Tom drained his coffee and leaned forward. ‘Can I tell you something?’
She studied his face, looking for the tell-tale signs of angst and guilt that usually signalled their conversation's descent into justifications, recriminations and, frankly, boredom. But they weren't there. If anything she detected something like a sparkle in his eyes so she said, ‘Sure.’
‘It was Freya.’
‘What was Freya?’
‘That I slept with. It was Freya.’
Karen blinked and looked away and ran her tongue around her teeth. She felt thrown, duped. ‘I thought we were past that,’ she said quietly.
‘Past what?’
‘Why are you telling me now? I thought we were past that.’
‘We are past that. It was a long time ago. That's why I'm telling you now. I mean, we still have a relationship, don't we? I think it's time to be honest. I need to be honest.’
‘Why's this about what you need?’
‘I think you need to be honest, too. And don't be angry with Freya. Please. It wasn't about her. It was about me.’
Karen was struggling to retain her composure. Tom hadn't got to her like this in ages. What was wrong with her? Last time had been round at Tariq and Emma's and she'd blamed it on the sight of him holding his godson. But now? Was she just feeling fragile or was it the difference, the new confidence, in his manner? Either way, she felt familiar sensations of anger and hurt bubbling to the surface and her voice was taut.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I'll be honest. Honestly, it's not for you to tell me how to feel about Freya, is it? Honestly, I'm not angry with Freya. I was but now I can't be bothered. Because, honestly, I knew it was Freya. I always knew it was Freya. Of course it was fucking Freya.’
‘You knew?’ Tom's face was a picture. ‘Who…’
‘Tom! Nobody told me. I'm not an idiot. Believe it or not I loved you like crazy. I spent years watching you, you know? I enjoyed your expressions. I enjoyed the way you looked at me. You don't think I saw the way you looked at Freya and knew exactly what had happened? Jesus, Tom! You say you want to be honest. Why? I don't know what this therapist has been telling you but I really think you need to fire the fucker.’
‘I have,’ Tom said. And then he burst out laughing. He actually burst out laughing! Karen was confused. She was beginning to think he might be deranged.
‘I don't know what you think's so funny,’ she said. ‘I don't want to talk about this.’
‘OK.’
‘It's not why I called you. I don't want to talk about it.’
‘Fine. You want another coffee?’
Tom pushed his chair back and got to his feet. Karen shook her head. She said, ‘Judging by the state you're in, I'm not sure you should have one either. You'll be bouncing off the ceiling.’ But Tom just beamed at her.
By the time he returned with another giant beaker accompanied by a chocolate-chip cookie the size of a frying pan, Karen had steeled herself for the main event. ‘Look. I wanted to talk to you about Murray.’
Tom slurped through the plastic lid and then winced as the hot liquid scalded his lips and left sandpaper bumps on his tongue. ‘That's funny. I wanted to talk to you about exactly the same thing.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. Murray told me what happened.’
‘What happened?’
‘Between you and him.’
‘What did he say?’
Tom blinked and bit his lip. It was his turn to be disconcerted. He couldn't believe they were about to discuss this after so long; nor that Karen was being so straightforward. He began to feel lighter than ever, as though he had now pushed off too hard and was indeed floating away, high above the table, heading for the ceiling. Fuck it. There was nothing else to do but go with it.
‘Actually he was really calm,’ he said. ‘Which made me pretty fucking angry.’
‘Exactly!’ Karen exclaimed. ‘He's actually persuaded everybody to be in on it, that's what gets me. I mean, Tariq's a drunk, Emma's desperate and Kwesi thinks the sun shines out of Murray's arse. But Ami? And Freya? I thought Freya had more sense.’ She looked at Tom and her eyes narrowed. ‘Then again…’ she added.
Tom dropped back into his chair with a bump. ‘Right,’ he said. Although he wasn't sure what was right. Right, he had no idea what she was talking about. Right, he supposed he was going to have to wait to confront her. Right, that was OK since he'd already waited a decade. Right.
Karen was getting quite steamed up. ‘You can't just walk into a bank these days and say, “Your money or your life,” ’ she hissed. ‘For god's sake! They must have panic-buttons and bulletproof glass and all that kind of thing.’
‘Oh. Right.’
‘They're not even going to make it behind the counter.’
‘Right,’ Tom nodded. Then he said, ‘Actually it's a pretty ingenious plan. Ami's already got a job in the bank.’
