by Emma Timpany
‘Oh, God. Oh, all right.’
‘You sure?’
‘No.’ Simon groaned and reached for his book. ‘For the love of vermin …’
‘Wake me if there’s a problem. Okay?’
Simon nodded. A little later he was on the sofa in his dressing gown and slippers, a pot of coffee on the side table. In the bedroom he could hear Barry snoring.
The minutes crept by. He read his book, but he found himself increasingly drawn to the shoebox and the seagull. They’d never had pets. He had to admit it was oddly comforting, sharing an evening with a sleeping animal. At one point Sonny turned over. Stretching out his neck, he stared straight at Simon with an unblinking eye.
Maybe he was still hung-over, maybe it was fatigue. But looking into the eye of a seagull was unnerving. It was like peering over a cliff, or into a moving river. How in the world had these birds survived? The ancient volcanoes had spewed out lava. The continents had risen and broken apart, and for all the millions of years the earth was capable of supporting life, through the meteors and ice ages, seagulls had held on. Now they were landing in back gardens, sharing sofas with humans in Cornwall. Maybe Sonny had known what he was doing. Maybe he’d seen Barry on the ladder and was smart enough to know he’d be safe.
Simon nodded off, then pushed through the limits of his exhaustion. There was no choice but to place a value to this effort, to convince himself he was doing something right. He put on a film, drank more coffee. He couldn’t believe Barry hadn’t prepared anything for the bird to eat in case it woke up hungry. So he hurried into the kitchen, tore pieces of chicken from yesterday’s roast and added potatoes. He chewed the food up and left it in a mash on a plate. He’d never liked seagulls – their scavenging disgusted him – but he’d be damned if the bird expired on his watch.
In the middle of the night something brought his memories back, all the way to childhood – sitting on his dad’s shoulders, eating monkey nuts. Both parents were gone now. He started to feel sorry for himself, and for the small life man had. He’d wanted to be an architect so that he wouldn’t be smaller still. He’d designed over forty buildings, but never could he create the sensation of looking into that unblinking eye.
Suddenly the bird was sitting up, trying to stand. Its little legs buckled and gave way. It tilted its head, opened its beak and made a faint, pathetic cry.
Simon listened for a sound from the bedroom. Barry was still snoring. ‘Morning, Sonny! You hungry?’
The bird just stared. Simon extended the plate of mashed chicken and potatoes. Seagulls snatched ice cream cones from grown men in Newquay. This one couldn’t get his head out of a shoebox.
He put the plate down and tossed a bit of chicken on the grass. Sonny moved his beak over, made a gurgling sound, then snapped it up. Simon had respect for any bird that ate bird. He flung bits of food into the box until the plate was finished. Sonny blinked at him with his visible eye, tucked his beak into his chest feathers and went back to sleep.
Simon smiled. Throughout the night he stared into the shoebox, willing the bird to get better.
At five in the morning, Barry appeared at the sofa. Sonny looked much more alert. He was sitting up in the shoebox and nibbling at the stuffing from the pillow.
‘You mean he ate the whole plate of food?’
‘Every bit.’
‘How did you know to mash it up?’
‘That’s what they do, isn’t it? The parents?’
‘You’ve given him strength, Simon. Did he try to stand?’
‘Once. It didn’t work, though – he sat right back down.’
Barry put his hand into the box. Sonny didn’t flinch as he stroked his head. It struck him as troubling. ‘He should have tried to fly, I should think. He looks healthier, but I’m worried. I’ll drop him at the hospital on the way to work.’
‘No, you go on.’ Simon looked at the seagull. Sonny was watching them, back and forth, like a spectator at a tennis match. ‘I can take him in later.’
‘What if something goes wrong?’
‘I’ve watched him all night, haven’t I? Go on. Don’t miss your flight.’
‘Let’s go together. I mean, in separate cars. After we drop him at the hospital, I’ll carry on to Exeter.’
‘Who gets to take Sonny?’
