Author Bio

DES DILLON

wait till the skies turn black

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Frank didn’t even turn round, he just kept staring across the school roof to the shut-down Boxworks.

Contemplating.

I got ready for his rant about how it was great here before the junkies and the dealers and all that. How the morning street was thick with men going to their work—aye thick with them. How queues for buses were five deep and a hundred yards long.

In the days when men worked.

When they had fuckin men’s jobs.

It was only when Marie came in with the tea that he turned and I saw that something was far wrong.

—What’s up Frank?

His tea ran down both sides of his chin when he slurped out, seagulls.

—Seagulls?

—Aye —fuckin seagulls. They’re all over the place out there. Ye can’t walk the fuckin streets for them. Swooping and flapping.

—Seagulls? I said.

—Aye, have ye seen they fuckers close up?  They’re that size, he said and showed us what that size was.

— Up to your chest, he said, —Fuckin wing span like Concord.

—Where are they? said Connie.

—They’re there, look.

I went to the window and saw two hovering.

—Whoa!  Watch yourself Frank, said Connie,  —Two!

—Look on the Boxworks roof, he said.

There was some there, maybe about fifty.

—Fifty seagulls are terrorising the whole of Possil, Frank? 

—Have you been on the magic mushrooms again, Frankie? said Connie.

He turned like a ghoul from a horror movie and said this,

—Wait till the skies turn black.

And when we’d stopped laughing he said it again only this time nodding his head as he spoke,

—Wait till the skies turn black.

—What yees laughing at? Marie shouted from the kitchen.

—What colour’s the sky, Ma? Connie shouted.

Blue was the answer and by this time Frank was filled with rage and about to launch into a Frankathon.

His rage iron in his fingertips, he pushed us to the window, pressed our faces to the glass and the tip of his pointing finger went white when he pressed it against the glass like a man with definite proof.

—See the dips? he said.

—Dips?

—In the roof, the dips in the fuckin roofs!

—Aye.

—They’re in there.

—What?  Hiding?

—Hiding? Fuckin hiding?  No they’re not fuckin hiding. They’re waiting!

—For what? Biscuits?

Me and Connie had to hold each other up at that one and on the Boxworks roof it looked like the seagulls were laughing too.

—Haw! Haw Marie!  Goanny get a grip of this daughter of yours, she’s ripping the pish out of me something awful in here.

—Leave him alone, shouted Marie, —He’s got enough to contend with, with these seagulls.

—Where are these seagulls, Ma?

—In the dips on the Boxworks roof, came the reply and the tone was such that we couldn’t tell if Marie was on our side or Frank’s.

—See, said Frank, —See! They’re in there, fuckin thousands of them. Millions! Every time ye go out, they swoop. Ye can’t even get a fuckin fish supper. And see the wanes at dinner time, I’m talking about poor wanes, fuckin junkie’s wanes, maybe all they get to eat all day, they big fuckers swoop into the dinner hall and fuckin bite their ears and steal their dinner.

—They come into the dinner hall Frank?

—Aye, they’ve got that place mapped! They used to have nests on the school roof. They swoop along the corridors and bite their ears and when the wanes are hiding under the tables they scoff their dinner.

—Bite their ears?

We were laughing again so he shouted Marie through and she leaned against the door with her head cocked to one side.

—What do the seagulls do, Marie? Tell them what they bastards do.

—Turn the skies black, she said like a question.

—No not that!  Not turning the fuckin skies black! What do they do to the fuckin wanes!?

—What do ye want me to say?

—In the dinner hall!  The wanes ears! he said.

—Oh aye!  They bite the wanes ears, she said, and made to move off.

—For fucksakes! After that Marie, after they bite the fuckin wanes’ ears, what do they do?

—Turn the skies black?

—No, not the fuckin skies! I’m not talking about the skies. It’s nothing to do with the fuckin skies. Marie. I’m talking about what they do after they bite the wanes ears!

