Once in a house on fire

by Ashworth, Andrea, 1969-

  against blue. I squeezed the rope between my thighs, loving the sweet heat that seeped inside my navy knickers.

  I hobbled home rich, cradling cramp in curious places, hoarding friction burns.

  Laurie and I began to feel resdess and lonely after school, even though we had Sarah and each other, and our mother had now stopped going out at night. A tiff had taken place after Auntie Jackie caught our mother on the phone to our stepfather, filling her ears with his fantastic pleas. Auntie Jackie had actually shouted: 'You must be a bloody masochist! That bugger's got you on a string, hasn't he? Like a flaming yo-yo.' She flicked her wrist as if she was playing with one: 'Up and down, you're always going. Up and bloody down!'

  Our ears tingled whenever the phone rang.

  Upstairs! Auntie Jackie jerked her thumb at the ceiling, ushering Laurie and me out of earshot while our mother slid things into the receiver in a low, trembly voice. We crept back down as soon as we heard the jangle of the phone being hung up, and watched our mother whoosh smoke through her nose, like a horse. She stubbed her cigarette, grinding it against the glass of the ashtray long after it had stopped glowing.

  We weren't allowed to bring schoolfriends home, our mother told us, because it wasn't our own house. I couldn't imagine inviting anyone like Stacey or Nardia or Winston back to Auntie Jackie's anyway. They would be shocked at how dusty and messy everything was, and it would be a catastrophe if any of them got bitten by a flea off the cats. I turned dizzy at the thought of the whole school knowing what my life was like. More than that, I didn't want anyone to see my mother now

  that she was looking so exhausted again, carrying all her worries on her face.

  Drained by phone calls, our mother grew thinner and thinner, until the bones pressed against the skin on her face and jutted across her chest. Her shoulders sagged, her feet dragged. She stopped picking up the phone. She stopped dressing us for school. She stopped getting out of bed.

  One Monday morning, when my uniform still lay crumpled and unwashed in the basket, I fished it out and set up the iron, trying not to touch the wires splaying out of its frayed cord. The plug had fallen off, so you had to stick the copper strands straight into the socket, then shove in the plug of the kettle to make the connection, praying there would be no sparks. Unfolding the ironing board slowly, to keep its hinges ft-om squealing, I steamed over my shirt, tie and skirt. My hands chased to get rid of the creases that would make me look like one of the poor kids at school, before Auntie Jackie could awaken and kick up a rumpus over such a risky thing.

  'What yer doing?' She discovered me dribbling tap water into the iron's spluttering nose. 'Does yer mam know what you're up to?'

  'It's a surprise.'

  Auntie Jackie gave herself a look behind her glasses, then shrugged and left: me to it.

  I took to getting up before light, to iron all our school things in the secret, silent bit of the morning. When Laurie and Sarah bounded upstairs to show off their immaculate seams and cuffs in front of our mother, she twisted in her pillows.

  'You mustn't be doing that,' she moaned. 'You're only eleven. It's dangerous, Andy, love.'

  'But I'm dead careful.' I spoke out of rigid collars, clammy-necked at the threat of my triumph being taken away from the start of every day. 'It's easy. Mum, and I don't mind doing it.'

  'I should be doing it,' she said. 'I'm your modier.' But she wasn't doing it.

  After school, I spent hours with Laurie and Sarah in the cold, empty front room whose lightbulb had finally been fixed by Uncle Duncan. I would rush to get my homework out of the way, then the three of us would sit in a circle on the mangy carpet, playing with Lego or drawing on the yellow paper rolls that Uncle Bill, who was a bus conductor, had smuggled out of his ticket machine for us. It was frustrating, because the ticket rolls were so narrow and the bright yellow paper spoiled the most sophisticated effects. But it didn't feel like doodling: I had started art lessons at school, and I knew what you could make a iB pencil do, if your fingers were in tune with your brain. A crumpled Coke can, an old boot, a bowl of apples and oranges - I had made them all stick out, as if you could pick them up off the page, in my sketch book in class.

