Mrs Claymore stares at me suspiciously when I drop my leash in front of her, panting overenthusiastically. I nudge it closer to her toes, with my nose.
‘What do you want?’ Mrs Claymore asks, raising her eyebrows. ‘Walkies? That’s not like you.’
I woof in the affirmative, nudging the leash again. Mrs Claymore, poised halfway through dialling another kennel, replaces the receiver and sighs through her nostrils. She glances at her husband, then breathes, ‘Oh, come on, then.’
Half an hour later, we’re charging full-pelt towards the green and brown splendour of Finsbury Park. I’m much more animated than usual, leading the way like a puppet dragging its master.
‘Oh, honestly!’ Mrs Claymore yelps happily, nearly putting her back out.
Once we get through the gates, the park widens in all directions, like a pop-up book being opened, with all the trees and lampposts jumping to attention. It’s not the first time I’ve worn a leash in Finsbury Park, but this time I’m enjoying myself, drooling, pretending to be athletic, snapping at the squirrels and pigeons, growling at other dogs. I sniff a few bums, just to be sociable. I piss against a bin.
After a couple of laps of the park, Mrs Claymore gives me what I want. Absolutely shattered, she slumps down on one of the graffiti-glazed benches, and unsnaps my leash ‘for two minutes’. As soon as I hear the retractable lead whizz back into the handle, I bark with joy and charge off at top speed, away from her and the bench. Despite looking like a hippo on stilts, I manage to hit 35mph in 1.5 seconds, leaving behind the words ‘Oh, oh, no, come back, come back, oh, shoot,’ like tiny bells ringing in another town.
Lips flapping, I sprint to the far corner of the park, where the skidmarks and tyre-tracks of the Smith Fairytale Funland are still tangible in the mud, like crudely drawn crop circles. I try not to focus on the bad memories as I slip into the shadows of the wood, keeping my nose to the ground. Fortunately, I had the ingenuity to spatter my favourite tree with monkey piss, so I find the old hawthorn easily enough, standing like a bright green lighthouse in a raging sea of leaf litter. Snuggling up beside the tree, I wait for a few passers-by to finish passing by, then I take a running-jump at the old, gnarled trunk. It takes four attempts to clamber up the bark and squeeze my muzzle into the right hollow. Then, after scaring off a few bugs and rotten berries, I finally find what I’m looking for.
I feel like gold, marching down the back streets of Kentish Town with almost £4,000 clenched behind my teeth. I wish I could’ve taken more, but the coin bags proved a bit cumbersome and weighty, so I buried them deep under the leaf litter, in case of emergency.
Thankfully, no one tries to mug me as I head through each estate – only mad people put their hands near strange dogs’ mouths. The only trouble is, I can’t find my way home again. I’ve been through so many traumatic reincarnations, I’ve forgotten Kimberly the Human’s superhuman grasp of the bus routes. Nevertheless, I’m enjoying myself, trotting past the humming bins with the sun as my guide.
I’m not sure if the Claymores are fans of bribery, but hopefully they’ll welcome me back into the family if I turn up on their doorstep with £4,000, tax-free. I know for a fact they like money – after all, those Lasagnes-for-One don’t buy themselves. You never know – they might even gift me a new pouffe.
Huffing and puffing through my nose, I follow the alleys and pavements this way and that, trying to catch a whiff of the Claymores’ legendary corn-fed roast chicken, but all the smells of the Capital crowd in, confusing me with a perfume made up of rubbish, fresh pastry, petrol, hot urine, newspaper, and McDonald’s. I end up going round in ever increasing circles, like a dog chasing a huge, invisible tail.
Soon, dusk sets in, casting a dark spell over the city. I carry on marching onwards, though my skinny legs want to buckle under the weight of so much fat and fatigue. After a near-death experience on a busy roundabout, I begin to recognise the odd street name – like Uxbridge Road, or Lime Grove – but they’re not the streets of West Hampstead. I’m back in Shepherd’s Bush. I must’ve taken a thousand wrong turns, and I don’t have the legs or the motivation to take a thousand more, to get me back to Hampstead. Feeling daft and shattered, I whine at the full moon, in a frequency only me and her understand.
It must be around eleven when I pass out, next to the Wethouse. The front door’s locked, and there’s no sign of life in the foyer. While latecomers are allowed to ring the bell, I doubt Malcolm’s dad’ll take kindly to a greyhound disturbing him, and I’m aware the language barrier could prove problematic. I wish I had Lassie-like skills of communication, or at least a dog-tag with my name and address on it.
