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‘Damn you!’ Cal shouted, cursing himself as much as the bird, for he’d left the door of the loft itself ajar, and – apparently careless of what harm he might do himself in his bid – 33 was making for the sky.
In the few moments it took Cal to latch the cage again, the bird was through the door and away. Cal went in stumbling pursuit, but by the time he got back into the open air 33 was already fluttering up above the garden. At roof-height he flew around in three ever larger circles, as if orienting himself. Then he seemed to fix his objective and took off in a North-North-Easterly direction.
A rapping drew Cal’s attention, and he looked down to see his father standing at the window, mouthing something to him. There was more animation on Brendan’s harried face than Cal had seen in months; the escape of the bird seemed to have temporarily roused him from his despondency. Moments later he was at the back door, asking what had happened. Cal had no time for explanation.
‘It’s off–’ he yelled.
Then, keeping his eye on the sky as he went, he started down the path at the side of the house.
When he reached the front the bird was still in sight. Cal leapt the fence and crossed Chariot Street at a run, determined to give chase. It was, he knew, an all but hopeless pursuit. With a tail wind a prime bird could reach a top speed of 70 miles an hour, and though 33 had not raced for the best part of a year he could still easily outpace a human runner. But he also knew he couldn’t go back to his father without making some effort to track the escapee, however futile.
At the bottom of the street he lost sight of his quarry behind the rooftops, and so made a detour to the foot bridge that crossed the Woolton Road, mounting the steps three and four at a time. From the top he was rewarded with a good view of the city. North towards Woolton Hill, and off East, and South-East, over Allerton towards Hunt’s Cross. Row upon row of council house roofs presented themselves, shimmering in the fierce heat of the afternoon, the herringbone rhythm of the close-packed streets rapidly giving way to the industrial wastelands of Speke.
Cal could see the pigeon too, though he was a rapidly diminishing dot.
It mattered little, for from this elevation 33’s destination was perfectly apparent. Less than two miles from the bridge the air was full of wheeling birds, drawn to the spot no doubt by some concentration of food in the area. Every year brought at least one such day, when the ant or gnat population suddenly boomed, and the bird life of the city was united in its gluttony. Gulls up from the mud banks of the Mersey, flying tip to tip with thrush and jackdaw and starling, all content to join the jamboree while the summer still warmed their backs.
This, no doubt, was the call 33 had heard. Bored with his balanced diet of maize and maple peas, tired of the pecking order of the loft and the predictability of each day – the bird had wanted out; wanted up and away. A day of high life; of food that had to be chased a little, and tasted all the better for that; of the companionship of wild things. All this went through Cal’s head, in a vague sort of way, while he watched the circling flocks.
It would be perfectly impossible, he knew, to locate an individual bird amongst these riotous thousands. He would have to trust that 33 would be content with his feast on the wing, and when he was sated do as he was trained to do, and come home. Nevertheless, the sheer spectacle of so many birds exercised a peculiar fascination, and crossing the bridge, Cal began to make his way towards the epicentre of this feathered cyclone.
II (#litres_trial_promo)
THE PURSUERS (#litres_trial_promo)
he woman at the window of the Hanover Hotel drew back the grey curtain and looked down at the street below.
‘Is it possible …?’ she murmured to the shadows that held court in the corner of the room. There was no answer to her question forthcoming, nor did there need to be. Unlikely as it seemed the trail had incontestably led here, to this dog-tired city, lying bruised and neglected beside a river that had once borne slave ships and cotton ships and could now barely carry its own weight out to sea. To Liverpool.
‘Such a place,’ she said. A minor dust-dervish had whipped itself up in the street outside, lifting antediluvian litter into the air.
‘Why are you so surprised?’ said the man who half lay and half sat on the bed, pillows supporting his impressive frame, hands linked behind his heavy head. The face was wide, the features upon it almost too expressive, like those of an actor who’d made a career of crowd-pleasers, and grown expert in cheap effects. His mouth, which knew a thousand variations of the smile, found one that suited his leisurely mood, and said:
‘They’ve led us quite a dance. But we’re almost there. Don’t you feel it? I do.’
The woman glanced back at this man. He had taken off the jacket that had been her most loving gift to him, and thrown it over the back of the chair. The shirt beneath was sweat-sodden at the armpits, and the flesh of his face looked waxen in the afternoon light. Despite all she felt for him – and that was enough to make her fearful of computation – he was only human, and today, after so much heat and travel, he wore every one of his fifty-two years plainly. In the time they had been together, pursuing the Fugue, she had lent him what strength she could, as he in his turn had lent her his wit, and his expertise in surviving this realm. The Kingdom of the Cuckoo, the Families had always called it, this wretched human world which she had endured for vengeance’s sake.
