The London Pigeon Wars

by Patrick Neate

  ‘Don't worry about me, Kazza. I'll make my own way.’

  Tom drove her home. Or back to Jared's house, anyway. They barely spoke, which suited Karen just fine. She wanted to establish how she felt to have seen her hated ex-boyfriend killed. There were certainly impulses telling her she should care; broad impulses of the ‘human life is sacred’ variety. But in the narrowness of herself she knew that she didn't care. Not at all. She tried thoughts like, ‘The world's probably a better place without him’, to see how they sounded in her head, to give the event the wider significance that a death surely merits. While these abstractions functioned well enough, she knew they didn't really fit. Because she just didn't care.

  At one point Tom said, ‘We shouldn't have left him.’

  But, as she didn't reply, the words just hung in the air between them for a moment or two before slowly evaporating. Karen didn't even know if Tom was talking about Murray or Kush.

  Studying Tom's profile, she found she was gradually overwhelmed by an understanding of the connection they shared and, in its simplicity, she found it extraordinary that she'd never put it together like this before. Tom, by virtue of his ongoing need for faith (in God, in therapy, in Murray, in her), was aspiring beyond the mundane security of his background while she, by virtue of an upbringing that ever tried to drag her back, aspired to precisely that mundanity. A botched gun deal in a Brixton car park, therefore, surely brought them closer together. So they met once again in the no man's land of ambition; a safehouse of unspoken but mutual secrets.

  Tom parked the car outside Jared's flat in Pimlico. Rather than leave the engine running he switched off the ignition, which seemed like a statement of intent. The lights were on in the living-room and the curtains were open and they could see what must have been Jared's sinewy torso and legs upturned against the bright, white wall.

  ‘What's he doing?’ Tom asked quietly.

  ‘Yoga, I guess. It's good for his back.’

  ‘At four in the morning?’

  ‘He must be waiting up for me. He's probably worried.’

  ‘Where did you say you were going?’

  ‘I didn't. We're not really talking at the moment.’

  She opened the door and leaned across to kiss him. Of course, she'd kissed him a thousand times since they split up, but, as her lips met his cheek, she immediately knew that this one was different and she held herself there for a moment and shut her eyes and heard his intake of breath. When she finally pulled back, he said, ‘You can stay at mine if you like.’ And when she didn't answer, he blustered. ‘I'm not trying… Really… I just meant…’

  ‘No. Thanks. No,’ she said. And then added, ‘Not tonight’, and even as she said those last two words, she realized they promised a future and, what's more, that was precisely what she'd meant.

  ‘You OK?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Considering.’

  He nodded, ‘Considering.’

  She got out of the car and slammed the door. Looking up at the window, she saw that Jared was still locked in his headstand, upside down. Even as Tom pulled away, she stood there for a moment and thought about the men in her life –Kush, Tom, Jared and, she guessed, Murray too. Briefly, achingly, she wondered if all relationships were based on no more than coincidence of aspiration.

  22

  The London Pigeon Wars

  As the tongue-tying's multiplying, so I know I've no time for bush-beating and I'd best be blunt as a woodpecker's beak after a month in the Concrete. For all her indubitable qualities of leadership and loquacity, and her indisputable skill for scoping the nuts and niblets that stayed stuck in the gizzard of a geez, Gunnersbury was no general and that's the verity. This is neither diss nor disloyalty. Such tactical acumen is by no means natural for a pigeon who was raised (as we all were) with no great grasp of the fabulous fortune of this London larder; so only god knows how Regent, the geez with a magpie phyzog, should have proved himself such a born soldier. But it's a tract of fact nonetheless and one we were soon to regret.

  After the murder of Brixton23 above the Brixton Tarmac, Gunnersbury was very vocal about vengeance and, to be veritas, we had her tail feathers to a bird. We were all, like, ‘What to do? What to do?’ cooing on cue like squibs for a squirm, but Gunnersbury incubated her ponderings for no more than an hour after the Declaration of War before hatching her plan.

  It was an idea that she ill-advisedly devised as ‘the invasion’ but, in its aftermath, became known to us Surbs simply as ‘Paddington’ (as in ‘battle of’). And, even though I missed the horror's heart of it (and that's surely why I'm still here to beak on to you), that's a word that ruffles my feathers and curls my pigeon toes and no mistake.

