Gull

by Glenn Patterson

  Their car, with the DeLoreland tape still playing, finally made it to the front door of the hotel only eighty minutes behind schedule.

  A row of faces on the other side of the glass rearranged themselves into smiles.

  ‘Looks like they have laid on a welcoming committee,’ the driver said.

  There were a lot of not-at-alls and of-course-of-courses as DeLorean’s hand did the rounds. The local society magazine wanted a few photos in the vestibule: the hotel manager and Mr DeLorean; the hotel manager and the hotel manager’s wife and Mr DeLorean; the head of the local Chamber of Commerce, the hotel manager and Mr DeLorean; the head of the local Chamber of Commerce, her husband, the hotel manager, the hotel manager’s wife... He left a trail of photos such as these wherever he went, a fact he had apparently alluded to in a conversation with Bill Haddad, when Bill – in his version of it, played out in the Grill Room of the Waldorf Astoria this time a year ago – had first raised concerns about some of his business dealings. ‘“Anyone wants to know where I’ve been and who I’ve been talking to any time in the last five years all he has to do is buy the papers, or find a computer that can read the papers for him.”’ It wasn’t a bad impersonation, it had to be said, and not, to Randall’s ears then, especially vindictive. ‘As though computers have nothing better to do with their brains,’ Bill said, himself again, and, yes, maybe Randall should have heard it, with a definite twist.

  The hotel manager was extending an invitation to Mrs DeLorean too, next time she was in town. DeLorean by way of reply shook his hand all over again. Randall had his hand on the handle of the function room door when a voice called out. ‘Mr DeLorean!’

  He, and Randall, turned. A young woman in the hotel’s livery was standing to one side of the reception desk, blushing at finding herself the object of everyone’s attention. ‘There’s a phone call for you,’ she said.

  ‘There’s a phone call for you, sir,’ the manager said, not entirely under his breath.

  ‘Sir,’ the young woman said and the blush grew fiercer. ‘He says it’s important.’

  DeLorean strode off after her to an office just back of the desk.

  There was a bit of half-hearted chanting from the far side of the function room door, audible in the quieter passages of the music and in the silence that had descended on the vestibule. ‘Why are we waiting, why-y are we waiting...’

  Randall waited, trying to read the blank door that had closed behind DeLorean’s back.

  Which opened in the end so suddenly it made him jump.

  The frown, the set jaw. Oh shit.

  Then the most enormous and unaffected smile. He drew Randall aside and spoke into his ear.

  ‘That was Prior. The prime minister has, for reasons that he says escape him, decided not to rule out the new loan. She wants to monitor sales ahead of a final decision in the new year... We’ll have Roy wire the dealers, put a little Christmas push on.’

  He angled his head back. ‘December thirty-second,’ he said, and laughed, then followed Randall through the function room door.

  The function room – there was only one word for it – erupted.

  *

  Liz had never heard or seen anything like it. One of the bar staff must have found him a footstool or something, because from one moment to the next after he had made his way to the middle of the room DeLorean went from head and shoulders above everyone else there to head, shoulders and entire upper body, but no sooner had he achieved this elevation than his expression clouded and in the next moment he had taken a step back, down, to just head and shoulders higher.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said and from the renewed cheering it was clear that everyone (except maybe the barman who had found the stool) agreed. He held up one finger. Kept it there long after the room had been brought to order. ‘Remember this year. Remember where we were at the beginning of it.’ Liz would never forget it: the crump of that first car as it hit the assembly shop wall. ‘And now look at us. Look at all of you. Look what you have done. Ask yourselves, are there any workers anywhere in the world who could have achieved what you have achieved in the past twelve months in the circumstances you have had to contend with? Seven thousand cars? You know what? I don’t think there are. And I’ll tell you another thing, I don’t think I could ever have done this anywhere in the world but here. I sometimes wish poor Preston Tucker could have had the good fortune I had.’ (‘Preston who?’ Liz heard TC asking Anto, a second before she could get the question out herself. ‘Tucker: do they teach you nothing at that Tech?’) ‘There’d be Belfast-built Torpedoes on the roads as well as DeLoreans. But it’s not just Tucker, hundreds more over the years weren’t able to defy the odds the way we have. You haven’t just made cars this year, you’ve made history.’

  Randall had told her DeLorean didn’t really drink, but he drank then, deep, from the pint of Guinness that had materialised in his hand: to next year, and the year after that, and the year after that.

  *

  When the tumult finally subsided Liz pushed her way through to the bar to get a round in. A woman she had never seen before, a Lotus pin in the lapel of her – jumpsuit, did you call that? Flying suit? – was saying very loudly in an accent Liz could equally not put her finger on (England, west, possibly... or east), ‘We’re going to be millionaires!’

  ‘I’m happy for you,’ Liz said.

  The woman smiled sloppily. ‘No, no, no.’ She was off her face. ‘We’re going to be millionaires.’ She made a lassoing gesture with her right hand, roping in the entire room. ‘You, me... all of us.’

