Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [14]
Friday, nearly a week after I started, he sent me and Tim over to the shop after it was shut, to muck out the birds and feed the fish and clean up a new batch of oil lamps that had come in filthy on a ship from the Indies.
Jamrach’s shop was on the Highway, two big windows and the name up twice: Jamrach’s Jamrach’s, it said. It was a late, dark afternoon, and I was weary in those first days, all of a dream with the days and nights, biffing and banging about between the yard and Spoony’s and home, and hardly ever seeing Ma because she was on funny shifts in the sugar factory. The shop was a dusty rambleaway sort of place, and it seemed unearthly as we roamed around it with a lantern casting lurching shadows, thick with presence. Every inch was crammed. The walls came in on you. In the centre by the stairs stood a mannequin, a naked woman, black hair piled on top of her head. She gave me the creeps. Japanese, Tim said. “Look, you can move her arms and legs.” And he twisted her into such a horrible pose she looked like a demon in the jumping light.
Inwards was a warren of small rooms and steps and narrow passages, the walls crammed full of pictures: idols, devils, dragons, flowers with curious fevered lips. Mountains and fountains, palaces and pearls. All came to me dreamlike. A green god watched me from a throne. There was a room full of suits of armour, a giant gong, knives, daggers, Japanese silk slippers, a blood-red shining harp with the fierce head of a dragon with eyes that bulged. Tim showed me around with such pride you’d have thought he’d personally found and conducted home each treasure from its far-flung source. “Stuff from all four corners!” He threw out his arms. “Know what we had once? Shrunken heads! Human! Looked like monkeys. That’s what they do in them places, cut off your head and wear you round their waist like a … like a … looka this. That’s a demon’s tongue from Mongolia, that is. And see that over there on the wall? That’s a death mask. From Tibet. Bet you wouldn’t dare put it on, would you?”
“No, I bloody wouldn’t,” I said.
“Dare you.”
“No.”
“Go on. Double dare.”
“You put it on,” I said.
“I already have. I went out in it once. This old lady nearly dropped down dead on the corner of Baroda Place.”
Liar. I didn’t say anything.
The birds and fish were at the back. Fish from China, orange and white and black, fat, mouthy creatures with big round eyes that stuck out like milky warts on either side of their heads. White cockatoos, cramped and patient, reasonable, amiable birds that watched with every appearance of deep interest as we went about our work. They’d been moved to new quarters and we were scouring down their old. Deeply mucky they were too, the ground caked thick with hard, white droppings that had to be scraped off with a chisel. It was getting on for half past five by the time we’d finished the cages, and we still had the fish to feed and the box to unpack.
“You hungry?” Tim asked. “Why don’t I pop out and get us a couple of saveloys?”
“You ain’t gonna be long, Tim?” I said.
“Two ticks,” he said, and off he went, leaving me alone there, locking me in “for safety,” he said.
It didn’t take long to feed the fish. I was done with that and halfway through polishing the lamps, wondering with each one whether a genie would appear and offer me three wishes, when I felt the first creepings of fear. The lantern stood on the counter, casting a sombre glow that called up flickering shadows from all nooks and corners. Each lamp as I cleaned it joined its fellows in a small neat community on the floor. I was sitting cross-legged with my duster beside the box, reaching in for the next lamp and thinking bad thoughts about Tim Linver. Suddenly, the hairs on the back of my neck came very slowly and coldly to attention, a sensation not unlike a thin finger drawing itself from the centre of my skull down to the top of my spine. It surprised me. I had not been feeling particularly afraid. The shutters were pulled