It stilled itself, its wings reaching out as far as they could go.
It turned its head to regard him with that unblinking eye, a shock of gold under its dark, red crown. The man wondered for a fanciful moment if it was going to reach down and scoop him up in those wings, as if this was some kind of test that he’d passed, one that, had he failed, he would never have remembered taking.
Then he found himself saying something stupid, something that made no sense at all.
‘My name,’ he said, ‘is George.’
He said it to the crane.
As if in answer, the crane bowed its long, long neck low towards the ground, keeping its shoulders up and wings out. It began flapping them in a different way, one that caused it to almost fall forward onto the man. He scooted back some more, and when the crane left the ground its burning white breast soared an inch from the man’s upturned nose. He looked back to watch it veer sharply upwards to avoid running into his house, carrying on up to the peak of his roof and alighting there for a moment. The moon was bright behind it, cutting it into a frozen silhouette.
It ducked its head once more, unfurled its wings, and swooped down over the back garden, its thin black legs trailing behind it, then up and up and up and up and up, until it was nothing more than one star among many in the night sky and soon not even that.
The man, George, rose slowly from the icy ground, a worrying ache starting to curl through his bare torso. He was shivering so badly now it was all he could do to stand, and he wondered if he was falling into shock. He would need a warm bath, and he’d need it soon, though he was already wondering if he’d have the strength to make it back inside–
A jolt ran through his body as he heard it, one more time. The keening, the mournful call that had brought him out here in the first place. It echoed through the frosty, clear air, as if it was the night itself calling out to him. The crane was saying its goodbye, its thank you, its–
And then he realised that the call hadn’t come from an impossible bird vanishing from his garden and life and out of the whole world for all he knew. The keen had been set free from his own body, cried out from icy blue lips, torn from a chest that suddenly seemed to hold his irreparably broken yet still beating heart.
‘But this says Patty.’
‘Yes, that’s what it says here on the order form, too.’
‘Do I look like a Patty to you?’
‘I suppose they could have thought it was for your wife.’
‘My wife is called Colleen.’
‘Well, then, Patty would have clearly been wrong for her–’
‘I saw the man type it in myself. Pea, ay, double dee, why. Paddy. And yet, follow along with my finger here as I underline the letters, this very, very unambiguously says Patty.’
‘Which is what it says here on the order form.’
‘But which is not what I saw the man type.’
‘I’m guessing maybe they looked at the vest and thought that since it was so pink–’
‘They? Who are they?’
‘The printers.’
‘This isn’t a printers?’
‘Not that kind of printers. We’re more of a flyer, poster-design kind of–’
‘So you’re a printing shop that doesn’t do its own printing.’
‘Not at all, as I say, we’re more of a flyer–’
‘Regardless, for printing onto running vests–’
‘And t-shirts.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s not just running vests we send out. T-shirts, too. Hen nights, stag dos, that kind of–’
‘You send them out.’
‘We send them out.’
‘With specific orders that someone in this shop types into a form on your screen there.’
‘Yes.’
‘So when I saw the man, quite a bit older than you, which is to say a grown-up, he typed in, before my very own eyes, Pea, ah, double dee, why–’
‘That would have been the specific orders to the outside printing company, yes.’
‘Which they didn’t follow.’
‘According to you, anyway, but it clearly says Patty on the order form–’
‘DO I LOOK LIKE A PATTY TO YOU?’
‘There’s no need for the shouting. We’re just trying to solve a problem, two reasonable men–’
‘Neither of whom are called Patty.’
‘I’m from Turkey. We don’t have Paddy versus Patty, okay? So how am I to know? Like I said, they probably saw the colour of the vest–’
‘That’s the colour of the charity. Pink is the colour of the charity. Breast Cancer. Pink. Because it affects women. Mostly women do the fundraising, but some men do, too. We run, we raise money. It’s the colour of the charity. It has nothing to do with the gender of the vest.’
‘Well, now, see, that’s interesting. Would you say vests had genders?’
‘Yes, I would say that. Men’s extra large. It’s right there on the tag. Men’s. Extra. Large. Really, am I being filmed? Is that what this is? Ah, here’s the guy–’
‘What’s going on, Mehmet?’
‘Customer here not happy with his order, Mr Duncan.’
‘Do I look like a Patty to you?’
‘I couldn’t really say without knowing you better, but I’m guessing no.’
‘Then why does this say–’
‘Obviously an error. I very clearly remember typing in Paddy with two dees.’
‘Thank you.’
‘We’ll get that fixed for you overnight.’
‘The race is on Sunday.’
‘And overnight will be Friday. It’ll be fine.’
‘I’m just saying there’s no room for error. Any more error.’
‘Don’t you worry. You’ve got my personal guarantee.’
‘You hear that? George Duncan’s personal guarantee.’
‘Which means exactly what?’
‘It’ll be here tomorrow, Paddy, I promise you. If I have to drive to St Ives–’
‘Your printer’s in St Ives?’
‘If I have to drive to St Ives and pick it up myself.’
‘That’s a twelve-hour round trip.’
‘You’ve done it? I’ve found the A30 not too bad if you–’