Featherbones Read online

  “‘For the breath of the ocean on their faces.’ You remembered.”

  “Of course I remembered. Hold on to that, Felix. If it’s the only way to keep your head above the water, hold on to it. I know I will.”

  “How’s Helen?” he says absent-mindedly. Staring at his hands, he senses Michael smiling.

  “She’s good,” he replies. “Angela’s good too.”

  Releasing his grip, Michael leans back into the sofa. They both take a mouthful of their drinks. The wind breathes heavily against the glass balcony doors.

  “How long has it been?” says Michael suddenly.

  Felix doesn’t need to ask to know what he is talking about. “Two years,” he admits.

  “Two years! No wonder you’re feeling pent up. Don’t you miss it?”

  “Are we really going to have this conversation now?”

  Michael shrugs. “Now’s as good a time as any.”

  He thinks about what he is missing, about the stream of women Michael professes to sleep with; a production line of faceless bodies, shining with sweat, grasping for attention, affection, connection in a world that requires it but provides none. He thinks about the phone calls, the arguments, the birthdays and forgotten anniversaries that seem to constitute Michael’s non-working life; his colleague, Lothario, living the dream-life in Southampton city centre.

  “No,” he says. “Yes and no. It’s complicated.”

  “It’s not really, though, is it?”

  Shaking his head, he watches the last of Michael’s drink as it vanishes down his throat and wonders whether Helen really knows what Michael is like. He wonders if Michael himself knows, and if Helen would care. Mostly he wonders how Michael lives with himself day after day, and it is then that he realises why man surrounds himself with angels. It is not because the angel reminds him of Heaven or death but because she is a woman.

  An angel is a messenger of God, but a woman is His child and so much more; a mother, a daughter, a sister, an instinctively maternal being. And as much as man needs reminders of Heaven and death, he also needs woman, whichever role she might play, to keep him safe, to keep him sane, to keep him singing in the night, until his song is spent.

  It is almost dusk when Felix and Michael find themselves in East Park. The idea was Michael’s, inspired sometime around the last half-inch of the rum. The city is shrouded with dusk. Still, its sounds wash over them; the roar of traffic, the rattle of construction, voices as people flock past them through the park on their way back to wherever they call home.

  When they reach the memorial, Michael and he perch on the low wall. Huddled into his hoody, hands firmly stuffed into his pockets, Felix turns on his seat and peers up at the statue. She stares stonily overhead.

  “We’ve stopped by here before, you know.” As he speaks, Michael produces a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He proceeds to light up. “The night Rachel left me. We must have lapped East Park a dozen times. It looks different in the dark. I’ve never really noticed.”

  “Noticed what?”

  “The memorial. The little details. I suppose I’ve never really looked.”

  They sit staring at the statue, surrounded by the city-roar of traffic, the hiss of braking buses, white-noise chatter of voices, so many voices; a chorus of human sound. A woman walks past them, two screaming children in tow. Her face is red, her eyes thin, hands white where they clutch the handle of a buggy. Opposite them a slender man in a suit stops to tie his shoelace. Felix feels every ache, every strain on the stranger’s face as he stoops slowly to the ground. Sensing he is watched, perhaps, the man looks up, and Felix turns quickly away.

  “I stopped by after work one evening,” he says, only half-conscious of the words coming from his mouth. “I think it was a Friday. I was tired.”

  “Sounds like a Friday to me.” Michael’s eyes seem to smile in the fading light. “Association.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that when we see angels, we think of Heaven and death. I bet there were lots of statues at Harriet’s funeral.”

  “Yes,” he says, remembering old, stony faces, smiling at him from the alcoves. “It was a church.”

  “Exactly. The church, the graveyard and the fact that this angel is a memorial shows you’re associating these things with each other. She’s reminding you of what happened, and how it affected you. It’s normal to feel like this, Felix. Especially if you haven’t dealt with what happened.”

