‘Anyone would think you were a communist,’ he replied with distaste. ‘Anyway, the offer’s there. So: the Shard. It’s a landmark project for the city, and I want it to propel us onto the international stage. We can help make this country great again, Günter, I know it.’
‘I’ll do what I can,’ I said. If I was going to get through my next job with Blades, I was going to have to think of a lot of noncommittal replies.
‘Good.’ He leant forward. ‘You know, we’ve had the labs working overtime to develop a completely new technology. I don’t pretend to understand it but if we pull it off, it will be so good it might just put us out of business.’
‘What do you mean?’
Blades lowered his voice.
‘What if there was a way to clean windows only once – a way to make sure they stayed clean?’ he whispered.
‘But there can’t be, can there? There will always be dirt. It’s everywhere, exhaust fumes, dust … it’s in the air.’
‘For a little while people have been testing new kinds of windows. Down in the Eden Project they use ETFE. It’s not glass but it’s so smooth that dirt just rolls off it when it rains. It’s strong, durable, superlight – the only problem is you need to keep pumping air through to keep it taut. Other people are looking at replacing glass with smart materials but they’re on the wrong track. What if there was a way to modify existing windows? It’s glass, Günter, but it’s not glass. There’s this chemical which hybridises with the surface and repels dirt – literally repels it. The windows clean themselves.’
‘I don’t understand. Why would you want to help create a chemical that will ruin your livelihood?’ I asked.
His eyes gleamed like dark stars. ‘Because sometimes the only way to make something perfect is to destroy something good. This is a chance to change the way that our corner of the world works; it’s a moment in history. This project will be our legacy, it will outlive us.’
‘Well – and again, I know I’m probably being really moronic – why didn’t we put the magical cleaning serum on the windows first, before they put the windows on the building? Wouldn’t that have been easier than putting regular windows all over a thousand-foot building, then spraying the whole thing?’
‘Bureaucracy,’ said Blades, glaring at me. ‘Middle-management games. If we had tried to give them the technology sooner, we might not have got the contract. We’d be new in the business of making windows. But we knew that if we waited, we could get the cleaning contract, because we are long established. And besides, I want to climb that building.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know what you mean.’
16
Liberty
The Steppenwolf was out of his room. He appeared to have drunk a lot of alcohol, and looked rheumy.
‘You know it’s a Monday morning?’ I asked.
He scowled.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Truth!’ he barked. ‘Every time I write down one truth, all the other truths must warp to accommodate it. It is a Rubik’s cube. It is the problem of quantum all over again.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘There must be one truth! There is only one truth! You either find it or you do not, but my evidence changes and I must start again!’ He pointed accusingly at my laptop, which I had left out by accident. ‘I have just discovered “internet”. It is a whole new plane of existence. An informational plane which renders the physical unnecessary. A network comprised of human nodes, emergence, singularity. I thought it would take another hundred years. I have not factored this in. How am I to write the permanent truth when the world changes under my feet? I am writing the ocean while I drown.’
‘Perhaps it depends what kind of truth you mean?’ I said tentatively.
He eyed me suspiciously. ‘Go on.’
‘Well. When I was an adult, I found out that glass was a—’
‘Yes yes, glass is a liquid, everybody knows.’
‘Actually, it’s a solid.’
His teeth made a gritty sound. ‘Sit. Explain.’
‘Well. When I was a little boy, I visited a glass museum. I had always thought that glass was a solid because it was solid to the touch, but a kind old man wanted to tell me a good story, and make me excited about the exhibits, so he told me something that you’re supposed to find out when you’re older. He told me that glass is a liquid. I had some exams a year later and one of my papers tested me on solids, liquids and gases.’
‘What about plasma?’
‘Well this is the thing – we were too young to learn about all that. And when they asked what glass was, I wrote that it was a liquid, and they marked my answer wrong. I cried a lot that day because I knew I was right. The exam hadn’t been about the real truth. It had been about the version of truth I had been taught.’
