Featherbones Page 10

  But he is not completely lost. Tenuous links still tether him to the city and the people who give it its eyes, its breath, its fingers, fumbling blindly through the night. He has a job, if not a career. There are people who depend on him, however loosely. He has Michael.

  More than once during these walks he finds himself thinking about Sam. It is not uncommon for Felix to go weeks without encountering him around the city, but he had not seemed himself when they last spoke. Wherever he is, Felix hopes he is safe. He can’t imagine what he would do without his flat to return home to each evening, without Michael to drink with and depend on. It occurs to him that there is one place left he might check, if not for Sam himself then for knowledge of the man’s whereabouts, and peace of mind. Before he really knows what he is doing, he finds himself walking away from Woolston towards the city.

  Sometimes he finds himself staring into space, as though he is looking not at the trees, the sky, the various houses that line the roads, but through these things. He remembers his conversations with Dr. Moore as a child, and fancies he sees other things behind the streets, as though they are the surface of an ocean; its waves rear-ing then crashing around him, and beneath them is ano-ther place, where dreams swim with fish amid sunken cities and drowned angels dance through the depths.

  ***

  “And how are we today, Felix?”

  The beige walls of the doctor’s study filled his eyes, the faintly-patterned curtains, the flowers; fierce red this time, refreshed since they had last spoken.

  “I’m feeling better, thank you.”

  “Good, very good. And your dreams?”

  “What about them?”

  “When we last spoke, you told me about the bird-boys in the locker room. You said that when you met and became friendly with Harriet, these dreams diminished, but that they were beginning to manifest themselves again, now that she is gone.”

  “Yes,” said Felix. “I see them all the time.”

  “And how do these dreams make you feel?”

  “Lonely.”

  “And how else do they make you feel?”

  Felix remembered scarlet wattle, smooth skin and a heat, which seemed to burn him up from inside and set fire to his cheeks. “Excited.”

  “I thought as much. Remember what I said before, comparing dreams to seas and how they could swallow men whole? That is what these dreams will do.”

  “I can’t help it. I don’t mean to dream about Matthew and the other boys –”

  “They are exciting, you say. But this must be frightening, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Concentrate on that. Remember how much they frighten you. Things frighten us for good reason. They frighten us because they are dangerous. Because they can hurt us. Change us.”

  “So I should ignore the dreams?”

  “Yes. You must ignore them. And you must not tell anyone else about them.”

  “But when I thought I could tell Harriet, I felt better.”

  “And look what happened to her, Felix. The things you are dreaming about are not healthy. They will make you different from the other boys. Is that what you want?”

  “No…”

  “Then fight them! You are a clever young man, I can see that. Tell me, how did Odysseus overcome the Sirens and their song?”

  “His men tied him to the ship’s mast. We learned about it with Mr. Stuart.”

  “That is what I am doing. I am tying you to a mast, so that you will not succumb to these bird-boys and the dream on which they fly.”

  ***

  It is a long walk from Woolston into the city centre, and the sea breeze turns his skin to goose flesh. Standing in the long shadow of the Church of Holy Waters, he tells himself it will be different to when he last visited. This is a place of sanctuary, if not for him, then for Sam.

  The foyer is vacant. The air is still cold, but drier and vaguely dusty. The corridors either side are also unoccupied, and for a moment he imagines the entire church is empty, before noticing that the doors to the service hall are ajar. Entering the heart of the church, he spots a solitary man at the far end, in the pulpit. He appears to be packing some books away into a worn leather bag as Felix approaches.

  “You look lost.”

  “I’m sorry,” says Felix, reaching the altar, “I’m not sure if I should be in here or not.”

  The man smiles sadly. “You misunderstand. I mean you look lost.”

  A strange feeling comes over Felix, as though the lights grow brighter where they stream in through the windows, the shadows darker between the pews and in the alcoves. He feels the man’s wet eyes on him, hears the breath of the ocean as it echoes through the room, fancies movement in the windows; angels and demons playing out eternal battle in the glass. The pressure builds until it becomes too much and he has to speak.

  “Are you the vicar?”

  “Mark Thomas. How can I help you?”

  In his plain clothes the vicar appears quite ordinary. He might be in his sixties, although Felix has never been very good with ages. Felix guesses he is of his father’s generation, if not from his hair then his ruddy face, hinting at a taste for more than communion wine.

  “I’m looking for someone. A friend. He used to come here, I think. I wondered if you might have seen him recently.”

  Stepping down from the pulpit with an armful of books, the vicar extends what he can of a hand. They shake briefly. “Let’s see. Does this friend have a name?”

  “A few,” says Felix, smiling. “Sam, probably.”

  “And his surname?”

  “I’m not sure. He would have come here for a roof over his head. He didn’t like the shelters.”

  “Ah, yes. Draper.” The vicar leads him to the front row of pews. They each take a seat, the old wood groaning beneath their weight.

  Even inside the church, Felix realises he can hear the tide. There are other sounds too; the patter of claws, or tiny feet, skittering through the rafters. “Can you hear that?”

  “The gulls,” explains the vicar. “They nest, somewhere above us. It is an old building, sadly falling into disrepair. Funding is not so forthcoming, recently.”

