The windows had blown out and smoke and flames were gushing up from the first floor. A big boy went past with a sweaty face and his eyes glazed over, grinning at the fire. Firemen burst out the front door in clouds of smoke with breathing masks on. They’d bashed the door down and gone in on top of it, but now the hoses were on and another fire engine was coming round by the main road. Policemen were moving people back from where the hoses and puddles of water were spreading on the road. An old lady stopped beside us on our side of the pavement, looking up with the light on her chin and her glasses – the flashing blue lights of the engine coming up the street which made a squawk as it switched its siren off and the blue lights of the ambulance as it turned in from the top of the street. No one was in, the house was empty. People had been lighting fires in the buildings because they were knocking them down anyway. But this was the closest it had come to us. It was Danny’s old house over the road. More firemen jumped down in yellow helmets with dark baggy clothes on, and one of them that had gone in was bent over coughing with his mask off and shaking his head at what they were asking him, so he got patted on the back and left to get his breath back. His hair was plastered on his forehead and he looked greasy and sweaty and dirty from his neck up. There were gusts of air coming along the road you could breathe, and then you got mouthfuls of smoke and bits of ash and soot that were blowing. That boy came back, but there were two of them, they were trying to get as near as they could. The other one was swaggering with his shoulders back like he knew all about being a fireman with his feet in the puddles and his hair blowing about in the fire. There was a gang of them going round the policemen and the fire engines and running in and out the crowd to get a good look at the fire. The crowd was growing and more policemen came in cars to keep everyone back – the fire was swirling up black and orange on to the street with hoses pouring water in through the windows.
‘Get back!’ the policeman shouted as he came up the pavement towards us. The old lady shook her head and walked away. Behind her a tramp was leaning back on the corrugated iron fence, smoking a cigarette and talking to himself. I watched him put the fag in his mouth like he was trying to whistle, raise his eyebrows, and pull on it till it glowed like that was the fire going on in his face and he was talking to it. It burnt his fingers and he let go, shaking his hand as he walked off and shrugging like it wasn’t him who dropped it, and he knew he’d get the blame. A woman went past holding a bloke’s arm, shivering and looking worried. She saw us and her face went blank. People were moving back because the fire was spreading and they thought something might explode after the top windows burst open and smoke started to come out from there. We were already out the way up the top of the street by the corner when we put the telly down, so we stayed where we were. Busola said it was too heavy to carry and she wanted to see what was going on. I couldn’t lift it without her so we were sitting on the television watching the fire when the policeman came up. Busola ignored him. There was a look in his eye that he wasn’t sure what we were doing, maybe we’d nicked the television out one of the houses, but the street was all empty except us and the students squatting the first house next to the factory on that side of the road. He couldn’t work it out so he looked away and shouted at the boys hanging round the ambulance and let us get on with it. But then he came back and said, ‘You watching it on television?’ We didn’t answer, another fire engine came round the corner by the main road so he shrugged and went off to help clear the way.
‘Look at them,’ Busola said. She was nodding her head at some of the men knocking everything down who’d come out the Lord Clyde where they drank. They were pointing up at the clouds of smoke coming out the top windows now the first floor was damping down. ‘Bet they did it.’
I didn’t have time to see what they were doing because then she said, ‘Don’t look, there’s Daddy!’
He was coming out the house with the big wheelbarrow he got for the move because he didn’t have a car no more. The barrow was loaded up with a blanket over the top to keep it in. My mum followed him out, putting down lots of bags of clothes and buttoning up her coat. They didn’t see us, she was looking up at the fire and my dad was locking up.
‘Don’t look,’ Busola said, ‘they’re going down that way.’
My mum stayed by the door as my dad went over to speak to two policemen keeping people back towards the main road. I could see he was telling them to change where they were blocking off so we could get in and out. He was taking his time and showing them the other house that was lived in, and getting them to nod and laugh and pat him on the back. He put his hand on a policeman’s shoulder, pointing up at the fire like it was their job to keep that away, and pointing at our house like they could come in there for a cup of tea once he got back with the wheelbarrow. But it was my mum who was getting all the looks from people, with the bags and the big wheelbarrow by the front door. She pulled her coat tight and her lips and waited.