But very soon now the chase would be over. Shadwell – the man on the bed – would profit by what they were so very close to finding, and she, seeing their quarry besmirched and sold into slavery, would be revenged. Then she would leave the Kingdom to its grimy ways, and happily.
She turned her attentions back to the street. Shadwell was right. They had been led a dance. But the music would cease soon enough.
From where Shadwell lay Immacolata’s silhouette was clear against the window. Not for the first time his thoughts turned to the problem of how he would sell this woman. It was a purely academic exercise, of course, but one that pressed his skills to their limits.
He was by profession a salesman; that had been his business since his early adolescence. More than his business, his genius. He prided himself that there was nothing alive or dead he could not find a buyer for. In his time he had been a raw sugar merchant, a small arms salesman, a seller of dolls, dogs, life-insurance, salvation rags and lighting fixtures. He had trafficked in Lourdes water and hashish, in Chinese screens and patented cures for constipation. Amongst this parade of items there had of course been frauds and fakes aplenty, but nothing, nothing that he had not been able to foist upon the public sooner or later, either by seduction or intimidation.
But she – Immacolata, the not quite woman he had shared his every waking moment with these past many years – she, he knew, would defy his talents as a salesman.
For one, she was paradoxical, and the buying public had little taste for that. They wanted their merchandise shorn of ambiguity: made simple and safe. She was not safe; oh, certainly not; not with her terrible rage and her still more terrible alleluias; nor was she simple. Beneath the incandescent beauty of her face, behind eyes that concealed centuries yet could be so immediate they drew blood, beneath the deep olive skin, the Jewess’ skin, there lay feelings that would blister the air if given vent.
She was too much herself to be sold, he decided – not for the first time – and told himself to forget the exercise. It was one he could never hope to master; why should he torment himself with it?
Immacolata turned away from the window.
‘Are you rested now?’ she asked him.
‘It was you wanted to get out of the sun,’ he reminded her. ‘I’m ready to start whenever you are. Though I haven’t a clue where we begin …’
‘That’s not so difficult,’ Immacolata said. ‘Remember what my sister prophesied? Events are close to crisis-point.’
As she spoke, the shadows in the corner of the room stirred afresh, and Immacolata’s two dead sisters showed their ethereal skirts. Shadwell had never been easy in their presence, and they in their turn had always despised him. But the old one, the Hag, the Beldam, had skills as an oracle, no doubt of that. What she saw in the filth of her sister, the Magdalene’s after-birth, was usually proved correct.
‘The Fugue can’t stay hidden much longer,’ said Immacolata. ‘As soon as it’s moved it creates vibrations. It can’t help itself. So much life, pressed into such a hideway.’
‘And do you feel any of these … vibrations?’ said Shadwell, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and standing up.
Immacolata shook her head. ‘No. Not yet. But we should be ready.’
Shadwell picked up his jacket, and slipped it on. The lining shimmered, casting filaments of seduction across the room. By their momentary brightness he caught sight of the Magdalene and the Hag. The old woman covered her eyes against the spillage from the jacket, fearful of its power. The Magdalene did not concern herself; her lids had long ago been sewn closed over sockets blind from birth.
‘When the movements begin it may take an hour or two to pin-point the location,’ said Immacolata.
‘An hour?’ Shadwell replied.
– the pursuit that had finally led them here seemed today to have been a lifetime long –
‘I can wait an hour.’
III (#litres_trial_promo)
WHO MOVED THE GROUND? (#litres_trial_promo)
1
he birds did not stop their spiralling over the city as Cal approached. For every one that flew off, another three or four joined the throng.
The phenomenon had not gone unnoticed. People stood on the pavement and on doorsteps, hands shading their eyes from the glare of the sky, and stared heavenwards. Opinions were everywhere ventured as to the reason for this congregation. Cal didn’t stop to offer his, but threaded his way through the maze of streets, on occasion having to double back and find a new route, but by degrees getting closer to the hub.
