Some things echo more than others. Sometimes I hear the last sound of all, that never echoes because there is nothing to bounce back from; it is the sound of final nothing, and it comes booming through the great pipes that are the bridge's marrow-less bones like a hurricane, like God farting, like every shout of pain collected and replayed. I hear it then; a noise to rupture ears, split skulls, shatter walls, break souls. Those organ pipes are dark tunnels of iron in the sky, enormous and strong; what other sort of tune could they play?
A tune fit for the end of the world, the end of all life, the end of all things.
The rest?
Just hazy images. Patterns of shadow. Screen not silver; dark. Stop the false and flimsy stuff in the gate if you want to see what it's all made of. There. Watch the pretty colours as it, static, moves again; cooking, burning, bubbling and splitting and peeling back darkly like bruised lips parting, the image forced aside by the pressure of that pure white light (see what I'm doing for you laddie?).
No, I'm not him. I'm just watching him. Just a man I met, somebody I used to know.
I think I met him again, later. That comes later. All in good time.
I'm asleep now, but ... well, I'm asleep now. That's enough
No I don't know where I am.
No I don't know who I am.
Yes of course I know it's all a dream.
Isn't everything?
A wind comes and blows the fog away in the early morning. I dress in a daze, trying to remember my dreams. I am not even sure I did dream last night.
In the sky above the river, swollen grey shapes are slowly revealed by the lifting fog; big bloated balloons like immense pneumatic bombs. Barrage balloons, up and down the length of the bridge.
There must be hundreds of them, floating in the air at about summit height, perhaps higher, and anchored either to the islands, or to trawlers and other boats.
The last of the fog lifts and is scattered. It looks like it will be a fine day. The barrage balloons turn together in the sky, looking not so much like birds but a school of great grey whales, slowly moving their bulbous snouts into the atmosphere's soft current. I press my face to the cold glass of the window, looking down the hazy length of the bridge at as acute an angle as possible; the balloons are everywhere, spread out across the sky, some only a hundred feet or so from the bridge, others standing several miles off.
I assume they are to prevent any more fly-pasts by the aircraft; rather an excessive reaction, I'd have thought.
The letterbox flaps; a letter falls to the carpet. It is a note from Abberlaine Arrol; she will be doing some drawing at a certain marshalling yard a few sections away this morning, and would I like to join her?
Today is looking brighter all the time.
I remember to pick up my letter to Dr Joyce. I wrote it last night after disposing of the returned hat. I have told the good doctor that I wish to delay the hypnosis. I ask his indulgence (politely); I assure him I am still more than happy to meet and discuss my dreams - they have been more profound lately, I tell him, and hence probably more useful in the sort of analysis he originally intended to make.
I put Miss Arrol's letter and my own to the good doctor in my pocket, and stand watching the balloons a moment longer. They swing slowly in the morning light, like huge mooring buoys floating on some invisible surface above us.
Somebody knocks at the door. With any luck, it will be a repairman, for the screen or phone or both. I turn the key and try to open the door, but cannot. The knock comes again.
'Yes?' I call, pulling at the handle. A man shouts from outside.
'Come to have a look at your television set; that Mr Orr, is it?
I struggle with the door; the handle turns but nothing happens.
'Is it? Mr J. Orr?' the man shouts.
'Yes, yes it is. Hold on a moment, I can't get the damn door open.'
'Right you are, Mr Orr.'
I tug and haul at the door handle, twisting it, shaking it. It has never even been stiff before now; not a hint of trouble. Perhaps everything in the flat is designed only to operate for about six months. I start to get angry.
'You sure you unlocked it, Mr Orr?'
'Yes,' I say, trying to keep calm.
'Sure it's the right key?'
'Positive!' I shout.
'Just thought I'd ask.' The man sounds amused. 'You got another door, Mr Orr?'
'No. No, I haven't.'
'Tell you what, push the key through the letterbox; I'll try unlocking it from this side.'
He tries this. It does not work. I walk back to the windows for a moment, breathing deeply and looking out at the massed balloons. Then I hear more muffled talking outside the door.
'Telephone engineer here, Mr Orr,' another voice calls. 'Something wrong with your door?'
'He can't open it,' the first voice says.
'Definitely unlocked, is it?' the phone man says. The door is rattled. I say nothing.
'You got another door we can use, Mr Orr?' he shouts.
'I already asked him that,' the first man says. The door is knocked again.
'What?' I say.
'You got a phone, Mr Orr?' The television repairman says.
'Of course he has,' the phone man says indignantly.
