The London Pigeon Wars

by Patrick Neate

  Murray squeezed out ‘Lighten up’ through the gaps in his bolus and Kwesi laughed, ‘Yeah, Freya.’ Freya smiled but she found it hard to lighten up when Murray ate like such a pig and his face, hands and clothes were already orange with the luminescent barbecue sauce.

  He paused over his second thigh. ‘So we're going to rob this bank, then,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah?’ Kwesi's eyebrows were jumping off his forehead.

  ‘Who's “we”?’ Freya asked.

  Murray belched into his hand. ‘You, me, K, Em and Tariq, Tom and Karen.’

  Freya was laughing. ‘The magnificent seven,’ she said.

  There was a pause while Murray took a mouthful and Kwesi sipped – thoughtfully, he hoped – on his coffee.

  ‘Why would we do that?’ Kwesi asked.

  ‘I don't know, china. Because Em and Tariq are about to go bankrupt and need our help. That's a good reason. Or how about a sortie into race warfare? I mean, for you, me and Tariq, my brother. Fight the power. That'll do, too. Or perhaps it's an act of artistic expression or a conscious rejection of the social contract or entrepreneurial spirit or post-millennial ennui. Or maybe – maybe it will represent an existential moment of definition. Maybe. Then again, perhaps it'll just be a laugh, you know?’ Murray shrugged and smiled and he glanced at Freya. His teeth were orange-stained too. ‘The important thing is that we're going to do it. As simple as that.’

  17

  Of happiness

  Karen is sitting in a coffeeshop in one of the busy sidestreets between Blackfriars and St Paul's. She's just walked across the Millennium Bridge and her face is untypically pink, whipped by the wind off the river. She paused for a minute or two in the middle of the bridge and contemplated the view of each bank, dominated behind her by the monolithic magnificence of the Tate Modern and ahead by the cathedral's great dome. Although the bridge has only been reopened for a few months, this is already her favourite London spot.

  In the summer of 2000, Karen and Tom had been among the throngs that trooped across this bridge on the day of its first opening and, when it started to sway so alarmingly, they clung to one another for support. It was closed for more than a year after that.

  This morning Karen read an article about the bridge's design flaws in one of those free magazines that lay around the canteen at work. According to the article, the engineers had expected the bridge to be able to move a little; indeed such flexibility was part of its strength. But what had caused it to swing so much that the people crossing struggled to keep their footing? The answer, it transpired, was simplicity itself. Apparently the engineers had not allowed for the fact that the footsteps of a crowd of pedestrians will always tend to slip into synch: left, right, left, right. Consequently, as the crowd walked across the bridge to one drum, their unanimous stride pattern carried enough force to start it swaying. What's more, as it began to move so, with one mind, the crowd had to adjust their step in order to keep balance and thus accentuated the swing.

  This little article was the catalyst to set Karen thinking and now, hunched over a table in this fish-bowl warmth, she can't stop. All kinds of different stuff; that free-range type of thinking when ideas come and go, in gangs, pairs and individually, like the passengers on a mid-afternoon tube to nowheres like Stanmore or West Ruislip.

  When she sits down, the first thing she thinks is that she doesn't do this much; this thinking. She doesn't have the time. She wonders if this is an excuse but, on second thoughts, she realizes it's absolutely spot on. She's so busy. She works, she has meetings, she chatters to friends and acquaintances, chatters to Jared, drinks, smokes the odd cigarette, can't bring herself to ring her sister, catches the headlines, fucks occasionally, reads the same five pages of the same book every night for a month and sleeps easily and without guilt. She's so busy reacting; to a memo, to chatter that fuels chatter, to ancient, ill-concealed inadequacies, to war and terrorism, to impatient nudges and ultimately to the day's ineffable rhythm. She's so busy.

  She remembers something Jared says, his mantra: ‘Nothing makes you happy. Happiness is a by-product of what you do.’ And she remembers Murray's riposte and the laughter in his voice, ‘But you're happy, right?’ Now, she doesn't think she believes in happiness. Then again, she doesn't think much.

