I Used to Say My Mother Was Shirley Bassey (10 page)

‘This is not diverse at all. In Hong Kong we saw Africans, Chinese people, Indians and white people. Everyone here is black. It's the least diverse place I've ever been to. Actually, it's boring.'

As he was saying the word ‘boring' a dishevelled-looking woman came rushing past our table trying to hawk a bottle of some concoction. She shouted out, ‘This tincture will cure your baldness, bring you good luck, it will help you keep your wife satisfied all night and keep you free of all diseases.'

We ignored her at first, but as she was moving away and fading into the crowd Dad called out after her, ‘Ay, sista,
whetin dey happen?
'

The dishevelled-looking woman was Auntie Yomi! We hadn't seen her since Abeokuta when she'd been running sound systems at the party. At New Year's Eve she'd seemed larger than life and dressed to impress, but here she shrunk away from us when she saw her sister. She started to smooth her wrinkled linen shirt and pocketed the bottle. I remembered how she'd saved me from getting into serious trouble that night and I ran up to embrace her. She looked very embarrassed, but as far as I was concerned she was still the cool auntie and she gave me a big smile.

‘Yomi,
kilode?
' What's wrong? asked Mum at first and then, ‘What is in that bottle? What are you selling?'

Yomi came up to the table and waved a greeting to Sebastien's family. ‘
This?
! This is just rubbish but I have to try and sell them.'

‘Come on, come on. I will buy one,' said Dad and passed over some naira without taking the bottle.

‘Ah! Broda,
I tell you ground no level. Juss dey patch am
.' Things are tough. I'm just trying to survive. ‘How you dey?'

‘
Monkey dey work, baboon dey chop
.' One person toils, another enjoys the fruits of it.

She looked at the white family we were sitting with.
‘Na go bye
dat?' Are you leaving?

‘Bodi no be firewood
.' A man can't work forever.

Mum looked guilty. ‘Sista. I'm so sorry. I have not been in touch, but things have been so raw for us.'

‘Jesus! For you and me too. Remember the Abeokuta
owambe?
They never paid me and I had all the expense of moving so many
gbedu
up there. I can't pay them, so now, the sound systems? They won't work with me. I can't get money. I can't get credit. They take
garri
from my mouth.'

In Nigeria there isn't any kind of welfare state and as Yomi had lost her income she'd had to sell her bungalow. She was now living in a tiny bedsit in one of the blocks in Ikeja.

‘Why didn't you tell me you are in trouble? You will come and stay with us.'

‘No! I'm telling you! My bungalow is gone but I have a place to live. I won't be a burden to you. If one finger brought oil it soiled the others.'

‘Please. At least come and sit with us for a moment. Join us and have a drink,' said Sebastien's dad.

Yomi refused. ‘Thank you, but I'm not finished. I'm not an old woman yet. The house sweeper's behind is never at one direction. I must work, work, work to get out of this and drinking Gulder beer will give me a headache. But ask me again another time and I will buy the drinks.'

Dad gave her some more money, but I knew that we were hurting for cash as well. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that the woman who had welcomed us into the country with open arms was hurting so badly and that we were so powerless to help her. But, at the same time, I was impressed that she hadn't given in and let her situation get her down. She was still my cool auntie.

The next morning was a Saturday and we did what we always did on Saturdays, which was clean the house. But from the New Year, the government had passed a new law which Mum and Dad detested as another example of a lazy and corrupt administration. Every Saturday all residents on a street were forced to take part in something called Environmental Sanitation. This was essentially government-mandated chores. We had to collect the rubbish, sweep the streets and even try and fill the massive potholes with compressed garbage. I can tell you that you don't know what a waste of time really is until you are in an unpaved street with a broom, just sweeping dust. If we had swept until Monday all we would have achieved was to make a big hole in the ground, but in light of what we'd seen at the party the night before, we grumbled more quietly than normal.