—Go home?

—Home?  Home!?  Are you on their fuckin side?

—I don’t know what ye want me to say here, Frank!

See if they two cunts don’t stop laughing, so help me God…

—Stop laughing at him yous, Marie said, but there was a Mona Lisa on her lips.

—With the food Marie. Tell them what the seagulls do with the wanes’ food.

—Oh. They eat the wanes’ dinners and the wanes hide under the tables.

—Thank you, Frank says, and turns like a vindicated lawyer to us and goes—Thank you very fuck!

But that just made us laugh all the more and he shook his head, let a little blast of air through his teeth, returned to the window, stared for a while and said—Wait till the skies turn black. Then he left the room.

After that you only had to mention seagulls to set him off. They were ripping the bins, shiteing on people, swaggering about in the closes. They were on fences, rooftops, chimneys and bin sheds. There was no escaping them and they knew Frank especially. They had it in for Frank especially. Even when he went to the pub these things attacked him and he had to crash in an slam the door.

—Seagulls? the barmaid would say.

—Aye.

—What have they got against you, Frank, these seagulls? Connie asked.

—They hate me.

—But how? Why do they hate you?

—How the fuck do I know? I don’t stop when they’re pecking fuck out me to have a wee chat in seagull do I? I just fuckin run. See when I’m drinking my pint. When I’m safe in The Brothers drinking my pint, see when I’m in there, safe, they gather round the windows, the seagulls. Know they wee narrow windows? They gather round them, right round the building. It’s like the fuckin Alamo and all they wee Mexicans. They get on the ledge and click clack their beaks. Click clack, click fuckin clack —goes right through ye so it does. Ye try not to but you’ve got to look and see when ye do, see when ye look, when I look —they shudder their wings at me. Like that, he goes demonstrating the shudder and for a second, with his long nose and bulging eyes, he looks like a gull.

His eyes glazed over, then he said —I’m goanny get a gun so I am. Ye can get a gun. Ye can get a gun easy.

I had this image of Frank stalking the streets of Possil, firing his gun up at the seagulls, pop, pop, pop and the gulls swerving and laughing at him. Connie had it the same time and we tilted our heads up and laughed.

The more Frank told his seagull tales the more we laughed. Sometimes we’d count three or four seagulls in the sky and say Wait till the skies turn black, Frank. And he’d say Aye, just yous wait till the skies do turn black.

Then, one day in late October, we arrived and Marie had left a note that she had to go to the bike shop and Frank would be in from school before the seagulls gained the advantage of the night. Could we make him something?

Well!

We went into the kitchen and there it was, standing on the window ledge, this giant seagull. It tapped its beak on the glass, three times. We stared and it done it again.

—Know what he’s saying, Connie?

—What?

—Is Frank in?

This great idea smiled across Connie’s face and she opened a tin of sardines in tomato sauce an sat it next to the window. As the seagull tried to get the sardines, its beak slid sideways and it ended up with flattened feathers and its left eye pressed against the glass. Connie laid a trail of wet sardines along the worktop over to the table, then half-opened another tin and left it there. She snuck along the wall and secretly opened the window. Gulliver, that’s what we called him, came charging in like a drunk Ku Klux Klan member gobbling up the sardines till he found himself digging his beak into the gap in the second tin.

There he was, towering above us on the kitchen table, sublimely white, his yellow beak dyed red with sardine sauce and his glittering eye winking like he was in on the joke. Everything smelled like the sea now. Connie crawled under the table and closed the window, then we left the kitchen closing the door behind us. As we crept in to the bedroom we heard the sardine tin clunk onto the floor and the flap and swish of Gulliver’s wings.

Our giggling died away to boredom and the sound of Gulliver’s yellow flippers sticking and unsticking to the linoleum. Then, joy oh joy!  Here was Frank hurrying up the street with his head scanning the rooftops.

He came into an empty house.

—Anybody in?

