by Tony Moyle
Sandy watched Ian communicate his message using a bizarre form of mime to act out what he wanted. He flapped his arms and pretended to leap off the edge of the nest. Occasionally he would point a wing at one of them and shout very slowly, ‘YOU FLY!’ It was like watching the warm-up routine of those idiotic bird-men that jump off piers on summer days wearing only a cardboard plane and a pair of flippers. Surprisingly, though, Fred did seem to understand the request. He stood up and bobbed over to Ian.
“I told you they were just slow learners. He understands me now,” Ian said, beckoning Sandy over to see the expert at work.
Fred walked to the edge of the nest, spread his wings, bent his spindly knees just slightly and flew effortlessly out of the nest. He hovered a few feet from the tree, waiting in hope for Ian to follow him. Sandy watched intently as Ian attempted to repeat Fred’s processes. More reminiscent of a long jump than flight, Ian leapt expectantly from the tree, flapping furiously. He floated for a few moments before the inevitable loss of control. This time he did at least fly forward, albeit whilst lurching uncontrollably from side to side and finally careering into one of the silver birches that encircled the oak tree.
As he flopped onto the floor in a heap, a startled grey squirrel landed next to him, dislodged from its hiding place from the impact of Ian’s collision. The nervous squirrel bolted off into the undergrowth, constantly peering backwards to see if the monster pigeon was about to follow.
Not for the first time Fred chirped to Emma to assist Ian back into the tree. The two of them flew down to where Ian lay, clutched him softly in their claws and lifted him back up to where Sandy was watching. Dejected, Ian waited naively for some moral support. None came.
“Rudder,” said Sandy.
“You don’t have to be like that Sandy, it’s not easy, you know. I am trying my best,” replied Ian apologetically, shaking his feathers to remove the dirt that had accumulated on landing.
“Rudder, you idiot. That’s the reason we haven’t got it right. If you watch Fred, he’s using his tail as a rudder to balance the direction he’s going in. All you’re doing is using your wings.”
“But…I don’t have a tail.”
Sandy promptly kicked him in the rear.
“Owww!” Ian squawked as he hit the twig surface of the nest.
“You may not have had a tail when you were a human but I think, as I have just proved, you do have one now. We just have to work out how to use it. It must be a bit like trying to wiggle your ears. Not everyone can do it, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. Right, we need to concentrate on trying to move it.”
The many other creatures in their secret, shady hideouts witnessed an extraordinary sight. Two pigeons were apparently gurning at each other as they put all of their willpower into moving a part of their bodies that until recently wasn’t there. The outcome was varied. Beaks twitched, feathers shook, heads wobbled and a foot did a little dance. Every bodypart moved, except the tail. Ian concentrated on his butt so much he managed to defecate all over his feet, which didn’t help Sandy’s concentration one bit.
“I think we’re approaching this the wrong way,” said Sandy after much loss of energy. “Ian, put your foot on my tail and move it up and down, maybe then I’ll get to feel which muscles I need to use.”
Ian placed his foot on the end of Sandy’s tail and, like a man trying to pump up a lilo, moved it up and down. Sandy felt the muscles at the bottom of his spine moving. For the first time his brain connected to it, two parts of his body making their acquaintance for the first time.
“Okay, stop. I think I’ve got it.”
Sandy’s tail moved unaided. He raised his wings in the air, bent his knees and put his full force into a bounce from the floor. Using his newfound tail for balance, he flapped his wings and rose majestically from the nest, hovering a foot in the air.
“I’ve done it!” he shouted. “I’m flying!”
The experience was exhilarating. Sandy had hated the fact that he was caged in this new body. He hated eating bugs. He hated being stuck with Ian. He hated not having hands. For the first time in six weeks none of that mattered. He was doing what probably no human had ever done in history before. He was flying and he loved it. This power made Sandy feel like Sandy again. He landed smoothly back onto the nest. Once Sandy had demonstrated the use of his own tail feathers, he attempted to help Ian to control his own bodyparts. After a much longer time than it had taken Sandy, Ian waggled his tail. They sat down to contemplate their next move.
