Glass (7 page)

The other man introduced himself as Pete, an Australian Greek with a harsh accent and the casual manner of an unrepentant alpha male. He wore his boiler suit done up to the collar and lit a new cigarette off the stub of his last.

‘Now,' said Blades. ‘You may be wondering why I've brought the three of us together for this job. We don't necessarily have a great deal in common. You've both got your own freelance work and I'm sure you don't need my patronage. But the thing is this: I'm trying to get us some good PR, in advance of a major contract that's come up. I need this contract. Failure is not an option. And both of you have something that I have, something you can't buy. It's something unique, something that other people want. I can't explain it except to say that you are the kind of guys that make headlines. And the thing is – I'm sharing a secret with you now – window cleaning doesn't make many headlines. It's something to be proud of, guys. It's what made my company stand out from the crowd in the first place.'

‘Oh yeah,' said Pete, looking at me askance. ‘You're that fuck'n … superman guy.'

‘I should say that it wasn't as windy as it looked from the photo. It was a rogue gust. What did you do?'

‘Peter wrote an advertisement with a well-placed typo,' Blades cut in. ‘Certainly caught people's eye.'

‘It said, “I do widows. First time free.”'

‘It went viral,' said Blades excitedly.

‘That's quite a commitment. Did you actually have to “do” any widows?' I asked. Pete pushed his bottom lip up into his top lip and tilted his head back. Lucky widows.

‘Gentlemen,' cut in Blades. ‘Back to business.'

Blades explained the layout of the tower, the all-important anchor points, and last of all the dreaded glass floor. Blades would go first, to clip on our safety ropes, and then we'd work from the top down, using equipment that he had provided. The heavyset man took all my own equipment back to his car and I felt a little naked. Then we walked round to the service stairs, strapped and buckled everything we could and ascended. Another spiral staircase, this time aluminium with little embossed shapes like blown up rice. The tips of my fingers itched; my head went hot.

We did the inside first, which gave Blades a chance to flash a few smiles and introduce himself to the visitors. The female contingent all promised to video the event on their phones and upload it to YouTube when they got home. All except one tall, broad woman who stood in the corner, looking out to sea, if anything actively avoiding Blades. I walked up to the window next to her to try and see what she was staring at so intently. I couldn't see anything, but my eyesight was imperfect, so I opened my mouth to ask.

‘Wh—'

‘Nothing in particular. I just love the sea.'

‘And do—'

‘Just visiting. I'm a medium, amongst other things.'

‘I'm a large,' I said. I always think a bad joke is better than no joke at all.

‘Leave.'

‘I'm sorry?'

She turned to me and held out her hand. I shook it, befuddled.

‘Günter. Pleased to meet you.'

‘Enchanted. Leave-ah.' She touched her significant bosoms with her free hand.

‘Okay. Well, I suppose I'd better be getting off anyway.'

‘Oh.' She looked vaguely put out. What on earth was this woman up to? I went to rejoin the other two, and she watched me go. I felt her eyes boring into me. Was this what women felt like when they walked past builders?

I helped Pete clean the glass panel on the floor of the observation deck, glancing occasionally down at the ground below. It was a cloud's-eye view of the world, suspended high above the human scale, looking down at the nothing between our feet. It made me delirious – happy, possibly.

We went back out to the service stairs, and then up and out. Blades chalked his hands and disappeared. Pete and I looked at each other. Then his smiling head appeared in the doorway, and he gave us the thumbs up. We pulled our ropes taut, and then we were out in the thin air. The noises of the city filtered up to us like heat waves, and the sun washed down as we hung like urban commandos. The trick was to take quick, light swipes at the window. If you pressed with any force, you'd start to swing, and then you had to wait while you regained equilibrium. The alternative was to use the suction cups we'd been provided, but if you leant on one and it came loose, it set you swinging, sometimes into the window you'd just washed, and you'd have to do it all over again. It was an amazing design, though. You can't make curved float-glass, so they had attached several panels at slightly different angles to give the impression of a curve. Marvellous in the truest sense. I worked with care, paying service to the slightest blemish while Pete cracked jokes about the chicks in Adelaide. He seemed unaffected to say the least. From his posture, one would have thought that we were sunning ourselves in deck chairs, or abseiling. I looked over at him and then, with a horrible lurch, I realised I couldn't see Blades. I couldn't see him anywhere.

