Gull

by Glenn Patterson

  She caught a bus the whole way into town and for reasons that made no sense even to her killed the time until she normally finished work, the last hour of it in the Bodega on Callender Street, where she ordered, of all things, a schooner of sherry. Speciality of the house, the writing on the board above the bar said. It was special enough that she had another two before fighting with the security turnstile at the bottom of the street to reach the bus stop home. Fucking, fucking, useless thing.

  She came into the house by the back door. Robert and the boys were in the living room, waiting on the Dinner Fairy. She must have swayed. Robert went to get up. She set the letter on the arm of his chair. ‘Don’t say a word, any of you,’ she warned and went straight up the stairs to her room, got into bed, shoes and all still on her, and pulled the covers right up over her head.

  Only then did she give in and cry.

  The week after the redundancies the news crews were back at the factory gates reporting that the remaining workforce had been put on a one-day week.

  Liz recognised the hunted look in the eyes of the workers as they passed the cameras. All those carefully calculated HP plans; all those mortgages taken out. Those holidays destined to remain dreams.

  *

  DeLorean had not spoken to Randall directly in close on a month. He had not set foot in Belfast since the Christmas party. Roy Nesseth was now working out of 280 Park Avenue, in the office right next door to DeLorean’s own. It suggested to Randall a circling of the wagons. (Bill Haddad – if they did not feel embattled enough in there – had filed a suit for slander.) They were concentrating on preparing a portfolio to present to potential investors at the Greater New York Auto Show in mid February, was the word coming out from behind both doors: the right-hand drive, a sedan – the DMC-24 (twice the car that the sports car was?) – and even a model to compete for part of the four-billion-dollar off-road-vehicle market were all talked up; but the Auto Show came and went and no more investment was forthcoming.

  He could have made life a hell of a lot easier for himself, DeLorean was caught on camera saying, if he had chosen to site his car plant anywhere in the world but Belfast. For every pound the British Exchequer had put in he reckoned he must have put in a pint of blood. The British Exchequer queried both the Math and the Tact, or want of it.

  Cristina went on TV and broke down in tears. It wasn’t fair what people were saying about him. It wasn’t fair at all.

  A couple of days later he was back in London again, with Tom Kimmerly this time, for a meeting with Prior, who brought with him Sir Kenneth Cork, a former Lord Mayor of London, and more pertinently one half of Cork Gully whose meat and drink was companies that had shed half their workforce and left the rest more out of work than in.

  Prior came out afterwards and told the press what they had already guessed, DeLorean Motor Cars Limited was from this moment on officially in receivership. ‘Constructive receivership,’ DeLorean, coming out behind him, was keen to stress, ‘which means the receivers will work with us to find the finance we need to get through our present liquidity difficulty.’ His take, communicated to Belfast by telex, was that this was preferable to the other option put before him, which was to form a whole new company, entirely under Cork Gully’s directorship and taking control of distribution of the cars in the US. ‘We bend a little way to keep this guy from breaking us altogether.’

  Oh, and, the telex went on to say, he will be in Dunmurry by the end of the day, to take the measure of the factory and its assets.

  *

  Sir Kenneth Cork’s nickname – the Great Liquidator – went ahead of him, as did his pedigree: father before him a liquidator, son beginning to make his way in the profession. So Randall was pleasantly surprised to see getting out of the chauffeur-driven car a grandfatherly-looking man a little dishevelled in dress, slack of neck, short of sight and almost entirely bereft of hair on top of his high-domed head.

  He told Randall that when he got the call from Prior the day before he had been out on his boat: an Anderson 22, if that meant anything to Randall. Randall had to confess it didn’t. Sir Kenneth smiled a little vaguely. ‘I understood you were with the company when it had offices at Chris-Craft.’ The vague smile was a blind: he had done his homework. ‘Well, not to worry,’ he said, which was good of him.