  Let me briefly illuminate the geography of the situation so that you might manifest a mindmap. Put simply, the division between RPF and Surb was a division between In and Out with Regent's hordes locked on a Concrete strip that stretched north from Westminster to the West End and Marylebone and then east along the river to the City, Stepney and Bow. In principle, therefore, us Surbs ruled the rest of the roosts in a wide circle around this RPF turf. That makes us sound like the powerful posse, right? Right. But in practice it was a whole lot more complicated than that.

  In the first place, the majority of Surb strongholds were to the south and west; ticking clockwise from Deptford to Camberwell to Brixton to Streatham to Wandsworth to Hammersmith to Shepherd's Bush to Kensal Green and outwards from there. And the other suburbs? Theoretically, for example, Neasden, Golders Green, Hampstead and Highgate were Surb territories and the peaceable pigeons from such roosts surely claimed camaraderie with Gunnersbury and our gang; but they weren't much involved when the feathers started to fly, not after Paddington anyway.

  Similarly, Regent, mostly through the guile of the gregarious Garrick, had secured support in Hackney, Stoke Newington and Leyton but these alliances didn't bother us too much because we knew there were pockets of Surb resistance in places like West Ham, Wanstead and Walthamstow that would at least make them doublethink before concluding to come to our commons and find squirms for their squibs.

  In the second place, our strength was also our weakness. While we might have reigned over the rump of the roosts, that was a whole lot of compass to control (especially when you deliberate the down and up as well as the other four points). And as that frosty geez Regent made a virtue of the concentration of his isolation, so we were stretched as thin as the wind. I'm not making excuses but that's the acorn of the matter.

  Gunnersbury's plan? That peachy pigeon's plot was simplicity itself and was rolled out just two days later (though, as I've already illuminated, two days can seem like a lifetime on the accelerated mindclock of cock and coochie). After the abomination of Acre Lane, you can bet that both sides in this soon to be war had reinforced their lines of spotters flying high over our bird boundaries (generally the young hotheads who could stay airbound for hours on no more than the conviction of their conscience). So I was to lead a raiding party of just twenty-five heartland hulksters to try and break the RPF line above Southwark bridge.

  The way Gunnersbury illuminated it, it didn't matter whether we succeeded or failed just so long as we squawked for London and beaked with enough braggadocio to bring Regent's forces flocking from the Concrete. Then we could hightail it back to Surb safety where a tough young coochie called Lewisham6 would be waiting at the head of a 100-strong squadron. They weren't there for a set-to, skirmish or scrimmage but merely to provide a body of beaks to track-stop the intruders (if they reached that far) and hold on for support. Our deployment was, you follow, only diversionary.

  After our Southwark assault had turned the enemy phyzog, Gunnersbury herself would lead a full attack at the head of 500 beaks to the west. They would, she assured us, easily overwhelm the spotters at Notting Hill before swooping behind the bulk of Regent's followers to surprise them at, say, Westminster – or Lambeth at the latest. All being well, the enemy would be driven into Surb territory and then scat
tered before our fury and, meanwhile, Gunnersbury and her closest consorts would be free in the Concrete to seek out Regent's own Remnant of Content. Gunnersbury was confident and confidence is catching.

  Now, as I've illuminated myself for you, you may ponder what yours truly, a pensive pigeon with an appetite for analysis, made of this scheme that looks (with the benefit of hindsight anyway) blatantly bird-brained; a scheme that patronizingly predicts no worst-case scenarios and relies less on its own brilliance than on the opponents' disarray. After all, I'd experienced the brief exhilaration of the consciousness of consciousness so didn't that lend any objectivity (or bird's eye, if you will) to my view? Well. If you still cogitate upon this conflict like that, my friend, then you clearly haven't scoped the full scoop and you may as well fly back to cloud-cuckoo-land. The verity is that for all my consciousness, consciousness thereof and, indeed, contemplation therefore, I was still as confused as the next geez. And, like I've illuminated already (if you've been following), everybirdy wants to follow. So now you know.

