Warren Fitzgerald - The Go-Away Bird

WARREN

FITZGERALD

The Go-Away Bird

blue door

For ‘I’ and the kids of LRC and Kazo, who saved me…in so many ways .

Cover

Title Page WARREN FITZGERALD The Go-Away Bird blue door

Dedication For ‘I’ and the kids of LRC and Kazo, who saved me…in so many ways .

1994 1994

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

1996

Chapter 17

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

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 Casualty, EastEnders, Coronation Street , and now this new version of Casualty called Cardiac Arrest – it can’t last, not two dramas about hospitals and blood and grief: surely people don’t have the stomach for it?

Floor 7 and Roddy and Dave in Number 58 were pumping out the House hits as per.

‘La da dee la dee da, la da dee la dee da,’ went Crystal Waters with her voice like the phlegmy mutterings of the old girl who sits outside Costcutter dozing in her wing-backed chair.

Here’s me trying to teach people what makes a good voice and a classic performance and these two dopes below will slam on another Acid track like they’re trying to undermine me. And now this stuff’s crossing over into the top 40 I can see that look in my students’ eyes sometimes that says: I just wanna be a star, be top of the charts, where 2 Unlimited and Snap! are, so why you getting me to sing all this old Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin crap?

Nearly there, Ash, nearly…

I finally reached my floor and the door opposite mine, Number 61, gently clicked shut like it always did when I reached the landing. It’s enough to make you paranoid, don’t you reckon? But I knew that her eye wouldn’t be at the peephole for long once she’d seen it was me. It wasn’t me she was waiting for. It was that bloody ape Daryl. I knew his name ’cause I’d heard her squeak it a thousand times through bruised lips as he crashed down the stairs telling her she’s dumped (again), and that she’s a whore and a fat one at that. Her name’s Rachel – I knew that ’cause he’d be roaring it into her door later, and she’d open it, like she did every time, and she’d let him in. Why did she let him in? Is it that she actually liked it, the way he treated her? It’s beyond me, I tell you.