The London Pigeon Wars

by Patrick Neate

‘Who?’

  He nodded across the room. ‘Jared.’

  Murray and Tom watched Karen worm her way towards her boyfriend. When she reached him, Jared bent to kiss her cheek but his eyes were still in their direction.

  ‘So what happened?’ Murray asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You and Karen. What happened?’

  Tom shrugged like it was no big deal. ‘She got a new job. She made it and got selfish. I was a teacher. I didn't.’

  ‘“As selfishness usually extends to devotion, so devotion usually returns to selfishness.”’

  ‘What's that? Shit! You sound exactly like my therapist.’

  ‘A quote. The Spiritual Self I've been reading.’

  ‘You? Reading?’

  ‘You? A therapist?’ Murray stared at him for a moment, eyes sparkling. Then he nodded. ‘And this bloke?’

  ‘Jared? He's her boss.’

  ‘Right,’ Murray said. ‘What does she do?’

  ‘She works for the mayor. A policy advisor. Transport. Something like that.’

  ‘You're joking!’

  ‘I know. A big change, right? You remember her at college? Marching against the Poll Tax, to reclaim the streets, against the Gulf War, to support the miners…’

  ‘The miners? I think you've got your dates mixed up, china. The Miners' Strike's, like, ancient history. Your memory's playing tricks on you.’

  ‘Yeah? I could have sworn she marched for the miners.’ Tom started to laugh. It was a strange noise, cold and hollow. ‘I don't know. There were so many causes I lost track.’

  Murray started to join in. But somewhere in the back of his throat, the laugh transformed into a grunt. ‘I told you. She's a chameleon.’

  He was looking out across the room. If Tom had glanced at him at that moment, he'd have seen his eyes narrow a little. But Tom was lost in his own thoughts. He was replaying the confusions of ‘Karen's Boyfriend Kisses My Girlfriend’ in his mind's eye and trying to remember how it felt for him to kiss her on the cheek and feel her proprietorial hand slide around his waist. Of course he still greeted her with a peck even now. But the gesture had a qualitatively different feel to it. He wondered about that and it made him sad. So he bit hard on his lip and tried to think about something else. What surfaced was the question that had been bugging him since the afternoon and, come to think of it, for years before, on and off.

  ‘Murray…’ Tom began.

  ‘Who are these fuckers?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Murray kissed his teeth. For some reason he seemed suddenly impatient. ‘This lot,’ he said. ‘These people. Who are they? Which ones am I supposed to like?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I mean, it's like a code isn't it, china? Shit. I'm out of touch. Who am I supposed to like?’

  ‘I don't know.’

  ‘Like, what about that guy Jared?’

  ‘Don't know,’ Tom shrugged. ‘I've only met him once or twice. He seems all right. Karen likes him.’

  ‘She's his girlfriend.’ Murray smiled broadly and Tom spotted a smidgen of food stuck next to one of his canines. It looked like meat, Tom thought. Chicken, of course. ‘So what does she know?’

  Watching Murray now, Tom recognized an expression that he hadn't seen in years. But it was still as familiar as the face in the mirror and it provoked familiar tinglings in his fingertips and that tightness in his chest.

  ‘I think it's time I mixed,’ Murray said.

  ‘You're not going to… are you, Muz?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Cause trouble. You know. Murray-fun.’

  It was the spark in Murray's eyes. That was the expression. ‘Murray-fun? I don't know what you're talking about.’ Murray glanced at him and blinked. Very slowly. ‘Like Karen said, some of us have grown up. I've grown up, china. I've changed.’

  Murray glided away. Tom considered following him, just in case, but the party was now in full swing and he wasn't feeling sociable. Why should he indulge in idle chatter when he could watch his ex getting lovey with her new man? He was alarmed by the coldness of this thought. He realized his feelings had shifted. Somewhere along the line, the raw pain of losing her had given way to this sardonic ache. He missed the raw pain; it was a lot more wholesome.

  He watched Murray plotting his course through the flotsam of the party to the main swell. Maybe he really had changed, because he spotted few of the little signposts that used to identify Murray in full flow. He was talking to that fool Bast who was almost too drunk for verticality. But Murray was listening and nodding and smiling like the most well-mannered socialite and the only signal of any discomfort was the occasional wince at a blast of Bast's breath. He patted Bast on the shoulder and moved on.

