by Alys Conran
He’s bending his long arms and legs round the chair and table like wet willow for bows and arrows, one of His cigarettes behind one ear and his thumb grinding at the sparky wheel of a lighter, His, like the cigarette and the twenty pound note Pigeon shows me, stuffed down his pants between his white skinny belly and the elastic.
“Twenty quid, Iola!” he says, showing it off, and grinning. Pigeon’s smile’s like the wood stove in my and Efa’s cold kitchen, too small to heat the whole room, but still better than nothing, that’s Pigeon’s smile.
It stinks, but Pigeon loves to smoke. So now he’s pinching the cigarette from behind his right ear and holding it between finger and thumb, lifting the white tube of the thing to his mouth, then sucking on it so his mouth looks small round the cigarette. While he sucks he’s flicking the wheel of the lighter all at the same time to light it. Pigeon looks smaller when he smokes. The cigarette makes him look like a real little boy, like when I put on Efa’s make-up. Smoke comes out his mouth: disgusting, pretty, sweet and bitter, and this is way better than Sunday school anyway.
With the windows open for the smoke to get away, we’re bending over the map, which Pigeon says is “of here, the hill, and the town, and the river, and there, the mountains too”. On the map, when Pigeon wrestles it round to look, is a little red cross “where Gwyn’s house is”.
I’m in on it this time, well in, and on the way to that little red cross, red like blood on the map. I’m Pigeon’s right hand man in her itchy tights and Sunday dress.
“We go there,” says Pigeon, in English like in the films, “and we give him a … a…”
“...taste of his own medication?” I finish it.
“Ia,” says Pigeon. “Ia. That’s right.”
We’re filling our pockets with weapons: a penknife for me, a lighter for Pigeon, stones with sharp teeth, “ready to take out an eye”, Pigeon says. He brings a length of rope and a hankerchief too, “for a gag”. He looks up at me as he says it. His eyes are like deep water. Pigeon stands by the attic window. He’s dark against the white day outside. Then I see how his hands are shaking a bit. He’s cross. No, not cross. Angry. Why is he so angry?
But I just have to do what Pigeon says. I have to believe what he says and do it all. That’s Pigeon.
In our pockets we put drawing pins, a pen, the map, the twenty-pound note, a reel of cellotape, a torch, batteries, a catapult, and a banana.
“It’s Dewi’s birthday,” I tell Efa. Dewi’s a boy from Pigeon’s class who lost a tooth last week and spent the money on stinkbombs for Pigeon’s coat so Pigeon “wouldn’t be seen dead going to his party” but it makes a good story to tell Efa. Efa’s all happy chanting a Yoga song in the backroom when we call over to tell her about the party. She shoos us away and we race down the hill to catch the number 67 out of here.
By the time we’re getting onto the bus, I’m already feeling something strange, something ice and still sitting around my ribs. But it’s enough to worry about just being on a bus that’s different and going to somewhere else, down the hill and off onto the main road on the bus with all the old people and the bus driver, who just raises his eyebrows at Pigeon’s twenty pound note, looks down at me and sighs “hh”, shaking his head like that, while we go along between the seats, right to the back.
With the map open across us, Pigeon’s counting down the streets of the town while we’re leaving it: “Stryd Goronwy, Stryd Albert, Stryd Uchaf, Stryd Ganol, Stryd Isaf, Stryd Syth, Stryd Gam, Stryd y Gwynt, Stryd y Glaw,” and out onto the main road like spit from a pea shooter.
“D’you see?”
While the bus rattles like a money box, Pigeon’s pointing to where we are on the map with his finger. The finger’s moving along the road, closer to the red cross – closer and closer and closer, so I stop looking, cos I feel sick. I’m sick cos of the bus, but also because I want to rub out the red biro of the cross and move Pigeon’s finger back along the lines on the map until it comes to ‘Rallt Uchaf’ and my house again at the top of the hill, with Efa probably doing the Shifassanna sleepy thing after her Yoga by now. And I feel that sick feeling again because it’s not Gwyn I’m scared of anymore, it’s Pigeon, and I’d give anything to curl up next to Efa and breathe in and out through her nose while Efa listens to the stupid guy on the tape, saying in, out, in, out, in, out, in.
