Glass (11 page)

Was there anything she didn't know? But her knowledge was hidden by the smoke of the incense, the low lights, the locked secrets of Tarot. Lieve didn't want to brush the dirt off of her life, so much as bury it in the garden for safekeeping. But she stroked my hair and we muttered things that didn't make sense to each other, and we laughed. I couldn't remember the last time I had laughed since I'd outgrown the bath. I told her so. She laughed. And then, under the fug of the incense, a heavy sleep seeped in.

I woke naked and clammy. My throat burned like I had drunk a litre of GOMORRAH. The glass next to us was empty. I looked over at Lieve, who was peacefully asleep next to me. She had opened my eyes to the surreal pleasures of rubbing and licking. I was reminded of lonelier times, when I had been so happily affected by the casual intimacy of having my hair washed at the barber's. The women had run their hands through my hair, massaged the shampoo into my head with their fingertips. But this was twenty times as pleasurable, a hundred times as intimate.

I detached my tongue from the roof of my mouth and stood up. My bladder was the priority here.

There were five doors leading off the landing. I had no idea which might be the loo. I opened the first and found lots of towels, socks, a selection of the large, dark lace undergarments to which I had been so recently introduced, and a dream-catcher. I closed the airing cupboard and moved onto the next. One of them had to be the bathroom.

I opened another door to what looked like a study room. There was a desk with a big black leather office chair. A big whiteboard was leaning against a wall next to several cardboard boxes marked JOHN, which had been taped up. The whiteboard had been wiped clean, but traces of a complicated web remained. I could read the words ‘Fasci', ‘Falange', ‘Cagoule'. This certainly wasn't the toilet.

The next door opened into a large, dark room. I switched on the light. The blue pastel walls and wall-hanging mirror spoke bathroom, but the mobile and empty cot did not. Nor did the pile of shop-tagged toys in a cardboard box in the corner of the room. I listened for any sounds of movement downstairs, but there was nothing. I closed that door gently, and found the bathroom.

I pondered that last room as I relieved myself. I gently hummed the tune to ‘There's a Hole in My Bucket'. I don't know much about the subconscious, but I secretly suspect it to be a rather savage and ironic part of the brain.
⁴²

I went back downstairs and drank straight from the tap. This had to be the longest that I'd been naked (outside the shower) in my entire adult life. The cool water ran down the side of my cheek and I hung free. Then I walked back through to the lounge, where Lieve stirred. I felt like a man. A man standing in front of a woman. Fully naked. With my willy out. No one could cast aspersions on my sexuality. Not now.

I lay down beside her, put her arm over my torso like a seat-belt, and fell asleep. I woke again in what seemed like no time at all. The sunlight was cut into neat slices by the venetian blinds in the kitchen and stacked up like a plate of waffles on the opposite wall. Lieve stirred and kissed the side of my throat. I felt her lips there for some time afterwards, even as she moved her hand across my body.

We spent the best part of Sunday lying there, occasionally taking breaks to eat bacon or make cups of tea. She drank a rancid concoction involving stinging nettles, which she seemed certain was good for the health, though I didn't see how it could be. People often mistake uncommon foods for good foods, just as people mistake quiet people for nice people. But I drank my normal tea and she drank her nettle tea, and just as the sunlight had brought the day, so it left with its train of warmth, and we showered and dressed once more, I in my white shirt and black trousers, which seemed unnecessarily formal now, and she in her silk dressing gown, which couldn't have provided much insulation.

We parted with a kiss, and I weaved back through London's streets. I saw a great billboard which boasted a company that delivered ‘milk and more'. Let them deliver their milk, I thought. I'd jumped that ship. I walked past several churches: some bustling with dark-skinned ladies wearing their colourful Sunday best; some Orthodox, their worshippers dressed only in black; some Anglican, and empty. I walked past a Scientology shop offering free ‘stress' tests to pick at the spiritual realm's low-hanging fruit. I wondered who, if anyone, spent their Sundays not engaged in some kind of mob activity. Even the atheists were communing in cafés, sharing stories of the night before with their ritual roasts and fry-ups, or watching football in vast crowds.

