Man with a Seagull on His Head Read online

  Yesterday, all had gone as usual at first. There were already orders in his tray when he arrived in the morning but he dealt with the forms first, as always. He checked in every tray, he was certain, doing fifty copies of those that were running low. So he was most confused when Paula, who was over by the trays just before lunchtime, turned round and said, “Ray, we’ve run out of PA147s.”

  This had not happened before. It was his job to prevent this from happening.

  “We’ve run out of PA147s,” she said again, although this time she looked past Ray to Mr. Turner.

  “What’s happened, Ray?” asked Mr. Turner, looking up from his coffee.

  “We’ve run out of PA147s,” Ray repeated.

  “Yes, so I hear. Why have we run out of PA147s?”

  “I don’t know, I only just finished topping them all up.”

  “Not quite all, it seems. It’s your job to prevent this from happening. It’s hardly a difficult job, now is it? You’d better go down to reception and hope there’s a master.”

  Reception was where the master copies of all the council’s forms were kept although, as Paula had told him in a final whispered warning, “they don’t have copies of everything.” A trip to reception to try your luck on the lottery of their filing system was something to be avoided at all costs; that was what all the counting and checking and being on the safe side was for.

  He could feel the pin pricks of sweat gathering in his palm as he left the office and started down the corridor. The receptionist smiled at him as he approached. She was a young girl with a lot of hair and pale shimmering lips, who said “Good morning!” at him each day in a bright, insistent way. He preferred to be ignored and usually was; this relentless greeting seemed to him to have menacing intent.

  “We don’t have copies of everything, you know,” she said, in a voice that made his ear lobes hot. He focused his attention on the board of headshots mounted on the wall next to the counter and found Mr. Turner in his younger days. His slightly tilted head and questioning gaze seemed to have his words attached to it, it’s hardly a difficult job now is it, so he looked away at the girl, now riffling among the forms, having to stand on tiptoes to see inside the drawer of the filing cabinet.

  “PA147 you say.”

  “Yes,” he said, and she sent the drawer rolling back in. He wished he could try another number.

  “Well then, you’re in luck,” she said, spinning round on her heel with the form held aloft. She lowered it towards the counter, then whipped it away again above her head. “What’s it worth?”

  This was worse. She was waiting for him to say something witty. He thought of making a quick manoeuvre around the end of the counter and grabbing the form from her, then decided it would be easier to jump up and snatch it from where he was. But just as he was gearing up for it she said, “Ah, look at you,” and laid it gently on the counter in front of him, taking her hands clear away and behind her back.

  “Don’t forget to bring it back,” she called after him as he started on his return journey up the corridor. “That’s when the trouble starts, when people don’t bring back the masters.”

  It was true: it was not a good day for him. He never really got back on track after the business with the PA147s. He got orders confused, did too few of one, too many of another, forgot to staple, returned them to the wrong people. And when things started going wrong like that, well, you were always on the catch up, the new orders piling up while you put right your mistakes.

  At the end of the day, Mr. Turner asked if he could have a word. As the others filed past on their way out they said, “Goodbye, Ray,” and, “See you on Monday, Ray,” and there was something consoling in the addition of his name that made him suspect something already. Mr. .Turner stretched out his arm to indicate the empty chair on the other side of his desk and Ray went over, avoiding the gaze that took him back to junior school, the teacher looking at him quizzically as if searching for an explanation for his existence.

  “I’ve noticed things haven’t really been going your way today, Ray,” said Mr. Turner when they were both seated.

  “I checked the trays this morning. I think someone must have removed all the PA147s. I think they did it on purpose.”

  “Now, Ray, don’t let’s get childish. These are the offices of Southend District Council, not a junior school. Why on earth would someone do that?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Turner.”

  “Quite.” Mr. Turner interlaced his fingers and placed his hands on the desk. “Anyway, it wasn’t just the forms, was it? It was the orders as well. You couldn’t keep on top of them.”

  Ray noticed Mr. Turner had dirt under his fingernails.

  “Frances said she saw you crying today.”

  And also those little white flecks that showed you didn’t drink enough milk.

  “I know about your mother, Ray. I don’t know why you didn’t tell me.”

  He could feel something edging down his nostril. He’d have to sniff in a moment to stop it emerging. He screwed up his nose to try and slow its passage, and tilted his head a little upwards.

  “I think maybe you should stay home for a bit. Give yourself some time.”

  “Yes,” said Ray, careful not to lower his chin.

  He wanted Mr. Turner to go now so he could blow his nose. He heard his chair push back promisingly against the rough carpet but then watched with dismay as Mr. Turner walked round the end of the desk towards him. He put a hand on Ray’s back. “We really value what you do here, Ray,” he said, and gave him a little pat. “We’re all thinking of you.”

  Ray sat at his Xerox table when Mr. Turner had finally gone. He had a bit of tidying up to do. There were papers muddled all over the place and they needed to be sorted into piles, their slips attached ready to be returned to the relevant departments on Monday morning. When he’d finished he stayed sitting there in the empty office, listening to the vacuum cleaner making its way down the corridor outside. He looked around the room, and the personal clutter of other people’s desks did a good job, in his colleagues’ absence, of making him feel he was not alone. If he felt like sobbing or lying down flat on his back on the bare brown carpet in the middle of the room, then the pen pots and photographs, the potted plants, dirty mugs and pulled-out chairs kept him sitting quietly right where he was.

