Featherbones Page 6

  Sam sinks from his knees to the pavement. Felix remains with him for the best part of the night, propped up against the low wall while the shadows ebb around them. Occasionally a car speeds past, more often than not a taxi, appearing as though from the darkness as it ferries men and women through the city. Those who do not see fit to need a lift stagger down the road in their twos and threes, laughing as the night-time tide pulls them along, first towards the city centre, then, later on, home again. Eventually even they diminish.

  He can’t have closed his eyes for more than a few seconds, yet when he opens them again, Sam is gone. Nothing around him stirs; not East Park, not the distant high street, not even the black sky. In this moment, he might be utterly alone in the city, except for the angel, standing behind him at her plinth, and the fat gull on her arm.

  Chapter Nine

  Felix can't remember the last time he walked the city so early on a Sunday. He doubts he has done so since his student days; when he approached the morning from the other side, the night beforehand. Sitting outside the Church of Holy Waters, he waits for the service to finish. He resists the urge to check his watch, as he resists most urges these days, choosing instead to perch patiently on a bench, across the road from the building where the angels make their righteous roosts.

  If it is a long time since he was last awake this early on a Sunday, it is longer still since he has been to church. Not since leaving Crows Hill has he walked between the pews, or held a hymn sheet in his hand. Even before Harriet’s death, church was never for him. He hadn’t known that as a boy, of course. His father was a devout traditionalist, if not a devout Christian, and his father’s word was law in Crows Hill, where the skies were blue, the buildings old and nothing ever changed.

  It took the parish many months to correct the terrible damage wrought to their church by the flood waters, thirteen years ago. The church took the longest to repair for funds had to be raised and heritage recreated, although there was no lack of generous sponsorship from the townsfolk, who wanted only for routine to return and things to become as they once were again. Felix remembers the ruin, as he remembered it whenever he had wandered the churchyard after the service. The stained glass was amongst the most costly of the work, where branches and furniture had swept through the centuries-old designs, seconded only by the statues in the churchyard, which needed returning to their pedestals. As the waters had slowly drained, the missing angels emerged in various places across town, no doubt dragged there by the flood waters, their smiling faces black with soil and slime.

  When Sunday Service ends and the church empties, he enters Holy Waters. Walking quickly through the foyer, where several people are still talking among each other, he moves into the body of the church. As he passes through the doors, he slows, coming to a standstill.

  The room is vast, seeming more so for its emptiness. Figures decorate the ceiling in beautiful intricacy; depictions from The Book of Sin brought to life in vivid brush-stroke. Stern-faced men smite the Sinful Courts to the corner of the masterpiece, where they cower in darkness and shadow. Reverence hangs in the air; thick, like incense or a guilty conscience, and dust coats the armaments, visible as tiny motes on the light through the stained-glass windows. More depictions of Sin dance in the windows, monstrous stained-glass images, bright and bloody with colour. They seem to snarl with incandescence as he enters.

  The light, the colour, the dark, dusty shadows weigh down on him as he advances down the aisle. He walks quickly, looking neither left nor right, and is relieved when he finally reaches the front. He can’t remember what they used to call this part of the church. It has been too long since he last recalled such terminology. He does remember the altar, though; a dominant presence at the head of the church, and the pulpit to the side, from where God’s voice might be heard again, if he only listens hard enough, and perhaps other voices too, singing to him through the ages, though they could just belong to the wind, screaming outside.

  ***

  Tall figures towered over Felix; the black-uniformed shapes of the grown-ups, and above them the hallowed heights of Crows Hill’s church. He had never studied the rafters before, or wandered through the pews as he did now. His father guided him to a seat. The wooden benches felt hard against his thirteen-year-old skin, and smelled of strong polish, like the sort he had been taught to use on his shoes.

