Glass (5 page)

‘This', came her ecstatic tremolo, ‘is the master bedroom.' I surveyed the room: a bay window, double glazed, ten panes. East-facing, so the sun might slip in each morning across the heavily frilled king-size duvet. (You'd be surprised how few people close their curtains of an evening.) On the bed, there were more pillows and cushions than one could comfortably rest a head on, and a mirror was stuck to the ceiling. The politics of this marriage were, I ascertained, conducted in the bedroom.

‘Very nice aspect,' I said, in what I hoped was a noncommittal tone. I tried to sense exactly how close she was behind me.

‘Now make sure you give these windows an extra polish,' she breathed. ‘I want them so clean you can't even tell they're there.' Something stirred in my Y-fronts. It was the perfect bay window, overlooking the lush garden and jacuzzi, and I would look forward to cleaning them thoroughly, but still I felt uneasy. I looked across at her and, just for a moment, I glimpsed something vulnerable in those squashed little eyes. Then her face hardened and she left the room. I was a little taken aback, but altogether pleased not to have been bundled onto the bed.

Downstairs, she asked me where I would start, and I explained that you have to do the top floor first, because the suds drip down to the lower windows. I would do the outside first, start round the back and work my way forward. I could do the inside if absolutely necessary. We agreed I'd start on the bay window. Then she asked me, very specifically, to come at twenty minutes past one the following Thursday. I happened to be available, but the specificity baffled me. She said that she wouldn't be around, but she'd leave my money and house key under the pot of sweet peas round the back of the house.

In the days leading up to Thursday, I did other houses, but something kept niggling at me about the Dorman job. I didn't know what it was, but our conversation had put me on edge. I had heard about exhibitionists before, and I was aware that there were any number of fantasies which might require the participation of a window cleaner. We are one of those few professions who, like doctors or teachers, must break social barriers as a matter of course in our daily work, and as such the humble window cleaner seems to occupy a disproportionately large space in the consciousness of the depraved.
²⁸

Thursday arrived on schedule, and the morning passed without event. At the appointed hour I unlatched the side gate and manœuvred my ladder across the side of the house. I thought I could hear noises within, but I couldn't be sure. I looked at my watch as nineteen flicked to twenty. Right on time.

I propped the ladder against the wall beneath the first floor bay window, steadying the bottom against the side of their jacuzzi. I took a deep breath, and steeled myself.

I had two options. I could treat the window as if it were opaque, setting my face and pretending that whatever was happening inside wasn't visible because of something unlikely such as glare. The second approach, and the one which I generally employed, was to smile, wave cheerfully, pretend to wobble on my ladder, and generally spread good cheer. The way I see it, there isn't really much choice but to admit that glass is designed to be transparent. To pretend otherwise is like being a mime: degrading to both viewer and participant.

But as I put my foot on the first rung of the ladder, I resolved that, whatever I was going to witness through that bay window, I was going to marshal my admittedly undeveloped acting ability and pretend that I couldn't see it.

As I climbed the ladder, the noise became more defined and I began to make out individual words. There was a pounding beat like a kick drum, and a man's voice, shouting hoarsely, ‘You're fired bitch! You're fucking fired!' over and over again. As I raised my eyes to the level of the window, I couldn't help but peer in to see the man I presumed to be Mr Dorman jackhammering away at a helpless woman who, for all her peroxide hair, was certainly not Mrs Dorman.
²⁹
Maybe a small part of me was grateful to be learning first-hand about sexual technique, but I gathered myself and remembered that I was here to do a job, come rain or shine. So I grabbed my cleaning fluid and sprayed a liberal quantity on the top left window, before watching my squeegee zigzag down the pane. It squeaked a little, and I heard a scream. Everything went quiet, and I watched Mr Dorman dismount and cross the room, preternaturally quickly for such a large man, penis pointing up at me like the lance of a mounted knight. I heard a muffled shout of ‘Pervert!' as he struggled to unlock the window, and then he opened it wide, and pushed me.

My ladder swung out into the air and for a moment I hung there, balanced between the house and the cool beyond. Then, as the angle of the ladder battled against the strength of Mr Dorman's push, and won, the ladder changed direction and came slamming back into the wall of the house. I lost my footing and fell twelve feet into the jacuzzi.

