Featherbones Read online

  The gull is still standing at the window. Behind it, Southampton shimmers in the darkness. His curtains are not drawn, accounting for the light: apartment blocks, bedroom windows and street lamps shining like the tips of deep-sea anemones in the night. He isn’t sure of what time he got in, or when he left the bar, or anything beyond the room into which he has woken; the few square metres of the city that for five-hundred pounds a month he calls his own. It is at once expensive and a small price to pay for the flat that has become his home. There is nowhere else he knows like these walls, except perhaps those of the bar where he has spent the evening with Michael, and most Friday nights before that for as long as he can remember.

  It occurs to him that he can still hear the tapping. He studies his room again, panning the clothes horse, the window, the wardrobe, doubting whether he is even awake and not still trapped in the throes of a dream. Then, almost helplessly he turns back to the window, and the bird standing on the sill.

  Something is wrong with its face. With the cityscape behind, it is not instantly obvious, but he has the gradual impression of a gargoyle, glaring through the glass. Slowly his eyesight adjusts, the bird’s features emerging from the gloom: smooth skin, fat cheeks, plump lips and two wide, unblinking eyes.

  For several seconds it does nothing but stare back at him; a spectre of the city or the sea made real by the moonlight on its back. The bird shuffles, shivers, the tips of its wings tapping quietly against the glass. Then its mouth slides open and, still staring, it cries with the voice of a small child.

  Chapter Six

  Rain patters against Felix’s bedroom window. He buries his head beneath his pillow, as though it is that easy to escape the sound, as though it is that easy to escape anything. In this half-asleep state his dream comes back to him; images rolling, crashing through his mind.

  Hesitantly he wanders through his flat. As he does so he studies his surroundings: the hallway, the kitchen, the main room, as though expecting them to have changed, or for something to be waiting, behind a door or at a window. In the bathroom his reflection stares, pale-faced, back at him. On the balcony he finds a bottle where he had left it, weighing down the post. Rain has reduced the letters to sodden pulp. He wonders if he is going mad, or if he has gone mad already. It has been a long week.

  “It’s been a long five years,” he says, as if speaking will undo the strangeness.

  Opening the balcony door, he steps outside. Gull cries stretch into one sound, marrying with those of other birds. The city is made up of them. Oystercatchers potter down Woolston Beach, beaks training on insects and small crabs in the shingle. In October, Brent geese cut through the clouds like black-fletched arrows, following millennia-old migration routes from Siberia. Year out, cormorants hold court above the city, made fat and sleek on the off-cuts of those living below. He stands, their audience, while the smell of the sea fills his nose, and with it the memory of the voice from his dream; the last sound to leave Harriet’s mouth, the night she drowned.

  Rain had fallen for almost a week over Crows Hill when the floodgate near Burford broke. Sodden soil swept towards the town in a rippling black torrent. It spilled under the fencing that marked the Crowleys’ farmstead before reaching Crows Hill Church. Statues littered the churchyard; grey figures staring skyward as the waters rushed around their robes and through the surrounding stone walls. The town was unprepared for the storm. The floodgate that kept them safe had never broken before. Not wood or stone or stained-glass window could protect them against the blackness, which poured through every gap and made gaps where there were none.

  He remembers the smell, which first roused him from bed. It was a rank aroma; moist and earthy. Leaving his bedroom, he had followed the stench of soil through the house. It led him downstairs. Water met his ankles at the bottom of the stairs. He remembers lights flickering across the town. Screams followed them, and shouts, and moans that rose deep from inside people’s chests; the kinds of sounds made when a person’s world is washed away and they can do nothing but roar.

  The Crowleys, he had later learned, had paddled through their kitchen, gathering up photograph frames and family heirlooms. Mrs. Grantham, who ran the post office in the town centre, helped drag children to safety in her first-floor quarters. Families desperately tried to repel the water from their homes, flinging it back with buckets and bowls.

  He was thirteen then, too young for what had happened. He wished so hard for Harriet to come back. But there were no doctors capable of that miracle, no angels strong enough to save his friend, no God, only his dreams and his memories and horrible things that were bits of both, suffused with smells and sounds like sodden soil, slippery grass and the groan of thunder in his head; a canvas, sagging from the weight of that night, swelling, bursting, stitched back together by Dr. Moore, his mind a makeshift Shelley monster –

  His weekend is lost worrying about the dream. As a boy, he had dreams often. His father called them night terrors. When he told his father that he sometimes experienced them in the day too, he arranged for Felix to see a psychiatrist, concerned for Felix’s well-being in that way he was concerned for anything that might make his son different from the other boys.

  “Rough weekend?” says Michael, when the pair of them slip outside for a cigarette before lunch on Monday. They are standing in an alley, by their offices on London Road. Only Michael is smoking. Felix has joined him for company and to escape the confines of his desk. He breathes in; deep lungfuls of the sea and the sky, and not a little smoke.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “Thank you for the phone calls on Saturday morning, too. I wasn’t busy with Helen at all.”

  “I think I’m having dreams again.”

  Stiffening, Michael watches him over his cigarette. “Are you all right?”