When I got back to the flat, the neighbour was just returning with her hemp bag full of shopping.

‘Hello!' I said.

‘Oh, hello again. Did you manage to get in in the end?' she asked.

‘I did. I'm living in the spare room now, in fact.'

‘I didn't know he had one.'

‘I think he keeps his cards quite close to his chest.'

She smiled at me and then there was a pause.

‘Well,' she said, hefting the hemp bag, ‘I'd better get this in.'

I unlocked my front doors and went in. The flat stared blankly back at me. There seemed so little point in sitting on my own on the sofa, or reading a magazine, when I could be with Lieve, filling in her uncharted past, finding out where on earth she was in all that time I was somewhere else. Why was I somewhere else now that we had finally met? It seemed pointless to be eating toast on my own, like telling a joke to an empty room.

Mum would never get to meet Lieve. I'd never find out what she thought of her. I found it hard to imagine what they would even have said to each other. They were so different. Mum would have fussed around in her bag for something or other so that she didn't have to make eye contact; I imagined Lieve watching her steadily, reaching over to take my hand.
Mum
, I'd say.
I'm so glad
–
this is – I'd like you to meet – she's my …
Well. Mum would probably have pretended to like her no matter what.
I'm happy that you're happy,
she might have said.
You are happy, aren't you?

I unlocked my phone and stared at the screen. No missed calls. I flicked through my contacts, found Mum, and deleted the number.

13

Chapter 133

When I opened the second front door, I saw a pair of bare feet sticking out of the doorway to the Steppenwolf's bedroom. They weren't moving. I approached slowly, my hand automatically feeling for my most dangerous impromptu weapon, which was my keys. I put the heaviest key between my index and middle finger, for all the good it might do. I crept up on the doorway, in case the killer was still in the apartment. Many months of post-redundancy internet surfing had equipped me with my fair share of amateur detective knowledge,
⁴³
and the Dorman affair had confirmed my instinct for suspicious activity. I crept up as quietly as my haunches could manage, and then spun into the doorway to confront the Steppenwolf, supine, naked, holding a paintbrush, the remnants of a fish hanging from his mouth, very much alive.

‘You should be careful with fish bones,' I said.

He squealed, leapt up and slammed the door in my face. On the outside of the door, in fresh paint, there was a notice saying
I AM ALWAYS PLEASED TO BE OF SERVICE UNLESS IT IS NOT FRIDAY
. And by my feet was a sheet of paper, which was presumably meant to have been trapped inside the room. I picked it up and read it.

As with so many of the things that came out of his mouth, I understood what he was saying, but not what he meant. It was as if he had created a parallel universe out of the language everyone else used, the regular train of thought parked in the sidings. He was on his own runaway train, within sight of the main track, the iron sleepers of his words guiding it away by inches. There was no phrase I could search to help me understand, no fact or article that might shed light. Nothing agreed upon. The Steppenwolf seemed to be trying to write a kind of anti-Wikipedia, a new world made of old words. As I slipped the fragment under his door, I heard a scream of rage from inside.

I lay down on my futon and flicked through
Professional Window Cleaner Magazine
. It all seemed to skirt around the topic of glass, to beat around the bush without ever actually hitting the bush itself. It was easy to find articles about cleaning glass, glassmaking practices, the chemical processes, the cultures that developed it, but it seemed almost impossible to find anything describing the thing itself, as if its transparency extended to its very definition. You could almost believe that glass was a liquid, that it might escape like sand through your fingers, if you waited patiently.

The phone rang.

‘Hi, Dad.'

‘Hi, Günter.' He sounded sober in every respect. ‘I was just calling to apologise for the other day and to say thank you.'

‘That's okay. What are you thanking me for?'

‘The money.'

‘What money?'

‘The Dean just called round with the money for your work on the cathedral spire.'

‘Oh, that money. Which of course I promised to you in a sort of hypothetical way.'

‘I also can't accept it.'

‘Really?'

‘Günter, I'm in more debt than you realise. They'll take my possessions, the house, even Mum's things.' He breathed deeply. ‘I'm beyond help now. My only real hope is to declare myself bankrupt, or throw myself off something.'

