Pigeon Variations - Ch 39 - Squawk of Nothingness

Pyser worked with Janice, who was in credit control, and Pauline, who was the financial controller. Janice was anti-birds and vocal about it.  “The Government should put measures in place to segregate them,” she said.

Pauline disagreed. “It’s not like they harm people.”

“It’s disgusting. What I saw on the 109 bus coming into work the other day will haunt me for the rest of my days. It’ll be a miracle if I don’t need counselling.”

“What do you propose then?”

Janice sipped her cream-topped iced coffee. She was one of those women who talked constantly about losing weight and diets but was forever stuffing her face with sugary food and drinks. “Well,” she said, breaking apart a cinnamon bun, “let me come to your first point about not harming people. How do we know that for sure?”

“There’s not a single recorded case,” said Pauline, eating a bacon sandwich. She was overweight and couldn’t care less.

“How do we know that?” asked Janice.

“I’m pretty sure the media would be all over it if there were man-eating crows.”

“What I’m saying, Pauline, is who knows where Human Avian Transitions is heading? Years ago, HATS was a once in a blue moon event. Now it’s happening so often it’s unusual if you don’t see someone transitioning when going about your business. So, what’s to stop this moving on to the next stage? It might be evolution. What if the birds start attacking us humans and try to take us over? Have you thought about that?”

Pauline used a paper napkin to wipe ketchup off her chin. “If it’s evolution, there’s not a thing we can do about it.”

“What if this is a man-made problem? What if it’s caused by all the chemicals in the air and experiments they’re conducting?”

“I’m lost. It was evolution a second ago.”

Pyser listened to their verbal sparring. On a couple of occasions, Pauline had come up to him and said, “'Don’t mind our Janice, she’s a good egg really.'” He wasn’t so sure. He felt she was deliberately holding these conversation for his benefit. She wanted to make him feel uneasy and self-conscious. He could picture her going home to her Tory husband and saying, “‘Guess what, they’ve only gone and hired one of ‘em. Sitting right opposite me in the office. I don’t know what the world’s coming to.’”

He palmed a mouthful of birdseed into his mouth and drank from a bottle of puddle water that he had collected. He increasingly found tap water difficult to swallow. 

Janice was on a roll. “My original point was that if you’re diagnosed as transitioned, you should be put somewhere immediately, not left as an ordinary member of society.”

“Like in a camp?” said Pauline.

“I don’t know what you call it but it’s a place where we know where they are. It has to be better than letting them loose like we do now. Who knows what they get up to? Do you think it’s a coincidence that crime has skyrocketed since HATS was on the rise?”

“Oh, the birds are stealing as well now are they? I guess the magpies are the kingpins.” Pauline looked at Pyser and winked. She seemed to him like a kind and decent person. Yes, she had grassed him up by telling the CFO that he was terrible with spreadsheets but, to be fair, he was awful at spreadsheets.

“I mean, they’re not like us, are they?” said Janice.

“But that’s where I disagree. They are people like you and me,” Pauline replied with firmness. “This could happen to any of us, remember that. You. Me. Anyone in this office. It did happen to one of us last year. Maybe we should show some compassion and understanding.”

“I am very compassionate,” said Janice. “That’s why I’m saying what I’m saying.”

“What, put them in camps? Segregate them?”

“Look after them properly,” corrected Janice.  “I can see this situation getting a whole lot worse if the Government doesn’t take stronger action.” Her phone rang. She fitted on her headset and put on her posh voice. “Speed Publishing, you’re through to the accounts department. Janice Strotton speaking.”

Pyser had a stack of invoices to input into the system. The VAT was calculated automatically. All he had to do was tap out numbers accurately.

Easier said than done when his fingers were falling off.

Janice was a nasty piece of work. On his second day, when it was only the two of them in the office, she had told him that they were exploring whether to automate his role. He sucked on the straw of his plastic bottle, reflecting on what she’d said about herding people diagnosed with HATS into camps. She wasn’t alone in her views. Politicians talked about the need for oversight and control. The right-wing media kept publishing stories about people with HATS getting their heads kicked in by ‘gangs of youths’ and ‘vigilantes’. The camps, it was argued, would ‘keep these people safe’.

Pyser himself experienced abuse pretty much every day coming into the office and returning home. And then he had to sit and listen to Janice’s bile. When she was off the phone, he turned to her and removed his hat and scarf. “Hey, what do you think of this then?” he mumbled. “Should I be put in a camp too?”

She sipped her iced coffee. She made a slurping sound.

Pauline said, “Pyser, it’s okay, she doesn’t mean any harm by it.”

Janice challenged him. “If you have something to say, say it.”

Pyser started to speak. He told her that he didn’t care that she lived in Dulwich near where Margaret Thatcher used to live. Or that she had a holiday home in Snowdonia which she was thinking of selling because she found the Welsh annoying and too many birds were flocking there to live on Mount Snowdon. He didn’t care that she wanted to buy a place with a pool in Costa Brava and that her daughter was marrying a sound technician who had worked on a film that had been nominated for two Oscars. He just didn’t care. What he wanted to know was why she was threatened by him? Why she thought he intended to do her harm? Why she detested his entire being and wanted him to spend his final days of agonised hatching in a new age concentration camp? Because that’s what she was saying. Make no mistake about it.

Except Janice and Pauline couldn’t make any sense of his outrage.

They cupped their perfectly formed hands over their normal ears.

Dennis, the CFO, rushed into the accounts section.

He yelled at Pyser and made a zipping motion with his fingers across his mouth.

It was then that Pyser realised he wasn’t talking. He wasn’t shouting either.

He was squawking like a bird.