  He’d left the High Street behind him and was carrying on in the general direction of the sea. Off his regular tracks now, he started to take notice of things: a woman putting a bucket of fishing nets outside a newsagent; a man in shorts walking a dog; a red car passing noisily; the Shoeburyness Hotel, closed; the smell of the sea, quite pungent, in the air; a faded blue sign reading “East Beach” and pointing down a narrow dusty path with long yellow grass growing up on either side. He made his way down the path, observing his feet and the dust that drifted up over his shoes as he walked. Then he looked up and saw the sea.

  He had arrived. And as he walked onward across the open patch of empty grassland before him he was struck by a sense of uncertainty, of not knowing how to behave or what he was doing here. For a moment he stood quite still. He looked at his watch. It was nearly eight. Seven thirty in the evening, when the water would go back on, was a long way off. He looked up and saw a sort of shack, which was at least something to aim for, so he walked towards it. He found a board displaying ice creams nailed up on one side and a bicycle propped against another. From here he could see the actual beach at last: the bank fell away to a narrow band of greyish shingle, dirtied by dried seaweed and plastic bottles but nicer than the beaches he passed on the bus to work each morning, which turned to mud flats when the tide was out. There was no road here: it finished a little way behind him and was replaced by a track leading to a dusty patch that looked like it would do for parking. Other than that, the beach was backed only by the large area of parched, unkempt grass he’d just crossed. Now that he’
d been here for a few minutes he was starting to find it quite pleasant.

  In the distance, at the far end of the beach, he could see the posts running out into the sea just as his colleagues had described. He set off towards them, choosing to stick to the grass rather than descend onto the shingle. The girl in his office, Frances, entered his mind. She had a lot of freckles—like grains of sand, he thought. There was definitely a bit of breeze here, pushing in from the sea. He could feel it against his right cheek. He could feel the sun there too, and was mildly aware of the skin on that side of his face responding.

  It didn’t take him long to reach the posts, which continued all the way up onto the grass, blocking off the final fifty yards or so of the beach before a rough and stony bank rose sharply to mark the end. It wouldn’t have taken much to get across onto the other side of the barrier but he was satisfied with being here, on this side, where he could still look clearly upon the prohibited section of the sea and picture the bomb lying beneath like a bloated fish. He sat down on the grass but, uncomfortable and not sure what to do with his legs, he switched to kneeling and remained there, upright and staring straight out to sea. It calmed him to think that the sea held a secret. If he had been the sort to examine things further, he might have seen that it had to do with the latent promise of death, of being able to feel it advancing within him upon another plane of existence, perhaps now ready to reveal itself, like an old friend whose warmth was remembered but whose face had been forgotten. But he felt these things in his blood, not in his brain, and merely found himself, for once, watchful and at ease.

  He gazed farther out towards the misty horizon and up at the sky, blank and thick with the heat. And then down again across the wide, ruffled water, the sunlight caught upon its irregular peaks. The sea never stops, he thought. This thought might have led to other thoughts, for he was beginning to get used to them, had not a woman suddenly stood up in his view. That another human being should just appear like this on the beach in front, so close when there was the whole empty stretch available, alarmed and bewildered him into believing her for a moment to be some strange creature of the sea. The word mermaid darted into his head like a minnow—and then just as quickly out again, for anyone could see she was no such thing. Still, he felt her significance, obscurely but keenly. That she had somehow been placed there. Placed there for him. She stood with her back to him looking out towards the water, her arms hanging down but slightly removed from her sides in a rather unnatural way. The grass bank cut off her legs from view, but her top half was clothed in a white blouse, blown to one side by the wind which, clearly stronger down there, caught also on her sandy hair and lifted it clear of her neck.

  He waited, still kneeling on the grass.

  Then she turned her head and looked straight at him, and at that moment he felt a sharp jab on his head because a seagull had fallen from the sky and changed everything.

  Two

  Amanda Parsons had been working as a junior reporter for the Southend Evening Echo for a whole month before she came across a lead for a possible story, something that might free her from the inglorious task of compiling the information box—a small panel at the bottom of the letters page giving tide times, weather forecast, and telephone numbers for the Samaritans and Marriage Guidance—which was all she’d been put in charge of for now.

  Of all people, it was her best friend Ruth who gave her the opportunity she’d been waiting for. They were sitting with lemon ices on a bench outside Keddies department store where, before Amanda had got the job at the Echo, the two of them had worked together in household linens. Ruth was still there, although no longer in household linens. She’d been transferred up to haberdashery and that morning her new boss, Jennifer Mulholland, had told her something: she’d seen a bird fall out of the sky and land on a man’s head.

  “It’s not funny actually,” said Ruth in that earnest way of hers when Amanda laughed. “The man was quite badly injured.”