Something definitely seemed to be up at home. During the following week, there were a lot of whispered conversations going on between Mum and Dad. We'd come back from school and things would be missing from the house. Slowly, all of Dad's equipment for work disappeared, then a wardrobe full of clothes would be gone. Normally, I would have rejoiced at the place being decluttered for once, but this time it all looked a bit ominous. Could we be so strapped for money that even the sale of Mum's sewing machine and her bolts of cloth would make a difference? We didn't get any explanations and we could see from Dad's face that we shouldn't ask.

That Friday night Mum made dinner for us on an outside barbecue. We'd been in Nigeria for almost a year by now and as there is no summer or winter out there, an outside barbecue is a good idea at any time. After we'd finished eating, Dad went to a box in the corner, fished out our passports and threw them on the kitchen table.

‘We're going on holiday.' We all looked up when Dad said this. Another unplanned disruption was about to happen to us. I was not enthusiastic, but Stella reacted very differently and actually ran out onto the street. I ran after her.

‘What's wrong, Stella?'

‘Remember the last time we went on holiday?' she shouted with a whoop and a cheer. Could it be that we were going home to England? I quietly prayed that it might be, but with Dad you just could never tell. And you could never ask either.

Once more we had to pack up the entire house and we loaded the rusty van to the brim. We still hadn't been told where we were going and when we reached Lagos airport we just followed Dad, carrying boxes and bags in our hands like a family of displaced ducklings. In the year we had been in Nigeria, West African Airways had shut down and Dad marched us to the British Airways ticket booth. My heart was thudding in my chest as Dad picked up seven one-way tickets to London. Stella nearly dropped the box she was holding she was so happy.

As the plane took off, Albert, Stella and I felt good: we'd arrived on an African carrier to live an African life; now we were going home on British Airways to resume our British lives. But who knew how long this would last? The flight was completely different from the one we'd taken over to Lagos a year before. There were films to watch on this plane. There were stewardesses that served us hot English food. As we looked out of the window all we could see below us were fluffy clouds flying past, looking deceptively solid. I sat in my seat and thought about how only the week before I had been sweeping a dusty Lagosian street and playing ten-ten with Sunday.

I suddenly felt very angry. Although I was happy to be going home, why did it always have to be so last minute and why were we never told anything beforehand? I never got to say goodbye to Sunday or to Mama Bunmi. I didn't even have their addresses if I wanted to write to them. What about the
Oba
of Abeokuta? Would I never see him again? Would I never get to meet his son? And Auntie Yomi too? Dad was constantly uprooting us and, as I heard our hand luggage bumping around in the overhead locker, I thought, We are just pieces of luggage to pack up and move about.

Though there was undoubtedly much love and care in my family, talking about our feelings was basically absent from our lives. I have no idea if this is a phenomenon of every large family, but in a way I can understand it. Keeping five kids safe and healthy is a big enough job; worrying about their mental well being too would keep Dr Freud busy for months. Only later on in my life did I begin to appreciate the trials and tribulations my parents must have gone through. I'm sure there was a lot of personal stuff they didn't or couldn't share with us and, ultimately, I know that they sacrificed a lot for us.

It's no surprise that these days some of my friends describe me as being a bit secretive. The thought of opening up and being emotional will never be something that comes naturally. What makes it easier is when I see how some of my closest friends have a completely different relationship with their families. My friend Dustin is so close and open with his parents and siblings that I sometimes feel I'm watching an episode of
The Brady Bunch
. It's bewildering to see him argue, discuss and make up with his family all in the space of minutes. I'd rather not get involved in that kind of drama. Some people might disagree, but, in my case, ‘avoiding the issue' are words to live by.

When we arrived in London the first thing we did was open up our bags and pile on as many clothes as would fit on our bodies. We had brought so much stuff with us that Mum had to take a taxi by herself and we stuffed the cab full of bags and boxes after she got in. Dad took me and the rest of the kids on the Tube. Cordelia and Chris, who were now five and six years old, were excited to take an Underground train as they simply couldn't remember having used the Tube before. About halfway down the Piccadilly line a large Jamaican woman got on the Underground. She was standing opposite, watching us kids as we sweated, each wearing three T-shirts, three jumpers and our feet swelled with the many pairs of socks we'd pulled on. She was laughing to herself at the sight when a foul smell pervaded the Tube. Someone had farted. She looked at us and smelled the air tilting her head upwards. Then she started moving her mouth. Like she was eating it. And declared in a thick accent, ‘Cha! Somebody bottom dirty!' We all screeched with laughter.

