by Ivan Phillips


After he died people said I should get rid. Listen to me! People? Martha said I should get rid.


Martha, the only other person daft enough to stay in the block while they pull the world down around us, her and her lads that is, young Langland, young Rowley. Them boys reckon there’s a fox comes into the flats, they call it their pet, leave it bits of food around the place, on the stairs, on the landing. They swear blind the food goes. That’s why they don’t leave, why Martha won’t take them somewhere else: they’re mad about that fox and she says she’d rather stay put here than have to put up with their tantrums or get them a real pet somewhere else, one that actually needs house-room. So that’s what I owe my last remaining neighbours to, a fox, and an imaginary one at that.

I’ve never seen a fox around here, not in - what is it? - not in thirty-odd years. As if any self-respecting animal would want to pick its way through needles and beer-cans and God knows what else in the hope of finding a clump of old chips or the crust off a pizza. They’ll have to get out in the end, of course, Martha and the boys, fox or no fox. The council want this place down, they keep sending their young men around. I’ve told them, they’ll have to knock it down with me still in it. I’m not going anywhere, not at my age, not now. If they leave it much longer, I’ve said, it’ll fall down without them having to push it, save them a few bob. They smile at this. I’m glad I make them smile.

Anyway, after Sammy went, Martha said I should get rid of the birds, give them to a zoo or something, but how could I? I ask you! I could no more get rid of them birds than I could‘ve got rid of him. I told her if she wasn’t careful I’d give them as a present to her boys. That shut her up! She’s a sweet girl but she wants to learn when to keep her nose out. Sammy made me promise, after all: ‘Look after Shanty, won’t you? Look after him and his ladies.’ And there’s never any point in getting rid. Life gets rid. That’s what it does. It gets rid. I sometimes think that’s all it does.

Eight birds in a little flat like ours, it never made much sense. All the feathers and the smell, and the noise - oh, the noise! And it didn’t seem right, it seemed cruel, like a rotten joke: all these floors up, a view over the city, and they had to stay put, the birds, pacing up and down on their perches, flapping against the ceiling. I made a heck of a fuss when he started it off, but he won me round in the end, like he always did. From the day I first clapped eyes on him till the day I watched his ashes fluff out across the doorway to the Swan, he got his way. He’s still getting it now, isn’t he? Except he’d want to be here. If there was a way back he’d have found it.

It’s not as if he didn’t do things for me. He spent his life with me, God bless him, the poor sod. He was a boy when we first met. He was a boy when he died - an old boy, older than me it seemed for the first time ever, but always a boy. I’m not saying there weren’t others who would’ve spent their lives with me, given half a chance. Oh there were others, there were plenty. And I spent my life with him, too, let’s not forget that: I gave him my life just like he gave me his. But he gave me my girls, no-one else could’ve done that, he gave me Anna and Jane. So I had my girls, he had his parrots. The girls went away, and so did he. But the parrots, the parrots stayed.

I’ve always called them parrots, but they’re not parrots, not really. Or they’re a special sort of parrot. He used to get annoyed when I called them parrots, but I’m damned if I can remember what they are. He used to tell me all the time, spelt it out, wrote it down, but it never stuck, not in my thick head, I always got it wrong. And I’ll never know again now. Ha! It’s funny that. I suppose I could go to a library, look it up or something, get it right. But what’d be the point? They’re parrots to me, always have been, always will be.

Shanty and Perty, Lord and Lady Laceholes, they rule the roost. Him with his big squawking gob and his fuzzy red plumes, her with her sideways looks, her shivery white tail-feathers, her butter-wouldn’t-melt tweet-tweeting. They started taking liberties after Sammy had gone and I was soft enough to let them. I should’ve nipped it in the bud straight off, but I didn’t. I don’t know why. I suppose I didn’t have much energy after the funeral. Maybe widowhood made me lazy? The birds took over anyway. It didn’t take them long. When Sammy was around, he’d have thought nothing of giving Shanty a flick to the beak or a crack to the back of the head, and if Shanty was in line the others were in line, it was as simple as that. But I just sat with my feet up and watched as they started to drift from their perches, spread through the flat, strut around the floor.

