Glenn Patterson - Gull

‘I am as frustrated as the next misunderstood engineering genius, but that was an opportunity missed for us,’ said DeLorean when he had put the phone down, his tongue as close to his cheek as was compatible with speech. (It was, wasn’t it?) ‘I had been talking up the Lotus link in my conversations with the sheikh. He’s a big, big fan.’

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…’