A last goodnight to Dylan.
I shivered and scrambled back to bed.
I must have forgotten to close the window because I remember the sounds well. So bright. Icy sharp.
There was the rustle and flutter of feathers against branches.
A low warbling sound, and then a single hoot.
It was our owl, and he had come to speak to Dylan.
He'd startled me. Through half-closed eyes I watched as the shadows of the branches shimmered across the bedroom wall. Tangling into twisted claws.
Dylan would sit for hours on the window-ledge. The owl came often. Dad said that it was unusual to find a bird like that in Brixton.
Dylan and the owl were friends. But now he'd have to find somebody else.
I pulled the sheet up tight to my neck, eyelids heavy with sleep.
There was a high-pitched whistle outside.
The owl was preparing to fly from the tree.
It shook its feathers and then let out a strange kind of 'hoot'.
And then another… it was really scary.
Almost a whistle.
Just after that I heard a strangled muffled growl, far away, from deep beneath the still cold earth.
I sank and sank, down and down, into the softness of dream.
My eyes were not quite closed. Not yet. But I knew.
From the distance the owl cried out once more. I couldn't do a thing. Couldn't even move. I didn't know if I was awake or dreaming.
There was a familiar scratching on the bark of the tree outside my window. A slow and perhaps painful kind of shifting.
The shadows of branch claws trembled across the wall as something pulled itself along a main bough.
There was a shape framed within the window, dead eyes that glowed, and then the soft plop as it dropped from the sill down on to the floor.
I heard a gasp, the momentary 'puff of the eiderdown as though something heavy had landed on the bed.
Outside the branches rustled. Twigs cracked.
I became aware of a gentle repetitious pumping at the bottom of the bed, and then a warm comforting vibration in the small of my back like an electric motor.
I was afraid. At first.
But I'm a big girl now.
Mum was very excited. 'Hysterical,' Dad said. She kept asking him over and over about the white and ginger hairs at the bottom of the bed. He told her not to be so silly and to 'lay off the sauce'.
I think it was the blood that really bothered her. That and the soil-clogged Burger King bun she found next to the pillow.
I can understand why she was so upset, but she's all right now.
What pissed me off most was Dad, saying that I could never bring another freebie into the house again.
I'll do what I want!
Have I got a surprise for them, for Christmas!
I've been practising my whistles, and I've got lots of ideas for using those key-rings now. I went to Brixton and caught the tube, all the way up to Chinatown, and all on my own too. I got a whole bunch of the tags from the old Chinese wok man.
We did a deal. I'd keep quiet about his fiddle with the batteries.
Tonight I'm going to go and see Grannie at the cemetery.
It's just up the road.
Mum misses her so, and it'll serve Dad right.
The key-ring works fine now. Fine.
Best freebie I've ever had.
6/ Roald Dahl - Man from the South
It was getting on towards six o'clock so I thought I'd buy myself a beer and go out and sit in a deck-chair by the swimming-pool and have a little evening sun.
I went to the bar and got the beer and carried it outside and wandered down the garden towards the pool.
It was a fine garden with lawns and beds of azaleas and tall coconut palms, and the wind was blowing strongly through the tops of the palm trees, making the leaves hiss and crackle as though they were on fire. I could see the clusters of big brown nuts hanging down underneath the leaves.
There were plenty of deck-chairs around the swimming-pool and there were white tables and huge brightly coloured umbrellas and sunburned men and women sitting around in bathing suits. In the pool itself there were three or four girls and about a dozen boys, all splashing about and making a lot of noise and throwing a large rubber ball at one another.
I stood watching them. The girls were English girls from the hotel. The boys I didn't know about, but they sounded American, and I thought they were probably naval cadets who'd come ashore from the US naval training vessel which had arrived in harbour that morning.
I went over and sat down under a yellow umbrella where there were four empty seats, and I poured my beer and settled back comfortably with a cigarette.
It was very pleasant sitting there in the sunshine with beer and cigarette. It was pleasant to sit and watch the bathers splashing about in the green water.
The American sailors were getting on nicely with the English girls. They'd reached the stage where they were diving under the water and tipping them up by their legs.
Just then I noticed a small, oldish man walking briskly around the edge of the pool. He was immaculately dressed in a white suit and he walked very quickly with little bouncing strides, pushing himself high up on to his toes with each step. He had on a large creamy Panama hat, and he came bouncing along the side of the pool, looking at the people and the chairs.
He stopped beside me and smiled, showing two rows of very small, uneven teeth, slightly tarnished. I smiled back.
'Excuse pleess, but may I sit here?'
'Certainly,' I said. 'Go ahead.'
He bobbed around to the back of the chair and inspected it for safety, then he sat down and crossed his legs. His white buck-skin shoes had little holes punched all over them for ventilation.
'A fine evening,' he said. 'They are all evenings fine here in Jamaica.' I couldn't tell if the accent were Italian or Spanish, but I felt fairly sure he was some sort of a South American. And old too, when you saw him close. Probably around sixty-eight or seventy.
'Yes,' I said. 'It is wonderful here, isn't it.'
'And who, might I ask, are all dese? Dese is no hotel people.' He was pointing at the bathers in the pool.
'I think they're American sailors,' I told him. 'They're Americans who are learning to be sailors.'
'Of course dey are Americans. Who else in de world is going to make as much noise as dat? You are not American no?'
'No,' I said. 'I am not.'
