The London Pigeon Wars

by Patrick Neate

  Subsequently, Gunnersbury ordered two more massive assaults on the Concrete – one across the river at the South Bank and one at Wapping – and they were each as disastrous as the other. Sure, we slaughtered many of Regent's followers (who were, of course, no different to us but for the geography of their roosts) but we always came off worse.

  To get to the acorn of it, you need to scope that Gunnersbury had no serious strategy beyond our greater weight of numbers. So she figured that if she got enough pigeons in one place at one time and passion-peppered them with her awesome oratory then that was job done. And when she sent these vast armies off – generally rag-tag crews who'd no more spark than a sparrow but had gone gaga for Gunnersbury's grandiloquence and agog for her phyzog – they were ready only to be butchered by the well-drilled RPF army.

  At Embankment, for example, Regent did no more than execute the self-same plan that served him so well at Paddington. His forces hid under Hungerford Bridge before ambushing our fallible flock as we crossed the river. Our losses were again heavy and I can picture the whole scenario in my mindeye, no doubt. But I have no desire to illuminate it further and, besides, perhaps you have memories your own selves from the nik newsprint – the camera-clicking pinxen who was bumped from the bridge by three grappling geezs to a Thames-quick quietus; or the shattered space pods and snapping cables on the great Babel wheel that had sweets and savouries shrieking; or the greatest and gruesomest dogfight I ever saw that locked Regent and Garrick with Sutton9 for a full minute before that suburban heartlander (who was indeed the very heart of us Surbs) spiralled to oblivion.

  Instead, therefore, I wish to pinpoint only two points about this particular catastrophe. One: our losses would surely have been even heavier but for the anarchy of our army, who mostly fled at the first peep of the Pigeon Front. Two: our losses would surely have been heavier but for the appearance of Mishap, staring into the murky river where it flows beneath Jubilee Gardens. You thought I'd forgotten about him? I hadn't. And here's why.

  God knows who first spotted him and god must assume that they knew nut all about him. For starters, I figure he was my own personal philosophy and I never squawked about my thinkings and, for seconds, I barely recognized the savoury. He was unilluminable, of course, but now you could have hazarded him as a knackered nik without being dissed for your description. And though he was no pinxen, brownsen, blaxen, yellowsen or greysen, his phyzog was a splash of plum purple and no mistake. Nonetheless his presence sent all the pigeons into a fleeing frenzy. So how do you explain that?

  He didn't do anything; just peered into the Thames like he figured it might hold some answers. But it was as if his very being bewildered the lot of us (RPF and Surb alike) and the chorus of our catcalls and curses coagulated into wordless screeches and squawks that were reminiscent, to use Gunnersbury's verbage, of the time before time and the language before language. So you can bet that we turned tail one and all, each guided by no more than gut instinct.

  I tell you this partly because it saved a lot of lives but mostly because it illuminates the fact, in case you'd forgotten, that this old bird was constantly and consistently cognizant that the unilluminable nik was at the acorn of it all. But I digress…

  As for the other great assault at Wapping, it was, if anything, a fiasco even more fatally feather-brained in its formulation.

  Scope it like this: after the South Bank, you can bet that us Surbs were already struggling to convince our constituents of our cause, even those naturally inclined to support it (pigeons with religious relish for the Remnant of Content, pigeons who took a shine to Gunnersbury's wholesome white breast, pigeons who liked the war talk of best bins as birthrights and territory as turf). So we were forced to sweep the suburbs simply to round up enough reinforcements to fashion a flock.

  Now, Gunnersbury's plan was that our great gang would gather in Southwark Park before setting off over Lower Pool, Shadwell and Whitechapel for the city's eastern backdoor (this was the very limit of her tactical nous and even this soupcon of surprise was something I'd pressed upon her). Unfortunately, of course, our raggedy recruitment was hardly rigorous in its regimen so the vast sea of pigeons that congregated on that Common was full of phyzogs that might as well have been a thousand eggs for all I could tell them apart.