In the end, they drove to Mousehole in Barry’s car, with Simon holding the seagull in his lap. He said he could do with the walk home.
The bird hospital stood on a steep cliff above the village. It had been started by two sisters, long since dead. It was dawn and still a while before opening hours. Barry rang the emergency number, and soon a woman appeared on foot. ‘What have you got?’ She noticed Barry and stared. ‘Wow. Anyone ever told you that you look like Morrissey?’
‘Male seagull. Approximately ten.’ Simon held out the shoebox. He explained how Sonny had dropped from the sky, how he’d eaten both chicken and potatoes.
‘Great,’ she said. ‘We’ll take care of him.’
‘Can we visit?’
The woman hadn’t stopped staring at Barry. ‘We’re open every day.’
It wasn’t until the following week, after Barry was back from Dublin, that they returned. They found parking in Mousehole and walked up the steep road to the bird hospital. The gate was open. Simon groaned at the number of steps before them. ‘I never should have fallen for a Catholic.’
Barry could tell he’d been drinking more heavily, as he typically did when left alone. He’d been upset about losing Sonny, and about getting attached in such a short period of time. They’d spoken about it on the phone while Barry was away. Barry had been forced to lie. He’d said there was no question that Simon had saved a life. He said the bird would remember.
They went up the crumbling steps to the entrance. A waiting room held musty magazines, bird calendars and donation boxes. The aviary came into view – outdoor enclosures of concrete floors and wire fencing. Most of the enclosures were empty. A member of staff was scattering seed for a one-legged rook.
‘Excuse me,’ Simon called. ‘We brought in a seagull a few days ago?’
‘Up on the next level,’ she said.
They walked up the second flight of steps. Along the walls were frescoes, icons of saints, statues of Francis of Assisi embedded in the rock. The smell of the sea wafted through the mist. At the top, they reached the seagull enclosure. It was a bit crowded.
‘Is that him?’
‘No. That one, there.’
‘Or the one with the extra red on his beak?’
‘Could be …’
Together, they faced the birds. There must have been thirty of them. Some were sitting on the concrete, others standing.
Barry raised his voice. ‘Sonny?’
Simon clapped his hands. ‘Here, Sonny!’
The seagulls turned their heads in unison. Simon and Barry stood at the cage, waiting for any sign of recognition. For what seemed the longest time, the seagulls kept watching them as if they were the only humans left.
THE SUPERPOWER
SARAH PERRY
BY SOME miracle, Stanley and May shared the same superpower. They didn’t give it much attention. Sometimes they forgot about it altogether. That was the trick, not going on about it. It underpinned their marriage and kept them on the level, during the good times and the bad. What were the odds of two people having the same superpower, their paths crossing and then marrying each other?
Fergus Treves, a small, terrier-like journalist with big ambitions, had discovered them quite by chance. On his day off, he’d driven out to a favourite spot tucked away on the Tamar, where swallows and salmon skim the surface of the water for insects. Time slowed down as he drove over the bridge into Cornwall. The hum of a tractor comforted him. He watched a flock of newly shorn sheep nuzzling the ground for grass. And then on a bend in the road, out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed a sign for free-range eggs. It was written in white chalk on a heavy slab of slate beside a bumpy farm track. In hi
s rear-view mirror, he watched the entrance of the lane disappear behind him. A curtain of dust spread and settled, as his car negotiated the stony dry pits and potholes that would have been muddy puddles a few weeks earlier.
He bought a bunch of the bluest cornflowers he’d ever seen, as well as half a dozen eggs. And somehow he ended up having a cup of tea with Stanley and May, chatting about this and that on a wooden form outside the back door of the farmhouse. Fergus asked some questions about farming, not really interested in the answers, just wanting to postpone his eventual departure.
Stanley sucked on his pipe, then tapped it against the stone wall to unblock the dregs of tobacco, refilled and relit it again, drawing in so deeply the embers glowed.
‘The point is, in farming, you’re working with living things – a grain of corn, a flower – they’re all living and if you look after them, they’ll produce.’
