaned forward again to Mrs Ralf’s son with her plastic sandals dangling off her feet on the edge of the sofa.
‘How is your mother?’ my mum asked from the door.
He smiled for the first time and put the piece of cloth he had in his hand on his head and straightened it out – it was his cap. ‘Sorry she couldn’t get out more. But she’s kept that window open, says your lot are smashing. Sorry they’ve had to see all this trouble, been a great street to live in,’ and he stood up, bigger than I remembered.
My dad stood up to see him off and shook his hand. ‘Thank you, you have been a good neighbour to us,’ my dad said, and my mum stepped out the way of the door.
‘Oh, and she sent this over,’ he said, stopping to drop a gold chain out his pocket into Busola’s hand where she was sitting. ‘For you.’
She had her head bent over it. My mum and dad looked up and said thank you to him, but he just shrugged.
‘It’s been good,’ he said. ‘They wouldn’t understand, chucking rats at us. Wouldn’t want ’em to.’
My dad shrugged, ‘Don’t mind them. We are not stupid, they are corrupt. And they won’t see we can see them coming.’
They went downstairs and I looked at Busola’s chain with my mum to see what Ralf’s mum sent her, but there was a hand hanging off it with an eye in the middle of the palm.
‘What’s that?’ I said.
‘It’s to ward off the evil eye,’ my mum said.
‘What’s that?’ Busola said, looking like she couldn’t work out whether she liked it.
‘It’s for you to go on and have children,’ she said, ‘that’s what it is.’
Busola shook it off her hand on to the floor like she was having kittens.
My mum gave her a look and said, ‘Who’d be your guardian angel watching over you?’
And Busola gave her a scowl.
My dad came back upstairs and asked my mum to come to the kitchen with him.
‘Are you going to help me put away the shopping?’ and he laughed like she was dreaming. She looked at him and nodded, ‘A garden would be nice.’