by Alys Conran
The car’s coming for Pigeon, but not because of the fire at Gwyn’s, or because ofHim. No one has put two and two together yet, not put them together: Pigeon and the fire, Pigeon and the van, Pigeon and Him. The car’s coming because it was coming anyway.
They had already been round the week before. Two had come to the crooked house, asking their questions. They’d heard Pigeon had bruises. They’d heard the man, the step-dad as they called Him, was a nasty piece of work. They’d heard Pigeon didn’t go to school. They’d come round with a clipboard, asking questions.
“When was the last time you went to school, Pigeon?” they’d asked.
“Last week,” Pigeon’d said. “We did English. And maths. We did mathematics.” But his face was so narrow, and his eyes, they were darting, like a cat’s.
“How did you get your bruises?”
“Fighting.” Pigeon grinned at them.
“What about your mam’s?”
“Fighting,” Pigeon’d said, then he’d looked away, shrugged. “But not with me,” he’d added, sulky.
“Who makes sure Pigeon is going to school?”
“Mam,” said Pigeon “Mam.”
And all the time Pigeon’s mam rocked back and forth, back and forth.
His mother continues to rock this time, as they come up the path to take Pigeon away. This time it’s two policemen and a woman.
From behind the cobwebs that are like a veil over the window, Pigeon watches the policemen get out of the chequered car, walk up the little path, speak into the tiny microphones on their chests. They wear heavy boots and padded waistcoats. They wear black, and little chequered bits on their sleeves: black and white checks, like a chessboard.
“Yep, we’ve found the house,” one says into the little microphone. “Should be out in a half hour or so, keep you posted. Yep, Linda’s with us, she’ll do the talking.”
Pigeon isn’t afraid of them. It’s the woman he doesn’t like, he doesn’t like the women who come with questions. He sits down in His chair in the living room, in the darkest corner.
No one answers the knock, so one of the officers pushes at the ragged door. As they move along the dark corridor towards him it’s like turning the last page of a bad story.
In here Pigeon just sits in the dark. He sits in the threadbare armchair that’s opposite his mother, rocking on her own chair. Pigeon’s waiting for it. Waiting for them to make it real.
“Excuse me,” says the woman, nervous at the door. And Pigeon’s mam, she just rocks back and fore on the creaking chair holding her face where He hit her.
“Hello, Mari? Hello…Pigeon?” The woman is nervous, respectable, out of place in the dank room. Neither Pigeon nor his mam change position. Pigeon sits in the dark, cross legged on the armchair. His chin is in his hand, resting. He stares at the window, although the heavy curtains are closed. He’s blank.
The woman peers in. Perhaps she can make out the shape of the boy sitting in the armchair, perhaps she sees the faint halo of his mother’s white hair rocking back and forth in the chair. He can see just the outline of the woman’s smile. She smiles in the way you smile at a child’s impossible handwriting, struggling, struggling to understand, struggling to encourage.
“Excuse me, Mari,” she says, trying a different tack, her voice a little high, a little strained.
“Don’t speak to her, Mam.” Pigeon’s hard, pegged-down voice shoots across the room.
A sharp intake of breath. Then “Mari, do you remember what we talked about?” The woman’s voice tinkles inappropriately in the room.
Pigeon’s mother’s white head moves back and forth, back and forth. There’s silence. Silence except for the persistent creak and then a snorting sound from the corner: Pigeon’s chuckle. His chuckle, like pulling a finger at them all.
One of the policemen takes a step forward.
“Afraid we’ve got to take him away, madam. We’ve no choice under the circumstances. He’s at risk see? I’m afraid…” switching on the light.
The light falls on the brown armchairs, on the brown sofa, on the full ashtray, on Mari’s white head, on Pigeon’s slight shoulders, on the dirty carpet and on Him.
He lies there, face down. There’s a wound in the back of Hishead, a small black and red wound. There’s a slick of blood on the floor. The light from the bare bulb makes shapes in the maroon blood. Pigeon watches the shapes with interest.
The light also falls on the woman’s concerned face, which crumples like a vacuum-pack. And now the light is switched on, they will also see something new in Pigeon. He won’t hide it.
