26a Page 6

  The real differences, the ones that mattered most, were inside, under clothes and in the soul. There was light and there was shade.

  If they wore different colors it meant that they could be whole people inside themselves, because people could see that Georgia was Georgia, in turquoise, and Bessi was Bessi, in pink. There were pink thoughts and turquoise thoughts, with white stripes. This meant so much more than a red stitch inside the collar, which was how Ida and the teachers used to differentiate their old green Puffa jackets when they were six, before they’d discovered the ability of color to make a half into a one. A half of green into a whole land of pink. A half a question (for sometimes even their parents couldn’t tell one from the other) into a whole turquoise question.

  “Who’s going to look after the roses while we’re away?” Georgia asked in the car on the way to Brent Cross for more shampoo and candles for when the electricity went off. “The roses need water, and what if it doesn’t rain?”

  The journey was only three weeks away and the questions came all the time now, unexpectedly, to anyone, even to Judith on the phone, who warned them continuously about mosquitoes and malaria and said their father was being extremely irresponsible, dragging them all that way away to the perils of Africa. Aubrey told Georgia he’d ask Mr. Kaczala next door to water the roses. All he had to do was put the end of his hose over the fence. “Every day,” said Georgia, “tell him he has to do it every day—if he doesn’t they’ll die.”

  “And the apples,” said Bessi, starting to panic, “and the apples, they need water, too, and Mr. Poland’s—”

  “Kaczala’s,” corrected Bel.

  “—hose won’t reach all that way! Isn’t it. And who’s going to pick them up?”

  “The lodgers can do that,” said Aubrey, loosening his tie. “Don’t make such a fuss.”

  Bessi tutted. The Little Ones, especially the twins, were not happy about the lodgers. Who were they? Why couldn’t they live in someone else’s house? What if they wouldn’t give it back? What if they broke things and messed things up, or accidentally burned it down and there was nothing left when they got back but boards and ashes, and holes? “No one’s sleeping in my room,” Kemy declared when Aubrey told them about the lodgers over dinner—he may’ve been promoted again, he said, but it wasn’t cheap, feeding a family and paying the bills, and one day they’d see for themselves. Kemy was also disgruntled about missing the school trip to the chocolate biscuit factory next spring. She wanted to get wild and staggered on chocolate, like the twins had when they’d gone, and now she’d miss it, she wasn’t happy at all, and the lodgers were the last straw.

  For the twins it was an even deeper violation. “And ours,” they said together. “No one’s sleeping in our room, either.” Because the loft was their house, it was full of secrets and thresholds. It belonged to them. The thought of strangers sleeping in 26a and treating it like home was like imagining someone moving into your stomach, into your head, into your dreams.

  “Of course they are,” Aubrey had said, not understanding the intrusion of it. The lodgers were a big family. Six children, two parents, and a grandmother. The grandmother would live in the loft with the youngest girl (apparently, they were inseparable, and the grandmother liked having a private bathroom); two more girls would be in Kemy’s room and three boys in Bel’s.

  “But nooo! They can’t,” shouted Bessi. “It’s our room.”

  “Yeah!” said Georgia.

  “Well then, would you like to pay the mortgage while we’re away?” Aubrey snapped.

  The twins didn’t understand what a mortgage was but they knew it was expensive and you had to work, and you had to be older than eight (and nine as well—they were nine in January) to work, unless you became a robber like Oliver Twist, which was definitely impossible because they had parents.

  The whole thing was getting out of control. They were losing their home. They were losing Christmas. They were going to summer when it was winter. They were going against the grain of their lives. For three years Georgia wouldn’t be able to stand next to Ham’s grave and wish him good wishes, or water roses (did Nigeria have roses?), and Bessi wouldn’t be able to lead the apple army (apples?) up the garden path. They’d grow older, and become foreign. “Will we be Nigerians?” Kemy asked her mother, sitting next to Bessi on a suitcase that Ida was trying to zip closed. There was too much in it. Ida had emptied the shops. Everything leakable was in plastic bags and Ida was ready. She had written a brief letter to Nne-Nne and Baba to say that she would soon be coming to visit, and she did not want to go empty-handed. She paused to answer Bessi’s question: “What do you mean? You are Nigerian now,” she said. “But only half,” Bessi pointed out. “If we live there, will we be all Nigerian?”