I whimper aimlessly for a minute, then curl up in the darkest shadow I can find, round the back of the black rails. All around me, the streets are quiet, with only the occasional creak of twisting trees or distant cars. I tuck my tail between my legs and close my heavy eyelids, keeping my jaw clamped tight around the moneybags. Tomorrow, I’ll pay more attention to the road-signs. Tonight, I’ll play dead.
As I sleep, the faint smell of cat urine and burned rubber gives me odd dreams. First of all, I’m sat on a huge white cloud marked ‘6’, being stroked by a lady wearing a dodo-feather dressing gown and unicornskin trousers. Next, I find myself in New York City, in the summer. It’s an overblown, comic version of New York: mobsters in spats; kids with Afros, setting off fire hydrants; women with chihuahuas in their handbags; honk honk honking yellow taxis. I’m in Central Park. I break loose from my amateur dogwalker to chase a pair of Siamese cats downtown. We sprint through the twinkling corridors of mirrored skyscrapers: left along East 65th, then right down Madison Avenue. There’s a jazz soundtrack. I steal a 10ft-long hotdog from a vendor on the corner of Madison and 57th, and nearly lose sight of the cats. They’re nifty bastards, slinking between the streetlights and mailboxes, and fearlessly jaywalking in front of traffic. Finally, I have them cornered in the East Village. I chase them down a dark, Gotham-like alleyway, which ends abruptly at a barbed-wire fence and some bricked-up brownstones. The Siamese cats cower between two trash cans, begging me not to kill them, in an accent I don’t understand. They look like a pair of bank robbers, with their black masks and paws, but they’re acting like wet blankets. I prepare to pounce. However, as I make my approach, the cats grow suddenly taller, on their hind legs, and they continue to grow and grow and grow, to the size of small skyscrapers. The adjacent buildings crumble to make way for their expanding bodies. I whimper, curling up behind a dumpster. But it’s too late. Hisssssssing, the cats uproot two wooden slats from the Brooklyn Bridge, and bring them down on my head, battering me to death.
The first impact wakes me up. Jelly-eyed, I wake to find a pair of Siamese humans bringing a wooden slat down on my head, battering me to death. I wheeze, coughing blood across the paving slabs. Through the pain, I can just about see my assailants, dressed in raggy jeans and hooded tops. I can’t make out their faces – only a dark shadow in their hoods, and thirty-odd gritted teeth. In desperation, I lunge at one of them. I bite hard into his neck. The bastard squeals, but manages to keep laying into me, until my skull finally caves in and my legs go limp. I hit the pavement hard, with a horrid thud. My last memory is this: a Siamese silhouette scuttling away, with its hoods still up, and nearly £4,000 stuffed in its pockets.
Part 3f) Kimberly the Magpie
Animals. We have so many disgusting habits. Dogs eat dogmuck. Escherichia coli thrive in binbags. Cats lick their own genitalia. Humans lick each other’s genitalia. Mother birds vomit into their chicks’ mouths.
It’s not the most pleasant introduction to the world, waking up to find your mother retching and bauking down your throat.
I’m the first of the flock to fly the nest. In magpie terms, my moody teenage phase comes around six weeks into my life, causing me to mope about on my own, dressed in black, bringing sorrow to anyone who believes in nursery rhymes and claps eyes on me. It’s nice being able to soar above the rooftops and treetops, o
r snake-charm worms by dancing on the grass, but I wish I was human again. I miss having friends, and changes of clothes, and opposable thumbs, and a capacity for love.
Animals are self-obsessed, paranoid, and predictable. I feel like I’m only capable of bringing more misery to the world, thanks to the magpie’s unevolved altruism gene, and that daft fucking nursery rhyme. Our PR’s terrible – in the old days, some smart cunt christened us a ‘murder of magpies’, like the crows, and it’s been impossible to shake off the negative connotations since. If I ever meet the wordy bastard, I’ll peck his eyes out.
One evening, more than four years after Kimberly the Human’s car crash, I’m contemplating suicide again, perched in the middle of a clearing, in the middle of a common, in the middle of the Capital. For birds, the best way to top yourself is to fly over a motorway and accidentally-on-purpose close your wings. Another is to hop through a cattery cat-flap.
From the uppermost branches of the tree, I can see the full extent of the city, with its pretty lights switching on and off like a sad, muddled Morse code. One thing the Buddhists got right was the realisation that all life is suffering. All across the Capital, I can see folk whingeing about the traffic; or whingeing about the weather; or whingeing about the lack of seats in the pub/on the bus/in their own house. Humans were born to be annoyed, but at least they have all these distractions – like loss, lust, happiness, bills, daydreams, etc. – to keep their minds off the ultimate distraction: death.
