Man with a Seagull on His Head

by Harriet Paige

  “It’s okay, we won’t be long,” said Mira. Taking Tom’s hand, she stepped over the threshold, turning to check that the old man was still behind them. She stepped forward, giving him room to enter, and watched him wipe his feet purposefully back and forth on the mat, then step slowly and carefully into the hallway. He closed his eyes and appeared to be smelling the air, making her aware of it too, the lingering traces of unknown bodies. She let Tom’s hand drop and he walked off into the sitting room. She knew he was cross and confused that her attention was so absorbed by this stranger, that she wasn’t being the guide to his mother that he wanted her to be. But she didn’t care. He could talk to his mother, answer all her silly questions. He liked talking about it. He talked about it as if it was his own. But it didn’t belong to him. It was hers. And she wanted to offer it as a gift to this poor old man.

  He too walked past her and through into the sitting room, and she followed, watching for his reaction. But he seemed more interested in the furniture than what was on the walls. His hand brushed lightly over the arm of the sofa, he looked down at the floor, his foot slowly and carefully following the swirl of the pattern in the carpet. Then he walked over to the window and stood looking out, as if upon a wide vista rather than just the interior of the gallery. She stood quite close to him but he didn’t seem aware of her presence at all. After a time he looked away from the window and down at his hand. He held it out, palm upwards, and appeared to be studying it, a puzzled, melancholy expression on his face. The other hand remained in his pocket, and his head still bobbed backwards and forwards in that curious manner. Then suddenly his hand fell to his side and he turned and walked out of the room. She thought he must be leaving and felt a terrible disappointment that what he’d seen had failed to touch him in any way. And yet when she followed she saw that he went not towards the back door but into the small bedroom on the opposite side of the hallway.

  The narrow single bed was positioned along the wall beneath the window on the far side of the room and he walked directly to it, standing over it for a short while before lowering himself down to sit on the edge.

  The steward who was seated just inside the door rose immediately from her stool.

  “No sitting on—”

  “Let him,” interrupted Mira. “It’s okay.”

  She stood at the doorway and watched as the thin, stiff body eased itself back onto the bed, the legs swinging up with a slow mechanical grace, the head lowering down towards the pillow. His movements were restricted somewhat by only having the aid of one hand, the other remaining at all times in his pocket in a way that made her wonder if he might be missing the other and concealing a stump. With his able hand he drew the meagre covers out from where they were tucked under the mattress and manoeuvred himself beneath them, turning his back to her as he tucked his knees up to his chest in a fetal curl.

  The steward looked again at Mira, concerned.

  “Honestly, it’s fine,” she said, walking over towards the bed. He had his eyes closed and she lowered her hand, thinking now she might touch him, stroke the frail strands of grey hair that fell over his forehead. He was like a child lying there, a strange old child. She felt, looking down at him, that her gift had been received.

  “It’s just that we’re about to close up,” said the steward, getting up from her stool.

  “I know,” said Mira, turning. “But don’t wake him. Don’t wake him just yet.”

  *

  He’d seen his house floating down the river and had followed it here. He had watched it lifted high in the air, swaying this way and that before coming slowly to rest on the back of a flatbed truck, a huge platform on wheels. He’d watched it disappear inside the vast brick building and had not followed it any further, for although he saw people freely coming and going, pouring in and out of the wide glass doors, he’d spent too long outside the company of others to feel any right to be among them. So he’d stayed outside with the birds, scavenging the remains of half-eaten hot dogs once the crowds had cleared and using their polystyrene containers to piece together a makeshift mattress beneath the footbridge.

  But then one day a girl had spoken to him. She had invited him in. Maybe her face stirred a memory within him of a child with dark curls, milk-white skin, and raspberry lips. Maybe it was this that persuaded him to accept the invitation, to follow her through the doors that parted smoothly to let her enter. He stood beside her, not too close, for his skin bristled to be near a creature so smooth and youthful. There below them was his home. No ropes or wheels or platforms now. Just sitting there in the middle of a huge grey space. And his bones ached with longing to be inside, to rest.

