A Funeral for an Owl Read online

  Shamayal shied away from the ripe, damp-enhanced stench of disposable nappies and decomposing vegetables.

  “You’ve no idea how happy I am to see you.”

  “Remember your little friend?” Reflected in the light of a lamp, the old man’s watery eyes were bright. He blinked frequently, as if it was part of the process of dispensing words. “She was a sweet little thing. All that bushy hair.”

  “I still miss her.” Jim appeared to consult the moon. “Summer holidays, especially.”

  Thinking himself undetected, Shamayal had been edging forwards when the old man turned to nod. “This your son, is he?”

  Jim did a double take and then said, “One of my pupils, Shamayal.”

  “Shamayal. What does that stand for?”

  Shamayal stepped into a circle of reflected light, blurred at the edges. “Hey! It stands for no crap, old man.”

  As Jim stabbed him with a look, the tramp tipped onto the toes of his worn shoes, paying no notice to the puddles. “Ah, very good! They all know how to stick up for themselves these days, don’t they? I suppose you teach them that. Life skills they call it, don’t they? I didn’t b-bother with school. My dear old mum taught me everything I needed to know.”

  “Is this still a good place for you, Bins?”

  “Where else would I go?”

  “Well.” Jim squeezed the old guy’s arm. “I need to get this young man home.”

  Shamayal could barely wait until they were back in the car to air his disgust: “He stinks, man!”

  “Bins didn’t seem to know you. How is that? He knows everyone.”

  “Like I told you, I keep myself to myself. I don’t like no busy-bodies.”

  “Bins? He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “Whatever!” As they pulled away, Shamayal detected sock among the damp smells circulating in the warm air from the heater. “He’s rank, man. You know he goes through people’s rubbish?”

  “How do you think he got his name?” Shamayal heard his teacher sigh. “Bins is one of life’s special souls.”

  “You can say that again! He’s scope.”

  “That’s not a very kind term.”

  “Better than spazzo. That’s what you used to call people who ain’t right in the head, innit?”

  A moment passed. The rubber of the wiper blades screeched as it skimmed the curve of glass. The night had almost cried itself to sleep.

  “I always thought it must be nice, being in a world of your own.”

  “You sayin’ he’s fakin’ it?”

  “Nothing’s as simple as that.”

  “Then what?”

  “They wanted to send him to a day centre to sew mailbags, but Bins was always clear what his role in life was. Every day, from early morning until the light faded, he would sit in the same place in the middle of the estate, dressed in galoshes, fishing rod in hand.”

  “You’re kiddin’ me!”

  “‘Catch anything today?’ I’d ask. ‘Alright, Jim Stevens,’ he’d smile. You’ve heard how he talks?”

  “Yeah! Like his tongue’s too big for his mouth!”

  The way that his teacher ignored his tone made Shamayal feel shamed. “‘They’re not biting,’ he’d say, blaming it on his latest batch of maggots, or the footie being a bit on the noisy side. Never that he was more than two miles from water and that the nearest fish was keeping warm under a light at the chippy.” Jim sighed loudly, shaking his head. “And now they’ve taken his license away, poor bugger.”

  Shamayal scoffed, “There wasn’t no license!” Was his teacher that gullible?

  “Perhaps someone upset him. Perhaps they moved him on. I don’t know.” Jim nudged the windscreen wipers off. “You really don’t know him?”

  The boy pulled a face. “He’s just some old man, innit? Don’t see what he’s got to do with me.”

  Turning onto the main drag, they drove over the road that bridged the railway; a divide as clear as barbed-wire fencing, separating the concrete of the estate from the neat grid of bay-windowed houses it overlooked.

  Shamayal adopted a game show host’s voice to read the floodlit signs. “DANGER. Private Property. KEEP OUT, Entry only with permit to work.” He turned to Jim. “I must be breakin’ some law or other.”

  “I grew up listening to talk about the day we’d leave for a house on the other side of the tracks.” Turning into a narrow side road Jim swore loudly. “Someone’s in my parking space. Permits don’t guarantee you anything round here.”

  “This is you? No shit? You could of got further away from the trains.”