'Can you phone Buildings and Corridors, Mr Orr? They'll know wh-'
'How can he do that?' The phone man's voice is high with incredulity. 'I'm here to repair his bloody phone, aren't I?'
I retreat to my study before he suggests I watch some television to pass the time.
It takes another hour. A corridor janitor takes the whole wood surround away from the door. Finally the door just clicks open without warning, leaving him standing, puzzled and suspicious, in the midst of broken wood and dusty plaster. Both the repairmen have left for other jobs. I step out, over wooden slats pierced by bent nails.
'Thank you,' I tell the janitor. He is scratching his head with a claw hammer.
I post the letter to Dr Joyce, then buy some fruit to break my fast. My release has left me just enough time to rendezvous with Miss Arrol.
The tram I take is full of people discussing the barrage balloons; most people have no idea what they are for. Once the tram clears the section proper and enters the relatively uncluttered linking span we all turn to look at them. I am amazed.
They are on one side only. Down-river, more barrage balloons than you could shake a stick at. Up-river; not one. Everybody else on the tram points and goggles at the massed balloons; only I, it seems, stare thunderstuck in the other direction, into the unmarred skies up-river beyond the X-ing girders of the linking span.
Not a single solitary balloon.
'Good morning.'
'It is rather, isn't it? Good morning to you too. How's your head?'
'My head is fine. How is your nose?'
'Same horrible shape, but not bleeding. Oh, your handkerchief.' Abberlaine Arrol digs into a jacket pocket, brings out my handkerchief, fresh and crisp.
Miss Arrol has just arrived here on a railway workers' tram.
We are in a marshalling yard, the widest place on the bridge I've seen so far; some of the sidings extend out far beyond the main structure on broad cantilevered platforms. Great engines, long trains of multifarious carriages, sturdy shunters and flimsy, complicated track-maintenance vehicles clank and shift over and across the complexity of lines and points and sidings like ponderous pieces in some huge, slow game. Steam drifts in the morning light, smoke billows across the harsh points of the still blazing arc lamps high in the girders; uniformed men dash to and fro, shouting and waving different coloured flags, blowing whistles and talking quickly into trackside telephones.
Abberlaine Arrol - wearing a long grey skirt and short grey jacket, her hair gathered up inside an official-looking cap - is here to draw the chaotic scene. Her free-hand sketches and water-colours of railway subjects already adorn several boardrooms and office foyers; she is considered a promising artist.
She hands my handkerchief to me. There is something curious in her eyes and stance; I glance at my laundered kerchief and stuff it into a spare pocket. Miss Arrol smiles, to herself, not to me. I have the disquieting impression that I have missed something here.
'Thank you,' I say.
'You may carry my easel for me, Mr Orr; I left it over here last week.' We cross several tracks to a small shed near the centre of the broad, rail-tangled platform of the marshalling yard. Around us, linked carriages and decoupled engines shift slowly back and forth; in other places, whole engines sink slowly through the deck on massively pulleyed platforms transporting them to workshops beneath the tracks.
'What do you make of our strange balloons, Mr Orr?' she asks me as we walk.
'I assume they're there to stop aircraft, though why they're only on one side, I don't know.'
'Nobody else seems to either,' Miss Arrol says thoughtfully. 'Probably another administration cock-up.' She signs. 'Even my father hadn't heard anything about them, and he's usually fairly well informed.'
At the small shed she retrieves her easel; I transport the A-shaped structure to her chosen vantage point. She appears decided upon one of the heavy engine hoists as her choice of subject. She adjusts the easel, sets down her small folding stool, opens her satchel to reveal bottles of paints and a selection of pencils, charcoal sticks and crayons. She surveys the scene with a critical eye, and chooses a black length of charcoal.
'No further ill-effects from our little crash the other day, Mr Orr?' She makes a line on the grey-white paper.
'A certain conditioned nervousness at the sound of rapid rickshaw heel-horns, no more.'
'A temporary symptom, I'm sure.' She unleashes a smile of quite stunning charm, before returning to the easel. 'We were talking about travelling, before we were so rudely interrupted, weren't we?'
'Yes I... I had been going to ask you how far you'd travelled.'
Abberlaine Arrol adds a few small circles and arcs to her sketch.
'University, I suppose,' she says, quickly brushing a few intersecting lines across the paper. 'That was about ...' she shrugs, 'a hundred and fifty ... two hundred sections away. Cityward.
'You ... couldn't see land from there, could you?'
'Land, Mr Orr,' she says, glancing at me, 'my, you are ambitious. No, I could see no land, apart from the usual islands.'
'Do you think there is no Kingdom then, no City either?'
'Oh, I imagine they both exist somewhere.' More lines.
