Send Out Your Pigeons by Alexander Mann

Been in pigeons some time, used to live for pigeons, used to know when a pigeon threw a flight and everything. These days, I hadn’t the time to race my birds; was busy, working mostly. Used to work what we call swing shifts till two in the morning then go to bed. My wife was alive back then so she’d let the birds out first thing in the morning. She’d be up like a lark, but that’s in the past now. These days I’m on call all night, I worked the taxi you see. And this was my last shift on the rank in this town, though I wasn’t to know it.

My first fare, I drove with the window open behind me, save the wind from my old face. My cab filled with fresh air and the smell of cider and the high-street was sucked out. It rushed in a little thick from the day’s heat. It’d been one of them long summer eves that stretched from bottle blue to navy black. I asked the kids to cut the drinking but in no mood to pull up I kept on. Then turned in and dropped them at the second of the two clubs in town. Next to Frankie and Benny’s, near the cinema.

You could tell they were good kids, just out for a laugh. After the fare was sorted and before they slammed the door, one leant down and said:

-Cheers ol’ boy.

-Alright then, look after yourselves, I said.

The club sign flickered above the bouncer and the group half waited before the young lass joined them at the back of the queue. It would be a late one. It was early and the town felt busy. I no longer did the hours I used to, so if I’d get to bed by six in the morning, I’d be quite happy. You get used to it: I’d be up at dinner time to make the last few trains. People always needed to get home and sometimes during the week, I’d go to the taxi office and see if they wanted a bit of help. On the weekends, I did the clubs and all.

On your own at my age, with all that time; you just end up watching television repeats otherwise. I’d miss the town too, if you know what I mean, I’ve grown with the people, reckon they know me too.

Seeing the girls in line, their chatter and flighty manner; I hoped they’d use their heads tonight. I’m not one of those cabbies who’ll blast your ear off, but I heard their exams were over and they were out celebrating. The one in front, who fluttered herself up, she was on the telephone and kept on down the line:

-You found another cab, have you found one? You could feel them circling the town, the young.

Those in the back talked loudly about colleges, cities, universities. With a game of bingo in mind, I’d hear Nottingham, Sheffield, Sunderland, Newcastle. Some were local, others I hadn’t a clue, but those ones I knew, up there on the Great North Road as we call it. Once the pigeons were liberated, that’s the route they took down south to our lofts. As I listened to them kids, I traced their futures across the country and little lights went off.

Round the young, when you’re an old boy like me, you get these pangs; they’re quite rare, and I got one then. When something falls behind your eyes, and you are lost for a second: my Suzanne, she’d been from Manchester.

The group pushed into the nightclub and I turned on the light above me. I worked the plated cab and I am the oldest taxi driver in town. Seen it all and I’m not sure about them, the new lot, the apps, the Uber people. They’re not plated you see, they don’t play by the rules. Anyway, I remember when they first tried those green bikes in town. What happened to them, I don’t know. Must have been vandals or something; people weren’t using them properly so they took them off the market.

Over the years, the town had changed. The dockside developments had helped, but the high-street had shrunk and I still saw the vulnerable folk late at night. Suppose it was better, but it was still town.

It was early for clubbers, so I thought better of waiting for the next fare. So off the roundabout next to the Jewson, I took the bridge to work down by the railway station, on the rank. As I said, it was getting lively in town, so the line was near full, though the last train wasn’t in till later. I flashed my lights at a few of the chaps I recognised and joined the queue.

The trains had been up the spout for months, maybe years and this one was delayed. That always meant good business, people’s connections would be gone; I never liked seeing anyone not happy, let alone here in my cab.

Engines turned back on as the first commuters broke from the station. The slow crawl started forward and under the shelter on the road opposite, a line formed. Most people went straight into town laughing, shouting at each other. Groups of girls or lads, some who’d clearly met on the train and one lot with open shirts, emptied their bottles in a bin close by. You could hear them all echo back through my open window, as they walked into town. A few taxis went right off at the start; then a bus came, which took more away and by that time, those who’d poured from the station had pretty much stopped. At the end, there was one young family with their suitcases. And the silhouette of a cabby jumped from his car to help.

One reason for being a plated taxi was exactly that: a burst of life before it was gone again.