  “You’d think so.”

  Jim drove a couple of lampposts down and then, throwing his elbow over the back of his seat, reversed into a space, a practised manoeuvre.

  Outside the car, Shamayal said, “Nice,” nodding to the beat in his head at all the little front gardens and picket fences, their tidy tiled paths. It lived up to the tree-lined road of semi-detached houses he’d imagined teachers living in. “What’s that?” He pointed to a long-legged tree clipped into a neat round while Jim grappled with his keys.

  “It’s a herb called a bay.”

  “For cookin’ an’ that?” He rubbed a leaf between his fingers and sniffed. “Don’t smell of much. What’s it taste of?”

  “I don’t know. Bay, I suppose.” Jim yawned, the door sticking slightly. “Home! I’m knackered.”

  Where Shamayal expected to see a wide hallway and a staircase, there was a small lobby and two more front doors. Jim flipped a few keys over, selecting another.

  Shamayal stood shipwrecked, dripping self-consciously, awaiting rescue. Inside, the downstairs flat was smaller than his own place. Corsa; half a house: teachers’ salaries don’t buy that much.

  Ahead of him, Jim was pointing to the first door on the left. “The sofa’s in there. Take your shoes off. I’ll find you a sleeping bag and something dry to put on.”

  The boy peeled off his socks, hoping the smell would be mistaken for damp. Left them tucked inside his shoes on the mat.

  Jim thrust a bundle into his hands, the towel on top smelling of fabric softener. “Bathroom’s up the hall. Sling your wet stuff over the radiator.”

  He hesitated outside the living room, taking in the haven of gadgetry, the piles of video games. “Wicked!” Shamayal felt wired. “Mind if I play Medal of Honour?”

  “Yes, I do! Three o’clock is time for bed.”

  “What’s this, Sir?” Stepping forwards the boy balanced the bundle on the arm of the sofa and picked up a pair of binoculars from the coffee table. Holding their lenses to his eyes, he spun around playfully, his vision blurred. “You from MI5 or somethink?”

  Jim’s bristle was unmistakable. “Would you mind putting them in their case?”

  Shamayal turned them over. “These are proper battered.”

  “They might look old, but they’re very precious. My mother gave them to me.”

  The boy hung them around his teacher’s neck solemnly. “Then you shouldn’t leave them lyin’ around.”

  Half an hour later Shamayal was jolted awake by the sound of glass shattering.

  “Who’s there?” Finding he was unable to move, the boy panicked - the Ralegh Boyz must have tied his legs together - before he remembered he was in a sleeping bag on Teacher-Jim’s sofa. He had thought he was beyond sleep but it seemed he had drifted off. “You broken somethink, Sir?” he called out.

  “I thought it was you,” came an alien voice from the dark.

  They appeared at their respective doors. Jim, bleary-eyed, was stuffing his arms into the sleeves of a dressing gown. The fact that his teacher seemed on edge unnerved Shamayal. Looking towards the front door, he saw that the security chain was still in place. “Is there some other way in?”

  “Go back to bed,” Jim instructed, reaching for the kitchen light switch. “I’ll see to this.”

  Bright shards lay scattered on the white tile.

  “You must have one of them polterghosts. Hey
, you don’t wanna go in there with no shoes -”

  Jim stooped, picking up two of the largest fragments by their edges. He examined them closely in the palm of his hand. “Damn!” Straightening up, Jim stood one foot on top of the other, wobbling.

  Shamayal saw the bloody trail: too late. “You got a pair of tweezers? I’ll sort that, no worries.”

  “I’ll sort it, alright!”

  Jesus! “Hey!” He backed off. “Forget I’m even here.”

  CHAPTER 3: JIM - SUMMER 1990 - WANDSWORTH PRISON

  There had been no false illusions: from as early as Jim could recall his father Frank had been a temporary presence. His second home - as he called it - was Wandsworth, a credential he shared with one of the Great Train Robbers. Jim’s brother Nick - older by six years - had been shoe-horned into the role of the man of the house. Both boys were monitored for signs that they were taking after their dad, as vigorously as their scalps had once been checked for head lice. Shortly after Nick reached the age of sixteen, Jean ironed and folded his clothes for the last time.