‘Where's Blades gone?' I asked.

‘He'll show up,' said Pete.

He mightn't just ‘show up'. It wasn't as if we had split up to save time in a supermarket; we were hanging from a modern sculpture five hundred feet in the air. I looked down and couldn't see any sign that he'd headed in that direction. No police tape or screaming, which had to be a good sign. I saw how small people looked. I heard my breath in my ears.

I pulled a bit too hard on the release and dropped a couple of metres down my rope, leaving me hanging from the building in mid-air. My stomach lurched again and my heart beat hard as my sidekick squeegee fell from its holster and spun into the distance below. I heard a sharp crack and shouts. I looked down. No one was injured.

The only way to get back up would be to hoist myself up sharply while I released the catch, but when I released it I had to make sure I was gripping hard enough, or I would fall further, run out of rope, and then there really would be police tape below us. This was one of those odd situations that was not serious until it was fatal. I began to get the feeling of dread that I always got at the possibility of dying ignominiously, a feeling I had first discovered when I was eight and I realised, swimming in the sea, that my feet weren't touching the bottom, and the tide was strong. My mum had waved to me happily from the shore. The tide wasn't vicious, but there had been a small chance that I would start losing ground with each backwash and that, despite swimming as hard as I could, I might not make any progress towards the shore. I was struck with horror that I might never reach the sand, which was so close and yet just out of reach. If I were pulled out to sea by the tides, I would be fighting a lost cause before anyone had even noticed I was in danger. I would never see my family again.

And now there was a small chance that I would fall to my death.

I was far down enough to see Blades on all fours, upside down with his suction cups, scrubbing at the glass. He glanced across at me and winked. Can't anyone ever tell when I'm in trouble? Knowing my luck, some tourist would probably snap my last moments in some stupid pose.

‘Just checking on you,' I shouted to Blades cheerily.

‘I'm fine,' he smiled. ‘You?'

‘Yep. Yep.'

My rope uncoiled slightly and I span to face the sky. There was nothing out ahead of me until the nearest star many light years away. There was nothing below me to put my feet on, nothing solid to grab onto. I was falling, but for three inches of rope. If I pulled the catch on my karabiner now, I would head backwards, picking up pace, approaching terminal velocity, before smashing into the cold hard fact of the concrete below me. It was almost tempting. And it might make a nice follow-up piece for the local paper. I could just pull a little on my karabiner, and never think again.

Still, nothing makes less sense than committing suicide without thinking it through, and I had a job to finish. The task of pulling yourself back up is not difficult, I told myself. The thing to remember is that you only get one chance. You either get it right, or get it wrong. If there has ever been a time to fully concentrate in your whole life, it is now. Okay, stop thinking about thinking about it. Just look at the rope. Firm grip. There's the release. Release and heave. Just do it a bit at a time. First try – agh! Okay. Good. Now one more. I really need to eat less. Stupid … gravity. Nearly. There. Good.

I was nearly back at eye level. Pete had finished his window.

‘Do ye want me to finish yours, mate?' He indicated the window, in case I needed help identifying it.

‘I can finish it myself,' I snapped.

And I did, under the gaze of the rogue medium. She stood at the window keeping a watchful eye on me until I was back on solid steel. Something about her unbroken attention was discomfiting, and yet I felt safer, up there, with her watching me.

When we were back inside I went into the viewing room to find her. I didn't know exactly why I was going to find her, as she had been so rude to me before, but it turned out not to matter since she was no longer there.

I went back down and took off my gear. The heavyset man appeared swinging car keys round his index finger, holding a little book in the other hand.

We three squinted up at the tower, which gleamed like a kiss in a toothpaste advert.

‘I guess we done all right,' said Pete.

