by Tom Pollock
Beth stood slowly, gazing up at this vast, empty chair on the roof of the City. ‘Are we — you know — allowed?’
The throne’s seat swamped both of them. They sat side by side, Beth cross-legged, Fil sprawled back on his elbows. Darkness rendered the city a mass of shifting squares of light, a puzzle waiting to be solved. It was a chaotic beauty, but no less pure for that. Beth gazed across it, her muscles knackered into relaxation. She was thrilled, and sad, and wistful, and ecstatic and- She didn’t have the words for the feeling, but she knew she’d never forget it.
‘Beth, what is it?’ Fil sounded alarmed.
‘What’s what?’
‘You’re crying.’
Beth touched her cheek, a little shocked to find it wet. Her tears smelled of chalk. She wiped them away and smiled ruefully. ‘I was thinking of Pen.’
‘Pen?’
‘My best friend.’ She looked at his narrow concrete-coloured face with some astonishment. Had she really never told him about Pen? ‘Inseparable, they used to call us,’ she said, ‘like it was ordinary. Like it wasn’t a bloody miracle to have someone who can tell you’ve got a broken heart by the way you button your coat.’ She exhaled hard into the cold night air. ‘I could never put how I feel right now into words, not if I had a hundred years. But with Pen, I wouldn’t have to. She’d just know.’
‘How did you get so close?’ he asked.
‘Don’t know — I guess if I could explain it, it wouldn’t be a miracle.’
He smiled, maybe a little sadly. ‘Sounds like you were in love with her.’
Beth shut her eyes, remembering Pen’s face. ‘She made me feel brave.’
‘What?’ He sounded puzzled. ‘You’re brave anyway, stupidly brave — suicidally brave, else there’s no way you’d be here.’
Beth was touched by his confusion. ‘Nah,’ she said, ‘I was never smart enough to be properly scared. So how could I be scared enough to be brave? Pen always said: “Only the people you love can scare you witless enough for true courage.” I thought she was quoting someone, but knowing her she probably made it up. She was scared of everything, especially heights, but she’d still follow me onto any roof. ’
Beth waved a hand over the echoing night below them. ‘One night we were muralling this rooftop in Camberwell. It’d been raining, and the slates were all slick and shiny, y’know? You could see the moon in them, it was beautiful…’ Beth felt the memory cinch her throat tight. ‘But it was slippery, and Pen fell.’ She rubbed her fingertips together; she could still feel the silk of Pen’s hijab where her desperate fingers had snagged it as her best friend slipped away.
‘ Thames! ’ Fil swore, ‘she died?’
‘Thank Christ and your Mother, no. There was another rooftop about six feet down. She didn’t even break an ankle.’ Beth snorted. ‘Happy endings all round. But for one second, the longest second of my life, I thought I’d lost her. That was the most afraid I’ve ever been. There was enough loneliness in that one heartbeat for a lifetime. She was the thing I cared about most in the world, and I thought I’d lost her — and the worst of it was she wouldn’t have even been up on that sodding roof if it wasn’t for me.’
She felt a wiry arm around her shoulder pulling her in close. She felt the rough texture of him, the matted tangle of his hair against her cheek. ‘You can’t begin to know what that’s like,’ she said.
‘Yes I can.’ He hesitated before he whispered back, ‘That’s exactly how I felt when I saw you in the fire.’
Beth kissed him — it happened before she let herself think about it. Her lips pressed against his and for a moment she was acutely aware of every tingling inch of her skin. His rough fingers brushed her neck.
Neither of them melted into the kiss; instead they held it, electrically still, each terrified the other would pull away, but neither of them did.
Eventually, Beth broke contact. Fil’s skin was hot as she laid her own face against it.
‘Wow.’ He was actually stammering. ‘That was… that was-’
Weird? Fantastic? Scary? Hot? Beth licked her lips nervously. Did he think it was rubbish? No, ’course not, he’s probably never kissed a human being, got nothing to compare it to. But still, that Lampgirl, they looked tight, maybe they were even in love…
The word leaped out at her: love. Oh Christ, Beth, she thought in alarm, what if that’s-? What if this is — ?
How would she know?
Love. There was a hollowness to the way the thought rang in her head, like chiming glass.