‘The British curriculum is pitiful, but irrelevant,’ he snarled.
‘Well – later, when I was in my teens, the teachers officially taught me that glass was a liquid, and I was allowed to write it on my exam paper, and I got the marks. I was very pleased. But I didn’t deserve the mark, because I found out on Wikipedia recently that glass really is a solid. It has never been a liquid. It has always been solid, unless you want to wait hundreds of billions of years for it to drip. The only reason anyone ever thought it was a liquid was because the glass is thicker at the bottom in old windows. They used to make windows by melting glass and then spinning it in a circle, so more of the glass would always settle on the edge before they chopped it up into square plates.’
‘Centrifugal force?’ he asked.
‘If you like. It’s also conveniently bottom-heavy so it doesn’t fall out. But most people still like the idea that it’s a liquid, that it’s breaking all the rules. They don’t care whether it’s true, because the lie lights up their lives. Who knows, perhaps we’ll have new evidence in ten years’ time, and it’ll turn out that glass is a liquid after all. Perhaps the lie will make more of an impact than the truth ever did. You can’t agonise about these things. People will find out the kind of truth they are ready for. You can’t force it on them. If you try, they won’t believe you.’
The Steppenwolf looked utterly dejected.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘That’s just what I think. I didn’t mean that your book was—’
‘Yes you did.’
He looked at the empty wine bottle in his hand as if it were a traitor and threw it with great force at the wall, where it shattered in a cloud of green splinters. I have read that, at the moment glass breaks, its points are just atoms thick. Even as it travels through the air it is blunted, so pristine are the shards.
‘Leave now,’ he said quietly.
I backed away and went back to my bare room and lay on my futon, waiting.
Sometimes I wished, for his own sake, that the Steppenwolf had been born in a different time. He seemed wrong for the modern world. Though I supposed life felt difficult no matter what time you were living in. Two people could just about keep up with one life, like my mum and dad had done. One life had too much to organise, too many bills to pay and washing to do and meals to cook. I’ll admit that I hadn’t been feeding myself very well up in London, but it seemed a waste to buy vegetables for one. They’d only rot before I’d used them. Steppenwolf hardly seemed to be a fan of the veg, either. He must have been taking some kind of supplement because he only ever seemed to eat fish. Mother had never touched shellfish because she said that they were unhygienic. She used to say she didn’t like the smell. She was partial to white fish, sometimes. Monkfish, seabass, you know. She used to say they were safer. Less chance of food poisoning.
I crept to the bathroom to move my bowels and found Archimedes in the bath, his water having drained away. He looked sad – as sad as a turtle can look, bearing in mind that he didn’t have lips or eyebrows. I turned on the tap and bent down to stroke him. As my hand came about level with his head he bit me with his weird little jaw. He didn’t have any teeth but it bloody hu
rt. Little bastard. I was only trying to help.
When the coast was clear, I left my room and stepped on a foil yoghurt lid. I looked up and it was as if a veil had fallen from my eyes. The place was a sty. There were mugs containing a kind of gloopy culture, which had furred up out of the cup; crumbs over every surface; a rat was nonchalantly exploring a stack of plates, with its forepaws up on the top, nibbling at a piece of forgotten toast; the pans were piled higher in the sink than the tap which was meant to clean them; the once-cream wall next to the hob was spattered with grease spots like a Jackson Pollock.58 I rolled up my dressing gown sleeves and went to my room for my cleaning belt. I was about to earn my keep.
Several hours later, I came back from the shops with bags full of new, fresh vegetables and a whole plaice for the Steppenwolf. I’d had the deli man fillet the thing first, so there wouldn’t be any bones. I put the food away, and glanced around the place, surveying my work. It looked good. Satisfied, I picked up my copy of Professional Window Cleaner and sunk into the sofa. I opened the magazine and was about to delve into an interesting-looking article on water-fed poles when I heard laughter coming from the Steppenwolf’s room. There were two distinct pitches: one was low and sounded almost like a cough, the other long and drawn out like a donkey braying.