  Crossing his hands over his chest, he stared down at his smartly-pressed trousers and his black suit-jacket. The jacket felt smooth against his hands, and he grasped it tightly, as though anchoring himself to here, to now. He had dressed smartly lots of times before. His father hardly let him out the house without ensuring he looked his best. But this time it felt different.

  Harriet wouldn’t have cared if he was dressed-up or not. She was dirty knees and muddy hair and blades of grass stuck to her shoes. She was running down the corridor and climbing trees and laughing so hard your voice carried right through the churchyard and you fell over with tears in your eyes. This wasn’t her; rows of people, sitting, sobbing, buttoned-up, faces down.

  Slowly the pews filled with people, until he was surrounded by a sea of black clothing. Music played from near the pulpit; a weak, tinny sound. He recognised the song as one of Harriet’s favourites, as though she could hear it now, as though she could hear anything anymore. Perhaps that is why they played the music here. Perhaps this wasn’t for God but for Harriet and the others, so many others who had gone before her over the years, over the world, more than he had ever considered before, alive then gone with nothing to show for themselves but a headstone and no guarantee of anything beyond death but that which the angels promised, the same angels who presided over the churchyard, watching the procession from the alcoves.

  A friend or relative behind Felix still sobbed, but most of the assembly was silent. His father was sitting beside him, but he didn’t turn, didn’t look; didn’t want his father to see the tears running down his face. He reached out instead, feeling the smooth wood of the bench, the dry paper of a hymn sheet.

  He wanted to tell them about the morning in choir practice, when Matthew Petty had stolen his hymn sheet, and Harriet and he had spoken for the first time. He wanted to read the poem that Dr. Moore had persuaded him to write. He wanted to talk about his Classics class, where he realised how beautiful Harriet was, and how much she meant to him. More than anything he wanted to tell them about the graveyard, not ten metres from where they were sitting; about running in the rain and laughing and chasing Harriet between the headstones, beneath the smiling faces of the angels.

  Felix’s fingers clenched his jacket. Heat pressed against his chest and down his arms, which he realised were shaking. He wished he could shout, as loud as his lungs would let him, over and over until he couldn’t breathe to speak, and run, and cry until all he could do was laugh. Instead he was forced to sit, as still as the statues in the alcoves, and be silent. The vicar’s words faded out of meaning, and Crows Hill with them. Everything around Felix grew grey and mute, so that only he was left behind.

  Harriet’s parents were the next to speak, standing together before the congregation. Felix had not seen her parents properly before, and was surprised at how much she had looked like her mother.

  Mr. Green didn’t speak for very long. When he did try to talk, his voice was thick and broken. Beside him, Harriet’s mother looked thin and drawn-out, but when she spoke she remained strong, and Felix found himself remembering Harriet; the way she floated face down in the water, the way her arms and legs spread out, like she was seeing into the depths, noticing them, as she had noticed so much in life. He remembered the coldness of the rain against his skin, the blackness of the sky and the water, the statues, their faces flashing, smiling in the lightning, then mouths wide, screaming, others missing from their stands, taken to the waters, the clouds, in celebration of the savagery, the storm-tossed skies –

  Mrs. Green said everything that her husband had been unable to, and it was not long before the room fi
lled with the sound of upset. The coffin was carried away and everyone followed after it, everyone except Felix, who stayed at the front, and his father, standing beside him.

  Chapter Ten

  Felix doesn’t remember leaving the Church of Holy Waters, or retracing his steps through the streets. He does remember the overcast sky outside; darkness that seemed to spill into the city below, diluting everything with shades of grey and shadow. He remembers the lightning, illuminating the church’s crumbling walls, the Sins that seemed to watch him, grinning monstrously in the window glass, and the sound of the city, like he has never heard it before. There were no distinct noises of their own, only an orchestra of chaos, at once screams and shouts and the roar of traffic and the sea, crashing inside his head: this, God’s earth, a chorus of cries.