  I can't pinpoint the precise second when I realized it was going wrong.

  My raiding party engaged the RPF spotters above Southwark Bridge right enough but there was barely a peckchop in anger. Certainly, we were some fearsome flock with thugalicious geezs like Sutton9 and Furzedown on my either wing and the enemy were squawking in terror when Tooting16 (who went by the nikname St George) sent some poor youngen whose breast had barely greyed plummeting to a Thames tomb (the second victim at a pigeon's beak, I hazard). Nonetheless, I was trebly surprised when they turned tail. I was surprised because we were well-matched for a scrimmage, because they surely expected reinforcements and, most of all, because there was Garrick himself at the forefront of their flight. What was that geez doing on the frontline? Generally he was never more than a wingspan from Regent's side.

  I was doubtful of what to do. Did my raiding party chase them back into the Concrete jungle where we'd surely run into rough resistance before too long? And, if the bulk of their beaks weren't heading here then, for the sake of the heavens, where were they?

  In the end, I'm shamed to admit, it was St George who took the decision. He called to me, respectful like: ‘What now, chief?’ But I prevaricated and procrastinated until he squawked, ‘Let's get after them!’ and set off in pursuit: ‘For Content! For Content! For Content!’

  So I followed my followers and justified it to myself with the thought that we would surely meet Gunnersbury's invading army if we could stay out of trouble and back-double west over Embankment and Piccadilly.

  Garrick of course had other ideas and was soon leading us into the heart of the City and away from our Surb fellows. The atmosphere was a strange one because the skies were as silent as surely as the streets below were the usual hub of nik hubbub. As the RPF spotters headed further north and further east, I was developing disquiet. What if they were playing us at our own game and there was a posse poised to pounce in Spitalfields or Shoreditch?

  ‘Hold up, geezs!’ I called to my fellows. ‘My bird's eye sees some starling shiftiness. We'll have this hunt another day. Now's the time to find our invasion.’

  Despite some discontented contempt (from Sutton9 most of all who was near smoking with bloodlust) they swallowed my orders like a squirm – good geezs all – and we took a right-angle, dropped a forty-five and headed for the Notting Hill line, flying low for cover, almost brushing the buildings with our breasts. Nobirdy can predict might-have-beens, of course, but I reckon I made the right call; especially considering what we found in West London.

  It was over Hyde Park that we first scoped them; scores of pigeons heading in to the Concrete. I didn't recognize a single one but, like I've already illuminated it, the features of a phyzog are difficult to differentiate for us birds, and initially I assumed they must be the vanguard of our Surb army. But then the cacophony of their calls conspired into a chorus that, to be veritas, made my feathers shimmer and almost snap in terror:

  The coochies and the geezs

  No squibs or pussy teasers.

  When Regent will instruct us

  We peckchop those Surb fucksters!

  OK, OK… it was a ridiculous, ribald rhyme, only worthy of the playground babchicks. But it chilly-chilled my blood nonetheless. Some of them looked hurt or haggard, all right, but most of them were joining in this triumphal song at the very tops of their calls.

  The peepniks crane their necks

  Begin to look perplexed

  When the RPF come calling

  You know the Surbs are falling!

  Luckily, or intuitively, perhaps, I'd dropped us lower still and we were skimming the Serpentine and Long Water, unseen as this bad bunch flew overhead. But you can bet we were full of foreboding as we cleared the park at Lancaster Gate and different kinds of noises – honks and shouts and sirens wailing – gave us our first clue of what we might find.

  The nik traffic was track-stopped throughout the area and even the pedestrian peepniks were shock-stilled by what lay ahead. We caught niblets of their panic as we passed ‘What the…’ ‘Why the…’ ‘How the…’ typical niks who know nut all and are ever questions and no answers.