  Felix hasn’t told anyone about his childhood since leaving Crows Hill except for Michael; the past made more palatable by beer and music and the intimate glow of bar light. It was enough, at university, that he was there; to study and laugh and live in a way he had not lived before. The details of his past up to that point were largely private, and his own.

  He had forgotten how difficult school had been. If he sensed that he was different from the other boys and girls at St. Barnaby’s, they sensed it too. He almost wished sometimes that they would strike him, that they would rise to more than name-calling, so that he might feel something, even if it was only pain. Some nights it was all he dreamed about, until he woke the next morning, dreams scattering from his head, and remembered he was alone again.

  ***

  The boys flocked to the locker room, their cheeks red and wild from the cold. The room filled with the flutter of sleeves as they began to get changed. Socks grew long where they were pulled from toes; longer and longer until they tore from ankles, snapping like synthetic sinew through the air. It was early afternoon and the autumn wind was playing with the tree outside the window. Red leaves pressed like outstretched hands against the opaque glass.

  Felix paused, his sweatshirt around his shoulders, to study the scarlet palm-prints. Their redness reminded him of other things: burst berries, split lips, the colour of his cheeks when he played outside in the cold. He stared intently for several seconds, the world around him fading beneath the brightness of the leaves. Then he lost himself once more in his sweatshirt.

  Around him, the other boys pranced and preened. Sometimes their faces were expressive, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Other times, it seemed, they barely had faces at all. One studied himself in the mirror above the sink, moving left, then right, his reflection doing likewise in the glass. From where Felix stood there was no nose, no mouth, no face that could be seen, but he imagined a sharp beak and two unblinking eyes in their place. He knew that beak. He had felt it before, or one like it, and the ceaseless peck of its words.

  Shouts ricocheted from the locker room walls. When they reached the communal showers they distorted, in that way all sounds did when they bounced from bathroom
tiles. He heard jubilation in those sounds, and taunts, and mimicry; so much mimicry.

  The shrieks escalated, grew shrill. He stepped back to his locker, which was already open, and shielded himself behind the metal door as the boys flew into a flurry of movement. His heart rattled, a cage of frightened love-birds in his chest.

  One of the boys fell into his locker, knocking the door into Felix’s face. He felt pain, where the door struck his nose. He sank to the floor. The rich metal-taste of red filled his mouth.

  Blackness encroached on his vision, then whiteness, growing from the strip bulbs above. The boys circled overhead, beaks clacking, and he heard malice. He heard stupidity and joy and inconsideration. If there was an apology, he couldn’t hear that. He didn’t think there was.

  Then they swarmed from the locker room, the corridor ringing with their shrieks. He was left alone, with the grit between his toes, the slap of scarlet at the window and the taste of the colour in his mouth.

  ***

  “It’s this world, this life,” says Michael carefully. “It nurtures dreams, like a force of nature. The ones who don’t dream don’t stand a chance.”

  “Ever the philosophy student.”

  Michael shrugs inside his coat. He glances from his cigarette to Felix, then back again, studying the small stick between his fingers. “An ocean of wisdom, me. Life’s too short to worry. Eat, drink and be merry, make every second count and all that jargon.”

  “Did you learn that in a lecture?”

  “Second year. ‘And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.’ Go mad, you’ll probably have a better time of it.”

  They stand outside their offices for as long as possible. Michael cuts a convincing figure, lounging against the wall, cigarette in one hand, the other in his pocket. A mixture of admiration and envy floods through Felix. His friend makes living look effortless. He remembers the first time they met, nearly eight years ago, at the café on campus. It was a morning not unlike this one. Heavy-eyed, he had ordered a coffee from the man behind the counter. The drink looked good. He said as much. The sweet scent of syrup filled his nose, the rich roasted flavour of the bean coating his mouth and tongue.

  When he looks back to that morning, he isn’t sure whether they spoke or not, beyond the request for coffee. It might have been the next time, or the one following that. Turning to leave, that first morning, he had noticed the name badge, pinned to the man’s polo shirt. The same was scrawled in marker-pen, down the side of the tall paper cup.

  There were many coffees in the ensuing months. He became accustomed to his morning fix of caffeine and the man who made his drinks. They drank together, stronger drinks than coffee, in less reputable places filled with laughter and the thin smog of cigarette smoke. Another time they caught a train to a gig for a band they both liked. The night Michael’s girlfriend, Rachel, left him, Felix was a phone call away. They walked through the city’s parks for three hours, not once mentioning her name. Felix felt much better; for the man at the end of the phone and by his side in the dark.

  Chapter Seven

  The White Ship is at the far end of Portswood, an hour’s walk from the city centre. There was a time, years ago, when not a night would go by without Felix and Michael ending up in one pub or another. Their heads foggy with drink, they would sit and talk, or else sip quietly while they melted under the twang of acoustic strings, a guitar solo or perhaps the muddy sound of a man or woman giving voice to love, life, heartbreak and other human things made honest by the breath in their lungs. Nothing sheds ghosts like good drink and a little company.