  And yet when he’d entered the bungalow he’d discovered such a mess. Such filth. Upon the walls, everywhere. Worse than the pigeon excrement he’d become accustomed to sleeping on, to having on his own person. Far worse, because this was all his own doing. It was true: he had been painting and he realized with shame that this was the result. But standing here, too humiliated to take Pigeon out of his pocket to see the house in which he’d once lived, he found himself recalling what it was he’d really been trying to do. He’d been trying to fly. And somehow he had been persuaded of the lunatic belief that he could do it.

  If that sounds crazy, then I suspect you have not seen the paintings themselves. For anyone who has, and has been touched by their beauty, will surely recognize the truth of it: that what you are seeing is not just a woman standing on a beach, but a spirit soaring, a man attempting to fly. He took up a paintbrush and tried to find wings. For it was never just a painting to him. It was a hope. A hope that swelled then died with the final brushstroke.

  Exactly what occurred that day on East Beach remains a mystery even to him. Struck by a dying bird; his eye momentarily made use of. He saw something and had no choice but to respond. In love, yes. In love like a fish is in water. So that now, lifted out of it, he has no real memory of what it was like to live and breathe in that medium, but is left only with a sense of lacking, a sad shrinking kind of feeling he doesn’t fully recognize as regret. But the little bed in the corner of the room offers him the rest he craves. Not just rest, but forgiveness. For all his audacity and his failure he is forgiven. Vindicated even, for as he pulls the blanket up under his chin he can feel his arm twitching, in readiness for flight. And he can sense a face coming out of the shadows to meet him. Maybe he will really do it this time. And maybe when he does he will see her again. He closes his eyes and feels the bungalow slip its moorings. Set adrift. Floating back down the wide brown river, all the way home.

  Reading guide

  1. Ray is a cryptic character, especially for a protagonist. As readers, do we ever truly know him?

  2. Early in the book, Ray is described as being “past the age when anything interesting was likely to happen to him.” The same might be said of Jennifer when we rejoin her in Chapter 6—the moment when something extremely interesting happens to her. What do you think the author is trying to tell us via the similarities of these characters, and what else do they have in common?

  3. Ray has, to say the least, an unorthodox relationship with George and Grace. But right up until Grace turns violent, it never seems to affect Ray’s art. What do you think this says about the couple’s interest in him—or about the art itself?

  4. The main characters have very little interaction. This is particularly drawn into focus at the end, where Ray and Jennifer very nearly meet and interact, but then miss each other. Why do you think the author ends the book with this missed connection?

  5. At the end of the novel, the narrator addresses the reader, writing of Ray’s aspirations, “If that sounds crazy to you, then I suspect you have not seen the paintings themselves. For anyone who has, and has been touched by their beauty, will surely recognise the truth of it: that what you are seeing is not just a woman standing on a beach, but a spirit soaring, a man attempting to fly.” Having not see
n the fictive paintings, does it sound “crazy” to you? Do you think Ray achieves flight—and, if so, what kind?

  6. If you could ask the author one question, what would it be?

  Reading guide

  1. Ray is a cryptic character, especially for a protagonist. As readers, do we ever truly know him?

  2. Early in the book, Ray is described as being “past the age when anything interesting was likely to happen to him.” The same might be said of Jennifer when we rejoin her in Chapter 6—the moment when something extremely interesting happens to her. What do you think the author is trying to tell us via the similarities of these characters, and what else do they have in common?

  3. Ray has, to say the least, an unorthodox relationship with George and Grace. But right up until Grace turns violent, it never seems to affect Ray’s art. What do you think this says about the couple’s interest in him—or about the art itself?

  4. The main characters have very little interaction. This is particularly drawn into focus at the end, where Ray and Jennifer very nearly meet and interact, but then miss each other. Why do you think the author ends the book with this missed connection?

  5. At the end of the novel, the narrator addresses the reader, writing of Ray’s aspirations, “If that sounds crazy to you, then I suspect you have not seen the paintings themselves. For anyone who has, and has been touched by their beauty, will surely recognise the truth of it: that what you are seeing is not just a woman standing on a beach, but a spirit soaring, a man attempting to fly.” Having not seen the fictive paintings, does it sound “crazy” to you? Do you think Ray achieves flight—and, if so, what kind?