'Haven't you ever wanted to see them?'
'Can't say I have, at least not since I stopped wanting to be a train driver.' She shades areas of the sketch. I can see a succession of vaulting Xs, a suggestion of cloud-shrouded heights. She draws quickly. At the nape of her pale, slender neck some escaped black strands of hair curl over the creamy suface like intricate swirls of some unknown writing.
'You know,' she says, 'I knew an engineer once - quite senior - who thought what we really lived on wasn't a bridge at all, but a single huge rock in the centre of an uncrossable desert.'
'Hmm,' I say, uncertain how to take this. 'Perhaps it is something different to all of us. What do you see?'
'Same as you,' she says, turning briefly to me. 'A bloody great bridge. What do you think I'm drawing here?' She turns back.
I smile. 'Oh, a bit less than a fathom, at a guess.'
I hear her laugh. 'And you, Mr Orr?'
'My own conclusions.' This earns me one of her flashing smiles. She goes back to the drawing for a while, then looks distractedly up for a moment.
'You know the thing I miss most about university?' she says.
'What's that?'
'Being able to see the stars properly,' she nods, looking thoughtful. 'Too much light to see the stars properly round here, unless you go out to sea. But the university was stuck in the middle of farming sections, and it was quite dark at night.'
'Farming sections?'
'You know,' Abberlaine Arrol steps back, arms folded, from her work. 'Places where they grow food.'
'Yes, I see.' It had not occurred to me that other sections of the bridge might be given over to farming; it would not be difficult, I suppose. One might require windbreaks, perhaps even mirrors, to farm on different levels, and water rather than soil would be the best growing medium, but it would be possible.
So the bridge may well be totally self-sufficient in food. My idea that its length was limited by the time it would take for a fast goods train to deliver fresh produce each day would appear to be irrelevant. The bridge can be any length it likes.
Abberlaine Arrol lights a thin cigar. One booted foot taps on the metal deck. She turns to me, folding her arms again beneath the bloused and jacketed contours of her breasts; her skirt swings, comes back; a heavy expensive cloth. There is a hint of a light day-perfume over the fragrant cigar smoke. 'Well, Mr Orr?'
I inspect Miss Arrol's finished drawing.
The broad platform of the marshalling yard has been sketched in, then altered; the lines and tracks look like creepers in a jungle, all fallen to the floor. The trains are grotesque, gnarled things, like giant maggots or decaying tree trunks; above, the girders and tubes become branches and boughs, disappearing into smoke rising from the jungle floor; a giant, infernal forest. One engine has become a monster, rearing out of the ground; a snarling, fiery lizard. The small, terrified figure of a man runs from it, his miniature face just visible, twisted into a shriek of terror.
'Imaginative,' I say, after a moment's thought. She laughs lightly.
'You don't like it.'
'My tastes are too literal, perhaps. The quality of drawing is impressive.'
'I know that,' Miss Arrol says. Her voice is sharp, but her face looks a little sad. I wish I liked the sketch better.
But what a signalling capacity Miss Abberlaine Arrol's grey-green eyes possess! They view me now with an expression almost of compassion. I think that I like the young lady very much.
She says, 'I meant it for you.' She reaches into her satchel and takes out a rag, begins to clean her hands.
'Really?' I am genuinely pleased. 'That's very kind of you. Thank you.'
She takes the drawing from the easel and rolls it up. 'You have my permission to do whatever you will with it,' she says wryly. 'Make paper aircraft out of it.'
'Certainly not,' I say as she hands it to me. I feel as though I have just been presented with a diploma. 'I'll have it framed and hung in my apartment. Already I like it a great deal more, knowing that it was drawn for me.'
Abberlaine Arrol's exits amuse me. This time she is picked up by a track engineer's car; a quaint, elegantly glassed and panelled carriage full of complicated but archaic instruments, all bright brass, clinking balances, and drums of paper flowing past scribbling pens. It hisses and rattles to a stop, a door concertinas open and a young guard salutes Miss Arrol, who is on her way to lunch with her father. I hold her easel, having been instructed to replace it in the shed. Her satchel bulges with rolled line drawings: the commissioned work she really came here to do and which she has been busy with - while still talking to me - since completing my sketch. She puts one boot on the high step up to the carriage and holds out her hand to me.
'Thank you for your help, Mr Orr.'
'Thank you for my drawing.' I take her hand. Between Miss Arrol's boot top and skirt hem her stocking is revealed for the first time; a fine but unmistakable black fishnet.
I concentrate on her eyes. They look amused. 'I hope I'll see you again.' I glance at those pretty bags beneath the grey-green eyes. Fishnet, indeed; I am netted again. She squeezes my hand; I feel faint with an absurd euphoria.