  Even as Gunnersbury took a high perch to deliver her heartening homily, therefore (‘A great prize requires great sacrifice’; ‘The illumination of Content is justification right there’; and all the usual fuzzy stuff), I was already full of foreboding. Like, I called to some geez who was busy with a best bit in his beak: ‘Who are you? I don't recognize you.’

  And he called back, frosty as you like, ‘I'm Bermondsey71. You?’

  ‘Ravenscourt,’ I said. ‘And who brought you here?’

  ‘Nunhead8,’ he replied. ‘And that peachy coochie Nunhead24.’

  Bermondsey71? Nunheads 8 and 24? I'd never heard of any of them. But what was I going to do? We needed the numbers. Nonetheless, my doubts doubled and then some.

  When Gunnersbury had finished speechifying, we all took to the wing and for a moment I thought what a fine and powerful sight we must have made, some 3,000 pigeons blocking out the sun over Jamaica Road. Indeed, to tell the verity, I even had the brief sensation that maybe our coochie leader had been spot on all along, that everything was going to be all right. But, trust me, that feeling changed quicker than you can say, ‘Oh shit!’ from your slick nik lips.

  Before we even reached the river we were confronted by a posse of maybe 100 RPF pigeons with Regent to the fore. Can you picture the joy on Gunnersbury's phyzog? She was fronting a force of 3,000 so surely that magpie-looking geez's comeuppance was up-coming. Unfortunately her expectations were not long lasting.

  Regent was hovering on a breeze and he looked as cocky as a geez displaying for the peachiest coochie in the certainty that his luck's in. He called loud and proud: ‘For the conquering of Commons! For squirms for all squibs! For the defence of our dustbins! For the power of the Pigeon Front!’ In that instant I got an insight into that geez's mindset, all right. Not for him the highfalutin rabble-rousing of the rights and wrongs of religion, the moral masticating and the power politics of personality; all he cared about was success and it was an unprincipled principle whose simplicity surely served him well.

  His words, though, were a signal and suddenly all was chaos and terror as our army tore itself apart from the inside. How many were there? Maybe 500, maybe more of Regent's faithful followers had distributed themselves throughout our throng. I scoped that they'd joined us on Southwark Common and, as anonymous as the Tower Hamlets towerblocks, been welcomed with wide wings.

  Now, at their leader's command, they attacked the geezs with whom, moments earlier, they'd shared a squirm and noshed on a niblet. It was a most devious deception that threw us Surbs into confused commotion and even our bravest birds were soon hightailing it hither and thither. For how are you supposed to fight the unidentified enemy within?

  ‘Thames! West!’

  I heard Gunnersbury's strained squawk over the horrific shrieks of both killers and killed and I and perhaps forty other faithful who still clung to that coochie (though now we didn't know why or what for) followed her flight. For all my criticisms of our leader, you should scope that both her courage when facing the phyzog of fear and her ingenuity in the eye of the storm were indisputable.

  Of course, Regent and his posse pursued but it's veritable to say that, if Gunnersbury were no grand tactician, she knew the intricate ins and outs of a close-quarters skirmish, no doubt. We led those poisonous pigeons quite a choreography around Tower Bridge; swooping under, back-doubling, splitting up and reuniting, teasing and testing them with our intricate manoeuvres. It was here, I'm shamed to admit, that I claimed my first and only victim. I spotted a fat Concrete coochie scoping this way and that just a tree height above me so I took a vicious vertical and caught her full in the breast with my beak. Even now, though my consciousness collapses and
recollections recede, I can still remember the crunch of her bones, taste her blood and feather, hear the pip-pip and final pip of her beating pigeon heart. Indeed, it was difficult to detach my head from her innards before she dropped to the bridge below, landing no more than a stride from a peepnik perambulator and making a shocked sweet scream like lorry brakes at an accident. I'm shamed to admit it both because of the chilled thrill it gave me to have popped a fellow pigeon and because I can claim no more than one victim of the thousands that died. That is, when you ponder it, another conundrum only civil wars can explain.