Maybe I’d be better off as a muddy puddle or a piece of cat litter after all – at least then I wouldn’t have to think any more. Apparently that’s what makes Nirvana so blissful: the emptiness.
Before I say farewell to the city, I circle the clearing once or twice. From so high up, the Capital looks like the candle-laden birthday cake of somebody ten billion years old. How are you supposed to find emptiness in a town teeming with so many people?
I glance down at the trees again. In winter, the blossom on trees is replaced with stray carrier bags and chip papers – no wonder the other birds have migrated. They’ve all gone down south for the winter, and I’m going down, too.
Cawing and clawing at the sky, I’m ready to accidentally-on-purpose close my wings over the Turnpike Lane crossroads, when something round and shiny catches my eye. I love sparkly things. Divebombing back into the clearing, I slalom between the horse chestnut trees and land on the handle of a rusty, three-wheeled pushchair. The round, shiny thing looks like a shrunken glitterball, or a swollen, silver marble. It’s very beautiful. I clap my wings together. The silver ball stares at me, then it winks, I think. I squawk back, excitedly.
At first, I’m convinced it’s Stevie’s silver eyeball. However, eyeballs are generally the first part of a corpse to perish, and it’s been years now since his death. On closer inspection, I realise it’s just a stray Christmas bauble. Nevertheless, the symbolism still works for me.
Taking care not to drop it or swallow it, I carry the bauble to the top of the tallest plane tree, and take shelter in an abandoned doves’ nest. Without too much difficulty, I hang the bauble on the highest branch of the tree, then we spend the rest of the evening together, watching the lightbulbs of the city switching on and off, revealing ten million tiny soap operas behind ten billion tiny windows.
And this is what we see:
On the south side of West Green Road in South Tottenham, two officers of the Necropolitan Police are hammering on the door of Flat 6B. After banging twenty-five times with their fists, the officers ready themselves to bang on the door with a battering-ram. A few worried neighbours and nonchalant passers-by stare as the policemen count to three, then blast the slab of white hardwood off its hinges. Everybody gasps in fright, covering their mouths. The foul stench, which has been growing steadily for months on West Green Road, suddenly belches from 6B’s open doorway, hitting the backs of the bystanders’ throats. A few dry-retch into their sleeves; others scuttle off with grim expressions and their evenings ruined. The smell is a mixture of binbags, rotting fish, sour milk, and faeces. The police officers give each other a hairy look, before striding into the property.
From our safe, sweet-smelling vantage point, me and the crystal ball watch the policemen’s heads bob past the stairwell windows, on their way up to the flat. They check the living room and bedroom with grave expressions, noses and mouths pressed into their shoulders. When they reach the bathroom, they freeze, gag rude words, then charge back out of the property at top speed. On the way down the stairway, they radio for backup, trying not to be sick on their uniforms.
Through a gap in the door, we can just about see into the bathroom. Mr No Tomorrow sits on the toilet, with his flesh dripping off his skeleton. He’s been sat on the toilet for seventeen months. His abdomen burst long ago, after being a nest for flies and maggots. His hair has grown into a greasy Beatles mop around his skull. His pretty, Persian cheekbones look more prominent than ever, without any flesh on them. Yellow custard leaks from his midriff and trouser legs, mixing in with the dry, crusted vomit on the lino and the severe bloody diarrhoea in the toilet bowl.
Mr No Tomorrow has shat himself to death.
Although dying from food poisoning is rare, sometimes the extreme loss of water and sustenance through diarrhoea and vomiting can cause shock to set in. While this tends to happen only in the very young or very old, if your symptoms are severe and left untreated – like in Mr No Tomorrow’s case – the Grim Reaper may well be watching your every bowel movement.
On the bathroom windowsill, someone’s left a milk ring.
I can’t think how Mr No Tomorrow got in such a state. I’ve never seen anyone leak so much bodily fluid. Perhaps his guts packed in after one too many bungee jumps; or perhaps he went the Elvis way, suffering a major cardiac arrest; or perhaps he contracted E. coli poisoning, after eating the venison ravioli at the Ristorante di Fantasia. It was his favourite dish, after all – his ‘usual’. And I guess he couldn’t get any medical care, because of his illegal immigrant status. And I guess that’s why no one even knew he was here, until the stench got this bad.
I blush into my wing.
I feel awful now, for contaminating Paolo’s restaurant. However, in the front room of 5 Welham Road in Tooting, my Promiscuous Pal Polly is opening her curtains for the first time in years. After we threw him onto the street on Halloween night, Mr No Tomorrow began harassing Polly something rotten. Obsessive, angry and lonely, Mr No Tomorrow developed a strange courtship ritual which involved posting cheap chocolate through Polly’s letterbox and battering on her door at the most unreasonable, unpredictable hours, demanding love. Some men are bizarre, desperately trying to break into your heart, like a burglar trying to break into a bright red, bulletproof safe with a toothpick.