  He counted in that initial inspection five hundred cars, in various states of completion, in the factory and its surrounding lots. ‘That’s ten million dollars right there,’ he said then added wistfully, ‘or would be if I only had charge of the American distribution.’

  Bend a little to avoid being broken altogether. ‘We missed the Salvage and Repair Crib,’ said Randall. ‘They might have another one or two cars in there.’

  And indeed they had, and gold-plated skins besides from the American Express promotion: enough for one more car, the guys there said. ‘Another eighty-five thousand,’ Sir Kenneth said, without hesitation.

  For the remainder of that week and much of the week that followed not a single tool in the factory was lifted – not a teacup in the canteen – unless it was to have a price tag attached to it. They became literally counters of beans (Crosse & Blackwell, baked, a quarter of a pallet, or four hundred and twenty-five cans, in the kitchen stockroom.) Any or all of this could be sold at a moment’s notice if Sir Kenneth so decreed.

  About the only thing that could be said was that, for the time being at any rate, there were to be no more lay-offs, although with every one-day-week that passed a few more people quit, like the guy from the door sub-assembly section who told Randall in parting he preferred the certainty of knowing he would be tipping dustbins into the back of a lorry for the rest of his life, on half of what he had been getting here, to sitting waiting on the next piece of bad news. They were actually light a few workers in one or two sections. Eventually Stylianides had to call the supervisors together and ask them to make a pitch for replacements.

  *

  It had been six weeks. Liz sat at the dinette table surrounded by the debris of everyone else’s breakfast – Shredded Wheat box, lying open, toast crumbs, a handle sticking out of the pineapple jam jar. She was eating a dry Ryvita (no butter in the house, only margarine, which she couldn’t take), hating every sawdusty bite when Robert came in dressed for work. He looked, as he had had the sense or self-restraint not to look on the previous twenty-nine weekdays, ever so slightly pleased with himself. He set a newspaper clipping down to the left of the jam jar.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Read it and see.’

  ‘Brides Head to Toe... That’s a terrible name.’

  ‘Keep reading.’

  ‘“Brides Head to Toe seeks dedicated and discerning part-time sales consultant...” A job ad?’

  ‘Tim at work gave it to me. His wife knows the woman that runs it.’

  He had been talking to Tim at work about her? Who even was Tim at work?

  ‘Here he is to me: “People might not always want stainless steel sports cars, but they will always want to get married... Am I right?”’ I could swing for you, Tim at work. ‘He’s told me his wife will put a word in. It would get you out a couple of days, and it would be handy having a wee bit of money coming in again.’

  He kissed the top of her head. ‘Think about it anyway.’

  She listened to the car door shut, the engine catch at the second attempt. She listened to the whine of the reverse gear, the lower register of first as the car reached the end of its arc out on to the street.

  She listened to it – first to second, second to third – all the way down to the end and – second again – round the corner and away.

  She could not have said how long she sat in the silence it left behind, an hour, hour and a half, longer, before she heard a car coming in the opposite direction, round the corner and up the street, slowing, picking up a little speed and volume, slowing again: looking at the numbers, she decided. It stopped, the engine still turning over; a door opened, but didn’t shut. In the next in
stant the bell on the wall above the dinette door sounded.

  She was nearly not going to bother her head. Who could possibly be surprised to get no answer at this time of the day? The bell sounded again, and again.

  Ach, to heck with it.

  She walked through the living room to the hall. From the outline in the frosted glass she thought it was a pal of one of the boys and was bracing herself for the usual excruciating exchange (oh for them to reach the age of gorm). Even when she had opened the door she was unable for a moment to free herself of the misconception. What did he want with the boys?

  ‘TC!’

  ‘You busy?’

  ‘Run off my feet. You?’

  ‘Funny you should ask.’

  She tilted her head to the side, narrowing one eye. ‘What are you at here, TC?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you they would have to make me a supervisor?’ he said and smiled. ‘Your overalls clean?’