  Across the street, at the bus stop, a small boy in football kit plays knee-ups with an empty beer can. He watches the boy, who seems smitten with the can, as though nothing in the world matters as much as keeping it from the ground. For one fleeting moment he admires the boy, who is so focused on such a small thing. Then he pities him, for the same reason. He pities them all; every man, every woman, every boy who could be contented with something as insignificant as an empty beer can; all of them lost in this city by the sea.

  Chapter Twelve

  On Friday night, as nearly every Friday night before-hand, Felix returns to the bar at Ocean Village. Michael says that it will help, that being around other people will make him feel better. Staring into the small, oval mirror above the sink while he brushes his teeth, he realises that he does not need persuading. If he has found any relief from life in the past five years, if he has glimpsed anything of what living used to mean before graduating, it has been at the bottom of a pint glass, or else swimming in the colourful depths of a cocktail. More than anything else, he needs that relief now; to feel reality wash away, and himself with it.

  When they reach Ocean Village, they find Helen and Angela already waiting. The night is a vast, cloudless thing. They move slowly towards the bar, its warm light inviting them across the waterfront. Their footsteps echo in the dark, above which murmur their voices, and the elastic slap of the waves, soft but growing louder, as though excited by the promise of what is to come.

  “It’s not like you to be late,” says Helen, as they mount the steps leading from the waterfront. Together the four of them make one long, amorphous silhouette, framed by the lights of the bar.

  “Blame this one,” says Michael, squeezing Felix’s shoulders as he steers him through the night. “I’m always on time.”

  “Fashionably late,” adds Felix.

  “Are we in a hurry?” asks Angela, from the end of the line. “I mean, is there a rush?”

  “No rush.”

  “Then it doesn’t really matter.”

  Felix is surprised by the smile that tugs his cheeks. It occurs to him that he knows very little about the woman walking beside him. Certainly there is nothing openly offensive about her. Quite the opposite; she carries herself with a quiet confidence that he realises is quite attractive. He will make an effort to get to know her better. Not because he should, he cautions himself, but because he wants to.

  They begin the evening with a tray of Jack Rose; a sweet, syrupy cocktail that is all too easy to drink. Felix doesn’t particularly enjoy the taste, but it doesn’t last long and then they are laughing as they select a second round, fingertips tracing text across the menus. They try Moonwalk, and Midnight Dream, then a small, elegant glass of Paradise, and with each successive cocktail the bar becomes more blurry, the people less distinct around him, until he feels as though he might not be part of the room but merely observing it from an undefined point. He is all too familiar with the feeling.

  “Down in one,” he hears, from across the bar. Other voices slip into his ears, snippets of sentences, spoken then lost.

  “What a week!”

  “We’ll go tomorrow. No looking back.”

  “I hate her, but I love her more. Does that make sense?”

  The spotlights grow overhead, burning into the room, breaking apart where they hit spirit bottles, or the brightly-coloured liqueur glasses stacked behind the bar. The people, too, lose form; slowing and swaying as they move across the room, and it seems to him that their reflections move indep
endently, a second shadow-bar mirrored in the glass doors to the smoking terrace, fragments of faces, races, light and colour captured in the smoke, the glass, the vast night. He studies these faces as they ghost against the dark and cannot help but notice that all of them are smiling, laughing, grinning; expressions unencumbered with concern of any sort at all. They are happy faces, and when he sees his own reflected there, and realises that he is among them, it is all he can do not to laugh out loud. The others are laughing too, even as they take his hand and pull him into the middle of the room.

  To his left, a young woman moves against a man. Their legs press tightly together, as though slotting into place, while she shimmies slowly back and forth. Her fingers clasp tightly at his shirt, where it has slipped from out of his trousers. His hands are pressed firmly around her waist.

  Behind them, two men are clasped in an embrace. With their arms wrapped tightly around each other’s backs, they jump up and down beneath the spotlights. The men’s faces are creased; eyes closed tight, teeth clamped together, lips set into smiles stretching from one side of their faces to the other. Just then, nothing in the world matters more than these expressions.

  Through the press of people, Angela’s hands find his. The room spins out of focus behind her until she is all that is left. His heart races to its own rhythm in his chest while his feet follow Angela’s. Their palms grow hot and wet where they are joined.