Ready to make tracks, I turned my engine on and then a couple moved from the covered entrance and behind them, someone went to get cash. They looked a picture as the couple stood there. Her hand rested in his back pocket and he carried their bags to his side. They were tall and looked round slowly at my cab and the queue. I caught some foreign-sounding words, so couldn’t be sure where they was from.

They walked straight passed my cab and went to the bloke behind me. I looked round and heard them say hello, very proper. My rough hands shuffled pound coins and loose change, I’d forgotten they were there in my palm.

Someone else, on the other side of my car, the lady who’d got cash out, appeared.

-Well, that was rude, she said and looked over to the couple.

She put her own bag in the back and chose to sit in the front; which I have to say, I quite liked. I’m a taxi man thanks very much, not a bloody chauffeur. She’d missed her train from the delays. It was only a forty-minute journey, but still, all that trouble and out thirty pound, I can see why their generation were under so much stress.

-Do you know the way or do you need help when we get closer? It was cheeky, but she meant no harm. I glanced in the wing mirror and let a car pass.

-I know the place. I’m eighty-six years old and don’t need any help getting there, thank you kindly. And crossed lanes using the indicator

-That explains the car, she said. Eighty-Six?! You’ve been on these roads more days than I’ve had hot dinners. Eighty-six? She said it again, quietly though. Maybe she thought I couldn’t hear as well as drive, so I chuckled at that and she laughed as well.

-Not a worry. Have a medical each year these days, and I’ll pass with flying colours. Taxiing kept me fit too I could have added.

Out the back route, I took us under a ring road and bypassed a dual carriageway, with less artificial light in the residential areas, it was darker in the cab. As I said, I’m not one to talk if it ain’t warranted so we went quiet. The tangerine light made a slow right to left scan, as the distance stretched between each lamppost. And once in the countryside, it was the glow of the dashboard on our faces.

-So you’re not retired? She said.

-Give up taxiing? No, soon as I feel not up to it, then maybe. They retire a lot earlier these days, I suppose. There’s no-one else who done sixty years in this town. Just been busy you see. And I’m on my own now.

-Oh, I’m sorry.

-That’s alright, she died last February, just life isn’t it.

-It is. I’m very sorry, she said and I saw she looked at me. We fell silent again. Driving these roads, they were narrow and with the headlights directed by the hedgerows, you could pick out the eyes of animals.

-Any plans for when you do, retire that is?

-Well, would like to throw time at my birds, I keep racing pigeons, have all my life.

-Oh wow.

-Kept them for over fifty-something years. Don’t have time to exercise ‘em no more. I’d like that.

-That’s nearly double my age: fifty years. How did you get into pigeons?

-It was my father. Believe it or not, he bred them in the war. Never won nothing though, gave ‘em the best feed and everything. Never had a car neither so he couldn’t do their exercise right. That’s the art: if you can’t get your birds out in the world, they’ll come last. I felt I’d got talking now, could do that. Tell me if I’m prattling on.

-Not at all, she said. Never met anyone who keeps pigeons.

-Fanciers.

-Sorry?

-Fanciers, that’s what we call people who keep pigeons.

-Oh, I see. Fanciers? She said and tried out the word, which I quite liked. Have you had any winners or anything like that? She was a nice girl, you could tell she was and brought up proper too, asking questions.

-Winners? Well, was top of the business once or twice. I had the first pigeon in the county from Berwick and then from Lerwick, first in town. As the crow fly, that’s five-hundred-sixty mile. I’d never named them winners. I got a cup and everything but never named them birds, funny that.

-You must have favourites then?

-Favourites? Well, you do have favourites, but once you’re in with favourites, you turn round and lose ‘em. You get hawks after ‘em and quite often they don’t come back.

-Oh.

-Just life isn’t it. Talking about the birds, I realised I’d gone on. So what brings you here then?

-Oh, it’s my gran, she died, she said.

-I’m sorry to hear that. How old was she, can I ask?

-She was eighty-four, had a wonderful life, and she was ill.

-That’s not bad, is it? Eighty-four. She was ill, was she? We arrived then at a junction, a nasty one and we both paused and looked both ways. The roads were empty but for one car that moved over. I got the cab back on the road and she said:

-Yes, she was ill, Alzheimers. How old was she, your wife when she?

