Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

A fumbling sound at the other end and Alison picked up the phone.

‘Hello?’ She sounded wary, bruised.

‘Alison, it’s me. Moses. I just thought I’d ring you, see how you were.’

‘You’ve spoken to Vince, then?’

Moses said he had.

‘How did he sound?’

‘Pretty pissed off. What happened?’

‘Oh, you know, another argument. He wants me to live with him and I don’t think I’m ready for that. Not at the moment, anyway. I told him that and he went mad and hit me.’

‘Oh shit,’ Moses muttered.

‘Not hard or anything. He was too drunk for that.’ She laughed — a half-laugh; the other half was bitterness. ‘Well, I’m pretty fed up with all that shit. So I left.’

Moses sighed. ‘Are you all right now?’

‘Yes, I’m all right. Bit shaky.’ She paused, sniffed. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with him. Just because I tell him I don’t want to live with him, he starts thinking there’s some kind of conspiracy going on — ’

‘That’s typical Vince,’ Moses said. ‘He likes it better when he’s fighting the whole world.’

‘I’m not the world, I’m me,’ Alison said tearfully. ‘Why’s he have to make everything so complicated?’

Moses didn’t know the answer to that.

After Alison rang off, thanking him, he tried Vince again. No reply. It was as he had feared. Vince had gone out to wreak terrible vengeance on an innocent city. He would probably end up in hospital again. Moses didn’t want to think about it.

He sat in Elliot’s chair for a while longer. Too many phone-calls had taken his elation apart piece by piece until nothing recognisable was left. He felt tired as he unlocked the door of his old Rover, slid into the seat and drove home.

So much for telling everyone the news, he thought.

*

‘Do you like pigeons?’

Elliot asked the question casually as he walked Moses round to The Bunker’s side entrance.

Moses scratched his head. What was all this about pigeons? Elliot had called Moses at nine that morning and offered to show him the rooms on the top floor of The Bunker. ‘I’ll be here until twelve,’ Elliot had told him.

Moses had driven over at eleven, his lungs still misty with smoke from the previous night. Too much whisky with Vince had laced the suspense he might otherwise have felt with irritation.

They had reached the black door. Wind blew dust and grit into the back of his neck. He folded his arms and drew his shoulders together.

‘What do you mean, do I like pigeons?’ he said.

Elliot didn’t appear to have heard. It was an annoying habit of his.

Seconds later he said, ‘You’ll see.’ His grin was half grimace as he grappled with a muscular rusty padlock.

The padlock had resisted his first efforts, but now the key slid in and gripped. It snapped open, almost jumped out of his hands. He pushed at the door. It swung inwards to reveal a pile of crumpled newspapers, a few circulars, and a steep flight of wooden stairs.

‘Nobody’s been in here for bloody years,’ he said.

There was a light-switch on the wall. One of those round protruding light-switches with an inbuilt timing-device. He jabbed it with his thumb. It began to tick quietly like a shy bomb. He set off up the stairs, two at a time. Moses followed.

Halfway to the top, the light clicked off. Moses heard Elliot mutter Fuck somewhere up ahead. They reached a door.

‘You really don’t like pigeons?’ Elliot asked Moses again.

‘I hate pigeons,’ Moses said. And said it with feeling, because it was true.

Elliot’s laugh was soft, so soft that it was hardly louder than a smile. Moses didn’t like the sound of it.

Elliot put his shoulder to the door. A groaning splintering sound. The wood gave. Light poured into the stairwell.

At first, Moses thought he was seeing some kind of optical illusion — the result of being in the darkness for too long. But then he realised that what he was seeing was real. He blinked his eyes several times. Yes, it was definitely real. They had walked into a room full of about five hundred pigeons. The pigeons were moving about with extraordinary speed and abandon. It seemed to Moses as if fifty per cent of the air had been siphoned off and replaced with moulting grey feathers. He took a deep breath. It was like breathing pigeon.

‘Oh,’ he said.

He backed away towards the stairs.

‘Do you like it?’ Elliot shouted. He thought the whole thing was a big joke.

Moses didn’t answer. He was gazing at the floor — or the place where the floor would have been if it hadn’t been inches deep in pigeon shit.

‘Oh,’ he said.

He had had a dream and his dream, after all these months, had finally come true. But there hadn’t been any pigeons in his dream. No pigeons at all. They had come as something of a shock to him.

‘Oh,’ he said, for the third time.

When he returned three days later, the party was still in full swing. He winced in the darkness of the stairwell as he heard the whirring and clattering of five hundred pairs of grey wings, as he thought of the task that lay ahead of him, but at least he had the grim satisfaction of knowing that he was prepared.

*

This was how Moses had spent his dole cheque that week:

1 broom

1 dustpan and brush

1 mop

1 plastic bucket

1 pair of Torpedo swimming-goggles

3 scrubbing-brushes

1 wicker carpet-beater

20 giant black plastic bin-liners

1 bottle of non-scratch cream cleanser with ammonia

1 bottle of scratch cream cleanser with ammonia

1 bottle of new thicker Domestos

1 bottle of new stronger Vim

1 aerosol of new improved instant double-action double-strength easy-to-use 30 % more free Blast insect-killer with new perfume in new giant family-size can as seen on TV

1 aerosol of Supafresh air-freshener with new alpine fragrance

2 grams of speed

5 packets of Increda Bubble — the popping bubble-gum (Feel the pop! Chew the soft juicy bubble-gum! Blow the fantastic bubble!)

1 case of Merrydown Vintage Cider (dry)

1 cassette of Liszt’s The Dance of Death

1 Second World War hand-held air-raid siren

1 shovel

That, he thought, should just about cover it.

*

The pigeons seemed to have some collective premonition of their impending fate. They began to whirl round the room twice as fast, colliding with each other, slamming blindly into walls and windows. Even the more casual of the pigeons left their mantelpieces and sills and mingled in mid-air, exchanging theories about the new situation and discussing possible courses of action.

Crouching low, with his arms wrapped round his head, Moses crossed the room and opened all three windows. Then, returning to the door, he switched his cassette-recorder on. The first bars of The Dance of Death thundered out at top volume. Moses began to shake the can of insect-killer. He glanced ominously at the pigeons. Some of them seemed to have taken the hint and headed for the open air. The others didn’t seem to understand the significance of the music they were listening to. Moses leaned back against the door and sprayed clouds of new improved Blast into the room. No effect whatsoever. We are not insects, the grey wings seemed to say. We are birds.

Eyes streaming, Moses tossed the can to one side. He reached for the carpet-beater. It was a sturdy article, a relic from Victorian times when carpets took some beating. It didn’t look as if it was going to stand for any nonsense, especially from a handful of twentieth-century pigeons. Things turned out differently. For ten minutes Moses thrashed and flailed. But the pigeons had never seen a carpet-beater before. They didn’t know what it was. They circled the room, wondering why this large man was attacking the air with an old wooden implement. It was strange behaviour, certainly, but not necessarily threatening. Some of the pigeons who had left even flew back into the room again to find out what was happening.