Pride.
“Fi nath o,” says Pigeon, pointing at Him, “Fi.”
It was me. It was. It was me.
The words settle into his stomach, like something molten becoming stone.
18
It isn’t chapel. It’s church. Catholic. He was Catholic, Efa says, but I can’t imagine Jesus with his sharing and his fish and his bread and his washing people’s feet having anything to do with Him at all, chapel, church or anywhere. But anyway they have the funeral in the Catholic church in the town by the sea where Gwyn lived. We walk there from the bus stop, and we see the big black car going into the carpark by the church. We’re wearing black again, like for Nain.
“There they are,” says Efa when the big black car comes. “We’re late,” she says, grabbing my hand. We walk up the path and into the church in a hurry. The church is all pretty windows and smells that are like magic and pictures of fairytale people from the Bible.
At the funeral there are only fifteen people. There’s me. There’s Efa. There’s Pigeon’s mam. She looks a bit clearer than usual. Less blurred. But her eyes are as lost as ever. There are some men from His work. Men with big shoulders and heavy hands, who are bigger than Him and who look grim. They come in with Him. Carrying him. Looking like they want to start a fight as they hold up the heavy box.
“Bloody disgrace,” says one of them, as he passes Pigeon’s mam, sitting at the front on her own. She shrinks like a spell, swallowing herself up, like a snail curling into its shell. Now you see her. Now you don’t. I thought for a minute, when I first saw her, that she looked better, more there, but now she’s smudged again, like rubbed-out pencil, with nothing to say.
The Bloody Disgrace is because of it being Pigeon. Pigeon who’s been taken to the police station. Her son. When I look at her for long I start to feel cold and like I’ve got something wrong with me. Maybe my heart. My stomach. Maybe that.
Apart from that there’s no one, except for me, Efa, and at the front, sitting in a chair with wheels, Cher. She sits there in front of a teenaged girl who’s wheeling her about.
“Who’s that?” I ask Efa.
“Cher’s sister perhaps,” says Efa.
That can’t be right can it? Cher doesn’t have a sister. She just has Pigeon and his mam and the crooked house.
“She’s looking better,” Efa says, “You should go over and say Hello,” she says. But when I look at Cher I feel sick to my stomach so I just stand next to Efa and look at the coffin where He is, in that wooden box that’s closed up like a fist. I imagine him inside it, scowling.
Adrian, they call Him. Adrian. It says His name on the front of the little booklet they gave us on the way in. In Loving Memory of Adrian Macauley. It’s strange to see Loving anywhere near His name.
When the service starts, the priest talks about His life as if He was a boy once. As if He was like us, me and Pigeon. But He never was. No way He ever was.
“Adrian grew up in Liverpool,” says the priest.
Liverpool. Where our dad lives now. I think about Dad, standing here with Efa. What would Dad think of all this. But Dad’s crazy. He can’t think probably. He doesn’t really exist. Like a dream person. Or angels. Or Pigeon’s mam.
Adrian Macauley had four brothers and a sister according to the priest.
I feel sorry for the sister. She isn’t here. Neither are the brothers. I bet they teased the
sister and twisted her arm in a Chinese burn and were meaner than even Pigeon is to Cher. Bet He was mean. He was mean. He was mean. He deserved everything he got. But that thought is too big and too nasty. Serve Him Right. I can’t think that either. Not properly.
“My impression,” says the Priest, “is that he was a boy full of fun.”
The priest talks about this Adrian and the games he used to play as a kid. Fishing. Tiddly-winks, which means counters, and boxing. That makes sense. Boxing. Adrian was never a kid. I know he wasn’t. He was Him.
“Lets not beat about the bush,” says the priest. “Adrian could knock out a man twice his size.” The big men laugh. Pigeon’s mum doesn’t, she just sits there, being alone and small and pretty and a Bloody Disgrace. I look at her, feeling how Pigeon isn’t there, where he should be, sitting next to her. Efa says not to mention him. “He’s not allowed to come,” she says. Like he ever would. Like he’d want to hear about this Adrian.