  “As long as you’re here, you’ll be a bad influence on Jim. Your brother’s smart. He’s still got a chance.”

  Named as the reason for Nick’s ex-communication, a stunned Jim was the recipient of his brother’s venom. Nick spat on the doormat before he slung his bag over one shoulder and loped away. Agape, Jim had begged, “Mum, tell him you didn’t mean it! You’ve got to stop him!”

  “No, Jim. This is the way it’s got to be.” Jean herded him away from the door and closed it firmly. The patch of white-yolked spit would stay there, stepped over, until the rain swept in diagonally to wash its imprint away. “If the neighbours ask, you’re to tell them your brother’s left home.”

  “If Nick goes, I go!” Jim protested, knowing his threat improbable - if not downright impossible - to carry out.

  He packed a bag, used it as a punchbag and stuffed its contents back into a drawer before hunger lured him towards the smell of bangers and mash.

  “I can’t watch over you all hours. I’ve got to earn a living. But, make no mistake: if you choose to be like him…” Jim wrapped his foot around the closest leg of the chair that had been his brother’s. Mid-sentence, his mother seemed to relent, placing her knife and fork among the debris of her meal and reaching out to ruffle his hair. “You’re my last chance.”

  Although Jim didn’t know it, the decision that had seemed spontaneous was brutal, causing Jean no end of heartache as she lay in her bed alone at night listening to her ten-year-old son vent his anger. And no end of earache when they next visited his dad to break the news.

  “What chance does Nick stand now?” The boy tensed as his father exploded; face crimson, brow veined, missiles of spit landing on the table. “He’s got no choice but to go robbing.”

  “Listen here, Frank.” Jean Stevens jabbed her finger, as only a woman can when she is surrounded by CCTV and prison guards. “Do you think it was easy for me? Nick had a choice, same as you, and I’ve given him dozens of last chances. Don’t try telling me he has to steal while I’m working all hours. If you were at home you’d have been entitled to your say, but I’m not budging - and there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it!”

  As she steered Jim towards the exit, he felt her entire body trembling. For the first time since she’d shown his brother the door, Jim experienced something close to pride for the way his mother had stood up to his father, but the only words he could summon were, “Alright, Mum?”

  Shock erupted, expelled under the guise of a laugh. “Christ Almighty, that was some speech!” She clutched her handbag to her stomach and fumbled with the clasp. “Look at me, rubber-fingers. Light us a ciggie, will you, love?”

  “I don’t smoke, Mum.” Jim popped the fastening open, unsure if she was testing him.

  “Course you don’t, love. You’re so grown up, I forget who I’m talking to.”

  Cigarette placed between quivering lips, the contents of the matchbox rattled as Jean nudged its cardboard drawer open. Just as she produced a flame the head broke away, fizzling out like a miniature rocket.

  “Give it here!” Jim scraped a match the full length of the box several times, inhaling the gunpowder smell. He cupped the flame and Jean bent her knees, pulling back her hair as he offered it to the end of her cigarette.

  “Get yourself a hobby,” she said, calmed after an extended drag. “Something to keep you out of trouble.”

  With that advice echoing, a strap looped around the metal railings caught Jim’s eye. “What’s this?” He reached up to unhook whatever it happened to be. The gadget’s twin barrels felt perfectly balanced as his hands curved to their shape. Raising the lenses to his eyes, Jim’s vision blurred.

  Jean blew a nicotine plume. “Binoculars. Nice ones by the look of it - although someone’s had good use out of them. No, not at the prison windows, Jim! You’ll have us arrested. Try up there instead.”

  “Where?”

  She spun him round by the shoulders then pointed to the branches of a tree. “A pair of doves.”

  “They’re not doves: they’re pigeons!”

  “Same difference,” Jean shrugged, doing the twist to crush the stub of her cigarette.

  “Doves don’t lie in wait under the railway bridge and crap on your school blazer.”

  “Don’t use that word!” Her voice suggested she was trying not to crack up.

  “What word, Mum?” All innocence.

