Once in a house on fire

by Ashworth, Andrea, 1969-

  I pulled yesterday's Sun from down the arm of the settee, where Uncle Duncan always stuffed it afrer filleting the sports pages.

  'Don't be reading that stuff!' My mother snatched it out of my hands and into the bin. 'It's all filth and lies, Andy, love.'

  Iwas thirsty for filth and lies. Girl, 10, Sees Parents Killed. Fire Destroys Family of Five. Yorkshire Ripper Strikes Again. My eyes bumped against hammers and knives, sex attacks and stabbings. Fear fingered the back of my neck: there were more details in the pages than you got on the telly. You couldn't avoid finding out that a man was going around killing young ladies - nice ones, not just the kind Auntie Jackie called floozies - doing shuddering things to their dead bodies, cutting bits of their insides out. The Yorkshire Ripper wasn't buried in one of Auntie Jackie's books. It wasn't a story, and it wasn't history - it was right now, down our streets after dark.

  How to build a bridge between Enid Blyton and Auntie Jackie's grisly paperbacks? Circling the entrance to Chorlton library, I had visions of being carted home in the back of a police van if I dared to step inside. Libraries were for grownups and posh people, not for kids who should be at school. I went back to Auntie Jackie's and threw myself into bashed My Guy annuals, dumped on us by her younger sister. My soul sank, discovering that the most recent issue was from Christmas 1978. I decided that faces were different fi-om fashions, and didn't fall out of date. Skin type, shape and shade: memorizing all the laws, I was ready to make the most of my assets, the moment I laid hands on some make-up of my own.

  In a pouch patterned with washed-out flamingos, my mother treasured a pair of tweezers and a blunt kohl pencil, squelchy mascara and a wine-coloured lipstick, whose gold lid I slid off whenever she was out. I swivelled it up and down, up and down, snuffling its waxy scent, without putting it to my

  mouth. My mother would know in a flash if the oily wine tip had touched any other lips.

  At night, when the front room was in blackness, Laurie and I were able to stand at the window and spy on the street without being seen. Girls lurked with older lads around the phone box over the road, circling a cigarette that flared out of each face before being passed along.

  'Right common,' our mother declared when she spotted them huddling in the rain. Bare white legs, the girls had, sticking out of minuscule skirts, stitches straining where they had sewn them tight against their thighs. Patent heels bit their ankles, making them walk with a wince.

  'Ridiculous!' Our mother shook her head. 'They must be flaming freezing.'

  If the girls felt the cold, their faces never let on. Chatting to lads, they folded their arms to bulk up busts under their jackets, seeping smiles and sticking one foot out to sway on the stiletto. I studied them through the smeared glass, noting the heels I would wear, the black eyeliner and lip gloss, the most luscious variety available, the minute I turned twelve.

  A brown envelope whooshed through the letterbox and skidded on to the linoleum in the hall. Although Andrea Hawkins was of no fixed abode, the local authority was in the process of assigning her to a Secondary Comprehensive. The situation would soon be rectified; we would be notified without delay.

  A second letter finally followed the first. Andrea Hawkins's place, the authorities were pleased to confirm, was now secured at Whitbrook High. Out of the same Manchester City Council envelope fluttered three green coupons.

  'For your new school rig-out.' My mother scrutinized the small print. 'We'll have to go over to Moss Side Precinct and see if one of them Indian shops'll be dafi: enough to take the flamin' things.'

  Wetting under the arms, I let the lady in the sari twist me into a pale blue shirt that we could all see was too small.

  'It does not work.' She tugged at the sleeves as if to make them longer, before rubbing my wrists to tuck them under the cuffs. Her grimace deepened when my arms refused to shrink. 'It does not work with your arms.'

  'You've always been lanky.' My mother jabbed an accusing look at me.

  'I'm eleven.' I pointed at the tag inside the collar, flashing 9-to-io years. 'I need something for eleven to twelve years.'

  ii6

  My mother frowned along the racks, searching for my size, eyes pinned on the price. My throat closed over tears that tasted like pennies when she came back clutching three shirts, all with propellor collars.

  'Are they the only ones. Mum?' I sweated'

  'Yes, madam, they're the only ones.' My mother gritted her teeth, refusing to acknowledge the crazy collars. 'The rest are nearly another quid each.'

