Walking on Glass

by Iain Banks

  "Just...winded..." he said, shaking his head. He wiped his eyes. "Okay..." he sucked in more air. He looked over at the board; the pattern on it broken and spilled. "Oh, shit," he said, and put his head in his hands.

  Ajayi kneaded his broad back through the heavy robes and said, "Never mind about that, Quiss. As long as you're all right."

  "But the... board, it's all... messed up..." Quiss gasped.

  "I can remember how it looked, Quiss," Ajayi said, leaning close behind him and talking into his ear, trying to sound confident and encouraging. "I studied it for long enough, goodness knows. It's engraved on my memory! Don't worry about it. Are you all right? Are you sure?"

  "I'm all right; stop...fussing!" Quiss said irately, trying to shove Ajayi away with one hand. She knelt back from him, her hands falling to her lap, eyes lowered.

  "I'm sorry," she said, getting up slowly from her knees. "I didn't mean to fuss." She bent, sitting on her haunches, grunting with the effort, and started to pick the fallen Scrabble tiles out of the snow to one side, drifting in under the roof of the arcade, and off the ice-crusted surface of the slate slabs.

  "Fucking ice," Quiss said hoarsely. He coughed, rubbed his nose. He looked round at the woman, carefully picking the pieces up from the ground and putting them on the board again. "Have you got a nose-rag?" he said.

  "What? Yes." Ajayi said, reaching into her furs and bringing out a small handkerchief. She handed it to Quiss, who blew his nose loudly and handed the kerchief back. She folded it and put it away. Ajayi sighed. She wanted to tell him to get up; he'd catch cold sitting on the freezing slabs like that. But she didn't want to fuss.

  Quiss got up with some difficulty, grunting and cursing. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as she picked up the scattered pieces, ready to help if he asked, or reach out quickly if he started to fall back again. Quiss stood, rubbing his buttocks and back, leaning against a column.

  They could so easily die, she reminded herself. They might be fixed in one age, but it was an old and fragile one, a weak and accident-prone age. So far they had not fallen really badly, or broken any bones, but if they did injure themselves they would take a long time to get better. She had asked the seneschal about that, long ago. His advice had been: "Don't fall'.

  She thought she had all the tiles. She counted them, all the ones on the board, and found there was still one missing. She got up, still stiffly, arching her pained back and looking round in the snow and on the slate flagstones.

  "Got them all?" Quiss said. His face was still pale, but not as grey as it had been. Ajayi shook her head, still looking round about her.

  "No. One missing." Quiss looked quickly over the slates.

  "I might have known it. They won't let us answer the riddle now. I bet we'll have to start all over again. I bet it. That's what'll happen. This is just typical." He turned quickly away and slammed an open palm into one of the columns, staying facing away from her, breathing deeply, head hung down between his shoulders.

  Ajayi looked at him, then lifted up the small table, to see if she had placed it on top of the missing tile when she put it down to help Quiss. But the tile wasn't there. "We'll find it," she said, gazing into the drifted snow. She didn't feel as sure of it as she hoped she sounded. She couldn't understand it; the tile couldn't have bounced so far, could it? She counted the tiles on the board again, then once more.

  She began to get angry; at Quiss for falling in the first place and then for trying to shove her away; at the missing tile; at the castle itself, the red crow, the seneschal, the attendants; all of them. Where could the stupid thing be?

  "Are you sure you've counted them properly?" Quiss said in a tired voice, still holding on to the column.

  "Of course I have, several times; there's one missing," Ajayi snapped, her voice clipped. "Now stop asking stupid questions."

  "No need to bite my tongue off," Quiss said huffily. "I was only trying to help."

  "Well, look for the tile," Ajayi said. She could hear herself, and she hated herself for it. She shouldn't lose control like this, she oughtn't to snap at Quiss; it did no good. They ought to be sticking together through all this, not quarrelling like schoolkids or growing-apart couples. But she couldn't help it.

  "Look," Quiss said angrily, "I didn't hit the fucking board on purpose. It was an accident. Would you rather I broke my neck?"

