Walking on Glass

by Iain Banks

  "Yes?" said the seneschal.

  Quiss scowled and said, "Why can't you get the food to us while it's still hot?"

  They were passing the vat Quiss had thrown the small attendant into. The scullion appeared to have survived the ordeal and was sitting, quivering and bedraggled, being wiped down by some of its colleagues. An under-cook was supervising the cleaning of the stove around the cauldron and the preparation of fresh ingredients to replace those lost. The seneschal stopped, looking at the work being done with a critical eye. The scullions worked even faster. The one Quiss had dumped in the gruel saw the huge fur-clad figure of the human and started shaking so hard that little flecks of soupy stuff flew off it, like water from a dog.

  "Well," the seneschal said, "it's a long way from here to there."

  "So construct a dumb-waiter."

  "That would be..." the seneschal paused, watching one of the apprentice chefs dipping a long ladle into the cauldron the unfortunate attendant had just vacated. The apprentice put the ladle to its mouth, then nodded appreciatively and started back down the ladder as the seneschal continued, "... going against tradition. It is a great honour for our waiters to take our guests their meals. I certainly could not deprive them of that. A dumbwaiter would be..." the apprentice chef with the ladle was talking to the under-cook now, who also tasted the ladle's contents and nodded, while the seneschal said,'... impersonal."

  "Who cares if it's impersonal? These aren't necessarily the sort of... persons I want to have anything to do with anyway," Quiss said, indicating the various attendants, waiters and scullions around them as the under-cook respectfully approached the seneschal, bowing to him. The seneschal stooped slightly as the under-cook borrowed a stool and stood on it to whisper something into his master's ear. The seneschal looked briefly at the quivering attendant being looked after by the others, then he shrugged and said something to the under-cook, who quickly got back down off the stool and turned to the others.

  The seneschal looked at Quiss and said, "Unfortunately there are not only your feelings to be taken into account. I have the welfare of my staff to think of. Such is life. I must go now." He turned and left, ignoring the shouts and screams of the small wet attendant as - after the under-cook had gathered the other scullions round, pointed to the cauldron, the ladle and its own belly before nodding at the wet attendant - the kicking, howling creature was grabbed by the same scullions who had recently been comforting it, hoisted up the ladder still resting against the side of the great vat, and thrown back in. The lid clanged down, rattling on its pulleys.

  Quiss stamped his foot in frustration, then marched back up the steps to retrieve the rest of his furs and make his way back to the castle's upper reaches.

  Open-Plan Go had turned out to be a game of placing black and white stones on a grid to claim territory on an infinite board. It had taken him and the woman two hundred days - as they measured them - to work out and play the game. Again, they were nearly finished now, and here he was yet again, trying to get the heating improved. Since their last game, the heat and light had deteriorated.

  "And now I suppose it'll be my fault the heating hasn't got better immediately," he muttered to himself as he walked along the narrow passageway. She would blame him. Well, let her; he wasn't bothered. Just so long as they could finish this stupid game and get on to his answer. She might be better at thinking up things as stupid as their games (infinite pieces which were only infinite in one direction, from a point; you could hold one end but it was still infinite! Insane!), but he was certain he had the right answer, and a more direct and obvious one than hers had been. He should never have let her talk him into letting her give hers first when they had been deciding how to handle this whole situation. Her and her smooth-talking, "logical" arguments! What a fool he'd been!

  "We'll get it right now though," he said to himself, as he ascended through the castle's twisted interior, and the light faded and the cold grew more sharp, and he gathered his furs more closely around him. "Yes, we'll - I'll - get it right this time. Definitely."

  Muttering and talking to himself, the old, massive, motley-haired man shuffled through the darkening levels of the castle, wrapped in his furs and hopes and fears.

  Quiss's solution to the problem, his answer to the riddle "What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?" was, "The immovable object loses; force always wins!"

  (The red crow, sitting on the balustrade of the balcony, had cackled with laughter. Ajayi had sighed.)

  The attendant came back after a few minutes, its little red boots ruffling the hem of its robe. "Much as I dislike being the bearer of bad news..." it began.

