Pigeon

by Alys Conran

  “Da ni am fynd lawr dre, Efa,” I call to my sister, and it’s not my mouth that says it. It doesn’t feel like me.

  Efa comes through, nods. She’ll let me do anything. But this time Efa gives me a kiss, and in my ear, “Be careful, Iola,” she says, but she lets me go anyway. Efa’ll let me go anywhere, even down to the bus stops in town, where there’s smoking and drinking and lads who can’t keep their hands or their thoughts to themselves.

  It’s not until we’re on the road on our own, Pigeon’s white face glowing with the streetlights, that we say anything else.

  “So be ’nes di’n Lerpwl?”

  “In Liverpool? Nothing. We were shut in. I didn’t do anything.”

  Pigeon, in English?

  I try again. “‘Ma raid nes ti ’wbath.”

  “Nope, not much.” This Pigeon’s a book full of blank pages.

  “O,” I say.

  There’s a long silence. I want to go back to mine, pretend he never came back.

  “You stayin’ at your mam’s?” I ask him.

  “Yep.”

  We walk down the hill in the yellow glow of the streetlamps.

  Pigeon’s different. And, although he came round, it’s like he’s come looking for something that isn’t here anymore. Something we’ve lost, like Nain’s ring which got lost in the laundry all those years back, and which we never found again although we all cursed black and blue looking for it. It must be here. It must be here. Like that. The same feeling of desperate, hopeless searching, except worse. Like losing your own eyes, or your ears, or your heart. I try twice more.

  “Sut ma’ dy fam?”

  “She’s alright.”

  “Ti, ’di gweld Cher?”

  “Yep, she’s at my house.”

  He stops, turns to look at me.

  “Cher’s staying in the shed now,” he says. We scuff along the road, carrying on as if nothing's happened, as if Cher’s the enemy. As if Cher’s still pretty and clever and a girl everyone likes.

  I stop. I feel sick to my stomach at the thought of it, my friend Cher, in that cold damp shed. It’s not made for her. It’s made for someone wild like Pigeon. Efa’s word for him pops into my head. Feral. That’s what she called him. Feral. Like one of the scraggy black cats that hang about by our door, waiting for scraps and love. Comfort. You have to turn them away, or they come back and back.

  “Pigeon,” I say, in English now, “I’ve just remembered I’m meeting someone, I’ve got to go.”

  Pigeon stands looking at me, as if I’m something he doesn’t believe.

  “Welai chdi eto rywbryd ta?” I say then in Welsh, to pretend we’re still friends.

  “Yep, see you,” agrees Pigeon, standing still.

  I walk away quickly, going right and going left between the houses and to my front door. Behind me Pigeon stands under the streetlight, pocketed hands, scuffed toes, green cat eyes looking after me, hungry.

  Cher’s waiting by my back door, she’s standing there, could have waited for hours.

  “He’s back,” she tells me.

  “I know,” I say, all innocent.

  “Pigeon. He came back yesterday.”

  “I know, Cher.”

  I watch my friend’s face.

  “Don’t look so happy, Cher.”

  “No,” Cher agrees. “No,” she says again, looking at the ground.

  There’s a silence. Then “He won’t talk to me,” I say.

  “You saw him?”

  “Yep.”

  “When?”

  “Just now. But he won’t talk.”

  “What, not at all?” asks Cher, slowly.

  “Just not properly. Not in Welsh.”

  Cher looks confused.

  “So?”

  “I dunno. It’s weird.”

  “You and me talk English,” says Cher, shrugging her shoulders as if it doesn’t matter.

  I look at Cher, and there’s that feeling. That feeling that it does matter. It matters a whole place worth of words and meanings and memories.

  “What’s he been doing?” Cher asks me.

  “Dunno. Won’t say.”

  “He’s been somewhere bad, Iola,” Cher says, seriously. “That’s what it is. He doesn’t want to think about it.”

  Sometimes Cher’s clever again. Sometimes it’s like she’s going back to normal.

  “He’s moved my stuff out to the shed,” she says. She says it with a big smile. As if it’s a good thing.