Nothing but us not breathing.

—Marie!?

Nothing.

Then a sound from the kitchen like a box being ripped open.

—Hello!? said Frank.

Sounded like Sugar Puffs scattering and bouncing all over the floor.

—Who’s that?

We heard the soft clunk as Frank lifted the baseball bat. There was a pause as he got into a good position.

—I’ve phoned the polis, he said, and was answered by the crunch crinch of Gulliver paddling through a sea of Sugar Puffs.

—I’ll give ye three seconds to get out!

Gulliver threw itself against the door and it was quite an almighty thud, the kind of thud you wouldn’t rightly expect from a seagull, so it could easily have been a junkie.

—Jesus fuck! Frank shouted and our door swung open as he backed in but he never saw us. He turned the bat in his palms, took a breath, padded back across the lobby, reached out, turned the handle, opened the door a quarter inch and shouted,

—I’ve got a baseball bat!

We saw his shadow step back before he kicked the door open and we heard the scream as the seagullf lapped into his face and the clatter of the bat as he ran shouting no no no. I imagined he was spitting feathers that tasted of sardines and fear as he bolted past into the living room. Gulliver came padding along the carpet with Sugar Puffs glued to his feet.

—Get to fuck!  Get to fuck! Frank was shouting.

It was like a cartoon. Frank dashed past. Then the gull. It chased Frank all over the place and our bellies were sore not laughing. Gulliver even came into our room at one point and stood opening and shutting his beak like he was catching his breath before having another go at Frank. Before Frank could escape, Connie grabbed Gulliver by the shoulders and flung him back into the lobby. There was a pause as he waddled gallus as fuck into the living room then another scream.

We heard the window opening, some crashing and flapping, then nothing and when we went in Gulliver was on the telly like a big white ornament. He opened and shut his beak three times. Clump, clump, clump, probably seagull for can I have some more sardines please.

—Hi Gulliver, have ye seen Frank? Connie said and Gulliver swung his head to the window where Frank had dropped into the back green. I wondered what the downstairs neighbours thought when he flew past?

It was three months before Marie persuaded Frank to let us back in.  He let rip. Did we know what we’ve done? Letting that fuckin thing in here. That was the king of the gulls, that thing. The fuckin leader.  It told all its mates. We just made things worse for Frank. They’ve got him down as number one target now, soon as he puts his head outside the door they’re fuckin dive bombing, then they come in for the slaughter. And another thing! Another thing! Ye want to have seen poor Marie trying to get that thing out of the house. She came in and it was sat on top of the fuckin telly pecking Sugar Puffs off its fuckin flippers.

—Fuck sakes Frank, it’s only a daft burd.

—A daft burd!  A daft burd? he said,—These things can kill people.

I laughed.

—You don’t believe me do ye?

—Eh —no.

—Look at my hands he said, showed us some mighty scabs and yellow bruises and went —And that was me trying to protect my head!

He snorted and I asked him to go out on the street so we could see for ourselves.

—No fuckin way.

So we give him case-closed, pressing our lips together and turning our palms out.

—I don’t care if yees don’t believe me.

But we kept our lips together and folded our arms.  A wee fart of laughter come out now and then.

—Right, right, fuck it! he eventually said.

We had big smirks watching him drag on three jumpers, a donkey-jacket done up to the top button and a balaclava.

—Joined the IRA Frank? Connie said.

He reached into the press and produced a cycling helmet.

—Boughta bike? I says.

He gives a short snort, a snortette, puts the helmet on, bulges his eyes at me as if to say watch this and shouts to Marie.

—They watching?

—That big one that was in the house, the Sugar Puff Kid, he’s on the school lamppost, says Marie, and comes in with a big pair of leather gloves, the kind your granny buys ye for Christmas, with the white fur inside. She holds them open and Frank slips his hands in one at a time like a surgeon and when he wiggles his fingers the leather creaks. His breathing fills the room and he’s like a fuckin poundshop astronaut when he asks Marie to come down and shut the close door behind him.