  PART THREE

  AMWELL STREET

  A succession of heavy trucks rumbled down Amwell Street as Graham turned onto it from Rosebery Avenue; they were big grey lorries, stone or chippings carriers with great corrugated sides and a plume of dust trailing after them in the near-still air. Graham was heading slightly uphill now, and slowed his pace accordingly. He listened to the traffic, felt the warm air slip by, moved his portfolio from one hand to the other, and thought of her.

  He hadn't been able to see Slater for two days after the party, and that time had passed in a daze for him. On the Monday, though, Slater had been in the small steamy cafe and sandwich bar on Red Lion Street which he usually spent most of his term days in, and Graham had supplied him with cups of tea and expensive rounds of smoked salmon on granary bread while Slater slowly, teasingly, told him about Sara.

  Yes, they had been neighbours in Shrewsbury, but of course they had only seen each other during the school holidays, and of course they hadn't made friends over some grotty little terrace-house garden fence; he'd first noticed her from the tree house in his parents" garden while she was learning to ride her new pony in her parents" ten acres of mature woodland and well-kept pasture.

  "A tree house?" Graham teased back. "Wasn't that a bit butch?" Slater replied tartly: "I was being Jane, sweetie, not Tarzan."

  Sara's best years. Slater continued, had been just after leaving school. She had been a scamp in those days, he said, sighing with exaggerated wistfulness. She drank Guinness, smoked Gauloises and would eat anything as long as it was loaded with garlic. Odour-free she wasn't. She carried a large handbag whenever she went out. It contained potatoes to stuff up the exhaust pipes of expensive cars, and a very large sharp knife for tearing holes in the hoods of convertibles. If it could be arranged, she threw up into the cars through the holes so created.

  She got drunk a lot and once did a strip on top of the piano in a local pub. (Graham asked Sara about this, on one of their canal walks. She smiled, looked down at her feet as she walked, finally admitted, a little ashamedly, that it was all true; "I was wild," she agreed in her slow, low voice, nodding. Graham felt a sort of ache then, as he had when Slater first told him; he wanted to have known her then, to have been a part of her life during that time. He was jealous, he realised, of time itself.)

  She was three years older than Slater; twenty-three now. She had been married for the last two years, to a man who really was a sewage plant manager (Slater was quite hurt that Graham thought he'd invented this detail for the sake of a joke). She had married against the wishes of her parents; they hadn't talked since the marriage. She didn't get on well with them anyway; probably she married as much to get at them as anything else. It was a pity, because her parents weren't bad sorts; like his own, they just believed everything they read in the Daily Telegraph.

  Sara had only one real skill, or talent. Not having done very well at school (not even allowed to sit the Oxbridge exams), she had nevertheless been diligent about her piano lessons, and was in fact quite good on the instrument. The horrible hubby had not encouraged this, however, and indeed had sold her piano one weekend when she was away staying with friends. That hadn't been The Last Straw; far from it. Selling the piano was only a few months into the marriage. She ought to have got out then, but she, the stubborn one, persisted.<
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  Hubby wasn't happy when no kiddies appeared; blamed her. Sara had tried to be the good wife but failed; the other wifies she was supposed to socialise with to further hubby's career were dreadful, brainless bores. Social ostracism followed outbursts of silliness, hubby drank a lot, didn't hit her often but did bad-mouth her excessively, and took up fishing; went away for weekends with male friends she'd never heard of. Claimed to be tackling rivers but kept bringing home filleted sea fish on the Sunday night, and was always suspiciously careful to empty his pockets when he gave her his clothes to wash. She began to Suspect.

  She had her own weekends, here in London, staying with Veronica, whose flat she was now looking after while its owner worked a year's exchange course at UCLA. On one of those weekends she had met Stock, a photographer who did a lot of, work for one of the newspaper colour supplements, though always under assumed names, for tax purposes. Slater had seen him on his BMW bike, or just getting off it. Never seen him without his crash helmet on; could be an albino or a Rastafarian for all he knew. Looked a bit like Darth Vader without the cloak. Jealous, moody type, apparently; married too but separated. No idea why he appealed to the lovely Sara.

