Roller Shutters over Broken Windows

Standing on this thing that looked like a gigantic mouldy green hot cross bun, they viewed the old kingdom. Why was it still here, this mound with four paved paths surrounded by housing estates. Possibly, this lump of earth topped with weed-infested grass had proved too difficult to dig up and cart away when they built the estates to house the slum clearances of the 1930s. From the ‘X’ where the paths met at the very highest point they viewed the old kingdom did Barry and Dale. X like the Roman numeral for ten. It was ten years since Barry had been here.
‘You can tell we’re on the Bun can’t you; just by the wind. It’s different up here. The air as well, Dale, it’s like breathing in a different …’
‘Oxygen. Yeah, makes a change from eating car fumes,’ said Dale rummaging in his pockets, fishing out a scrunched-up fiver. ‘Talking of eating, the chippy’s open. Coming?’
‘I’ll stay here for a while,’ said Barry gulping air enthusiastically. ‘Bring them back; we can have them up here.’
Dale looked around, there was nowhere to sit and eat fish and chips up here. There wasn’t even a tree to shelter underneath and now the concrete-coloured sky began spitting cool rain.
‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to stay up here for too long.’
‘I’ll be all right. S’really vivid up here. Curry sauce on mine, Dale mate.’

Back then, thought Barry, things were either ours or theirs. Anyone not one of ours or not one of theirs wouldn’t know these unmapped territories existed. They did though. In an A-to-Z guide, oblique sections could be highlighted pink or light blue as in an old imperialist atlas: two kingdoms, the Square and the Roundabout.
Barry and the others who made up the Square had everything north from the shops to the Minstrel plus the park, dual carriageway and garage at the western tip. The Roundabout had the big traffic island, the Swan, the balti house, everything east up to the superstore. It worked okay. Barry’s mate Hughesy once went out with their top man’s sister without any Capulet or Montague-style repercussions. We are talking about modern England and not spear-throwing barbarians, after all. Having said that, an unwritten but understood etiquette pinned the peace. If the Roundabout were in the balti house Barry’s boys had a takeaway; hanging around just long enough to acknowledge, with a quick thumbs-up or flicked military salute, their top man, Finniemore. The pubs were the same, pretty much private members establishments. If the Square were in the bar the Roundabout would stay in the lounge, niceties exchanged when having a slash in the neutrality of the bogs.
The thing that kept it all hunky dory was simply that oil (metaphorically speaking) hadn’t been struck in this suburb. Neither side had anything the other wanted. The area’s natural resources: skunk and nicked phones provided plentiful bounty for each gang. The thing they might fall out over would have to be personal. So, it was wise to never get into a position where an affront could be given or taken. Weston, the longhaired one from the Roundabout, should never have taken his scooter into the garage on the Square. Alan should never have agreed to fix it.

Robins are cute, pigeons comical – but nobody likes crows. They’re the rockers of the British skies. Big black easy riders, their piercing Kraa! Kraa! being the heavy metal of birdsong. It made sense. A delicate concerto played out by a troupe of chaffinches would be fine down there among the gardens. Up here, it would get drowned by the winds’ sweeping howl. To be heard on the Bun you need to sound like guitars at maximum volume distorting though giant Marshall stacks.
‘Hello mate,’ said one of the crows that peck at the seed on the allotments that border the Bun. ‘Your lot don’t usually hang around up here at this time of day.’
‘What time is it?’ asked Barry.
‘This is crow time.’
‘Huh?’
‘After the wingless walk their dogs across the Bun, fetch their papers and milk. Before the small ones ride by on their mini-scooters and roller blades.’
‘Crow time, eh,’ smiled Barry.
‘Yes, and if you’re standing up here at this time of day it’s because you’re on the dole or because you’re a lost soul.’
‘This is your territory, I s’pose,’ enquired Barry.
‘Yes,’ announced a second, younger, more excitable crow.
‘We don’t get bothered up here,’ said the first crow. ‘Down there among the wingless you can guarantee someone will come chasing after us with a broomstick or an air rifle. No gratitude; I mean to say, what else is going to eat your rats and dried-up kebabs for you?’
‘You wanted to know if I’m on the dole or a lost soul,’ said Barry. ‘The answer to that is, er, both.’