Changing onto the Northern Line we eventually arrived at Tooting Tube station. We emerged onto the street and found our way to the tiny flat that Dad had got for us on Fountain Road. It was a dodgy-looking block and had only three bedrooms for Mum and Dad and the five of us kids, but we didn't mind the cramped conditions because we felt like we had finally come back home.

Once more the exhaustion of the trip was overridden by the excitement of arriving in a new place and I resolved to do something I'd missed for the whole previous year. I took a pound from Dad and went out to buy junk food. I was still only twelve years old and Woolworth's Pic 'n' Mix was calling out to me. Tooting is a hugely Asian area and I was amazed to see so many Indian people out and about after a year of seeing only black faces. I passed temples, mosques and loads of Indian sweet shops. I was so busy staring that I almost ran straight into a little old Indian woman who scowled at me.

‘Don't you know your shoe is untied?'

I could never understand old people's paranoia about untied shoes. It's as if having a lace flying about is as likely to result in a broken neck as having a noose looped around your head while standing on a rickety ladder. I just looked at her and right there on Tooting High Street she got down on her knees and tied up my shoelaces for me, before getting up, smiling at me and tottering off. I have to tell you that after coming from Nigeria where I'd had to spend half my life on my knees or on my belly prostrating to strangers this was a wildly different experience.

In Woolworths a Chinese man served me two Wham! bars almost without looking up and, as I left the shop, one was already in my mouth. I remembered how much Stella liked sausage rolls – another treat long denied us in Africa – so I headed into a bakery on the way back home. I had just enough money to buy a roll from the white woman behind the counter and, as she handed it over, she said with a wink, ‘There you go, lover. They put the bollocks and everything in that.' I was truly home!

As I walked the rest of the way back to Fountain Road with the warm sausage roll turning the paper bag see-through with grease in my pocket, I realized that in the space of ten minutes I'd come into contact with three different people from three different races: a trip to the shops in London does more for racial relations than any Benetton advertising campaign can ever hope to achieve. Forget trying to fit in if nobody else bothers with it. I wasn't a Lagosian or a Londoner. I was just myself, and realizing that, I walked down the street that night with a little bit more
effizzy
in my step.

C
OMING BACK TO
E
NGLAND
was a real shock to the system. We'd missed a whole school year and were going to enrol in secondary school a year late. We were up to scratch in most of the academic subjects, but we were going to have to unlearn such a lot of habits that we'd picked up in Nigeria. School started two hours later over here; agriculture and RE were out the window. Making your own uniform wouldn't be seen as a badge of honour in London and we went out to buy cheap polyester uniforms off the peg from Marks and Spencer.

The teachers had been disarmed and we could get away with a lot more, which was good. But we had to deal with another kind of torture when we finally enrolled, because to my horror, Stella and I were separated into different classes. There was a policy back then to separate twins from each other as soon as possible. It's the kind of wrong-headed nonsense that no one in Nigeria would ever think of bothering with. We only got to see each other at lunch breaks when we'd play ten-ten and go out to buy crisps from the local newsagent.

Thankfully, these days that policy has been reversed. Basically, schools have changed for the better since the eighties, although I saw my nephew recently and he said that kids today aren't allowed off school grounds at any time during the day. Apparently, people are worried that paedophiles are lurking behind every corner, which is ironic because back then half of our teachers were seriously pervy. I remember we had one teacher who would just wander around the boys' changing rooms making sure everyone was showering naked. He didn't even teach PE. And if we forgot our kit? You guessed it! We had to do it in our vest and pants. Even the cross-country run! Although to be fair we lived in South London and if you were a thirteen-year-old boy out on my local high street in just your vest and pants then you'd better be running. This was considered normal back then. It was so ridiculous at my school that the register should have been a list of all the teachers who would qualify as a sex offender today.