There were signs. Where I was headed. They let you know . As a child they warn you, if you’re gonna be on the menu. It started when I was about six or seven years old and we’d moved into a block of flats which had a small playground attached to it. I was on the swings one day, legs stretched out, head somewhere below sea level, so I had a panoramic view of the sky. I noticed a black dot way out in the distance which rapidly developed into a black cloud. It was soot black, looked like a smudge painted on the sky. And it was moving way faster than the other clouds. As it got closer it morphed into a flock of literally monstrous black birds. Soon they were swarming around me. They looked like ravens but huge, capable of dwarfing a harrier, kite or even a black eagle and with distinct, red, down curved beaks and pink legs. They made me feel dizzy and I fainted. Lenny from the flat downstairs ran and got my mum.
She didn't believe me. Thought I’d been imagining it. Said crows don't have red beaks. And giant ones don’t come in swarms, not round south London.
They came back though. And visited me again, more than once, always swarms of them and always when I was on the swings. I couldn’t bear the swings after that. I kept passing out.
When I got older I came across a library book about birds. It turned out my mum had been mistaken. About crows not having red beaks. The book showed pictures of the different types of crow. The smaller ones included the jackdaw, the jay and one I had never heard of called a chough. I had to do a double take. I was staring at a picture of a crow with a red beak and pinkish legs. It was the same species of bird , albeit much smaller , that had visited me on the swings. I did some reading then, found the chough was a rare bird in the U.K. and most of the time only found in the coastal, heathland areas of Scotland, Wales and Ireland. With a few stragglers in Cornwall. It didn’t do London.
It wasn’t choughs that visited me as a child. It couldn’t have been. They looked like choughs, but that’s as far as it goes. For a long time I considered the very real possibility that I had been abducted by aliens. That the birds were a screen memory, a common occurrence in alien abduction.
I don’t think that any more. There was no spaceship. No little greys with huge black eyes. There were just the huge black birds with the red beaks and legs. And they made me ill. And I know why.
They were clearly an omen.
Chapter 11
Sorted
The theme from Mahogany has faded out. A loud voice brings me back to the present.
‘Lisa! How are youuuuuuu?!? A shoulder length dyed black perm with with pale blue blouse, bodycon skirt and faux leather handbag has gone rigor mortis. Her arm is stuck behind her clinging to her lifeline, smart receding thirty something in neutral chinos with suit jacket and token tie. Their path has been blocked by a worse for wear, going on forty, few extra pounds, fading, carrot curls number in tight jeans and tight zip up jacket. Right behind her is a wiry, black twenty something with a number one on top and a face primed with the proper amount of stubble.
‘Shirl, wow, yeh, amazing …’ Lisa’s ginger head enters spin cycle. Then shudders. Comes to a stop. She takes a deep breath. Her eyes wide as saucers. Chin forced up with manic smile. ‘ ...yeh I’m great. How are you?!’
Shirl recovers some movement from the neck above. ‘I’m really good, yeh great ….’ Her closed-lipped smile breaks the speed limit so I can’t tell if it was just a facial tick. She flips her head round to look at chinos, then turns back and gives Lisa the once over. ‘You look so well.’
‘I am. I’m sorting myself out. I really am.’
‘Oh goooood. Isn’t it Mat?’ Shirl shakes Mat’s arm. He nods once slowly. No flicker face. ‘It’s so lovely to see you.’ Shirl is already carving an escape route by running her bum along a table, leading Mat with her by the tip of his tie.
‘And you. Yes. Lovely. Yes.’ Lisa’s smile remains fixed as she turns to her black lover. He is making a break for the bar. Once Shirl is at a safe distance Lisa’s smile drops at the speed of light, making me wonder if gravity has just got stronger.
Mental health case, or booze, no druggie I can see that. Sorting herself out though. I’m seriously impressed. One day she’ll be sorted. I can see her placing that last grain of sand neatly in order just before high tide hits the beach again.
Good luck to her. The poxy truth is that I lost my ‘sorted’ status pretty soon after I was born. By the time I was in my mid twenties I had morphed into an economic leper. No produce. The consuming tailed off too which is worse. No excuse for that coz the media blasts out constant wake up calls. How we need to keep pigging ourselves to death to aid economic growth and all that. I couldn’t face the shops though. Only the back alleys. And that don’t help the GDP. Not officially anyhow.
It weren’t like there was anyone around to care. Except the dole office. Down the Elephant. Guaranteed at least one black eye or bloody nose hanging about there every time. Grey, miserable queues. Everyone clucking.
By my thirtees I had upgraded for a while to a bench. Fully furnished with dribble and damp, lawn both front and back seeded with shattered glass and the stink of stale piss. My next door neighbour was Sam. He used to lend a mouth, slurring on about Belfast, his army days, how the country owes him and all his Tommy mates and all that crap. He looked out for me though. Gave me smokes and stuff. Till his wino mates started dissin me for being a junky. That’s normal for them. Junky bashing. Alcoholics are just about the only bods who can lie in the gutter and look down on people.
Shirl is at a safe distance now.
‘You too. Bye.’ Lisa’s smile drops at the speed of light. Makes me wonder if gravity has just got stronger.
The table elephant woman and wimp were at has been taken by a latin sort of geezer and a way too young mixed race girl. He’s the overly smooth oily type with full set of colgate tiles in his mouth and a stupidly wide, dick fuelled beam on his face. She’s staring at her phone and searching through her handbag with her spare hand. The two of them don’t fit coz she looks way too clued up to fall for the casanova act.
I look down at again at Nurse Ayunde Engola’s statement for the hearing, skimming through till I get to the bit where I left off.
On the night of 11th January 2015 I was on the night shift. Ms. Westerley was in her room and I had been informed that she was not feeling well, had been seen by the doctor and that physical observations were due to be taken every four hours. She had not been eating or drinking so was placed on fifteen minute general observations and a fluid chart was commenced. She was noted to have taken some fluids and eaten one biscuit She complained of being cold and was given a blanket. At 6pm her observations showed a pulse 106, blood pressure 93/63 and temperature 36.1. The blood pressure was low compared to the previous reading and the pulse slightly up, but these readings were not significantly abnormal for me to call the doctor back again. At 10pm I was called to Ms. Westerley’s room by agency worker Brian Larson and found her to be on the floor naked and wrapped in a blanket. On touching her legs I found them to be abnormally cold. Her pulse had been tested at 79 blood pressure 68/45. At this point I went back into the office to call the senior nurse for that shift, who was over on Linton Ward.
I can feel my own blood pressure building fast.
Senior nurse. SENIOR FUCKING NURSE. How about an ambulance or at least a doctor?
I drain my glass of whisky and slam it on the table.
‘Jesus!!!’
Mr. overly smooth oily and his young prey turn their heads for a moment. I give them a rabid glare and he looks away quick, she holds it for a second then backs down.
I didn’t come here to be a freak show so I sweep my papers up, stuff them in my bag and head back upstairs.
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