Where the paper was falling off the walls with the damp, they scavenged for bedding. Nests started appearing all over the place: on the sideboard, behind the telly, on the top of the fridge, inside the cupboard in the kitchen. Now that made me laugh. I’d been pestering Sammy about that cupboard for years. It was bloody lethal. Good luck to them, I reckoned! But I didn’t laugh when I found them setting up in the lavvy and on my pillow. And when I found Shanty and Perty huddling down in the oven one afternoon, I damn near slammed the door shut and slow-roasted them. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I remembered my promise. And I remembered how, every time I showed him a fresh bruise on my shin, he’d say he’d been meaning to fix that oven door for ages, stop it swinging open. Promises, promises. His and mine.

Perty’s always been Shanty’s special bird. The others are just his bits on the side, bimbos the lot of them, I don’t even know their names. It’s Perty who’s got him where she wants him, or at least that’s how I thought it was until the last few days. Now I’m not so sure. You see, I can read that flirty little madam’s mind and there’s something up, she’s in a mood. They’re not getting on, that much is obvious. They’ve started bickering every hour of the day, pecking and flurrying at each other. Where they used to nuzzle their beaks together and burble quietly for hours on end, now I find them standing with their backs to each other, as far away from each other as they can possibly get.

He spent last night in the kitchen, sulking on top of the fridge, while she sat chewing at her feathers in the shadows behind the telly. She’d almost plucked her chest clean by this morning. And he’s no better. He looks like he’s been through a wash-cycle, his feathers are stuck up all over place, his colours have faded, his beak’s lost its shine. He looks like he hasn’t slept for days. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was having bad dreams. The pair of them look a mess, but it’s not just them. The other six birds are acting weary too. They hardly move all day. They don’t make a sound. It’s like they’re sickening for something. I’m starting to get worried.

So I take myself off to the Swan for a lunch-time snifter. It’s what I tend to do when I’m fed up or worried. If I’m honest, I’m there most afternoons. It gets me out of the flat and away from the birds for an hour or so, gives me a chance to see some people, hear some chatter. I don’t see Martha and the boys very often these days. Maybe they’ve moved out after all? And there’s nothing on the telly. I’ve run out of things to say to myself. The view out over the city just makes me want to cry.

The pub’s the nearest thing I’ve got to a gravestone for him, it’s where he spent most of our life together and it’s where he ended up. I go there to talk to him, to ask his advice. It’s changed a lot since he used to sup here. There are more lights, the music’s louder, the drinkers are all school-children, or they seem to be to me. I can see them gawping at me from time to time, trying not to, talking about me, nudging each other, muttering, laughing, looking concerned. Every so often a group of youngsters, usually the girls, will make a comment along the lines of, ‘look at that mad old cow,’ or, ‘someone should do something,’ or, ‘someone should tell her,’ or, ‘I so hope I don’t end up like that’. I can’t say any of it bothers me. My skin’s too thick for that. I’m old and lonely and I smell like a parrot cage. But I was a good wife - I’m still a good wife - and I never harmed anyone. I tried to be a good mum too. Ask my girls. Ask my girls.

It’s getting dark when I walk back across the dust between the pub and the flats. There are no people around, never are these days. I stop to have a quick sneck at a burned out car in the ruins of the shopping precinct, it’s still smouldering a bit, giving off heat. There’s a flat cap on the back seat, an old-fashioned one like Sammy used to wear. It’s not even singed and I think about picking it up, taking it back with me. But it’s not in me, is it? The sun’s setting behind me. The way it catches on what’s left of the glass in the tower-block, it makes it look new again, like its the first to go up, not the last to come down, like we’re about to move in and start living all over again.

My lungs are whistling by the time I get to the landing, giving me jip like my ankles, my puffy old knees, so I rest up when I get there and look across at our door. Our door! All the times I’ve been through it, one way and the other. When block was full of voices. And now that it’s full of… what? Full of nothing. The door’s ajar. I forgot to close it. The key’s still in the lock. I go cold with panic. The air in the flat’s just a thick mess of feathers, they tumble and swirl, every colour in the rainbow. But all I can see is the fox. A fox! It’s definitely a fox. It’s standing in Sammy’s armchair, smiling at me with big green eyes, his eyes, wagging its brush like an eager pet dog. As it slinks between my legs with a flash of brassy orange, it drops something at my feet, almost gently, like a present. I look down and see Shanty. I stoop to pick him up. There’s a dark flush of blood at the back of his neck and his heart flickers hard against the palm of my hand.










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