  The suitcase was almost closed and Ida was bending down and using all her weight to pull the zip. Her belly was full of soft empty spaces that children had left behind. She said, “Nothing will change. It is your home.” And then she added, as Bessi was about to ask another question, “You better ask your daddy.”

  Aubrey wasn’t around much. He was working all the hours to “tie the loose ends,” so Bessi went to ask Bel, who was in her room packing suitcases with Georgia: “So, what will happen when we get there? Will there be a loft?” Bessi sat next to Georgia on the side of the bed. They both looked up at Bel folding clothes and waited for her to answer. As they waited, Bel was struck by a feeling that she had seen this image before, of these two faces, looking up.

  She said, “I don’t think there’ll be a loft. But let’s wait till we get there, and see.”

  The night before they left, Georgia and Bessi—and Kemy was allowed, too, because it was a big good-bye—stood at the window in the loft and looked out at the evergreen tree. The moon was lying in a silver hammock, behind the tree. They had the same feeling at the bottom of their stomachs, the tremor of an oncoming journey, the feeling that this night was the end of here and tomorrow would be an unknown, a dream that was not a dream, another sun and moon, different trees, different beds. Somewhere in the darkness the world would transform. Their house would go spinning in whirls of tornado and then slow down, and they would drift. They were full of hope, and sorrow. And fizz.

  The three of them held hands and Georgia prayed. “Dear God, make the plane get us there safe, and please look after the house and make the lodgers give us it back. And let it rain, in case Mr. Poland forgets.” They had already written and signed their instructions to the lodgers on a sheet of paper, assisted by Bel, and pinned it to the door of the wardrobe:

  Do pick Apples in Septembers

  Do water the Roses if Mr. Poland (Kaczala) forgets

  Don’t sit on Beanbags

  Don’t make Anything messy

  Don’t make Fires

  They looked out over the chimneys of Neasden and registered the things that were inside them. Over there beyond the fence at the end of the garden, the school playground, where they ran at lunchtime, and shouted, and stood on the wall for differences. To the left in the far distance, the Welsh Harp, the river, with the clearing at the edge where a rope hung from a tree over quicksand and you had to be brave to swing it. The evergreen tree that was high enough to shield the moon and too far away to find.

  And the smell of chocolate biscuits, with the chocolate still warm.

  THE EXCESS BAGGAGE came to £146.50. Aubrey was not impressed. His back was hurting from lifting suitcases, of which there were seven. He said “Hellfire, woman,” “For pity’s sake,” and “God almighty” to Ida, ripping out his wallet, and everyone kept quiet including the polite lady at the desk. But then he seemed to forget about it. Because he also was fizzy, as Aubrey could not help be in such environments. All these departures, the trolleys and their wheels, the taxis opening journeys, those wonderful spirited planes raising their noses to heaven. The places, he thought, all the places! Aubrey’s good-bye had consisted of a study of the silver men in lamplight, the helicopter, a gentle fingertip push sen
ding it spinning, and a last walk through the garden with a cigarette (the Little Ones had seen the glow of the ember from the loft).

  They had left the house at five o’clock the next morning, in the dark, the way of beginnings.

  The twins were wearing their different-color anoraks with red cords and they both had short, bumpy afros. The Hunter afros traveled through realms of texture between Aubrey’s genes and Ida’s genes, Kemy at one end, soft and floppy, Bel at the other, thick and coarse. The twins were somewhere in between. Georgia, with outward feet, had a new clip with a plastic daisy on the end positioned just behind her ear, and Bessi, with inward feet, had painted her nails in Glitter Girl nail varnish. Ida made them hold hands with Kemy through the crowds and queues and announcements, down the cold spaceship tunnel that joined the airport to the plane, until they were on board. Kemy refused to put her hand luggage, a Miss Piggy rucksack with hair, into the overhead compartment and started crying when Bel tried to get it off her. “Sindy’s in there!” she shouted. Passengers stared, waiting to get past. “Let her keep it,” said Ida. “Come, sit down.” And she gave Kemy the window of a row of three, her in the middle, Aubrey by the passageway anticipating lunch. On the adjacent row of Flight BA712 Bel sat on the end, responsible for the twins, while Bessi let Georgia take the window on the condition that she would have it on the way back. “Don’t forget,” she said. “Bel, can you remember for us too? Bessi’s sitting by the window on the plane in 1984. Okay? Don’t forget.” Aubrey, as he always did, told everyone to read the leaflet about what to do in an accident. They stared at the pictures of life jackets that didn’t look as if they’d be able to help them if they fell out of the plane, and watched the woman at the front moving her arms around.

