Free Gull by Glenn Patterson Page A

house to life like human beings in it.’
    ‘It’s a really kind offer, but...’
    DeLorean stopped him. ‘Really kind offers never require a but. Besides, you would be doing me a big, big favour.’
    And big, big favours, Randall knew, did not admit of refusals, however polite.
    *
    Friday night in the Conway Hotel was supper dance night. Saturday was wedding day. The former varied little, only the name on the pegboards outside the function room doors distinguished this week’s brown suits and fur stoles (Friends School Old Girls Association) from last’s (Derriaghy & District Indoor Bowling League); the latter, between the white tuxedos and the blue velvet, the peach organza and the turquoise tulle, to say nothing of the hats, the hats, the hats , were an advertisement for the inexhaustible variety of the human imagination.
    Randall was sitting in a secluded corner of the lounge bar late on the rainy Saturday afternoon before he moved across to Warren House, reading a magazine he had picked up in the lobby, when a man in a grey morning suit, an arrangement of a white rose and something purple in his buttonhole, rested his whiskey tumbler on the edge of the table.
    ‘Do you mind?’ he said, his hand on the back of the seat facing Randall. He could have had his pick of two dozen others.
    ‘Not at all.’
    ‘I was worried I might be disturbing you.’
    He gestured towards the magazine. Randall showed him the cover. Homes and Gardens . He laughed. ‘Actually, you’re saving me. You’re with the wedding party, I take it.’
    The man looked down the length of himself, as though surprised all over again by his get-up and the reason for it. ‘It’s my daughter’s getting married.’
    ‘Well that’s great.’
    ‘Better now the speech is out of the way,’ said the man, shaking the hand that Randall had offered in congratulation.
    ‘I should buy you a drink.’
    ‘Thanks, but I’m OK with this. I have a long night of it ahead of me.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘To tell you the truth, it was the wife’s sister asked me to come over.’
    Randall looked past him, half expecting to see a face he recognised (though whose that would be he couldn’t think), half dreading the one he did not. All he saw, though, was the archway through to the rest of the bar, the doors to the function room beyond.
    ‘She’s’ – picking his words with care – ‘on her own.’
    ‘Oh, listen, that’s really thoughtful,’ Randall said, then worried that even that could be construed as an acceptance. This guy was – what? Fifty? Fifty-five? And he was trying to set him up with his spinster sister-in-law? ‘I mean, it’s just, I have a couple of calls I have to make back home, to the US.’
    The man held up his hands. ‘You don’t have to say anything more. Totally understand. I told her I would come over and I did. No harm done, I hope.’
    ‘None at all.’
    The man pushed back his chair, but only, it seemed, to inspect his shoes. Shiny like he clearly didn’t believe.
    ‘Have you children yourself?’
    ‘One,’ said Randall, ‘but...’
    ‘Wee boy, wee girl?’
    ‘Girl, but...’
    ‘That’s lovely.’ It was worse than trying to deflect DeLorean in full flow. Randall gave up trying. ‘You know though you’ll get your eye wiped, don’t you? You tell yourself you won’t, but you will, guaranteed.’ He leaned forward and clicked the rim of his glass against Randall’s. ‘Girls. They’re too well able for us.’
    The man returned to the wedding, Randall to his magazine, although he was barely even looking at the pictures. A little later, passing the doors of the function room, he saw the man dancing with his daughter (ivory taffeta with lace neck) and, truly, a prouder man never trod a dance floor. Randall lingered a while in the doorway trying to imagine. Tamsin had still been at the clomping stage the last time he had led her round a floor – round and round and round and round – to... what? ‘Our