Blades handed us each an envelope.

‘I'll be in touch boys.'

Pete tore his open immediately. I opened mine too, using my little finger as a letter-opener, and found a cheque for £500. Crikey. Perhaps it was danger money.

I started off the way I had come, back down the quay, past the
faux
French café, and I spotted the strange woman, sitting at a table by the window. I thanked the driver and waved Blades off. I didn't know what I'd do if she asked me to leave again. The car hummed off down the road, blaring classical music. A seagull strolled past between us. I hadn't realised seagulls were quite so big. Up close, it looked like it'd put a decent dent in my leg with that beak.

‘Would you like to sit down?' the strange woman asked, staring at me under a poster for Chat Noir.

‘Thank you, I will.' I tried, unsuccessfully, to catch the waitress's eye. ‘So your job, is it based at the tower?'

‘Of course not. I was in the area visiting a client, and I thought I would look at the view before I left. It's not often I get out of London.'

She opened a large purple purse filled with bank cards, loyalty cards and what looked a lot like a deck of cards. From their midst, she pulled out a business card and handed it to me.
Lieve Toureaux
.

‘Your
name
is Lieve!'

‘Yes. Yours is Günter. You have a bad memory, Günter. You must be thirsty after your work. Let me get you a glass of water.' She summoned the waitress instantly and asked politely for water.

‘This card says you're a psychic and a medium.'

‘I'm not exactly psychic. It's hard to explain. The best way to put it would be to say that I can see into the immediate future. Say, half a second. I asked my GP to help me prove it to the scientific community, and he told me that, in his opinion, I was deranged.'

‘Are doctors allowed to use the word deranged?'

‘I don't know. I assume it was his professional, and not his personal opinion.'

‘Are the two any different?' I asked.

‘It's important to keep work and private life separate,' she told the sea. I was too busy thinking about her ability to see into the future, albeit the immediate future.

‘So can you—'

‘Yes, but people find it annoying when I interrupt them, so I try not to.'

I sipped at my water. The waitress had put a slice of cucumber in it. It tasted pure and clear. I wondered why I never used to drink water on its own. I rather liked it. Lieve saw me eyeing the glass.

‘The cucumber is supposed to help cleanse your palate.'

‘But I haven't eaten anything.'

‘Perhaps your breath smells. Breathe on me.' I leant up close to her and whispered
haaaaa
as I stared into the clear grey-blue pools of her eyes. She looked directly back at me and smiled. ‘No, you're fine. You smell quite nice actually. Is that your natural odour?'

‘I suppose it must be. I'm not wearing aftershave.'

‘It's a good sign. It means we're sexually compatible.' She looked at her watch. ‘I should catch my train. It was a pleasure to meet you, and I don't say that to everyone I meet.' She got up, grabbing a gargantuan handbag, which sagged with its unknown contents. I knew that this was the moment to ask for her number, but I was unable.

‘My number's on my card,' she said. ‘I already gave it to you. Take care.'

After she left, I sat on the cheap wicker chair, my fingers edging around her business card in my pocket, looking out at the sea. The seagulls fought a vicious air battle over a couple of scraps of bread, and I saw that I never would have survived in nature.

10

My Lady of the Slabs

When I got home I noted Max's four-by-four in the drive. There was no sound in the house. I walked through to the kitchen, where the two of them were sitting. Dad looked up at me as I came in and Max turned round to see me.

We were just talking about you
, Max smirked.

Dad assumed the serious face that he had always used when Mum laid down the law.
You know you can talk to me about anything
, he signed.

I nodded. Dad opened his mouth a little while before speaking.

‘It's just Max has been looking out for you, and he's noticed that you haven't had a girlfriend since – well – ever. He's been explaining to me that it's actually quite normal to be gay now and a lot of people don't think it's disgusting at all.'

‘Thanks Dad, but I'm not gay. Max is winding you up.'

I'm not! Look at his vest top.

This is a T-shirt!
I signed angrily.

It's a cutaway at best. And you've got the church trying to convert you before it's too late. When have you ever shown an interest in women? You didn't even watch that porn I sent you.