When Pigeon and me get off the bus, we’re on a flat street, where all the houses are separate, and white, and they all have small gardens and it’s nice. It’s very quiet though, so quiet because there’s not so much weather down here. The sky’s high above us, and there’s no one on the street at all.
“How’d you know he’ll be in anyways?” I ask Pigeon.
“Cos I asked him how long his shifts were, stupid, and he said he gets home at four every day.”
Pigeon has the map, and he also has this piece of paper, with an address on it. The number he’s looking for is seventeen. The house we’re closest to says seventy-seven, so we’re a long way off and have to walk all the way down the street, all the way down on the black pavement. The things I have in my pockets are making a din. I go down the street making such a noise that Pigeon says “Iolaaaaaa” like that, like as if it’s my fault.
“Can’t help it can I!” I say back, because it’s true. I can’t do anything to stop any of this. That’s the thing. That’s the truth.
“Hold those pockets then,” he says, and I can tell he’s nervous too now so I do what he says, holding my pockets with my hands, and we walk down the quiet, empty road like that. I only make a noise sometimes.
Number seventeen is one quarter of one of the big houses; a big house split up like a chocolate bar into little flats. Number seventeen is one of the flats. Pigeon looks at it, looks at the small shoebox that’s number seventeen, and he looks like a balloon that’s lost its air. Gwyn’s always rich in Pigeon’s stories. Pigeon’s even angrier now things don’t fit in. That’s not good for me. That’s not good for Gwyn.
Pigeon says “Stay here, Iola.”
And I do. I wait, standing just outside Gwyn’s garden. Except Gwyn doesn’t have a garden. He has gravel and one rose in the middle with some rocks that are the same colour as gravel in a little circle round the dead rose.
Pigeon goes up to the window of number seventeen. He goes so close that I feel hot and sick. My shoulders and my chest are burning all of a sudden with all the fear of Pigeon going up to the window. Pigeon’s looking into the room now. He looks for a few seconds, then he comes back to me.
“He’s there,” he says.
“O,” I say.
“He’s planning,” says Pigeon in Welsh, and then changes to English like in the films “Planning his next terrible crime,” says Pigeon.
I shiver. And I want to see too, want to see Gwyn in there planning what he’s going to do next, and to who, and it’s like when you think you can fly, and you forget what’s real and what’s not, and forget you’re not brave enough, and it’s like that, when all of a sudden, I’m at the window, like Pigeon was before.
Inside, it’s quite dark, and looks like old cupboards smell. It’s a living room, but it looks dead. Like a kind of a coffin. Everything’s a pale brown. There’s a sofa and two armchairs all in the same colour. Apart from that, there’s a glass topped coffee table and some plastic flowers in a pot in the middle of the table. And there’s Gwyn, on the sofa. The murderer. I can see his hairy neck, and the shiny round top of his head, and I can see his stubby hands and they’re…
He’s just doing a crossword.
Which I don’t say anything about to Pigeon. Pigeon looks annoyed enough already, cos it’s not going like in his stories, not really. Gwyn just looks boring, and his house is boring too, but I don’t say it.
“Be nawn ni ta?” I whisper the question to Pigeon when we’re both back on the street side of Gwyn’s garden wall, away from the house enough to talk. He doesn’t answer, doesn’t know what to do next, that’s what I reckon. Perhaps he’s making th
is up as he goes along. Perhaps he’ll give up now that it’s not really working. Except I’m not sure I want that to be a crossword, and Gwyn to be an ice-cream man, and this to be a quiet boring street with no fast weather and no other story either.
“Awn ni mewn?”
Pigeon doesn’t usually ask questions. Which is good, cos I don’t much like choosing answers. Like now, I really don’t know. But I nod.
Pigeon looks surprised. I’m surprised too, because that was a crazy thing to do: nod. Then Pigeon nods too, and he starts walking toward the house again, like as if he was the one that was brave and decided to go in, not me.
I stand out by the rose, try telling myself I’m here in case Gwyn gets up and starts moving, so I can warn Pigeon, but it’s a lie, really I’m just here cos I can’t move a toe or a finger with all the burning chills I have in my bones and all over. Then I see Gwyn standing up.