  I had to smile at the lady in the sari, to keep her sweet so that she wouldn't kick up a stink at the sight of green coupons instead of cash. Stepping in and out of grey nylon skirts in front of a warped mirror, I watched myself being zipped into an A-line monstrosity, nodding through misty eyes to say that it would do. I fumbled back into my clumsy pink flares, feeling friendlier towards them after the shock of grey nylon. My only hope lay in the council coupons. If they created a crisis at the till, we would have to put everything back and try again in the shop across the way, where the clothes were more expensive, but also more up-to-date. My mother unfolded the vouchers and explained how they would work. The Indian lady gave them a long look, gave our faces a long look, and decided to trust them.

  'It will work.' She smiled at my mother's smile. 'It will work lovely super, never you worry.'

  'Give us a twirl!' Auntie Jackie lined up with Laurie and Sarah to get her eyes on the whole shebang.

  Sky-blue shirt, collars tamed under a royal-blue jumper, V-neck framing a maroon tie. A grey tent brushing my knees, which gleamed mahogany after a summer on the street, above blinding white socks scooting down skinny calves to my shoes, brand new from the Happy Feet sale rack. Although, at size 5, these looked enormous, they stuck out as my saving grace:

  maroon leather court shoes, peppered with dapper holes, like proper, grown-up brogues. Goodbye to my soggy blue sandals.

  My mother perched me on a chair over the News of the World and took the kitchen scissors to my fringe.

  'You look a treat, Andy, love.' She stood back, hands on hips, to admire her handiwork.

  'Mmm.' Auntie Jackie agreed over a mug of warm lager. 'Dun't she just?'

  They swoing me down off the chair and sent me upstairs to our mattress, my head crowned in noisy kisses. I shifted into a hot, uneasy sleep. The uniform hung on the back of the door like a headless ghost, murmuring Monday morning, Monday morning.

  A tall black girl, her skull snaking magnificent plaits, was the one to keep an eye on. A pale lad had charged across the schoolyard to put me in the know. 'Right,' I thanked him, and shuffled along the railings. Hands flaking with eczema, his voice whinged out of a wiry neck. You could spot them a mile off, the ones that attracted the bullies. A skinny Indian girl stared out of deep swimming eyes, while white silk trousers billowed like pyjama bottoms beneath her uniform. Her grey skirt was stained with grease and creased - obviously secondhand. For someone like that, things could only get worse. You might sneak a hello through your eyes, but it was best to steer well clear. Especially if your collars flew out too far from fashion.

  ChRomATogRAph, the science teacher chalked across the board in a mixture of capital and little letters that I copied, like everyone else, along the top line of my blank first page. Squeezing my pipette, I teased a trembling globe of ink on to

  the filter paper circle, unfiarling a galaxy of shades that made my insides gasp. Fuzzy halos of purple, green and yellow bloomed out of the plink of black ink. My eyes widened, but quickly narrowed when they met mean looks on the loose across the lab. Behind the teacher's back, some of the brittle-boned kids sniffed fumes from brown bottles, giving their gazes a thicker glaze.

  Bells clanged. Faces crowded along corridors. Black, brown, mustardy, sock-white and milky pink. Only the eyes stood out, during the first week, in two darting sorts: sly ones slit and on the lookout for a touch of softiness to rough up; round ones, blinking wide, nowhere to hide. Break times
were exhausting: trying to look tough but not terrifying, straining to check the smiles that would provoke slap attacks by lads and lanky girls who stalked down the corridors, scowling at the world. It was like being dropped into one of the wildlife programmes that used to hold my stepfather spellbound in his armchair: fierce cats lurking behind bushes, muscles poised to pounce on knock-kneed deer.

  I had to turn my shakiness inside-out, letting it tremble under my skin. If I had started school on time, I could have panicked with everyone else; now there was nowhere for nerves to blend in. All the other first-year kids, who must have been as wobbly as me a fortnight ago, had been stapled into their fates. Coming from local primary schools, everyone could boast someone who belonged to them, whether they liked them or not. Coming from Canada, carrying traces of a watery accent, I had nothing but curiosity on my side.

  'Go on, say summat!' Porridgey-faced kids sidled up at an angle, to avoid catching the disease that made you stick out like a sore thumb.