And now, as he approached, it became apparent that his first theory had been incorrect. The birds were not feeding. There was no swooping nor squabbling over a six-legged crumb, nor any sign in the lower air of the insect life that might have attracted these numbers. The birds were simply circling. Some of the smaller species, sparrows and finches, had tired of flying and now lined rooftops and fences, leaving their larger brethren – carrion-crows, magpies, gulls – to occupy the heights. There was no scarcity of pigeons here either; the wild variety banking and wheeling in flocks of fifty or more, their shadows rippling across the rooftops. There were some domesticated birds too, doubtless escapees like 33. Canaries and budgerigars: birds called from their millet and their bells by whatever force had summoned the others. For these birds being here was effectively suicide. Though their fellows were at present too excited by this ritual to take note of the pets in their midst, they would not be so indifferent when the circling spell no longer bound them. They would be cruel and quick. They’d fall on the canaries and the budgerigars and peck out their eyes, killing them for the crime of being tamed.
But for now, the parliament was at peace. It mounted the air, higher, ever higher, busying the sky.
The pursuit of this spectacle had led Cal to a part of the city he’d seldom explored. Here the plain square houses of the council estates gave way to a forlorn and eerie no-man’s-land, where streets of once-fine, three-storey terraced houses still stood, inexplicably preserved from the bulldozer, surrounded by areas levelled in expectation of a boom-time that had never come; islands in a dust sea.
It was one of these streets – Rue Street the sign read – that seemed the point over which the flocks were focused. There were more sizeable assemblies of exhausted birds here than in any of the adjacent streets; they twittered and preened themselves on the eaves and chimney tops and television aerials.
Cal scanned sky and roof alike, making his way along Rue Street as he did so. And there – a thousand to one chance – he caught sight of his bird. A solitary pigeon, dividing a cloud of sparrows. Years of watching the sky, waiting for pigeons to return from races, had given him an eagle eye; he could recognize a particular bird by a dozen idiosyncrasies in its flight pattern. He had found 33; no doubt of it. But even as he watched, the bird disappeared behind the roofs of Rue Street.
He gave chase afresh, finding a narrow alley which cut between the terraced houses half way along the road, and let on to the larger alley that ran behind the row. It had not been well kept. Piles of household refuse had been dumped along its length; orphan dustbins overturned, their contents scattered.
But twenty yards from where he stood there was work going on. Two removal men were manoeuvring an armchair out of the yard behind one of the houses, while a third stared up at the birds. Several hundred were assembled on the yard walls and window sills and railings. Cal wandered along the alley, scrutinizing this assembly for pigeons. He found a dozen or more amongst the multitude, but not the one he sought.
‘What d’you make of it?’
He had come within ten yards of the removal men, and one of them, the idler, was addressing the question to him.
‘I don’t know,’ he answered honestly.
‘Maybe they’re goin’ to migrate,’ said the younger of the two armchair carriers, letting drop his half of the burden and staring up at the sky.
‘Don’t be an idiot, Shane,’ said the other man, a West Indian. His name – Gideon – was emblazoned on the back of his overalls. Why’d they migrate in the middle of the fuckin’ summer?’
‘Too hot,’ was the idler’s reply. ‘That’s what it is. Too fuckin’ hot. It’s cookin’ their brains up there.’
Gideon had now put down his half of the armchair and was leaning against the back yard wall, applying a flame to the half-spent cigarette he’d fished from his top pocket.
‘Wouldn’t be bad, would it?’ he mused. ‘Being a bird. Gettin’ yer end away all spring, then fuckin’ off to the South of France as soon as yer get a chill on yer bollocks.’
‘They don’t live long,’ said Cal.
‘Do they not?’ said Gideon, drawing on his cigarette. He shrugged. ‘Short and sweet,’ he said. ‘That’d suit me.’
Shane plucked at the half-dozen blond hairs of his would-be moustache. ‘Yer know somethin’ about birds, do yer?’ he said to Cal.
‘Only pigeons.’
‘Race ’em, do you?’
‘Once in a while –’
‘Me brother-in-law keeps whippets,’ said the third man, the idler. He looked at Cal as though this coincidence verged on the miraculous, and would now fuel hours of debate. But all Cal could think of to say was:
‘Dogs.’
‘That’s right,’ said the other man, delighted that they were of one accord on the issue. ‘He’s got five. Only one died.’
‘Pity,’ said Cal.
‘Not really. It was fuckin’ blind in one eye and couldn’t see in the other.’
The man guffawed at this observation, which promptly brought the exchange to a dead halt. Cal turned his attention back to the birds, and he grinned to see – there on the upper window-ledge of the house – his bird.
‘I see him,’ he said.