The more Polly rejected him, the more effort Mr No Tomorrow put into the stalking. He even broke into her house one afternoon, gaining entry through her bathroom window and changing the locks. Polly returned from a friend’s funeral to find Mr No Tomorrow in her best silk dressing gown, with a stew in the oven, acting like a good husband. Despite an afternoon’s worth of fighting and arguing, Mr No Tomorrow wouldn’t leave, until Polly feigned unconsciousness after she fell/was pushed down the staircase. She figured Mr No Tomorrow wouldn’t phone for an ambulance (he was afraid of the authorities – and he rarely had battery), so she played dead on the carpet, waiting for him to say one last ‘I love you’ and scuttle off into the night.
A day later, he posted her his dead mother’s engagement ring, with a heartwrenching, apologetic, badly spelt message attached, signed ‘YOUR HUSBAND TOO BE’.
Polly was scared. Instead of putting a hex or restraining order on Mr No Tomorrow, Polly took evasive action. She shut her curtains, rechanged the locks, blocked the stained glass in the front door with newspaper and only left the house when it was absolutely necessary, in disguise. She installed a peephole, opening the door only to the Royal Mail, or the bloke from Tesco Online with her groceries. She found wor
k selling fancy dress and sex aids over the internet. She ate in darkness every day, surrounded by her stock.
Despite barricading herself into number 5, still every fortnight the house came under fire from Mr No Tomorrow’s fists. Sometimes her letterbox screamed, ‘Let me in, you fucky bitch! I love you!’ at her. Sometimes she heard heavy breathing in her sleep.
Polly became jaundiced and depressed. However, not long afterwards, Mr No Tomorrow became ill with E. coli poisoning, finding himself bed-ridden, then toilet-ridden; unable to bash his fists on her door any more. Even though the house has remained silent for almost a year and a half now, Polly still kept her curtains shut, haunted by the thought of his face reappearing during Neighbours or Holby City.
Today, though, she dares herself to take a peek. After months of anxiety and Vitamin D deficiency, Polly opens her curtains again. Outside, the clouds look like cotton pads loaded with pink blusher. Polly can’t see the magpie or the bauble staring at her from the top of the tallest plane tree in the Capital, and she certainly can’t see into the bathroom of 6B West Green Road. However, in the last of the day’s rays, her hazel eyes are twinkling. She already looks less yellow. It’s time to remove the mountain of melted chocolate from her UNWELCOME mat, and rip the newspaper from the stained glass. It’s time to put on attractive, provocative clothing again, and it’s time to get out of the house.
I feel good now, for contaminating Paolo’s restaurant. As I dance from branch to branch, another light catches my eye, to the west of the city. In a small flat on Wormholt Road, Shaun and Sean have just returned from an evening of leisure, slurping noodles and cocktails under the cold, garish blaze of the South Bank. For the first time since Stevie’s funeral, the boys look well adjusted; almost handsome. Sean is wearing a well-fitting Burton shirt and Shaun has combed his hair the other way. Shaun sits down to watch Sky Sports News while Sean shakes up a couple of Long Island Iced Teas in the kitchen. While they drink up, sat side by side on the gaudy corduroy sofa, what strikes me as odd is the silence. Shaun and Sean haven’t argued once in the last six weeks. They’ve been getting along famously, taking up their old jobs as bartender and lifeguard, always paying the rent on time, and coming home in the evening to cook each other tea in peace. What’s happened to all the bickering? Perhaps the lads have finally matured and seen the errors of their ways, or perhaps the £4,000 they acquired recently helped put an end to their worries, not to mention their homelessness. As it happens, though, the answer lies in Shaun’s oesophagus. Six weeks ago, Shaun had his vocal cords severed by a greyhound. After a week of painful, unsuccessful throat surgery, Shaun can now barely raise his voice above a whisper. Sean tried his best to keep up the arguing, but soon realised it was pointless if Shaun wasn’t going to return the slaggings. Shaun became an almost monk-like presence in the flat, dressing in a towelling robe each night after washing away the chlorine from Acton Baths. The peace was hard to get used to at first, but the £4,000 filled the silence well enough. The lads said farewell to the Wethouse and never looked back. They bought new shirts, shoes, underwear, and toothpaste. They found a modest flat to rent. They found their old jobs advertised down Acton Jobcentre Plus. Now, if they could only find a pair of impossibly beautiful female Siamese twins and steal their hearts, Shaun and Sean might never have to steal anything ever again.
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