The Vespa T5 navigating the roundabout shook and threw its rider in the manner of a fairground bucking bronco. The unseated rider gambolling across the inside lane past a housewife’s braking Peugeot, the scooter careering across the grassy roundabout, smashing through the balti house sign and keeling over in a belch of grey smoke.
Initially it had nothing to do with the Square or the Roundabout. It was between Alan and Weston. A week before, having broken down in Square territory, Weston sheepishly pushed the bike into the garage for Alan to fix.
Weston wasn’t sheepish on his next visit to the garage, though. He threw a pair of jeans onto the workshop floor.
‘Sixty quid these cost me and they’re wrecked, man! And what about my Vespa!’
Alan looked at the scuffed designer denim. He said nothing but thought: what’s this prat on about? The scooter had been roadworthy when it left the garage. It was no secret the only maintenance Weston ever did was buffing up the chrome. Plus, he hammered the machine to oblivion racing around. He was trying it on.
The garage boss came out of his office.
‘Sixty quid they cost me – I’d only worn them once,’ repeated Weston, forcefully.
The boss wiped his hands with an oily rag as mechanics do before breaking bad news.
‘Nothing I can do about that but bring the bike in and I’ll have a look at it.’
Here comes the punchline smiled Alan as the boss paused for a moment, then continued. ‘We’ll need an insurance report. You are insured?’ Not a chance.
Weston scooped his jeans off the floor and stormed off mumbling ‘Wanker’ under his breath. The boss turned to Alan and made a hand gesture that indicated the same word.

There wasn’t an announcement in the local media or anything like that. No one outside of the participants would know a dispute was contorting its way into active hostility. Barry first felt it when he went to the superstore for tobacco.
They were in the café hung over chairs and tables, the Roundabout and some of their women. Barry raised his hand in their direction, an attempted wave more than a confident gesture. They didn’t flex back in peace. Mouths moved and brows furrowed. Barry, far enough away not to hear what they were saying, close enough to read the scowling faces thought: Cheeky bastards. They’d better not come down the Minstrel with that front. And as for that Weston, he’s just a wanker.
Besides, Alan was a good lad, one of Barry’s best mates.
The Roundabout tagged the garage one night. Kids stuff, but a liberty all the same. Alan and Barry were incensed. It required a response: ‘They spit on our doorstep, we’ll piss on theirs.’
The Square circled the roundabout a couple of times then Jase’ got out of the car to lob a house brick through the Swan’s big plate glass window. The pub emptied; women shouted high-pitched obscenities, men waved fat fists. Finniemore and his gang were less vocal, less animated.
A rag soaked in petrol through the garage window in broad daylight – now that’s an invasion. The police took away what was left of the accelerant; a jeans zip and a charred metal button. That to Alan and Barry was even more incendiary than the petrol.

‘A lost soul; so much for the primacy of your lot,’ jeered the first crow.
A number of the birds had gathered around Barry’s feet, some flexing lustrous keratin pulp feathers, others stuttering through overgrown grass.
‘We used to live down there a billion generations ago. Then we got our wings and then we got altitude,’ puffed the second crow, his diction a mix of evangelical zeal and ornithological erudition.
‘And a good job we did,’ said the first crow. ‘Five million years ago your lot started to appear; though you weren’t too bad then, too slow and stupid to cause much harm.’
‘Big heads,’ piped up a third crow.
‘That’s right. Plenty of scope for brain enlargement in those skulls especially as you started to eat more meat. That’s when you developed the nasty bit, the mind.’
‘What is this?’ sneered Barry. ‘I didn’t come up here for a lecture, not from a mob of crows.’
‘It’s Corvus Corone Corone actually,’ protested the first crow, mandibles snapping angrily
‘What?’ said Barry.
‘Corvus Corone Corone. That’s the name he gave us, the Swedish naturalist who classified the avifauna. And one more thing; we’re not a mob we’re a ….’
Barry lit a roll-up. There were crows on the Bun that night. Sinister prophets fulfilling the same role they always have. From gothic etchings to noir cinema, if your tale has crows something very bad is going to happen.