  If the architecture reminds Felix of anywhere else, it is Oxford, with its brooding colleges and haughty spires. He wonders how the rest of Southampton might look today, had it not once been bombed so heavily. The vicar appears to read his thoughts.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. There’s a church where I grew up but it’s nothing like this. A small building, for a small town.”

  “We were lucky to survive the war. All of this could have been lost. The windows, the stonework, the angels in the alcoves…”

  “What do they want?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The angels,” says Felix, surprised by his own directness. “What are they? What do they want?”

  “They are messengers. I would imagine they want the same thing that we all want.”

  “And what is that?”

  “To be loved. And to return that love in kind.”

  “By God, you mean?”

  A wistful smile flits over the vicar’s face. “I occasionally joke that they love the water. That they sing of it, and that if my parishioners listen carefully when it rains, they might hear the angels’ voices in the sky.”

  “Sam says that sometimes.”

  “Yes, of course. Sam Draper.” While the vicar speaks, he resumes packing the books into his bag. “I run a group, once a week, for the homeless. He would join us, from time to time. We’re talking about the same man?”

  Felix takes a moment to organise his thoughts. It is a slippery few seconds, in which dreams, memories and waking terrors wash over each other in his head.

  “Yes, I think that’s him.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t seen him for some time now. Not since his birthday, a few weeks ago. Some of the others from the shelter came. We had tea, and I made coffee cake, although I can’t say it taste
d very much of coffee, or cake for that matter.” The vicar pauses, Bible in hand. Then he deposits the book into his rucksack. “Yes, it would be weeks since he was last here. It’s not unusual, for a man in his position, but you do worry, of course.”

  “His birthday?”

  “Yes, at least, that’s what he said. His thirtieth.”

  Something moves in the rafters. The scratching intensifies, and Felix imagines a shape in the overhead gloom. As he watches, the figure leans forward; peering down from the beams, and then it is toppling through the space between the ceiling and the floor. There is nothing graceful about its descent. It falls heavily, flapping like a bundle of old clothes before crashing soundlessly into the pews.

  “I’m sorry,” says the vicar, unseeing. Beside him, the broken figure twitches silently where it lies on the stone floor. Felix witnesses bones, matted plumage, and, staring back from beneath a splintered arm, the gaunt suggestion of a man’s smiling face. Swallowing, he turns away.

  “Thank you.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Friday flaps frantically at the windows, but Felix does not open the door to it. He thinks of little all day except the vicar’s words, and the shivering sack of bones on the church floor beside him. Only a few years older than he, Sam is alone in the world, except for the angel beside whom he sometimes sleeps and begs. It is no wonder a moment with her in the storm-tossed skies seems preferable to this absurd life. Felix feels as though he is living underwater, in this city where the air smells of salt; sinking deeper and deeper with each passing day into the crushing oblivion of life’s depths.

  “What a week,” says Michael, when he returns from the office in the evening. He showers immediately, no doubt eager to escape his work shirt, trousers and tie. Felix knows the feeling. As Michael rejoins him in the kitchen, his hot, damp presence fills the room. A towel finds his wet mane of hair.

  “How is Coleson?”

  “Besides being a bastard? He’s fine.”

  Finding a bottle opener in a drawer, Felix uncaps two of the beers. The bottles hiss drily in his hands. “I mean with me taking the week off work.”

  “He hasn’t mentioned it since I spoke to him on Monday. I doubt he’s noticed, to be honest.”

  “Charming.”

  “It’s not as though you’re always taking time off. All things considered, you’re a model employee. I wouldn’t give it another thought.”

  They finish their first beers, then their second. Slowly a stash of empties begins to grow; brown bottles standing like stems of glassy fungus in the light. They seem out of place in the otherwise clean kitchen; a wet intrusion on the sterile surroundings.

  “How are things going with Helen?”

  “They’re all right.” Michael’s head vanishes beneath the towel again, emerging moments later vaguely drier. “She didn’t take well to me cancelling tonight.”

  “You had plans?”

  “Nothing that couldn’t wait.”

  “You could have seen her, I wouldn’t have minded.”

  “I know you wouldn’t have. That’s why I didn’t mention it.”

  Michael tells him about all the time Helen and he have been spending together; the evenings out, dinner in the city, sleepy Sundays drifting through the New Forest. None of it sounds especially exciting to Felix, but he can’t ignore the discomfort in his stomach, of movement inside him; an unborn chick, still fresh and foetal, yet to break free but stirring now inside its sticky yolk –

  “I’m happy for you,” he says, and he realises he means it. Not since Rachel broke up with him has Michael spoken at such length about one of his girlfriends. He remembers what Michael said about feeling lost, stripped bare and abandoned, and hopes that he is feeling better now; that Helen has made a difference.

  “Enough festering,” says Michael, tapping his empty bottle against the work surface and springing suddenly from his seat. “It’s Friday night and we have places to be.”

  “We’re going out?”

  “We certainly are. Maggie’s having a house party and I’ve RSVP’d for the both of us.”

  “Maggie?”

  “Your work colleague? I realise she must be a distant memory after almost a week off, but she still remembers you.”

