33 East

by Susannah Rickards

  She was standing in front of the North by North West mural in the passageway of Leytonstone station. ‘How apt,’ he said. ‘Why?’ Amy inquired, turning to take it in. The mosaic mural was one of the seventeen that line the damp concrete of the station with colour and culture. ‘The title is apparently taken from Hamlet, - I am but mad north-northwest: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.’ He was sure that Hamlet would have related to the ringing of the church bell as a symptom of madness. ‘I didn’t take you for a Shakespeare fan,’ she smiled. She had never noticed the murals before and walked along saying their names out loud. ‘Well there you go, you have taught me something, it’s not all me helping you after all.’

  They emerged the other side of the tube station and walked past the Polish supermarket, the Vietnamese nail place and Percy Ingles bakery, where they bought an iced bun each to eat on the bench outside the church by the crossroads. He felt better, more positive, maybe Amy was right, he just needed a push in the right direction. She finished her bun and gathered up her bag. They had an awkward moment where he did not know whether to kiss her good bye or not and they kind of hovered in a limbo. ‘I will see you on Wednesday,’ she said, ‘make sure you come, else the full benefits are not really felt.’ He smiled and agreed that he would definitely be there on Wednesday.

  He felt good as he walked down the road, he had done some exercise and the sun had started to peak through the grey clouds. He turned the corner towards home with a spring in his step. ‘Howzit bru!’ He heard someone shout down the street. He emerged from his bubble, he knew only one person that would greet him in that way. Andre was walking down the other side of the street, overalls dirty with paint and dust. It was too late to avoid him. Heart sinking, he smiled and waved. ‘Coming for a pint?’ Andre asked. They were nearly at Zulus and before he could think about his answer, he was in there with a pint of that South African beer and a whiskey chaser. Andre had laughed when he heard that he had been at yoga. ‘What you want to do that hippy crap for?’ Telling him the truth would be pointless. Instead he bought another round of tequilas and explained that yoga is sometimes worth going to because you can look at the women’s arses. Andre’s eyes lit up at this and he said he might look into it. The thought of Andre at the yoga class in an art gallery down the road made him chuckle a little as the warm glow of alcohol took over his body and senses. He couldn’t imagine a 22-stone prop forward pulling off some of those positions.

  The sound of his alarm clock mixed with the DONG… DONG… DONG… of the church bell. He groaned and stretched his leg out which felt odd, he was still wearing his tracksuit bottoms from yoga but he could feel something else. DONG… DONG… DONG… He felt like crying, he felt like his brain had been pierced with a thousand knives. He lifted his hand to his face and felt the crusting of blood DONG… He moved his hand around his eye, it felt swollen. He realised that it was not that he did not want to open his eye, but he couldn’t. DONG… Flashes from the night before started to come back to him with brutal clarity; he felt the panic tighten his chest. DONG… They had seen one of the sinewy yoga men from the class and started on him. Andre liked fighting and he was too far gone to have cared. The yoga man chose to launch himself at him with a punch to the eye DONG… he remembered falling to his knees, DONG… the right one onto a shot glass which shattered and had no doubt left a bloody cut. The excavation drill was in his head again, the bell was haunting him and he needed to go to hospital for stitches.

  DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… the bell rang, he counted the chimes. He thought if he counted them, it would stop the panic attack that was about to engulf him. He couldn’t breathe. Nine he thought to himself. He looked at his phone, the clock read 9am. The bells were ringing right. He bolted upright in bed and hauled his leg over the side. He could see a dark patch of congealed blood on his knee. He looked in the mirror by the bed, his left eye was swollen shut and there was a cut on the eyelid with a big crust of dark blood making it impossible to open. His jaw was black from the impact and he could not really move his neck. His head felt like it was full of concrete and cotton wool at the same time. His heart raced as he stifled a sob of self pity and peered out the curtain, terrified at the prospect of the outside world. The church loomed back at him. He had to call Marie at work to say he would not be coming in. With shaking hands, he dialed the number. ‘This is your fourth sick day in six weeks and your second formal warning,’ said a detached voice at the end of the line, ‘you are in deep trouble.’