The Square moved from the square and the Roundabout moved from the roundabout. Approaching the rendezvous from different directions, they trooped up the mouldy green hot cross bun to fight as they had arranged during a stand-off in the road a couple of days ago. Heads bobbing up and down, insults unfurled like regimental flags. Barry called out to Finniemore, ‘Next Friday - Half-nine - The Bun.’ And that was that.
It looked like the Gunfight at the OK Corral, but without guns. On that summery night, it was still light enough for a prolonged stare to produce a surge of adrenalin.
No great military strategy was involved, they just charged into each other. There were scuffles on the grass as punches, kicks became wrestling and rolling until a decisive blow ended the coupling. Weston got knocked unconscious. Rick swung a sand-filled sock. Hughesy had his nose smashed. Alan took a stone to his head and then saw two of everything.
Boys were being sorted from harder boys. Some blushing red through fists landing on their noses and cheeks backed off screaming defiance, others hobbled away to nurse bruised shins or clutch winded stomachs.
Eventually, by a process of elimination only two were still willing to fight. The kings of the Square and the Roundabout, Barry and Finniemore faced each other. Whatever the stuff of gangs, numbers are only ever for show and intimidation. It only ever really comes down to the best two; like Ali and Frazier, Achilles and Hector. The rest of them could have sat on the grass shouting encouragement, having a picnic.
Sirens could be heard, getting louder, getting closer. The contest entered its final round; was there time for a knockout. Barry slashed, Finniemore sprayed. Screaming patrol cars revved up the slope scattering the crows. Most of the combatants ran, hoping the Bun entrances were also still exits. Barry’s hands covered his face, police covered his escape.
If one thing did surprise him, it was just how easily the knife went in, through the tracksuit top, through the polo shirt, through the skin, the muscle, right through to the organs.

‘So what are you doing up here, anyway,’ demanded the first crow.
‘It’s sort of the last thing I can remember. The smell in the air, the sky at that time when it’s just about to get dark. I loved that time when the night was coming. That was the best time of the day.’
‘This is the last thing you can remember?’ said the second crow, puzzled.
‘Yeah. The grass was all burnt up that summer. In places, it was like hay. There was still some sun out. A ball of roasting light that you can’t look at for a second even though you want to stare into it for ages.’
‘The whole world used to be like that. Before your lot got their minds,’ lamented the first crow. ‘Our ancestors foresaw your progress from caves to mansions to prisons. We knew it would be very bad news.’
‘Prison, there’s something I know about,’ said Barry screwing the nub-end into the ground with his shoe.
‘I’d hate to be in a prison,’ piped the third crow. ‘Can you see the sky in there?’
‘I couldn’t, no.’
‘What were you in prison for? I understand you have to do something bad.’
‘I stabbed a bloke to death. Well, hardly even a bloke; he was only a kid, only nineteen-years old.’
‘They put you in prison for that?’ gasped the first crow. ‘We kill whenever we have to. Was the other man, or ‘kid’, invading your nest?’
‘Not exactly, but sort of,’ said Barry.
‘He means murder,’ crowed the second crow. ‘They kill and it isn’t even about survival. Then they have the gall to refer to us as a murder of crows.’
‘Don’t get me started on that,’ said the first crow.

‘Bloody things! They’d have the shit out of your arse,’ barked Dale, kicking and shooing the crows away. Barry heard an eruption of flapping wings and sensed the murder of crows leaving the land, carried up on thermals towards God who had chosen birds to be closer to him than humans. Up there they could see everything for miles. Barry couldn’t see anything through his dead acid burned eyes. His dark glasses like roller shutters over broken windows. He breathed in the smell of salt and vinegar and began eating his fish and chips.