A Cast of Vultures by Judith Flanders Read Free Book Online

doing. ‘Hunsden. Bill Hunsden. But don’t bother to ring back. I don’t know anything now, and there’s no reason I’ll know anything tomorrow, or next week.’
    ‘Got it. Thanks again. I appreciate it.’ I hung up and wrote ‘Bill Hunsden’ on a piece of paper. I looked at it for a moment and added, ‘Council, planning’, and the phone number. I underlined it. Then I looked at the council website and worked out the council’s email address style, and sent him an email with my name and contact information, and with Viv’s, ‘in case he heard anything’, I wrote. It made me feel as if I’d accomplished something, and it gave me something to tell Viv.
    I gathered up my passport application, with the various subsidiary forms that I needed to complete to prove that I was me. Some had to be countersigned by a qualifiedprofessional ( a doctor, a veterinarian surgeon, lawyer, or university professor . What about vets who didn’t perform surgery? Wasn’t that discrimination? If a university professor was OK, why not a teacher? Weren’t violinists trusted members of society? And plumbers? What had plumbers done to make the Canadian government overlook them so scandalously?). Then there were the regulations for the photographs. Do not smile; head must be in three-quarters profile; left ear must be visible; right hand to be held in the Vulcan salute . I threw everything into my bag. The day, I decided, was officially over.
    The agent and the Canadians between them ensured that I spent the journey home planning out the superpowers I needed to improve the world. My primary one, I decided, would be to kill with a glare everyone who aggravated me: passport officers and the un-mathematical agent obviously, but also the people on the Tube who were having a good time when I wasn’t; the tourists huddled around the map on the wall who were blocking the ticket barrier; and mostly myself, for being so cross for so little reason.
    If nothing else, it was cool in the tiled station hall. The last month had seen never-ending rain, which had, over the past week, transformed itself into summer. Summer is one of those seasons we are never prepared for in this country. We tell ourselves, and live, as though the British climate were always mild. If you come from Minnesota, or the Sahara, this is true. Otherwise it overlooks the reality that some days, or weeks, will qualify as ‘cold’, and some as ‘hot’. This entire past week had been hot. Maybe even very hot. To be on the un-air-conditioned, barely ventilated Tube in this weather was Method preparationfor an audition in one of Dante’s circles of hell.
    Foreigners think that all social interactions in Britain must legally begin with a discussion of the weather. This is not true. We are only required to talk about the weather in certain, very specific, circumstances. When the temperature rises above 22°. When it drops below 10°. When it rains heavily, or there are showers for more than three days in a row. And when it snows. Or hails. Or it looks like any of these things might happen in the next month. At any of those moments, weather commentary is obligatory.
    Fortunately, the evening was well above 22°, and had therefore reached the point where the temperature had become material for discussion for days afterwards, ‘Isn’t it hot?’ and ‘How are you managing in this heat?’ morphing imperceptibly into ‘Wasn’t it awful?’ and ‘How did you manage?’, which would safely carry us through until the next weather emergency – say a drizzle that continued for more than an hour.
    So as I stopped at the newsstand to buy the chocolate I deserved after being so polite to the innumerate agent, ‘Hey, Azim, nice and cool in here’, was my reflexive opening. My credentials established as a respectable member of society, I moved on without waiting for a response. ‘What’s going on?’
    Azim had run the newsagent’s for years, possibly as long as I’d lived in the