  At his flat, he finds wine in the refrigerator. Returning to his post on the balcony, he takes a swig, swilling the liquid around his mouth, allowing it to coat his tongue and teeth. Pouring the rest of the wine into a glass, he places the empty bottle on the table.

  For several minutes he does nothing but sits and stares out over the sea. His flat overlooks one of the city’s various dock gates, where cruise ships come to spew their living cargo onto land. There are no cruise ships today. There is only Felix and the birds that have been haunting his thoughts.

  The cries of the gulls ring in his ears, reminding him of Odysseus, Tiresias, Witch-Circe and the Sirens. How long ago school seems now, how uninteresting it seemed then. He had hated learning, confined to desks and chairs. Still, the knowledge learned there seems to have stuck, or if not knowledge then awareness, inspired by those epics.

  ***

  They studied classics with Mr. Stuart in the corridor down the east wing. Felix’s twelve-year-old mind did not think schools should have wings. They were the make-up of birds and Sirens and Harriet Green, who was arguably both. From the light of the overhead projector, he traced the myriad particles of dust, which floated on the air like silt in muddied waters. The weight of the classroom washed over him like those same waters, stifling his breath until he thought he might never taste fresh air again. This was his lasting impression of his time at school, through which he was dragged, year by year, like a pebble across the riverbed.

  Harriet excited him in ways he had never before known, or been able to relate, until he learned one day of Odysseus and the Sirens. Where the other girls were beginning to fill out, Harriet had a slender, almost boyish figure. Felix did not know many details surrounding this, except that she was beautiful.

  “Tell me, Felix,” said Mr. Stuart, “tell me what the Sirens were.”

  The classroom in which they sat was dark and stank of decay. Mr. Stuart had been using the overhead projector again – one of his favourite teaching tools – and the smell of burned dust hovered on the air. The smell infused the corridor, the whole school even; an ancient preparatory establishment, built on traditions no less ancient or preparatory.

  “Odysseus encountered them on his Odyssey, sir.”

  “Yes, that much is given, Felix. But what actually were they?”

  He did not know the answer because he hadn’t finished his prep. Instead he had gone with Harriet to the churchyard near the Crowleys’ farm. Mr. Stuart seemed to feel he was better than Felix because he was grown-up and well-educated but he had never loved anyone like Felix loved Harriet. Even Felix’s father had loved his mother. Mr. Stuart was alone in the world, so could not comprehend Felix’s feelings for the girl sitting in the chair beside his.

  When Felix first spoke to Harriet, before hymn practice one Sunday morning, she offered to share her verse sheet with him. The hall was vast, and uneasy with the stressed sounds of old wood. Winged statues watched them from the alcoves. On that day he noticed none of this, only the quickness of his breath, the quiet of the hall, the closeness of the girl on his right.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Hello.”

  “Matthew Petty’s taken your hymn sheet. I saw him do it, the little pest. Would you like to share?”

  He told her he would. He had never stood so close to Harriet before. She had a peculiar smell that he couldn’t then identify, but was dull and faintly earthy. Her hand, which grasped one side of the hymn sheet, was smooth and delicate-looking. He thought his own looked pale beside hers, and sought to hide most of it behind the paper.

  Then she had sung. Oh, how she had sung! He did not look her in the eyes for the entire practice, but thanked her afterwards before running off to the playground, red-cheeked and breathless, after the other boys.

  ***

  He stands listening to the gulls until his clothes are soaked, his skin cold; wet with rain. Their screams are wild and he understands Odysseus’ angst, or that of the Sirens. In that moment he wants to write of the gulls, to sing of them, to dance through the skies with them, except he can do none of these things very well. He imagines he is winged and among them; the wind in his feathers, cold rain and screams on his lips.

  He contemplates throwing his phone over the balcony. The ground is nine floors below, and the phone would be obliterated. He pictures the moment of impact in slow-motion; the thin, black case as it cracks against the pavement, the sound of destruction, short and immediate as a breaking egg, or life itself, shattering into a hundred shards against the unforgiving ground.

