Twelve Stories by Paul Magrs

Author:Paul Magrs [Magrs, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781844717200
Google: rAUoAQAAIAAJ
Goodreads: 8101689
Publisher: Salt Pub.
Published: 2009-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Longsight Branch

March is the noisiest month in the branches above Longsight and Levenshulme. Spring hasn’t quite yet come to South Manchester and the trees seem lifeless and dead. The spindly boughs of the horse chestnuts are drooping in the chill and you have to be right up close to see that they are bursting already with hard, sticky buds, eager to pop.

And us lot are out and about, rattling the branches, bashing the trunks, tapping on the twigs and pelting about like billy-o. Tap-tap-tapping on the Longsight Branches.

All along the railway lines from Piccadilly in the heart of the city, all the way to Stockport and the distant hills, further than any of us have ever been in our lives, we are massing and tumbling and scampering. It sounds undignified, but so are we. We love being out and about. After an achey, cramped up winter, the dregs of which are still in evidence around us—ooh, it’s nice to be out.

My name’s Elsa. Hello, there!

This isn’t a happy story, by the way. It’s about the first tragedy of that dramatic year. It’s about that particular night, very early in the year, when the world was coming back to life and we were bashing away on the branches, belting around and sending messages with all our news on the mossy jungle drums. That particular night when Roger died.

I was going to have a night on the tiles. The kids were tucked up. My old mother was round to guard the nest. A Friday night in South Manchester. Fluffing up my tail. Rubbing my eyes till they were keen and bright. And then comes Roger’s message.

I can tell the difference between everyday chatter and the sound of genuine, raw alarm. And distress.

We were helpless. All his family and friends and colleagues. We stood on branches a sensible distance from the house as it blazed. And we knew he was up there, on the roof. Smoke plunging into the dark skies all around him. The trees that stood taller than the house itself swayed in the buffeting blasts of heat. He had sent his pleas to us through their branches. He had pulled at them and tried to hoist himself to safety. Why didn’t he just climb away? Old Roger—he was nimble, he was the quickest of all of us. Why couldn’t he just get away from that house as it burned?

God, what an inferno. In the early evening dark it was a terrible gold. Sheets of unforgiving flame came pouring, upstairs and down, from the windows of the derelict house.

Oh, there he is! Look! He’s there!

Someone caught sight of old Roger. Hopping about on the roof tiles. They must have been searing hot. Scalding his thin, sensitive feet.

Help me, save me, his message had cried. Bringing us here to the house. I caught a glimpse of him then. His lithe, gaunt silhouette darting about. Too late to hop onto any of the branches. They had transmitted his SOS to us, but they were too hot now for clambering along.

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