  I plunged into the storybooks my sisters brought home from school, reading them aloud and putting on voices, never feeling embarrassed. Not like I did in class, where I squirmed when it was my turn to read out a poem or a passage from the English textbook - you could be sure everyone would mimic you afrerwards if you sounded too la-de-dah, or if you seemed to enjoy rolling the posh, airy words around in your mouth. I envied Laurie and Sarah for being at primary school: you might get laughed at or bullied a bit, but it didn't seem to matter so much - nothing could singe your face with embarrassment or make you break out in a wet panic under your arms. Half of me was dying to grow up, but the other half kept looking backwards at my litde sisters. It seemed so far away, being nine, like Laurie, who could get lost in the land of Narnia, or five, like Sarah, who was absorbed by James and the

  Giant Peach. Every night, as soon as I got in from school, I would put my pride away, forgetting I was nearly twelve, to lie on my tummy with my sisters and make up stories. I knew it was babyish, but sometimes I couldn't resist. It was so nice not to think. •

  The thing that had forced our mother to lie down all the time in Canada had followed us over the water and now had her in its grasp again. Massive headaches froze her face. Sometimes she couldn't speak, or even breathe properly. Often she would lie terribly still on her camp bed, the covers pulled up over her head, like a corpse. I wondered if other kids' mothers suffered from the same thing. Something told me they didn't, though I never dared to mention it at school. I had a secret fear that we were not normal. Mostly I made myself forget about it; if ever I stopped to dwell, I would feel it seething under my skin, frighteningly hot, as if it might burn holes.

  Our mother's fingers now drooped like fish washed up on the bedspread. She let me run my fingertips along the veins that pulsed just under the skin, then lightly over the knuckles, from the bony wrist to the tips of her nails. Occasionally, scuffing in from school, Laurie, Sarah and I would find her playing Solitaire with a pack of cards Auntie Jackie had bought her. Already the cards were fiirred along the edges. Wrapped in her quilted pink housecoat, she gazed through dirty hair at spades and hearts and diamonds and clubs, while her cigarette burned between her fingers until the ash dropped off by itself

  At tea-time she would haul back up the stairs, staring at her slippers after each step, as if to check that her feet were still there. Instead of sitting at the kitchen table 'like litde ladies', the way our mother preferred, my sisters and I were allowed to balance our plates on our knees. I felt guilty about trading in on her weariness, which kept her from objecting when we

  broke the rules, but was as tickled as Laurie and Sarah by the thrill of taking in telly with our chips and cheese-and-onion pies. After tea, my mother would let me sit with her in the attic to read out poems I'd written in the loos during the dinner break at school. I longed for her to look up from the cards, splayed out over the bedspread, wishmg she would smile or say something nice. Usually, she leant back and shut her eyes, not stirring, not even noticing when the poetry had run out. Sometimes, she opened her eyes and let the cards jiggle and slide off her knees while she fiddled to strike a match. She would watch it burn down to her thumb, withering into a spindly, black question mark that she laid in her ashtray with all the others.

  One night, when I bounded up after tea clutching my dinnertime rhymes, I heard a panicky plastic rattling on the other side of the door. My mother was leaning out of bed, shuddering, trying to shove a brown bottle into the bedside drawer - her sleeping pills. On the bedside table, a glass of water was shivering and spilling with the jerks. My mother grabbed me by the wrists.

  'I was going to, Andy.' Her eyes sliced into mine. 'And I would have, if it wasn't for you.'

  'Mum.' I slid my arms around her. 'Mum,' holding on to her hollow trunk. H
er back was ridged along the ribs, and her body light, so that it was like hugging a wicker basket.

  My mother had dried up in bed, too sick and tired to cry. But now I could feel her welling up inside. It would be like drinking something sweet, to see her eyes wake up and weep.

  At last she began to answer the phone and see visitors. Auntie Pauline, her younger sister, dropped by with a bunch of grapes.

  She came in a new saloon car that she seemed sorry to have to step out of at Auntie Jackie's dingy door. Our mother's shoulders failed to perk up. Auntie Pauline remembered a flea thingy that she had to pick up from the vet. She was gone before we could blink, leaving black grapes behind her that oozed bitter seeds across our tongues. When our favourite Auntie Livia arrived, we had to cling and cling to her jumper, getting the affection off our chests, before giving her up to our mother. My sisters and I knelt on the floor, lurking about her soft suede shoes, while she sat on the settee and laid her hand on our mother's knee to make it safe for her to cry.