I could tell she wasn’t feeling right. We’d been moving our furniture through the streets with two smaller wheelbarrows for Manus and Connor, but no one was looking until the fire broke out. Now we had to do it with everyone watching. She was looking at my dad and the fire, and ignoring the crowd. My dad had found somewhere to rent up by the Oval and said it would do for now, and he was going to borrow a van from work to move the beds and the cooker but we had to carry everything else ourselves. He was still saying it was daylight robbery and he wasn’t moving unless they paid him properly for our house. But the damp had started coming in the walls, and we couldn’t stop it spreading from the front room down the stairs into the hallway and the kitchen. My mum was coughing, and all the wallpaper on that side of the house was mouldy and running with water. We weren’t even saying we were moving, but we stopped bringing anyone home. I was there at the window when Connor came home from football, it was raining and they were dropping everyone off. Instead of stopping by the house the minibus passed us and stopped on the corner. Connor got out with all his mates from school pressing their faces up to the back of the bus so you could see their mouths open looking up at the empty ruins of the houses. He jumped down and didn’t look back. He didn’t come in out the rain, he turned and ran away down Tyers Street. I went and told Manus who said, ‘Serves him right, let him stand in a doorway and get wet.’
They weren’t getting on, there was trouble with the two of them having to carry things together on their shoulders until my dad got the wheelbarrows and they could have one each. Me and Busola were getting off with just carrying bags. I didn’t mind the walk, but Manus and Connor were going up Vauxhall Street round the back of the Oval because they didn’t want anyone to see them. The shortest way was down the main road where my dad was going. He made the cars and even the buses stop and go round him pushing the wheelbarrow on the road, with my mum and me and Busola walking behind on the pavement to make sure nothing fell off. But then Busola and me had to carry the colour telly in our arms because of bumps on the wheelbarrows going over the pavements. ‘Don’t drop it,’ Connor said, ‘I’m watching the Big Match.’ Busola said he should carry it if it belonged to him. ‘Don’t make me come after it,’ he said. Manus wrapped the lead round into a knot and said, ‘Take it steady, don’t trip.’
It was heavy and we were trying to work out how to carry it. But by then Manus and Connor had gone on with the wheelbarrows up the back way and the fire had started, so we put it down. Over the road was burning, and I was watching my mum pretend there was nothing going on as though the fire brigade wasn’t flooding the street and crowds of people weren’t coming. She put her hands in her coat and wrapped it round her, and made her shoulders stiff like she was gonna stand up by the door in spite of anyone looking. I hadn’t seen it before but she looked skinny in the big coat. The fire was making it hot, but her face looked pale and white like she was freezing. I wanted my dad to stop joking with the police and go and get her. I looked at him, nodding and smiling to them as he moved back to the wheelbarrow, making a big fuss about the fire being too close like he didn’t want them to see what we were doing. My mum couldn’t see us and didn’t look round because she was trying to go on like we weren’t moving, and so was he.
They turned to go, my dad lifting the wheelbarrow and my mum grabbing hold of the bags, when a chunk of stone fell down off the edge of the roof and broke into pieces on the ground, sending sparks up and exposing the roof on fire with flames reaching out to the sky. The crash of rubble sent the firemen running back while a roar went up from the crowd that was scared and excited. It felt like everyone was watching us being burned out and the building coming down, and they wanted more. Busola jumped up, I looked for my mum and my dad. They were walking away with their heads down, past the growing crowd, pushing the wheelbarrow and pulling the bags out on to the main road. ‘I’m not going,’ Busola said, and sat back on the telly. ‘Let them go first, we’ll go up this way after. I’m not running.’ She was making me stay and watch what happened. The hoses moved up to the top floor and it took the firemen leaning back to hold them. Water splashed off the walls making a spray that blew over towards us so I could feel it on my face, then the jets broke into the top windows and on to the roof. A cheer went up when two of the firemen slipped over, jerking the hose so a cloud of water fell over our way on to the crowd. People ducked and fell back, but the workmen out the pub stayed there with their chests out telling it come on and shouting when they got drenched. I turned my face away as the rain whipped across me, trying to sit my legs in front of the telly to keep it dry. It was like being slapped. I wiped my face off with my sleeve, feeling exposed and shaky, and saw a boy bouncing along behind his mum at the edge of the crowd on Tyers Street. He was holding her hand while she pushed a pram, and it looked like his feet were twisted out, or one leg was shorter than the other. He was hungry and happy all at once, with scraggy, orange hair on top of his head and red marks round his mouth with some teeth a bit crooked or missing. His mum was trudging along with her shoulders slumped like she was worn out. The boy was lurching after her, looking all around as if his head wasn’t connected to his body. He saw me looking and his head went on one side to see what I was doing. I was watching him, so I waved my wet arm. His face lit up, and his chin tipped up into a smile so his neck went back into his shoulders. Then he was off to the next thing he could see. I felt he was on my side, and I was on his.
