Featherbones Read online

  “You’re losing.”

  “How dare you? I never lose!”

  Drawn by the gulls’ disturbance, Maggie, Michael and he assemble behind the window. The birds make a frantic sight, their wings twitching, screams filling the street. When contact is made, by a beak or broad pinion, the birds spring back from one another, as though jerked suddenly into the air like puppets on invisible strings.

  It is somewhat apt that the birds draw blood here, where so many altercations reach violent heights, brought to life by the many pubs and clubs crammed into the street opposite offices, convenience stores and fast customer trade. At once an extension of the city and separate from it, an air of sullenness hangs over London Road, which is saved only by the same pubs and clubs that would see it wetted with blood; the allure of alcohol and an escape from the real world drawing the crowds of students and the homeless who, together with the birds, make up the street’s cosmopolitan pulse.

  “What are they doing?” says Maggie. She lingers hesitantly behind the glass.

  “Fighting,” says Michael.

  “Why?”

  “Do they need a reason?”

  “Yes!”

  “Food. A mate. For the sheer hell of it.” Beside Felix, Michael shrugs vaguely. “They look hungry, to me.”

  Maggie groans audibly. “Thank you very much for that mental image.”

  “You do understand that birds eat bread? Flies, seeds, occasionally used chewing-gum.”

  “Maybe we should feed them?” The suggestion is barely out of Felix’s mouth before Maggie bears down on him.

  “Feed them and they’ll never leave. I should know. I once fed a cat that happened to find his way into my kitchen. I only gave him scraps. Titbits, from the back of the fridge. The thing came back every morning afterwards for two weeks, trying his luck.”

  “Is this cat a cat,” ventures Michael, “or a metaphor for a gentleman-friend you happened to pick up one night?”

  At that moment one of the gulls recoils into the window. Its bulk thumps against the glass and Maggie shrieks, flinching as though struck.

  “Somebody fetch a broom,” says Michael, “before Maggie has a fit.”

  “I don’t want a broom, I want a drink.”

  “My desk,” he adds, “third drawer down.”

  “You keep alcohol at work?”

  “Brandy, a little rum. For bird-related emergencies.”

  “Oh, wonderful.” She relaxes visibly, before glancing back to Michael. “And he was a cat, thank you very much.”

  The gulls continue their chaotic dance as Mr. Coleson emerges from his office with the tired mop from the cleaning cupboard. Guttural sounds slide from the birds’ beaks, then prehistoric cries as the man sets among them. The birds throw themselves into the sky, and in the flurry of feathers that follows, Mr. Coleson is stripped of his identity, broken by broad wings, white plumage. Then the birds are whisked away into the wind and Mr. Coleson reappears, red-faced, himself again.

  Eventually the madness subsides. Michael makes everyone tea while Felix and Maggie sneak mouthfuls of Barbados’ finest in plastic cups from the water dispenser. As he sits at his desk that afternoon, staring into the screen of his desktop monitor, Felix wonders if there is such a thing as sanity. After this afternoon, it wouldn’t surprise him to learn otherwise. Giddy from rum and the break to routine, he spends the last half hour of the day suppressing laughter behind his hands.

  Chapter Four

  After work, Felix meets Sam at the memorial and they wander down to East Street together. The café sits near the end of a side-street. The building itself is unassuming, built of crumbling grey brick beneath an off-beige canopy. Two metal garden chairs and a table litter the front, wet with the kiss of recent rain. A half-finished drink is abandoned on the table, leftover froth spilling like sea-foam onto the saucer beneath.

  Felix holds the door while Sam moves inside. If the shop front looks old, with its crumbling brick and washed-out overhang, the inside is its match; dated, archaic, “a corpse from the nineties,” Sam had called it, when they first found the place. Where the competition has modernised with the turning decades, ground into sleek, gaudy coffee-producing machines, the high street equivalents of the very same espresso-makers that are their steaming hearts, this one has not. Felix understands Sam’s sentiments, but he can’t deny a certain charm about the place, which revels quietly in its antiquity while the rest of the city does nothing but scream.

