Birds of Paradise by Oliver Langmead (read any book .TXT) 📗

bacon,” he says. “Think they make it out of mushrooms or something. You can get sausages and pork chops and all sorts these days, all made out of plants. Don’t know how they do it, but I’m not complaining.”

“Tastes like the real thing.”

“Good to know.” Pig munches away. “Seriously, though. Why are you here, Adam?”

“I’m looking for Magpie.”

“Magpie?” Pig’s prodigious brow folds. “What do you want with him?”

“Rook sent me.”

“Rook. Ah.” Pig brushes crumbs from his chest. “Well, now. That’s different. I owe Rook. We all do. Funny the power a few bits of paper can have, ain’t it? The right bits of paper can mean all the difference between a good life and a bad life.” Pig rubs at his stubbled chins. “I last saw Magpie a couple of weeks ago. I’m doing a bit of teaching in Glasgow, these days. Nothing fancy, just getting kids through their sums, a bit of algebra. It pays the bills – enough to maintain this old place, at least. Magpie, though. He showed up out of the blue at my school, holding this big old roll of papers under his arm. Told me he was working on a project and wanted my opinion on it.”

“What were the papers?”

“Not a clue. Looked a bit like the blueprints of a greenhouse. Weird looking greenhouse, though. He was asking me all kinds of questions about the structure and materials and weaknesses, but I don’t think I was much help. It’s been a while since I did any architecture.”

“What then?”

“Not much else to tell, I’m afraid. I invited him to Sunday lunch out here; figured Butterfly would like to see him. He came along, but he seemed pretty distracted.”

“Do you know where he might be now?”

“Well.” Pig squints at the sky. “I picked him up and dropped him off at a hotel in the West End. Could be he’s still there. Can give you the address, if you like.”

“Thanks. That’d be great.”

The sun slowly rises overhead, warming the cove, and Butterfly soon returns from the loch bearing a wealth of coloured pebbles. She sits cross-legged on the polka-dot blanket and shows Pig and Adam her collection. Then, when she is done, she and Pig go to the edge of the loch and throw her pebbles back into it one by one.

Adam takes his leave while they’re distracted. He pauses at the treeline, considering whether or not to say goodbye, but when he turns back to see Butterfly and Pig, wading and skimming stones together, he decides against it. He thinks he would prefer to try and fix this moment in his fractured memory: the sound of their laughter, and their shimmering reflections rippling in the great mirrored loch.

A moment of true happiness.

V

Queen Street railway station is mostly composed of scaffolding, and the rest of Glasgow is much the same. Adam wanders through crowded streets where the buskers are so close together that their voices compete. He knows that he must reach the West End of Glasgow, but his feet don’t seem to know these streets very well and he finds himself repeatedly getting lost, veering down alleyways where the wrecks of burned buildings squat beneath flapping expanses of blue tarpaulin. Eventually he decides to follow the sun, peering up through the grey smog and grey sky to find it glowing white there. Glasgow makes Adam feel clumsy; he keeps accidentally colliding with people in the street, no matter how carefully he navigates the crowds.

The last time he was here, the sky bristled with chimney stacks, he remembers.

No matter where he walks, the path crunches beneath his feet, either with dead leaves or crisp packets or bits of broken glass. Homeless people call out to him from every corner and shopfront, asking for change, and charity workers dance across the paving, trying to get him to stop, to listen, to donate. Adam raises his collar and practises unseeing the city, passing through an enormous park with a murky fountain. At a bridge he pauses, observing the frothing brown flow, interspersed with the occasional white flash where discarded wet-wipes tumble between the ducks.

At last, he comes to the West End. Everything here is slightly cleaner, the faces he passes are slightly younger, and the buskers are positioned slightly further apart. The homeless are more demanding: they raise their hands and curse Adam when he offers them nothing. There is laughter here, and music drifting from open windows, and the trees cast their leaves thick across the streets as if they might bury the city.

He’s not quite sure where to go, so he asks a young guy with a clipboard offering free eye tests for directions, and is told the hotel he’s looking for is based on the other side of the Botanic Gardens.

As Adam passes through the black gates of the Botanics, a silhouette descends from the grey sky, and Owl perches among the tall trees, amber eyes sweeping over the yellowing grounds.

Deeper inside the gardens, white bunting is strung up across the bushes, and people dance to music. It’s a wedding, Adam thinks. He catches the briefest glimpse of the bride as she is swept across the lawn, spinning with the music, and tries to remember if he ever married Eve. The idea of promising to love her forever seems superfluous, somehow.

There is a marquee set up on the central lawn. Tipsy men and women in their wedding best laugh and flirt between the flower beds, twitching to the live band performing on a stage nearby. Staff meander through the throng with trays of bubbling champagne while screaming children run around their feet, and somehow nothing is spilled. The white table covers, and white flowers, and white teeth of the bride and groom all remain white. There is only one smile that catches Adam’s attention: the metallic grin of the man sat at the bar, turning a fluted glass between his fingers.

This man is wearing a sharp suit that somehow complements every angle