“We need to get back to London. The only person we can trust now is Violet. We need to seek her out and help her to stop Emorfed,” said Sandy, uncertain as to how this was even possible. “The only problem is, we don’t know where we are, and we don’t know in which direction London is.”
“Don’t pigeons home?” mumbled Ian.
“Do you know that might have been the most interesting and helpful thing you’ve said in your entire life, pigeon or human.”
Ian wasn’t quite sure why he merited praise, or maybe just didn’t recognise it as praise. It’d never happened before.
“You are right, of course, pigeons do home. But are we homing pigeons? Is there enough pigeon in us for that and do our brains know where home is?”
This peaceful little valley, which had been their home for the last few weeks, now felt like a tiny wilderness in a much more complex world. Which way were his instincts pointing him? He felt strongly that a point to his right under the midday sun was the direction they should follow. Maybe it was instinct or maybe a blind gamble.
“I think it’s that way,” said Ian, pointing a wing over the brow of the hill in exactly the same direction that Sandy had indicated to himself.
“That’s where I was thinking, too,” said Sandy. “Only one way to find out, I guess. You ready to go?”
“Not quite,” replied Ian. He stood up and hopped over to Fred and Emma. Using his unique communication style of mime and piercing stares, he shouted, “THANK YOU!” in the loudest and slowest English that he could muster.
Sandy and Ian went through their newly learnt pre-flight routine, which still needed a high level of conscious thought. They lifted off from the nest for what they hoped would be the last time, passed out of the forest and up above the treetops. Brilliantly bright yellow rapeseed fields spread out for miles, keeping villages and thickets at bay on their perimeters. An astounding view that they could have stopped and watched for hours if they had more certainty of the dangers that might face them on their journey. As they got into their rhythm and were flying at what they thought was top speed, Sandy was aware that they were now food in the eyes of a great many creatures.
Behind was a sight he didn’t expect. Flying about fifty feet away was a swarm of pigeons. He couldn’t count how many there were, but they were flying in formation and they were most definitely following them.
- CHAPTER FIFTEEN -
THE SCOOP
As the Cessna light airplane touched down at Fairoaks Airfield just outside Chobham in Surrey, John contemplated his next move. What he knew so far was that Sandy and Ian were pigeons, probably bloody big ones with certain characteristics that resembled their human forms. That meant that somewhere in the world there was a pigeon with a beard. From all accounts their souls wouldn’t have survived a long journey on their own, so they were likely to be somewhere in the South-East of England, quite near to the Tavistock Institute. That’s if they had stayed where they were, and there was no guarantee of that. What would he do next? It was already the start of May and the solstice would be in six or seven weeks. Time was running out.
“There we go, Nash, we’re here,” came the voice of the pilot from the cockpit, having just taxied them to one of the private hangars at an airport so small even some of the neighbourhood weren’t aware of it. “I still can’t understand what you were doing in Geneva without transport, though?”
“You really don’t want to know, Syd,” replied Nash. “Did y
ou phone Herb to pick me up?”
“Yes, he should be here already. He was very pleased that I called, seemed very eager to see you,” answered Syd.
“I bet he was.”
As he disembarked he shook Syd’s hand in a manly fashion in order to demonstrate, without verbalising, his debt of gratitude. God knows how he would have got out of Switzerland in such secrecy without him. In the hangar, leaning against a 1985 Porsche 911 that had seen better days, was an extremely grumpy Herb.
“What the fuck have you been up to?” grumbled Herb, as Nash reached the red sports car. “Do you know the grief that you have put me through in the last four weeks? I said, have a couple of days off and relax. I didn’t say go to Geneva to be imprisoned for a month, before getting embroiled in a mass murder. You’re a wanted man and your career, well, that’s going to disintegrate quicker than an O. J. Simpson getaway.”