  Anyway, he thought they would be drifting apart a bit now, perversely but predictably because they were seeing more of each other, not just weekends; Stock stayed the night at the horrible little place in Islington quite often, but Slater thought Sara might be getting bored with the black-leather macho man.

  The thing round her neck? Scar tissue all right; a birthmark she'd had removed in early teens in case it turned malignant. Yes, he found it perversely beautiful-too. "La Cicatrice" had been his pet name for her.

  Finally Slater divulged the flat's telephone number, and Graham noted the seven numbers down carefully, double-checking them and ignoring Slater's snide remarks about quirky Sara with her terrible taste in men, and the unfaithful, untrustworthy nature of women in general. He'd offered to swap stories about what had happened once they had each paired off at the party, but Graham wasn't going to tell, and told Slater so as he carefully wrote her name by the side of the numbers: Sarah Fitch. Slater laughed, pointing and guffawing at what Graham had written. "Not one big "f; two little ones. Like British industry, our Sara's undercapitalised. And no "h" on the end of Sara," he said.

  Graham called her from the School that day, found her in. She said she was delighted to hear from him; he thrilled at the sound of her voice. She was free the following Thursday evening. She'd meet him in a pub called the Camden Head, at nine. Looking forward to it.

  He whooped for joy as he left the phone cubicle.

  She was late, as she always was, and they only had about an hour and a half to talk before she had to go, and he was nervous and she looked tired though still beautiful in bright red cords, Arran jumper and tattily magnificent fur coat. "I think I might be falling for you, you know," he said as they were drinking up at eleven.

  She smiled at him, shook her head, changed the subject, seemed distracted, looking about as though for somebody she expected to see. He wished he'd kept quiet.

  She walked with him to the bus-stop, would not let him walk her back to the flat, said not to follow her; she'd watch, be angry. She kissed him again, quickly, daintily. "Sorry I haven't been great company. Call me soon; I'll be on time next time."

  Graham smiled to himself at the thought of that. Her sense of time didn't seem to be like everybody's else's. She kept her own time; some inner, erratic clock regulated her. Like some conventional caricature of female punctuality, she always arrived late. But she usually did turn up. Almost always. They met on weekdays, not weekends at first, in pubs never very far away from the flat. Small talk mostly; a slow process of discovery. He wanted to find out all she'd done and been, everything she thought, but she was reticent. She preferred to talk about films and books and records, and though she seemed interested in him, asking him about his life, he felt cheated as well as flattered. He loved her, but his love, the love he wanted to be their love seemed stalled, stuck at some early stage, as though hibernating until the winter had passed.

  She wouldn't talk about Stock at all.

  Graham walked up Amwell Street. How are you? he asked himself. Oh, I am well. He looked at his fingernails. It had taken him half an hour to get his hands and nails clean, using white spirit and a nailbrush as well as soap and water. A couple of specks of paint on his shirt had surrendered, besides. He had used a friend's Nivea to restore some moisture to the scrubbed, parched skin on his fingers. The only stains left on his hands were a few stubborn traces of India ink, left from the drawings of Sara he'd finished the previous day. Graham smiled; she was ingrained in him.

  He passed the entrance to a courtyard. There was a banner slung slackly over it, advertising a fete. He gave the banner a second glance, fixing its curves and lines in his mind, storing the sight so that he could draw it some time. Tricks could be played, points made by drawing a drooping banner so that certain letters and words were obscured and altered by the folded fabric.

  He remembered one time he'd walked up here, in May, after she had started seeing him in the afternoons and going for long walks along the canal-side. It had poured with rain; a total cloudburst, thunder cracking and grumbling in the skies above the city. He'd been soaked, and hoped that at least this might finally gain him entry to the flat; she'd never invited him in.