  Auntie Ethel, Great Auntie Agnes, even Nana Hawkins rolled up. Rallying round, they called it. They were all fat, the women on our stepfather's side of the family, and they sank into the settee while the foam bulged to escape along the splitting seams. Their powdered faces scowled when the tea ran out, until I brought them a fresh pot on a battered tin tray, balancing chocolate bourbons and pink wafers for dipping. I had to dash across the junction to the Spar shop with Laurie to squander our mother's hard-earned money on yet more fancy biscuits. Laurie and I christened them Elephauntie This, Elephauntie That, when we were ordered out of the warm living-room while Sarah was allowed to stay and play.

  'We want a private word with your mam,' they mumbled through crumbs. 'Off you two go out for a bit, there's good kids.'

  We left our mother to them, bony and frail in her cardigan, fingers quivering for a cigarette.

  Their flowery bottoms finally squeezed into Auntie Ethel's car, which grumbled down the road in the dark. Our mother lit up precious fags: first one and then another and a third before she could speak.

  'He wants us back, you know.'

  'Who?' I stopped dead in the hunt for pink papery wafers and chocoiatey oblong biscuits. 'Dad?'

  'Your Auntie Agnes says he never stops talking about us.'

  Not about me, I thought.

  I said, 'Do you miss him?'

  My mother pursed her lips and blew out, slowly. The last bit of smoke bubbled in a ring and burst. I wanted to laugh, to break the thoughts behind her slinky blue cloud.

  'I don't know what I feel any more,' she murmured. 'I'm too tired to know what I feel.

  'I don't even know if I love him,' she spoke into the ashtray on her lap.

  How can you? I swallowed.

  'Anyhow,' she looked up from her dimps and shrivelled matches, 'I've said we'll go up on Saturday and do something nice with him and your grandad and Nana Hawkins.'

  'Saturday.' I forced my face into the one my mother wanted, while Laurie and Sarah buzzed about her knees, wondering which cardigans they could wear and whether we would ride on the top deck of a bus or in the back of our stepfather's van.

  I lingered around my mother, too, trying to pluck up the courage to open my mouth. I wanted to ask her: Why have you agreed to see him, after what happened last time, in the park? As if she could sense questions in the air, she got out her emery board and curled up alone on the settee. I watched her, rasping away, her face lost in a veil of dust, her nails coming out in perfect curves.

  Laurie, Sarah and I were dumped in the launderette in Stockport where Nana Hawkins worked, while our mother went off with our stepfather to wander around the Saturday market. We stood against the wall, watching our stony-faced

  Nana feeding men's trousers into the jaws of a huge steam press. Pair after pair: skinny and fat, black, brown and blue. She yanked the lever to let out screams of scalding steam, followed by deep moans as she lifted the lid. Our throats itched as we breathed in hot air laced with chemicals and squinted towards the door. Our mother and stepfather had promised to rush back as soon as they had finished shopping, to scoop us out of the hot clouds.

  Seven o'clock saw us stuck on Nana Hawkins's settee, sulking behind Tupperware bowls filled with the same mush she used to make us swallow when we were smaller. Our mother had turned up with our stepfather as the lights were being switched off at the launderette. A necklace of gold leaves had sprouted across her chest. Now we watched the leaves twinkling while our stepfather unfolded his foolproof plans, to become a landlord in a pub in a posh district where we could all go and live together.

  'In't it great?' He reaped smiles off^ the settee, before tearing our mother out into the dark.

  'Why aren't Mummy and Daddy having any?' Sarah's face creased over her gravy and mash, threatening to screw up into one of her awesome, ear-splitting tantrums.

  Nana Hawkins decided it was time for Wagon Wheels. Flat planets of chocolate and marshmallowy biscuit. 'Mummy and Daddy are having something of their own.' She gave us a smile so rare it seemed to be hurting her face.

  After a squeaky night, smelling the rubber mattress cover under the sheets, Laurie, Sarah and I clambered out of the bed set up for Grandad Hawkins when his willy sponges were letting him down. As soon as we got downstairs, Sarah was grabbed on to Nana's lap, while Laurie and I were sent into

  the back garden with a packet of crisps for breakfast. It was cold outside, but when we came back into the kitchen to ask why birds landed on next-door's bird table, and not on theirs, she shooed Laurie and me out again - 'Shuddup and eat your Quavers! You can see I'm having a quiet word with your mam.