  But it was funny. The injury made it all the funnier, and definitely more newsworthy. Immediately Amanda recalled her editor, Larry, unleashing his wheezy laugh into the office upon being told the story of the group of girls whose topless frolic in Southchurch Park pond had been interrupted when they were attacked by a swan. “Love it!” he’d said, slapping his hand down on the desk. This story was not all that dissimilar. It was bizarre. It involved a bird. No topless girls unfortunately … but maybe she could stretch the truth. Maybe if Jennifer Mulholland had been sunbathing. Topless? And then she laughed again, for that really was funny.

  Jennifer Mulholland had worked at Keddies forever. Ruth and Amanda thought her a curious creature. Each morning they watched as she crossed household linens on the ground floor and slowly mounted the stairs to the haberdashery department on the third, her backside tightly and impenetrably packaged in stuffy homemade skirt suits that took no account of the stiflingly hot weather. In the dead hours between three and five in the afternoon they sometimes fell to amusing themselves with simple conjecture about her private moments. For some reason they found it hilarious just to imagine Miss Mulholland getting drunk, or having sex, or even just being naked. When Ruth was transferred to haberdashery, Amanda ordered her friend to do some digging but all Ruth could unearth was that Miss Mulholland had once been the Southend Carnival Queen.

  Amanda had choked on her cigarette. “No way!”

  “Miss Southend 1955.”

  “You’ve got to be joking.”

  “No! She’s even promised to bring in a newspaper clipping. She was eighteen years old, which makes her—”

  “Thirty-nine. Nearly forty!”

  Back in Ruth’s bedsit that afternoon, where they wasted much of their time, the two girls imagined Miss Southend 1955 in a string of lustful encounters: behind carnival floats, beneath bandstands, below the pier. But these scenarios, developed in the slow hilarious haze of dope, didn’t stand up next to the reality of Jennifer herself, and they came to the conclusion that her window of romantic opportunity had more likely been filled with demurely fought-off fumbles, all in the name of saving herself for a husband who never came. Jennifer Mulholland was surely still a virgin. Amanda could tell. When you’d done it you could immediately spot someone who hadn’t.

  “Of course I shall have to interview her,” said Amanda when she and Ruth had finished discussing the story’s merits and her proposed breakthrough onto the news pages. Ruth said she would come too, for she had nothing else to do that afternoon.

  Amanda had imagined Jennifer in a bungalow, but the reality was a bedsit not much bigger that Ruth’s and not far from it either, in one of those big dingy old houses set back from the seafront in the part of Southend known as Westcliff-on-Sea. As in Ruth’s building, the hallways and stairs were in a state of communal neglect. The brown gloss paint on the bannisters was heavily chipped as if wilfully and idly picked at, and the walls had gathered mysterious stains which made the embossed wallpaper look as if it had swelled with an accumulation of smoke and sweat and boozy breath. Amanda knew that people lived in such places. Ruth lived in such a place. But that Jennifer Mulholland should do so stirred in Amanda a feeling that might, had her ability to empathize not been so crippled by youth and privilege, have grown into remorse for the casual amusement she’d had at her expense. But as it was, it manifested itself only as a slight feeling of disgust.

  The stairs creaked and cobwebs crowded the corners of the high dark ceilings as they followed Jennifer’s behind up to the second floor. Cleaning was a serious business in Amanda’s house. Her mother had a cupboard big enough to walk inside dedicated to its accoutrements. There was really no olfactory evidence that the house was inhabited by living bodies at all. Which made her nose all the more keenly attuned to the smell of an unflushed toilet, say, or the sour emanations of sleep that might linger on unwashed bedclothes. She detected these things now, and other unerased traces of life, not as a powerful odour but a
s an undercurrent of decay, a taste of loneliness in the air. And, as Jennifer dealt with the keys, she had a sudden and awful fear that they were about to find out her life was terribly and truly hard, that something awful lay behind the door: an invalid child or parent, perhaps.

  Jennifer unlocked the door and held it open for them to pass through. Amanda relaxed a little, for the room, although small and cramped, was an instant rebuff to the seediness of the communal areas and seemed almost to defend itself against them with its surfeit of polished pieces of dark wooden furniture.

  Jennifer stood with her hands together, a little bird-like here in her cage. “Can I offer you girls a small glass of sherry?” she chirped.

  Amanda looked at her friend and smiled. It was impossible to conceive of something so warm and syrupy when for weeks now they’d craved nothing but coldness and fizz. It was hot. They were gripped by a heat wave. They knew people who hadn’t worn shoes for weeks, and others who’d taken to sleeping on the beach. The bar staff poured shandy without even having to be asked. No one, no one at all, was drinking sherry.

  “Oh yes please!” said Amanda, enjoying the absurdity of it.

  “Ah!” said Jennifer, pleased, and squeezed her way round to a chest of drawers on the other side of the room, on top of which sat a half-full bottle of sherry and four cut-glass sherry flutes. Slowly she poured out the burnt-coloured liquid and placed the three glasses in the middle of a coffee table that sat on stumpy leonine legs in the centre of the room. “Please, girls, take a seat,” she said, gesturing to a brown corduroy settee.