  One other recollection of Wapping: in the end, Gunnersbury secured our flight by leading us, tight to the turf and goose formation, right past the Tower of London. Wasn't there some joy in dodging the Beefeaters and, especially, looking back to scope Regent himself, trackstopped by a couple of crows who then chased him away with instinct's disregard for his dignity? The exhilaration I felt as I fled in Gunnersbury's slipstream – my old-bird wings beating at a full 120 bpm – still ruffles my feathers at the thought of it.

  It was only after this third disastrous defeat and the extermination of excessive numbers of our number that Gunnersbury finally agreed to a change of tactics. Even then it was probably force of circumstance that swayed her more than any recognition of wrongdoing.

  Scope it like this: Regent's real skill lay in his know-how of our every formulation. Paddington? Embankment? Wapping? He knew our every plan. The consequent conclusion, therefore – ironic considering the feather-brained nature of this conflict (though is war ever any other way?) – was that the RPF victories were primarily the result of infiltrated intelligence. Of course, this came as no surprise to yours truly. After all, haven't I already illuminated the peculiarities of pigeon nature? Before Trafalgar, before the consciousness of consciousness, we knew ourselves only as birds of a feather so more delineated definitions never came naturally. What's more, the territories of Surb and RPF were ever misty in their mapping and the values of each flock full of fluctuations. Most of all, however, for all the typical Surb accents and Concrete conceit, it wasn't as if you could tell a coochie's conscience or a geez's allegiance just by scoping them. It wasn't like we had nik uniforms – whether formal or fashionable – to label us, so we were arguably only what we claimed to be in a given instant.

  Do you scope what I'm trying to illuminate? You should do, I think. Because these days I'm not sure the peepniks (uniforms or not) are much different. For all my fascination with the unilluminable Mishap and conviction that niks like to hide behind their logos and logoi, I can't avoid certain observations. Take complexion: aren't London peepniks ever more mixed palates (if not entirely unilluminable) ? Take logos: aren't cash suits often filled by niks speaking faltering foreign tongues? Take logoi: aren't City slicksters as likely to slip into street slang as any streetnik desperado? These days, this city is populated by a conundrum of representations so no wonder the niks are confused and stay close to the coteries they know best. So, at this crucial point in the Wars, us pigeons were exactly the same.

  Put simply, you peep a geez and you call, ‘RPF or Surb?’ and he calls, ‘Surb’, what are you going to do? Peckchop the fuckster just because you don't like the dart of his bead? Intelligence was, therefore, everything.

  Gunnersbury may not have accepted this analysis but we were so downright decimated that she had little choice but to savour my solution. And so we abandoned any grand scheme of a great army and rearranged our remaining loyal birds into raiding parties; that is to say insular cells, ten to fifteen strong, where every bird knew every other.

  The conception was clear enough: the RPF surely couldn't penetrate these posses that would report their activities only to Gunnersbury, Lewisham6 (who was becoming increasingly influential) or myself. We gave these raiding parties no specific plans but merely the freedom of the sky to wreak havoc where they could: to propagate our propaganda (whatever that might be) to any RPF who might waver in our direction, to attack enemies keen on combat and even assassinate any of our own Surbs suspected of spying. Essentially, then, we gave the cue for chaos.

  Let me quiz you: how do you measure the merits of a method? Certainly the war now turned against the rampant RPF but to whose benefit is an altogether equivocal equation. Sure, we caused carnage in Concrete and Commons alike, but to what end? Do you really think, for example, that a few words from Gunnersbury, Lewisham6 or me could conserve the conception of our cause? No way. Our raiding parties were soon as random in their processes as they were ready in their prosecutions. We were soon no more than terrorists with principles prostituted to the continuation of conflict. What was it all for? Though, at least initially, Gunnersbury still beaked a believable battle plan, the verity is that none of us now knew. So both the RPF and Surb flocks fractured into gruesome gaggles that served only their own ends and had no more to unite them than the certainty of their selfishness.

  Now here's another query for you to get your beak (or nik nose) into; a real ‘Which came first, the coochie or the egg’-type dilemma. As us pigeons splintered into ever smaller denominations (and even some raiding parties divided and subdivided again), so the diminution of our consciousness accelerated. We were dumbing down by the day. But which was the trigger? What I'm planning to pinpoint is this: was our ignorance a product of our failing faith or vice versa? It's a problem that ties this old geez's bird brain in knots and no mistake.