  "Of course not," Ajayi said carefully, trying not to snap or shout. "I didn't say you did it deliberately." She wasn't looking at Quiss, she was moving her head from side to side, still scanning the snow and slates, seemingly intent on finding the missing tile, but her mind was all caught up in the words; she knew she wouldn't have seen the tile even if it had been quite obvious; she wasn't concentrating on the search.

  "Maybe you'd rather I did, eh?" Quiss said. "Eh?"

  She looked up at him then. "Oh, Quiss, how can you say that?" She felt as though he'd kicked her. There had been no need for him to say that. What made him say such things?

  Quiss just snorted. He pushed himself away from the column with one slightly shaking arm, and as he did so, the missing tile fell out of one of the bottom hems of his furs, where it had lodged when it and he fell. At the same moment a small figure appeared at the far end of the arcade, from a door which led back into the main body of the castle. They both looked first at the fallen tile, then at the small attendant. It waved and called out in an excited voice:

  "Did you say, 'There's no such thing as either'?"

  They looked at each other again. Ajayi tried to answer, but had to stop, and patted the top of her chest with one hand; her throat seemed to have dried up, she couldn't get any words out. Quiss nodded enthusiastically. "Yes!" he shouted. He kept nodding his head.

  The attendant shook its head. "No," it said, and with a shrug disappeared back into the castle.

  Somewhere far away, beneath them in the ruins, a familiar voice cackled, crowing with distant laughter.

  PART FIVE

  HALF-MOON CRESCENT

  On the corner of Maygood Street and Penton Street there was an employment office, where people went to sign on for dole money. A sign said: Door C surnames A-K, Door D surnames L-Z. Graham walked by, looking down to Half Moon Crescent itself; the curve of tall houses where Sara ffitch was living. His stomach seemed to lurch, tensing with nervous anticipation. He felt shivery, keyed up; the vaguely sultry, dulling air seemed suddenly sharpened. Colours stood out, smells (cooking, asphalt, exhaust fumes) became more vivid. The buildings - ordinary Victorian three-storey terraces, now mostly converted into flats-were strange and alien.

  His heart beat faster when he saw a bike parked outside one of the houses in Half Moon Crescent, but it was outside the door next to Sara's, and it was a red Honda, not a black BMW. He took deep breaths to try and slow his heart down. He looked up at the window Sara leaned out of sometimes, but she wasn't there.

  She will be there, though, he told himself. She won't be out. She will be in. And she won't have changed her mind.

  He went to the entryphone. He pressed the button for her flat firmly. He waited, staring intently at the grille from which her voice would come. Very soon.

  He waited.

  He put his finger on the button, about to press it again, then hesitated, uncertain whether to wait a little longer or not. She might still be waking up, or having a shower; anything. There could be lots of reasons for her not answering yet. He licked his lips, kept staring at the grille. He leaned forward on the button once more, closing his eyes as he did so. He let the button go.

  There was still plenty of time. Even if she wasn't in, he could wait; she would probably just be out getting something for the salad she'd said she would make for them.

  He wondered whether he ought to press the button again. His stomach was feeling heavy, sick. He could just imagine someone from the houses on the corner of Maygood Street watching him now, looking at his back as he stood at the entryphone grille, waiting and waiting. The grille made a clicki
ng noise. "Hello?" said a breathless voice. It was her!

  "It -" he said, and choked on the words, throat dry. He cleared his throat quickly, "It's me. Graham." She was there, she was there!

  "Graham, I'm sorry," she said. His heart seemed to sink, he closed his eyes. She was going to say she had changed her mind. "I was in the bath." The buzzer on the entryphone sounded.

  He stared at the door for a moment, then at the entryphone, then at the still buzzing door. He pushed it quickly, just before the buzzer stopped sounding. The door swung open, and he went in.

