Featherbones Read online

  At the head of the table, his father had just finished eating. Cutlery scraped once more against the plate beneath, then clattered quietly where knife and fork were carefully set down.

  “How are you finding your sessions with Dr. Moore?”

  “They’re good. He’s good at explaining things.” Felix studied his half-empty plate while considering what to say next. “He reminds me of Mr. Stuart.”

  “Yes, think of him as a teacher.” His father nodded approvingly. “And he is helping?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you still having those dreams?”

  “No. I don’t think so. If I am, I don’t remember them.”

  He realised his father’s hands had been clenched, because they slowly opened as he spoke. In the quiet room Felix heard him swallow.

  “You must remember to thank Dr. Moore, when you next see him.”

  “Does this mean I’m getting better?”

  “It does.”

  “Even though I don’t feel better?”

  For a long time his father didn’t move. Then, rising from his place at the head of the table, he came to stand by Felix. His hand found Felix’s shoulder. “We’re a family, you and I. There might only be two of us now, but there have been others. Your mother, God rest her soul. Her mother and father, and mine. This is our family. If we have a duty to anything in this life, it’s to uphold our family, Felix. Sometimes this means we can’t do things we want, or be the people we might otherwise be, but that’s the way it is.”

  “The way what is?”

  “Life. The world.”

  He wanted to tell his father that he knew what he meant. He wanted to be the dutiful son, the normal boy. He wanted to make his father proud. But he couldn’t pretend. Catching his eyes, Felix looked quickly away. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s for your own good, Felix. If you understand nothing else, understand that. You’ll thank me, one day.”

  ***

  Michael leans across the table and for a few moments his hands cup Felix’s. His palms are surprisingly soft against Felix’s skin, and warm where they’ve held the cup of coffee.

  “How did you cope with that, growing up?”

  “I had Harriet. When I was with her I felt better.”

  “And after Harriet?”

  “Dr. Moore. He was the one who suggested I wrote about how I was feeling.”

  Their food arrives but Felix continues to talk, barely eating, barely noticing the plate sitting before him.

  “I can see why you wanted out,” says Michael, “and why you haven’t been back since. I keep picturing you in the old house, all on your own. No one to talk to. No one to help.”

  “I thought maybe it was my fault.”

  “Your fault? What part of anything that you’ve just told me was your fault?”

  “My dreams.”

  Michael shouts suddenly; a derisive sound that fills the now empty pub. “Christ, Felix, you can’t help your dreams. You know that now, right? They’re no one’s fault.”

  “But they were bad dreams.”

  “What were they about? What could possibly have been so bad that it warranted psychiatric care?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “School,” he says quietly, remembering faceless boys with feathered arms, the taste of his own blood in his mouth. “Matthew Petty. The other boys. I remember thinking how much I wanted to be like them, to be their friend, to fit in. They were frightening but I still kept dreaming of them. Dr. Moore called them sea monsters. But he was just trying to help –”

  “No, he wasn’t. There’s one word for what he was doing, and it isn’t ‘helping’. What do you actually know about him? Who was he?”

  “I don’t know. He ran a private clinic from his house. He was my father’s friend. And he wasn’t from Crows Hill. I remember that. Somewhere off the coast, I think. He talked often of the sea.”

  “Well, the man needs striking off, assuming he hasn’t fled back to whichever rock pool he crawled from. And don’t get me started on your old man, manipulating you like that. Every boy dreams of monsters. I still do!”

  “You do?”

  “Yes! It’s normal to be frightened, to see shapes in the dark, to fall asleep and think you’re flying or drowning. It’s our way of making sense of the world, our way of staying sane, day after day. You don’t set a psychiatrist on your son, for that!”

  “I felt different. From the other boys. I still do.”

  “Different is good. Celebrate different. Take different’s hand and dance with him through the night.”

  They pick at some limp chips from their plates. The food is cold, and they realise with a start that they have wildly overshot their lunch break. They order more coffee anyway and stay until their plates are clean, the shadows long, their cups drained to the dregs.