  'Don't be soft:!' I roughed up my 'o's, yanked my 'a's flat.

  and stretched my 'i's as wide as they would go. Ripping the bottom out of my 'u's, I uttered everything from my guts. 'I'm from flippin' Rusholme, I am.'

  Boys walloped my back, challenging me to arm-wresdes in the dining hall.

  'Been eating your spinach!' They were as surprised as I was, when my arms put up a Popeye fight. Olive Oyl was my first nickname, on account of my wiry, olive-skinned arms and legs. Occasionally, I was picked out for teasing, with no nasty intentions, as a kind of mascot for the biggest black kids, whom the rest idolized or feared. Their glamour rubbed off on my skin, replacing the garish 'new girl' gleam. I foresaw a time when I would coast across the schoolyard, clear of catcalls and whisdes, beautifiilly invisible.

  I carried my exercise books in a man-sized camouflage bag, picked up for 99p from the Army Surplus store, and had covered them to protect against wear and tear, according to the school rules.

  'You must be taking the mick,' Mr Butcher, the maths teacher, sneered. He held up my book by the tips of his fingers. 'This is a classroom, not a fan club.'

  Since my mother refiised to fork out for brown paper from the Post Office, I had backed my books with pictures ripped out of our old My Guy annuals. Lx)ng-haired men writhed in skin-tight trousers, streaks of red lightning around their eyes. In order to explain how they got there, I would have to confess that baked beans and cigarettes came before brown paper, in my mother's bloody book. The backs of my knees throbbed above the tight elastic of my socks.

  'I thought it would be all right, Sir.' I decided to keep my mother and the question of money to myself.

  He squinted over his beard. Truth or trouble? I saw him hovering, impatient to tip me into one of his boxes and slam down the lid. ^•

  'You'd better be rid of those louts by Monday morning.' He turned to chalk up the day's problems on the blackboard. 'That's just audacious, that is.'

  Is this algebra? It was impossible to unlock my lips, to confirm that the precious stuff was finally before me. Audacious, the covers churned. Audacious. I was sure it was something to do with being common or rude.

  'You don't go messing with the Butcher man!'

  That break-time I was celebrated by good-looking but lazy black boys from the back row, their ties dangling outside their jumpers in low-slung knots like medallions, clamouring as if I'd stepped out of a boxing ring. I shivered, daring to meet their eyes for the first time. Oblivious to the charms of algebra, they were wise to Butcher's talent for wiping out insolence by hurling the blackboard cleaner at smart-arse skulls, suppressing the curses which coloured the air in other classes. I sat in the third row back, with kids like Winston and Vanessa and Nardia, who weren't too cool to mix with whites. Although white kids were on a lower rung of the ladder, they might scrape a smidgen of influence if they were hard or fiinny or good-looking. Or just plain lucky, like me.

  'Sister underneath, ain't it?' I was knighted nearly-black, on account of my dark skin and big eyes, along with my ability to hiss 'Ras it!' without sounding too big for my boots. In front of our matey row, silent Pakistani girls huddled with bow-legged boys under the teacher's nose, where they could avoid

  being bullied until the bell. Finally, right at the front, Chinese boys scribbled with their heads down, noses glued to their pens, alongside white girls who smelled of soap powder and fiddled with plaits arranged by their mums. Whenever they stuck up their hands, I sensed arrows of scorn aimed at their heads from the depths of the sulky back rows.

  As soon as I got home, I fished behind the settee for the battered dictionary that my mother had carted around with her for years, since Gran had given it to her one Christmas. 'All the words in the world,' my mother had laughed when she opened it: 'No wonder it's so bloomin' heavy!'

  I hurried to 'A' for audacious. Octopuses glooped in the margins, tentacles dancing under blobby brains where I had felt-tipped them in during wet days alone, imagining myself at the bottom of the sea, surrounded by words fascinating as seashells. My mother had landed a slap on my forehead after Uncle Duncan had been wrestling with a crossword and 7 across brought the creatures to light.

  My fingernail slid along the octopus arms: aubergine, aubrieta, auburn, au courant, auction, auctioneer.

  auda'cious (-sh«^) a. daring, bold; impudent.

  My chest drummed on the verge of pride, at the heroic-sounding words. I flicked to T: impuissant, impugn, impudicity.. .

  i'mpud/ent a. shamelessly presumptuous; unblushing; insolently disrespectfiil.