Busola was trying to lift the wet bits of her dress off her legs, and just nodded when I said, ‘Let’s go.’ We picked up the television and turned down Tyers Street trying not to bump into people.
‘Hold it.’
‘You hold it!’
‘There.’
‘Don’t drop it!’
‘Stop.’
‘Put it down!’
It felt like they’d given us something we couldn’t carry and we weren’t supposed to get there. Busola walked backwards and then I did, but we could feel it slipping and had to put it down again. We got up as far as the Marmite factory on the main road and stopped in a covered doorway, and sat on top of the telly watching the cars go past.
‘What we gonna do?’
‘Run away,’ she said.
I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t run off and leave me, I wasn’t being nice to her. It was her fault we got wet, I was angry and upset she wouldn’t hold it properly and my arms were aching. But the strength was gone out my fingers so if she got up to run I couldn’t grab hold of her. I could see me waiting on my own in the doorway with the telly for Connor to come and look for it, all the cars going past and the light going, so I changed what I was feeling and said, ‘You carry that side and I carry this side and we both walk forward.’
‘It stinks!’ she said, wrinkling her nose up. The smell of Marmite from the factory was stale beer but inside the doorway there were pee marks up against the wall and dribbled in the dirt. It smelt like a toilet, and drink.
It was her fault we were there, so I said it wasn’t me smelt like a tramp. She looked like she was gonna do something horrible to me so I stood up. ‘You’re the tramp,’ she said. ‘You’ve got snot in your nose and your face is dirty, and you never clean your knees, they’re black. Not even with a scrubbing brush.’
I looked down and it was a bit dark under my knees, but I didn’t have to get my own back because her face was dirty too, she had white bits stuck in her hair from the fire and she didn’t know. ‘Look at you,’ I said. Her dress was drying, but there were dirty black marks across her front where we were lifting the television.
She looked down at her stomach and her face wobbled. ‘I don’t care,’ she said, ‘what anyone thinks.’ We stopped talking and picked up the telly with the screen in front and walked forward sideways up on to Harleyford Road.
People were streaming down both sides of the pavement from the Oval to the trains at Vauxhall, spilling on to the road so cars were slowing down to go past. Everyone was pouring out of a cricket match which meant we couldn’t get along the pavement because more and more of them were coming. They tried to step out the way, but then there wasn’t room, and some blokes stopped and looked into the screen of the telly, shaking their heads and saying, ‘Nah, can’t see it, mate,’ in Australian, ‘it’s all over,’ before they went round us. We moved off the pavement on to the road but we were still blocking the way and a car beeped us as it went past because we were blocking there, too. We crossed over in a gap in the traffic and tried walking in the road on that side where we could see the cars coming, but the people were taking over everywhere and we were going the wrong way. It was crowds of cricket people with white hats, some green underneath, carrying bags and hampers, the older ones wearing jackets and ties, and mostly men but lots of children. I didn’t know about cricket except they all wore white, and I didn’t know these people. They were smart and made me feel scruffy. I started sweating and it got into my hands and started making the telly slip, but we couldn’t put it down because we’d get trampled. I shifted the weight to get a grip and Busola looked panicked but took it until I got hold again and frowned at me to keep going. ‘Look at them, Daddy,’ a boy said, holding his dad’s hand, but the man just shook his head and marched them on. It was the sound of feet, thumping and clicking and marching on the pavement. ‘Leg stump.’ ‘Away through the mid-wicket.’ ‘A really bad short ball.’ Everyone walking against us. ‘Terribly good.’ ‘Only day three.’ I couldn’t understand it. But I could feel them. ‘Off how many overs?’ ‘Watch out!’ A teenager wasn’t looking and bumped into us. He stepped back and frowned, looking at everyone like what were we doing, and went round us. ‘Locals?’ It was a blur of people and we couldn’t fight our way through. We looked at each other, and pushed back on to the pavement, up against the gate by the big school, and put the television down. We didn’t sit in case they trod all over us. We stood leaning back on the gate and let the television get in the way to keep us safe. They kept flooding past and I couldn’t look at them any more, it hurt my eyes and pulled away at me. I clung on to the gate with my fingers. A faded sign painted on the wall of the cricket ground opposite said STOP THE KOREAN WAR NOW. I held on to Busola’s hand, and she let me. It was like standing on a ledge with white water rushing past. ‘We keep the ashes.’ We could only do it if they didn’t see us. ‘Is that a television?’ So we crouched down to let them go over our heads.
