Frank Baker Page 13

  A new view, then, was taken of the birds. They were pests, like locusts, black-beetles or wasps. They must be “dealt with.” Yes, certainly. But how?

  This was the question which the sorely tried grey-beards in the House at Westminster one day decided, after a good deal of pres­sure, to discuss. It seemed to be within the province of the Home Secretary, or possibly the Minister of Health; or should it be dealt with by the Minister of Transport, the Admiralty, or War Office——?

  The House dispersed, having reached no conclusions. Then the newspaper proprietors, anxious as usual to show their power, began to tell the Government what to do. Shoot them down! screamed one paper. Entice them by means of tasty foods into gas-laden pockets in the air, snapped another. Lure them to a park previously cleared of people, release an army of hungry cats, and hope for the best. Offer a pound for every bird slain whose corpse can be produced.

  Yes, yes, certainly. But one fact stood out. Nobody had yet been able to kill or capture one of these pests. On the contrary, a considerable number of people engaged in conflict with them had died. And in all these mortal conflicts, no bird, not even a feather, had ever been found.

  About this time we realized that the sparrows, starlings, pigeons, and gulls which usually frequented London in such great numbers were now hardly ever seen. Whether they emigrated to quieter parts of the country was never discovered. They were certainly absent from the City. Whenever we saw birds we knew they were the pests. And this absence of normal bird-noises seemed to close London into a box; as though the sky were a vault through which all birds, except the pests, had flown to freedom.

  What did they eat? It was a question on many people’s lips in those days. Nobody had ever seen them eating. In earlier days when good-natured ladies had tried to cosset them; they had affected the utmost contempt for the traditional seed which pampered pigeons were known to devour in quantities. The brisk trade in bird-seed that for a week or so had gladdened the hearts of chandlers, had entirely declined. People had no desire to buy seed purely in order to have the pleasure of seeing it swept into a dust-cart at the end of the day.

  There was very little doubt, the common voice expressed it on all sides, these unreasonable and ungrateful creatures—so unlike the popular conception of what a good bird should be, from a cockatoo to a canary—were impertinent, offensive. A few pigeons, yes; people were fond of pigeons so long as they refrained from deposit­ing their loads on the newly whitened façade of the Royal Exchange. A few seagulls, yes; they were a considerable diversion in the lunch hour on London Bridge, gracious enough to accept any scraps that were offered them; a sparrow or two, yes; so long as they did not twitter too early in the morning. Owls, yes; they were romantic and macabre. Thrushes and blackbirds, oh yes, yes, yes; they were so very useful to poets. Nightingales, of course; they had been the means of revealing to us the amazing virtuosity of the wireless. Peacocks, indeed yes; their feathers were invaluable, and the air of prestige they gave to a country house was not to be underrated. Hens, ducks, geese, turkeys, with their gastronomic corollaries: omelettes, green peas, sage stuffing, truffles, Michaelmas and Christ­mas—certainly these admirable creatures, so long as they are always kept in the farmyard. Canaries, cockatoos, budgerigars—as many as you like; so amusing when they use words that father only uses when he is alone; so pretty in a drawing-room; such admirable exponents of the virtues of a cage; such a constant and piquant source of irritation to the cat. Yes, yes, by all means—almost feverishly we hasten to assure the feathered world—all these species, by the million if you wish it. We understand these things; we understand they were called into the world to divert us in their several capacities.

  But birds that never look the same two days running; birds that grow in the night; that drive other birds away from our midst; that have no respect for our national statues; that offend our King; that hold up our Government when it has serious things like war to discuss; that rob us of our water when we are short enough already; that refuse to eat the delicious seed we scatter for them; that emit a most unpleasant odour; that scream in harsh voices; that invade our private lives—these we will not endure.

  Such was the common voice. No single voice raised above the crowd was ever heard to ask the question, “Are these birds natural? Can a materialist view ever explain their presence amongst us?” The birds were an abomination; this was agreed. But the drought—the unprecedented hardness of the hot cavern of the sky—this was not an abomination. On no account could this be termed an abomination. For it was an act of God, and acts of God, though embarrassing, were to be re­spected. And the war in Africa—this was not an abomination. No, this was a state in human affairs which could all be easily explained by a study of economics. It was certainly annoying; but it was perfectly natural. Supernatural and natural calamities—these were inevitable and explainable. But the birds; they were simply an abomination.

  It was not to be expected that religion should fail to apply its dusty theology to these natural and supernatural calamities. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York met and discussed the attitude of the Church. They were tired, possibly, of having had little contact with human affairs since the jubilee thanksgiving in honour of our late King a year or so ago. Time was ripe for the Church to show its gloved hand; to lead its own particular short-cut to the throne of God; to call the attention of its children to their sins. Hence, a special form of religious intercession was ordered and printed, and a day set apart when from every church in the country prayers for rain and peace would rail at Heaven’s gate. At the same time a great massed company of choirs and dignitaries would gather in St. Paul’s Cathedral and do their utmost to gain the confidence of the omnipotent ear.

