Glenn Patterson - Gull

‘No,’ he said, ‘I was…’ What? Really looking at it this time? ‘Miles away.’

‘Well, you’re back now.’ She had folded her arms. Defensive. ‘I just wanted to let you know… the Botanic Gardens are lovely this time of the year. If you wanted to get out and about more, I mean.’

‘The Botanic Gardens.’

‘Right. Especially on a Sunday morning.’

‘Sunday.’

‘Right.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome.’

*

She had no idea what possessed her. She had been on the point of passing him by — he had his nose stuck in paperwork — and then she thought, no, I’m going to say something here and then her mouth was open and instead of giving out to him she was telling him about Sunday mornings in Botanic Gardens.

Absolutely no idea at all.

There had been a shift in the tenor of their training of late, less now about getting to know the ins and outs of every stage of the assembly, more about getting to know one particular task. Hers — whatever it was the people in charge of the training had observed in her in the previous weeks and months — was seats.

Right down at the end of the assembly line. That was where she had been going when she saw your man Randall at the Tellus control station and suffered the rush of blood to her head.

A pair of seats was sitting there waiting for her, positioned as they would be when eventually the computer brought the carrier to a halt, a fully fitted car mounted on top, doors raised.

For now, though, it was mules and anatomy lessons. She had to learn how to take the seat apart and put it back together again. Thirty named parts, some, like the Nyloc nut, its washer and cap screw, in multiples of four per seat. The seat covers were black and made from the hide of she preferred not to think what, so soft was the leather. (She wouldn’t have said no to a pair of gloves made out of it, all the same.) Hand-stitched, she was pretty sure. This wasn’t work, she sometimes thought, it was a window on another way of living.

Along with the clearly defined role came clearly defined workmates. Taking the seats apart and putting them back together with her were a fella by the name of Anto Hughes and a wee lad, not much older-looking than her own boys, Tommy Cahill, who went by TC.

Liz had never noticed either of them on the way in in the mornings or on the way out again at the end of the day so figured they must be coming and going by the other gate, the Twinbrook one.

‘No kidding?’ Robert sarked. ‘Tommy Cahill and Anto Hughes and you think they might be from West Belfast? Go to the top of the class!’

‘God help us,’ she said, ‘if our names should ever be all that define us.’

She would have put Anto a year or two either side of her — mid to late thirties. Always had a book sticking out of his overalls’ pocket, which he would read, sitting quietly off to one side, any time he had a spare moment.

‘Jack London,’ she said into one such lull, glimpsing the name on the spine. ‘I remember getting him out of the library when I was a kid — The Call of the Wild .’

He looked at her, she thought a little embarrassed. ‘I haven’t read that one.’

‘There’s another one, isn’t there, with a dog in it? What’s this you call it?’

‘I don’t know.’ He frowned and folded back the cover on the book he was reading, which she saw in that movement was called The Iron Heel . A huge black boot for an illustration. She wondered if she had got the right Jack London. She wondered if some of Anto’s discomfort was for her, not him.

TC, the morning after the three of them were first teamed together, was late getting in. ‘Sorry if I kept you. I had a pass out for an hour there to go up to the Tech for my exam results.’

‘Exam results?’ Anto said.

‘Level Two City and Guilds, Welding and Sheetmetal Fabrication.’

‘And?’ said Liz.

‘I got a merit. I’ve already put in for my Level Three.’

‘Well done.’

Anto made a face. ‘Aye, well done, but in case you hadn’t noticed they’ve been turning us into jacks-of-all-trades since we got here. What are you planning on doing with a Level Three City and Guilds in a place like this, or even a Level Two?’

TC drew himself to his full height, six inches shorter than Anto, a couple shorter than Liz, even allowing for the arches of hair rising up either side of his centre parting. ‘I’ll tell you what I plan on doing — training to be your supervisor, that’s what.’

Anto nodded: sure thing . ‘You in a union, TC?’

‘Of course.’

‘Which one?’

‘Which one, he says,’ said TC to the world at large; to Anto, ‘Which one do you think? The big one.’

‘Well then, man-who-would-be-my-supervisor…’ Anto punctuated each word with a light tap on TC’s breastbone, ‘I’m your union rep.’

Light or not, TC looked like he was about to return the taps with interest until Liz intervened.

‘Hold on, you two chiefs, are you telling me I’m the only Indian here as well as the only woman?’

They turned to face her, but before either of them could speak the safety goggles went up on to the forehead of the worker who had been bent over examining a pressurised cylinder a few feet away.

‘If it’s any comfort, love, I’m an Indian too,’ she said.

In fact, as Liz well knew, there was no shortage of women about the place, and not only where you would have expected to find them in other factories: typing letters, answering phones, though mind you even in DeLorean she never saw a man do either of those things. More astonishing still, there were enough cubicles in the toilet blocks (of which there was one about every hundred yards throughout the factory) that she didn’t have to stand in a line reaching halfway down the corridor, watching as any amount of men came and went from the toilets next door. They had been prepared for this, in other words, the management. Her and all the other women, they were not here by chance but by right, on equal footing.

*

Randall took a call on Thursday evening. DeLorean in LAX. The irresistible lure of the last phone booth before embarkation. ‘I am going to be in London this weekend. I was hoping you could meet me… You’re not doing anything that can’t be dropped, are you?’

What was he going to say? ‘Funny you should ask, I was hoping I might take a stroll in the Botanical Gardens.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘not at all.’

He flew over on Saturday morning, later than intended. The flight was delayed due to the cancellation of the previous night’s last inbound flight from Heathrow: a regular occurrence in Randall’s limited experience. ‘Any time there’s an emergency on another route they pinch a plane from Belfast,’ the woman who took his ticket said with a smile. ‘I suppose they think, sure who’s going to notice?’

He rang the Ritz from the arrivals lounge. Mr DeLorean had already gone out, but he had left a message to meet at three p.m. in Soho Square.

‘Soho Square?’ Randall asked. ‘What is that? A restaurant?’

‘No, it’s a park.’

Randall did not think he had ever seen DeLorean out of doors when there was not a factory to be an announced or a car to get into. He was half expecting to find a film crew in attendance, or at the very least a photographer, but instead the only cameras on display in the square (‘park’ was maybe stretching it a little) were being wielded by tourists arranging others of their party around the plinth of the statue of the man in stockings and wig at its heart, or trying to get an angle on the curious half-timbered building out of which the gentleman on the plinth might have stepped moments before he was petrified and in the lee of which (and not, Randall thought, incidental to the photograph being composed) stood three bona fide London punk rockers, all spikes and studs and sideways snarls.