Karen snorted, ‘You're joking!’
‘No. Seriously. She persuaded her TV company and the branch manager that she should do undercover research for a show. You know what Ami's like when she turns it on. She did her whole telly-eyes thing and they really went for it. She's working there right now. She told me she's enjoying it.’
Karen gasped, incredulous. ‘I don't believe it.’
‘Honestly.’
She stared at him curiously. ‘You're not part of this mad plan, are you?’
‘I don't know,’ he shrugged. ‘Why not?’
‘I thought you said you were angry with Murray?’
‘That was… something else. Doesn't matter.’
‘Why are we even having this conversation?’ She shook her head. ‘This is crazy.’
‘Why? The way I look at it, it's no different from all the Murray-fun we had at LMT. Shit, Karen, you had no problem with the Antiques Trade and that was basically stealing, same as this. I mean, come on; don't tell me you have moral problems with it. It's a one-off and you're doing it for your friends. It'll be a laugh. Murray? He's untouchable. You know he is. It's just another scam. Let's face it, you can trust Murray 100 per cent…’ He paused. ‘When it comes to scams, anyway.’
‘You do know we're not at college any more, Tom. We're actually grown-ups these days.’
‘Right. So we should pull a grown-up scam.’
‘This isn't a scam. Stop calling it a scam. This isn't even stealing. This is a bank robbery. You realize Murray's asking me to get Kush to find us some guns. Guns, Tom. You really think that's a good idea.’
Tom started laughing again. He was revelling in this exchange. The thought that Karen was looking at him as crazy and reckless was new and exhilarating. ‘Like you said, it's a bank robbery. What do you think we're going to use? A pair of scissors and a couple of steak knives? Nobody's going to get hurt. It is a scam. It's a bluff, isn't it?’
Tom took a big bite of his chocolate-chip cookie and munched happily. He broke a piece off and offered it to Karen. She declined. He realized he was floating once more and, looking down, he liked the self he saw and the way Karen was watching him. He loved the idea he was the kind of guy who calmly ate biscuits while discussing bank robberies. He felt like he was in a movie.
He dropped another bombshell. ‘I'm quitting my job.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah.’ He picked a crumb from the corner of his mouth. ‘Jacking it in. Teaching, I mean. I'll see out the end of term but that's it.’
‘Why?’ She looked almost personally hurt.
Tom shrugged. ‘I don't know. I think I became a teacher because it fitted with you and me, you know? But I don't have that any more. I just feel like I want to do something for me. Besides, apologies to any political sensibilities and all that, but it's a shit job and it's only getting shitter. I'm permanently knackered and, the money I'm on, I can barely afford my rent.’ He glanced up and met her eye, unblinking. ‘Don't look at me like that. I'm not having a go at you. This is just about what I want. I need to try somethi
ng else.’
Karen said, ‘So you're going to leave teaching and rob a bank. You're really going to do this?’
He laughed. He felt peculiar. He couldn't find the word for it. He felt perfect. ‘Rob a bank and leave teaching. That order,’ he said. ‘I think so. I mean, if you don't want to be part of it, that's fair enough. Your life's going well, right? You've got a good job, a nice place to live and a successful boyfriend. You're on the top of the ladder peering down at the rest of us, know what I mean? But me? I'm barely even on the bottom rung. No. Please don't look at me like that. I'm not complaining. Really I'm not. I'm not bitter, I don't think I'm especially unlucky or life's unfair, I'm just telling it like it is. I've known Murray longer than anyone and I know he's really up for it. And me? I want to do something, you know? I want to do something big. I need this.’
‘What if you don't have guns?’
‘Then I guess it's back to the steak knives.’ Tom smiled and polished off the cookie. ‘I've still got them.’
‘Got what?’
‘You remember Riq and Em's wedding? You remember we forgot the present? You remember what it was? Conran Shop, set of twelve, hundred quid?’
‘We never gave it to them?’
‘Uh-uh,’ Tom shook his head. ‘Been sitting in a box under the basin ever since. I guess you could say we owe them.’