-Well then, my Suzanne was a heavy smoker, smoked about forty, sixty a day, gave it up myself, just to try and get her to quit but she couldn’t hack it. She did give it up eventually but then we broke up. She went back to Manchester, where she come from. She died last February, be a year now since she passed. She was seventy-nine. It was lucky the road was straight. As I said, I’m not one for talking too much when I’m driving. I lived on my own see and it’d been a while since I’d had a conversation like this one.

-Seventy-nine. I’m so sorry.

-She had a new hip, a new knee, they done her shoulder as well, and they found a shadow on her lung. They said that it was nothing. Then all a sudden that turned a big cancer, with all that smoking, reckon it caught up with her. She lost her voice. And I was ringing her up and she couldn’t talk. I kept ringing her mobile, because I liked cheering her up and that. Then she stopped answering, I tried her again and again. Then one day, it just switched off.

-Oh my god, I’m… She stopped, so thought I'd better continue.

-Reckoned she’d passed away then. But when I rung her flat again, she turned round and spoke. She’d got her voice back all a sudden. But then apparently, when you get cancer of the lung, it can go to your brain, and she lost her mind then.

She looked at me, all I could do was talk and drive, so I did. The air-con hushed like someone putting a child to bed and the roads were quiet with no noise of traffic bar my old car. Out here without much signal, even the analogue radio would work wrong.

-Well, rang her up and she said I’m losing my mind. She said I shouldn’t be here, should be down there with you. I’ve never let you down yet Suzanne, is what I said. I can turn you round and put you straight. And that’s what I done. She was happy when she died, she just turned to the nurse, said she was tired, then went to sleep. Never woke up. She didn’t suffer, that’s the thing with Suzanne. She couldn’t have children neither. We accepted it, that’s what you do.

Time was near being called on my shift and I was tired. So after the last journey, I went home round five. It being so early, the roads were clear and never over the speed limit, I made good time tracing back where I’d come. There was no cloud to conceal the night-sky so the moon was bright, but I knew the light would be turning soon. An empty Shell garage passed on my left, cat-eyes whipped under the tread of my car as I rose up a long bridge.

The last few miles before I got near our cul-de-sac were always slow and dreamy, like something pulled me in. Like my birds, they reckon it's the sun and the earth that plays a big part. The sun comes up in the east and sets in the west. Reckon a pigeon knows that to get back to their nest. But the honest truth, what I love; is that we don’t know how they come back, it’s a mystery. And as for our home being empty, that’s all I knew just then.

Outside our semi-detached, I turned the key and let the engine die and walked through the front door. I didn’t hear the kettle coming up to the boil or see our two mugs there waiting, like she’d do at her chair for me. The kitchen was cold without her noises. So I stepped through to our conservatory and warmed with the rising sun.

In the heyday, when all the clubs were about; there were four to five hundred fanciers in this town. You had the Westland Club down at Royal William, you had the Invitation Club and you had the Two Bird Nong Club, and then there was the Whitten Club and the Stoke Club. There was all them clubs and each had forty or fifty members. Then the people started to dwindle, to try and keep it going, they swapped clubs. Now we’re down to two: the Great North Road and a club for the South.

I’m with the North Road Club, but I already said that.

It was too hot, the warmth felt prickly. All that remembering, all that’d changed, it felt physical. So I opened the conservatory to our small garden and stepped out with my stick by the door.

The birds were already awake and I could hear them cooing and purring with that deep, watery gurgle. With an open shutter, I let them into the aviary and sprinkled some feed through the chicken wire and watched them peck.

Carefully, I picked one out and left the hatch open. The top of the hen were like scales of mauve and green in the daybreak. I could see her skin was a nice pinky colour and with her heart, she hummed in my hand. By looking them in the eye, you can tell what makes a good pigeon and Suzanne would say my birds had a hard look. The amber and black marble made sharp movements at me and the bird’s wing, I stretched out.

Her long flight feathers were frosted and tipped black. As I’ve said, been in pigeons some time and used to know when a pigeon threw a flight and everything.

Out through the hatch, I let them go: it was all wing, claw and beak in a blur. Then with a blue-grey thunder, they burst out. Up, up they went. And they wheeled round me and my garden, higher and higher their circle grew. All a sudden, they broke out in unison. As a flock, I watched them. Rising up behind our estate, the flock flashed and dazzled towards the sun. Whether they go north or south I don’t mind, just as long as the wind don’t knock them off course. That they’d make it back when they strike for home.