The Go-Away Bird
What happens when two worlds collide?This is a story about me, Clementine, and my friends: a panther called Levi, a pelican called Lola and a turtle called Jimmy. It is about dragons and goblins, my Daddy the King, my Mummy the Queen and Prince Pio my brother. At least that is the way I tell it sometimes when thoughts of the blood, the machetes, the swamp and the fear of Uncle Leonard become too hard to describe.But that was all before I met Ashley, wonderful Ashley. Not that he would ever call himself wonderful in a million years. When he tells you his story you will see what I mean…
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WARREN
FITZGERALD
The Go-Away Bird
blue door
For ‘I’ and the kids of LRC and Kazo, who saved me…in so many ways.
Table of Contents
I live here because I can’t afford to live anywhere else. Well, you wouldn’t live here for any other reason, would you? It’s a hole, but where else can you live in central London for forty quid a week, eh? Nowhere, I tell you. And I’m only here because I was lucky enough to know ’Chelle from my time at the charity, and she moved up north and sublet the place to me. So, yeah, I always have to think twice before answering the buzzer, or turn down the telly and creep to the peephole for a squiz if someone hammers on the door, but…central…forty quid.
Nearly there. Hold on, a couple more minutes.
Surprising I get any students at all when you think about it. I can just imagine their faces as they look up from their A–Zs, reckon they’ve found it…Well, this is Couper Street. They see the tall glass-fronted foyer with the concierge’s (don’t have a go if I’ve spelt that wrong! Not many of you would get it right first time. And as for my pronunciation…there’s only one person who’s allowed to correct my French – you’ll know why when you meet her)…Anyway, where was I…the concierge’s desk with alien green light all round the bottom of it, so the bloke looks like he’s hovering above the metallic turquoise floor in a little spaceship, ready to welcome the residents, or to exterminate the uninvited filth. They see the massive potted plants with polished green leaves that match the spaceship lights; they see the rows of locked pigeonholes, one for each flat…sorry, apartment…lined up behind the concierge and his floating desk, as if he’s standing guard over loads of little safes in a bank vault or something. And they see nothing else in this huge foyer that stretches the length of the block, except for the big cardboard sign in the corner window advertising the fact in blue and yellow that for a mere £475,000 the ‘penthouse’ apartment is still available – I wonder why?! They look impressed, even a bit excited. Then I can imagine their faces as they read the tiny letters on the glass door that say: CATHEDRAL APARTMENTS. So they turn round, looking for Frapper Court. Right street, wrong side. And their faces drop as they see the defaced council sign welcoming them to /rap/e/Court.
Nice.
Why do I find it so difficult to remember that I would’ve found that bloody hilarious when I was their age? Because I seem to take everything so personally these days, I suppose. Because, although I’m no little shrimp to look at – well, not particularly – if I’m honest with you then I’d have to say that I’m a bit scared of the little bastards, dressed in their baseball caps, enormous jeans and huge plastic clocks hanging round their necks, trying to be Flavor Flav or Chuck D. I’m scared of the feeling of humiliation if I get another football smacked into the back of my head, and the laughter that ricochets off the beige hard face of my block, so it’s like even my own windows are dissing me:
No sanctuary for ya, even here, mate!
You can shut up. Call yourself windows! You’re so thin and weak I could push you out with one finger from your grotty metal frames – laugh at me then as you plummet down eight storeys and shatter on the pavement with nothing but a puny hiss. You can’t even keep the rain out half the time, let alone the cold and the noise. Christ, if this was my own place I would’ve been in touch with that nice old bloke from Everest, had him come and ‘fit the best’, had you out on your ear and replaced with some lovely double glazing ages ago.
I tore my screwed-up eyes from the windows of my flat as I ducked into the stairwell of the block. The stench of piss and wet dog slapped me round the chops and made me realize that I’d just been having a barney with a piece of glass!
Don’t worry, Ash, you’re seconds away now.
I took the stairs, of course. I needed the exercise, and I just couldn’t risk the lift. It’s not the getting stuck in there that bothers me. I sometimes wish for that. Then everything would have to stop. I would have to stop for as long as it took. It’s the closest you could get to having the world stop turning for a bit so you could jump off, if you know what I mean. But I wouldn’t, not in that lift, ’cause when my legs got tired I couldn’t sit on that floor knowing what’s been puked, pissed and gobbed on it.
By the time I got to Floor 4, I was already flagging. Man, you’re thirty-nine, not fifty-nine! A door slammed somewhere up at the top of the block and gave me my second wind so I could get to my place before I’d have to pass whoever it was on the stairs coming down. Floor 6, and right on cue the theme music to Casualty blasted from Number 57 so loud that their front door buzzed at me as I flew past. I had absolutely no idea who lived there, never seen them, but I knew exactly what they liked to watch on TV – we all did. Even though there was another floor between me and them, I knew they couldn’t get enough of