  Sam finds a seat among the dated décor while Felix approaches the counter. There are many seats to choose from. Two tiny Asian women sip at their drinks by the windows. In one corner an old man in a black raincoat seems to have fallen asleep. A solitary waitress sits behind the till, reading a slim paperback.

  Service is slow. Felix can’t make out what she is reading, but he assumes it is a good book. When he returns, two cups and saucers rattle in his hands. Perching on a stool opposite Sam, he slides one of the coffees towards him.

  “Enjoy,” he says, and means it. “I’ve ordered some food, too.”

  “You shouldn’t have…”

  “It’s done,” says Felix.

  “God bless you. He’s watching over you.”

  “Not all the time, I hope.”

  “Always.” Sam stops talking for long enough to inhale a mouthful of black coffee. Some of it spills from his lips, following the channels of his face to his chin.

  “Steady on.”

  “Asbestos lips. They don’t call me Thirsty for nothing!”

  “People call you that?”

  “A name’s a name.” He wipes down his face on a napkin, the tissue darkening in his hands. “We all need one.”

  They talk easily, as two men who have escaped the world are free to do. Mostly it is Sam who speaks. Felix doesn’t mind. He enjoys listening. The waitress appears from behind the counter with two toasties on oval plates, and they busy themselves with mouthfuls of hot ham and melted cheese.

  “I’ve been giving the shelter a second chance. Just the last few days. You know I wasn’t keen on it, the first time around, but it’s been cleaned up since then. I mean, as much as you could expect.”

  “I thought you said the shelter was dangerous?”

  “There’ll always be the users. But I keep out of their way. Roof’s a roof, you know? At least someone up there’s watching over me.”

  Sam drinks more, pouring coffee past his lips like it is fuel and he’s been running on empty. Heat bathes the man’s face, and Felix imagines it softening the leathery skin, bringing relief to the sunken cheeks. He realises it is these features that first urged him to speak to Sam, when they crossed paths beside the memorial last year. It is the face of those who struggle day to day against the world, or who have struggled with it and lost. There are so many people without friends, without family, with no meaning to their lives at all beyond the jobs they get up for each morning or the rent at the end of the month, and Sam does not even have these. So Felix talks with him, and sometimes takes him for food or a hot drink, because no one should be alone.

  “Who do you have, then?” asks Sam. “I have the Lord. Who watches over you?”

  “I have a friend.”

  “Just one?”

  Harriet flashes behind his eyes, staring back at him from her unspoiled face. “Yes, just one.”

  “That’s better than most, I reckon. I had friends, before. At least, I thought I did. But you can’t have friends without a life.”

  “Before?”

  “Before the bank came knocking. Before I was evicted. Before this.” He tugs at the frayed collar of his coat, then stares off into the surface of his drink.

  “You have a life, Sam.”

  “No, not a life that matters. Not anymore.”

  For a moment, it seems as though Sam is going to change the subject. He grins shakily over his china cup. The expression doesn’t last.

  “You’ll never hate yourself more than when you wake up one morning in the doorwa
y of a shop. You’re cold. Your back aches, maybe your neck. Most mornings you can’t feel your fingers. You’re sitting on a doorstep under an overcast sky and you realise you’re alone.”

  “You’re not alone.”

  “I am. I was. No one wanted to know and I didn’t want them to. I was ashamed, and angry. I wanted to break apart, to be plucked away by the angels, taken with them into the sky…”

  Every evening with Sam is the same. He starts out quiet, contemplative, perhaps just numb from days and nights spent in the cold. Sometimes, Felix knows, he finds shelter, but more often than not he is stuck sleeping on the streets. As the evening progresses he grows bolder, more animated; alive with caffeine and, Felix presumes, the pleasure of companionship. Then he falls back on himself. And each time they meet, Felix promises himself it will be the last time; that he cannot bear to see Sam again, until he next sees him around town and he realises it is worse not to see him, and they go for another drink.