  Six hours was the longest plane they’d ever been on; even Tunisia hadn’t been this far. Georgia was worried they might run out of petrol and there’d be nowhere to stop. There was nothing up here but clouds, which couldn’t hold planes, or petrol stations, because they were nothing but white. She stopped worrying when they were in heaven. This was the best bit of flying, when the plane had run off the earth and glided upward and upward right through the clouds, the seat-belt signs were off, and they were sailing. The sky turned to ocean and the wisps and rolls of clouds were its shifting islands. Whenever they were up here, Georgia saw herself and Bessi lying down on the fleecy grasses and sky-bathing. They had bikinis on, and there were Dr. Orange ice pops for when it got too hot. They had a whole island each and spent time falling asleep, or reading books that turned their own pages, or diving off into the pure saltless blue. It is so quiet up here, thought Georgia, it must be very close to God, to where he thinks.

  Apart from heaven, lunch was the second best bit of flying. The surprise of it, the questions in the flurry of air hostesses shooting up and down the aisle in their eternal lipstick. Will it be chicken? Will it be beef? What will be under those plastic rectangles covered in steamy foil? When it came, Aubrey sat forward and viewed the display. He loosened up his fingers. Beef casserole, boiled carrots and mashed potato. Crackers and cheese to the left. A bread roll and butter. Sponge pudding in the corner (sponge pudding!), and a shallow white cup for coffee. Four courses. “Smacking,” he said. He ate everything and so did Bel, because she wasn’t fussy. Ida didn’t eat the cheese because it was straight out of the fridge, or the pudding. Bessi also left the cheese. She had to be careful. She was getting allergies, so far spinach, which made the inside of her bottom lip go lumpy (the incubator’s fault).

  Georgia left her pudding. Cakes were fattening. And she was the fattest.

  As they ate, Kemy slept, her shaggy hair hanging over the armrest onto her mother’s lap. Ida said not to wake her, that sleeps interrupted in the air were bad luck.

  “That’s nonsense,” said Aubrey. “Where d’you hear that from?”

  “It’s true,” Bel butted in. She was learning more and more from Ida about the truths that were called superstition. Eat with your right hand to avoid poison. Don’t sleep where a mirror can see you. Turn around once if a cat, any cat, crosses your path at night. The two of them sat on Ida’s bed in the late afternoons and roamed the mystical world. Bel was the only one who knew what Ida talked to Nne-Nne about and she would never tell. And last year, a week before Aubrey had received a two-thousand-pound windfall from work, Bel’s palms had itched for three days.

  So Kemy missed lunch. When she woke up she was furious. “I’m hungry,” she whined. “I want lunch. I want plane lunch and a plane sandwich. Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “It’s for your own good,” said Bel. “Mum said so.”

  Kemy went on whinging. “Off we go,” said Aubrey, raising his eyes. “See?”

  Ida collected everyone’s leftovers—her pudding, Bessi’s cheese, one of Georgia’s crackers, a piece of tomato in beef juice—and put it on a tray for Kemy, who remained indignant. She wanted a proper lunch. Aubrey had to ask one of the air hostesses for a whole new lunch so that he could have his postprandial nap in peace. When it came, Kemy made herself a beef-and-mashed-potato sandwich and was satisfied.

  Then Grease came on and John Travolta took them to Nigeria in a pair of spandex trousers.

