‘Who wants him?’ I shouted.
‘Jamrach wants him,’ he said. ‘Come down.’
‘What about our cod, Mister Jaf?’ Mari-Lou’s long red claws dug into my arm.
‘I’m going!’ I cried and bounded down the stairs.
The boy came forward. ‘You him?’ he asked gracelessly.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve got to get you a raspberry puff,’ he said morosely. ‘Jamrach said.’
The raspberry puffs in the windows of the pastry cook’s shop I walked past every day on Back Lane were beyond me. The berries bled juice through their hairs. The furrowed cream was pale gold, the pastry damp with sugar.
The tiger had opened magical doors.
‘I’m running an errand,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to get fish.’
‘Well, I’ve got to get you a raspberry puff and take you to Jamrach,’ he said, as if that was far more important. ‘Getting the special grand tour, you are. See all the wild animals?’
Mari-Lou leaned out of the window. ‘Off you go and get that fish, you, Mister Jaf!’
‘What’s it like getting eaten?’ the boy said.
‘Eaten?’
‘You’re eaten,’ he said, ‘so they say.’
‘Do I look it?’
‘It’s all around that you’re eaten,’ he said, ‘eaten up and just your head left on the stones.’
I saw it, my head on the stones. It made me laugh.
‘Just your head,’ he said, ‘and your hands and feet. And some bits of bone, I suppose, gnawed ragged.’
‘Didn’t hurt a bit,’ I said.
Mari-Lou threw a bottle at my head. It missed and smashed in the gutter.
‘Two ticks,’ I said to the boy. ‘Wait.’ And I ran all the way to the fried fish stall and all the way back.
Mrs Regan was just taking up her post on the doorstep and looked disapprovingly at my filthy feet as I shot past her. ‘You’ll get blood poisoning, you will,’ she remarked. I pelted upstairs and shoved the steaming bundle into Mari-Lou’s eager red claws. Mari-Lou and Silky liked their fish drenched till it was soggy. My eyes stang from the vinegar. I’d forgotten the pickle. You’d have thought I’d robbed a cripple. I had to give them back a penny, but I didn’t care. Wild animals were roaming in my head: lions, tigers, elephants, giraffes. I was going to have a raspberry puff and see the animals.
The boy was still there when I reached the street, hands deep in his pockets, shoulders high. ‘Come on,’ he said, and I followed his straight, insolent back down through the crowds between the market stalls till we came out on Back Lane, where he barred me from going with him into the shop with one movement of his arm and not a word. Himself, he went in and requested one raspberry puff to eat now please, Rose, darling, as if he was a man. I did not know then that he was only a year my senior and thought he must be at least eleven.
I could see Rose through the glass, a nice smily girl with flour dusting her eyelashes. Then he strolled out, looked up at the sky, handed me a raspberry puff nestled in a little napkin for me to hold to keep my fingers clean. Not that they were clean in the first place.
There he stood with his hands in his pockets and watched me eat the raspberry puff. The first bite was so bitterly sweet the corners of my mouth ached. So beautiful, a film of tears stung my eyes. Then the pain dispersed and there was only delight. I had never tasted raspberry. Never tasted cream. The second bite was greedy and gorging, stopping my mouth up. He had eyes like a statue. Never moved. He’d probably never had a raspberry puff himself. He was better dressed then me, shoes and all, but still, I bet he never ate a raspberry puff in his life.
‘Want a bit?’ I said.
He shook his head sharply and made that banning motion with his arm again, smiling a little, proudly.
The smell hit me first, a good thrilling smell, stronger than cheese. Then the noise. We came in from the street to a lobby where coats were hung, and boxes and great sacks stored, and a green parrot leaned over me and peered into my face. It looked as if it knew something funny.
‘She speaks,’ said the boy. ‘Go on, Flo, say: “Five pounds, darlin’.”’
Flo cocked her head sharply, shifting her gaze to him in a sympathetic way but saying nothing.
‘Five pounds, darlin’! Go on, you stupid bird.’
She blinked. He made a quick sound of disgust and led me to an open door from which a smog of dark smoke was visibly spreading into the hall.
‘Here he is, Mr Jamrach. He’s had his creamy doodah.’
I followed him in. The great, red-faced Jamrach came down through the murk with a smile and cried: ‘Ha! Jaffy Brown!’ He punched me gently on the shoulder. ‘Did you have a good supper last night?’ He bent down with his face so close I could count the red veins in the whites of his eyes. The air was heavy, lush and rotting, filled with traces of bowels and blood and piss and hair, and something overall I could not name, which I suppose was wildness.
‘Mutton stew,’ I said. ‘It was lovely.’
‘Excellent!’
Mr Jamrach stood up and rubbed his palms together. He wore a business suit that made him look stout, and his hair was parted in the middle and slicked down with oil.
‘Bulter,’ he said to a pale young man scowling and picking his nails behind a very untidy desk, ‘get Charlie out.’
Bulter stood, long and thin, flounced round the desk and stopped before a large cage. A wonderful, outrageous bird perched attentively, watching the dim room as if it was the most wonderful show. The bird was all colours, and its beak was bigger than its body.
‘Come out, Charlie, you stupid bird,’ Bulter said, lifting the latch.
Charlie danced with delight. Didn’t he crawl as gentle as a sleepy kitten into Bulter’s arms and nestle up against his breast with that hard monster beak and the downturned head bashful? Bulter stroked the black feathers on top of the bird’s head. ‘Daft he is,’ he said, turned and placed Charlie in my arms. Charlie raised his head and looked into my face.
‘He’s a toucan,’ Tim said.
‘Got the touch, you have,’ Bulter said to me. ‘He likes you.’
‘Likes everyone,’ Tim said.
Charlie was a sane and willing bird. So was Flo, the parrot in the lobby. The birds that came after were not.
Mr Jamrach led me through the lobby and into the menagerie. The first room was a parrot room, a fearsome screaming place of mad round eyes, crimson breasts that beat against bars, wings that flapped against their neighbours, blood red, royal blue, gypsy yellow, grass green. The birds were crammed along perches. Macaws hung upside down here and there, batting their white eyes, and small green parrots flittered above our heads in drifts. A host of cockatoos looked down from on high over the shrill madness, high crested, creamy breasted. The screeching was like laughter in hell.
‘This is how they like it,’ Jamrach said.
My eyes watered. My ears hurt.
‘They flock.’
‘They’re crying out for parrots,’ Tim Linver said sagely, bobbing alongside with a loose and cocky gait.
‘Who is?’
‘People is.’
I