  Chapter Twenty

  When Felix leaves work that evening the city seems subtly changed; an urban place in the beginnings of bloom. Blossom settles in the gutters and across the pavement; pink icing petals on the black road.

  People drift like lost souls down London Road. His feet lead him down East Street, past the Engineers’ Memorial. In one way, at least, he feels indebted to the statue. Had she not listened to him, he might have drowned in Southampton; the halfway city between the sea and the sky. So many have drowned already. It is not a slight against the city, but the way of men and women, who seem so willing to forget themselves and what it means to be alive.

  He is standing in the alcohol aisle of his local convenience shop when his phone rings. Michael had still been talking with Coleson when Felix left the office. Broken from his reverie before the shelves of dark green bottles, he retrieves his mobile from his pocket. “You took your time.”

  “Can I come over?”

  “I thought you were seeing Helen tonight?”

  “I need a drink.”

  “What are we celebrating?”

  “My new-found unemployment.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll see you in ten, then.”

  Four bottles of wine find their way into his basket. He navigates the aisles thoughtlessly, hands moving of their own accord between his basket and the shelves. His mind roars with dull white-ocean-noise.

  The man behind the till is called Piotr. He has served Felix many times before. His lips break into a broad smile while he processes the items from Felix’s basket, fingers prodding the till screen, but he does not speak. Felix realises he has never heard him speak before, and he finds himself wondering whether he is happy in his work, his life, and whether he too is haunted when he goes to bed at night. Michael’s earlier admission to nightmares comes back to him, and Felix suspects he is not alone; that they all dream from the imagined safety of their beds.

  Outside the shop, he steps into the coldness of dusk. Shadows drape across the street, and for a moment it is all he can do to stand there while the breath of the city washes over him. Behind him, dust coats the shop window in a thick layer, through which old promotions struggle to surface. Other things, it seems, are also struggling to take form in the dirt; the reflections of the city, swimming like lost shapes beneath brown water. His own reflection swims facelessly among them.

  At his flat, Felix has time to roll up his sleeves, remove his tie and pour two drinks before Michael arrives. The door is unlocked and Michael walks straight in. Just before he reaches the kitchen he pauses. Felix cannot see him but he hears that he has stopped in the hallway. Then Michael swoops in and takes up a glass.

  “Well,” he says. “That’s that.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Michael pours the wine down his throat. A thin stream of it escapes his lips, trickling down his chin, almost unnoticeable except where it catches the light. Grey spots grow on the collar of his shirt.

  “I’m fine.” He coughs to clear his throat, then pours himself a second. “I’m fine. To new beginnings!”

  They
make an uncertain toast before taking their glasses to the balcony. The sun is long lost to this side of the building, concealed behind the flats above. This close to the sea, the evening air is quite cold. Hairs prickle down the backs of Michael’s arms. Felix realises his own are the same.

  “I can’t believe it,” he says, retrieving a chair from the main room so that he can sit opposite Michael. “After five years of working for him.”

  “Five years of being late. Five years of lip. Five years of general inadequacy.”

  “You weren’t inadequate.”

  “It turns out I was quite inadequate. He showed me a chart, with a graph.”

  The sea breeze struggles against their faces. Felix feels it, like fingers through his hair. Michael’s hair remains unmoving, pulled tight into its usual knot, but he sees the breeze in his friend’s face; his jaw set, fine nostrils flaring, eyes glistening from the wind and perhaps from something else.

  “We could appeal. They can’t sack people, just like that. We can fight this.”

  “Why?”

  “What?”

  “It’s time to move on,” says Michael. “It’s time for a fresh start.”

  It might be the sudden breeze, dancing coolly across Felix’s skin, or the deep scent of Michael’s cologne in Felix’s nose, but he cannot still the shiver that runs through him. His wine glass finds his mouth and stays there for several seconds.