I still can’t move. But Gwyn doesn’t see me stood by his dead rose in the grey garden. He walks away from the window, and goes through a door to the back, which isn’t good: that’s where Pigeon is too. And I can’t move, still can’t move.
Next minute Pigeon comes running out, his coat over his head to hide his face. Pigeon runs. Pigeon runs towards me. “Run, Iola! Run!” he shouts at me, his face white as he grabs my arm and we both run off down the road. And although I can’t hear anything coming behind and I don’t look until Gwyn’s gone, Gwyn must be running down the street after us with a knife, cos Pigeon says.
We get to the bus stop and hide inside. Pigeon stands looking out of it down the road. Ydi Gwyn yn dwad, Pigeon? Is he coming? Pigeon, is Gwyn coming? Is Gwyn coming after us, Pigeon?
“No. Stupid. Don’t be an idiot, ” he says. And that’s when I know why Pigeon’s cross. Pigeon’s cross and so he says I’m stupid, and it’s cos we haven’t been able to use the stones and the rope and the hankerchief gag, or any of the other things. We’re too scared of Gwyn and his crossword and his boring house.
I don’t say anything on the bus, just hold my pockets trying to stop the stuff in them clunking when the bus shakes round the corners and uphill to our town and the blown-up clouds again. I don’t say anything. Pigeon doesn’t say anything either.
I give him another chance when we’re off the bus. “What happened? What happened, Pigeon?” I ask him.
Maybe he’ll say he saw all Gwyn’s knives there, round the back, or he saw lots of babies’ graves or he saw somebody all tied up and kidnapped and saw Gwyn sharpening his knives when he left the crossword in the living room, or that Gwyn saw him and threatened to kill him, that’d be good.
But Pigeon doesn’t say anything. So Pigeon just saw Gwyn and he got a big fright, cos he’s a prissy hogan after all. But I don’t say that. Pigeon’s my best friend.
Cher’s come to meet us on the road, asking in English, “Did you get him did you get him, Pigeon did you get him?” And Pigeon just mutters, “I will”, with a murderer’s voice and pushes past Cher like he’s storming through a door. And then there’s just me, because I don’t believe Pigeon, not really, and he knows it. And there’s just me, there on the street on my own, and Pigeon’s angry with me. And when he’s angry with me, he just walks away. But I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t follow him. I turn round to walk home to Efa not caring at all. And when I look after him again he’s stomping along the street towards his house and the shed, with Cher running behind, asking him“How, Pigeon, how?” because Cher’s stupid really and will believe anything.
8
Pigeon’s furious, a cold, frightened fury, as he walks along home. And as Cher trails beside him down the meandering, skinny road, saying, “Be careful Pigeon, someone from school came and told them you weren’t there. Dad’s angry, He’s really angry.” Pigeon, going home to another beating sure enough, hates Gwyn, hates him with a kind of cumulative, pressurised anger.
The anger had started, originially, because of what had happened between Gwyn and Him.
Things in the house had been getting worse and worse. There was no work in the town, or nothing for a dockworker, used to industrial shipping, timetabling and operating big cranes that were as big as monsters. There was nothing here on the hill. There were money problems.
Finally He got a job as a bouncer in the new club in the next town. It was good, because He was out at night, bad, because it was paid badly and because it made Him dark round the eyes and angry, and taught Him to use His heavy, hard hands.
“Mari,” He said last month, “I don’t know how we’ll get to the end of the month, darling.”
And then it was, “You’ll have to work faster, Mari. Work faster.”
They only had her dresses, and the letters she’d address and post for that company. You had to do hundreds a day to make any money on that. There were weeks where they couldn’t pay the rent. They ate absolutely everything from tins, because it was cheaper. They couldn’t afford the electric heater in Pigeon’s shed anymore. They couldn’t afford warmth for Pigeon, but He still sat drinking beers in the living room all day.
Cher was afraid of Him. You could see in her eyes, and her hands. She almost jumped when He spoke.
Pigeon couldn’t bear it. There was something wrong in the way He made Cher wear pretty dresses all the time, and be perfect. Pigeon couldn’t bear to be around her. She was everything He wanted her to be. Cher was his “darling girl”. That’s what He said. And He was sick.