I put the magazine down, got up slowly and edged towards the Steppenwolf’s door, which was slightly ajar. As I pushed it open, allowing the redolence of fish to flow over me like a wave, I saw the Steppenwolf sitting in the midst of a pile of bottles, facing my father, who was apparently trying to balance three wine bottles, in a pyramid, on the shell of a distressed Archimedes. Dad looked up as I walked in and the bottles fell just as Archimedes jammed himself back into his shell, causing the two of them to erupt in another bout of coughing and braying.
‘Dad? What the hell are you doing here? How did you get in?’
‘The nice lady showed me how to use the little …’ He grappled for words as he mimed aiming the white rod through the hole in the first front door.
‘It’s okay, I get it. But what are you doing here?’
‘I’m just getting to know your landlord. What a feller.’
I turned to the Steppenwolf. ‘But it’s not your day of contact!’
The Steppenwolf bared his teeth at me, a new savagery in his eyes. ‘I have returned to nihilism. We must all return in the end. Your father has shown me the way. His world view is complete, all-encompassing.’
‘He’s not religious, he’s depressed!’
‘What is religion but a coping mechanism?’
‘What’s his coping mechanism?’ I asked, jabbing a finger accusingly at my father. ‘Drinking?’ I turned back to my father. ‘Why are you here?’
‘House got repossessed.’
‘Right. Great.’ Archimedes peeked out and, sensing that the coast was temporarily clear, flapped under the bed. ‘You’ve brought your own supply, I see.’
‘It’s all I’ve got,’ he said, suddenly serious, wiping his wet lips with his palm. ‘What did you want me to do with it? Eh? It’s all I’ve got. I’m a 68-year-old widower, not a penny to my name. Though I might try and cheer myself up a bit, and drinking cheers me up. So there you are. It’s bloody sad, but what can you do?’ We all took a moment to reflect. ‘I tell you what, though,’ he said. ‘Bailiffs wouldn’t touch your mum. I said to Max, we should have kept the ashes in a Tupperware and hidden the good stuff in the urn.’ Then he giggled. Giggling is unbecoming to old men. I felt sick, and I am not a man who regrets his food.
I had to get out of the flat, so I went to see Lieve. I decided to walk the long way from her tube stop, through an old churchyard. The city calmed as I entered, the hum of traffic muted by the trees. An old woman was brushing leaves off a new white headstone and I wanted to say something as I passed, offer a few words of condolence, but they would have sounded hollow from a stranger. I had heard those sincere condolences and deepest sympathies before. Someone should be mourning for all these lost lives, I supposed, but we were so few and they were so many.
As I continued on the footpath, I found there was a section of the graveyard devoted to cot deaths. Many had plastic toys where you would expect flowers. They wouldn’t degrade for ten thousand years. I wondered whether someone would discover these toys when they had long been buried under layers of rubble, and use them as proof that twenty-first-century humanity believed in the afterlife. I imagined an academic showing slides of a bucket and spade – they believed that the child would need these when he passed over – never suspecting that the toys had been left there because the parents didn’t want them in the house any more and couldn’t bear to give them away. These plastic toys were not sacred objects. They were just painful reminders that needed burying too.
Beyond the children’s graves was a patch which had been left for many decades. It was a shame that these people had died in the city, since they’d soon be exhumed to make space for more bodies, their bones packed into a storeroom like a tube carriage at rush hour. Too many bodies, not enough space. Overlooking these graves was a weeping willow, its tendrils propped up on the boundary railings like a sad drunk.
I found my way out the other side of the churchyard and was welcomed back to the din of the city. I tried to tuck in my T-shirt – the largest I had – as I approached the house but, to my dismay, it wouldn’t fit under my stomach, so I was doomed to walk around sporting a pre-natal look. I needed to cut down on the waffles. Or cycle to work, perhaps. It was hard to be bothered.
Lieve opened the door.
‘Guess what?’ I said.
‘You have a rare illness?’ she asked, straight-faced.