Love…
The thought wasn’t hers.
Beth’s eyes snapped open. She twisted her head, hardly daring to…
A tiny spider dangled from an air-con vent by a filament wire. It was no larger than a common house-spider, but it glittered like fibreglass and hissed and buzzed with static.
Love…
‘Fil!’ she cried, and threw herself at the spider with the speed of a chemical reaction. Her hands clamped around it.
‘ What? What?’ He sprang to his feet, spear already in hand.
Beth’s voice came out in an excited hiss. ‘It’s one of them — one of the spiders! I can feel it crawling all over the inside of my fingers. Ow! It’s like shuffling thistles — Fil, don’t just stand there, bloody help me!’
He merely gestured with his spear. ‘Let it go, Beth.’
‘What? Are you mental?’ Beth was scandalised. ‘It’s one of those spiders. I’m not letting it go, it’ll eat my face!’
He frowned. ‘Pylon Spiders don’t eat faces, Beth.’
‘It’ll make an exception for mine, I have a very pretty face.’
‘Um… er… yeah.’ He looked uncomfortable.
‘How about a little more enthusiasm?’ she snapped. ‘You kissed it-’
‘Seriously, Beth…’
‘It’ll kill us,’ she said stubbornly.
‘One that size? Against both of us?’ He cocked his head. ‘Let it go.’
Beth glared up at him. ‘Come and stand here,’ she ordered him.
‘Why?’
‘So if you’re wrong, it’s your face gets eaten,’ she grumbled.
‘Let it go, Beth,’ he said again calmly.
Gradually, she lifted her palms half an inch off the metal and peeked under them.
Needle-pointed feet flickered. ‘ Love,’ the glassy voice whispered gleefully in her head, ‘ weird and fantastic and terrifying love- ’
‘Shut it,’ she told it as she retracted her hands.
Fil squatted in front of the spider and cocked his head to one side as though listening. ‘Speak up,’ he said after a moment. ‘Let Beth hear.’
‘ Weird, fantastic… ’ The tinny chorus broke off suddenly and another voice spoke: ‘You survived, then.’ The words carried an unmistakable note of disapproval. ‘Harder to shift than a takeaway curry-stain, the both of you.’ It was Gutterglass’ voice, coming from the spider.
‘Mostly they swallow voices.’ Fil didn’t stop watching the creature while he murmured in Beth’s ear. ‘But you can persuade ’em to spit one out every now and then, if you make it worth their while.’
‘The two of you have been gone for almost a whole day,’ Gutterglass’ voice lamented, ‘so what in Thames’ name have you been up to?’
They exchanged a look, and then both erupted into a simultaneous fit of embarrassed coughing.
‘Nothing much,’ Fil managed.
Gutterglass emitted a sceptical snort. ‘ Fine. Well, while you two were gallivanting around in the docks, I went on a bit of a recruitment drive. You’ll be happy to know we have some proper soldiers on side now: some of the Pavement Priests — a minority, admittedly, but a significant one — have seen the light.
‘They’ve come in under the nominal command of the angel-skinned one, Ezekiel. Did you know he can actually fly? Limestone wings and all. It’s quite astonishing to watch. He says you can lead the stoneskin regiment with him if you like.’ The voice was positively smu
g. ‘How’s that?’
Fil’s face fell. ‘Ezekiel? What about Petris?’
‘Alas, the old sinner broke out in a rash of democracy and decided to stay with the majority of the priesthood. Funny moment for a man like him to come over all gallant, I must say. He said: “I can’t in good conscience lead my people back into bondage.” Honestly! Ezekiel ought to be High Priest really; he’s a much better advocate for Our Lady. A true zealot, a dying breed almost, but still there if you know who to talk to.’
Fil folded his arms, hugging his spear to his chest. He looked slightly irritated that his old tutor had succeeded where he’d failed in recruiting his own mother’s priests.
‘Do come swiftly, Filius,’ Gutterglass was saying. ‘I’ve heard rumours; the pigeons and the gargoyles on the taller towers say there’s been movement at St Paul’s. Reach’s cranes are restless.’
The young prince nodded, his face set. ‘We need to strike before he gets moving,’ he agreed. ‘If his wolfpack catches us in the open, they’ll take us apart.’