  He cannot remember the last time he danced like this. He knows only the lights, the heat, the music and Angela, smiling back at him with two rows of small, pearly teeth. She is beautiful in a plain, un-made-up kind of way. The loveliness of her lashes rise and fall with her eyelids when lights scatter across her face. Her dark brown eyes glitter when the same light catches them, like the wave-tips outside. An unfamiliar heat burns in his cheeks and under his arms, causing him to smile, stir, then look down and pull away. She holds tightly onto his hand.

  Angela’s wrists seem impossibly pale. With increasing concern, his eyes chase her thin arms to her body, naked and goose-pimpled with quills. She twists in response to the music, drawing him closer as more pinions rise from her skin, emerging like fledgling feathers from her flesh. Smatterings of coral cling to the shallow undersides of her breasts and beneath her arms. He follows the trail of growths up, past a narrow neck, and finds himself staring into the mad eyes of the angel.

  Still, they dance wildly; he and this limp, pale thing in his arms. There is no breaking free, no escaping her hands at this point. His heart cannot race any faster. Even his smile does not fade, but seems to grow wider on his face until laughter rushes from his belly into his throat and out; a wild, meaningless sound, at once joyous and uncaring.

  “The rain,” she says, through a mouth that is both beak and lip. “We love the rain. The water. We sing of it.”

  He looks outside, past the bodies, the music, the lights, and realises that it is indeed raining. Water pours through the blackness, as though the night itself has grown wet and is running down the glass. Turning back to the angel, he laughs harder, tears filling his eyes.

  “I’m waiting,” she says. “Beautiful voices. We’re waiting.”

  “No more waiting,” he replies.

  “Do you trust me, Felix?”

  He tells her that he trusts her and she throws herself around him, enveloping him in feathers and bone.

  They dance until they can no longer stand and then they leave together. In a moment of lucidity, he watches Michael and Helen as they say their goodbyes and stumble into a taxi. Hand-in-hand, Angela and he brave the wet walk home. The city no longer seems to crush him. It is an ocean now; of glittering lights and damp air and dark dreams.

  “I was born in the rain,” he says enthusiastically to the woman on his arm. She shrieks, shielding herself beneath her bag as the two of them hurry through Queen’s Park.

  “I’m soaked through!” she says, still grinning in the dark.

  “I thought you liked the rain?”

  In her scrunched-up face he sees recognition. Removing the bag from above her head, she steps out of her shoes and runs ahead.

  “Come on, Felix!” Her laughter fills the park.

  He watches her as she runs, her small feet leaving long streaks in the mud. At first she is Angela; unknown, barely acquainted by drink and dance. Then she is the angel, fleeing through the night, feathers fluttering beneath her arms, and for a moment he hears screams again, like those of the gulls.

  Then she is Harriet. He watches the small girl as she dashes through the trees, footprints tiny in the mud, hair streaming behind her, and feels pressure welling inside him as something pushes outwards, compelling him to move, to run after her through the rain, as he should have done that night. He realises that it is guilt, and that he has harboured it all these years; Dr. Moore’s sea monsters, stirring in the deep.

  ***

  The night melted around him, darkness lashing through the air against his face. He had never seen so much water, never known such wetness, cold against his skin. His small, heavy heart rolled wildly in his chest. Behind him, Crows Hill blinked fast, beleaguered in the night. The hill became a waterfall of muddy movement. Ahead he saw the church spire, lit from within, shining like a lighthouse in the dark.

  He stumbled up the hill towards the churchyard. Black water made a slide of the pathway. He hoped that Harriet was not there. He hoped that she had stayed at home, that she had seen sense; that for once she had listened to her parents and remained inside. Even as he thought these things, he knew that he would find her. There was no caution where Harriet was concerned. His words from earlier that day came back to him, as though he heard them again over the wind and rain.

  “Harriet, I need to talk to you about something.”

  “So talk to me, then.”

  “I can’t. Not here.”

  “Is it bad?”