Standing in the church, looking at the coffin with Him in it, I think how it was Adrian. The massa-killer, the sicko-psycho, was Him all along, and I never knew. Pigeon never told me. I never knew until I saw Him in their living room that day, with Pigeon. Hurting Pigeon. My friend.
The hymns for Him are very quiet because there’s only fifteen people. Some of them are the same songs we know in chapel, but they’re in English instead in this church. Only the priest really sings. He sings nice and round into his microphone, and it’s like he really believes in the song and in God! and in Him. And then the priest, who’s dressed in a long robe like a warlock, with a scarf around his neck and a special serious look on his face shakes clouds of spicy smells over the coffin where He is, as if He’s something that should be treated kindly, as if He’s something special, as if He’s something soft and not just a body you have to break to survive.
“What’s the priest doing?” I whisper to Efa.
“He’s blessing Adrian,” she says.
“What’s that?” I say, pointing at the swinging metal thing that the priest holds.
“Incense.”
“What for?”
“For making the dead person special and holy.”
“Him?!” I say it too loud and people turn round.
“Sh. Iola,” she says. And the priest goes on shaking the spices and smoke all around the coffin, as if He is something you have to be kind to, and make charms for.
That’s crazy, I think. Blessing Adrian.
Blessing Pigeon, that’s what they should all be doing, blessing my friend, not this dead man in his box. Thinking that is so angry and dark I feel sick. I think about the holes in the body that’s in the box. Straight through his body, and the blood. And then I can’t breathe with the singing and the priest and the church and Cher, and with Pigeon not being here. It’s like the church and me are full of holes and I’m leaking all the breath I try to breathe. I’m full of holes and Efa’s holding me, and she’s got me by the shoulders and she’s pulled me outside.
“Sorry, Iola,” she says, holding me to her warm body, as I shake and try to breathe. “This was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have made you come.”
She holds me, standing outside the church. She holds me until I stop shaking. We go for a hot chocolate in the National Milk Bar and I have mine with a flake and Efa’s so kind to me I want her to love me like this forever and love me as if we’d never ever told each other any lies like that lie lying in that box in the Catholic Church. I want Efa to love me enough to make up for Dad, for Nain, and now for Pigeon, now for Pigeon too. I want her to love me so much it stops up all the gaps, all the bits where there should be love and there isn’t. And after the hot chocolate, I cry. It’s not that I cry for Him, for his funeral with its false magic spells and its one man singing on the microphone. I cry for Pigeon. I cry for Pigeon so much it’s like tearing paper.
19
“I dunno. Snot really my problem. Snot really anythin’ t’do with me.”
The room is white, calm, hard, cold. Pigeon sits on a big leather chair. It’s what they call an executive chair, and it’s there for adults. There is a smaller chair in the room, one for children, but Pigeon has ignored the Police Psychologist, and he’s sitting in the big chair, and so he’s looking at her straight, eye to eye. There are also toys on the floor for kids. “To make it easier for children to talk,” she says in English, with her smile like aluminium. But Pigeon isn’t having any of that either. He sits on the chair, in the little white room. He sits perfectly still, facing her. She sits also, in her white shirt and her black trousers, her notebook, her hair pulled back. The room has a video camera, with a little light to show that it’s filming. It’s always filming. The room also has a panic button.
Looking at her like this you can see that he makes her uncomfortable. Her legs and her arms are crossing and uncrossing, crossing and uncrossing again and again all the time, as if she was the one on trial. This is how Pigeon’s evidence will be given. From this room, locked away. Pigeon can go to the trial if he likes, but his evidence will be on camera.
“Fair enough!” she says, at his refusal to answer. She smiles like make-believe. “That’s fair enough!”
She says the last fair enough as if it’s on your marks, get set, go! But Pigeon doesn’t start, he simply scowls.
“How about your dad?” the woman carries on with her endless nosy-poky-parker questions. Who is she to ask about his dad. Pigeon’s dad doesn’t exist.
Pigeon scowls more, and he says nothing. He throws one of the little bright plastic balls that are part of the toy box between his left hand, and his right hand, and then back again, from one hand to the other one, from one hand to the other. Pigeon tries it, to control the room, to bring it back under control. Pigeon copies what He would have done, controlling it by throwing that little ball from one hand to the other, one hand to the other. Pigeon’s heart beats hard.
