The bar shines across the waterfront that Friday, orange and inviting in the night. As Felix approaches the building, he notices how the light catches the sea, or perhaps it is the sea that catches the light; at once dark and glassy but bright, as though burning from beneath.
Even for the weekend, the bar seems busy. Crowds have formed the length of the counter, and all of the sofas are occupied. Bodies made thin by modern life cut to the front with savage jabs from bony shoulders pressing through their clothes. Mouths grow wide when pressed to glass, desperate to drink, to speak, to scream a word or two after five days of bitten tongues and muted minds. Figures flicker in his vision; slim shapes, bent silhouettes with blemished skin and feathered arms. When Felix turns to face them, they are gone.
Pressing through the groups of people, he struggles closer to the bar. It is several minutes before he manages to find Michael, sitting patiently at the counter.
“Always early,” he says, reaching over his friend’s shoulder to retrieve a waiting drink. Tonight the drinks are tall and slender, filled with bright blue liquid and crushed ice. He knows Blue Lagoon when he sees it.
“Always late,” replies Michael. They both drink deep from the awkward glasses, only stopping when their lips are numb with cold. “I thought you might have bailed on me this evening.”
“Really?”
“Your time-keeping is terrible.” He crunches on a mouthful of blue slush. “A few more minutes and your drink would’ve found a new home.”
“I’m sure it would have,” murmurs Felix, smiling. Already he can feel the alcohol heating his throat, flooding his body with warmth. The weight of the week begins lifting from his shoulders when he notices a third drink at the bar. “Didn’t want to order me another, while you were at it?”
“What? Oh, that’s Helen’s.”
“Helen?”
A slender hand finds his shoulder. It squeezes, then slides down the smooth lapel. “You must be Felix!”
For a moment it is as though the weight of the week comes crashing back down on top of him. Half-turning, he stares dumbly into the face of a woman. She smiles back at him.
“Helen, Felix,” says Michael. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, sorry,” he says, “the ice. Numb mouth. I just wasn’t… Michael didn’t mention you were joining us.”
“Did too!”
“Charming,” she says, smiling deeper. Moving beside Michael, she plants a kiss on his lips. “Sorry I’m late. It’s horrible out there.”
“Is the angel coming?” says Michael.
“Yes,” she replies, looking past Felix to the crowds.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, she’s coming. Angela,” she says, waving, “over here.”
A woman breaks from the crowd and moves towards them. As she draws nearer, Felix recognises her instantly. Matted feathers hang beneath her forearms, her bare skin pale as bone where it shines beneath the lights. Time seems to slow as he watches her advancing through the dancers, knowing – hoping – he is dreaming, and that if he is not, there is nothing he can do against this modern myth, this ancient art: the angel, resurrected by the sea, the rain, the birds in the night sky –
“Felix?”
He returns to the room and the faces in front of him.
“I… Sorry, yes.” He shakes the dregs of his drink. “Drunk.”
Introductions are made by the bar. Helen is twenty-six and works in retail, managing a newly-opened clothes outlet in Bedford Place. She has always lived in Southampton but would like to move to Spain when she is able, or somewhere in Italy; anywhere, in fact, warmer and drier than here. Standing by the taps in her black dress she seems familiar, and Felix feels sure he has met her before, last week or the Friday before that.
In the same breath, she tells Felix about late shifts, bank holidays, incompetent staff and a dozen other banal things that he has heard a hundred times before from as many similar faces. He nods, and smiles, and sucks loudly on his straw until she realises his glass is empty and moves away to buy a second round.
“It’s heaving in here,” says Michael, beside him.
“Almost too busy, tonight. A pub would be a nice change of place right about now.”
“That’s not such a bad idea. Next weekend.”
“I think everyone has the same idea,” says Angela, finishing her own drink. “Rushing out on Friday night, to drink and dance –”
“– by the sea,” says Michael with her. They both look at each other and laugh easily. “You know, Angela, Felix has this theory, about the sea.”
“I do?”
“You do,” he says. “Remember?”
“Please, remind me.”
Finishing his own drink, Michael takes their glasses and places them on the bar. “You said that this is why people come here, time and time again. Not just for the drinks but for the sea and the night sky. For the breath of the ocean on their faces.”