  Liz’s attention though had already wandered to another part of the bar, another hand – June, she thought the woman it belonged to was called – resting for an instant on a sleeve that she knew, almost without having to see his face, was Randall’s. She knew too what his fleeting touch in return signified. There was history there, graphic. She told herself it was no more than was to be expected. No one, man or woman, could go that long without. She couldn’t.

  She blew out her cheeks and turned to the bar again. The barman was putting the last of her drinks on a tray. Liz took out her purse.

  ‘You only have to give me for three,’ the barman said. ‘Your Pernod’s paid for... The woman that was standing there.’

  ‘The millionaire.’

  The barman showed her a piece of paper. ‘She gave me this.’

  A cheque for fifty pence. ‘Told me she’d run out of coins for a tip.’

  ‘Here,’ said Liz and handed him an extra pound. ‘I’ll buy it off you.’

  *

  She was outside by a minute to ten. Robert arrived at two minutes past, which gave her three minutes to top up on smoke-free air.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting you to be out so soon.’ He sounded almost disappointed.

  ‘Ach, you know the way those things get.’

  He gave her hand a squeeze.

  She thought they might just be able to survive this. She squeezed back.

  *

  Randall had been on his way to talk to her, entirely on impulse, when June stepped in front of him, telling him, fingertips resting lightly on his wrist, that he was not to worry, she had no more desire to draw attention to the two of them than he had. ‘Let’s pretend we are talking about productivity...’

  He was tempted to reply in the same vein, a little light innuendo to tide them both over, then carry swiftly on to where he wanted to be, but he stopped himself, as it dawned on him fully: that story she had told him, sitting in bed, hugging her knees, might turn out to be worth tens of millions of dollars. He slipped his hand under her wrist, felt her pulse quickening.

  ‘I don’t think you can possibly know how much I owe you, how much this whole company owes you,’ he said.

  She withdrew her hand, a quick glance over both shoulders. It was so clearly not what she had been expecting to hear. ‘Thank you,’ she said, but whatever fire had been threatening to flare a minute before was, he could tell, well and truly doused.
‘If I don’t get talking to you before’ – a weak waist-high wave as she stepped away from the bar – ‘have a good Christmas.’

  DeLorean had made his customary early exit a few minutes earlier, though with unaccustomed regret. (He had made pretty short work of the pint of Guinness Randall had handed him, and the pint that followed that.) He had a breakfast meeting in Dublin ahead of his flight home otherwise he would assuredly have stayed. He would take the Sounds of DeLoreland with him.

  ‘I think you could probably teach me things by now,’ he said.

  Randall doubted it very much, but a compliment was like a favour, not to be refused.

  ‘I am very glad you think so.’

  17

  Randall’s own flight home, early the following week, had to divert to Pittsburgh: heavy snow in the New York metropolitan area. The first fat flakes were falling too in Pittsburgh as he walked to the terminal building. By the time he walked out the other side he could barely see two feet in front of him. There was a pause overnight then it started coming down in good and earnest.

  And coming and coming and coming.

  It was still snowing when he left again for Belfast eight days later, by which time perversely, given his problems on the way in, flying was pretty much the only guaranteed way of getting about. Out on the roads nothing much was moving. Out in the car lots even less was selling. And as for innovative gull-wing sports cars... Randall tried his best not to think about it and further spoil an already fraught Christmas. (‘Mommy says there’s no point you even trying to get across here,’ Tamsin told him the one time he got to talk to her. ‘She says we’re better not leaving the house.’)

  It was actually something of a comfort to see, as the plane made its descent through clouds on the final leg of his return journey, the habitual rain-murk enveloping Belfast.

  The relief lasted all of ninety-six hours. Then DeLorean called. The mood change, Randall thought afterwards, was palpable before the first word was out.

  ‘We are going to have to put the factory on short time,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Prior rang. Thatcher ruled against the loan.’

  ‘But that was just to... I mean, I can appreciate there haven’t been many sales this past while...’

  ‘Let me see, in the last week of December? Twenty-five.’

  ‘...but what about contingency... the whole factory on short time?’

  ‘I hope after all this time you are not going to start telling me how to run my business, Edmund. I know my margins in ordinarily exceptional circumstances. These are extraordinarily exceptional.’

  ‘That’s a new distinction on me.’

  ‘And don’t be so asinine as to correct me on my English either. You know damn well what I mean. They are calling this the worst snowfall in a hundred years. You don’t legislate for once-in-a-century events, you roll with them as best you can. Ford has shut down its plant altogether. The snow will melt and the sales will pick up and the factory will return to full production and in the meantime maybe Her Majesty’s government will realise what’s at stake here.’

  Randall’s head jerked round towards the window.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘It’s started snowing here too.’

  ‘I’m glad you find it amusing.’

  ‘Amusing? Of course I don’t. I just...’

  But the phone was already down at the other end of the line and Randall had not the energy or the desire at that moment to try to re-establish contact.

  The one stroke of good fortune in that bleak week was an industrial dispute that hit the ferries between Belfast and the other British ports. Vital parts of future DMC-12s were stranded in containers on the Liverpool dockside.