  She couldn’t find the notepad that lived, or was supposed to live, in the door below the drainer. She turned over the bridal shop ad on the table and wrote in the margin. ‘Away back to work. Home at normal time.’

  *

  She had thought she understood it, sitting at home this last lot of weeks, but it was only walking into the assembly shop again now that she was hit by the full knowledge of how much of her was bound up in this factory. She felt in that moment as though she had returned from exile.

  And like a returned exile all she could do for the first however many minutes was try to take it all in, looking, touching, adjusting the memory to the reality.

  ‘I honest to God never thought I would see the inside of this place again.’

  ‘Well take a good look,’ said Anto, ‘because after today it’s going to be another week before you see it again.’

  He was a union man, Anto, he would not have thanked her for saying it, but it would have been all the same to her, to be honest, if they had her told she was only going to be working a one-day month.

  18

  The snow was long gone. The sales had not recovered. Barely two hundred coast to coast for the month of March, which, compared to the figures for April, was a veritable bonanza. A deal with Bank of America fell through, a deal with Budget-Rent-A-Car – or Blow-the-Budget-Rent-A-Car as it would have had to be rebranded – fell through. At the end of May, with DeLorean having got no closer than he was at the turn of the year to raising the money needed to restart production, Cork’s patience ran out. The gates of the factory were symbolically closed and three-quarters of the remaining employees were let go. To the couple of hundred who were kept on would fall the task of putting together – by hand if necessary – the various parts still about the factory, whose resale value in their unassembled state was virtually nil, and of keeping the larger tools maintained in the event that some rescue plan might, even now, be devised before the new final-final deadline of seven o’clock (it was persuasively precise) on the evening of 19 October.

  They were kept company in the canteen by a couple of hundred of their former workmates who had decided to (symbolically) climb over the closed gates and stage a sit-in.

  Cork had informed the management in advance, of course, about the need for a second round of redundancies, and the symbolism of the gates. ‘As of tomorrow DeLorean Motor Cars Limited is in a state of cryogenic suspension, a mere flick of a switch away from complete extinction. We cannot illustrate that graphically enough.’

  Randall did not know when he had felt so low. His life the previous few weeks had been – to use a phrase he had picked up in the plant – completely up the left. He ate – when he remembered to eat – sitting at his desk. ‘Chips’ figured prominently, though half the time he could not have told you five minutes after he had finished what he had put in his mouth. That night, before the redundancies were announced, he made a supper for himself in Warren House of the only things he could find in the icebox: a jar of pickle, a pumpernickel loaf he had been astonished to discover in a store in Lisburn (how many weeks ago was that?) and a bottle of duty-free black-label vodka.

  He addressed himself to them in unequal proportion.

  Some time around ten he collapsed sideways on the sofa. He woke at three in the morning with – Oh, God – barely enough time to reach the kitchen sink before he threw up. He was sick then, off and on, for the next twenty-four hours. In between times he lay under the bedcovers and shivered. At some point he had a something-more-than-dream: he was in an elevator travelling up and up and up – the numbers above the door made no sense – and then suddenly he was out and he knew for certain this was the forty-third floor, knew it even though he all he could see was bare walls, bare floors, glass and empty sky beyond. He ran from room to room: nothing, nothing, nothing, was or ever had been...

  His legs went from under him.

  He was on the carpet in the sitting room of Warren House, the bed sheet he had tripped himself up with still tangled round his lower right leg. The vodka bottle was on its side under a low table next to his head. He straightened it up and was surprised to discover it was only a little less than two-thirds full. For the first time it occurred to him that whatever was ailing him did not emanate entirely from that source. Only then was he able to rise above his shame and phone a doctor whose first question – he was sorry to have to ask it – was had he been drinking – not that much and not for the best part of a day now – and whose second was had he been eating – a bit of stale bread, pickles...

  The doctor came in person at first light, smelling heavily of pipe smoke, which was to say the least unhelpful. Randall could barely turn his face towards him. He nodded or shook his head weakly to a whole raft of new questions – about work, in the main, but home-life too, who, if anyone, was around to look after him – while the doctor conducted his examination, paying particular attention to the neck, the throat, the underarms and the abdomen.

