Chapter 14
Here they come, the wee chaps. He listens, enjoying the sound of it, as they begin skittering on the concrete outside the shed door. Something aye comforting about the noise of them pecking the ground, tapping, the odd time, on the side of the shed.
Until recently there’d just been the one — probably the same patient guy that’s been coming all the while — but he’s obvious gone and let dab to all his mates that they can come and eat here, and now there’s a whole mob of them. Good for him, no keeping it all to himself. Obviously no an English bird. A genuine Southsider, that sparrow. It’s mostly just bread he’s buying now, each few days when he works himself up to leaving the shed, and he keeps a couple of slices from each loaf aside to put out for them. Sometimes, when he hears them arrive and gets open the door latch, he lays a short trail of crumbs from the outside, into the shed, to see if he can get any of them to come in. There’s one time, he managed it. This tiny head, poking in the door and then following the line, unaware, or otherwise unbothered by the great hulking creature that was keeping still and watching him from the darkness under the table. Sometimes as well he tries to sneak a look outside at them, but each time he does they all fly off, and he has to wait a few minutes until the noise starts again: that small fluttery sound of them out there, getting beasted into their breakfast.
Chapter 15
A dark red car is turning off the high street. It comes past the park and the cemetery, slowing a moment for a pair of old women to cross the road, then continues on until it pulls into a residential street, and a few seconds later parks up against the kerb. A short bald man gets out, followed by a larger, younger man in a pullover. They come through the gate to Mick’s house and stop by the front door. The older man knocks firmly, while the other peers into the living room window. There is no response from inside the house so the older man hunkers down and looks through the letterbox. In a moment he stands up and pushes an envelope through the flap. Then the two men, without speaking, go back through the gate, get into the car and leave.
On the other side of the house, in the shed, Mick is sitting up close to the radio. It is almost out again, the sound distorting quietly like voices inside a hull. He needs batteries — all the ones that were in the house are used up; more bread as well; cash. For now he clicks the radio off and gets the few remaining pages of the paper over for another read, nothing else to occupy his mind now that the morning is by and the sparrows have finished their breakfast and left.
FIRST TENANTS MOVE IN TO NEW HOUSING ASSOCIATION DEVELOPMENT
SLOVAK ROMA COMMUNITY GIVES A HAND TO SOUTHSIDE CLEAN-UP
LOCAL LOLLIPOP MAN HAS REAL STAYING POWER
He gives a read of that one:
Britain’s top football juggler broke the record for keepy-uppies on Tuesday, when he kept a ball aloft for six hours at Debenhams in the St Enoch’s city-centre shopping mall.
Sadly, his effort was declared unofficial because there was no representative from the Guinness Book of World Records present at the event, although Graeme, 45, has still raised thousands for charity.
Afterwards he said: ‘I could have kept going but I had to stop because the store was closing.’
Mick gives a wee smile. Good on ye, pal. The thought of him there in the Debenhams, a crowd of skiving weans and confused old hens gathering round. 42,500 keepy-uppies. Fucksake. That’s just mental. Interesting but, these stories that you hear. This other one he minds — about a restaurant owner with a rat problem: they’re eating into his food stores and frightening the customers. See but these rats are too canny for the traps, and when they do eat the poison it isn’t strong enough to kill them, so the guy decides he’s going to leave his cat there the night in the hope the rats will start crapping it and scarper. So he locks the cat in the restaurant, and when he comes in the next morning he finds it out the back court, on top of the beer crates, devoured, only the poor creature’s carcass left, and even then some of the bones are away.
Where’d he heard that story? Robbie, was it? Aye, it was — he’d been telling them while they were watching the TV, Lynn shifting about on the settee with a look on her like she’d just sat on a dod of crap, and Jenna elbowing at Robbie telling him it’s no an appropriate story to be saying; but him carrying on anyway, nay doubt enjoying putting the mix in.
Probably he’s been calling, Robbie. Likely he will have gave Craig a call too, asking him what’s the story with the da.
He doesn’t want to think about any of it though. It’s more than he’s up to the now; what he needs to concentrate on is this immediate situation in front of him. First things first, he needs cash, and that means bulling up to go into the bank to see about an overdraft.
He walks quickly, taking the back ways where he can until he has to come out onto the high street. He goes a short cut before the Empress, through a tenement close. There’s nobody about. The door to a garbage cage is flapped open and the wheelie bins strewn all at angles inside it from the binmen coming collecting the morning. He comes down a side street and stops at the entrance to the high street, eyeing left and right. It’s hoaching. It must be lunchtime: schoolweans outside the chip shop; traffic hurtling — and then, just his bloody luck, he keeks the woman from next door, pushing a pram on the far pavement. He retreats back into the side street, head down, observing the feet. Maybe she wouldn’t recognize him even. There is some sort of oil smear down the one trouser leg, he notices, starting above the knee and staining all the way down to his shoes. Perfect. See there’s him trying to keep the head down and remain unnoticed, but just look at the state of him — he’s bloody bogging — he may as well be wheeling her along after him with a flashing light on top the coffin.
He looks up and watches the neighbour away down the pavement; the messages done, off back now to get on with the business of looking after the snapper, the husband no about, seemingly. And where is the husband? How come you never see him about? Easy to think the worst sometimes but maybe it’s just that he’s off on the rigs or something, you never know. Cathy would have known, sure enough, but otherwise you never know. There is a lull in the traffic and pedestrians, and he steps out onto the pavement.
When he gets there, the bank is queued out. He decides that he’s best waiting until after lunch, and turns the other way down the street.
Which is how he finds himself in the library. It isn’t what he intended, but he’d no been intending anything, and it looked quiet inside, so in he went.
She’s very helpful, the girl at the desk. He can’t have made himself awful clear when he came in, stood there staring just, not knowing if he needed a ticket or anything to go in.
‘Can I help ye there?’
‘No. Aye, well, see I’m just hoping to have a look round at the books.’
‘Ye been here before?’
‘No.’
‘Come on well and I’ll get ye up and running.’
She lifts the desk counter and he follows her as she gets showing him all the different sections while he shuffles behind picking books out at random, trying to seem like he’s interested in them and he isn’t just in there because he’s too feart of everybloodywhere else. And it’s good too, somebody being kindly that he doesn’t know, who doesn’t know him, who isn’t sticking the whole pity routine on him. By the time she leaves him at it, he has a whole pile of books that he hasn’t a clue what they are. He sits down and opens one of them, all the time looking about to see if anybody is watching him. No danger of that but. It’s pretty empty in here. There is a guy that looks like he’s a scaffer asleep with a newspaper spread out under his forehead, and three old hens at a table in the corner, each with a copy of the same book. Quite an animated conversation they’re having.