  Felix showers and changes while Michael calls for a taxi. He is still getting dressed when their lift arrives. Sliding onto the back seat of the taxi, he buttons up the top of his shirt while the car pulls away. City lights flash past, catching his face in the reflection of the car window, and he realises his pulse is racing.

  Beside him, Michael’s face is lit-up. Black skinny jeans cling to his slender legs, a white shirt draining his already pale skin. Michael holds his gaze for a moment. Then he turns back to his window, and Felix does likewise. Taking a deep breath, he closes his eyes, clears his mind and surrenders to the approaching night.

  He hears Maggie’s house before he sees it, beating with music, nestled noisily in the street. Some effort has been made to black out the windows, bin liners stuck fast to the glass panes, but flickers of strobe light still escape at the edges, shining on tall grass and the children’s toys nestled within; plastic tractors and oven sets still speckled with rainfall. There is a potting shed that does not look as though it has seen use in twenty years, flower beds filled with a mixture of daffodils and weeds, and at the front door a thin woman in a large shirt and white skin-tight jeans. She sucks on a cigarette while the door frame supports her, and it is not difficult to associate the sounds of the gulls with her own lips as they pucker and twitch, milking the rollie for every ounce.

  Excusing himself, Michael slips past her, and inside. Hurrying after, Felix follows suit.

  He has never been to Maggie’s house before, and does not think he would recognise it again, were he ever to return here. The hallway is heaving, and he struggles through the press of bodies to keep pace with Michael. On their right, a spare room is being used for storage, a pile of coats and leather jackets like a puddle across the single bed.

  They move into the sitting room, made into a rave den, then the basement, where bowls of crisps and dip are doing the rounds. The room is a strange hybrid of home and dance club; wash baskets have been filled with bottles, spotlights stuck on top of dusty utilities. At the far end of the room, a washing machine works its way through a colour wash, filled with orange glow sticks like dancing flames. Everywhere, people are moving to the music’s beat.

  Faces flock around them, more orange, then green, and white under the wild spotlights, but none of them Maggie’s.

  “Drinks,” Michael mouths, or at least Felix fancies that he does. They each knock back a beer, then another, until they find themselves beginning to dance, helpless not to in this place where private residence meets underground club. Hands find Felix’s waist, Michael’s face in his face, so close he can see the whites of his teeth, smell the crisp lager on his breath.

  They drink more, and dance harder, while their basement surroundings melt slowly away. Behind Michael’s head, the washing machine begins a new cycle. Its drum flashes with glow sticks, steadily at first, then faster and faster until the glass door is a blaze of green, burning everything else from Felix’s eyes, leaving only spiraling incandescence, Michael’s laughing face, then the dark.

  A kaleidoscope of chart music fills Felix’s ears. People press into him as they squeeze past; hands grasping, firm where they fumble down his wrist. He knows he is at a house party, although he is not sure quite how he got here, or when. His head is a splash of colour and confusion.

  Tearing himself from his place on the wall, he wanders through the house. Partly he is anxious, and does not want to draw attention to himself. Mostly he cannot move for other bodies in the way. The kitchen, when he finds it, is a bright, stinking place, alive with hot breaths and the aroma of liquor. Grinning faces hover all around him. He searches for Michael’s.

  “Down in one,” somebody shouts; a tall, bald man with tattoos down his neck.

 
“Same time next week,” chirps a woman beside him, her eyes wide, lush lips smiling.

  “Glass is empty –”

  “In no hurry –”

  “What’s a guy got to do to get a drink around here?”

  Pushing through the crowds into the next room, he heads further into the house. Another corridor stretches ahead of him, busy and boisterous as the last. Forcing his way between warm bodies, he takes the first opening – a sliding glass door – and finds himself in a kind of conservatory. The music is quieter here, or at least muffled, if not by the glass then the smoke that seems to swell and press against it; mist billowing from cigarettes like rich fumes from exhaust pipes.

  “Michael?”

  “Who are you?” says a slurred voice. Figures form in the smoke; few and phantasmal.

  “Who is anyone? Does it really matter, here?”

  “Have you seen Michael?”

  “Who the hell is Michael?”

  He lingers in the conservatory, surrounded by the semi-formed shapes of the loungers. He cannot help but linger, in this room where there is no up or down, no left or right, no solid forms or certain things, only insubstantial smoke and half-seen shadows shifting in the gloom. For a moment he feels respite from the music, the raucous colours that seem to saturate the rest of the house. Then the shapes of the loungers grow more certain around him.

  There is no mistaking the shabby wings, like old bin-liners in the wind, pointed faces with black beaks below which dangle wattles, scarlet like open wounds. Laughter caws from the throats of the assembled, quietly at first then louder; moronic sounds from rough mouths thick with tar, and suddenly there is no safety in the smoke, no sanctuary from the rest of the house or the music, which seems to hammer at his head, slide under his flesh, reverberate his bones and there inside disturb something, which has long waited to be hatched.

  He stumbles back from the conservatory. Retracing his steps, he flees through the corridor, the kitchen and the hallway until he reaches the front door, where he does not hesitate but flings it open, throwing himself outside.