Karen's phone rang. She looked at the display and Jared's name flashed up. She ignored the call. She shut her eyes for a moment and licked her lips. She was feeling very peculiar too; super-sensitized as if she could feel every part of her body at once, distinguish every scent (coffee, of course, but vague traces of exhaust fumes, perfume, sweat and disinfectant as well) and hear every individual voice above the hubbub – ‘You should have got it. You'll get it. You're going to get it. ‘You'll just have to wait that's all. Bide your time. You'll get it.’ ‘You coming tomorrow night? Yeah? Should be brilliant.’ ‘I try and manage twice a week. It gives me so much energy. Even if I only use the treadmill.’ ‘They'll go for it. Of course they'll go for it. What are they going to do if they don't go for it? They'll go for it.’ ‘There's, like, one every three blocks. We're becoming, like, so Americanized. Listen to me! Every three blocks!’ ‘I don't know. You know what it's like. I just can't seem to get myself out of it.’ ‘You all right?’
The last voice was Tom's and she opened her eyes. She blinked at him and smiled thinly. ‘Just tired, I think.’ Looking at him now, at his concerned expression and the way he ran a hand through his hair (his long-standing mannerism of nervousness), she felt suddenly and deeply nostalgic. At first she couldn't figure where it came from but then she was forced to accept she was nostalgic for the certainty she had indeed once known (if never admitted). Without thinking about what it may or may not mean, she reached across the table and took his hand and squeezed it gently. When she spoke again, her voice was barely audible. ‘You know you said my life was going well?’ she whispered. ‘I'm not so sure any more. I'm not so sure.’
19
Inklings of inevitability
I am peck-pecking at the Clapham Common earth just south of Lavender Hill (and isn't that a typical contradiction of nik nomenclature with its reek of railways and exhaust emissions?). I'm half-heartedly squirrelling for squirms but mostly just enjoying the cool consistency of this sumptuous soil beneath my beak.
I'm wondering how you scope my scoop so far: do you divine drama in my divulgences or do my own awful agonizing and my species' skirmishes and scrimmages strike you as no more than a feathered fuss over not a whole lot? Feel free as a bird to be asinine in your assessment as it won't bother me. Because one part I can positively pinpoint is this: however petty us pigeons may appear to the peepniks, however dull our divisions and paltry our politics, consider the impact they had on a feather-brained flock that had just now known no such thing. Before Trafalgar, before consciousness, before Gunnersbury's grasp of the word ‘war’, there were squirms for all squibs and best bits for everybirdy and endless bins where birds burrowed without even the blink of a bead to acknowledge London's lavishness. Sorry to beak on about it but that's the way it was. What am I trying to illuminate? I'm saying suspend your superiority because our pigeon pettiness was certainly significant to us. To be veritas, a lot of peepnik problems seem pretty petty to me too. Empathy, therefore, is what I must emphasize to ensure illumination.
Nonetheless I'll sheeply admit that, as I tiptoe across these squirmy casts and dodge the packets and papers that blow across the patchy grass, the current content of my daily drudge is (I hazard; since I haven't the reassurance of recollection) not so different from the time before Trafalgar and the construction of consciousness. Whether, therefore, with a peepnik penchant for exactitude, you call this war or simply bedlam in a bird-bath, I can veritably verify that life still goes on.
This is not to say that my whole pigeon personality is not sometimes shock-stilled with the chilly-chill of freezing fear and foreboding as I presently potter on this hiatus before the horizon, teeter on this precipice of the present, falter on this fault line of fate. But, fact is, I've still got to find my foodchits, I still gulp honest ozone into my bursting breast and I still scope Gunnersbury as just about the peachiest coochie this side of the City. ‘Life goes on,’ I squawk; and isn't that nik knowledge right there?
Even as this call carelessly coalesces into something like solid sound so my vibrato diverts a bounding bow-wow who's stalking a stick nearby (as bow-wows do). He's yomping towards yours truly, all drool, trailing tongue and concealed canines, so I take a vertical to the bough of a beech nearby.
This bow-wow's a feisty fuckster and no mistake. Generally these peepnik pets – four-legged fops the lot of them – have all the attention span of a squabblesome squib. But this one? He's pawing at the trunk, high on his hind legs, his breath like death actually atrophying the air around me until it feels like some kind of shrinking prison. I'm hardly bugged by this bothersome beast but you can scope that his ambition amuses me. Does he presume this pigeon will just jump into his yawning jaws?