The next thing I knew, Paula was dabbing at my face with a cloth from my belt, her face a Pangaea of blotches.

‘I'm so sorry Günter, I never meant for this to happen, I'm so so sorry.'

Back on my rounds a couple of weeks later, I mentioned the incident, if not the frightful specifics, to a neighbour. The neighbour revealed that, since Mr Dorman managed the finances for the both of them, Paula couldn't have hired a private investigator without arousing suspicion. But she had known that something was going on, since she always came back from her Pilates class on Thursdays to a badly made bed, and she might be a lot of things, but she wasn't a slattern. So when she had seen me walking along with my ladder, it had seemed the perfect opportunity to ‘smoke the rabbit out of the hole', as the neighbour put it.

The Dorman Affair was perhaps my first inkling that I'd make a good private detective, although if anyone ever wanted to compile a comprehensive survey of the masturbation habits of teenage boys, I'm sorry to say I could do that too.

Around the time I was called as a witness for the Dorman divorce hearing, I got a phone call from an unknown number.

‘Glass Cleaning, how can I help?'

‘Günter?'

‘Yes?'

‘Oh good. Dean Winterbottom here. I was wondering if you might like to come over for a cup of tea? We have some wonderful loose-leaf Darjeeling in at the moment. Best served without milk.'

‘I'm all booked up this week,' I said, looking at my diary.

‘I quite understand. However, it is rather pressing. I don't mean to put pressure on you, but we don't want to have to close the cathedral.'

I thought about telling her I'd already found a job, but a part of me was still intrigued.

‘Are you free this evening?' I asked.

‘Always free, my dear, always free. God is a freelance.'

‘Okay, I'll pop over around six.'

I went downstairs to make an early dinner for Dad, and found him sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of whisky.

‘Fish fingers again, I'm afraid,' I said, opening the freezer.

‘I can't eat now.'

‘You've got to eat something.'

‘Sit down and have a whisky.'

I went and sat with him. He filled up his glass and nodded to himself.

‘You're a real man now, with your job. You're independent. You must be making some proper money now, eh? You'll probably move out soon. No use in worrying.'

‘Look, Dad, if it's about my cooking, I can learn. We both can.'

He drew his hand down over his face, like he was wiping an Etch-a-sketch.

‘Look, if you want to stay here, I might have to start charging rent. I can't keep supporting you. All I've got's my pension, and it's smaller than the mortgage. So the longer I live, the more I owe.'

‘That's okay, I can help to clear it,' I said. ‘The window cleaning is going well, and I have a couple of hundred pounds left from my redundancy.'

‘We're talking about thousands of pounds of debt, Günter. The bank won't give me any more money.'

‘Oh. What about Max?'

‘Tight as a bunny's arse.'

I looked up at the wall clock. It was quarter to six.

‘I've got to run, but we'll talk about this later. Eat something.'

‘Thanks for your concern,' he said, eyeing the whisky bottle, ‘but I'll start what I've finished.'

8

Miracle Worker

I arrived at the cathedral a little late. The sun was hitting one side of the building, casting a long shadow which pointed out east like a giant sundial. I walked in through the main entrance, where tourists were milling around, some of them dragging children or dogs.

I went through to the back where the little office was, and knocked on the door. There was no answer, so I opened the door to find a young reverend goggling at a computer screen. Statistically, it was likely to be either a video of a cute animal or pornography.

‘Evensong was at half five,' he said without looking up.

‘I'm looking for Dean Winterbottom,' I said.

‘Who are you?' he asked.

‘Günter Glass.'

‘Anne!' he shouted, still staring at the screen. I very much wanted to see what was on the screen.

Dean Winterbottom came through from the kitchenette, looking quite radiant.

‘Sorry I didn't hear you come in, my dear, I was just feeding Moses.' I must have looked bemused, because she explained, ‘Our cat. I found him a few months back wandering around outside. He looked lost, and the vet said he needed lots of tablets, so I called him Moses. We are stewards of all God's creatures, are we not?'