I very much had watched the pornography,
³⁴
and felt a flush of righteous indignation.

As a matter of fact I met a woman today. Her name is L-I-EV-E.
I made a sign close to ‘beautiful' to stand for Lieve's name.
³⁵

Max snorted.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Dad looked a bit confused at this new development. Presumably it had taken some persuasion to convince him that I was gay, and now I was clambering back into the wardrobe of heterosexuality before his very eyes.

‘Well, you know that I'm here for you if you are gay, and we're not going to judge your choices,' said Dad. ‘But if you're not gay, that would be ideal.'

‘I'm not sure people choose to be gay, Dad.'

‘They bloody do. Some of them have kids, so it's not as if they can't get it up.'

‘Dad, please.'

You're making him uncomfortable talking about his people like that.

‘They're not my people! I mean, they aren't
not
my people, but I'm just not – look, the point is I'm not gay. I like women.'

Give him time. Anyway, I should go. Hey Günter, look at my new Mido. Swiss-made. It's a work of art
. He proffered his watch. I have to say, it did look very nice. But if he could afford Swiss watches, why was he letting his own father drown in red letters? I shrugged at Max and he sloped off down the hall, slamming the front door loudly on his way out.

I wonder when I stopped liking my brother. Perhaps I never liked him. I just never really understood why he had to talk about how much money he was making all the time.

‘I made five hundred pounds today,' I announced to Dad, showing him the cheque. His eyes filled like fish bowls, and he hugged me.

‘Good lad, good lad,' he cried, and I felt how fragile he was in my arms. He was getting older now. I would look after him. I patted him on the back, unexpectedly disturbed that there was no one left who could look after me, no safe place, no more summer holidays, no one to pat my back. I didn't really want to have to provide for myself. Perhaps I should give God a try. I didn't much like the idea of giving up my weekend lie-in, but I supposed it was all
quid pro quo
.

When Sunday came round, I found myself awake at dawn. I looked across at the clock. 07.04? I didn't know times like that existed on a Sunday. I could even
get up
.

I sat in the kitchen for a while eating my waffles. Sunday morning. What a surreal thought. I could go to church. I could just get dressed and go to church. I'd woken up; anything was possible.

I didn't want to wear my black funeral suit ever again, if I could avoid it, so I went into my dad's room, where he was snoring face down into a pillow, picked an inoffensive-looking work suit and squeezed myself into it. He was not quite so broad as me, so I developed a cunning way of pulling back my shoulders so as not to rip the material. I reasoned that, as it looked like a warm day, I could probably take off the jacket once I was safely installed in a pew.

It was a pleasant walk to the cathedral, and for the first time in days no one bothered me for my autograph, or snapped me on their phone. I simply walked, shoulders back, head held high, past the school, over the green, and joined the patient worshippers queuing for entrance. It was cool when I got inside, and no one took off their jackets. I would just have to keep mine on. The young man who had been staring at the screen before now stood near the lectern, dressed in gold and red and white, staring at the people passing like an angry customs official. I hoped he didn't expose me as a charlatan. I felt he would be the kind to cast people into the flames.
³⁶

Everyone was filing in with quiet, almost-fearful reverence. The bishop stood taciturn in an imposing golden gown with a white hood draped back over his shoulder blades. Lit candles illuminated pools of light around the young choir, who wore white gowns over green with little ruffs. The powers that be seemed to have chosen a particular moment in history to stop moving with the times. They must have felt that their age captured the very essence of religion. I wondered if God would wear a ruff and light his way round houses with candles. If so, what did he do before ruffs? Was he just waiting until they were invented? And if so, why wasn't Jesus born then?

Oceanic blue light poured from the windows at the end of the hall, magnifying the artificial feeling of twilight, and everything, everything pointed upwards. I must have looked out of place, because a nice old lady took my arm and led me on to a pew. Her face looked like a parched desert, the skin cracked into slabs, and her lips seemed to have imploded in on her mouth, but she led me with silent understanding and I was grateful. We were seated while the bishop spoke and I had a good deal of time to look around me. I noticed a little crystal prism inside a cabinet to the side of the hall and wondered what it was doing there. A memorial, probably.