  His hand slips into his pocket. For a moment temp-tation spurs him to hold the mobile over the railings, arm outstretched; as supplicant as the statue in East Park.

  The silver skies match the silver seas, which shudder underneath, the tips of their waves shivering and white. Withdrawing his outstretched arm from the railing, he studies his hands. They are the same hands that held Harriet’s, and they are not. Now they hold wine bottles, and sometimes a desktop mouse, and not much else. The life he has lived is legible in their creases; a callus here, where he has worn down his skin, a wrinkle there, when another year slipped past him. The fingers of his free hand grip the railing of the balcony. The wood is wet but flaky, where rainfall has worn through the polish. He rubs the railing so that a little more crumbles free. It is carried off by the wind, and some of Felix with it.

  He realises he is still holding his phone. With numb fingers he files through his contacts. It is not a long list. It has never been a long list.

  “Michael?”

  “Hello, trouble. To what do I owe this honour?”

  “You said it would be all right.”

  “You didn’t… Felix?”

  “It’s not all right. I need to talk to someone.”

  “Yes, of course. Are you at home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait there for me. Just wait.”

  The gulls are still screaming. He fancies they are speaking to him. “The angels,” they scream, “the angels are coming. Jump, Felix. Jump from the balcony and fly with us.” A deep, singular terror tightens his chest, not at the prospect of plummeting, but that the thought had crossed his mind at all. Then he prefers that the birds are not speaking, incapable of such a complex thing, content to scream into the wind.

  Chapter Eleven

  Felix is still sitting, shivering, on the balcony when Michael finds him. It seems only seconds since they spoke on the phone. They go inside together, and he changes into a dry set of clothes while Michael makes them both a drink. He isn’t sure whether drinking is a good idea or not, but he takes the glass anyway. Michael is only trying to help.

  He knows he is warm again, and dry, because the glass feels cold in his hand. It is black with cola, and smells of rum. The first sip makes him wince. So does the second. By the third sip, he is not thinking about the taste, or anything at all except the night Harriet drowned. He takes a seat beside Michael on the sofa.

  “Come on, then,” says Michael, lifting his glass to his lips, “what’s brought this on?”

  “I went to church.”

  Michael splutters into his drink. “Well, that would do it.”

  “I thought
it might help.”

  “I’m not sure it’s working.”

  He tells Michael about Crows Hill, and how his memories of the town have been coming back to him. He tells him about all the moments that are surfacing in his head and floating there, like the bubbles in their drinks. He tells him about the pain inside, and how he thought he had escaped it when he escaped Crows Hill, but that it is still there, and has been all along, growing inside him.

  “I’m seeing things,” he says, as they are finishing their drinks. His tongue feels thick, mouth sticky with a coating of cola. “The angel, from the memorial at East Park. And Harriet. Her face.”

  “Seeing things?”

  “Dreaming, I suppose. But I’m awake.”

  For a long moment, Michael is silent. Gull song fills the void; long, lilting sounds from outside the balcony. Felix watches his friend, who is studying the shining black surface of his drink, and wonders what his eyes see there, bobbing in the blackness.

  “What was she like?”

  “She was brave. Wild. Careless, in that way some children are.”

  “No, what was she like?”

  “I think she was lonely.”

  Putting his drink to one side by his feet, Michael swoops forward. He grasps Felix by the thigh. His fingers are firm where they latch onto him. His breath is sugary and cold.

  “Eight years and counting. A lot of this is new to me, but I know you. I know you enjoy the job about as much as I do. I know five years is too long to be sitting at a desk. You expected more from life. I know because I expected more too. And we’ll find it. We will. In the meantime, we need to keep going. That’s all anyone can do. Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember what you said before, about the bar? You said ‘This is why people come here, time and time again. Not just for the drinks but for the sea and the night sky.’”