Night of the Hummingbird

Jerry’s bombs let loose souls of the culled on September 22nd. Slaughtered cat, dog, gerbil and bird spirits fumed from sewers bounding this city and the effect is still felt, like lingering gas. Hostile goat, pig and rabid rabbit souls, all twisted out of shape and pulling gruesome faces, raided St James’s Square. Memory, that mortifying fairy tale, can’t make these creatures any bigger in their begrudging. Heinkel squadrons a million-strong couldn’t compare to the vengeance of London’s culled.

A music box with two little wonky ballerinas inside we found that night in a tilted lodging house, the first Objet d’blitz Dad let Liz keep. She liked falling asleep listening to the broken tune, always conjuring up the dead dog on Augustus Street…

Our Sunday night started with a thief’s Baghdad of silverware in that lodging house, where the tilt was so bad I was scared to sneeze. Me and Liz paddled through dining room debris, picking up fancy knives and forks, teapot and cake stand, a Rayon tablecloth laid with gnarled napkin rings. Stuffed with spoons, I rattled like castanets. Each lodger’s room was a strange bazaar. Crosses, a leatherbound bible, rosaries and Christs in pewter, wood and silver were torn about the front room at the top, spilling into an avid collector’s lodging underneath stinking of glue and Spanish Shawl, where I grabbed a pair of brass bulldogs, three ivory goblets, stamps in neat folders arranged by colour, roman coins, a Beethoven bust and the music box Liz dug out ...