Glenn Patterson - Gull

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.’

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.