  That was the reason they went with when they made the announcement of the three-day week. They were thinking of the press, of course, but they were thinking of the workers too: no point lowering morale any further (‘Are things really that bad that the money’s run out after a couple of weeks’ snow?’). If their luck held, by the time the ferry strike ended the thaw would already have set in, or like DeLorean said, Her Majesty’s government would have realised exactly what was at stake.

  *

  ‘Eleven hundred redundancies,’ Don said. It was the end of the second three-day week and he had just returned from yet another round of talks in London. (Randall had not been invited to a single one of them.) He still had on his overcoat and scarf when he convened a meeting of the management in the boardroom, or bunker as a few of those present had taken to referring to that windowless box. His face was ashen. ‘Eleven hundred redundancies, with immediate effect.’

  ‘How are we going to do that?’ Randall asked. Not ‘why’ any more. Sales back home had appeared briefly to be rallying, despite the whiteout, before nosediving again.

  ‘Lottery,’ said Stylianides. ‘Section by section. It’s the only way. Imagine you are turning down the volume on your record player’ – he demonstrated with forefinger and thumb – ‘there is less coming out but the balance remains the same.’ The man could probably have struck the cheery note in a terminal-illness prognosis. To be honest, he said, the computer could probably make the selection for them, and Randall was guiltily glad not to have to have a hand in it.

  *

  Liz was running late: hold-ups on all the main roads, the sort of start-of-the-week, main-road hold-ups that cities the world over were prone to, rather than any more sinister local difficulty. There were jams too on the way in the gates (one of the reasons why she preferred to get in early), though the horns being sounded now were simply the prelude to a wave, or a ribald comment through a side window wound down for that express purpose.

  She was still thinking, a little diffusely, as she entered the assembly shop, about how people here could adapt to pretty much anything, when she started to clock individuals passing her, coming from the lockers, with letters in their hands.

  ‘What’s the betting this is us back to a full week?’ one fella was saying as he worked his finger under the gummed flap, and Liz had barely time to wonder why in that case not everybody was carrying a letter before she turned the corner to her own locker.

  ‘What the fuck?’

  It was Amanda. An envelope lay torn on the floor at her feet. The letter, in her right fist, shook.

  ‘They’re fucking laying me off.’ The fist tightened, the letter shook harder. ‘They’re fucking laying me off. I moved my whole fucking family here. I took my lasses out of school, away from all their friends. I risked my fucking life, everyone back home told me: “You’re risking your fucking life, girl.”’

  She narrowed her eyes at Liz.

  ‘It’s because I’m English, in’t it?’

  But by then there were shouts, and curses, from all quarters.

  ‘I don’t think it’s just you,’ Liz said, and glancing over her shoulder saw TC holding an envelope in his hand. Poor fella looked as though he was about to throw up.

  ‘Oh, TC,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  TC blinked. His cheeks bulged and his lips twitched. God, he wasn’t really going to be sick, was he? The words came out in a rush. ‘It’s not mine, Liz, it’s yours.’

  *

  She had no idea who was leading it, but there was a movement – a swell – in the direction of the administration block (it was becoming traditional with them), those with and those without letters caught up in it alike. The managers (as was traditional with them) had got wind of their approach. They were waiting in a line, Randall one of the middle three with Don Lander and Myron Stylianides. He looked as bad as TC, near, but she thought in his case it was maybe fear. There was no Gardiner from wages, with his inexhaustible supply of pens, to call on this time. He had every right to be scared.

  Without warning a hail of objects flew through the air from the front of the crowd. The managers to a man flinched or outright ducked before they realised that they were
threatened by nothing more lethal than letters of dismissal, balled up.

  There was a sound then, long, drawn-out – yeeeee-ow – composed of equal parts contempt and delight at their display of cowardice.

  If they hadn’t sensed it already her fellow workers knew for certain now who occupied the moral high ground.

  ‘You told us this was different.’ Liz recognised Anto’s voice, somewhere to her left. ‘We’re no better off than if we’d been standing on the street corner waiting on the ganger to pick us.’

  Don Lander tried several times to speak, but was shouted down. Randall though did manage eventually to make himself heard.

  ‘Give Mr Lander a chance,’ he said. ‘He did everything he could the past few weeks to make sure this didn’t happen. He will do everything he can in the next few to make sure these lay-offs are only temporary...’

  He stopped. It was a moment before Liz realised the reason was that she had her hand up – out in fact, arm rigid, fingers splayed. ‘Seriously, how are we expected to trust anything you say?’

  A round of applause at this.

  He held her eye. She held his longer.

  ‘I am – all of us here are – part of this too, you know,’ he said, to anyone it seemed but her.

  *

  Randall was half expecting someone to shout out and ask if they were all in this together, then which of the managers had got redundancy letters today. No sooner had he finished speaking, though, than the workers seemed to arrive at a collective and unspoken decision to turn their backs on him, on Lander, Stylianides, the lot of them, and walk the other way.

  *

  The television cameras were waiting at the gates, reporters jamming microphones under the noses of workers as they walked out, trying to get a comment. Liz dipped her head as she passed, remembering how she had watched John DeLorean those years ago on that knackered TV while serving up the dinner: ‘two thousand jobs in eighteen months...’

  What she was doing now, she knew, letting hair fall across her face like that, she was hiding from herself.