  “Cher that’s terrible,” I say.

  “Why?” she says.

  “It’s cold and damp in there. It’s not a place for someone to sleep!”

  She looks at me like I’m mad.

  “I always wanted to be allowed in,” she says, as if I’m the stupid one, “And now I am. I’m allowed the shed. And Pigeon has the house.”

  Poor Cher. She’s so thick sometimes. And then other times she’s so clever I think she knows it all.

  We follow the path down to school, carrying on as if nothing’s happened, as if nothing’s ever happened, as if there’s nothing wrong, and as if I’ve got all the right in the world to my life and my marks at school, and Cher doesn’t and that’s why she’s got just a shed.

  It’s a couple of long, plain weeks before Pigeon comes to my house again. The next time I see him, it’s on the anniversary of when Gwenllian, my mam, died. No one else thinks about the date anymore. Not even Efa. Especially not Efa who won’t let me speak about either Gwenllian or our dad, but I remember the date every year. Seventh of May. I learnt it. It says it on the stone in the graveyard and so I learnt it, and I remember every year. I usually go there, to see her although I don’t have much to say to her. She didn’t stick around for long did she? She didn’t properly meet me, and I didn’t properly meet her. How can you miss someone you didn’t know? It doesn’t make sense. But I do. I miss her so much it’s like not being able to breathe. Not like with Dad. With Dad I’m angry. He left on purpose.

  I’m just about to head out to see Gwenllian when Pigeon arrives at the door. There’s a feeling of things sinking suddenly, in a way I can’t stop. Efa and Dafydd are out, and the house suddenly feels hollow without them. Pigeon comes in this time and then sits down on the sofa as if he belongs here and is just slotting himself into place. Pigeon has a strange weight to him, and everything seems to give for him, shift around to make space. This time he’s more like the old Pigeon. He’s got this notebook, starts making notes. He’s copying out what’s in the newspaper Efa’s left open on the table. He’s always done this. He copies something out, and then he’ll change the order of it. I used to think it was just a bit of fun. Now it feels like Pigeon wants to take everything, learn it, and change it all around. Why can’t he ever just let things be?

  “Why d’you hang round with Cher?” he says, in English again, still copying as he asks me. He doesn’t even look up.

  “She’s alright”

  “She’s a freak.’”

  “Nacdi tad, cau hi,” I say, half sticking up for her, but not in a strong and brave way. Not like a friend should.

  “Anyways, she’s a lesbo,” he says, with a chuckle.

  When did he start just calling people lazy names? Scumbag. Lesbo. Before, he’d make up stories, and then the names’d come after. Now it was just names. Empty names in fake English.

  “Shut up, Pigeon,” I say then, as if he’d never been away. As if we’re pals who can afford to argue. He gets a black look.

  “Are you a lesbo?”

  “No.” I feel the heat in my face.

  He grins “D’you fancy me then?”

  “No.” My face burns even more.

  “Bet you do really.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I’ve gotta girlfriend, anyway.”

  “You have not.” My face cools too quick. Something icy in my stomach.

  “Do so.”

  “Be di ’i henw hi ta?”

  “Ceri.”

  “No way.” Ceri’
s in my class. She’s got boobs, a bad attitude.

  “Yes way.” he grins. “Anyway, can I borrow a book?”

  It takes me by surprise. So I don’t answer for a few seconds, just sit there staring at him.

  “Which book?” I say eventually.

  “I dunno.” He looks at me and then he says, “One about a murder maybe?” with a smile.

  The words are like quick hail. I’m up, and walking out, leaving Pigeon all alone in my own house.

  I need to walk. My shoes are hard and regular on the road and the road’s solid. I walk. I walk up the steep street, up the hillside. At the top you can see the mountains tumbling down towards you, all draped with clouds. I walk up for a time that’s not countable, and then turn to skirt the hill and all along, past the estate, and down the river which is swelled up with spring and decorated with green plants growing fast and lush and too full of life. I walk the path by the river, then the other path, the one to the graveyard by the church.