“Okaaaay,” she says, pulling the okaaaaaay out like bubble gum. “How about your stepdad then? How did you two get on?”
And Pigeon hates it, the way ‘you two’ sounds. “He’s gone,” he snaps. “He’s not around anymore anyways,” and he lets the ball fall to the floor, watches it as it slows against the deep-pile carpet and finally stops against the skirting board, cornered.
“Hmm,” she says. “Yes, I see. But were you friends?” and she leans forward, slightly. You can see it on her skin, the prickles of getting to the bottom of it, of unlocking the secrets. The prickles wander like ants up her arms.
Pigeon looks up, is still for a second, and then, “No! We weren’t ‘friends’ alright?” And it’s a man’s anger, uncontainable in his boy’s voice.
“If you don’t want to talk about it Pigeon, then that’s alright, okay? That’s fine for today.”
She shakes her head, shuffles her papers. She looks at him, almost kindly. Almost mothering. But the room is too white. And she isn’t a mother. She isn’t his mother.
“Yep, that’s right.” Pigeon rests his forehead in his hand. “Don’t want to talk about it,” he says, pursing his lips.
“Okay, fine, we’ll do this some other time Pigeon, okay?” She looks at him a long while, her eybrows pulled down low.
But Pigeon doesn’t want to do this ever again. Doesn’t want to sit in this room with the stupid toys, the grinning bears, the shiny, ugly-perfect balls, the dolls and the cars and all the other things that adults need children to have, so he says suddenly, “I hated his guts,” and then, “He spoilt everything. He was a bastard to mum, and a bastard to me.”
“Who’s He?” She’s looking confused, looking at her clipboard, as if she’s lost her place on the page.
“Him,” Pigeon leans forward, with his own italics this time, reaches for her clipboard and taps his finger twice about halfway up the page.
Step.
Dad.
She flushes and makes a note, but Pigeon grabs her notebook halfway through.
– difficult relationship – possibly repeated violence? �
�� Psychological mistreatment? –
“Pigeon, Give that back!” she says. You can hear the strain in her voice. Fear? Her upper lip sweats as he holds the notebook, reading with interest as the description of him grows across the page, her handwriting adding flesh to the bones, describing his pigeonhole to a T. But he gives her the notebook back, impatient to get out. To get away.
“So anyways, I did it. Might as well tell you. I did it.”
“What?”
“Well, Gwyn’s house for starters!” He shakes his head, almost laughs.
“Who’s Gwyn?” Again she’s confused, again looking in her papers for the answer, frowning.
Pigeon looks at her, and his eyebrows go up.
“Don’t you know anything?” he asks her, as if interested. He smiles. He’s enjoying this, except for the feeling; the feeling that The joke won't be worth the pain.
She shuffles through her papers, frantically looking for a note, a scribble, an underlined name.
“He’s the ice-cream man,” says Pigeon with a helpful smile. “I burnt down his house.”
If it wasn’t for that Pigeon might have got off lightly, even with the body lying in holes on the ground. He would have got off lightly because he had bruises, Pigeon, and his mam would testify that it was self-defence, and even His friends knew that Adrian was a brute. But burning that house. Burning Gwyn’s house. That carried the boy into a different league. He was malicious. He was dangerous. He had to be locked up a good while. Re-educated. Spat out brand new.
20
We don’t talk about it much, me and Efa. She doesn’t ask me many questions. I don’t ever ask her if she’s glad Pigeon’s gone. She doesn’t think it’s anything to do with me, so she doesn’t ask. All the things they talk about at school, and at chapel and in the paper, they’re nothing to do with us. It’s just Pigeon’s life. His life. So Efa goes on working at The Home, and doing yoga, and trying to make it all up to me, the lies she’s told. But there’s so much space between what we know and what we say now. However much we hug, we can’t close the space. I think of him all the time, Pigeon. Someone to believe in. Think of the last time I saw him. The last time I had a real friend, someone close. As close as two crossed fingers.