  Looking around, she is suddenly shocked by the décor; the pictures so formulaic you seem to see straight through them to the bare walls, the pine chairs with the check seat covers, the marble-patterned Formica tables. Though she has been into this very coffeeshop a dozen times before, she notices for the first time that it is furnished around a quaint golf theme located somewhere in fifties Americana. She is briefly fascinated by the idea that someone presumably designed all this – this peculiarly specific abstraction – presumably at vast expense. The anonymous quotes on the ceiling: ‘The game of golf is a long slow walk punctuated by occasional moments of optimism, but generally characterized by crushing disappointment…’ The words ‘CRUSHING DISAPPOINTMENT’, ‘OPTIMISM’ and, indeed, ‘GAME OF GOLF’ are capitalized.

  She considers all the suits and shoppers dropping in to this coffeeshop to revive themselves with Styrofoam highs and she is suddenly equally shocked by the hubbub; so many people with so many different things to say! She has a bizarre sensation that maybe she's been struck mute and if someone approached her now she wouldn't be able to form any words at all or, if she could, they'd be somehow cancelled out by the white noise. She knows this is fancy but she nonetheless considers the difference between the dumb and the merely silent. There is no difference, she concludes, until the silent choose to speak.

  She wonders about Tom; what it was that made her call him. They've been apart for a long time now but, when challenged, pressurized or upset, she still dials his number without fail. Is this instinct, habit or a mixture of the two? It's not like she does it without understanding the implications but she always goes ahead anyway. She suspects it's not a good thing. It's unfair on him and probably unfair on herself as well. But Karen figures that this is something that defines people, especially people in relationships (however successful, failing or over): the capacity to do stuff that they know is bad – even bad for themselves – and, what's more, to keep on doing it again and again.

  Of course, Karen had assumed it would get easier. She had assumed that, in time, the bits of Tom's heart, personality or perhaps just routine that had embedded themselves within her would begin to decompose, maybe even fertilize a new relationship. But that hasn't happened. How could it when she still calls him any time she has a worry? This makes her angry with herself and, more to the point, angry with Tom, too. Again, she knows it's unfair but that's the way it is.

  Now that she thinks about it, she realizes she's jealous of Tom and that only makes her all the more angry. Specifically, she's jealous of his certainty.

  When they first met, she'd found his eagerness to love her almost bizarre, as threatening as it was welcome. After all, her only previous boyfriend had been Kush so it wasn't surprising that she thought of men as heavy bodies to dodge and parry and relationships as an ongoing series of battles and ceasefires in which she was the lone guerilla, living on her wits, sacrificing everything. Tom's promise to look after her (however unlikely) had, therefore, seemed like it must be a cunning ruse, a plan to make her drop her guard and open herself up for the killer blow. But she was a girl raised on high-school movies in which star-crossed lovers find redemption in the final-frame clinch so she had to go along with it; almost as a matter of principle. And besides, Tom had been so certain.

  Tom had always laughed at the way she could watch Some Kind Of Wonderful, The Breakfast Club and Pretty In Pink, of course, again and again. He said, ‘What happens next? That's what I want to know. It's typical Hollywood. The movie ends at the point they get together but, in real life, that's when it starts to get difficult.’

  Karen was puzzled he could be so disparaging about the archetype while seeming so sure about their future together. He, on the
other hand, couldn't understand how she had more belief in a fairytale than she did in her boyfriend. In the end, though, it was her faith that was proved right and she who suffered for it. Where was the justice in that?

  If she was honest with herself – and she was – Karen did admit that, for the majority of their time together, Tom's certainty, his unquestioned commitment to them, had been a solid foundation for the relationship. After the initial hiccups of her distrust (not of him particularly; of anyone), that commitment gave them thick roots that allowed their branches, flexible with youth, to knot and entwine with speed and confidence.

  Karen admitted too that she had come to take his conviction for granted. She admitted that, as her career progressed and accelerated, she had stopped worrying about the foundations or roots and concentrated instead on what she considered the cosmetic – the décor of the relationship that needed sprucing up and the buds that now occasionally failed to blossom. When, for example, she had begun to work seventeen-hour days for the campaign team, she had figured this was no more than peeling wallpaper, a superficial problem to be dealt with at a later date. And when she'd subsequently gone off sex and found Tom's every touch sent the wrong kind of shivers down her spine, she'd dismissed it as a dry spell which required no cure but the changing season. Because their relationship was certain, wasn't it? That's what he said.

