The Bird Yard [antikvár]

November, 1997 The vast metal ball hung from the jib, held still by its own dead weight. He felt the weight of that ball as if it were an extension of himself, a responsibility that kept him in the cab for hours on end. Operating cranes of this nature was a vocation of sorts. It kept men like him apart from the rest of htimanity, his workmates bringing the occasional offering of tea or cigarettes. He took their gifts as a god might take any sacrifice, mindfrd that their lives were in his hands and aware that the slightest sign from him could send them running for cover. Below him, on groimd that glittered with frost, two workmen came out of a house. Victorian and four storeys high, it stood at the end of a row, its downpipes lurching from crumbling walls like badly broken limbs. It stood as testimony to the days when properties such as these were inhabited by people whose families could not be considered oU or connected; people made cruel by the fear of family scandal or the sudden loss of their comparatively insignificant wealth. They clustered together, away from the terraceid slums that had spread to the north. The slums were gone now; only these houses remained, the downward spiral from flats to squats having led some years before to an order that condemned them.