  “This was always on the cards,” adds Michael. “I couldn’t have spent my life there any more than you could. It was just a case of when. Well, now I know.”

  “I’m sorry,” says Felix, although he is not quite sure why. “If we hadn’t been talking for so long…”

  “Don’t even think about apologising. That conversation was important. This is good. This is what I need.”

  They watch the birds that hover in the sky, following their swoops and dives while listening to the drawn-out cries. Even in the shade, beside the sprawling docks and grey concrete piers, the seafront is beautiful. A deep red bleeds into the skyline, and Felix is reminded of the childhood dreams in which he tasted the colour as it ran from his nose.

  More than once he finds himself watching Michael. If his friend notices, he does not seem to mind. Felix suspects that he is far away in his own thoughts. The red sky bathes his face, so that he almost appears to glow; a man for five minutes incubated by the warmth of the world, which at all other times seeks to drown them in its depths.

  They drink until the wine is gone, their smiles long, the moon a pale disc far out to sea. Tower blocks rise uniform in the night sky, emboldened by the lights lining the Itchen Bridge, together illuminating Queen’s Park and the docks beyond. Those blocks of flats that remain dark make silhouettes against the cityscape.

  “Did you ever call Angela after that date at the museum?”

  “No.”

  “Of course you didn’t.” Producing a cigarette from a pack in his pocket, Michael proceeds to light up. He strikes a match; it hisses, spits, then wavers and is swallowed by the night. His second attempt is more successful, and he takes a long drag. “It’s going to rain soon.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Clouds,” says Michael, indicating the dark algal blooms that have begun to fill the sky, and although Felix can barely see his friend’s face, he can hear the bemusement in his voice. “Clouds usually mean rain.”

  “I was born in the rain. There was a storm, the roads were blocked. That’s why my mother died. I don’t think my father ever forgave me for that.”

  The tip of the cigarette flares in the darkness before descending in hand to rest on Felix’s knee. Somewhere nearby, a gull croons gently in its roost.

  “So what are you going to do tomorrow?”

  “I’m not sure,” says Michael, returning the cigarette to his mouth. His smoky breath curls up and away. “Sleep would be good. Sometimes I feel as though I haven’t slept in years. Properly slept, I mean. The kind where you wake up the next morning and feel rested.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “I’ll pop into the office, to collect my things. To you, I bequeath my third-drawer brandy. We could do lunch again.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “The brandy, or lunch?”

  “Both.”

  Michael smokes the cigarette into its grave then lights another. Unencumbered by drink and the dark they talk easily, and only when they feel the first drops of rain do they retreat inside. Felix closes the balcony doors behind them while Michael borrows a coat from his bedroom.

  “You’re not walking back in this, are you?”

  “I like walking,” says Michael, “and I don’t mind rain.”

  Felix follows his friend to the door. Shadows fill the corridor. As he steps into the dark, Michael turns back to him.

  “No lights?”

  “Broken. Do you think you can find your way to the lift?”

  “I’ll manage somehow. Cheers for tonight. For the wine, and the company.”

  “Anytime.”

  Felix steps forward and wraps his arms around Michael. At first, Michael remains quite still. Then he seems to soften. His chin finds Felix’s shoulder, their cheeks pressing together; cold and slightly rough where stubble scrapes his skin. His arms meet behind Felix’s back. They stand like this for several seconds while Felix’s heart flaps like a trapped bird in its ribcage. Without really knowing what he is doing, he half turns towards the face. His mouth presses against the line of Michael’s jaw, then the edge of his lips –

  Michael steps quickly back into the corridor. For a moment he waits there, half in and out of the dark. It is impossible to read his face in the shadows. Then he turns from the flat and leaves.

  “Michael. Michael, wait.”

