‘Jesus Saves’

Summary

Hounslow High Street, 1979

I am nine and pulling along my brother, dreaming about Joanne Stubbs who'd holidayed in Broadstairs, who was ushered to the front of St Luke's Church that morning.

My mother tells me to look the other way as we pass the pigeon man in the square outside Brentford Nylons.

He's now climbed onto a box encrusted with bird droppings; his face is red and weathered, his hands hold a small brown book. The eyes are fixed on the distance, beyond the beyond.

And when we pass by a few hours later, he hasn't shifted from his hardwood spot, he's jousting the air with his fingers, and though it was long after Enoch, the notes fasten in my head, that we couldn't be saved, that every last one of us was damned.