May backed up Stanley’s reflections. ‘I have my hens. I sell my hens’ eggs and have enough to pay the groceries from that money. There you are. We love our animals.’
It was only after he’d left the dusty lane that Fergus noticed he felt very different. It was something he couldn’t put his finger on, but his curiosity was aroused. He remembered one thing Stanley and May had said, about being the subject of a research study conducted at the university. Once Fergus caught the scent of a story, he didn’t let up.
May wished she’d had her hair washed and set a few days earlier. She patted the bottom of her hairdo with the palm of her hand, with the hope of finding an inner bounce in her follicles, but her hair remained stiff and unyielding on the top of her head. By tomorrow, it would have dropped and softened and looked less starchy. Never mind.
They’d been reluctant to take part in the television interview. The taxi and three-course meal had won them over. They didn’t have to drive anywhere and it was a day off from cooking for May.
‘In my series of interviews we have met some remarkable people, but these two people are by far the most extraordinary. I would like to introduce you to Stanley and May, the last two people on earth with what scientists have only recently identified as a superpower. It was thought this superpower vanished with the death of Janet Hodge in 2011, so we are incredibly excited to find it still exists and lives on in Stanley and May. So, May, can I talk to you first?’ Fergus said. ‘When did you first know you had this superpower?’
May thought it had been handed down to her, so it wasn’t something she felt she could take credit for. She didn’t like the fuss. ‘I think I was more like my mother. The stamina and work. I don’t know any other really.’ She sat back, having said her bit.
Fergus growled internally; he realised May was a woman of few words. It would be like drawing blood from a stone. He turned and wagged his finger at Stanley. ‘Right, ah, and what about you Stanley? What can you tell us about the origins of your superpower?’
Stanley was waiting for his turn. Although a little nervous, he felt he had something important to say. He caught sight of himself in the camera directly in front of him. His head looked brown and smooth like a hazelnut. Not bad for a man of seventy-six years, he thought to himself. ‘I think it stems back to my army career. I had to stand on my own two feet. In the army you have to stand on your own two feet. You’ve got to learn to do your ironing …’
‘He’s not ironed since we got married,’ May interjected quietly, with a trace of humour. The audience tittered.
‘But I had to learn, you see. Ironing in the army, you’ve got to iron to perfection. You’ve got to have creases everywhere, in your trousers and shirts. I could iron to perfection if I wanted to.’
‘I always thought he would be a good husband because he was good to his mother. When they’re good to their mother, they’re usually good to their wife. His mother thought the world of him.’
Fergus shifted in his seat. He sensed Stanley and May were leading him down a rabbit hole. He’d have to round them up. ‘So, it could be genes, it could be the army training, or it could be something else altogether.’
‘But there again, Mam, when we moved into the farm, we weren’t under the same pressure. That’s the answer to it!’
May wished Stanley wouldn’t refer to her as Mam in front of people. But she was many things to him.
Fergus’s ears pricked. There was some fidgeting in the auditorium that he needed to get on top of. He flashed his teeth and turned to the audience. ‘I’d like to introduce Dr Sheila Scott, from the School of Positive Psychology at the University of West Britain. Dr Scott, can you shed some light on this superpower and explain to us why Stanley and May are the only two people left with it?’
As Dr Scott took a deep breath, she wondered how in hell she was going to condense a lifetime’s work into a sound bite. ‘As you know, we have been classifying human strengths and virtues for the last fifty years. In our international research project we have listed forty-two character strengths in total. Then five years ago, we noticed certain strengths were becoming increasingly difficult to identify in populations right across the world. Indeed, we started talking about the disappearance and, in some cases, the absolute extinction of specific strengths in humankind. Because of their rarity we started to refer to these strengths as “superpowers”.
‘Our understanding of these superpowers is very limited. We have lost the ability to recognise them. Our brains, despite or because of their complexity, don’t perceive them any more. Even when we do succeed in isolating them, we find them extremely difficult to capture – it’s hard to find the words; they elude us. Many scientists have lost their minds over this.’