  Now he was talking to Identikit Ami who looked typically uncomfortable in her inflexible telly armour that cocooned her fragile ego beneath a soon-to-be-silicon breastplate and blonde helmet. Tom knew that vanity was one of Murray's favourite games and he could unwrap it with all the enthusiasm of a kid with a birthday present. Tom realized that, unconsciously, he was holding his breath. But Ami was soon laughing and pouting and flicking her hair, happily indulged by Murray's smile and charm.

  Now he was talking to Kwesi and, Tom considered, if any fruit was ripe for some Murray-plucking then it had to be the K-ster with his ridiculous ghetto-chic manner, his good intentions (that were almost as impossible to doubt as they were to take seriously) and the self-importance that had grown in inverse proportion to his achievements. Kwesi was pressing one of his flyers on to Murray. As Murray read it, Kwesi tilted his head a little and set his mouth in a growling sneer (two of his more absurd affectations). Tom bit on his lower lip as he waited for Murray to react. He had become, he realized, a social rubber-necker watching in flat-footed fascination for what happened next. As far as Tom was concerned, the assassination was not in doubt; merely the chosen weapon. Would it be the slice and dice of the sharp tongue? The desiccation (wry and dry) ? The acid spit? The nerve pinch? Or maybe the slow burn (that only caught up with its victim on a lonely night some time later and struck with the venom of a whisper) ?

  Murray carefully folded Kwesi's flyer and slipped it into his back pocket. He looked up and said something. For a moment, Kwesi didn't react – This is it, Tom thought – then his affected sneer dissolved into a bright, open smile. He took Murray's hand and enveloped it in one of those elaborate handshakes that gave Kwesi, in Kwesi's opinion, a hint of the rapper. Murray was smiling too. Maybe he really has changed, Tom thought. And for all his worries about Murray ‘causing trouble’, he wasn't surprised to find his heart gape at the possibility.

  Tom was suddenly quite overwhelmed by sadness and it was an almost physical sensation that had him opening his mouth to scream only to be silenced by another choking gobful of the stuff. His brain was Old Street and the traffic came from all directions. He looked over the heads of the heaving party and he thought about pebbles on the banks of the Thames that abrade each other to bluntness until they can sit one on top of the other, cheek by jowl, uncomfy and awkward but bearable once the numbing kicks in. He remembered Murray when he'd first met him at college: the raw mischief of him, the passion for everything and nothing in particular. He thought about children growing into adults who for one brief second poke their heads from manholes to take a glorious breath of THIS IS ME fresh air only to open their eyes and find themselves nose-to-tread with an articulated's tyre. He scoped the room and he saw the disappointment in the twirtysomething eyes of the likes of Freya and TV Ami and the complacent certainty that played on the twirtysomething faces of Jared, say, or Big-In-Property Jackson. He experienced one of those moments of clarity that catch you unprepared like ice cream on your teeth or the first sight of St Paul's rearing from the city. The disappointed and the smug? It made no difference; they were still all stymied by either side of one equation. One group were prostitutes to their dreams, the others kept dreams as their mistress to be indulged on seedy nights in a Travel
Lodge. Hooker or punter, Tom thought, you still fuck like animals beneath the same dirty sheets on the same dirty bed in the same dirty room.

  And what about him? Tom considered his dreams and he inevitably stumbled over Karen, whose image was like a corpse lying on the doorstep of his memory (he could step over it but it wasn't the kind of thing he could ignore). Maybe it was seeing Murray or maybe it was his earlier session with the therapist because, for the first time in a long time, he examined the carcass from every conceivable angle but he couldn't avoid the same conclusion. He used to be smug and now he was disappointed. He was a trick turned whore and wasn't that the real shitter?

  Seeing Murray was like the breaking wash from a sixty-foot cruiser. It had tossed him up the Thames shore and left him jagged in his new spot. He remembered them all together (him, Murray and Karen, Tariq too) and, in the absence of present hopes, he made the common mistake of recalling old ones that had long since been washed away. Tom found himself longing for the numbness. Is this as good as it gets, he thought?