  The graveyard’s where Gwenllian’s buried. She’s five rows up and two rows in. There’s some dead chrysanthemums in a pot by the grave. Did Efa bring them? I stand there looking at the stone. It says Gwenllian. My mam’s name. Gwenllian.

  I don’t know much about her. Only that Dad loved her, and she died just after I was born, and then he obviously didn’t care so much about us, Efa and me, because he left us then, with Nain and her rules and tellings off.

  I think, stood in front of this Gwenllian’s grave, that it’s a shame I never knew her, cos, with a name like that, she must’ve been a story.

  I pick up the dead chrysanthemums then, and I say, “Ta ta Gwenllian,” and start walking back home to Efa.

  When I get home I find Pigeon’s left a note for me and Efa, scrawled on the back of a newspaper, saying he’s borrowed a book, but he’ll bring it back. And it’s not Agatha Christie or any of Efa’s other murder books. It’s a children’s book full of old-fashioned stories, by Hans Christian Andersen.

  Efa thinks it’s funny.

  “What on earth does he want with that?”she says.

  What would Pigeon want with children’s stories?

  27

  He’d thought he was after something scientific. He was after something that was full of FACTS and experiments and explaining things just the way they were. And then he got to that row of bright spines. They were all picture books there, for kids. He got one off the shelf. This was the kind of thing Iola would’ve read when she was little. He opened this one. It was a big blue book, quite heavy. It was for a mam or a dad to read to you, it’d be too heavy for a small kid to hold on their own. He sat down on the sofa. Iola’s sofa. Next to him there was a pile of clothes, waiting to be ironed or folded and to be put away. He could smell something vinegary coming from the kitchen. It was probably pickle. There was always something on the go in Iola’s house. Efa was always doing something, cleaning or cooking or lighting candles, or listening to music. In his house there was just mam. She hardly moved all day. They watched TV in his house. They ate food from packets and tins. In Iola’s house there was always things happening, people working to make things happen. It made things move around inside you. You were like the house. Going places. Happening. Pigeon sat on the sofa next to the clothes that were halfway through being folded, smelling the pickle that was halfway to being made. Iola’d be back in a minute. Perhaps she’d be angry? Or was she scared? He’d better just get a book and go, come back another day. Why’d he said that thing to her? Said ‘about a murder’. Why’d he said it?

  He sits with the big book, and he starts to read. And the first lines of the story are like visiting an old house in the past where things are different and where people wash clothes on a Saturday and make their own bread. It’s old fashioned, the story, and it has a taste like a cinnamon bun, spicy and sweet and gone out of fashion.

  It’s because of the words. The words aren’t for him, they’re for someone else. Someone with tidy, ironed trousers, round cheeks, and a mam who wears scarves, has pink, soft lips, smells clean. “Once upon a time,” she says, and she smiles. Pigeon closes the book.

  But he never gets a science book, a book about facts, instead he takes the story book, leaves by the back door, and goes over the gardens and hedges and walls until he gets to his house.

  From the side wall, he can see that there’s a man standing on the front doorstep.

  Pigeon stands back, and watches the man knock on his door, he skirts around the side of the house to the front, and, as he walks up to the man, the door opens, and his mam stands there. She’s not wearing proper clothes. She’s wearing a nightie. She shouldn’t be opening the door to a man in just that. She’s too pretty. He watches from the gate. But his mam sees Pigeon, and, just when the man’s leaning down to her in a way that turns his stomach, she says quickly “I can’t do this now. Come back tomorrow.”

  The man leans towards her still, as if he’s going to kiss her but then he doesn’t. He touches her on her hip, and walks away. That touch, as if he owned her.

  “Who’re you?” asks Pigeon, but the man only looks at him briefly and walks away. He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even answer. The man looks familiar. How does Pigeon know him? How?

  “Is that your boyfriend?” Pigeon asks her as she shuts the door after him. But when she turns round she’s pale, and she looks full of upset and tears.

  “No,” she says, shaking her head.

  “But he touched you.”

  “Yes,” she said, “he did.”

  She faces him.