She directed this last question at the young reverend, who carried on staring. The cat strutted through and rubbed itself along his leg. He gave it a little kick and it decided to lick itself instead. It probably wasn't a cat video.

‘Come on, let's take a walk outside. The quality of light this time of year is quite spectacular.'

Outside, the sun had gilded the tops of the trees.

‘Just look at it,' she said, squinting up at the cathedral. ‘Still beautiful, no matter how many times you see it. You always notice something different.'

‘Why has the light stopped flashing?' I asked.

She beamed at me and clasped her hands.

‘You did say you paid close attention to detail, didn't you? And you're good with heights. It's all worked out splendidly.'

There was an ominous rumbling in my bowels.

‘This job that you mentioned—' I began.

‘We had a very good chap who used to replace the light. It normally lasts a year or two. He'd come every May. But he is almost as old as me now, and he had a little scare last time. It does get windy up there, but karabiners so rarely fail …' She trailed off.

‘I see.'

‘It's not exactly a common job, so I've been having a little trouble knowing where to find a replacement. But when I saw you standing there looking up at the spire for so long, I thought I might lean tentatively on God's Providence. Of course, one mustn't test the Lord, but I thought I might see whether or not you were one of his little jokes. So I invited you in for tea.'

‘I thought you were just being nice.'

‘No, no,' she said, waving at an invisible fly. ‘It wasn't anything so trivial as niceness. I had a purpose to deliver, and you were searching for one. “That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.”'
³⁰

‘I'm not sure I follow.'

‘There is a right time for everything, Günter, and I believe that you came here for a reason. Whatever you were looking for, I believe you'll find it up there.' I looked back up. It really was very high. Four hundred feet, Wikipedia said.

‘I suppose I wouldn't mind doing it, but all I have is a fifteen-foot ladder.'

‘Oh, I'm sure we can sort all that out. And you'll be remunerated, of course. We used to pay Mr Giddings a hundred and fifty pounds, I hope that sounds reasonable.'

I thought of Dad.

‘I'll do it.'

‘Sterling,' she said. ‘Let's go and get the harness.'

She set off towards the cathedral, taking me by the arm. We walked through the back office and into a sort of broom cupboard, where she bent from the hips and started rummaging around in an old Asda carrier bag on a low shelf.

‘Now what you must do, when you get outside – I was sure I had left it here – there should be two ropes, you see, one for – oh no, here it is, I could have sworn I'd put it – it's crucially important to make sure that you – and here's the other.' Flushed and triumphant, she handed me two sets of ropes and a harness. Her part of the task was over. I wasn't sure I had understood her instructions, or even whether she had given any.
³¹
We went to the bottom of the spire, and walked upstairs in a spiral so uniform that it made me wonder whether I was travelling at all, or whether I was stuck in a nightmare by Escher.

After some time, we reached the bell tower.

‘The world's oldest working clock,' she said. ‘The day this bell stops chiming I'll be listening for the sound of sixteen hooves.'
³²

There was another staircase leading off from this main platform, with a black metal chain on which hung the sign,
DANGER OF DEATH: DO NOT CROSS
. Dean Winterbottom cheerfully unclipped it and waved me through.

‘Good luck my dear, and remember what I said about the ropes. Oh – and do come down if it's too windy, won't you.' She handed me a screwdriver and a red bulb that she'd been carrying, almost like a bicycle light, but much larger. On the back it said
AIRCRAFT WARNING LIGHT
. I stepped into the harness, tied the bulb to my belt and pulled as hard as I could on anything that looked like it might break or come loose. Matters had progressed more rapidly than I had anticipated. My palms began to sweat. I wiped them on the thighs of my jeans, walking up the remaining stairs, which creaked and grumbled, until I came to a little door, about the right size for a hobbit. I opened it onto the cool evening air. All of Salisbury was laid out before me. Shaftesbury, too. Hardy country, I'm told. Stonehenge and rape fields. It was too high for mosquitoes. If I fell, I would have time to worry on the way down.

Except that I wasn't worried. As if for the first time, I felt alive. Of course, you always know you're alive – rationally you know, you can feel your pulse and think and move and all that – but now, up here, I really
felt
alive. I could feel my skin buzzing and the sharp geometries of my surroundings hung in the air before me like they were the only real things I had ever seen.