  THE SOUTHERN NIGERIAN heat was different from summer in London, or a beach along the Mediterranean. It was something bestial and extreme. It did not believe in seasons or lapses into coolness, apart from the months of December and January, which weren’t really cool at all. Coolness was relative. It was just two months of a lesser humidity, though a heat still thick enough to carry people off planes like floating carpets, even to make them faint. Through the day, through the year, there were simply different levels of extremity. Very warm at dawn, merciless at noon. Heavy rain from March to November, and sunny swollen rainbows waiting in the wings. The air was thermal, and when they emerged from the plane their first instinct was to undress, to undo zips and shrug jackets violently off their shoulders, to carry things, tie them around waists instead of wear them, and surrender to the throbbing four o’clock sun. Miss Piggy’s hair trailed along the ground as they waded into the sweaty, shouting airport lounge. The roots of resentful afros became damp. Aubrey dabbed his face with his hankie and Bel’s eyeliner melted down her face. Ida had on a weepy, glossy smile that wouldn’t end.

  A man who reminded Ida of Sami was waiting for them. Troy, their towering slender driver, dressed throat to toe in white with only his forearms showing, and a beautiful round Adam’s apple. He had gold plate in his mouth and a sleek matching grin. Soft-voiced, he said, “Welcome, welcome,” and immediately, fourteen and panda-eyed Bel fell in love.

  Troy rescued them from a riot of illegitimate porters who were pulling at suitcases to make some cash. They followed him to the carriage: a blond Mercedes parked in the shade of a coconut palm. The Mercedes had silver beams along the sides, a silver ballerina at the tip of the hood, and the headlights were smooth blazed sockets of crushed ice. Troy cleaned it twice a week, every inch, with warm water and a leather cloth, until it dazzled. Had it been made of glass, it would’ve been good enough to take Diana to St. Paul’s.

  They drove for two hours, looking for apple trees and roses, asking questions (How far is it? When does it get dark? What’s that? What are those?) until the whirl of it spun them to sleep. Bel stayed awake, watching the slope of Troy’s neck and the outline of his Adam’s apple. They drove southeasterly away from Ikeja toward central Lagos, along the highway through grassland and wasteland and hints of savannah, down toward the coast that stretched for five hundred miles between Benin to the west and Cameroon to the east. Behind the shores where high waves made curls on the horizon was a belt of lagoons and mangrove swamps. Giant kingfishers with huge black bills made solitary journeys through the fifty-foot trunks. Shiny orange-eyed starlings with purple heads searched for wild figs and chattered up and out toward the desert. To the far east were the clustered waterways of the Niger delta, where towns slid about on sewage and watched the great ships carrying oil out i
nto the Atlantic. Over a mesh of islands and mainland and bridges, Lagos spread itself. The traffic slowed as they skirted the commercial center, with its bright yellow buses and shiny skyscrapers and the traders wading out into the queues, and a final bridge crossed the lagoon toward Sekon.

  Sekon was a quiet suburb east of Victoria Island. It had low houses and lines of sleepy palms. The houses stood well back from red roads without pavements and the gaps between them were vast, especially at night, reminiscent of an emptier time. Streetlights happened only once on every street.

  Troy had put the air-conditioning on during a conversation with Aubrey about the Benin rubber industry, which Troy invested in. Full-blast ice air made a wintry car. Georgia and Bessi woke up cold, on the gravel in front of a strange new house. They were full to bursting with What is its?

  “Is this it?” asked Georgia. “Are we here?” said Bessi. The twins were dizzy. Cold and hot and dizzy. It smelled of oranges. It felt as if God had turned the map in the hallway at Waifer Avenue into a liquid reality and was dipping them upside down into Nigeria. Georgia was even a little frightened as she looked around her, and she stayed very close to Bel. The house was big, with a flat white roof and crimson ivy along one side. An old dog was pissing against a cedar tree in the middle of a circular front lawn, and sprinklers around the edge threw out shell-shaped water. Next to the house was a row of tiny bungalows with blue doors. “Can me and Bessi have a bungalow?” Georgia asked. Someone grunted, a man in a string vest grabbing suitcases out of the trunk with Troy. They were carrying them into the house, and at the front door, holding it open, was a very small woman with bow legs wearing a nurse’s uniform.

  Troy introduced the dog as Beetle and the man in the string vest as Sedrick, the watchman. His job involved sitting in a narrow box by the front gate and opening and closing it. The rest of the time he picked sugarcane strings out of his teeth with one foot up on the wall in front of him or leaned against the cedar tree smoking. His eyes had become yellow and droopy from watching.