  I wondered why the definitions had not been designed better, to help you work out whether a word was a compliment or an insult.

  Friday night was still Friday night, in spite of a whole week at secondary school: Tia Maria for Auntie Jackie and our mother, toffees and telly for us kids. Uncle Duncan out chucking darts. Starsky and Hutch burst out of their car as usual, jerking their heads this way and that. On Saturday, when Auntie Jackie took us to Chorlton Precinct and we lugged back potatoes and tins, my chest stuck out proud, while my maroon shoes sailed down the street. But Sunday night brought on a bout of panic that nibbled away in my bones. I had spread my naked school books across the carpet and was preparing to cover them in perfume adverts that my mother had unstapled from her women's magazines. She got out the ironing board and turned up the radio so she could croon to the Top 40 while she was steaming out wrinkles.

  'Why the face like a wet dishcloth?' she asked, when the number one had finally come and gone. 'So long as they're covered in something, what's it matter?'

  My hands shook over the Sellotape, getting the strips in a twist, sticking my fingers together.

  'I can't.' I looked at the pictures and saw my fate. I could not walk into school with my books wrapped in the pages of Woman's World.

  'Don't be giving me grief, Andy, love.' My mother groaned. 'Not while I'm ironing, eh?'

  But after the worst tears of the week, my mother gave in. Scrumpling the offending pages, she picked up the phone to Auntie Pauline.

  'Listen, love.' She explained my dilemma as if it were a life-threatening disease: 'Our Andy's been told to back her exercise books in summat sturdy, like. You haven't got any of that wallpaper lying around from when you were doing up your front room, have you?'

  I thought of the dark blue leaves tumbling across Auntie Pauline's walls, and crossed my fingers in both fists.

  'Could your Bill drop it off on his way to the Depot?'

  My mother clicked down the phone and picked up the iron, which steamed out a snort. 'Satisfied?'

  'Thanks, Mum.' I blinked up at her through red eyes, fi"om the wreckage of Sellotape and shredded magazines.

  'Come 'ere, mardy pants.' She rested the iron on its haunches, fi-eeing both arms. Locked in a delicious circle, I leaned, dizzy, into the warmth of her chest.

  'What yer like, you?' My mother kissed the top of my head; the dread of Monday dissolved.

  'Seconds?' Stacey, the girl who was dinn
er monitor on our table, balanced an enormous spoonftil of slop over my plate.

  Cabbage and curry, wafting pongs out of silver tins, was dinner on Mondays.

  'Go on, then.' I let her slither lumpy yellow stuff over the remains of my mashed potatoes. Saying yes to seconds was not a matter of choice. Stacey was tall and tough and just like a boy, but for her long blonde ponytail, which nobody, but nobody, ever dreamt of giving a yank. Lads were afraid of her; steely-faced girls in the upper years left her well alone. If she offered an extra dollop of curry, you took it. It meant she wanted you on her side, and that she would be on yours.

  Stacey was feeding me up so that I would help her with her English homework behind the coats in the cloakroom. Mrs Chappell scribbled subjects on scraps of paper which she shook in a battered top hat on her desk, asking one of us to pluck out a slip. Before next class, I had to perform magic tricks for two, pulling poems like silk hankies out of nowhere, for Stacey as well as for me. I made up rhymes about wrinkly roads running through elephants' skin, and described the schoompf of steam engines down tunnels, although I had seen no elephants outside the telly and had never set foot on a train.

  Aeroplanes were like flying toothpaste tubes, I was able to boast in front of the class, since no one else had ever left England (unless you counted Wales).

  While poetry felt like a game, and spelling was a piece of cake, grammar exercises were torture to. me. Dismantling sentence after sentence, I ftmibled with verbs, objects and nouns as if they were Lego bricks. I clicked them into what felt like the right order, without knowing what was really what. It was nailbiting, waiting for the results, knowing Stacey would be miffed if I gave her any clunking mistakes.

  'Done it again!' She broke into a grin, elbowing pride when the grammar exercises came back, as if the nineteen out of twenty was really her own work. 'Blue merit badge before you know it!' Only Stacey could wear a merit badge without it doing her any damage. For the rest of us, it meant a thwack that sent the fastener spiking through your jumper and shirt into your chestbone. A gang of girls with jutting chins made it their business to inflict bruises on brainboxes.