Where Bones Dance: An English Girlhood, An African War

Bath

Bath T his is as bad as when you worked in bloody Birmingham all week.” Dad’s face is plain. Nothing is written on it. That’s how he looks mostly. I like it. It’s like a wind that always blows from the same direction. I can hear the jeep in the driveway. The driver is waiting. My father kisses my mother on her lips. He came all the way to Lagos. Now he’s going back to Benin and then he’s looking at the killings. He’s observing them. The jeep wheels spit gravel at us and Dad holds his hand over his head but he doesn’t look back. We go into the dining room. My mother takes six pills instead of four. She takes them one at a time, swallowing loudly. “When did Dad work in Birmingham?” I know the story but I ask anyway. It’s one of the ones Dad sits behind a newspaper for but now he isn’t here. “It was when we came back from Hong Kong. You weren’t born yet,” she says to Bill. He is making a twirl of ketchup on his egg yolk. It stands up an inch off the plate then he takes his knife 175 176 and cuts down into it so the yellow spills out across the plate and it has streaks of red in it. “When we came back from Hong Kong Dad left the Foreign Office and went to work in a factory in Birmingham.” “Why did he do that?” “It was part of the training for working with I.C.I. as a scientist.” I meant why did he leave. I don’t ask again. I just want her to tell the story. “We were living in Warwick. Dad was living in digs in Birmingham all week. We were so poor you ate spinach for a whole year. It was the only thing that would grow in the garden there. We wouldn’t have made it if Granny hadn’t sent us money, and your aunt Gwyneth used to invite us over once a week for a slapup meal. She would come and pick us up because Dad took the car. Do you remember the car?” “It was green with a silver stripe.” “I used to push you everywhere in a red and white push chair. There was a toy shop and you fell in love with the golliwog in the window. Do you remember?” I think I can see the white spots on the red chair but I’m not sure if it’s because she told me about it so many times. I still have Golly. He has a red tailcoat and striped trousers and big, surprised eyes. “You wanted him so much, that golliwog. He cost half a week’s rent but I scrimped and saved for weeks and then I bought him for you. You were my only friend, you and Mrs. Brown downstairs , who used to look after you when I went out. But you had a friend, remember?” “Andy Pandy Jones,” I say. I hate this bit. “In the garden there was a paddling pool. You played there all summer with Andy Pandy Jones, naked as the day you were born. C y c l e 3 People in the other flats were shocked. They were such prudes. You looked so sweet together and we’d say how one day you were going to get married.” Bill says, “Anna’s not going to get married.” I say, “You weren’t even born yet.” My mother doesn’t say anything, she gets up. I wish she would finish the story. She says, “I’m going to the market.” It is Sunday but I don’t say anything. I go to brush my teeth. We have strawberry Mr. Punch toothpaste and the taste sticks to my tongue. I tell my face in the mirror how one rainy Sunday my mother said to my father, “I can’t stand this anymore, I didn’t marry you to live in a slum,” and she showed him the ad in the Sunday Times where the Foreign Office was recruiting and so Dad became a diplomat again and we moved to London and the cabbies helped Mum start the car every morning by pushing it down the hill and then we went to Germany and Bill...