  Only it wasn't certain. It wasn't.

  She'd come home one night after a tough day of conference calls, copy editing and computer headaches to find Tom sitting up in bed fully clothed. It was past three a.m. and his breath was thick with alcohol and she could read his face like a banner headline. He said, ‘We need to talk.’ And she said, ‘Tomorrow.’ Because she knew what was coming and she was simply too tired.

  ‘I've been with someone else.’

  He blurted it out just like that. It should have been, in some ways, a Hollywood moment, loaded with tension and drama. But London's not Hollywood and Tom is no Tom Cruise and his eyes were unfocused and his cheeks sagged.

  ‘With who?’ she asked and even those two words seemed to exhaust her further.

  ‘It doesn't matter.’ Tom was shaking his head. ‘The point is we have to talk.’

  ‘I'm going to sleep,’ she said quietly. ‘I've got an early start. Would you mind sleeping on the sofa or something? I don't want to look at you.’

  Tom was bewildered. It wasn't what he was expecting. ‘But we need to talk.’

  ‘No,’ Karen said. ‘No. You've done it. What's there to talk about? You've done it already.’

  She'd tried to throw him out the next day but he refused to go. It took her a week to sort out another place and she left. In between, they barely exchanged a word. Tom was bitter and angry (which she certainly didn't understand) and hardly ever in the flat; and when he was he was drunk. Karen was just numb. Her mind and her emotions seemed to click into a cool rationality that brooked no argument and rendered any conversation pointless anyway. She didn't cry at all, which surprised her. The only time she cried was a couple of weeks later.

  This was because it was a couple of weeks before Tom started begging her to come back. He took to hanging around outside her building – she'd moved to a bedsit in Kilburn; a bedsit, for god's sake – and swearing his undying love. He'd accost her at the door and say, ‘We're meant to be together, sweetheart. You know we are. Some things are meant to be.’ And, for all the desperation in his face, there was that certainty again.

  At first she wouldn't even acknowledge him, let alone let him in. But in the end she had little choice because he was becoming such a nuisance and her neighbours – above her, below her, to left and right of her – were starting to look at her funny when they crossed on the stairs.

  As soon as they were inside and he was perched on her one chair while she slouched on the uncomfortable futon that dug divots into her back, she saw he was hopeful and she knew she had to dispel that pretty quick.

  ‘I love you,’ he began. Like he still thought that would make it OK. ‘We're meant to be together.’

  She shook her head and she felt her eyes prickle and burn. ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Karen!’ he exclaimed. It was like he expected this and he had his answer down pat. Jesus! He almost looked smug. ‘I've always been sure.’

  ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘No. Because if you're sure you don't fuck around.’

  ‘It was a mistake,’ he said. ‘A lapse.’

  ‘No way. Because if you're sure, if you're certain, if you're absolutely positive, you don't make mistakes. Because you're sure. That's the point.’ She felt a lump the size of a plum in her throat and the first sob almost choked her as she fought with it. ‘Jesus, Tom! Jesus!’

  He tried to comfort her then but she wasn't having it. He'd become a heavy body and she was the lone guerilla again, fending him off. His touch, his smell, the look of pity on his face – pity? How dare he! – repulsed her.

  ‘Go,’ she said. The tears were coming fast now. ‘Please. Get out.’

  ‘We have to talk, sweetheart.’

  ‘No. There's nothing to talk about. I was never sure, Tom. I was never sure. But I never made a mistake, I never lapsed, I never fucked someone else. Please. Just go.’

  They'd been having variations of the same conversation ever since; some civilized, some raw and angry, but basically the same. And Tom still didn't get it.