  When Michael does not reappear, Felix returns to the main room. For a long time he sits on the old leather sofa bought to emulate those from their Halls of Residence. Then he gets up and walks to the balcony. Opening the glass door, he steps out into the rain. The garden chair is slippery, and wobbles slightly as he climbs onto it. He stands above the balcony railings. Familiar sounds fill his ears; mewing bird cries, and the beating of air beneath wings. Rain soaks him to his bones.

  In his pocket, his phone rings. He feels it, vibrating against his thigh. Removing the phone, he holds it out over the railings, one arm extended, the other by his side for balance. He takes a deep breath and holds it, feeling the wind against the tears down his face. The chair trembles beneath him.

  He calls out for Harriet in a way he has not called for her since he was thirteen. The city takes his voice and throws it back at him. He hears the word as though it echoes through water, distorted until it has no meaning.

  His phone vibrates again. He clings to it a second longer before opening his hand and allowing it fall. The phone is swallowed by the darkness but he follows it from the light of its screen as it sinks slowly through the night. When it hits the bottom, there is no sound, as he had previously thought. There is no crash, no splintering of plastic, or soul, or any noise that he can hear from so high above.

  He feels the figure behind him before he sees it. Despite himself, he begins shivering. Stepping down from the chair he turns back to the main room and the presence that has been haunting him. Though he cannot make it out properly in the darkness, its silhouette is visible in the doorway.

  His heart races while everything else is still. They remain like this for some time, staring at each other across the room. The damp smells stronger now, almost rotten in his nostrils, and he wonders if he has not sunk beneath the sea after all; the full moon wavering like a watery sun. The figure’s head cocks curiously to one side. Then it lurches towards him.

  He recoils from the advancing figure with a shout, fumbling his way onto the balcony. The railings press against his back. Its movements are sporadic, as though it is in pain. As it staggers closer, he scrunches his eyes shut. He dare not look for fear that it has his face again; that they are one and th
e same, this sad, malformed thing and he. He cries harder.

  Wet fingers brush his skin. Still he does not open his eyes. Damp, maritime smells fill his nose as it moves onto the balcony and wraps him in its feathered arms, no stone cold angel but the opposite; imperfect and alive. It cradles him and kisses him and rocks him while he cries, until he sinks from consciousness into sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The alarm clock startles him from sleep. Crawling from bed he silences the sound, staggers into the kitchen and boils the kettle. Crumbs scatter across the floor from the bread that he carries to the toaster. His mouth is sticky, sour-tasting, and as he pours the boiling water into a mug the evening comes back to him; drinks on the balcony with Michael, the sight of the sky and the sea beneath spread out before them, the sound of Michael’s laughter and the press of his arms around him, Michael’s face against his –

  Tea overflows the mug, rushing across the work-surface and down the side of the cabinets. It is a moment before he comes back to himself. Sinking to his hands and knees he chases the spill across the linoleum, slowing its spread with kitchen roll. White tissue becomes rank between his hands.

  When he has finished cleaning the spill he pours away the remaining tea. He cleans the mug, and the plates and cups that have been left to drown in the sink, then wipes down the sink and taps. The rest of the kitchen follows; the cupboards, the fridge, the crumbs that have fallen out of reach in the gap between the two units and been left to fester.

  He moves onto his bedroom next, gathering up his clothes from the floor and dumping them in the wash-basket. The bed linen follows suit, as do his pillowcases. The clothes horse puts up a fight but he breaks its skeletal back, stripping it bare before folding it away in the airing cupboard. He thrusts his ties, work shirts and trousers into bin liners and leaves them by the door.

  The main room looks different in the daytime. Furnishings that are featureless silhouettes by dark resume their roles in the sunlight. His bookcase is a bookcase again, his plastic plant unchanged, the empty drinks cabinet revealed like some kind of lost exhibit, gathering dust. The last thing it held was a half-drunk bottle of cheap rum, weeks ago, when he shared more about himself with Michael than with anyone since he was a child. The evening comes back to him, remembered in his blood, his bones, his fragile heart. His chest tightens until he feels like he can’t possibly contain himself and will crack.