A full flutter distant, I can scope his morose master mouthing half-hearted hails that the bow-wow inevitably ignores. This savoury is an old knackered in threadbare threads with lank grey hair that licks his lobes and tickles his temples. He's a sullen sort with an unappealing apathy, mitts in the pits of his pockets and a cigarette cherry hanging limp from his lower lip.
Nearby a cash young couple in casual cashmere are steering a stabilized youngen on his babchick's bicycle and they haven't scoped his big brother toddling towards my tree fixed in fascination by the barking bow-wow and the geez that goads him from a branch above. This little fellow is all flushed fresh phyzog and goldi-lock charm beneath his burgundy beanie but I wish he wouldn't come so close to this salivating sack of savagery with his turbulent temperament. Fly away, youngen! At least flee!
To be veritas, it's none of my business and it's not like no niks ever rushed to rescue a bird being torn wing from wing by a pernicious pussy. Nonetheless, as I scope the bow-wow's attention abstracted by the warm woolly bundle of bones, I shriek and squawk with all the bravado in my breast: ‘Up here, you fatuous fuckster! Up here!’ After all, what have I got to concede for my concern? Nut all. But the behemoth's brain has already been sidetracked by the sideways sight of the nik youngen and he growls and gallops at him with a ferocious focus that ruffles my feathers, no doubt.
The youngen yelps helplessly even as the bow-wow butts him to the earth and reveals his gnashing gnashers before sinking them deep into the tender flesh of a trousered thigh.
Now the poor poppet's parents have noticed the absence of their elder offspring all right. The sweet is a swell of screams as the cash savoury sprints to his son's side. The bow-wow's owner comes quickly too but his shouts are as ineffectual as September sun. The bow-wow is shaking its head from side to side, tossing its peepnik package this way and that like he was a bag of bird food.
To be veritas, the youngen's oldg
eez is fairly frosty. He clutches the creature's collar and his guttural growls match or even trump the beast's own. He thrusts one hand into its mouth and hits its heaving flank with his fist again and again trying to jar the jaws apart.
It's only a moment before the bemused bow-wow drops his peepnik prey and sidles sheeply away, mewing like a miffed and plaintive pussy. The youngen's soon smothered in maternal mollycoddling and, to listen to the lungs on him, nowhere near death's door, not even perched on the porch of passing away. But this isn't going to stop the savoury from attacking the old knackered with a cavalcade of curses and a sharp selection of slurs: you stupid fucking this, you old fucking that, you ignorant fucking the other and so on.
Though I like to peep the peepniks as much as the next bird, I quickly lose interest since such tiffs are two a penny on any suburban street or Concrete concourse (are you looking at me? What did you say? Excuse me but this is a fucking queue, right? All of that). Like I said, the ins and outs of a nik contretemps can seem a trifle trivial to a pensive pigeon. Like I said, empathy is a two-way street.
Besides, there's something about this scenario that starts me in some conscious contemplation. I'm focusing on the youngen whose fresh phyzog was fixed on the barking bow-wow. One moment he was an awestruck audience while the very next he was startled into a starring role (or at least the specious spotlight of the expendable extra). Isn't this a cautionary tale for us all (peepniks and pigeons alike) ? Though we tend to take top billing in the motion flixtures on our mindeyes, we still have a contrary capacity to watch ourselves over packets of popcorn on pot bellies until the beastly behemoth bites us back to some semblance of reality and we suddenly see ourselves scuppered on the very same soundstage. I'm thinking on the wing so fly with me. Because I'm sure there's a niblet of knowledge in here somewhere.
Take the two tyrants (or is that tyros?) of our feathered factions: Gunnersbury and Regent. When I consider the current conundrum of our fractured flock, I consistently conjure the context of their Trafalgar tantrum as they squabbled over the unilluminable stuff that was bunged in a bin by the unilluminable nik. But this recollection casts the cantankerous couple in roles of responsibility that might just be missing the point of the pin. After all, does a leader always come up with a cause? Or are they, the leaders, merely expelled by the frenzy of fate, spat into the spotlight by the harbingers of happenstance? What I'm trying to illuminate is this: would our destiny have differed if two other birds (one geez and one coochie) had been first to Trafalgar's trash? And, if so, how much? If my instinct is now inclining me towards some inkling of inevitability, I confess I find little comfort therein; not least because these ponderous ponderings pester me with a new nugget of vicious verity that now yawns for yours truly as surely as that monster's mouth.
The London Pigeon Wars Page 27