It was late when we got back home. My dad said if there was anything we wanted to do in the house, to do it now because tomorrow we weren’t coming back. I was on my own in Mr Ajani’s old room at the back on the ground floor, Connor stayed behind in the new place to watch the Big Match and was coming home later, Manus went up to his room at the top. Missus got in and stayed on the stairs, but she was a wild cat now. She sat up like she knew we were leaving and was waiting for us to go, the house wasn’t ours any more. The lights were on everywhere, with brown speckles from the flies on the bare bulbs, but there was an echo with most of the furniture gone that felt like the house was already going dark. I followed my mum into the big room on the ground floor where she was standing on a chair to clear out the last of the cupboards. Busola looked up from lifting the edge of the lino off the floorboards, ‘Look, it’s all yellow,’ she said, showing newspaper underneath with stories and pictures and adverts from the ’20s for soaps and bicycles. There were people living in the house before us and we didn’t know anything about them. The paper had turned yellow and I didn’t want to get too close to people being there before, so I told my mum I was going to have a bath. She steadied herself on the chair because I was pulling on her skirt and said, ‘Your father’s in there, have one tomorrow.’ I let go and didn’t say anything, but didn’t know what to do, so I just stood there. She glanced round at me, ‘What have you been up to?’ Busola let the lino flap back and went over to the other cupboard to see what was in it. My mum glanced at her and turned back to what she was doing. ‘Cat got your tongue?’ I couldn’t speak for a moment because I had to jump over everything to what I’d been doing since we got back. I’d sat in my room making up a list of all the things I should do before we left, but I couldn’t think of anything.
‘I’ve been making a list,’ I said.
‘What’s on your list?’ My mum dropped a pile of dusty curtains behind her on to the floor with a thump and a cloud of dust.
‘I made a list of all the things I could hear,’ I said, because that’s what I did saying goodbye to the house.
‘Oh? What?’
‘Aeroplanes, cars, trains echoing on the railway, the sound of trees and their leaves rustling – I made that up – people calling out on the street, Daddy coughing, the kettle boiling, accident emergency police sirens, lorries going hush and turning the corner, creaks on the stairs, wind outside shaking the windowpanes, doors banging, and birds.’
She looked down at me, wiping her face on her arm, and got down off the chair. She put her hands on my shoulders and then round the back of my neck, they were cold and clammy.
‘And whose fault is that if you’re bored?’ she said.
‘I’m not bored. I’m home. Are we really going?’
She nodded, ‘It’s time.’
‘Look, Mum,’ Busola said, ‘it’s that wig.’
We turned round and she was putting on the wig she’d found out the cupboard, black and straggly over her hair. My mum screamed and ran over and started slapping her. Slapping and slapping her head and her face and her shoulders. It was too much, there was a look on Busola’s face that it wasn’t happening, until she started doing it herself. Then my mum started stroking Busola’s face and laughing and stroking down her shoulders.
‘Get it off!’ Busola said. ‘Get it off!’
It was already off, my mum was stamping on it and kicking it across the floor, ‘That’s filthy!’
I thought it might still be alive and got ready to jump on the chair. But it wasn’t, it stayed where it was in the corner. I looked at Busola and saw black things crawling out her hair as she scratched at it with her fingers. My mum was helping her scratch and laughing her head off. That’s when my dad burst in from the bathroom with the towel round him and shampoo in his hair.
‘What’s going on?’
My mum pointed at the wig on the floor, trying to get the words out and the laughing under control, ‘Who – let that cat in? It’s riddled!’ He looked down at the wig crawling over in the corner by the torn lino, and looked at my mum and Busola, still shaking out her hair. He shook his head and turned to go back. ‘She’s next after you,’ my mum said, scratching her own hair.
‘Please, that’s enough,’ he said. And he looked at me, ‘What are you doing? Go to bed.’