  Tom shook his head vigorously to loosen these bad thoughts a little. He headed for the bar and bought himself a bottled beer. He rolled the cool glass across his forehead a couple of times; like they do in the movies. He noticed Bast at the far end of the bar, asleep on a bar stool, resting his head on an empty pack of Bensons. He said to himself, ‘It could be worse.’ But it didn't help because he didn't really believe it.

  He spotted Murray ensconced with a gang in the middle of the room, all laughing and joking, and he made his way over to join them. He wasn't feeling sociable but perhaps he could lurk around the fringes and at least their banter would save him from himself. Freya was in this group. And Tariq. And Nick Jackson and a few of his bespoke cronies. Karen and Jared were among them too. Generally Tom would have given them a wide orbit but he now had… How did he describe it to himself? ‘That reckless-misery thing on the go.’

  As he approached, Tom realized that Big-In-Property was in full flow and even Murray was standing back. Jackson was puffing on a cigarette and nastily drunk and, egged on by his mates (whom Tom knew only by their nicknames; things like Chalkie, Buzzard and Shithead), he was taking the piss out of Freya in a guileless and vicious way. Karen was shaking her head. Tom knew her well enough to see she was simmering like Brick Lane. Jared was placid but, at the sight of Tom, he rested a big and bony hand on her shoulder. Tariq looked embarrassed and he kept glancing around the room as though he expected someone to come and sort this out at any moment. Freya looked mortified, like a rabbit in headlights, and her face was blotchy flushed. Chalkie, Buzzard, Shithead… Murray too… they were all sniggering.

  ‘So, Freya,’ Big-In-Property was saying, ‘let Nick Jackson get this straight. You just went to the bank manager and said you wanted to open a hat shop?’

  Freya nodded.

  ‘And you had a business plan?’ he went on, his voice coloured with an effective shade of incredulity. ‘Research? Projections? All that kind of thing? Yeah? And he lent you money?’

  ‘That's right.’

  ‘He said… what? “Twenty grand? A hat shop? Why the fuck not?” Something like that.’

  ‘No. I…’

  ‘So… umm… did you wear one of your hats to the meeting, then?’

  You had to give it to him; Jackson's timing was immaculate, setting up the punchline like a pro.

  ‘Yes,’ Freya said, her voice quivering with self-conscious defiance. That was it. Jackson packed up laughing and Chalkie, Buzzard and Shithead joined in. Freya tried to giggle. But the effort died on her lips and, instead, she covered her mouth with one hand and hugged her other arm to her chest as though she were trying to protect herself against a dust storm.

  But it was Murray who laughed the loudest and longest. He hooted and guffawed, he threw his head back and cackled, he creased and convulsed, he laughed until he cried and he screeched ‘Fuck me! Fuck me!’ until everyone else was distracted and watching him; Jackson and his mates included. Nobody could say anything. Murray was bent double with his hands on his knees and, every time one of the others opened their mouths, the giggles would come again.

  ‘I…’ Jackson tried (reverting to the first person for once). Murray cracked up.

  ‘You…’ Jackson began. More laughter.

  It must have been a full minute before Murray finally straightened up but it felt like a lot longer because nobody could even remember what he'd been laughing at. His bizarre hat had fallen low over his eyes and he took a moment to adjust it with both hands so that nobody could see his face. When he finally dropped his hands, his expression was as blank as a piece of paper.

  Jackson pulled irritably on his cigarette. ‘You all right, mate?’ he said.

  ‘Hilarious,’ Murray said flatly.

  Tom said, ‘Hey, Muz’, just trying to catch his attention. But Murray was staring emptily at Jackson. ‘You got a spare?’ he asked.

  Jackson shook his head. He coolly raised the butt to his lips. ‘Last one, mate,’ he said and he sucked deeply.

  ‘Right,’ Murray said.

  Jackson started spluttering. Then the splutters turned into a full-blown coughing fit. Now it was Freya's turn to giggle but the laugh froze on her face as Jackson suddenly turned an alarming puce as he fought for breath. Chalkie smacked him on the back but that only seemed to make it worse as his eyes started to bulge and his whole body shook and the coughs turned into retching.

  ‘You all right, china?’ Murray said. Nobody knew quite what to do so it was Murray who took control.

  ‘Let's get you outside,’ he said, his expression as concerned as Islington. ‘Get some fresh air.’