  He didn’t know whether he cared or not, he was in too much pain. He sank back onto his pillows, his whole body trembling as his world caved in. He lay there unable to move. DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… 10am. He knew they would be right again somehow. He lay there all day listening on the hour to the church bell and they rang on the hour at the correct time all day. He watched the light and shadows of the day pass behind the curtains, only knowing what time it was because of the bell.

  It was dark by the time he got up. He limped up the street and onto the bus. Everyone was staring at him. He avoided eye contact as the bus lurched towards Whipps Cross. When he did look up, while they were stopped at a set of red lights, he saw Amy waiting to cross. She saw him and waved but then saw his eye and dropped her hand, a look of disappointment crossed her face. He didn’t think he would be making yoga tomorrow. He hung his head and the bus carried on.

  ***

  DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… he woke up, his injuries aching. Eight am, he thought as he hoisted his injured leg over the bed and gingerly lifted his hea. He had things to do. He walked out of the front door, past the church, staring up at the spire. The sun broke behind it, hurting his swollen eye. The sky was blue as he opened the door to the internet café. He sat down in front of the computer and typed into the search engine: Working for London 2012, National Skills Academy for Construction.

  He would not be walking home past Zulus again.

  ENFIELD

  Nne, biko

  Uchenna Izundu

  I

  The air was seasoned with buzzing laughter and chatter about homework, feisty teachers, fit bodies and strict parents. Bursts of colour entered Ndi’s peripheral vision as teenagers ran for buses that swung into Edmonton Green bus station. Strewn between the groups laden with Asda and Tesco bags, buggies, weight and faith that things could only get better were the harassed mothers, shuffling pensioners, yo-yo dieters and upbeat immigrants desperate for work.

  They were all on the hustle; Ndi was sick of signing on in the dreary magnolia JobCentre Plus office on Fore Street where its sewage drains perfumed the air one fortnight or his advisor suffered from banging breath the next. He flared at their patronising tones in threatening his pitiful allowance. He tensed at the crap compulsory literacy and numeracy tests for job searching training that still wasn’t bringing no dough, man. Miserable motherfuckers: the routine was soulless. Read the scribbles in his JSA diary, sign a line, click a mouse and get out. They thrived on ticking boxes, suffocating bureaucracy and massaging government stats in the poor part of Enfield where over 60 per cent of its residents survived on benefits and Sky.

  Using his antiseptic tissues to wipe the greasy job listings screens, Ndi shuddered at the parade of young and old, fat and thin, light and dark, thick and smart, bent and straight men and women crippled by the disease of frustration. The advisors couldn’t inspire them with boasts of the area’s work ethic in the last century with furniture making and timber transportation by barge along the River Lee Navigation. They didn’t know; fudge it. There were no jobs now, innit?

  Security at the JobCentre knew Ndi for trying to save the startled plump Asian advisor from a clawing client. They bullocked him for it. Ndi was shocked: he went home with a thumping headache and bruised arms that ached for days – determined that if that shit ever happened again he would knock them out.

&nb
sp; Each time Ndi left the JobCentre, he wondered where was his chi? Was his god sleeping? He began to bind, cast, and laminate all enemies of progress, calling on God to give him a J, O, damn B with prospects. The answer was always the same: overdose on McDonald’s or KFC, which were next door. These outlets, mobile phone kiosks and bric-a-brac shops vied for attention on the long, bedraggled, grey street, punctuated with the occasional green tree and sparkling hubs of Turkish, Asian and African enterprise. Ndi Snr, a short and stocky mini cab driver, was unsympathetic. ‘Eh-heh, you see what happens when you don’t want to read!’ Whether awake or asleep, whenever he tossed and turned, his father’s voice pricked him all over like feasting chinchi.

  And the memories were so hard to drown; they kept thrashing to the surface.

  His screaming disappointment when Ndi dropped out of college ‘coz it’s hard, innit!’ Pulling on his ear, Ndi Snr bellowed, ‘Gee nti, what hard are you talking? Did you carry water from the stream? Read by candle when Nepa took light? Look for food during Biafra? That spirit of stubbornness that is blocking you from getting your certificates should leave you today, today!’