  The truth was that Karen didn't hate his certainty and she reckoned she understood where it came from perfectly. But that was why she was jealous; because this certainty – however misconstrued, misplaced or plain mistaken – was such an act of faith. And faith came so easily to Tom. It was easy for him with his loving family in a semi-detached in Hampton Wick to believe in anything he wanted and, what's more, to stop believing with few repercussions (she had, after all, witnessed his occasional spurts of devoted Catholicism). It was easy for him to believe that there was someone out there (Karen or whoever) who was meant to be with him, with whom he could live happily ever after and say so with unshakeable devotion. Lucky Tom. But Karen? She'd never believed that and the one person she'd met who might have convinced her otherwise had shown that, for all his faith, he couldn't be faithful. And trust, like many things, is most highly prized by those who've known it least. So no wonder she stuck to her movies, thanks very much. And yet…

  Karen checks her watch. Tom is late. Tom is never late to meet her; never. And she feels a brief pang of desperation and she suddenly wonders if the moment she's long expected has finally arrived; the moment when he finally admits that they weren't meant to be together after all.

  She shakes her head and plays with the froth where her coffee used to be, scooping it up on her teaspoon for mouthfuls of bubbles. Her relationship with Tom is, she thinks, as confusing as an Escher sketch or the Soho one-way system; a complex conundrum of impossibilities and queries whose answers solve nothing. She can't be with Tom because he's so sure that it's right and she can't trust that. But if he lost his certainty, of course, she couldn't be with him anyway. She could forgive him his infidelity if she thought he was truly weak but how could she build a life with someone weak? Maybe if he changed, she could give him another chance. But if he changed then he wouldn't be the Tom that she'd so wanted to believe in. He'd be yet another shape-shifter, no better than Kush, whose many faces (well, two) only confirmed her fears that she couldn't trust anyone. He would no longer be the Tom she fell in love with.

  So Murray calls her a chameleon? At least her changes reflected the search for viable identity rather than unconsidered inconsistencies of character or brief hiccups of desire.

  Of course, Karen knows that her thinking is flawed but she forgives herself easily because she tries not to think about this too much and, besides, it's essentially about how she feels and she may as well question the weather as question that. Nonetheless she is able to admit that she still wants Tom even as she knows they can never be together (and that at least sounds like a balanced equation).
What's more, she knows that people do change – her, Tom, the lot of them – whether she chooses to acknowledge it or not. After all, she'd seen Kush again just the other day and hadn't their meeting been evidence enough?

  After she ran into him in Brixton, Kush had called her at work. God knows how he got the number but she couldn't be bothered to protest. He said, ‘We should catch up, know what I mean?’ And when she asked why and he said, ‘For old times' sake’, she almost laughed. But she arranged to meet him for lunch at the Admiralty, an expensive joint just off Strand. ‘My treat,’ she said though what she meant was ‘my turf’ and she hoped he'd feel every bit as uncomfortable as she thought he might.

  He turned up reeking of expensive aftershave and wearing an expensive suit that was tight around the shoulders, waist and thigh and lent him all the class of a baked potato. His thick neck and bald head poked out pinkly from his collar like the head of a penis from a gripping fist. Kush? Of course he hadn't changed at all.

  She recalled the way he used a knife and fork for his asparagus tips and then complained, loudly, on his way back from the gents that the food had made his piss smell dodgy. She recalled some of the stories he'd told and the conclusions she'd drawn from them; that he'd graduated from junior gangster to minor gangster, cutting deals around South London and battering some other poor cow no doubt.

  The change, therefore, was in her. She wasn't surprised that she was no longer scared of him; she'd expected that. In fact, part of her wanted Kush to lamp her right across the table so she could laugh all the way to A & E at the prospect of having him sent down. Nor was she surprised that she still found him in some ways charming. There was that street savvy she'd always admired, of course, and she also recalled how she liked the way his voice softened to barely a whisper when he was trying to be serious – a mark of confidence or insecurity, she'd never been able to tell. What did surprise her, however, was the idea that she'd once tried to plan a life with him and, more to the point, once found this monster in some way physically attractive. He was, she now realized, an oaf. It was nothing to do with his capacity for violence nor the pathetic tics of machismo that found form in his every expression. Instead it was the clumsiness of his movements; the noise he made – a wheezing sigh – when he sat down, the sight of his fat mitt wrapped around a crystal bulb, the way he accidentally kicked her under the table when he crossed his legs. Presumably, at one time, she hadn't noticed this lumbering; perhaps she'd even liked it. But now the idea of being close to him conjured only images of beasts mating.