The Seagulls Laughter

by Holly Bidgood

  ‘And the boy? Ketty’s boy?’

  Birdie looked at him again, and steely-eyed, set his cup down on the table.

  ‘You thought you were special, did you? The only bedfellow? I kept her bed warm as much as you did.’ He paused. ‘I’m ashamed to admit it now. But we’re all human, and all men get lonely sometimes.’

  Rasmus shivered. I kept her bed warm... He had said it so casually. As though it meant nothing, changed nothing. His throat was dry.

  ‘And the boy…?’ he said again.

  Birdie shrugged his shoulders once more.

  ‘Could be mine, could be yours. I don’t think Ketty even knew herself. But he won’t remember either of us, he’s no longer a child. He’s no one’s.’

  Silence once more. Rasmus stared at the table.

  ‘Still,’ Birdie added quietly, ‘Your wife deserves to know. You’ve kept quiet about it for long enough.’

  Rasmus rose slowly to his feet. ‘I think you should leave now, Robert.’ He spoke calmly, could not bring himself to make eye contact.

  We are all human, Birdie had said. And all these years Rasmus had felt as though he were trapped under the wing of the monstrous white gull, waiting until he had gathered enough strength to fight his way to freedom. He saw now, with a lurch of his heavy heart, that this creature he had feared was nothing more than a man. It was the depths of his own imagination against which he had been fighting this lifelong battle.

  Birdie appeared to hesitate.

  His gaze fixed on the table top, Rasmus inwardly braced himself for one final fight, for unkind words and raised voices. Instead he heard only the muted scrape of the chair on the linoleum floor, footsteps that passed him swiftly by, the soft click of the front door. And then Birdie was gone.

  PART THREE

  Malik

  ‘There’s something I think you should know, Malik.’ Snorri turned away from the window, breaking the reverie that had kept him silent for some time. I did not move from my chair, fearing the sudden look of vulnerability that crossed his face as he spoke to me.

  ‘Since you’ve come this far, I think it is best that you know.’

  He clasped his hands behind his back, appeared to grow smaller under the weight of what he was about to say.

  ‘Of course, everyone knew about Rasmus’ relationship with your mother, it was no secret. But,’ he stopped, sighed heavily.

  My breath caught in my throat – in that moment I knew what Snorri was about to say.

  ‘Robert – Birdie – was also… involved with your mother.’

  I dragged the air painfully back into my lungs. ‘Involved?’ I shuddered at the sound of this word, heavy with emphasis.

  ‘I can’t tell you much more: I tried to stay out of it as best I could,’ Snorri continued. He began to pace before the window, shaking his head. ‘He was perhaps just trying to get at Rasmus. I don’t know. I never understood the feud that those two had between them.’ He stopped, looked over at me. ‘But you understand what I’m saying… don’t you?’

  I understood. And I wished that I did not. Involved. Involuntarily my hand crept up to touch my right eye – the cursed one. Aqueous blue, full of water, the shallow eye of the gull. Just the same as his eyes, hideous and cold, above his beaked nose.

  ‘Of course, no one can know for certain.’ Notes of an apology hung in Snorri’s voice. ‘And I don’t know what difference it would make anyway. What’s done is done, and I’m sorry you became involved with all this.’

  ‘Did…’ I struggled to find my voice. ‘Did Rasmus know?’

  Snorri shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, both at once.

  ‘Not at first, no. I have reason to believe that Robert told him the truth many years later. Perhaps that’s the reason he… The icing on top of the cake, as they say. The thing that tipped him over the edge.’

  ‘The reason he killed himself?’

  Snorri looked at me, evidently uncomfortable to hear such things said so plainly.

  ‘There was a darkness within him,’ he said firmly, in explanation. ‘Depression. He said so himself. I believe he hoped that it would not follow him to the north… but one cannot escape such things.’

  I nodded. I would have risen to my feet, to take my leave of the weight of the conversation, but my body had become numb. I feared my legs would not carry me. It did not matter to me, who my father was. Not anymore.