  Ndi’s vision changed; he stopped looking up and started looking down as he flirted with one low paid job and another – cleaner, painter/ decorator, security. None lasted more than six months; he either quit, was fired, or laid off.

  Nne, his buddy-buddy, remained constant; they were always burning credit blowing ‘tory. Consolation, encouragement, and cussing the hell out of their situations. She was multitasking: her access course into teaching, working part-time in the West End, and her mother’s wahala about housework and rent contributions.

  His relationship with Nne was sealed at primary school until she returned home at the age of 10 when her father remarried. Once a year they could gist on and on till the break of dawn during family visits in the summer holidays. Their motto became, ‘if you do me, I do you’.

  So, he graduated to his first run-in with the police around Tottenham posing in his friend’s stolen car. ‘Did I raise a thief? Why are you allowing the devil to operate in you?’ Ndi Snr yelled.

  He manned up into a 419 sideline when Adeyemi became pregnant at nineteen. There was stunned silence when the Ibo grapevine grassed him up on the £5000 scam he had jiggery-pokeried on no-one of someone that one other person knew. ‘Ndubuisi, you mean you’ve grown wings like dis?’ Ndi Snr screeched as his fists connected with his son’s jaw. ‘You’re now congratulating yourself, abi?’ When the baby was stillborn, his father said it was a relief that Ndi had escaped his responsibilities. That catapulted his exit from the crummy two bedroom council flat they had shared in Upper Edmonton since ma’s passing from sickle cell anaemia.

  II

  ‘Come again?’

  Nne jerked forward in her seat; Mrs Briscoe bristled. ‘I know it’s not what you want to hear but…’

  ‘But it’s complete shit!’

  Mrs Briscoe flushed a faint red that surprisingly added some delicacy to her stern features and Nne immediately apologised. Her thoughts fluctuated between jealousing the angular frame of her boss who had birthed five children and internally cussing the day she first picked up chalk to write equations in this difficult secondary school. The irony of the situation was not lost on Nne at all. Here she was sitting in the headteacher’s office facing a potential disciplinary for a wayo-no-good-waste-of-a-lyin’-wor-wor pupil who actually thought she was too damn nice.

  What kind wahala be dis one, now? Can you imagine? Nne thought. Kai, this country is going to the dogs!

  She tried desperately to match Mrs Briscoe’s cool, calm composure. ‘I don’t understand how Grace can even have the audacity to challenge this decision.’

  ‘If it’s any comfort, I’m amazed at how aggressive Grace’s parents have become about this issue. They’re all saying you assaulted her. We have a duty to consider their claims.’

  ‘But she was cheating! I saw her!’

  Mrs Briscoe held her steely stare and handed a sheaf of papers over with guidelines on how the investigation would be handled.

  She knew that Nne’s response – of dragging the screaming pupil out of the exam hall – was the diluted version: if permissible, Nne would have slapped Grace. How could she respond to this hunched firecracker with long black locs? She was just so, well, raw with her gold nose stud gleaming on flawless Oreo-coloured skin. This was a farcical situation: Grace was pleading ignorance to cheating in an exam as Nne, the invigilator, hadn’t stated that this was forbidden. And now her parents were making a dreadful fuss that she had to manage.

  Mrs Briscoe smoothed back her coiffed grey bob.

  ‘That will be all, Nne.’

  ***

  Pausing outside of the staffroom, Nne’s ears were sprinkled with muffled giggles. She tutted and battled the burning tears. Six years of self-improvement investment was on the verge of just melting like that? All that hypertension in reading for her teaching exams? All these early starts and late nights? She now needed glasses as she was squinting from marking students’ papers. For what now, for what? Ah-ah!

  She snapped her fingers. God forbid! She had J.E.S.U.S; it was time for fasting and praying. This disciplinary would not succeed.

