Free Call Me by P-P Hartnett

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    Ray’s back was turned to me. He was just wearing baggy old underpants, standing in his usual spot by the drain-pipe. I stood behind him, holding in the tears. He looked so sparrow. His body had always been precious to him, great and abundant. We could both feel his nourishing blood pump gently away, reducing his strength with the flow.
    One day demolition men would go about their work with cranes, drills and heavy hammers, pounding through partitions, lifting blocks, ripping out ironwork, reducing the block of flats to piles of raw materials to be sold for scrap, recycled or dumped—he’d said. The bulldozers of the site-levellers would tidy away before men with brooms appeared. Housewives would wipe their windowsills free of dust, then there’d be nothing left.
    It was the same soiled white sky as Ray’s last day at the flat, three years back. The grey of that view had invaded me with the fragile existence of those quickly thrown-up quickly pulled-down buildings that nobody loved.
    The smell of the coffee made only an hour ago was already fading.
    *   *   *
    The lights were green from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch. I covered Oxford Street in seven minutes, dodging the occasional lemming shopper. Coming off Bayswater Road I dismounted, obeying the ‘no cycling’ signs in eroded white on grey.
    I’d forgotten how theatrical the position of the Peter Pan statue was. Trying to look normal, I walked through the low gate, up two steps, entering the crazy-paved circular surround of the statue. The bronze of the rabbits, doves, snails and mice had been lightened with frequent touchings of tiny fingers. Areas at the base had also been rubbed bright by the bums of little ones posing for cameras.
    I sat for a moment on a bench down by the water, dark edges inviting me in. Off in the distance was the tall, thin, red brick building of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, where steak-fed young men stripped by windows at night, having learned how to kill during the day. Crows in the branches above—I counted nine—were making a lot of noise squawking.
    Time can move so slowly when you’re waiting for a stranger. Dabbling ducks and diving ducks, opportunistic feeders, made the most of the granary bread I’d brought with me. One bird crossed from the other bank in a straight line, snapping up feathers as it came. I identified this bird, from a nearby notice board, as a grebe: ‘Grebes eat a large quantity of feathers to facilitate the passage of particularly indigestible items, such as fish bones.’
    I turned around a few times as I stood there on the edge, half expecting someone behind to give me a good push in and under, holding me down until the bubbles stopped rising to the surface. Only three mounted police trotted by, wearing fluorescent green tops and blank faces.
    By the time the grebe got to me all the bread had gone. I mustered up phlegm from the back of my throat, spitting with B Wing precision. My offering was duly snapped up and swallowed. I returned to the bench and realised it was splattered with bird droppings. I checked the seat of my shorts to be sure I’d escaped any smudges. Although the light was fading fast I kept my Oakleys on. I felt watched.
    Two women arrived with a little boy who looked as though a terminal disease was winning against the immune system behind his skin. They sat him on one of the lighter areas of bronze to take a photo, then fed the ducks some stale white bread. As they left, Allan arrived on a skateboard.
    The child who’d been warned so many times not to talk to strangers, not to accept sweeties from strangers and not to get into the backs of cars belonging to strangers, beamed first at Allan performing an emergency stop wearing beads and a huge buckled belt on his cut-down Levi’s, then at me. A nice, big innocent smile. (So young).
    The scrape of board on tarmac flustered the birds and off they