I looked down at the green, where tourists were swirling like dust. A sharp gust tore at my hair as I located a little metal loop, onto which I clipped my first safety rope. I put my hands on the frame of the door, then got a foot up, turning myself around to face the spire. I looked up at the climb, and tested my weight on the black metal structural ladder. I felt I knew how to do this instinctively, almost as if it was coded in ancestral genes. Another gust wrapped itself around me, and I shifted the second rope on my shoulder. I went one rung at a time, slow and steady, methodically, tantalising myself with furtive thoughts of the drop below. I got to the top of the ladder and took a breather. My fingers were tingling. I wondered how long it had been since I had last eaten, and wiped my palms again, one by one, on my jeans. Here was the spire. I gulped down air. I was at the highest point between the horizons. Beside me in all directions was sky, and beyond that, space.

The wind changed direction twice in short succession. I held the spire itself and stood upright on the topmost rung of the ladder, trying to get myself steady. I couldn't see anywhere to clip my second rope – the spire and the rungs were too wide. I unscrewed the first of four attachments on the warning light and caught the screw in the same hand as it fell – a moment of unwonted grace. I did the second and third without trouble, stowing the screws in one of my marsupia, but as I started to unscrew the fourth, with the plastic casing now hanging off, a new gust caught me front on and I lost my footing. I grabbed the spire as the wind took me and, for one fraction of a second, hung in perfect balance, supported almost horizontally by the wind. Then the air under me went still, and I fell through it.

I caught a rung on my second attempt, hitting the ladder with various extremities as I jerked myself short of oblivion. I didn't trust that rope to hold a normal adult, let alone someone of my dimensions, so it was a relief to find myself clinging hard to the ladder, held fast, breathing heavily, alive. I had nearly conquered the spire. I would conquer it.

I climbed the ladder again, removed the shell, replaced the light and, triumphant, took the old spent bulb in my hand. I heard a cheer as from a far-off stadium, and looked down at the tourists, who had converged in the middle of the green. Little pinpricks of xenon flashed out in the murky light, and I lifted the old lamp to show them. If I could do this, I could do anything. I could clean skyscrapers. I was breathing hard. Here a man could really breathe.

I was in the local paper the next morning.
³³
There was a photo of me outstretched in the air, one hand gripping the spire, the other wielding the screwdriver as if I were a British Superman, flying in to attack the warning light at speed. Say what you like about Japanese tourists, they know how to take a good picture. I even had a suspicion that my safety rope had been photoshopped out.

The article itself seemed to suggest that I could be likened to Jesus, because we both had facial hair. This didn't seem like a fair comparison, although I can't pretend I wasn't flattered. And when they had phoned me up about it, I had asked them to mention my window cleaning, so the phone had been ringing all morning. I ended up enlisting Dad as my secretary, because otherwise I wouldn't have had time to attend any of my appointments.

When I came home after a long day of cleaning, I was tired. My knees and elbows hurt from the fall, and I'd hurt one of my fingers catching the ladder. To Dad's dismay, I cancelled everything for the next day and went straight up to bed, taking a mug of herbal tea and a long list of missed calls with me.

A lot of the people who had phoned were too far away for me to reach by foot, so I had to reject them out of hand. But I did fill up my potted schedule for the week ahead, and confirmed what I already knew: this neighbourhood was mine. If I carried on like this for a few months, I might start making enough to pay the mortgage, and if he found some work too, we could start eating into the debt.

This had all of the characteristics of a good, solid plan, the kind of plan that a man could live by. Prudent. Except that I didn't want to be prudent. I wanted to be way up there in the sky, close to the sun.

As I scanned down the list, one name stuck out from the rest (possibly because my father had written it in capital letters and underlined it urgently.
JOHN BLADES
. I felt a searing heat run through me. John Blades had called me. John Blades OBE, the man who cleaned half the skyscrapers in London, had called me, Günter Glass, of Glass Cleaning, Salisbury. I should have whooped or punched the air, but as it was, I tiptoed across the hall and went to the bathroom. Those herbal teas go right through me.