‘No.’
‘You’ve brought me a present.’
‘No … I can go and get one if you like?’
‘Don’t be silly. Come in. What were you going to say?’
‘I have all day to see you.’
‘Do you ever work?’
‘Sometimes.’
I followed her through to the lounge, watching the muscles on her back rippling under her floaty purple top. You’d need good back muscles, with a chest like hers. Every time we met, her breasts seemed to be getting bigger.
‘Do you want some?’ she said, indicating a shisha on the low table.
I opened my mouth to speak.
‘I probably shouldn’t either,’ she said, patting her belly. I didn’t know shisha made you fat. Still, you learn something every day. She sat on a pouffe and poured out mint tea, adding spoonfuls of sugar to each. She was breathing in and out quite loudly, as if through a paper bag, and looked quite pale.
‘Are you all right?’
But she just shook her head as she shot past me and up the stairs.
I sat at another pouffe and sipped at the tea. It was very sweet. I imagined fur growing on my teeth and ran my tongue across them. Every now and again I would hear the noise of vocal chords shunted forwards by a torrent of vomit. Sounded like she’d caught one of those nasty twenty-four-hour bugs that were going around. I shifted on the pouffe, trying to get comfortable. I heard sounds of brushing teeth and then a lock turning. Lieve reappeared, her face shining and newly washed.
‘Sorry,’ she said, sweeping through to the kitchen. She brought back a bowl piled high with kiwis and two teaspoons. ‘Would you like one?’
I opened my mouth to speak.
‘You don’t like them? I keep getting cravings … Look, Günter. I know we’ve spoken about this already, but I think we need to talk seriously about the commitment we’re making.’
We need to talk? It felt like ice-cold water was being poured down my spinal column. Every time I thought I knew how things were, she turned everything on its head. It was like dating a sand clock.
‘We’re already talking,’ I said.
‘Günter, I like you a lot. I’m a bit taken aback, because when I first met you, I didn’t think this would be a big thing. You’re a bit lacking, socially. And you’re always squinting into your gla
sses like a little mole. But against all the odds, you’re actually charming, and somehow I’ve tripped over and fallen in love with you.’ I opened my mouth and closed it again, like a fish out of water. ‘And if we’re both realistic, you’re not going to do any better than me.’ I smiled sheepishly. She grabbed my hand. ‘What I’m saying is, I want you to feel – to be – involved.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘You know what I’m talking about, Günter. I want you to be involved.’ She put my hand on her stomach. Everything went so still that I wasn’t even sure my heart was beating.
‘A baby?’ I asked.
‘Don’t look so shocked!’ she said. I took my hand away.
‘I thought you wanted to. Um.’
‘Günter, I said I wanted to take care of it.’
‘Take care of it?’
‘I was hoping you might too.’
‘Oh.’
‘Oh?’
‘That’s quite, sort of, different. To what I was expecting. Actually, really very different. It’s a … well. It’s a big decision. Having a baby. Raising a child.’
‘What decision? There’s nothing to decide,’ she said.
‘Well. Not nothing,’ I replied. ‘We’re all adults, aren’t we, so I need to give my … consent.’
She looked at me as if I was stupid. ‘I don’t need your consent.’
‘Yes, well, no, but …’ I trailed off.
‘But what?’
‘But that’s not fair. You didn’t even ask me.’
‘You knew how much it meant to me,’ she replied indignantly.
‘But you – you tricked me. You said we didn’t need … You said you were on the pill.’
‘No I didn’t.’
‘You—’
Unfortunately, I found myself unable to press home my rhetorical advantage. Hyperventilating might look silly, but it doesn’t feel great, let me tell you. It felt a bit like I was being assassinated by the mafia, who had wrapped cling film over my mouth. The difference being that the person sitting opposite was looking at me as if I was vaguely pathetic – no more than if, for instance, I had been used as target practice by a pigeon. It’s very hard to battle for control of any situation when you are hyperventilating, and sadly that only makes you hyperventilate more.
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