  “Pigeon, with Him gone and Cher to look after and all. I needed the money.”

  He stares at her. What does she mean?

  “I needed his money,” she says. Then she sits down hard. “And the others,” she says, looking down.

  Pigeon stares at her. The others? Money? Then it’s as if the whole room is suddenly swimming in a queasy green light. His mam, sat there, in her nightie. His mam now, standing, saying “Pigeon!” the lipstick around her mouth making the shape of his name. Then he pushes past her and out of the house again.

  It’s not until he’s up the hill, above the town, looking down at the strewn houses and fields and the layered streets, that he knows it. That man touching his mam had been the same one watching Iola’s window.

  And that’s when he gets it, Pigeon. He’ll need to be the one in control, here, in this town full of liars and cheats and people who want to run you into the ground. You’re either a winner or a loser. And being a winner is all about keeping your doors and windows closed to the wrong people. Being a winner means being the one who held the gun, who killed Him, who calls the shots, has the key to his own front door, and has the force to keep it closed.

  28

  I walk back home from school the long way, along the path that goes up the valley with the river, where there’s all the pools the kids from town come to, to swim. You can hear them now, the sounds of laughing and splashing around and the gasps as they jump in. The water’s freezing, since it’s only the beginning of May.

  I walk round the bend in the river, coming up to the waterfall that’s like a paradise in the spring. There’s all the green rocks and trees round the waterfall, and there’s a perfect pool at the bottom. The water squirms down into it. That’s when I see them, Pigeon and his girlfriend, sat by the waterfall. They’ve probably been there all day. Pigeon doesn’t do school and I don’t think she’s too bothered either.

  Pigeon’s grabbing Ceri all over and kissing her. It’s disgusting.

  I stand watching. I stand watching their twisting bodies until he pulls away and says something to Ceri and stands up.

  I start walking away, but then turn again because I can hear Ceri’s voice rising.

  “You’re an idiot if you do that, Pigeon. It’s too high. It’s not deep enough!”

  Pigeon’s stripped down to his shorts, and while Ceri and me watch he climbs right up to the top of the rock, and he looks down at the pool. There’s only th
ree’ll do that jump. Three of the boys in town.

  I’m not keen. I don’t like it when they do it. The pool’s a long way below, and it’s not that deep. A boy got injured last year. It was just his arm. Luckily, Efa’d said.

  Watching Pigeon, stood in his shorts, and his white, thin body with the pale light that comes through the trees making shapes on him, my hands are hot and sweaty and I feel that sickness, that old familiar sickness that comes when Pigeon’s getting in trouble. I don’t want him to jump. I don’t.

  I shout it, without meaning to, “Stopia! Pigeon, Stopia!” and he looks at me. And he looks at me, and he jumps.

  But he’s alright, Pigeon, swimming in the pool after jumping off the rock. He’s cold, and shouting with the cold, and then, when he’s used to it a bit he’s laughing at me and Ceri who’re both stood with our hands on our mouths looking terrified. He’s swimming and doing rolly-pollys in the water, and he looks different, down there in that pool. He looks happy. And it makes me think about that question the police asked me, in that cold room after it all happened, when they were trying to work it all out.

  “Do you think Pigeon’s unhappy?” they asked.

  I never answered.

  He was happy when we used to go up into the old quarries exploring all the holes and the mountains of slate, where, if you fell, you might’ve plunged all the way down the slate tips, and landed cut to pieces at the bottom. He was happy when we used to go to the tops of the hill nearest town too, running up one in front of the other past the cows and over the stiles, and up the side of the steep hill and along the bumpy spine of it until we got right to the top, with no breath left in us at all, and too cold in the wind but it was so worth it.

  Because there you could look down on everything like it was a rucked-up blanket, and all the fields and the sky and even sometimes clouds were below us, and there below us we’d see my house, and we’d see Pigeon’s house, where Helived, and Pigeon’d spit at it. Spit at the crooked, ugly house that was supposed to be his home. And then we’d laugh, Pigeon and me, we’d laugh. And I’d try to spit as far as Pigeon could. But I’d never manage it.