‘My sentiments precisely. Oh, in the name of all that is clean and holy…’ the voice crackled away for a second and then returned. ‘That Russian of yours wants me — hurry, Filius! Ms Bradley,’ she acknowledged her formally, and then the spider dissolved into the air with a white-noise fizz.
Fil smiled at Beth. For a second, she wondered if he was going to kiss her again, then his eyes fell on her crownscar. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Like you said, it’s your fight too now. Time to join it.’ He grabbed the cable attached to the window-washing platform. ‘This how you came up, was it? Nice. Economical. I approve.’
Without another word, he swung back off the roof. She watched his narrow form plunge into the night and start abseiling down the tower.
Beth made to follow, but then paused. She reached into her backpack for one of the black Magic Markers she kept there. After all, she thought, I can hardly come to London’s highest rooftop and not tag it, can I?
Crouching, she did a rough sketch of them both on the rooftop, side by side. Underneath she wrote an inscription: Beth Bradley and the street-urchin Prince on the day they stood on the roof of the world.
Sounds like a fairy-tale, Beth. Here’s hoping it ends like one. The taste of the kiss was still on her lips, as heady as petrol fumes. For a second she imagined Pen’s face, drawn in beside hers, watching her. What would you think of him, Pencil Khan? What would you say?
Maybe one day soon she could ask her.
‘Oi, Bradley!’ His voice echoed up.
Beth seized the cable and, daring herself with a shout, leapt out across the city.
CHAPTER 30
Pen dreamed of her parents. She was sitting at the kitchen table, and her father sat opposite her, sleeves rolled up over his teak-coloured arms. He peered though his glasses and scribbled in an old-fashioned accounting ledger.
His forehead rucked up in concentration, he muttered, ‘This bloody thing simply will not add up.’
Her mother fussed at the hob, skipping out of the way as the fat spat. Behind her pakoras and samosas were piled high on the kitchen counter, the paper beneath them transparent and glistening with grease.
‘Mum?’ Pen said. It was hard to shape the words because of the scars on her lips. ‘What’s all the food for?’
Her mother gave her a bemused look and squeezed her shoulder. ‘Why, it’s for your wedding, dear one. Why else would I be putting myself to all this trouble?’
Pen stood up to help, but her mother waved her out of the way. She didn’t protest. Of course she was getting married soon, although at that precise moment she couldn’t remember to whom. ‘Well, Mama,’ she said, ‘it is only slightly more than you’d make for a light lunch for the three of us.’
They all laughed heartily at this weak joke.
Her father threw his pen down on the table in frustration.
‘Damn it, I cannot make this add up at all. We’ll have to call it off. All of it.’
Her mother looked disappointed and began to dump platefuls of hot food into the bin.
‘Mum!’ Pen was appalled. ‘Dad, what is it?’
‘Your dowry — come, see if you can make this work out.’
Pen stood up and came round the table. She looked over his shoulder. Instead of rows of numbers, a face had been drawn in Beth Bradley’s distinctive style on the lined ledger pages, a face with swollen scars and twisted lips.
‘He’ll want an exorbitant sum to marry that,’ her father said, rubbing her hand fondly where it sat on his shoulder. ‘But I suppose we’ll have to try to find it.’
Pen put her hand to her face; she felt the scars and the bruises. Her fingers brushed air where one earlobe used to be.
‘We’ll do the best we can with you, my daughter,’ her mother said kindly. ‘But it won’t be easy with a face like that.’
Pen looked past her and saw her own reflection in the kitchen tap.
Wake.
Wake Wake Wake Wake Wake Wake Wake Wake Wake Wake.
Air ripped in through Pen’s nostrils and she coughed and opened her eyes. This was the first time she’d dreamed of her parents since she’d been taken. She’d imagined them while she was awake: coming home, her mother scolding her with relieved tears in her eyes. But they’d never entered her sleep until now.
The wire gripped her and rolled her over.
Wake Wake Wake Wake Wake Wake Wake Wake
The word was all around her, scratched in the concrete in massive, jagged letters. Fresh dust caked her finger. Her wire exoskeleton was vibrating over her skin. She felt its eagerness — or was it her eagerness? It was becoming difficult to know which of them any given emotion belonged to now.