  Eventually Sam tires, or runs out of things to say, and they make their separate ways back through the city. The streets are quiet but there are still people walking through them. There are always people. Nowhere knows the knock of shoes, the gasp of breath, the beating of the human heart like cities, which are made up of these things as much as they are collections of buildings linked by street names and labyrinthine roads. It is at once familiar to Felix and strange, so different from the town where he was born and spent the first half of his life.

  He hasn’t thought about home for a long time. It is peculiar that he should be remembering it now. His memories are not especially unpleasant, but he holds no fondness for the town where he grew up. Crows Hill was a conservative place, preoccupied with heritage and tradition. It still is, to the best of his knowledge. The winter floods were among the most exciting things to happen each year; wild days spent wading through the fields with Harriet.

  People remember things that they love or hate. The rest smudges, as easily as the city when rain falls. Some days he cannot distinguish between the listless sea and the grey sky above it; Southampton’s streets, stretching into the water, the clouds.

  Chapter Five

  The bar shines across the waterfront that Friday, orange and inviting in the night. As Felix approaches the building, he notices how the light catches the sea, or perhaps it is the sea that catches the light; at once dark and glassy but bright, as though burning from beneath.

  Even for the weekend, the bar seems busy. Crowds have formed the length of the counter, and all of the sofas are occupied. Bodies made thin by modern life cut to the front with savage jabs from bony shoulders pressing through their clothes. Mouths grow wide when pressed to glass, desperate to drink, to speak, to scream a word or two after five days of bitten tongues and muted minds. Figures flicker in his vision; slim shapes, bent silhouettes with blemished skin and feathered arms. When Felix turns to face them, they are gone.

  Pressing through the groups of people, he struggles closer to the bar. It is several minutes before he manages to find Michael, sitting patiently at the counter.

  “Always early,” he says, reaching over his friend’s shoulder to retrieve a waiting drink. Tonight the drinks are tall and slender, filled with bright blue liquid and crushed ice. He knows Blue Lagoon when he sees it.

  “Always late,” replies Michael. They both drink deep from the awkward glasses, only stopping when their lips are numb with cold. “I thought you might have bailed on me this evening.”

  “Really?”

  “Your time-keeping is terrible.” He crunches on a mouthful of blue slush. “A few more minutes and your drink would’ve found a new home.”

  “I’m sure it would have,” murmurs Felix, smiling. Already he can feel the alcohol heating his throat, flooding his body with warmth. The weight of the week begins lifting from his shoulders when he notices a third drink at the bar. “Didn’t want to order me another, while you were at it?”

  “What? Oh, that’s Helen’s.”

  “Helen?”

  A slender hand finds his shoulder. It squeezes, then slides down the smooth lapel. “You must be Felix!”

  For a moment it is as though the weight of the week comes crashing back down on top of him. Half-turning, he stares dumbly into the face of a woman. She smiles back at him.

  “Helen, Felix,” says Michael. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, sorry,” he says, “the ice. Numb mouth. I just wasn’t… Michael didn’t mention you were joining us.”

  “Did too!”

  “Charming,” she says, smiling deeper. Moving beside Michael, she plants a kiss on his lips. “Sorry I’m late. It’s horrible out there.”

  “Is the angel coming?” says Michael.

  “Yes,” she replies, looking past Felix to the crowds.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, she’s coming. Angela,” she says, waving, “over here.”

  A woman breaks from the crowd and moves towards them. As she draws nearer, Felix recognises her instantly. Matted feathers hang beneath her forearms, her bare skin pale as bone where it shines beneath the lights. Time seems to slow as he watches her advancing through the dancers, knowing – hoping – he is dreaming, and that if he is not, there is nothing he can do against this modern myth, this ancient art: the angel, resurrected by the sea, the rain, the birds in the night sky –

  “Felix?”

  He returns to the room and the faces in front of him.

  “I… Sorry, yes.” He shakes the dregs of his drink. “Drunk.”

  Introductions are made by the bar. Helen is twenty-six and works in retail, managing a newly-opened clothes outlet in Bedford Place. She has always lived in Southampton but would like to move to Spain when she is able, or somewhere in Italy; anywhere, in fact, warmer and drier than here. Standing by the taps in her black dress she seems familiar, and Felix feels sure he has met her before, last week or the Friday before that.