Me and Connie take up positions at the window.

—Right ready! He shouts from the bowels of the close and Marie whips the door open and Frank dashes into a birdless street.

He runs in silence, like a movie with the sound turned down and it looks like he’s going to make it when the air is filled with squawks and cries and a turbulent rush of wind and down they come, a snow of gulls, a storm, a fuckin blizzard. They’re at his head, pecking his jacket, biting his legs and trying to trip him up. There’s a white tornado in orbit rattling pecks into Frank’s bike helmet and any gulls flung out drop down and attack his arms and legs.

—Come on Frankie boy, run! Run like fuck, The Brothers doorman shouts.

Frank’s big leather gloves were definitely a good idea cos there’s gulls hanging off his fingers as he hops, spins, dances and yelps toward The Brothers trying to flick them off.

—Get to fuck! Get to fuck! He’s shouting.

All Frank could see was white but he homed in on the voice, zig-zagged his way over and dived in. When the doorman slammed the door a fuckin car-wash of gulls brushed the paintwork before they dispersed into the sky and when they flew over us, for a few seconds, the sky did turn black. I rushed to the back window to see them descend onto the gullies of the Boxworks roof. They posted sentries on the ridges, swinging their heads slowly left to right and I truly believed they were waiting for Frank.

The phone went.

—Do ye believe me now?

—Do they do that to everybody?

—Most people, but they hate me the worst.

—But what have they got against you, Frank?

—Aw, I don’t know, let me fuckin think? Maybe it’s the fact that a right rotten bastard of a step-daughter and her even right rottener man locked one, the fuckin leader, in my kitchen till it was stir crazy and high on sardines and fuckin Sugar Puffs and the first cunt it sees when it gets out is me!

He challenged me to go over. When I got out the streets were a Clint Eastwood movie. A wane with a roll on sausage ran from one close across the road to another, slammed the door shut and watched me through the wired glass. When I was halfway across, a gull, I’m sure it was Gulliver, came gliding round me, scanning with one yellow eye and made off. I saw it landing on the ridge.

When they let me in I burst out laughing cos Frank’s gloves were shredded, hanging off his hands like seaweed. I got a pint and looked round. There were men with peck-scars on their faces and arms. I know it was autumn but they had jackets and scarves and hats like it was the Arctic. One wore full-body downhill mountain biking armour. These were hard hard men, the hardest Glasgow can produce, yet they looked defeated.

—And nothing done about it, somebody said —It suits the authorities that we all live in fear.

—Shht!

There was the pitter patter of webbed feet on the roof, then another, then another. Soon they were coming down in hundreds, thousands, filling up the windows like heavy snow. We tried to carry on like normal, playing pool, darts, drinking and telling all the old jokes. But there was a steady drone of terror underneath it all. We called the cops but they didn’t want to know and by the time somebody had the idea to call the Fire Brigade to hose them off the building the fuckers had pecked through the wires and disabled the phone mast on the school roof. There was an in-gulp of fear, then they started pecking the building. All of them. It was like living inside a typewriter.

Frank broke first.

—Fuckin leave us alone, he shouted before launching a bottle through the window. There was a smash, the falling of glass, then a silence and the dreadful knowledge filling that pub. A racket of wings and in they came, funnelling through that gap, dodging pint glasses and pool cues and set about us. Gulliver stood on the jukebox barking out orders in seagull. Frank flung all the shelves and Budweiser out the glass-fronted fridge behind the bar, squeezed in and shut the door. Gulls took turns at smashing against the glass trying to get him and he was screaming,

—I never meant it! I never meant it! I’m a janny, it’s my job!

And running around that bar with twenty or thirty or forty squawking gulls attached to my body, surrounded by screaming men and Hotel California blasting out the jukebox, I realised we were all paying for Frank’s actions.