'Well, Mr Orr, if I can summon up the courage, I may let you take me out to dinner.'
'That would be ... most pleasant. I do hope you discover quite inexhaustible reserves of bravery in the near future.' I bow a little and am rewarded with another glimpse of that besottingly lovely leg.
'Goodbye then, Mr Orr. Keep in touch.'
'I will. Goodbye.'
The door closes, the carriage clanks and hisses off; steam from its passing curls round me like mist, making my eyes water. I take out my handkerchief.
It has been monogrammed. Miss Arrol has had a finely sewn O added to one corner, in blue silk.
Such grace; I am captivated. And those few inches of delectable, dark stockinged leg!
Brooke and I sit, after lunch, drinking mulled wine in Dissy Pitton's Sea View Lounge, lounging on suspended couches watching a depleted fishing fleet setting out to sea far below; the departing trawlers sound their horns as they pass their stationary sister-ships on barrage balloon-anchoring duties.
'Can't say I blame you,' Brooke says gruffly, 'I never did think the fellow would do you much good.' I have told Mr Brooke about my decision not to let Dr Joyce hypnotise me. We both look out to sea. 'Damn balloons.' My friend glares at the offending blimps. They shine almost silver in the sunlight, their shadows speckling the blue waters of the firth; another pattern.
'I thought you'd approve ...' I begin, then stop, frowning, listening. Brooke looks at me.
'Not up to me to approve or - Orr?'
'Shh,' I say quietly. I listen to the distant noise, then open one of the lounge windows. Brooke gets to his feet. The drone of the approaching aero engines is quite distinct now.
'Don't say those bloody things are coming back!' Brooke shouts behind me.
'Indeed they are.' The planes come into view. They are lower then before, the middle one almost level with Dissy Pitton's. They are flying Kingdomward in the same vertical formation as before. Once again, each trails pulses of oily smoke, leaving a giant ribbon of dark smudges hanging in the sky behind them. The planes' silver-grey fuselages have no markings. The silvered-over cockpit canopies glint in the sunlight. The combined wires of the barrage balloons seem to provide only the most rudimentary of obstacles to the planes' progress; the aircraft are flying about a quarter of a mile from the bridge, where the wires are probably at their most dense, yet as we watch they have to make only one brief turn to avoid a cable. The flight drones away into the distance, leaving smoke.
Brooke smacks one fist into the other palm. 'Cheeky beggars!'
The hanging wall of smoky smudges drifts slowly towards the bridge in the steady breeze.
After a couple of energetic games at the rackets club I call at the picture-framer's. Miss Arrol's drawing has been mounted on wood and covered in non-reflective glass during the afternoon.
I hang it where it will catch the morning light, above a bookcase to one side of my now-repaired front door. The television switches itself on while I am straightening the drawing on the wall.
The man still lies there, surrounded by his machines. His face is expressionless. The light has altered a little; the room looks darker. His drip will need changing soon. I watch his pale, slack face. I want to tap the glass of the screen, to wake the fellow... I switch the set off instead. Is there any point in testing the telephone? I pick it up; the same calm beeps still sound.
I decide to dine at the rackets club bar.
According to the television in the club bar, the official line on the rogue planes is that they are an expensive prank perpetrated by somebody from another part of the bridge. Following today's latest outrage, the barrage balloon 'defences' are to be strengthened (there is no mention of why only one side of the bridge is ballooned). The culprits responsible for these unauthorised flights are being sought. The Administration asks us all to be vigilant. I seek out the journalist I talked to before.
'Can't really add anything to that," he confesses.
'What about the Third City Library?'
Couldn't find it in our records. There was some sort of fire or explosion up on those levels: some time ago, though. You sure this was only a couple of days ago?'
'Positive.'
'Well, probably still trying to bring it under control.' He snaps his fingers. 'Oh, tell you something they haven't mentioned on the broadcasts.'
'What?'
'They've found out what language the planes are writing m.'
'Yes?'
'Braille.'
'What?'
'Braille. The blind language; still complete nonsense, even when you do decipher it, but that's what it is, all right.'
I sit back in my seat, utterly dumbfounded for the second time today.
I am standing on a moor, a sloped plain of tundra leading up towards a ridge and the grey, featureless sky. This place is cold, and scoured by a gusting wind which tugs and plucks at my clothes, and flattens the rough, stunted grasses and heathers of the heath.
The moor continues downhill, vanishing into the grey distance as the slope steepens. All that breaks the monotony of this dull waste of grass is a thin straight stretch of water, like a canal, its surface roughened by the cold wind.