‘Okay, well you can just post me a cheque, and you know, once I start earning properly—'

‘Günter, when you get to my age you realise that you're supposed to have been spending the first three quarters of your life piling up possessions, friends, memories, money. And then for the last quarter you just have to hope that you have enough of everything to lose some, because every year that passes, you lose a few memories, break a couple of keepsakes while you're drunk. You want to be able to look back and say, “That's what I was doing.” All I'm thinking is, “What the hell
was
I doing?” I took your mother for granted, I wasted myself in a job I hated—'

‘You didn't hate your job.'

‘I bloody did. I just never told you I did. Just like I never liked your mum's lasagne.'

‘But lasagne was your favourite!'

‘No. At no point in my whole life have I ever said that anything good can come of sandwiching mince between two slices of pasta. I'd rather have a sandwich. At least you can hold onto the thing without the filling coming out the side or getting béchamel all over your fingers.'

‘But you can use a knife and fork.'

‘The point is, Günter, that I'm too far gone now. I haven't got much left for me here, and soon I won't have anything at all. I want to join your mother.'

‘Well, tough. You're not allowed.'

I ended the call. I knew he had lost someone he'd shared his life with for decades, but so had I. Weren't Max and I a reason to stick around? Why did he have to be so self-centred about it? What about me?

By the time I had finished making my packed lunch I had worked myself up into a fury. I lay back down on my futon and could read no more. As I looked at my last email from Blades, I realised that I was also nervous about my first day of work, and that I might not be able to eat the next morning, so I decided to make myself some food to eat in bed. I heated a tin of beans in a pan and, in the absence of a toaster, put some bread on to grill in the Steppenwolf's old metal oven, scoffing it vengefully before settling down to catch up with my old friend, slumber.

I awoke before the day had drawn its shadows. It was early, but I felt good. I had now recovered from the various injuries I had sustained, on church spires and from angry motorists, although I did have some elbow burns. I wondered whether this was a standard casualty of the sexual fray, or whether perhaps I was doing it wrong. I tried to put thoughts of protective elbow pads from my mind, as I was quite sure these were intended for rollerskating.

I grabbed my liver sausage sandwiches and went downstairs to find Frank and the waiting car. He was stood by the entrance to the flats, reading from his book, which he stuffed into an inner jacket pocket.

‘Good morning, Frank. I was going to cycle today.'

‘Sure you were,' he said in his quiet, throaty voice, opening the door for me.

‘Can I sit up front with you?'

He closed the back door and opened the front passenger door. I sunk down into it, stowing my Tupperware by my feet, and listened to the quiet wailing of an opera. He seemed to listen to a lot of opera.

‘What are you listening to?'

‘Ring cycle.'

‘Right, right. And who wrote that?'

‘Wagner. It's fifteen hours long. Good for driving.'

‘I imagine so. Do you have any idea what they're singing about?'

‘Dead Vikings.'

He nodded appreciatively. I thought of my mum, her Viking myths, her wordsearches. I had almost never asked her anything about herself, and now I couldn't. So much treasure must have sunk in the shipwreck of her mind. All I held now were little fragments, and they didn't make sense on their own.

We glided through London's backstreets, turning down alleys, creeping the wrong way up one-way streets and shortcutting through car parks. I should have insisted on cycling to work, but this was such a comfortable way to travel. I would start cycling next week, once I was settled.

The training course turned out to be as boring as anything I have ever done, and I say that as someone who used to collect Roman coins.
⁴⁴
I spent the majority of the next five days plagued by the supervision of pedants. The first thing they did was weigh me to check I was under the safe limit of 100kg, an indignity which I suffered in mute consternation. (I passed, incidentally, weighing a mere 96.6kg. I may have had one foot a tiny bit on the floor.) Next they took us through the appropriate clothing to be worn; proper equipment; equipment care; pre-use equipment checks; risk assessment; controlled descent; safe rigging (the point on which I had failed at the Spinnaker Tower, which is to say, I got the knot wrong); rescue; short ascent … The list goes on, and gets more boring. We were given reading materials at the end of each day, which all had names like
Industrial Rope Access: Investigation into Items of Personal Protective Equipment
, or
Five Steps to Risk Assessment
.