I was just beginning to get used to the gloom and the strange uniformity of the participants when the congregation stood. Everyone's expressions were caught between the purposeful and the downright miserable, and so I set my face in the same way. But then the choir started and I couldn't help but perk up. Their young voices sailed up in such beautiful harmony, echoing round our heads with an intertwining sound that seemed to lift itself out of all worldly ceremony and gloom. I was so transported by this glimpse of purity that I forgot who I was, what I had grieved for and what I meant to achieve. So lost was I in the holy rapture that my Lady of the Slabs had to prod me rather viciously in the ribs before I would open my eyes and acknowledge the bishop. He glared contemptuously, rubbed his thumb in a bowl of the Godly era and then made a wet cross on my forehead, saying, ‘Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.' The mark itched immediately. I was irritated that the bishop had interrupted the music. Frankly, it was too dark in here and everyone was behaving strangely; on top of which my shoulders were starting to cramp up. But I realised, caught in these tight pews with only one, very public, escape route, they had made leaving impossible.
³⁷

This was a bad idea. These people repelled outsiders. They lived off rites and customs and reverence and deference and acted as one; I was in a cult. A cult with beautiful music, but a cult nonetheless. This was what cults did, wasn't it? They trapped you and then they brainwashed you with their weird repetitive rituals and then you gave them all your money. I saw a collection plate being passed around. I tried to breathe carefully through my nose and mouth and focus on the music but now the deep bass of the organ was filling the air and people were taking wine and bread with one hand cupped under the other and I didn't want to be a part of their mind games, their chanting, their low words. I looked across at my Lady of the Slabs, and she was crying, wiping tears from the wrinkly channels in her cheeks. For all I knew those channels were cut by tears over many debilitating years of worship. I couldn't hear anything over the deafening crescendo of the choir but I could see that, two rows away, a baby was crying. It wasn't natural to want this.

My eyes darted around for exits and there were none. Doors had been closed, a service was in progress. The collection plate edged closer. The bass of the organ enveloped me. I stood wedged in the middle of a line of ten and prayed – to whom, I don't know – that I would not be sacrificed as an unbeliever. Everyone around me turned to prayer books and recited together while I tried to peek at the page number over the shoulder of my Lady of the Slabs. The same words, repeated in endless permutations by endless voices. This was entrapment.

I moved my Lady of the Slabs aside and said, ‘Excuse me,' at the other worshippers on the pew until they let me past. People had started turning around to look at the troublemaker. The bishop and his retinue were patrolling the main aisle so I turned back the other way, nudging people aside, and bolted along the side of the building, ripping the shoulders of the jacket, tearing out of a small door and into the cool, fresh air as cries of consternation rose up behind me. I supposed I must have violated some holy sanctum on my way out, but it was too late now: I was off across the open field and free. I looked back and saw the aircraft light flashing, turning the cathedral into a beacon and dragging it into a century it had never wanted to be a part of. That building stood as a monument to the unbounded ambition of humanity. Its stonework, the stained glass and the wrought perfection of the choristers were eyewatering, but it had all been achieved for one purpose. I supposed that I had been drawn to the cathedral because it was a place where a certain kind of art had been perfected, without realising that its art was persuasion. They were a tribe, united by the unbelievers circling them around. I was looking for something else, something high up in the rafters. I supposed that I wouldn't come back, and that I would miss it, in a way. But then, I supposed a lot of things.

I had to get away. Not just from the cathedral – from Salisbury, from my life here. Since my mother had died, I had begun to see what a life might look like if I were to choose it for myself, no longer relying on the world I had inherited. I might live where skyscrapers defied the downward pull of time, standing out against the chaotic jumble of mere buildings. I might find someone to love and to make memories with, so that there might be some brief record of my existence. High up, away from the earth, I had had some glimpse at my purpose, my permanence, and I had to chase it, because it wouldn't be there forever.