“That’s beautiful,” says Angela. “Really, it is.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you write?”
“No. I used to, a little poetry. But not anymore.”
“I didn’t know that,” says Michael.
“We’re all full of surprises this evening.”
Helen returns with a tray of cocktails and shot glasses. They drink Sex on the Beach, then more Lagoons, followed by a round of Dark ‘N’ Stormy, and another, until Felix cannot distinguish between the storm in his glass and the one that has broken outside, lashing the smoking terrace and stirring the sea, waves leaping like orange flames against the waterfront, illuminated and terrible by the light of the bar, where inside people drink and dance and for a few hours dream of a little life with their feet.
He doesn’t remember leaving the club, or getting home, but it is still night when he wakes in his bed to a tapping sound. Slowly his eyes become accustomed to the dark. With his head on the pillow he can just make out his surroundings. The moon catches the tip of his wardrobe mirror, casting light on the skeletal frame of the clothes horse. His shirt and jeans are strewn across the floor. A flicker of white draws his eyes upwards, to where a gull has settled on his windowsill. The bird is thin, its plumage pale in the moonlight. He doesn’t know how long it has been standing there, framed by the city behind it.
The tapping echoes in his head, disembodied through the darkness. The storm, at least, seems to have passed, leaving in its wake a hollow calm, like an exhaled breath. Rising, he drifts silently down the hallway. In his sleepy state he is reminded of survivors, trapped in a sunken ship, spelling out their lives in Morse Code against the metallic hull of their tomb.
For a moment he stares around, his eyesight dulled by sleep. It is still night, or early morning. He cannot remember what time he went to bed and did not think to check his bedside clock.
He examines his surroundings in the darkness. The shapes are familiar; the bookcase to his left, the drinks cabinet by the wall, the television and the plastic plant beside it. To his right he sees a pool of moonlight, capt-ured in the clear glass table-top. The curtains are drawn but a sliver of light slips between them, near the ceiling.
The darkness alters things, so that they are not what they seem. He imagines himself in the ruins of the room, sunk deep beneath the sea, and everything around him rotten, green with growth. He is sure he has dreamed as much, before. Automatically he wades through the dark towards the curtains. Damp, maritime smells fill his nose. As his hand reaches for the fabric, he wonders what he will see. Nine floors above Queen’s Park, there is no way a person has reached his balcony. He imagines one of the garden chairs being blown by the wind against the glass.
He tugs the curtains, draws them back, and finds the balcony empty.
Confusion fills his mind. He studies the balcony dumbly; the wooden railings, the table and chairs, an empty wine bottle, glass glinting in the moonlight and behind it a vast backdrop of blackness, which is the sea and the night. Both are filled with tiny stars and, he thinks, if he looks closely, a small ship, pale against the darkness. He wonders what he is doing there, standing in the cold, with only his thin cotton pyjamas for protection. Turning from the balcony, he returns to his bedroom.
The gull is still standing at the window. Behind it, Southampton shimmers in the darkness. His curtains are not drawn, accounting for the light: apartment blocks, bedroom windows and street lamps shining like the tips of deep-sea anemones in the night. He isn’t sure of what time he got in, or when he left the bar, or anything beyond the room into which he has woken; the few square metres of the city that for five-hundred pounds a month he calls his own. It is at once expensive and a small price to pay for the flat that has become his home. There is nowhere else he knows like these walls, except perhaps those of the bar where he has spent the evening with Michael, and most Friday nights before that for as long as he can remember.
It occurs to him that he can still hear the tapping. He studies his room again, panning the clothes horse, the window, the wardrobe, doubting whether he is even awake and not still trapped in the throes of a dream. Then, almost helplessly he turns back to the window, and the bird standing on the sill.
Something is wrong with its face. With the cityscape behind, it is not instantly obvious, but he has the gradual impression of a gargoyle, glaring through the glass. Slowly his eyesight adjusts, the bird’s features emerging from the gloom: smooth skin, fat cheeks, plump lips and two wide, unblinking eyes.
For several seconds it does nothing but stare back at him; a spectre of the city or the sea made real by the moonlight on its back. The bird shuffles, shivers, the tips of its wings tapping quietly against the glass. Then its mouth slides open and, still staring, it cries with the voice of a small child.