  Seeing us off with sour kisses, Nana Hawkins handed us triangles of Dairylea, intended to keep us quiet in the back of our stepfather's van, though none of us liked the squidgy cheese.

  'Now, now.' She tucked a five-pound note into my mother's clenched fist. 'I can't let you go empty-handed. Get yourself summat nice and don't be foolish.'

  We climbed through the back hatch of the van and squatted among the tools, anxious to save our Sunday dresses from oil stains. Laurie and Sarah gave me nervous looks that let me know my face must be on the slide, shift:ing into its old shade of carsick green. I thought I had outgrown my carsickness, but something was making me feel squiffy and sour inside. I took a deep breath, and tried not to think about my mother and stepfather getting back together.

  'Stick yer 'ead out, why don't you?' My stepfather made me press my face close to his, to breathe in buckets of thundery air as we sped down the motorway to Auntie Jackie's.

  We pulled up in the dark at the top of Denton Road. Our stepfather snuffed his headlights.

  'Don't go back in, Lol.' His arms fastened around our mother, like a human seatbelt. 'You know we can make a go of it.'

  Laurie, Sarah and I crouched among the tools, watching rain spit patterns across the window-screen behind their silhouettes.

  'You belong with me.' Our stepfather fingered the gold leaves, then buried his face in our mother's hair to weep. 'I'm beggin' yer, Lol.'

  Rain pummelled the roof of the van.

  'I'll think about it,' our mother murmured. 'It's just too soon right now.'

  He lifted his leaking face: 'It's that bitch, in't it? Poisoning you against me.'

  'Jackie's been dead good to us.' Our mother buttoned her coat with fidgety fingers. 'She's helped us no end.'

  'She's an interfering bitch is what she is.' He jerked the ignition and the van growled back to life. Our mother laid her hand on the steering wheel before he could do anything silly.

  'I'll phone you to arrange something,' she whispered. 'From a phone box.'

  We climbed out, aching, into the rain. The van melted into the lights at the junction, our mother unlocked the leafy chain from her neck and slipped it into her pocket. She shepherded us under her brolly, across the road to the Off-Licence. Nana Hawkins's fiver was unfurled to buy a twenty-pack of Silk Cut, intended to mellow Auntie Jackie, who would be rigid wi
th resentment after a weekend of friggin' worry.

  The Top Forty was long since over on the radio; our mother had retired to the attic for a smoke on her own in the dark, when Auntie Jackie's oil-painted kittens began to shudder in their fake-wood frames on the living-room wall. I raised my eyebrows at Laurie, who kept her eyes glued to the screen while I teased down the volume, bit by bit.

  'I stood by you, Lorraine!' Doors slammed. Ructions shook

  the hall. 'After all that's happened, you let that bastard go and badmouth me!'

  'You're bloody well out on your ear now, you are,' Uncle Duncan chimed in.

  I jerked the volume back up, to drown out shouting and swearing and crying. Our mother rushed itito the back room with a blotchy face: 'Time to pack.'

  We awoke among our stuffed bags and suitcase, to find a gap in the mattress where Laurie had been tossing and turning all night.

  'Where on earth .. . ?'

  It was Laurie who had squealed to Auntie Jackie, and now she had disappeared.

  My mother dialled everyone she could think of, lighting a new Silk Cut after each call. She crowded the ashtray with dimps, tipping them in black clouds into the bin. Auntie Jackie stood by, chain-smoking to keep her company.

  At last, the umpteenth call soothed the frown from my mother's face and she was able to breathe without the aid of a cigarette.

  'Thank ber-luddy Christ!' She hung up the phone and slumped on to the settee with Auntie Jackie.

  'You's don't have to go, you know,' Auntie Jackie said quiedy.

  I couldn't imagine life without the stereo blasting 'Bohemian Rhapsody' to make the walls shake. Our nerves screwed up into knots every time the man wailed for his Mamma, before untangling in a trickle of stroking words and sighs about how nothing really matters.

  My mother shook her head. 'No, love.' She rubbed her face as if she were having a wash. 'It's time I took things in hand.'