  Does it bother you? I scope it does not if you're a peepnik with the composure of complacency so try this on for size instead. In her various verbage (oratorical and otherwise), Gunnersbury repeatedly returned to the time before time, the place before place, the language before language and the flock before flocks existed and she described this as a state of Content, an idyllic and harmonious London Eden (for what creatures have ever succeeded in this city so well as us pigeons?). What's more, I believe that coochie was honest in her approbation of Content as appropriate aspiration. And yet, as I feel my consciousness collapse, I can't help but question whether Content is where I'm heading and, assuming that's the verity, is my consciousness, consciousness thereof and, indeed, contemplation therefore a worthy price to pay? Scope it like this (and whether peepnik or pigeon it's a concept to consider): is Content really the height of my dreams and will I ever, even, dream again?

  As the London Pigeon Wars unwound into petty and prosaic parody of what had gone before, I spent increasing time at Gunnersbury's right-wing. Although (or maybe because) she retained her reason far longer than most, the depredation of her own dreams hit hard and I felt she needed a friendly phyzog at her side.

  Even for us, words came less easy now, so we took to taking timeless, silent flights high over London. The lines of spotters were long gone so there was no great danger beyond the raiding parties (of either side) that had retained their integrity if not their intelligence and still made like moonatics for the opportunity to tear a pigeon wing from wing. But those pigeon posses? They now had nuts for brains and couldn't keep up with our city sense.

  Sometimes we scoped one of our formerly faithful geezs banqueting at a bin, following a foodchit or baiting a bow-wow. Once we scoped Furzedown, once Acton29, and we called to each of them. Acton29 took a forty-five and didn't look back, like we were contesting his claim. Furzedown, though, glanced up at us and there was not a niblet of recognition on his phyzog; his beads were as opaque as the buttons on a slick babchick's cash overcoat. Gunnersbury took such things tougher than me. I figure this was partly because of her god complex and vanitarious nature and partly because I'd already considered this conclusion way back when I first made connections with the unilluminable savoury I call ‘Mishap’ (for fear of the syllables of his proper name).

  With the Wars winding down, however, at least we had the freedom of the London sky and so explored Common and Concrete as we saw fit. We pecked squirms in Soho Square and ravaged rubbish bins of their best bits without caring who beaded us. Indeed, even the peepniks who would have once shoo-shooed
now hurried away or shock-stilled and stared as we tore a crust between our two beaks. They'd surely never taken such notice before!

  Eventually we even toured Trafalgar. I hazard that it was in some way inevitable that we'd end up there before too long; that fate should feel that the end of the end should reflect the beginning's beginning.

  We came in from the north and, since this was the very heart of RPF turf, we kept a steady high altitude, at least until we'd scoped the lay of the land. It was peculiar because we barely peeped a pigeon as, with growing confidence, we dropped little by little until we decided to catch our breath on Nelson. It was the first time I'd sat on that perch since you-know-when.

  Suddenly, Gunnersbury's feathers ruffled and I saw a glimmer in her phyzog. ‘What?’ I cooed. ‘What you scoped?’

  That coochie didn't reply but took off on a dipping seventy and I automatically swooped behind. She slowed no more than a tree top from the ground and, for a moment, hovered on a thermal before, with its passing, winging a tight circle.

  Now I scoped what she was beading and my call caught like gristle in the gizzard. I heard words on her breath – ‘Garrick! Regent! Lewisham6!’ – the first she'd uttered in a day. There, below us, on the transparent, upturned nothingness where a lion should stand, those three pigeons were struggling in a starling-tempered skirmish on the slippery surface. Lewisham6 was proving herself a feisty fuckster as she held her own among the pecks and jabs and tearing toes, and in her beak clung to something I couldn't scope.

  Then, for an instant, the mêlée of feathers parted and my bead fixed and, in spite of myself, I squawked a wordless sound. Next to me Gunnersbury cooed, ‘Content’, all soft and gentle, and she directly dived to join the fray and suddenly there were four pigeons hammer and tonging it for god-knows-what.