  But the birds were left out of the programme. It was not considered within the dignity of State religion to mention these trifling annoyances.

  “O Lord, send rain upon the earth.” Yes. Most seemly.

  “Grant us thy peace, O Lord.” Eminently suitable.

  “O Lord, deliver us from the birds.” No. Most certainly, no.

  *

  On my return I heard various stories about the activities of the pests. I recollect that an elaborate military ritual known as changing-of-the-guard had one day been completely disorganized. This quaint custom took place in Whitehall, and was always witnessed by a group of interested spectators from the country. Soldiers, magnificently dressed, performed on horseback a sarabande in a courtyard while others took their places. What were they guarding? I’m afraid I don’t know. Probably their own dignity. It was not preserved that par­ticular day, however. A stream of filthy birds, who had apparently just flown from a mound of horse manure, charged down upon the soldiers, threw most of the men off their horses, and sent one horse scampering wildly down Whitehall. Great consternation was caused to hundreds of people when the horse finally charged straight into the window of a teashop near Westminster.

  The birds now seldom appeared over the City in great massed swarms such as had first been their habit. The scene in Trafalgar Square was never repeated. It was now their pleasure to fly about in smaller groups of, perhaps, five or six hundred. They no longer disappeared into the sky; they were always about us—chattering, croaking, scream­ing. By night they roosted in and about famous monuments; they did not seem to care so much for trees. They took evident delight in disfiguring our most im­portant buildings with their offal. Hundreds were always to be seen in the scaffolding of the Houses at Westminster, where some sort of renovation work was continually in progress. I remember also how they delayed the augmentation of the Bank of England. The Old Lady was undergoing considerable extension. Amidst the skeleton of the new construction, retreating behind massive cranes, concrete slabs, and iron girders, the birds found a thousand comfortable nooks. They never attacked the workmen; they merely made it difficult for them to continue their work.

  A marked feature of the birds, one that I have already men­tioned and w
hich was now noticed with some concern, was their re­markable power of growth. They were no longer the pretty little birds we had first seen, though some, curiously enough, remained small. The great majority were larger than crows, with long beaks and sharp, mischievous eyes. Their smell was most obnoxious. I can best describe it by saying that it was the sort of smell which hangs around old damp plaster walls and cupboards that have not been opened for many years; but it was a hundred times more sickening. The noise they made if anyone attempted to obstruct them was atrociously harsh and strident. Their legs grew longer, their claws more crooked and firm. Their flight was very ungainly, wings flapping as they rose, with a dull clicking noise not unlike a nightjar.

  In those days the colloquial phrase, “So-and-so has got the bird,” was commonly employed when speaking of a person who had been rebuked by his employer or dismissed from his position. Now this phrase could no longer be thus used. For it became true. And it was a truth that nobody dared to admit. Of all the devilish wickedness wrought by the birds, there was none so disturbing as their growing habit of detaching themselves from the swarm and solitarily pursuing, from place to place, some particular person. As time went on, more and more were singled out for this unwelcome attention, often so subtly, that they were at first unaware of it. It was always the same bird; with some a large creature; with others, a small. And so acutely sensitive were people to this ordeal that hardly a soul would refer to it. You could therefore no longer say that So-and-so had “got the bird.” I cannot tell you why people were so sensitive. But I can relate my own experience and tell you of the ordeal which I, in common with everybody else, had to suffer. I have already given you a hint in this direction in my account of the two detached birds who one evening disturbed my mother and myself at Stroud Green.

  When I came home I saw at once that my mother and Annie were concealing some secret from me. It was not only that my mother was worried about the general condition of the world; there was something more per­sonal in her mind. Thinking I could raise her out of her dejection, I gave her a long account of my holiday. She was hardly interested. I told her that I had been driving a car and suggested that we should buy one. But she made little response.

  Later in the evening I spoke to Annie and asked her why my mother was so depressed.

  “Why, you ought to know,” said Annie, “it’s the birds.”

  “Birds——” I began stupidly, thinking she meant the great mass of birds that flew about the City.

  “Birds,” she repeated sharply, “what tap and tap on the windows every night and give us no peace.”

  I began to understand. “Oh!” I said slowly. “Oh—I see——” Then I turned on Annie angrily. “Why didn’t you write and tell me about this?”

  But there was a wild, half-furtive look in her eyes, and she would not answer me. Suddenly I felt frightened.

  I went to my mother. She was sitting in her chair attempting to read.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Mother?” I held her hands and looked into her eyes.

  She tried not to meet my eyes and caught her hands away.

  “Did Annie tell you?”

  “Yes——”

  “I told her not to,” she cried.

  “But why? Why shouldn’t I know, Mother?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. Don’t worry me.”

  She would not look at me. I saw there was terror in her eyes and the same half-furtive expression I had seen in Annie. I en­treated her to be frank with me, but she broke away and rose to her feet.

  “Every night——” she began, with her back to me, fumbling at the cupboard where she kept her wine, reaching for a glass.

  I took her hands and led her back to her chair.

  “Sit down and tell me the truth. Annie says that this bird taps on your window every night. Is that true?”