You could divide the class into two kinds of people, the Alternatives and the Blokes. The Alternatives were getting into rope work as a lucrative way to fund their extreme-sports habits – they would work on an oil rig or a skyscraper as a freelance for just long enough to earn the money for their next venture, and they spent the breaks excitedly swapping tips about wing-suits and mountain ridges. The Blokes were window cleaners who wanted to make more money, and were generally hardworking men whose few words were reserved for football or women. In the absence of a fitting phrase, I would call them ‘raging straight'.

By the penultimate day I felt lobotomised with knowledge. I could have divided the course materials into eighty pages of
Things That Are Essentially an Extension of Common Sense, Such As Make Sure You Attach Your Rope to Something that Isn't You
, and then about three pages of
Actual Facts Which You Wouldn't Know Unless Someone Told You.
My salvation came in the form of a text from Lieve, saying that she was free on Friday night. The lecturer had just finished expounding on the virtues of kernmantel semi-static rope over dynamic mountaineering rope, and I gave a little yelp of glee, which elicited derisive laughter from both the Alternatives and the Blokes.

That night, instead of reading a leaflet on
What You Need to Know About the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002
, I watched pornography. Not, you must understand, out of some kind of base carnal urge, but so that I might educate myself on the finer points of the sex act. After some frustrating googling, I determined that the language of pornography was a law unto itself, and that in order to get anywhere at all, I had to search for phrases such as ‘XXX hot college teens'.
⁴⁵
I didn't know what the Xs stood for, but I assumed it was a question of strength, like the anonymous gin bottles in old Western films.

After I had found what I was looking for, I ascertained that I was actually very staid. I didn't want extraneous body parts involved, nor did I need helping along with prosthetics, medieval weapons, extra people or multiple sexual organs. I wanted heterosexual sex between me and a solitary, human, fully female woman of roughly my own age. But even this simple dish could be served in a dizzying variety of ways, with a leg over a shoulder or a knee on a tumble-dryer. I personally couldn't think of anything less sexy than foreplay in a utility room, but it seemed to feature as one of the more likely scenarios.

Eventually I abandoned the research as confusing and unhelpful. The problem with crowd-sourcing information was that, once mob rule was established, people were unlikely to speak out against it. I didn't recognise any of the men's actions in myself. They seemed to favour violent oral sex. I am too optimistic a person to believe that they represented the general approach.

I finished the rope course on the Friday and opted out of going to the pub with the others afterwards. I went home instead and was surprised to find the Steppenwolf emptying a box of corn-flakes into his mouth and generally over the floor around him.

‘I am lacking fibre,' he munched. ‘Very hard to defecate.' He picked up a bottle of prune juice from the coffee table and started chugging like Thor. In the short time he had spent out of his room, he had made an almighty mess. I supposed I would have to clean it up.

‘I, uh, read that chapter of your book,' I said, sinking into the old sofa.

‘Which chapter?' he asked.

‘133.'

‘Ah no, it is at the heart of what is wrong with the book. I have burned it.'

‘Burned it? Couldn't you just throw it away?' I asked.

‘No!' he laughed. ‘Then I might become contrite, like the lover who has spurned, and return to those parts of it that charmed me. I must not allow my future self to become lazy. So I have gone back to the beginning once more, recognising that my tenth draft was unsatisfactory. I have written a new introduction. May I read it to you?'

‘I don't think …'

The Steppenwolf looked steadfastly at his little leaf of paper, his moustache drooping, his eyes filled with longing.

‘I understand,' he said.

‘It's not that I don't think you're very good,' I said. ‘I just don't know how useful I would be.'

‘But it is written precisely for the common man.'

‘I, um. Sorry.' I pulled down my T-shirt, which relaxed back to its position above my waistline. ‘I'm just going to …' I put my hands on my knees and rocked forwards out of the depths of the sofa.

‘Where are you going?' he asked anxiously.

‘I have a date tonight.'

‘Ah, the courtship process,' he said wistfully.

‘Yes. Complicated business, all this,' I said.

‘I couldn't agree more,' he said, as if I had just made a very profound and life-changing statement.