Glass

by Alex Christofi

  I passed a man who was asleep in the front seat of his car, the bonnet propped up to reveal the innards. I had a quick look at it, topped the radiator up from my water bottle and checked the oil. All seemed fine to me, so I knocked on the window. He woke up a little startled as I had expected, and thrust the door open hard into my kneecap.

  ‘Ow! Why did you do that?’ I asked.

  ‘Get the fuck away from me! I haven’t got any money. Get away from me now or I’ll kill you, I swear!’ He brandished a car jack at me.

  ‘What are you going to do with that? Give me a quote on my undercarriage?’

  ‘I told you to step away.’

  ‘I’m only trying to help. What’s the matter?’

  He studied my boiler suit. ‘Are you AA?’

  ‘No, I’m … helpful. What’s the matter?’

  ‘I ran out of petrol.’

  ‘Oh.’ I rubbed my knee. ‘There’s a petrol station just up by Waitrose, you know.’

  ‘Is there? Nothing came up on my satnav.’

  ‘I’m going that way. I can show you.’

  ‘No that’s okay. I need to, ah …’ he cast around.

  I smiled to prove I wasn’t a murderer. ‘Well, have a nice day,’ I added as an afterthought. I limped off. One good deed in the bank and the day had barely begun.

  I reached the station, found a bench and watched the sun climb steadily. The sun must have made a good god. It had a constancy not often achieved in the average deity, and one experienced its benefit and absence daily. The odd eclipse probably provided a decent unknown variable to ensure worship.

  By the time I arrived at Gunwharf Quays, the day was bright and I was hungry. I had the second half of my breakfast in a mock-French café (a buttery, stale croissant), and caught up on some news from an old newspaper. Nick Griffin had been invited to the royal palace as a Member of the European Parliament, and apparently the billionairess owner of L’Oréal, whose father had been a right-wing extremist, had illegally funded Sarkozy’s campaign trail. I abandoned the paper on the grounds that it was depressing.

  There was patriotic bunting strewn everywhere in preparation for the Jubilee. It looked a bit much to me. I’d always thought one of the nicest things about being English was how quietly we held our pride, as if flag-waving and shouting the anthem were faintly embarrassing and, old and wise as our country was, we’d got that kind of adolescent demonstration out of our system two hundred years ago.

  I watched the people of Portsmouth go by. They were a good-looking bunch. I have often thought that people are more attractive outside of one’s home town – it’s like you’re on holiday, and you get that spontaneous, carefree sense that you might never meet again. Either that or I come from an ugly town.

  After a time the heavyset man appeared and motioned silently toward the others. We walked the few hundred metres down the quay, with seagulls hurling abuse above our heads and a ferry honking out to sea. The Spinnaker Tower loomed up ahead of us, a giant white spear dominating the quay, twisting up like DNA into the sky. It looked like a lighthouse from the future.

  I had thought that there would be a whole team of us, but as it turned out, we were just three including Blades. Dressed in a yellow hard-hat and a boiler suit done up to the waist, he had the spry build of a rock climber, and I felt not a little ashamed at the hairy gut peeking out between my buttons.

  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 sl
ightly 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 k
new 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.’