  My stomach completed another sickening twist with the realisation that the man known as Birdie had not come to me as a complete stranger on that day in Angmagssalik, when I had sat mending my kamiks on my front doorstep. I had seen him before; he was a phantom presence in the hazy memories of my early childhood. An occasional visitor – an unpleasant guest – a “friend” of my mother’s. It was no wonder the sight of his eyes on that day had filled me with such dread – a nameless dread that only now did I understand.

  I glanced at Snorri. He had been watching me as I sank into the timelessness of memory.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘For your time. And your honesty.’ With both my hands on the desk I pulled myself to my feet; I could not stay in this room any longer.

  ‘You can stay here tonight,’ Snorri said, with no hint of a question. ‘It is the least I can do.’

  I shook my head. ‘No. Thank you. I should go. I have to go.’

  He walked over to the desk, looseness in his movements, seeming to sense defeat. He picked up a book from the table, began to flick through the pages.

  ‘I’ll make a call to the embassy – we can get you on the next plane home from Reykjavík.’

  ◆◆◆

  The chairs were horribly uncomfortable, a crippling place to spend the night. I tugged my mended kamiks off my feet and attempted to create a bed across the chairs with my anorak, but still I did not sleep. Every few minutes I would glance over to the door, expecting to see Eqingaleq strolling into the quiet, deserted airport. But there was no sign of him, and I knew in my heart that I would not find him here.

  Soon I would see the fjords of Greenland. The pack ice would just be beginning to break up at this time of year, leaving open water for miles and miles, to the east and to the south… What kind of a welcome could I expect? There were few who would have missed me. I had sold my dogs. I still wore the curse with which I had been born, for all to see in the unevenness of my eyes. I missed Qallu and his kind-heartedness, but with him now gone from this world forever, I did not feel as though I were returning home. I was more an outsider now than I had ever been.

  I knew that my daughter would not remember me, or at least would not understand the nearness of my life and hers, the way in which we were connected. I had been gone for over a year. She might remember me as the strange man with frightening eyes; she might remember the suffocating, hostile atmosphere that descended in her family home whenever I was present. I’d had to beg to be allowed to see her. And I doubted, since I had been gone for so long, that her mother would accept me back into my daughter’s life, even if I were to beg as before. She had a new father now, I recalled – a real father. This was much better for her; I did not want my innocent daughter to have to shoulder the burden of a broken family, a half-absent father with a curse, a father who was an outcast.

  I closed my eyes and tried to picture her, imagine what she would be like now, as a toddler. But I could remember only baby-plumpness, and at once I saw the image of Boo, laughing as she sucked on the paintbrushes that I had left lying around. And Martha prising them from her little hands and apologising to me breathlessly, as though anxious that I might be angry with her, or the baby. Neil had told me about Boo’s father, about how he used to hurt Martha – it had brought tears to my eyes – when Neil was not looking. I had not mentioned my own daughter’s existence – to Neil, or to anyone in the house – for fear of what they might think of me. Perhaps they might think that my daughter was kept away from me for the same reason that Boo was taken away from her father, to a place of safety. I feared that they would have st
opped me, too, from being with Boo.

  And yet, in the end I was the one who had left Boo behind. I had held her in my arms on the quayside, before I must board the ferry which would take me over the broiling sea once more, to Iceland this time. I had not wanted to let go of the solidity of her little body – for where she was, there was Martha also.

  I missed the familiar comfort of Martha’s presence. I missed the freshness of the sea wind over the low Shetland hills, the way in which it blew through Martha’s fine hair and stirred it up into wild streams which she would tuck away behind her ears over and over again. I missed the warmth of the fireside in the evenings, the weight of Boo’s head against my chest, her eyelids fluttering as she watched the gentle whir of the spinning wheel. Martha’s hands teasing the wool into yarn, her laughter when she made a mistake. Boo would stir slightly at the sound of her mother’s voice.