May felt sorry for the doctor’s predicament. She meant no harm in having this superpower, but it seemed to be upsetting these very educated people.
‘Stanley and May are anomalies, outliers,’ Dr Scott continued, getting into her stride. ‘They are statistically and clinically significant. They have completed numerous standardised psychological measures, but the School has been mystified by one consistent finding: Stanley and May cannot be categorised.’
May caught Fergus’s eye and raised her hand a little just to let him know there was something she wanted to say. ‘I’d describe myself as very contented and easy-going. And, ah, not one who wants everything. Just an ordinary farmer’s wife. I don’t wish for a lot, but wish everyone had success in their lives and was happy.’ She hoped that would help a little, but couldn’t be sure it was enough.
Fergus noticed a calmness slowly creep over his body as he listened to Stanley and May. The room went quiet. He thought to himself, If this is all I’m remembered for, this interview, then I’ll be happy. And then it struck him. Perhaps this was what contentment felt like. He was about to leap out of his chair and announce, ‘I’ve got the superpower too! I have contentment!’ But he hesitated and in that split second he had a worrying thought. How would he keep hold of it? And just like that, the superpower disappeared, like a strip of sunlight on wooden floorboards, extinguished by a small silent cloud passing over the sun.
May remembered there were two shop-bought chocolate éclairs in the fridge back home, filled with fresh cream. They’d go off if they weren’t eaten today.
‘Let’s forget about the three-course meal, Stan,’ she whispered under her breath. ‘We can’t eat like we used to. There’s a bit of ham in the fridge and a couple of chocolate éclairs. You like them.’
Although he didn’t have much of a sweet tooth, Stanley was relieved May had made the first move. ‘Let’s leave them to it.’ He took the opportunity to round things off. ‘Well, a favourite saying of mine is, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” Albert Einstein said that, you know, and you might find that a good bit of advice. I have.’
THE HAUNTING OF BODMIN JAIL
ANASTASIA GAMMON
SCREAMS CUT across the sound of glass shattering. Shards flew everywhere and feet leapt backwards, away from the glass and, presumably, the spirit who had
knocked over the wooden table and sent it flying in the first place.
‘It’s okay,’ Jane said to the guests, all huddled in groups around the cold, dark room. Jane held her hands out and kept her voice level, calm, as she carefully tiptoed around the broken pieces of glass and towards the door. ‘I think perhaps we might have outstayed our welcome.’ She smiled and a few of the guests let out small, uncertain laughs, fingers unclenching ever so slightly from the arms of the friends beside them. ‘Now is probably a good time for us to call it a night anyway.’
Under the modern, fluorescent lights of the cloakroom, fright quickly turned to relief and excitement at having had a real paranormal experience. Jane saw the guests safely back to their cars, graciously accepted their praise for her work, and, only once the very last one had driven away from the jail, returned to pick up the wooden table and place it carefully back on the hidden spring mechanism she stood on every night to tip it over and send the glass flying. She swept up the shards with the dustpan and brush from the cleaning cupboard, turned off the silent fans that sent periodic bursts of cold air out of two of the cells on the second floor, and retrieved her phone from the hidden speaker on the third floor where it had been playing the sounds of whispers and jangling chains earlier in the evening.
It was almost 6 a.m. before Jane was ready to leave. She grabbed her things from the staffroom, thinking already of her soft bed in her warm flat. When she finally stepped out of the jail’s front door, a figure was waiting for her on the other side of the empty car park. The figure waved and Jane’s teeth ground together. Ed.
‘What are you doing here?’ Jane asked, voice hushed, as she hurried across the car park.
‘I wanted to surprise you.’ Ed grinned.
‘Well, you surprised me. Now let’s go.’ Jane tried to get past but Ed took a step in the other direction, back towards the jail.
‘How was work?’ he asked, still smiling, still slowly backing further in the opposite direction to where Jane wanted to be.