Gideon followed his gaze. ‘What’s that then?’
‘My pigeon. He escaped.’ Cal pointed. ‘There. In the middle of the sill. See him?’
All three now looked.
‘Worth something is he?’ said the idler.
‘Trust you, Bazo,’ Shane commented.
‘Just asking,’ Bazo replied.
‘He’s won prizes,’ said Cal, with some pride. He was keeping his eyes glued to 33, but the pigeon showed no sign of wanting to fly; just preened his wing feathers, and once in a while turned a beady eye up to the sky.
‘Stay there …’ Cal told the bird under his breath, ‘… don’t move.’ Then, to Gideon: ‘Is it all right if I go in? Try and catch him?’
‘Help yourself. The auld girl who had the house’s been carted off to hospital. We’re taking the furniture to pay her bills.’
Cal ducked through into the yard, negotiating the bric-a-brac the trio had dumped there, and went into the house.
It was a shambles inside. If the occupant had ever owned anything of substance it had long since been removed. The few pictures still hanging were worthless; the furniture was old, but not old enough to have come back into fashion; the rugs, cushions and curtains so aged they were fit only for the incinerator. The walls and ceilings were stained by many years’ accrual of smoke, its source the candles that sat on every shelf and sill, stalactites of yellowed wax depending from them.
He made his way through the warren of pokey, dark rooms, and into the hallway. The scene was just as dispiriting here. The brown linoleum rucked up and torn, and everywhere the pervasive smell of must and dust and creeping rot. She was well out of this squalid place, Cal thought, wherever she was; better off in hospital, where at least the sheets were dry.
He began to climb the stairs. It was a curious sensation, ascending into the murk of the upper storey, becoming blinder stair by stair, with the sound of birds scurrying across the slates above his skull, and beyond that the muted cries of gull and crow. Though it was no doubt self-deception, he seemed to hear their voices circling, as though this very place were the centre of their attentions. An image appeared in his head, of a photograph from National Geographical. A study of stars, taken with a slow release camera, the pin-point lights describing circles as they moved, or appeared to move, across the sky, with the Pole Star, the Nail of Heaven, steady in their midst.
The wheeling sound, and the picture it evoked, began to dizzy him. He suddenly felt weak, even afraid.
This was no time for such frailties, he chided himself. He had to claim the bird before it flew off again. He picked up his pace. At the top of the stairs he manœuvred past several items of bedroom furniture, and opened one of the several doors that he was presented with. The room he had chosen was adjacent to the one whose sill 33 occupied. Sun streamed through the curtainless window; the stale heat brought fresh sweat to his brow. The room had been emptied of furniture, the only souvenir of occupancy a calendar for the year 1961. On it, a photograph of a lion beneath a tree, its shaggy, monolithic head laid on vast paws, its gaze contemplative.
Cal went out on to the landing again, selected another door, and was this time delivered into the right room. There, beyond the grimy glass, was the pigeon.
Now it was all a question of tactics. He had to be careful not to startle the bird. He approached the window cautiously. On the sun-drenched sill 33 cocked its head, and blinked its eye, but made no move. Cal held his breath, and put his hands on the frame to haul the window up, but there was no budging it. A quick perusal showed why. The frame had been sealed up years ago, a dozen or more nails driven deep into the wood. A primitive form of crime prevention, but no doubt reassuring to an old woman living alone.
From the yard below, he heard Gideon’s voice. Peering down, he could just see the trio dragging a large rolled-up carpet out of the house, Gideon giving orders in a ceaseless stream.
‘– to my left, Bazo. Left! Don’t you know which is your left?’
‘I’m going left.’
‘Not your left, yer idiot. My left.’
The bird on the sill was undisturbed by this commotion. It seemed quite happy on its perch.
Cal headed back downstairs, deciding as he went that the only option remaining was to climb up on to the yard wall and see if he couldn’t coax the bird down from there. He cursed himself for not having brought a pocketful of grain. Coos and sweet words would just have to do.
By the time he stepped out into the heat of the yard once more, the removal men had successfully manhandled the carpet out of the house, and were taking a rest after their exertions.
‘No luck?’ said Shane, seeing Cal emerge.
‘The window won’t budge. I’ll have to try from down here.’
He caught a deprecating look from Bazo. ‘You’ll never reach the bugger from here,’ the man said, scratching the expanse of beer-gut that gleamed between T-shirt and belt.
‘I’ll try from the wall,’ said Cal.