  He slung Jackson's arm around his shoulder and began to half carry him towards the door. Tariq offered to help. ‘You need a hand?’

  ‘He'll be all right,’ Murray said.

  As Murray and Jackson stumbled outside, the little group began to splinter. For a moment, Chalkie, Buzzard and Shithead looked genuinely worried but they were soon nudging each other and saying things like ‘Stupid arse’ and ‘What a pussy!’ Freya found herself standing next to Jared. She was upset. ‘I wonder what happened,’ she said. Jared shrugged. ‘I'm sure he'll be all right.’ Tom and Karen and Tariq gathered in a little triangle. None of them said a word and they could hardly meet each other's eyes. Tom wondered if the other two were thinking the same as him.

  It was ten minutes before Murray and Jackson returned but, by then, everyone had forgotten where they'd gone anyway. It was a total shock, therefore, when the whole party was suddenly silenced by Jackson's screams as he burst into the room. He was holding his face in his hands and he was largely incoherent; although the blood that was splattering his brushed grey lapel and spurting down his white designer shirt left little doubt that it was an ambulance he was after and several people reached for their mobile phones. There was then a brief and ludicrous delay while the would-be Samaritans looked at one another as if to say, ‘Are you calling? Or should I?’ during which Jackson lay on his back in the middle of the floor and screamed some more. Freya and Karen rushed to kneel next to him and gently coaxed his hands away from his face. At first, with all the blood that fountained from the wound, they couldn't see what had happened. Then, as Karen tried to clean his face with a beer cloth from the bar, she jumped back and yelped in surprise and disgust. The soft bulb of gristle at the end of Jackson's nose was gone. For a relatively small injury, it gave his face an astonishingly bizarre look and produced an equally astonishing quantity of blood.

  At that moment, Murray walked in. He was holding his purple felt hat in his hand and it was blood-stained and mucky. He looked agitated as Tom approached him. ‘Murray! What the fuck have you done?’

  ‘Me?’ Murray exclaimed. ‘It was this little fucker!’

  He upturned the hat and a limp bundle of feathers and bones dropped heavily to the floor. It was a dead pigeon.

  Unsurprisingly, it took a while before anyone was convinced that Jackson had been savage
d by a pigeon because, at that time, such an attack was unheard of. But then Freya piped up to recount the theft of her hat and she showed off the peck wound on her ear to the curious. Even Jackson, dosed with a large brandy, a handkerchief pressed to his nose, confirmed the story and made Murray sound like quite a hero for wrestling the pigeon off his face. People were impressed too that Murray had actually killed the bird and the blokes in particular looked at him in a new and admiring way.

  Murray shrugged. ‘It was just a dirty fucking pigeon,’ he said.

  By the time the ambulance arrived, the party had inevitably started to disintegrate (because a night gets no higher than a pigeon attack) and Freya's friends began to leave. They thanked her and wished her luck with her business. They nodded at the uniformed ambulance men tending to Jackson and said things like ‘Shame about… you know’ and ‘Awful!’ and ‘What a terrible thing’. But secretly they were still buzzing with the thrill of it and the stories they'd tell on Monday morning about Big-In-Property Jackson and Murray the Pigeon Slayer. Unintentionally, it was Karen who summed it up best. She hugged Freya. ‘You throw quite a party,’ she said wryly. And she was right.

  Freya half-smiled and said, ‘Is this what happened in Pretty In Pink?’

  Karen shook her head. ‘This is Carrie,’ she said. ‘Big-In-Property as John Travolta.’

  While the ambulance men fussed around Jackson (‘Fuck! Don't touch Nick Jackson's fucking nose!’), Murray slunk off to a window and stared out at the night sky and Tom didn't spot him for a minute or two. It was only when the injured property broker was wheeled away (a wheelchair? A bit over the top, Tom thought) that Tom glimpsed his friend's silhouette. Tom was exhilarated although he didn't know why (or at least didn't want to admit why).

  ‘Muz?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Murray didn't turn round.

  ‘I wanted to ask you something.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  Tom paused. He suddenly realized that the question he'd wanted to ask for god knows how long… well… he'd never actually organized it into words. And now that he tried to do so, he found it almost impossible. In fact, he wondered whether it was actually a question at all or just a series of thoughts that needed clarification.