“Look, Herb, I know you don’t understand but I really have got someone inside my head telling me what to do.”
“That’s just what Charles Manson said,” replied Herb in a tone teetering between genuine concern and utter bewilderment. “Get in the car.”
Herb squeezed his nineteen-stone frame into the driver’s seat of the most inappropriate car he could have picked for himself. The car had been a present newly bought for himself in the 1980s when the excesses of that period made it compulsory to own a vehicle like this. Unfortunately twenty years later and about the same number of additional waist inches, it made him look quite ridiculous. Herb was convinced he was still the zenith of cool, partly due to the fact that no one had the courage to tell Herb how utterly ludicrous he looked. They sped out of Fairfax on the small lanes that wound haphazardly across the countryside.
“What should I do?” said Nash, after an awkward period of silence.
“There’s no choice. You have to give yourself up. Clear your name!” shouted Herb over the roar of the engine.
“Oh yeah, great idea! Let’s sit in prison again trying to argue that a man more than three hundred years old, who’s possibly in cahoots with the Devil, killed a load of people using an invisible heat-ray that came out of his index finger! That’ll be the shortest trial in history, although it won’t, because whilst we’re there the Universe will implode around our ears. Good idea, Herb, you idiot,” thought John.
“Yeah, I agree with John,” said Nash. “If we try to explain that, they’d lock the door and throw away the key.”
“Who’s John?”
Nash pointed to his head.
Herb shook his.
“Look, if you’re not going to hand yourself in at least let me help you with your head. I have a friend, Donovan King, he’s a priest who helped me straighten myself out in the late-1960s when everyone was tripping their tits off.”
The wind whipped Herb’s preposterous comb-over into his eyes as they sped along with the car roof down to enjoy one of the rare moments in the British calendar when it wasn’t raining. John didn’t know what would happen if this mysterious vicar was let loose on Nash’s head, or more importantly his soul. It was up to him to get them out of this situation and he’d have to use his one and only good lead to do it. But to do that he’d have to convince Herb that this was in Nash’s best interests.
“Look, Nash, we both want to get rid of each other and you want to clear your name. The only person that connects Sandy and Ian to what we know is that reporter from The World Today, Fiona Foster. Why don’t you give her an exclusive interview and set the record straight about what happened in Geneva, whilst I find out what she knows about Tavistock?” suggested John cleverly.
“I like that idea better than having some priest mess about with my brain. Herb, I need you to get hold of Fiona Foster at The World Today. Tell her I want to do an exclusive interview, and it must be today,” demanded Nash.
“Look, it’s your life, Nash, but if you will insist on doing this you need to give me time to set it up. I can’t just get hold of her immediately like that. Come back to the flat. I’ll make some calls and you, and your imaginary friend, can sleep on it,” replied Herb.
“Is this imaginary, fatty?” thought John, as he lifted Nash’s middle finger up in Herb’s direction.
*****
Not since the hotel in Camden over a month ago had Nash woken up in a comfortable bed. It was even longer since his mind had been this clear and his body so relaxed. In fact it was, as he recalled, the first time in some years that he’d woken up in a nice bed without a hangover, a full memory of where he was and what he’d done the day before.
There was no doubt that Nash had used and been abused by alcohol. Performing onstage had always felt as alien to him as a cat trying to roller skate. Thousands of adoring fans waited expectantly every night for the person they thought he was to perform on cue. It was a persona that Nash knew he could never live up to, as much as he tried. Writing the music was what drove him on, not playing it to thousands. It was the messages in the music he wanted to get across to the public, not just a catchy, three-minute tune that they could dance to.
When the band had been propelled into the spotlight it meant he was forced to play in front of bigger audiences, and only alcohol gave him the confidence to perform. It was this enigmatic, yet inebriated, version of Nash that the fans really loved and he hated them for it. All this doppelgänger did was reinforce the illusion of success, whilst the real Nash grieved the failure of each song and project to achieve a greater purpose. The consequence of which was he drank more in a vain attempt to achieve it.