He hated Pigeon. He hated him. It was all Pigeon’s fault. Pigeon got it all, all the anger about not having enough money, all the anger about the bad job, about not being able to stop with the beer, about not being able to stop keeping Cher all boxed up and perfect like a doll, and about what was happening to Mari, since He had started locking away her words and expressions one by one, until she had nothing left to say.
Once she could barely speak up for herself anymore, He stopped her moving. Stilled her. Made her stay at home. Locked her in even. Wouldn’t let her go out alone. So that her street, her town were no longer hers, and even her boy, Pigeon, was shut away from her, wasn’t hers.
But that particular Sunday, because of the beating Pigeon’d got for stealing that lolly, and because last week Efa’d given him the money, she said.
“I hate it that they bought you one out of pity for us.” She looked almost angry. She’s funny his mum. She’s not brave, but she does have this thing. This thing in her. Pride, Efa’d called it. Pride.
“Look Pigeon,” showing him her purse. “I can get one for the both of you.”
It was odd, seeing her out on the street again. How she seemed to grow with every step, until you think maybe, maybe He won’t fit her back in through the door again, because she’ll be too proud and tall and beautiful. Maybe she’ll escape.
“What’ll you have?” she asked him as they walked along the street towards the van and she was half smiling, “a Feast? Or a Calypso?”
He considered. “I’ll wait and see what she chooses,” he said after a while. “It’s her turn.”
He liked the idea of buying Iola an ice cream. Being big about it. Offering her a choice. It’d taste different, better, knowing it was his own mam that bought it. And, when Pigeon saw Gwyn, for a moment he was just an ice-cream man, nothing to worry about, a guy.
Pigeon’s mam went up to the slot in the van’s side.
“One Feast. One Calypso.”
And Gwyn changed. He changed like men do with her. He looked down at her, and he smiled and he said what a nice day it was, and what did a pretty young thing like her want today, and Pigeon’s mam, you couldn’t believe it, Pigeon’s mam laughed and she said “well, I’m after two ice creams.” And she told him which and he got one out and he winked at her as he handed it over, and she laughed again. And the thing wouldn’t have been so bad, except she was seen.
He was coming up the road with Cher, and He saw her there, saw the wink. He had her arm straight away, and pulled her away from the van walking her up the street towards
the house. Pigeon left the van, and Gwyn, staring and ran with them. He ran after them right to the door to the house, his breath tight in his chest. Pigeon got there just behind them, but He dragged her inside anyway, and slammed the door in Pigeon’s face. And you couldn’t get in. You couldn’t get in, and Pigeon kicked and kicked, he kicked and kicked the door, and she cried, she cried inside.
The police came that day. It was because Pigon ran to Iola’s. Efa called them. They came, and that stopped Him. But then they went again. His mam sent them away.
She had bruises. “It’s ok, love,” she said, when Pigeon cried over her bruises. “Bruises fade.”
But it wasn’t true. That wasn’t true for Pigeon.
Though she did wince, did cower, did cry quiet bewildered tears, she didn’t carry Adrian’s anger, not like Pigeon did. It was Pigeon that took all His anger about the mess it all was, and how it wouldn’t sit tidy, not even for Him, the anger about what He was doing to His ‘love’, to Mari as He fought with her to keep her in control. Pigeon got it all. Pigeon took it all, and he took the second beating, the beating that was to spare, when He came to the shed, shaking with the rage of it, and with not being able to stop.
And now, again, Adrian is at the door, shouting.
“Open the damned door!” he shouts. “Open it right now or I’ll fuckin’ kill you. I will.”
Today will be like the other days. Threats. Bruises. Threats.
Pigeon sits on his bed, his knees drawn up to his chest. He sits, watching a tiny ant crawl over the doorframe, watching his shed become a whole wide world to the ant. Pigeon sits, and he waits for the beating, and he hates, he hates Gwyn with all his might.
9
Efa will be home, with her million and one herbs and yoga and meditation and pills and grains and breathing exercises. A million and one things which can’t make up for the fact that Efa’s not really happy, and her life’s no fun. When I open the door, sure enough, there’s Efa, listening to music, and she’s in one of her moods, her good moods. Too good.