  There were carpeted steps down to a basement flat, a door straight ahead to the ground-floor flat. He went up the stairs; cheap but cheerful carpet, white paint on the banisters, fading pastel wallpaper. He could hear an old Beatles record being played downstairs. He got to the first-floor landing. There were more steps up to another flat, but the door on the first floor, into her flat, was open. He knocked and went in, looking around with obvious trepidation, just on the off chance it wasn't the right flat, or she hadn't meant to leave the door open. He heard water from a room to his right. Light showed under the door. "Graham?" she said.

  "Hello," he called out. He put the portfolio down against the wall and closed the door on to the landing.

  "Go on in, to your left." Her voice was soaked up by the sound of the running water. He took the portfolio up again, went round to his left, into a small, cluttered room with a couch, chairs, television, hi-fi, bookcases and a small coffee table; at the far end, raised up a few inches, separated from the main part of the room by small wood railings which each extended a third of the way across the area, was a kitchen section; cooker and fridge and sink, a larger table, and behind it, main curtains drawn, white lace ones floating out slightly on a faint breeze, was the window.

  He put his portfolio down by the side of the couch. A small table at one end of the couch held the telephone; he recalled the time it had rung and rung, and she was under the1 bedclothes, hiding from the thunder. He crossed the room to the raised kitchen section, stepping up on to its worn linoleum surface and going to the sink. He rinsed his hands under the cold tap, splashed some water on his forehead. He dried his face and hands on a dishcloth; there was no hand towel. He was shaking.

  He went back down onto the carpeted area and stood, heart beating quickly, in front of the bookcase beside the television. He saw a book there which he hadn't read but had seen televised. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe was the second part of the story begun in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Slater had told him that when the BBC made the series they just lumped the two books together. Graham took the slim volume out, flipped through it, looking for one bit in particular. He found it, in about the middle of the book. The scene involved a character called Hotblack Desiato, who was spending a year dead for tax reasons. Desiato was a firm of Islington estate agents, Graham had seen their signs; Douglas Adams must have lived in the area.

  He put the book back. Although it was funny, it was rather light reading; he wanted Sara to find him reading something more impressive.

  There were a lot of books on best things and worst things; books full of quotes, criticisms, collections of hyberboles and euphemisms, lists of lists, books full, simply, of facts; books on what had happened on each day throughout the year, books about last words, famous mistakes, most useless objects. Graham knew what Slater thought about such works. He took a very dim view indeed; they were yet more signs that the End was In Sight. "Can't you see?" he'd said, one day in March, sitting in the small, steamy cafe in Red Lion Street. "It's a society getting its affairs in order, preparing for the end, drawing a bottom line under what it's done. That stuff and all the bomb literature... we're becoming a death-based society, in love with the past, seeing only annihilation ahead: annihilation we're fascinated by but powerless to do anything about. Vote Thatcher! Vote Reagan! Let's all die! Yip-fucking-pee!"

  Graham took out a book on Marxist economics, opened it about a third of the way through, started reading. His eyes took in the words, but it was dry, hard, complicated stuff, and the meanings flowed over the surface of his mind and off again like water from a sun-creamed shoulder.

  "Graham," Sara said from the doorway. He turned round, heart thumping, to see her just leaning in from the hall, a white towel round her head like a turban, a thin blue dressing gown round her body. Her face looked white and painfully thin without its usual aura of black hair. "I won't be long. Have a seat." She went into the room across the hall, which he assumed must be the bedroom. He put the economics book back.

  He sat down, looking around the room. After a while he rose to look at the record collection. It all seemed very dated; a lot of old Stones records, but much Led Zeppellin and Deep Purple: middle period Floyd and early Bob Seeger. Meatloaf was about the latest stuff. Funny. The collection must have belonged to the girl who actually owned the place, the one who was in America.

  He inspected the bookshelf again.