  Before they leave, they linger a while on Felix’s balcony. Conversation turns quickly to the evening ahead. It is a long time since they have made plans to drink midweek, but Thursday is the White Ship’s live music night, and Michael had insisted. While Michael talks, Felix sips from the glass in his hand, and watches the gulls gliding overhead. He imagines they are ghosts, unfettered by the promise of a night out, released, screaming, back to the wind.

  The pair leaves in good time from Felix’s flat. Life is enough of a rush without having to worry about being late outside of work. Besides, Felix likes walking, or the simple companionship that comes from walking with someone, and sometimes talking.

  “It’s been years,” says Michael as they turn from London Road. Taking a side-street, they emerge at the bottom of Bevois Valley. Michael’s face seems more severe in the evening light, shadows pooling in the hollows of his cheeks and beneath his eyes. He licks his lips, hungry for the night ahead. “I hope they’re as good as the last time.”

  “I’m surprised you can remember them after so long.”

  “You don’t just forget a good sound. Haven’t you had that? When the music stays with you beneath your skin? I just hope they haven’t lost it.”

  This end of Portswood slumps like so much broken brick into the road. They move past shop windows plastered with newspapers, kerbs littered with soft pizza boxes and the unmistakable smell of fried food; onions, garlic, peppers and indistinct meat. They pass a Sikh temple, then a car dealership and an Aldi supermarket. Trolleys line one side of the store, and industrial waste bins, around which crowds a flock of pigeons.

  “Do you remember,” says Felix, as they advance towards the birds, “when we used to think they served pigeon at that place across the road?”

  “We were partial to a little pigeon in the evenings.”

  “You were partial to a little something in the evenings.”

  A vague smile crosses Michael’s face. “I still am.”

  The birds scatter as they approach. Felix feels the displaced air against his face, hears the rustle of their feathers in his ears. His world fractures beneath the buffeting of their wings. Then they are gone, replaced by twilight, tarmac and the laughter of children somewhere nearby.

  The pub welcomes them with the casual ease of an old friend. It is dark inside, lit by firelight and the few dim lamps dotted around tables and the bar. They are far enough into Portswood that the student patronage does not dominate the crowd. Men and women of all sorts make up the faces in their midst. Felix sees bright eyes and rosy cheeks, coiffed hair and hair that looks like it could use a wash, vests, jumpers, the glitter of rings and gold bracelets in the firelight. In one corner, the band is setting up.

  “It’s good to be back,” says Michael, and Felix has to agree with him. The years between now and their last visit already seem to be diminishing. Coils of knotted rope still hang from the walls, alongside framed paintings of old ships long lost at sea. And as the years shrink away, lifting from his shoulders and chest, he draws what feels like the first honest breath that week.

  “Like we never left.”

  “You old romantic, you.”

  Michael moves easily through the crowds. Felix follows in his wake, comfortable for the darkness and the aroma of real ale. A model replica of HMS Grace Dieu greets them at the bar, the flagship of Henry V, where it floats inside a display case on tumultuous putty waves. They order a round from a young woman with cropped hair and a broad smile before finding a corner of the room to themselves.

  The ale is rich on Felix’s tongue. Each mouthful tastes fortifying, filling his arms and head with an easy fugue. Beside him, Michael is scanning the crowds. His cheeks are slightly coloured from the long walk and perhaps the hearty drink. Foam from the ale’s head clings to his mouth.

  “It feels strange, drinking on a Thursday. Do you still want to do something tomorrow?”

  Michael finishes his mouthful before replying. The back of his hand finds his white mouth. “Tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow, as in sometime after tonight but before Saturday.”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything. You could come to mine. Or we could do something cultural for a change. There’s the Titanic museum around the corner from my place. I haven’t been there for years.”

  “Pubs are cultural. Trust you to bring up a mus
eum.”

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  “I would, except I’ve already made plans. Helen’s coming over and I’ve promised I’ll cook.”

  “You’re cooking?”

  “Apparently I’m speaking a different language here.”

  “Well, have you forewarned her?”

  “Excuse me?” Mid-mouthful, Michael swallows quickly. “I think somewhere between telling her I can cook and trying to impress her I must have forgotten.”

  “Christ. What are you going to do?”

  Michael stares at him a second longer, his eyes searching, before the indignation melts from his face. “I don’t know. I really don’t. I’ve been trying not to think about it.”

  More than once Felix notices his friend’s eyes flitting back to the bar. In profile, Michael’s face seems leaner. The man scrutinises the other patrons with the sharpness of a scalpel, as though by simply staring he might dissect flesh, muscle, bone and uncover the hot secrets of their hearts. He has dissected many hearts in the time they have known each other, and will doubtless dissect many more. Felix would give anything for such a gift; to be able to look at someone and see the truth of them, their carnal core.

  “She’s nice,” says Michael quietly.

  “Nice?”

  “Helen. We get on. I like her.”

  “That’s good to hear. For God’s sake, make sure you cook everything through.”

  The first practice notes emerge from the strings in the corner. The chords reverberate in the air, sending similar ripples through the crowds. Some people return to their seats. Most show no outward sign of hearing the sound at all, content to mingle, make conversation with their friends and family; whoever constitutes their company this evening, standing beside them in the shadows, by the bar or near the log fire.