  “I’ll what word? you.” She set a brisk pace down Heathfield Road in the direction of the common without a glance over her shoulder. “Hang those things up where you found them, love. Someone will be back for them later.”

  Finders keepers, was Jim’s motto. Testing his jacket pocket for size, he found it lacking.

  “Course, it was pigeons that almost drove your granddad insane.”

  “How come?” The boy dawdled two steps behind, eyes trained on the back of his mum’s head.

  “There was this one pigeon sat on the roof of his house who’d start his noise the minute the sun was up. If you ever wondered what time sunrise was, your granddad would be the one to ask. ‘It was four o’clock this morning! Four-oh-clock. I’m going to get a gun and shoot the little bugger!’ he’d say…”

  Come on, Granddad, help me out. Jim’s only other option was to slip the binoculars inside his jacket.

  “…You see, the chimney acted as a loudspeaker. There was a fireplace in every room, so there was no escaping the noise. Your granddad would leap out of bed and shout up the chimney, ‘If you don’t stop that racket by the count of three, I’m going to light a fire and burn your sorry arse!’” By then, Jim’s mum, vibrating like a leaf, had to lean against the railings to compose herself. Jim was conscious of the bulge in his jacket. With one arm bent, the binoculars nestled in the crook of his elbow. Still wiping the tears from her eyes, Jean demanded, “Why are you holding yourself funny?”

  He licked his lips. “I’m not -”

  “Your shoulders are all stiff. Look.”

  “I was only laughing at your story.” Stealthily, Jim lowered his arm, trapping the binoculars against his body, and stuck his hand into his pocket as far as it would reach.

  “You miss Granddad, don’t you?”

  Jim felt that the old man was winking at him. “S’pose.” He winked back.

  A week later, left to his own devices much of the time, Jim had mastered the binoculars.

  “For Pete’s sake!” Jean barked from the kitchen. “JIM!”

  “What?” he yelled non-committally from his kneeling position on the sofa.

  “Not what? ‘Yes, Mum!’”

  “Yes, Mum.”

  “I don’t expect to come home after I’ve been out working all day and find the breakfast dishes in the sink! Was what you were doing so important that you couldn’t spare two minutes?” He heard the sound of running water. “The cornflakes have set like concrete. I’ll have to let them soak. JIM!”

  Her voice
right behind him now, Jim secreted the binoculars on the windowsill behind the curtains before turning to face her. She was standing there, her folded arms pushing her bosom directly into his eye-line.

  “Who are you spying on?”

  “No one.” Standard-issue reflex-reaction.

  As she held out one hand, palm up, one breast sagged. “Let’s have them.”

  The idea of the binoculars being taken away was unbearable. In truth, his main interest up until then wasn’t birds of the feathered variety. Ever since he’d seen his first episode of Baywatch and watched C J Parker run in slow motion - boobs swaying as her elbows pumped, her beach-damp pony-tail streaming, mouth pouting - his dreams had been invaded by her, diving into the shallows, coming to his rescue. That had been the beginning of his fascination with women. Because they didn’t know they were being observed, Jim saw them in their natural environment, marvelling how much work went into looking that natural. Rollers, razors, wax and other instruments of torture procured from Superdrug. Miracle bras that shored everything up and squeezed it all together. There were no Pamela Andersons in Ralegh Grove - wrong climate for red swimsuits - but what Jim saw terrified him.

  Through the lenses, he witnessed comings and goings previously concealed. Men who visited women who weren’t their wives in the middle of the day. Money exchanging hands on doorsteps. Packages exchanging hands in bathrooms. Items secreted on windowsills where people thought they were hidden from view. Private Gardens of Eden: tomatoes growing side by side with cannabis; coloured underpants strung across balconies like bunting; daydreamers gazing towards a horizon of rooftops, the homes they’d been brought up in, kidding themselves, ‘Once Labour’s back in charge…’ Mothers bouncing babies on their hips, pointing out clown-shaped clouds and lingering vapour trails and small yappy tail-chasing dogs. Parents scattering cigarette ash as they kept an eye on children below. People making patterns on the ground like lines of ants. This was Jim’s view of what life had to offer.