  6. If you could ask the author one question, what would it be?

  About the Book:

  An Interview with Harriet Paige

  Why, of all possible birds, a seagull?

  A gull is a very common bird, but also possesses great beauty. When I see them up close, their beauty always surprises me; the white of the feathers that run over the head and breast is so pure it possesses a kind of lustre and richness. That suited the theme of transcendence within the everyday. Seagulls also have a very piercing gaze, a kind of knowing look, which suited me too. I wanted the accident on the beach to have a fatalistic aspect, as if Ray was being chosen, honed in on.

  This is an unusual book, by turns absurdist and deeply felt. Could you talk a bit about its origins?

  In my recollection the seed for the idea was planted when I heard someone talking on the radio about the importance of forgetting. That if we were to retain everything that our senses take in at any given moment then we wouldn’t be able to function at all—that forgetting, and forming a comprehensible narrative from the little we retain, is vital for us to be able to move smoothly though life.

  I started to wonder what would happen if, for some reason, someone was to retain every single detail of what they saw at a particular moment. That maybe, although we need to forget most of what we perceive, something is also obscured by that forgetting. That if we could contain it in our heads, even just what is seen in the fraction of a second, something might be unlocked about the mystery and beauty of life. Something that we do sense, but cannot normally access.

  And because I wasn’t really interested in the actual psychology of it, rather just the idea, I conceived of an entirely fantastical way in which this might happen. That’s where the absurdity comes in I suppose. Creating a fantastical plot gives me an arena in which to explore ideas, rather than just situations. But I’m always very interested in interior lives so it’s important to me that my characters are real.

  The irony of the term Outsider Art—how it uses the language of the establishment to describe an artistic practice that, by definition, exists outside of that establishment—raises interesting ethical questions about the relationship between dealer and artist, the academy and the impulse to create. Do you think there is a literary equivalent?

  The further I got with the novel, the more it became about the idea of creativity. I became interested in exploring the creative impulse itself—of how something immaterial becomes translated into something material and the inevitable frustrations and disappointments involved, but also looking at the relationship between the creative impulse and the desire for recognition. I don’t think I would write if I didn’t have publication as an aim but surely the purest form of creativity is one that doesn’t seek recognition. If that is one definition of Outsider Art then I am sure there are literary equivalents. Emily Dickinson is one that springs to mind. She wrote nearly 1,800 poems during her very reclusive life but almost all of these were only discovered after her death.

  Literature has no shortage of female muses, who so often function as objects of desire. But Ray’s obsession with Jennifer feels very different. How would you describe it?

  I didn’t want Ray to fall in love with Jennifer or feel desire for her in the conventional sense. I wanted to express the idea that the beauty he sees in her is universal, shared by all humanity, and that he would have seen the same beauty in, and felt the same love for, anybody who happened to have been standing in his field of vision at the time. At the same time, he very specifically sees her, which has important consequences for Jennifer. As it says at the end of the book, Ray falls in love, but in love like a fish is in water. His experience immerses him in love itself and provides a direct encounter with another human being, an encounter which is unattainable within normal human relationships.

  As interesting—and inscrutable—as Ray is, Jennifer’s richly imagined inner life makes her such a compelling character. How do you hope readers are affected by their missed encounter?

  It was always very important to me that Ray and Jennifer never actually meet in the novel. I wanted their connection to exist purely in a realm beyond the material world. The ending is a coming together of the characters without

  them actually coming together. By having them brush past each other without being aware of each other’s presence, I wanted to express how the yearning we have for deep connection with the other remains unfulfilled, but only just. We feel the possibility without being able to fully attain it. In many ways the novel is about our inability to truly know each other.

  About the Author

  Harriet Paige was born in 1979 and grew up in Devon, South West England. She studied English and American Literature at the University of Warwick and returned in 2004 to do an MA in Writing. After completing the programme she continued to develop her writing alongside working as an interiors journalist and bringing up her three children. Man with a Seagull on His Head is her debut novel.