In latter years he no longer used alcohol to build his confidence: alcohol was using him to satisfy its own addiction. When days merged with nights, friends transposed with strangers and normality was easily substituted for celebrity, it was the gang of four that were really in control. Alcohol, cocaine, acid and sex had executed a slow hostile takeover, self-appointing themselves as his management team. Was it them that freed his mind to write brilliant music, or was there a more fundamental innate ability somewhere in the back office struggling for recognition? He didn’t know, but the fear of not knowing had always driven him to ‘back the management’. Surely they knew what they were doing?
Today he was free of them. Without John with him, the last month would have been the same old story. An endless night of binge drinking, staggering from one party to the next, oblivious of his own actions. Perhaps John had become his new drug? Who was really in control, him or John? When, or if, John ever left, what would remain of him?
“John, what do you do when I’m asleep?” asked Nash as he sat up against the headrest.
“To coin a phrase, Nash, I wander lonely as a cloud,” thought John, who knew all too well what he did and it certainly wasn’t sleep. John didn’t like the question because he hated the real answer.
“What do you think about?” asked Nash, probing John’s altogether ambiguous response.
“I think about everything, Nash,” replied John, sensing an unusual air of pity towards him.
“Like what?”
“Mostly I think about things that I have no influence over,” replied John.
“Tell me,” asked Nash softly.
“I think about my mother and how devastating my death must have been and I hope she has found some way to overcome the grief. I think about my friends and sister. I think about what I could have achieved in my life, if it had not been cut short. I think about the children I never had the chance to raise and the wife I never fell in love with. I think about why these things were robbed from me. I think about the millions and millions of souls that I have felt suffer, and I pray for them. I think about my father, and ask how he could have ended up in that place, when I know in my heart that he was a good man. Mostly I think about how I want nobody else that I love to suffer that fate, the fate that I have seen at the end of life. Finally, I remember that the key to most of this is finding Sandy and Ian.”
Nash wished he hadn’t asked. He wasn’t good at dealing with emotion, and cert
ainly wasn’t good at offering advice. He’d usually say something stupid like, ‘Never mind, it’ll be all right in the end,’ or, ‘Look on the bright side.’ Nash’s advice was the equivalent of asking a mental health patient to ‘pull yourself together’.
“What do I do when I’m asleep and you’re thinking?”
“Dream mainly.”
“What sort of dreams?”
“Some are downright pornographic and I get as far away as possible. Most are quite fascinating. It’s clear your mind is packed with ingenuity. I see songs and lyrics building, like a painter experimenting with colours. A musical melody forged by memories, thought and unthought. I know it’s only a matter of time before they emerge from your subconscious into something amazing. It’s all in here, Nash, it’s all you need.”
Herb opened the door to Nash’s bedroom. He was already dressed, if you can call denim shorts, flip-flops and an unbuttoned shirt ‘dressed’. “Breakfast’s up. Full Irish.”
Nash knew all too well that ‘full Irish’ meant two pints of Guinness, an Irish coffee and anything that Herb found in his fridge that wasn’t growing a bacterial culture on it and could be microwaved. Michel Roux, Herb was not.
Given Herb’s cooking, John had expected his house to be on a scale between NATO air strike and communal squat: unclean, unloved and unfurnished. He had visualised it having an unnecessarily large collection of musical memorabilia that adorned every wall and hall, each with a personalised story that Herb would give without prompting, each one ending with, ‘We were totally wasted.’
In reality Herb’s house would have been quite at home in the pages of Country Living magazine. Every room was immaculately decorated with antique furniture that enticed you to explore further. The paintings were intelligent and well placed, and each small detail was lavish and thoughtful. Nash and Herb sat around the grand kitchen table like marble chess pieces waiting for battle. Around them the perfectly designed kitchen clashed incongruously with Herb’s bespoke cooking style.