  I thought about the paintings that Martha had helped me to sell. She had seemed so apologetic for taking my paintings without my knowledge. My thoughts were heavy with regret that I had not told her how grateful I was to her, how touched I was. I recalled the strange, comfortable nervousness that I had felt as we stood side by side at the opening of the exhibition – my exhibition. I could not speak; I could only watch as she chewed on her bottom lip, chapped with the cold of early spring, wishing she would look up at me.

  Why would she not look at me?

  I remembered how my insides had broiled just like the ocean as I had watched her look through my paintings of Greenland – the ones that I had not shown to anyone else. I could no longer avoid admitting the truth to myself, the way I felt about her. And I knew that this time it had nothing to do with drink, or the means to a desired end. Yet as I thought back to my brief encounter with the girl I had met in the bar with Michael, the fateful union with the woman who was then to carry my child, and – most painful of all – the mistaken clash between Sun and Moon… I feared that to act on my feelings might cause harm once more.

  Eqingaleq would have helped me to understand my thoughts, had he been around. Without his guidance I did not have the confidence to trust myself. So I had said nothing to Martha, only suffered inwardly, paralysed, over the weeks leading up to my departure. And what could I have said to her, anyway? I knew that I had to reach Iceland, I had to find Snorri; still I wished that the remaining days I had with Martha would not pass by so quickly.

  I had been waiting for the spring, when the ferry would run to Iceland once more. But I left in winter-cold rain. At the quayside I shook Neil’s hand, and Alastair’s. Neil bid me good riddance – one of his awkward jokes, I presumed, given the tightness of his grip on my hand and the look in his eyes that I could only interpret as sadness. Alastair grasped my hand in both of his as he assured me with all sincerity that I was welcome in his home anytime. A lump began to rise in my throat, and stuck there as Jeanie embraced me in a way that my own mother had never done. I could not speak, not even to Martha as I embraced her last of all: Martha and Boo together. I wished that someone could have taken Boo from her at this moment, for I longed to hold Martha tightly. But perhaps this would have been more painful. I wrapped my arms somewhat awkwardly around mother and daughter, my cheek to Boo’s head. She turned her face to mine and I kissed her on the forehead. Then, before I could think about what I was doing, I kissed Martha on the cheek, too. I turned away quickly, so that I would not have to see her reaction, but I felt her pain nonetheless, aching in my own heart.

  Afterwards, I watched as Lerwick disappeared into the smudge of mist and rain. My heart was heavy, but warm after the send-off I had received. I had left Greenland as an outcast, missed by nobody; later I had fled the grey city under a cloud of shame. I had stayed in Shetland for only a few months, yet I felt as though I were leaving home –

  – I swung my legs off the edge of the plastic airport chair so quickly that I almost fell onto the floor, hit by the sudden realisation that it was not the beak-nosed man who was now foremost in my thoughts. He had been there for so long, a constant predator, that I had taken his presence for granted.

  My thoughts had been clouded by the shame of my past misdeeds, mistakes committed in darkness and drunkenness, overshadowed at all times by the seagull’s great, white wings. He had taunted me and I had believed that I was worthless. But he did not haunt my thoughts any longer.

  I paced up and down the row of empty chairs. The coolness of the floor against my bare feet brought some calm to the heat of my thoughts. I thought of Martha: reminiscences that flowed in like the tide, pushing aside the agony and self-doubt that had pursued me until now on webbed seagull-feet and the dogged chase of wolves’ paws. I thought of Judith, too, and the kindness that she had shown me when the beak-nosed man had brought only pain. One day I would show her my thanks, for the warmth that she had brought into the darkness of my soul.

  But for now, I thought, I would tell Martha what I had done, and the wrongs that I had committed. I would explain to her, at last, who I really was and where I had come from. And perhaps she would forgive me, where Judith surely could not.

  I knew that I had followed the path that was laid out for me: fate, as Eqingaleq had said. But I understood now that in following it I had, in the end, travelled too far to the north. Thankfully, I had some money left, saved up from the paintings that Martha had helped me to sell. If I were to hitchhike back to Iceland’s east coast – to the ferry terminal – I could be in Lerwick within the week. With this thought, I pulled on my kamiks with shaking hands, hoisted my bag onto my back and half-ran out of the airport building and into the breaking dawn.

