Free Gull by Glenn Patterson

estate company to request a brochure did he realise that it was the same house he had looked at, albeit with a little less ivy, who knows how many times in a book on the hotel’s reception desk. Turns out it too used to belong to the family that owned Conway House – all the large houses in the district seemed to have belonged to them once upon a time although few of them had had such a curious and colourful afterlife.
    The most recent occupants had been a chapter of the Plymouth Brethren – a sect Randall had hitherto mistakenly imagined was a uniquely American phenomenon. ‘They are like hermit crabs, that crowd,’ the real estate agent said when he took Randall to see the house. Lee Bell, he had told Randall his name was: ‘Three ls, three es and a B and that’s me, nine Scrabble points.’ He wore large-framed glasses that, when you looked at him head on, had the disconcerting effect (even more disconcerting after his mention of crabs) of making his eyes appear to bulge out at either side. ‘They will move in practically anywhere, even somebody else’s church building, although they tell me they don’t believe in churches. Make sense of that if you can.’
    There were still chairs arranged non-hierarchically in a circle in the drawing room, it being another guiding principle of the Brethren, Lee Bell explained (‘the things you learn in this job’), that no man had a right to be raised above, or seated at the head of another.
    ‘You’re welcome to keep anything here you think is of use.’
    Randall was still staring at the non-hierarchical circle. Whatever it was Lee Bell read in his expression – clearly not suppressed amusement (non-hierarchical circles? DeLorean Motor Cars Ltd?) – he started stacking the chairs. ‘Not these, obviously, but anything else – fixtures, fittings...’ He gave Randall the benefit of his full, distended regard. ‘Or you can have the whole place gutted.’
    ‘Are you kidding me? Gutted? ’
    Lee Bell shrugged. ‘Well, you never know with people,’ he said, as though referring to a species distinct from real estate agents.
    Randall roamed the house with his camera while in the drawing room Lee Bell caught up with paperwork, or tried to think of names with a lower Scrabble value. Several of the six bedrooms showed signs of damp; the plug sockets throughout were mounted directly on to the wooden baseboard and would have to be replaced; the kitchen looked to have been equipped by people who did not believe in food any more than churches or priests, and as for the bathroom, OK, so it was an old house, but Randall had been in more sophisticated outhouses. Nevertheless, those first few photographs were all that was needed to convince DeLorean, although Randall still returned repeatedly over the weeks that followed to take more pictures – of the plaster mouldings and cornices as well as the baseboards, of the door- and window-frames, the mantels and the fire surrounds – which he sent back along with detailed reports of sunrise and sunset (the dining room got the benefit of the latter) and even cuttings from the shrubs growing nearest to the house.
    The instructions that he received in return had, he suspected, more than a little of the hand of Maur Dubin in them; Maur at his most whimsical and Margaret-Mitchell-inspired. The bathroom faucets were shipped from Harrods in London, only Harrods in London apparently stocking the style of faucet that fit with his vision, or the DeLoreans’, for the house. The label on the box said gold. Randall very much doubted it. They would not have been to his taste, that was for sure, but then Randall did not have to live with them. Or did not imagine he would have to.
    It was DeLorean himself on his next but one trip across – he had flown into London from Salt Lake City, whatever had him in Utah – who suggested that Randall move in, temporarily of course, while the renovations were still being carried out. ‘There is nothing brings a