  At that moment, on St John Street, near the buildings of the City University and about a quarter of a mile south of the junction of Pentonville Road and Upper Street, a figure in black leathers, wearing a black full-face crash helmet with a smoked-glass visor, was crouched by the side of a BMW RS100 motorbike which was propped against the side of the kerb. The man in the black leathers sat back, looked up the road, north, in the direction he had been heading when the bike had suddenly started misfiring a quarter of an hour ago, while he was making his way, as arranged, to Half Moon Crescent. He cursed, leant forward again, quickly turning a small screwdriver as he fiddled with the settings on the carbs. STK 228T was the registration number of the bike.

  Graham took out a book on ethics. It looked like the sort of book to be found reading, too. Slater, naturally, had his own views on ethics as on everything else. His philosophy of life, he said, was founded on Ethical Hedonism. This was the moral system virtually every decent, unblinkered, reasonably informed human able to scrape together a quorum of neurons lived by, but they didn't realise it. Ethical Hedonism recognised that one had to enjoy oneself where one got the chance these days, but that rather than immerse oneself totally in such diversions, one ought always to behave in a reasonable and reasonably responsible manner, never losing sight of the more general moral issues and their manifestations in society. "Have fun, be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking, is what it boils down to," Slater had said. Graham had nodded, and observed that it sounded like it was easier done than said.

  He got bored with the book on ethics, which was even more obscure and difficult than the economics book, and replaced it in the bookcase. He went back to the couch and sat down, looking at his watch. It was four twenty-five. He took his portfolio up, set it on his knees. He thought about opening it up so that he would be looking at the drawings when Sara came in; perhaps even doing some last-minute alterations to them; he had a pen and pencil in the portfolio, too, in the bottom. He decided not to. He didn't have Slater's natural acting ability, that way of just adopting a persona. "You should have been an actor," he'd told Slater, late last year, sitting in Leslie's sandwich bar over a couple of cups of tea and two sweet, sticky pastries.

  "I tried that," Slater had replied huffily. "They threw me out of drama school."

  "What for?"

  "Over-acting!" Slater had said, dramatically.

  Graham put the portfolio down again. He stood up, looking at his watch again, and walked back to the kitchen part of the room, to the window. A slight breeze blew the thin white curtains softly towards him. The view outside, round the corner of Maygood Street, was still. A couple of parked cars, closed doors, the usual grainy sunlight of the summer city.

  A fly buzzed in through the window, and Graham watched it for a while as it flew around the kitchen area, hovering over the cooker, flying down underneath it, wavering in the air around the door of the fridge, floating over the black surface of the round table near the window, criss-crossing the air in front of the food cupboard. It settled
on one of the thin plastic chairs pulled in around the table.

  Graham watched as it stretched its two front legs over its head, cleaning itself. He picked a magazine up off the table and slowly rolled it up until it was tight, then he stepped slowly forward, towards the chair where the fly was. The fly stopped cleaning itself; its front legs went back down to the surface of the seat-back. Graham stopped. The fly stayed still. Graham moved into firing range.

  He drew the clenched magazine upwards, tensing himself. The fly didn't move.

  "Graham," Sara said from the doorway, "what are you doing?"

  "Oh," he said, putting the magazine down on the table. "Hello." He stood there, embarrassed. The fly flew off.

  Sara wore baggy olive-green dungarees, a black T-shirt underneath. On her feet were a pair of pink trainers. Her hair was still swept back from her face, held at the rear of her skull by a pink ribbon. He hadn't seen her with her hair like that before; it made her look smaller, thinner than ever. Her white skin glowed in the light coming from the window. Her dark eyes, the heavy lids like hoods, regarded him from the far end of the room. She was putting her watch on; a black band round the thin cord of wrist.

  "Are you early, or is my watch wrong?" she said, looking at it.

  "I don't think I'm early," Graham said, glancing at his own watch. Sara shrugged and came forward. He watched her face; he knew he could never draw it properly, never do it justice. It was flawless, precise, perfect, like something carved out of the finest marble and possessing an ultimate elegance and simplicity of line, but yet containing a promise of such softness, a tactile transparency... I'm staring again, he told himself. She stepped up on to the raised kitchen area, still fiddling with the strap on her watch, and went to the window, looking out of it for a moment. Then she turned to him.