  “It’s about me and my dreams. Please, I can’t tell anyone else. It has to be you.”

  “Do you trust us, Felix?”

  “What?”

  She indicated the half-faced statues towering over them. “Do you trust us?”

  “Yes. You’re the only ones I trust.”

  “Then tell us now.”

  “Not now. Tonight, when everyone else is asleep. Let’s say eleven o’clock.”

  “Fine. We’ll meet back here. You can tell the angels, too. They’re good at keeping secrets.”

  As he reached the top of the hill, he slipped to the ground. Cold soaked his hands and knees. Struggling to his feet, he was afforded a view of the town below. A mixture of fear and fatigue knotted his stomach.

  Blackness rushed towards Crows Hill, iridescent like crows’ feathers or flowing silken sheets. The fields and hillsides ran, as though dissolving beneath the rain. Houses flickered and died, their lights extinguished by the water. More houses lit up as their owners awoke, only to blink and blackout. The town flashed feebly in the dark.

  As he stood staring, a chorus of cries reached his ears. It was like no choir he was used to hearing. There was no righteousness or rhythm, only screams and shouts; human sounds made small by distance and the dark.

  Turning from Crows Hill, he rushed towards the church. His legs burned but he forced them to keep moving. His heart sank as he saw the water pouring from gaps in the old wall. Grey stone shone white with wetness by the moon. Reaching the wall, he followed it to where it was the lowest, then climbed over, as Harriet had shown him, a dozen times before.

  Stones slipped beneath his fingers, slimy and cold, like cobbled ice. Dragging himself over, he tumbled into the bushes. Water rushed into his nose and mouth. Sharp branches whipped across his face.

  “Harriet!” he shouted. His voice sounded small beneath the wind. “Harriet!”

  The water here was waist-deep. The same stone walls that let the water in were not so quick to let it out again. Soil lifted with the surface, which shone silvery black beneath the moonlight and with it a stagnant smell. He waded through
it.

  “Harriet! Harriet, are you here?”

  “Felix!”

  Stomach sinking, he chased after the voice. He called out. She shouted back. They played their sorry name game in the rain. As he followed after her voice, his eyes grew wet with fear.

  “Harriet!”

  “Felix!”

  He found her by the statues, halfway between the gravestones and the church. He clung to a headstone, as she was clinging to an angel. Flood waters filled the clearing between them.

  “Felix, the water. I can’t swim.”

  The damp smelled worse here; ripe, almost rotten. Stepping towards her, he felt the tug of the current almost instantly. He dragged himself back around the headstone.

  “Felix, help me –”

  “Harriet, I can’t –”

  “Help me. Don’t let me go.”

  Still pressed against the statue, she half turned, craning her neck towards the place where Felix stood. Their eyes met across the clearing. He had never seen Harriet look afraid before. He hadn’t thought her capable of something like fear. She was his wild bird, his Siren, his friend, who ran through fields with him, and climbed trees, and laughed when no one else in Crows Hill dared to smile. He stared at her and she stared back at him, her eyes big and dark against her pale face.

  “Don’t let me go,” she repeated, or he thought she did, because he couldn’t hear her properly this time. Then she moved again, slipped, stuck out her hand and was gone beneath the black surface of the water.

  Chapter Thirteen

  In the darkness of his bedroom, Angela slowly removes her clothes. Visible as streaks of white in the city light through his window, she looks skeletal; a thin, hard shape with long bones for limbs. Naked, she slides into bed beside him.

  As she begins to explore his body with her hands, he wishes that he could lose himself, as he lost himself at the bar. Her cold touch tickles the hairs down the back of his neck. They make love tenderly; a slow, reluctant kind of sex that turns his stomach. He wishes he could be sick, as though it would expel the badness from inside him; that he could continue being sick until his throat burned and everything went black and he found himself in that place Dr. Moore once warned him from, where there are tiny stars, and fish-faced figures swimming beside him, decay filling his nostrils like mouldering wood while scaled hands trace across his arms and legs, slick and silvery in the darkness –