  As we flew up Craven Road, I realized there were now no other birds in the sky (neither Surb nor RPF) so I took a steep seventy to get a better look at what was going on. My god…

  As my consciousness degrades so too my grasp of language surely slips away like a squirmy squirm from the beak. But in this instance I'm limited not by my diminishing descriptive powers but by horrors that would have flummoxed the most talented tongue-twister. As I looked down like god himself, I scoped that a rough rectangle, bordered by Eastbourne Terrace, Bishops Bridge Road, Praed Street and the Westway and including both station and basin, was now no more than a mass grave for our Surb fellows. Hundreds of pigeon corpses littered the Tarmac and pavements and lay in pigeon-shaped dents in car bonnets and roofs. Shop windows had been shattered by dying birds who must have been desperately trying to pull out of their final free-falls. The Westway was chockablock after a speeding Transit had – I'm hazarding here – met a fleeing geez head-on and jackknifed across the carriageway and rolled upturned to a stop before four, five or six cars piled into its wreckage. I scoped several ambulances, pairs of policemen in sun-yellow jackets, babchicks who wailed at the carnage of it, sweets sweetly weeping and savouries who shook their heads and said, ‘What the…’ ‘Why the…’ ‘How the…’

  I peered down at my fallen fellows, seemingly all Surbs to a bird, and I felt like my poor pigeon heart, no bigger than a berry, might burst with sorrow. Sutton9 was at my right wing. His phyzog was all pity but at least his brain was still ticking over. ‘We should go, chief,’ he squawked.

  We found the drabs and dribs of our mighty invasion had flown to Barnes Common, just south of the river. If I'm going to straight-talk and crow-fly, then I must concede that it took some time to establish the exact events since every single one of those pigeons was all shock and staring beads. They clucked around and cleaned each other's wounds but none was adequately compos mentis to paint a proper picture. In the end, I had to piece it together myself with the same tender care and heavy hopelessness that you'll see in a coochie-momma as she tries to piece together the shell of a dropped egg.

  It turned out that a huge RPF force, around 1,500 beaks strong, had been right there at Paddington when the invasion hit their territory. When their spotters fled from Notting Hill, so Regent was waiting just a mile up the road, hiding in the eaves and awnings, unseen by Surb scouts. As the triumphal invasion flew cooing overhead, so the RPF emerged from hiding and sent fear and frenzy flooding through the flock and carcasses cascading to the Concrete. Indeed, Gunnersbury herself, who was at the back of the bunch, was set upon by three fucksters and would surely have perished but for the furious intervention of Finchley440, who beat them off one by one.

  That poor coochie had made it back to Barnes but she'd taken a terrible gouging and goring and was fading f
ast by the time I found her, all alone in the arms of an oak. Even as I fluttered down next to her, I could see the light dimming in her amber beads. ‘For Content,’ she cooed, soft and mournful. And I replied likewise, if only to give her death dignity. Because, to be veritas, I already knew it was all birdshit.

  When I located Gunnersbury, that peachy coochie was a firework of fury. She too was surely shocked but, the way I scoped it, her indignance was ignoble and veritably vanitarious. Maybe it was the god complex of which I'd already seen signs, but the way she was beaking on you'd have figured she were protesting the cheek that her plans should have been so disrupted rather than the deaths of a dozen dozens of her own.

  I tried to ask her, ‘How did Regent know where we'd attack?’ But she wasn't even interested in this most quintessential of questions.

  Instead she preferred to rant and rave with a tremulous timbre to her call; as if this defeat were in some way a personal slight. Perhaps if I'd pushed my point a whole lot of pigeons would have been spared. But I didn't push my point so you can scope, without illumination, I think, that sometimes the slipping of my consciousness feels like a blessing (with no disguise) or a sheep in wolf's clothing.

  ‘Regent figures they can hold out?’ This was the kind of stuff Gunnersbury cooed. ‘But who has the numbers? We do, Ravenscourt. We do. And we'll overwhelm and overrun them with our battalions of beaks until they beg for the unification of Content.’

  I did query her, veritably I did. ‘Gunnersbury! What are you squawking about? Look who you're squawking to! You don't have to sell me a line. I'm not some naïve nik who can be diverted by a pleasing phrase or glistering goods. It's me. Your right-wing!’

  But Gunnersbury just scoped me and kinked her peachy phyzog: ‘You're a faithful geez, aren't you? A faithful Surb geez, through and through.’

  I don't blame her. Perhaps, for the sake of the heavens, her consciousness was already coming apart and as a consequence her consecution was already faltering and flawed. But that is not to say that she was not responsible for the subsequent suffering.