I sat up in bed in my underpants and vest with the light off, listening to people coming and going out the backyard to the bathroom. My mum came down the stairs to get Busola out the bath, so I got up to do a cross on the window in case the door went on banging in the backyard when no one was out there – but doing it in my mind where no one could see, through the net curtain on to the glass, without moving my hand, In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of ... I saw my dad come out the toilet. My mum stepped into the backyard and took his hand as he went past.
‘It’s been good,’ she said.
He nodded, but didn’t really agree because his face creased up as he pulled away from her like he was about to sob. I moved back not to look.
Lying back in the bed I heard Busola complaining she didn’t want her hair cut, she wanted her own room when we moved. She didn’t want people looking at her. My mum was taking her upstairs after her bath and saying there was good and bad in everyone, so to take people as she finds them. The front door clicked and that was Connor tiptoeing up the stairs. Manus came down and spoke to Missus on my windowsill out in the backyard. He wasn’t allowed to take her. And she knew it. He came back out from brushing his teeth and called for her, and again softly, but she didn’t come. ‘See you,’ he said, and went in. It was the same feeling when we weren’t allowed to keep the toys. They opened the door of the factory at the bottom of the road, and it turned out it was full of toys. We didn’t know. We just saw lorries coming in and going out. But because it was closing down they opened the hatch in the big door and put boxes of toys out on the street, ripping open the cardboard to show what was inside. There were only a few houses left, so there weren’t many of us playing out and we went wild, pulling the toys out on the road, winding them up and setting them off. There were metal spinning tops and aeroplanes with rubber wheels in bright metallic colours. I got a toy robot with a metal body and lights flashing in its head that moved automatically by itself when you wound it. It was like the door opened and all the toys came out, boggle-eyed and crazy, as though the street was taken over by an invasion of robots and UFOs spinning to a halt, and everyone’s toys together made a whirring army of metal that flickered and stopped. ‘Not one toy in the house,’ my dad said. ‘They are not ours, we don’t want.’ It was the end of the world. No one was playing out any more. We were being knocked down, and the silence in the street was man-made. Not even the toy factory closing down could change that. ‘They are not coming with us,’ my dad said, it was charity, they were treating us like children. I took in my robot and hid it under the bed. At night, I wound it up under the covers and let it blink red and whirr at me in the dark. In the morning, when I woke up, it was gone. Someone took those toys, and the tramps folded up the cardboard to use as beds and sleep in the doorways, huddled up in their red skin and blackened clothes. ‘They live rough lives,’ my mum said. ‘And every one of them someone’s child.’
Connor had come back too late and my dad lost his temper, shouting at him for wanting to stay out all night. I stopped listening as my mum tried to settle it down. After a while I heard her come down and cry by the stairs, trying to keep it quiet. She went out to the bathroom, but I could hear her still sobbing. She didn’t come out for a long time, so I got up and sat out at the bottom of the stairs to wait for her. The lights were off and there wasn’t any noise in the house as though everyone had gone to be alone. I didn’t think I was cold, but I was shivering. There was a sound I thought was mice scrabbling down the stairs, and I froze. It wasn’t. It was behind the wallpaper, coming down the wall – the sound of plaster crumbling. The house was falling down, and it was only me who didn’t know how to move. My mum found me alone on the step, because she leaned over in the dark and whispered in my ear, ‘Just remember, this isn’t your life, this house. It’s mine. You’ve your whole life ahead of you,’ and walked on past me up the stairs.
I waited until everything was still again, and got up and opened the front door and stood looking out at the empty street in my bare feet. The fire was out, and there was new corrugated iron nailed up over the door and ground-floor window of the house over the road. The ripples of metal looked shiny against the blackened windows and burnt-out roof above. The street had been cleared of rubble but the road was still wet, so the light reflecting off it made it brighter than the black and orange sky. At the far end of the street that was already knocked down they’d left the telegraph pole, all its wires gone. It was a tree trunk again with no branches, in the place where that girl had fallen. I tried to remember her face, closing again at the window, but I couldn’t bring her back any more than I could bring back the sparks and embers of the fire blowing about in the air. It was gone, and the houses were gone, but I remembered everything that happened. I put the latch on and stepped out on to the pavement to say goodbye, to show everyone I wasn’t sad, I was ready to go.
‘You’ll catch your death,’ my mum said. I turned round – my mum and my dad were leaning up out the top window sharing a cigarette, and wondering at me. ‘Or what do you think?’