  She swung open the door and was instantly irritated by her milky-way colleagues sprawled on sofas sipping tea and coffee and eating custard creams, who massacred her name to ‘Innay’ because they refused to hear Igbo. They were armed with mummy, daddy, equities, and trust funds.

  She had no one to call upon to bail her out of this spiralling shit. Nne had fled Lagos with £200 in her pocket at the age of 17. When Popsie remarried, Nne was convinced that her stepmother had jazzed him. She was no longer his sweetheart and was bewildered by this snappy man who had abandoned Momsie in London.

  It was Ndi that she belled regularly to lament about her stepmother’s increasing wickedness as the years progressed. ‘Ndubuisi biko, help me to leave now!’

  He tracked Momsie when Nne first landed in town. Until tomorrow he had never quite understood how she escaped, especially as Nne had said that her British passport was locked up in the family home in Aba in the east. She just shrugged: ‘I forged another in Oluwole – anything is for sale there, even human heads.’

  The pupils’ babbling in the hallway jolted Nne into the present.

  This shitty day needed to be erased with a spliff: that drag would pacify her. In her head, she could already hear Ndi moaning about it. Nne took a deep breath as she packed her belongings: her tart response to his lectures still remained the same – drug use is different to drug abuse.

  III

  Ndi was tired of scavenging in the 99p stores in the rusty and crusty concrete jungle shopping mall in Edmonton Green, which spat out empty units from a biting recession.

  Crashing at Momsie’s place over the past few months left him distinctly uncomfortable. She was clocking all shifts going to save money for a brief ‘holiday’ at home. He was bumming around.

  Nne had become increasingly aloof: she had an outside life that he couldn’t relate to. This course, that concept; this assignment, that lecturer, Mr Clever Clogs, Miss Thicko. She came back late; she was tired. She couldn’t talk. She didn’t listen any more. And she was impatient with his vagueness about what he wanted to do with his life. She always seemed distracted by school – it was all she bloody well talked about. He could no longer confide in her as she was hell bent on cracking teaching to escape the tiny meandering roads, boxy cottages, and high-rise flats of Edmonton.

  Momsie listened though: she squeezed his hand, patted his back, teased him about his wide feet. She always asked if he’d eaten and urged him to reconcile with his father and when he broke down Ndi knew he was starved of tenderness and her smoked chicken jolloff rice. She drilled him on what his plans were and was vexed by ‘I dunno; I’m seein’ how it goes, innit?’ So, when the bulbs popped, Ndi handled it. When the garden needed mowing, he sorted it. He made pepper and okasi soups, Momsie’s favourite
s. He painted the house – desperately aware that he needed to earn his keep.

  And that’s how it hit him one Tuesday afternoon whilst washing goat meat to roast in the oven. He heard the door flap shut and picked up a leaflet about a talk in Ponders End community centre the following week by local entrepreneurs. If no-one was going to employ him, he needed to employ himself. Pennies needed to become pounds ASAP.

  What business could he do? He frowned: whatever it was it needed to be recession proof. Then, as he began seasoning the meat, it occurred to him that people would always need to eat. Why couldn’t he cook for them? Naijas were always shakin’ a tail feather.

  Ndi researched the internet to collect some ideas. When his funding applications failed Momsie sponsored the business. Ndi tensed at the offer but remembered his father’s reprimands whenever he rebuffed help: a man who believes that he can do everything should dig a grave and bury himself!

  Ndi found the monthly networking evenings empowering as he learnt about finance, marketing, and legal issues. With other entrepreneurs struggling he was no longer the fuck ups specialist. When he saw his first grand sitting in his business account, Ndi was dazed. That changed to elation; he bought himself a nice suit on sale from Burton. From there the business grew: one order became two. Ten became twenty. His customers’ recommendations were sweet: he was booked out for the next six months. Nne teased him about his chi’s awakening and promised to accompany him to one of these forums on South Street, nibbling soggy cheese sandwiches and swallowing flat coke.

  That’s why he was waiting for her at Edmonton Green bus station. Was this the first time she was late? Hell to the damn no.

  When he saw the bulging Primani carrier bag in her hand, Ndi really became agitated.