The penguins were terrified. They had crowded by now on the opposite side of the pool to guard the red nesting boxes, those huge eyesores of rough-daubed wood that had been added to the architectural masterpiece to make it more livable. Indeed, there were four live eggs in the boxes (and two infertile ones).
Cuthbert pulled himself up and sat forward and stretched his legs out, letting the water run out of his trousers and shoes. He felt more sober than he had in months. He wanted to stand up and cheer. It was all a big laugh—the busted pool, the penguins stirred from their torpor.
Then he noticed a dark object floating on the water. What’s that, eh? With a rising horror, he realized it was a penguin, floating grotesquely with beak down in the water, a corona of pink water around it. The animal had been unlucky—smacked unconscious by the falling ramp.
Cuthbert dove into the water and got his hands on the bird.
“Oh bloody Jesus!” he cried. “Oh fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!” With one windmilling arm, he paddled frantically; in the other arm he held the wounded bird—it was lighter and warmer than he expected. He scampered back onto the pool’s apron and lay the penguin down gently. Blood covered his arm. The penguin’s neck was completely slack, its head at a severe, obtuse angle from his body. Its beak was parted open.
“Oh sweet Jesus,” Cuthbert said. He touched the animal. It was already dead, he believed. “A’m a bastard,” he said. He backed away from the bird and fell down on his hands and knees, gnashing his teeth. He started to stand up, then sat down, kicking his heels. He thrust his face into his hands and he wept wildly, his arms flailing, scratching at himself with cold fingers. He reached up crookedly and cried in screeching jags. He was like an old tree scraping its own bark off.
“It was a mistake!” he blubbered. “I’m sorry, chaps!”
The penguins now formed a mottled black and white phalanx around the boxes of their makeshift rookery. Some of them rocked their heads back and forth with taut, beaky aggression. Cuthbert stood up. He said, “I’ll find the Gulls of Imago, muckers. I’ll find them for you, you’ll see.”
The penguins began a furious, rhythmic song—it was a noise unlike any Cuthbert had ever heard, like a tone collage of rusty, clicky kazoos, all insisting on the same note, a note that was equal parts buzziness and sweetness, rancor and innocence. Among their thistly lament was a quiet layer of something far more melodious and soft, a little reedlike slip of music. Cuthbert could see now, inside the middle nesting box, a tiny, fuzzy form that could only be a penguin chick. It was as small as a sparrow and colored a solid, sticky gray.
“Oh god,” said Cuthbert. “Oh bless you all.”
Find the Gulls of Imago, they said to Cuthbert. Find our friends. But you will never be forgiven.
Cuthbert cleared his throat with a harrumph. “I know, I know. I deserve to die.” He wouldn’t mind it at the moment, so awful did he feel. He must help the penguins though, if he could. He owed them that.
“I’ll find a way to get your gulls.” He raised his index finger and gave it a good wag, like some little Mussolini. He said, “Blunky, munky gulls!”
But he didn’t feel very confident.
Never forgiven, they repeated. You are an enemy of penguins. Forever.
“That’s OK,” he said. “I’ll still help you. And I’m certain Dryst will muck in, too. You’ll see.”
Oh, Cuthbert may not have recognized these Imago gulls personally, not off the top of his head, but he could make inquiries.
“I’ve a few notions where to start looking, boys,” he said.
Through the high windows of his flat in Finsbury Park, for instance, he occasionally noted gray-mantled mew gulls. They would float at eye level, on the eastern winds that blew all the way up from the Thames Estuary. These gulls were excellent spotters of discarded chip cones, he had observed, and with so many chippies in Finsbury Park, they were eternally busy. But not too busy to be put a question or two from a certain psychotic fellow.
“I’ll ask ’em when I see them next,” he said to himself. “Which of you knows where I might find your Imago comrades?”
A few times, he had seen his gulls swoop down audaciously and, he believed, snag a hot chip from an Indigent child or lady’s wooden chip-fork. Cuthbert felt that this seemed a kind of torment, did it not? But no, the Gulls of Imago had to be something quite grander. They would not fly in the airspace of north London.