  ◆◆◆

  Lerwick was beginning to stir in the morning light as the ferry docked after the few days’ journey I had endured on the North Atlantic. The crossing had been calm, the ferry cradled in the gentle arms of the Mother of the Sea. I watched gangs of belligerent gulls, swooping and shrieking over the stone harbour, and smiled: the sight and sound of them no longer instilled fear in my heart. Making my way down the gangway, relieved as always to place my feet back upon solid earth, the blood rushed to my head as I caught sight of a familiar figure.

  And where the hell have you been?

  The words rushed out indignantly, though I noticed even as I spoke them that I was not at all surprised to see him in this place.

  Eqingaleq grinned with his ever-present, mischievous humour. He was leaning against the harbour wall, evidently quite at ease, for his smooth face did not show a single crease of worry on its canvas skin. He spat out a piece of seaweed on which he had been sucking and tossed the remainder of it over his shoulder, into the water.

  I’ve not been anywhere. He grinned again. The fur of his bearskin trousers rippled like grass in the wind.

  I wrenched my backpack off and threw it onto the wet stone ground.

  You know I’ve been looking for you. For quite some time, in fact.

  Then you can’t have been looking very hard.

  With a sigh I rested my back against the wall, stood beside him, looking upon the stone houses of the town and the undulating island hills beyond.

  Come back for her, have you? He spoke casually. If she’ll have you after all that you’ve been up to.

  I could hear the mischief bubbling in his voice; he may even have thrown me a wink. But I did not look at him, would not give him that satisfaction. I pursed my lips together to quell the unbidden smile at the corners of my mouth.

  So you were here, were you? All this time?

  We looked at each other, his black eyes boring deep into my being.

  I was with you, he said, only you chose not to see me.

  I closed my eyes for a moment, savouring the peace brought by his words. When I opened them again I saw him wink, and this time I smiled from ear to ear.

  It’s good to see you again, my old friend, I said. And picking up my backpack, I started to walk.

  My feet carried me along the road that led up and out of the town. I could see the rise of the hills b
eyond the houses, grey in the morning light, and I pictured the cottage beyond them, on the island’s opposite coast. It was likely that I would see Alastair first, feeding the sheep out in the fields. Perhaps Martha would be there with him, for she had said that she felt quite at home amongst the sheep. She had laughed when she said this, and her eyes had lit up, and her cheeks were coloured from the cold, wild air, and I was sure she must have noticed me looking at her.

  I was so caught up within my thoughts that at first I did not notice that Eqingaleq was no longer at my side. I spun around in a panic, fearful that he had left me again. But he was sitting only a short way behind me, on a low wall by the side of the road, one leg crossed casually over the other. He looked at me, and I raised my arms questioningly.

  You’re going to wear another hole in your kamiks, he said.

  He was right. It was a long way to walk.

  You’re not thinking straight, he chastised. It’s no wonder you ended up out your way, in Iceland.

  I walked slowly back to where he was sitting, digging my hands into my jeans pockets as if trying to hide this small part of myself away from the anxiety that began to slip back into my mind. We had not yet talked about my meeting with Snorri.

  Who do you think my father is? I asked him hesitantly.

  The wind seemed to drop as I waited for his answer. My heart stumbled irregularly, yet around me the world was peaceful. The road was empty – of both people and cars – and I could see fields now, beyond the houses. We had almost reached the boundary of the town. Back towards the harbour, the ferry continued to belch black smoke into the clear air, the rumbling roar of its engine carried away inaudibly by the wind.

  I looked back at Eqingaleq, sensing that his gaze had not left me. He shrugged as I caught his eye.

  The only thing that matters is what you do now, he said.

  I nodded. My heart stilled. Then through the gentle rush of the wind I heard the sound of a car approaching. I held my arm out, my thumb stuck up in the air. The car indicated, and trundled noisily to a stop beside me. As the driver leaned toward the opened passenger window I found that I recognised her: a neighbour from the village to which I was headed.