  He put away his stethoscope and took out his pipe, which he began idly to fill. ‘The vomiting needless to say will have drained you and the drinking on an empty stomach was, as any teenager could tell you, asking for trouble.’ (Randall was going to bring up the pickles and the bread then swallowed hard against the thought of bringing them up.) The doctor returned the pipe to his pocket unlit. ‘But I am satisfied there is something else there. Your system, frankly, is in a bit of a mess. You need time away from work.’

  Randall found the strength to laugh.

  ‘I mean right away from everything connected to it. I would be happy to write you a line for a week, a fortnight, however long you think you need. You are no earthly use to anyone like this.’

  He left time for his words to sink in.

  ‘A week, then,’ Randall said at last.

  The doctor nodded: that was more like it. He put on a pair of half-moon glasses to write, head tilting back a little more the further he got down the page. ‘Here’ – tearing off the page – ‘I made it for two just in case. If you decide to go back before then they will all think you are a hero.’

  In the doorway he turned and looked about the room. ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying, it’s a lovely house and everything, but if you had somewhere else you could be, other people around you, just till you’re on your feet again...’ His expression as he spoke gradually changed: this was as pointless, he had obviously concluded, as recommending a longer sick-line. He drew in breath. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

  Randall fell asleep again almost at once, and almost at once was back on the empty forty-third floor, returning there at intervals throughout another fretful night. The following morning he felt well enough to make tea in a mug, which he drank, black of necessity, with three spoonfuls of sugar. By midday he was showered and dressed. Three hours later he was at the airport.

  *

  The first person he met as he came out of the elevator was Maur Dubin, fur-coated in defiance of the season, and immediately behind Maur a phalanx of uniformly young, uniformly six-foot-plus removal men, toting paintings, piec
es of sculpture, sealed cardboard cartons. More cartons lay open on the secretaries’ desks, on the floor all around them; the lobby walls were stripped bare.

  It was as though he walked into the movie of his life the scene before the one he had been dreaming. He took a step back, but already the elevator was closing behind him.

  ‘Hey, there!’ Maur clicked his fingers, to summon the name, it seemed, as much as attract attention. ‘Randall! Hold that door!’

  No sooner had he called out than DeLorean’s own voice roared from inside his office. ‘Randall? Is Edmund here?’

  Randall presented himself in the doorway.

  DeLorean was standing in the middle of the floor where his desk had used to be, phone in hand. Shirts were strewn about the carpet, some still in their packaging, others unwrapped, arms outstretched, blues and lilacs, plain and striped, white collars and toning. ‘But this is crazy,’ he said, taking the words out of Randall’s mouth. He held the phone at arm’s length, earpiece tilted towards Randall. Far, far, away a ring tone sounded. ‘I was just this minute trying to call you in Belfast. They told me you were sick.’

  ‘And they told me you weren’t giving up yet.’

  DeLorean drew back his head, puzzled, then looked about him. Now he got it. ‘You mean this?’ He laughed. ‘Didn’t you see the memo? We’re not giving up, we’re moving down, to the thirty-fifth floor.’ The thirty-fifth floor – the ‘basement’ in the DeLorean company parlance – had up to now been home to several of the company’s non-executive offices. ‘Doing our bit to help the economy drive.’

  ‘Excuse me.’ An elderly man slipped into the room through the door behind Randall, suit jacket off to reveal, beneath his vest, a lilac-striped shirt to match one of those spread out on the floor. ‘Anything?’ he asked DeLorean, and Randall at the second time of asking placed the accent, a variant on Jennings’s Scots.

  DeLorean glanced apologetically at Randall. ‘I wonder if you could give us a couple of minutes. Mr Simpson here has come all the way from Edinburgh, Scotland... not just for me, you understand, but this is his only afternoon in New York.’