quite relaxing, retaining a little of the weight of the head with the muscles of the neck, ready to stand, ready to respond.
âStay.â
Windows on this side of the building have popped in the aftershocks, burst from their frames by the twisting and the strain, going off like gunshots, followed some seconds later by a distant tinkle of shards reaching the street, shards to slice open a skull. Richard settles himself at an empty window frame, his backside propped on an easy chair, his left hand laid upwards on the sill like a crabâs claw, reddish-blue and hardened, a little mound of crumbs in the palm. The right hand waits, charged with more crumbs to toss and tempt with.
It is early days in Eden. The air is sweet and warm and the world is quiet but the only birds to come are the urban invaders, the birds that came with the people who built the city. The starlings are gangsters in flashy suits, strutting like hit men on the far edge of the sill, their sword-beaks jabbing at each other in perpetual squabble. But they are cowards, greater cowards than the house sparrows, who for all their being just dowdy balls of fluff and feather, hop past the gangster brutes and are rewarded for their courage with fat-laden crumbs, crumbs to fire a sparrowâs tiny high-revving heart. But they remain shy of the claw. They hop to within inches of it, then pause, and Richard holds his breath and wills himself not to cough, but they sense somehow that the hand is animate, that it constitutes a threat. None has yet pecked from it.
In twenty minutes the starlings have cleaned up the more distant scatter, the sparrows the near stuff. Twice Richard has tossed out replenishments with his good hand and the birds have withdrawn, hopped back with instantaneous, preciselysynchronised alarm. Richard becomes immersed in the birds, the chance-driven miracles, miniature feathered dinosaurs with hollowed bones, Darwinâs brilliant, pointless children.
A city pigeon lands heavily on the sill, disturbing the warring starlings. Greyish brown, it has one good pink foot and one thatâs clenched to a sort of upturned fist, so the bird lurches as it crosses the sill towards the crumbs. It pauses only once to cock its head and eye Richardâs hand as if for final confirmation, then unhesitatingly it takes the last two drunken steps and stoops to peck. And through the hard, scarred and puckered skin Richard feels the insistent little hammer of the beak, and the muscles of his face turn up the corners of his lips and lift his grey and whiskered cheeks and crease the flesh around his eyes and the dog who youâd have said was sleeping senses something changing and flicks up its eyes to see the man is smiling and it thumps its tail and the birds take off. As one.
Richard sighs as the tension of concentration slides from him and throws the last of his crumbs through the window frame. âGood boy, come here,â though the dog has anticipated the call and has his head already against Richardâs thigh and is being patted in the luxuriant fur of its neck.
âA cigarette, Friday, a glass of wine, and then tea time, I think.â He jams a Rothmans into the V of his claw, lights it and draws on it cautiously, wary of the paroxysms of coughing that twice have left him curled on the floor too weak to move for minutes. Once Friday pawed at his shoulder as he lay weak and incapable, pawed with such vigour that he tore a hole in theshiny parchment of Richardâs skin and drew blood that soaked into the thick pile of his dressing gown.
The wine seeps goodness into him. He can feel easing of something in tissues far down in his body and his mind. It is not the first drink of the day but it is the first to tip him over the base level of need into the zone of pleasure. The knack is to stay there as long as possible, for the dog as much as for himself.
âFetch the lead,â says Richard and the dog lollops across the room and
âStay.â
Windows on this side of the building have popped in the aftershocks, burst from their frames by the twisting and the strain, going off like gunshots, followed some seconds later by a distant tinkle of shards reaching the street, shards to slice open a skull. Richard settles himself at an empty window frame, his backside propped on an easy chair, his left hand laid upwards on the sill like a crabâs claw, reddish-blue and hardened, a little mound of crumbs in the palm. The right hand waits, charged with more crumbs to toss and tempt with.
It is early days in Eden. The air is sweet and warm and the world is quiet but the only birds to come are the urban invaders, the birds that came with the people who built the city. The starlings are gangsters in flashy suits, strutting like hit men on the far edge of the sill, their sword-beaks jabbing at each other in perpetual squabble. But they are cowards, greater cowards than the house sparrows, who for all their being just dowdy balls of fluff and feather, hop past the gangster brutes and are rewarded for their courage with fat-laden crumbs, crumbs to fire a sparrowâs tiny high-revving heart. But they remain shy of the claw. They hop to within inches of it, then pause, and Richard holds his breath and wills himself not to cough, but they sense somehow that the hand is animate, that it constitutes a threat. None has yet pecked from it.
In twenty minutes the starlings have cleaned up the more distant scatter, the sparrows the near stuff. Twice Richard has tossed out replenishments with his good hand and the birds have withdrawn, hopped back with instantaneous, preciselysynchronised alarm. Richard becomes immersed in the birds, the chance-driven miracles, miniature feathered dinosaurs with hollowed bones, Darwinâs brilliant, pointless children.
A city pigeon lands heavily on the sill, disturbing the warring starlings. Greyish brown, it has one good pink foot and one thatâs clenched to a sort of upturned fist, so the bird lurches as it crosses the sill towards the crumbs. It pauses only once to cock its head and eye Richardâs hand as if for final confirmation, then unhesitatingly it takes the last two drunken steps and stoops to peck. And through the hard, scarred and puckered skin Richard feels the insistent little hammer of the beak, and the muscles of his face turn up the corners of his lips and lift his grey and whiskered cheeks and crease the flesh around his eyes and the dog who youâd have said was sleeping senses something changing and flicks up its eyes to see the man is smiling and it thumps its tail and the birds take off. As one.
Richard sighs as the tension of concentration slides from him and throws the last of his crumbs through the window frame. âGood boy, come here,â though the dog has anticipated the call and has his head already against Richardâs thigh and is being patted in the luxuriant fur of its neck.
âA cigarette, Friday, a glass of wine, and then tea time, I think.â He jams a Rothmans into the V of his claw, lights it and draws on it cautiously, wary of the paroxysms of coughing that twice have left him curled on the floor too weak to move for minutes. Once Friday pawed at his shoulder as he lay weak and incapable, pawed with such vigour that he tore a hole in theshiny parchment of Richardâs skin and drew blood that soaked into the thick pile of his dressing gown.
The wine seeps goodness into him. He can feel easing of something in tissues far down in his body and his mind. It is not the first drink of the day but it is the first to tip him over the base level of need into the zone of pleasure. The knack is to stay there as long as possible, for the dog as much as for himself.
âFetch the lead,â says Richard and the dog lollops across the room and
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