  When he got there he pressed the button on the entryphone, waiting for the crackle of her distorted voice, but there was nothing. He pressed and pressed. He stood back in the street, the rain stinging his eyes, wetting him to the skin, getting in his mouth and eyes; warm rain, huge hard drops, slicking and sticking the clothes to his body; erotic, making his heart beat faster in a sudden, squally sexual fantasy; she would invite him in... no, better yet, she would turn up in the street, having been out, also wet to the skin, she would look at him... they would go in...

  Nothing.

  He walked all the way to Upper Street, near the bus-stops, before he found a free phonebox. He stood in it, his clothes and skin steaming, dripping water into the urine-scented callbox, called her number, listened to it ring, called again, saying the numbers to himself like a chant, making sure his finger was in the right hole on the dial each time. The double ring: trr-trr: trr-trr: trr-trr. He listened to it, trying to will her to the phone; imagining her coming back to the flat after being out; she might hear the phone from the street... now she would put the key in the lock... now running up the stairs... now dashing in, dripping, short of breath, to grab the receiver... now... now.

  Trr-trr: trr-trr: trr-trr.

  Please.

  His hand hurt, his mouth ached with the expression of tense anguish he knew he wore, water ran from his hair, over his face, down his back. Water dripped from his elbow where it bent, holding the phone up to his ear.

  Be there: be there: be there: trr-trr: trr-trr: trr-trr...

  There were people outside the callbox. It was still raining, though more lightly now. A girl outside tapped on the glass, he turned away, ignored her. Please be there... trr-trr: trr-trr: trr-trr...

  The door of the callbox opened eventually. A wet-looking blonde in a rain-darkened coat stood there, glaring at him," "Ere, wot's your game, eh? I've only been standin" "ere twen'y minutes, "aven" I? You ain't even put your bleedin" money in yet!"

  He said nothing; he put the phone down and walked away to get a bus. He forgot to take his ten pence out of the slot where he'd had it ready, and he'd left a pile of tens and fives sitting on top of the directories. He felt sick.

  She apologised, over the phone, the next day; she'd been hiding under the bedclothes, playing her favourite David Bowie cassette at maximum volume on her Sony Walkman, trying to drown the noise of the thunder.

  He laughed, loving her for it.

  Graham passed a small hall; in its courtyard was a little stall selling cakes. He considered buying a cake to eat, but while he was thinking about it he kept on walking, and thought it would loo
k stupid to turn back so far up the street, so he didn't, though at the thought his stomach suddenly rumbled. He'd last eaten about four hours earlier, in the same small cafe where he'd got Slater to tell him about Sara that January.

  Graham crossed the road. He was approaching Clairmont Square, at the summit of the hill, where tall houses, once genteel, then decaying, now undergoing gentrification, faced over tall trees to the bustle of traffic on Pentonville Road. Graham shifted his plastic portfolio from one hand to the other. Inside were drawings of Sara ffitch, and Graham was proud of them. The drawings were in a new style he had been experimenting with recently, and now, he felt, he had got it just right. It was perhaps a little early to be certain, but he thought they were probably the best things he had ever done. This made him feel good. It was another sort of omen; a confirmation....

  Once they'd had a conversation on two levels, from street to first-floor window; it had been in April; on the second occasion he'd visited her in the afternoon, for a walk along the canal.

  She came to the window when he pressed the button on the entryphone, poking her head out of the lower half of the opened sash window, through dark brown curtains. "Hello!" she'd called.

  He went out into the middle of the street. "Coming out to play?'. he said, smiling up at her in the sunlight. Just then the window had slipped, the lower half falling down on her; she laughed and turned her head round.

  "Ouch," she said.

  "You all right?" he asked. She nodded.

  "Didn't hurt." She wriggled. He shielded his eyes to see better. "I think I can get back in. Hope so, or I'm stuck here."

  He gave a small, concerned laugh. He thought suddenly of how she must look, seen from inside the kitchen she was leaning out of; an ugly sexual idea occurred to him, and he looked about for the big black BMW bike, but it wasn't there. It never was when she invited him to meet her at the flat; she was keeping him and Stock out of each other's way. Sara was giggling.