  In the same breath, she tells Felix about late shifts, bank holidays, incompetent staff and a dozen other banal things that he has heard a hundred times before from as many similar faces. He nods, and smiles, and sucks loudly on his straw until she realises his glass is empty and moves away to buy a second round.

  “It’s heaving in here,” says Michael, beside him.

  “Almost too busy, tonight. A pub would be a nice change of place right about now.”

  “That’s not such a bad idea. Next weekend.”

  “I think everyone has the same idea,” says Angela, finishing her own drink. “Rushing out on Friday night, to drink and dance –”

  “– by the sea,” says Michael with her. They both look at each other and laugh easily. “You know, Angela, Felix has this theory, about the sea.”

  “I do?”

  “You do,” he says. “Remember?”

  “Please, remind me.”

  Finishing his own drink, Michael takes their glasses and places them on the bar. “You said that this is why people come here, time and time again. Not just for the drinks but for the sea and the night sky. For the breath of the ocean on their faces.”

  “That’s beautiful,” says Angela. “Really, it is.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you write?”

  “No. I used to, a little poetry. But not anymore.”

  “I didn’t know that,” says Michael.

  “We’re all full of surprises this evening.”

  Helen returns with a tray of cocktails and shot glasses. They drink Sex on the Beach, then more Lagoons, followed by a round of Dark ‘N’ Stormy, and another, until Felix cannot distinguish between the storm in his glass and the one that has broken outside, lashing the smoking terrace and stirring the sea, waves leaping like orange flames against the waterfront, illuminated and terrible by the light of the bar, where inside people drink and dance and for a few hours dream of a little life with their feet.

  He doesn’t remember leaving the club, or getting home, but it is still night when he wakes in h
is bed to a tapping sound. Slowly his eyes become accustomed to the dark. With his head on the pillow he can just make out his surroundings. The moon catches the tip of his wardrobe mirror, casting light on the skeletal frame of the clothes horse. His shirt and jeans are strewn across the floor. A flicker of white draws his eyes upwards, to where a gull has settled on his windowsill. The bird is thin, its plumage pale in the moonlight. He doesn’t know how long it has been standing there, framed by the city behind it.

  The tapping echoes in his head, disembodied through the darkness. The storm, at least, seems to have passed, leaving in its wake a hollow calm, like an exhaled breath. Rising, he drifts silently down the hallway. In his sleepy state he is reminded of survivors, trapped in a sunken ship, spelling out their lives in Morse Code against the metallic hull of their tomb.

  For a moment he stares around, his eyesight dulled by sleep. It is still night, or early morning. He cannot remember what time he went to bed and did not think to check his bedside clock.

  He examines his surroundings in the darkness. The shapes are familiar; the bookcase to his left, the drinks cabinet by the wall, the television and the plastic plant beside it. To his right he sees a pool of moonlight, capt-ured in the clear glass table-top. The curtains are drawn but a sliver of light slips between them, near the ceiling.

  The darkness alters things, so that they are not what they seem. He imagines himself in the ruins of the room, sunk deep beneath the sea, and everything around him rotten, green with growth. He is sure he has dreamed as much, before. Automatically he wades through the dark towards the curtains. Damp, maritime smells fill his nose. As his hand reaches for the fabric, he wonders what he will see. Nine floors above Queen’s Park, there is no way a person has reached his balcony. He imagines one of the garden chairs being blown by the wind against the glass.

  He tugs the curtains, draws them back, and finds the balcony empty.

  Confusion fills his mind. He studies the balcony dumbly; the wooden railings, the table and chairs, an empty wine bottle, glass glinting in the moonlight and behind it a vast backdrop of blackness, which is the sea and the night. Both are filled with tiny stars and, he thinks, if he looks closely, a small ship, pale against the darkness. He wonders what he is doing there, standing in the cold, with only his thin cotton pyjamas for protection. Turning from the balcony, he returns to his bedroom.