  “Yes, every night.” She spoke quickly. “And it’s killing me—I tell you, it’s killing me. I can’t eat, rest, or go out anywhere. Annie will tell you, I can’t eat.”

  “Is it a big bird?”

  “No, no; it isn’t big.”

  “Do you see it in the day?”

  “If I go out, it’s always there. I feel it always above me, and I can’t get at it, can’t even see it properly. I daren’t go out any more. I have to stay in and keep the windows shut. Don’t ever open them, son; don’t ever open them. It’s like—like a blot somewhere. Something I can’t—get at.”

  She began to cry. “Oh, son, why ever should it happen to me? I haven’t done any harm to any one.”

  She hadn’t done any harm. . . . The words carried me back to an old woman screaming in a crowd; she also, she had assured every one, had done no harm.

  “What do you think it’s going to do to you?” I demanded angrily.

  “It’s going to kill me.”

  “You’re just naturally upset by all this bother, the drought and everything. The best thing you can do, Mother, is to get away some­where—into the country where it’s quiet. You should have come to Wales with me.”

  “It isn’t so easy as all that,” she said.

  “It is easy—if you make it so,” I argued.

  “You’re young. You don’t think. You’ve got your own affairs, you don’t think of me any longer.”

  I denied it, but I knew it was half true.

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “I do think of you, a great deal. Only——”

  “——you think of your life, your future more? Oh, it’s right you should, son. Don’t take any notice of me. I’m only a silly old woman who might just as well be out of it. What’s it all for, anyhow? You’ve got a hard enough future before you.”

  She seemed to divine the future and the feelings in my mind. Nevertheless I urged her to change her life.

  “Mother, we can make a fresh start, somewhere away from here. You can, if you try.”

  “What about your work then? Is that nothing?”

  “Work!” I laughed. “I have a feeling I shan’t stand much more of that.”

  Then I launched into a diatribe against London and Leaden­hall; told her how intolerable the City was in these days; how de­termined I was to get away from it. Very soon I forgot her troubles and lost myself in my own affairs. She said very little; the old apathy seemed to have settled over her. But nothing would induce her to consider any scheme whereby we might alter the routine of our lives.

  Suddenly, in an angry, selfish mood I left her, and went out.

  The sun had nearly set, and the sky, in which no shape of cloud had risen for so many weeks, oppressed me. I felt that I never wanted to see the sun again.

  I found myself by the gates of the Alexandra Palace, perceiving, without reading, its notices of motor-cycle races, horse-races, ex­hibitions, and band-concerts. I went up the path by the side of a little rail-track where the tram-car ran, and so to the top, to a terrace of gravel spread out before the sprawling corpse of the gross build­ing. From here there was a view of northern London similar to that from the ridge at Stroud Green.

  Immediately below I saw the racing trades and the stand from which onlookers watched the races. To the left was a long wooden fence which surrounded the public bath where I had so often swum. The place was closed now, for shortage of water prevented its use. I looked at it mourn­fully; something told me I had swum there for the last time. My eyes wandered to the reservoirs, five or six flat basins. Only one contained any water, and that was but half full; the others were hollow cavities of sand. Running near them were the railway lines, stacked with trucks and disused carriages. Towering above this darkening scene were three or four enormous chimneys; from one of them, a straight line of black smoke pierced into the sky. Clus­tered around on every side was a thick network of streets, dense with little houses, red, brown, and yellow. There were a few puny trees, and somewhere, I am sure, the inevitable gasomet
er. Set in the middle, small and grey, like a stone lying in a confectioner’s shop, was the detached old church tower which I have before described to you. It was singularly conspicuous.

  I surveyed all this. Then I turned to look at the frowning shade of the Alexandra Palace. The whole building seemed to have been thrown out of proportion, because of the fact that one of its four main towers had been lopped off in order to enable scientific engineers to make experiments in a new invention called television: an invention which would enable people to witness current events from a great distance. It was similar to wireless, but it applied to the visual sense, as the word implies.

  I looked at the building and I began to feel something like regard for it. It was so insignificant, so clumsy, so pathetic. After all, I felt, it means no harm. Inside was the monster organ, squatting silently above two files of peeling coloured statues of the kings of England. From the decapitated slate tower came sounds of ham­mering: thud, thud, thud on the heavy, windless air. Some one was working there, late as it was; working in order that people might have their jaded tastes stimulated with a new wonder—crying, before the freshness wore off, “Isn’t this television wonderful!”

  I turned again to survey the scene before me. Little twinkling lights by railway and street began to trace the shape of the suburb like pins stuck round a design and the design then blotted out. I sat on the balustrade by a stone urn, with dead geraniums rising thinly out of earth dry as bone. The distant sounds of the streets below were crystallized and unreal. I remembered another view from a mountain-top. And then I said, “Oh yes, you may have a vision on a mountain; you may grow philosophic wings, but when all is said and done, this is your home, these are your streets. Here, within the very shadow of this meandering building, you were born, and on these parched slopes you played with your nurse as a little boy. Something, always, you must leave here, forswear and forsake it as you will.”