Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [132]
“Same old thing. Bit of this, bit of that.”
“Ah.” Dumb.
“So …” The wombat nuzzled under her arm. “How are you, Jaffy? I hear you’ve got yourself a lovely little bird place.”
“It’s coming on,” I said.
“A haven of tranquillity!” Jamrach announced floridly.
“Can I have a look at it?” she asked. “Are you going back there?”
“If you want,” I said. There was a faint, pounding beat inside me: take care, take care, take care.
“Oh good!” She smiled, jumped up and handed the poor wombat over to Mr. Jamrach. We left it to its fate and she walked back to the shop with me. “Isn’t this funny?” she said. “You’re taller than me.”
“By a head at least.”
She put her arm through mine just the way she used to sometimes, just as if we were back four or five years ago and nothing had ever happened. Why is she doing this? Does it mean anything? I was walking fast. Every now and then she ran a few steps to keep up with me and the sight of her old, scuffed boots when I looked down filled me with such tenderness I could have cried.
“Is it far?” she asked. “I’m supposed to be at work in twenty minutes.”
“Not far. See the yellow sign?”
Jack flew to my shoulder as soon as I opened the door. She jumped away with a little scream as his fierce black face flapped towards us.
“So this is it,” I said proudly.
She laughed. “All this is yours, Jaffy. All this!” And I was guilty all over again for being alive and having all this. But she meant no harm. She flitted about admiring it all, the cages, the parrakeets, the parrots, the Java sparrow, my pictures stuck all over any bit of spare space. “This is nice,” she kept saying, and when we stepped into the yard she clapped her hands. “It’s so beautiful,” she cried, running up one of the gravel paths, turning, running back. I’d planted a rockery and the campanula was running everywhere. The linnets were in song.
“What’s it like where you are?” I asked her.
“Horrible,” she said. “Stinks.” She was standing next to me by the door. “Look at you,” she said, “you with the bird on your shoulder, matches your hair. What a pair you are.”
“Can you bear to see me?” I hadn’t meant to say it.
She became very serious, put her hands on my shoulders and stared in my eyes. “Is that what you think?”
“I don’t know what I think.”
She went on staring and my eyes started to water. “I thank God every day that you survived,” she said very quickly, then turned away and walked briskly back to the front door.
“Where are you going?” I dashed after her.
“I have to go to work.” She turned with the door open. The street outside was settling into its evening.
“But you’re coming back?”
“What do you think?” she said. She was smiling. Then gone.
At midnight she returned, unpainted, like the girl who ran about the docks with us, like her brother. She never went away again.
ll this was a long time ago.
Things are very different now. You can buy fruit in a sealed can, and meat from America; and the Highway’s going up in the world. St. George’s East they call it nowadays, but people around here still call it the Highway, and I daresay always will. They’ve closed down a lot of our familiar haunts, and they’ve cleaned up all from here down to the docks. The bridge of sighs, where people used to chuck themselves over—that’s gone, and Meng’s with the old Chinaman on the door. Spooney’s went years ago. Still a good few of the old dives and dens left though. Not that I’m in them much these days. Too many responsibilities. My fifth decade gathers on the horizon like weather at sea. There is a place on my arm which is eternally bruised. The other night I caught a glimpse of my face in the glass and it pulled me up short. Didn’t look like me. And when I look at the faces of my friends, I see that they’re all changing too, as are the streets outside.
Sometimes, waking, I forget where I am. It’s the sounds that bring me back. There’s an alehouse not far away. When I float through to consciousness, its sing-song ding-dong comes to me from afar through the void, like a ship through fog. It reassures me to hear its sentimental din