What? she thought to it. What is it?
In answer, it lurched her to her feet and used her hand to pull the tarp aside. Pen squinted in the site’s arclights for a moment. A sound of tearing metal echoed around the half-finished architecture. Pen watched in astonishment as clamps unlocked, scaffolding bars slid free and the metal framework that had been bandaging the buildings fell away in an iron avalanche. But instead of crashing into a heap in the dust, struts swivelled around joints into new configurations, moving faster and faster, forming clouds of blurring metal. The wire’s excitement flowed through Pen as she watched and she found herself almost panting.
Then suddenly, the whirring metal reformed itself into more familiar shapes: massive metal animals like dogs, or wolves, even, and skeletal men. The steel men reached down and patted the beasts’ gleaming necks, and they put their heads back and emitted echoing iron howls.
The scaffolding creatures loped from the building site.
We ride, the wire scratched on the wall with Pen’s shaking finger, and adrenalin filled her. The wire felt no fear, so neither did she. Her legs bunched under her and she jumped. The air stung her cuts as she plummeted; the lights of cranes flashed past. Barbed tendrils flashed out from her feet and touched earth. Two spindly legs of wire contracted under her, bearing her slowly to earth, breaking her descent gently.
A wolf bent its neck in deference and Pen climbed on. The wire lashed her securely to its back and with another baying howl the beast turned and padded after its packmates.
The iron giants strode beside her. The clang of their footsteps on the shale of the building site was like war drums.
III
A CROWN OF TOWERS, A KING OF CRANES
CHAPTER 31
I remember the first stories Gutterglass ever told me about my mother. Glas was a woman at the time, and she had her rats stretch her lap out for me, and we lay back on the side of a mountain of tin cans, condoms and mulch. Glas always found the grandeur of the landfill comforting; it was easier to talk about the good old days there, without the sour milk spilling from her shells.
That smell of decay still makes me think of home.
Glas rocked me to and fro, and although I pretended scandalised pride, I secretly loved every second.
‘Your
mother,’ she began, ‘is an incredible thing…’
I’d never been able to remember my mother; I’d barely even been aware I was missing one. But I knew this was important. I stopped feeding congealed special fried rice to her rats and listened, and I discovered that my mother was that most incredible thing: a Goddess. I also learned that out of all the things she was, being my mother was by far the least important.
But even with that momentous revelation I got bored and I wriggled out of Glas’ lap and set to work building a castle out of old paint tins. I really didn’t understand.
But later…
Our memories are like a city: we tear some structures down, and we use rubble of the old to raise up new ones. Some memories are bright glass, blindingly beautiful when they catch the sun, but then there are the darker days, when they reflect only the crumbling walls of their derelict neighbours. Some memories are buried under years of patient construction; their echoing halls may never again be seen or walked down, but still they are the foundations for everything that stands above them.
Glas told me once that that’s what people are, mostly: memories, the memories in their own heads, and the memories of them in other people’s. And if memories are like a city, and we are our memories, then we are like cities too. I’ve always taken comfort from that.
A decade ago, a six-year-old boy raced a glowing-glass girl through the warm brick warrens of the Lots Road Power Station, and if you’d asked him then, he’d’ve said, ‘ ’course I’ve met my mother.’
If you could get him to stop showing off for the horrified lightbulb girl by swimming in the station’s water tanks, if you could get him to tear his eyes away from the spectacle of her plugging herself into the mains and glowing as bright as a tiny sun, and if you could get the inarticulate little squit to shape the words, he’d tell you all about his mother.
‘Are you blind?’ he’d say; ‘are you daft? She’s there. Right there-’
— with him and Electra as they dared each other to do ever more suicidally stupid things for the honour of their genders (never mind their species). He’d tell you how he and his mother had fought side by side against the cranes; how they’d lassoed the moon and dragged it into the sky, leaving it hanging there like an old tyre on a rope. He’d remind you how when she sang it made the river still, and that once she’d baked him a tarmac cake this big (he’d extend his short-arse six-year-old arms to maximum stretch) and he’d eaten all of it — of course he had, were you calling him a girl?