From the ridge uphill comes a thin, siren sound.
Grey smoke, driven and made ragged by the tearing wind, moves along the skyline. A train appears over the distant ridge. As it comes closer, the siren sounds again; a harsh, angry noise. The black engine and few, dark carriages make a dull line pointing directly at me.
I look down; I am standing between the rails of the track two thin lines of metal head straight from me to the approaching train. I step to one side, then look down again. I am still standing between the tracks. I step aside again. The tracks follow me.
They flow like quicksilver, moving as I move. I am still inbetween the rails. The train's siren shrieks once more.
I take another step to the side; the rails move again, seeming to slide over the surface of the moor without resistance or cause. The train is closer.
I start to run, but the tracks keep pace, one always just ahead, one always just at my heel. I try to stop, and fall, rolling, still between the rails. I get up and run in the other direction, running into the wind, my breath like fire. The tracks glide in front and behind. The train, very close now, screams again; it easily negotiates the corners and kinks in the rails my stumbling, twisting progress has produced. I keep running; sweating, panicking, unbelieving, but the rails flow smoothly with me, gauge constant, before and behind, perfectly attuned to my desperate, pounding gait. The train bears down on me, siren bellowing.
The ground shakes. The rails whine. I scream, and find the canal at my side; just before the engine reaches me, I throw myself into the choppy waters.
Under the surface of the water there is air; I float down through its thick warmth, turning slowly, seeing the under-surface of the water above, glistening like an oily mirror. I land, softly, on the mossy surface of the canal's floor. It is quiet, and very warm. Nothing passes overhead.
The walls are grey, smooth stone, and close; at full stretch I could almost touch both sides. The walls curve slightly, fading away in either direction under the dim light falling from above. I put my hand on one of the smooth walls and stub my toe on something hard under the moss, near the wall.
Clearing some of the moss away reveals a piece of shining metal. I brush more of the moss away on either side; it is long, like a pipe, and fastened to the floor of the channel. In cross-section it has the shape of a bloated-looking I. Closer inspection proves that it runs under the moss to each side, raising the green-brown surface in a continuous, hardly-noticeable ridge. On the other side of the tunnel there is a similar raised line of moss, near the wall.
I jump up, hurriedly brushing the moss back over the section of rail I have uncovered.
As I do so, the thick, warm air starts to move slowly past me, and from far down the tunnel's narrow curve there comes the faint, thin sound of a siren, coming closer.
Slightly hungover, waiting for my kippers in the Inches breakfast bar, I wonder whether I ought to take that drawing by Miss Arrol down from my wall.
The dream disturbed me; I woke up sweating, and lay tossing and turning in my bed, still wet with sweat, until finally I had to get up. I had a bath, fell asleep in the warm water and woke up, freezing cold, terrified, jarred as though electrocuted, suddenly certain in my immediate confusion that I was trapped in some constricting tunnel: the bath a tunnel-canal, its cold waters my own sweat.
I read the morning paper and sip my coffee. The Administration is being criticised for not having prevented yesterday's flypast. Unspecified new measures are under evaluation with a view to preventing further violation of the bridge's airspace.
My kippers arrive; their filleted bones have left a pattern on the pale brown flesh. I recall my thoughts on the general topography of the bridge. I try to ignore my hangover.
There are three possibilities:
The bridge is just that, a link between two landmasses. They are very far apart, and the bridge leads an existence independent of them, but traffic crosses the bridge from one to the other.
The bridge is, effectively, a pier; there is land at one end but not the other.
The bridge has no connection with land whatsoever, save for the small islands beneath every third section.
In cases 2 and 3, it might be still under construction. It may only be a pier because it has not yet reached the farther landmass, or if it has no connection with land, it might still be being built not just at one end, but two.
There is one interesting sub-possibility in case 3. The bridge appears to be straight, but there is a horizon, and the sun rises, arcs, falls. So the bridge might eventually meet itself, form a closed circuit; a circle, vertically, ringing the globe; topographically closed.
Visiting the library on the way here to look at a braille book reminded me of the still-lost Third City Library. I feel quite recovered after my breakfast and decide to walk to the section which houses both Dr Joyce's office and the fabled library. I'll have another crack at finding the damn thing.
It is another fine day; a soft warm wind blows up-river, slanting the wires of the barrage balloons as the grey blimps try to drift towards the bridge. Extra balloons are being floated into the sky; large barges support the half-inflated shapes of even more balloons, and some of the trawlers have already been equipped with two balloons, producing a giant V of cables in the sky above them. Some of the balloons have been painted black.
I walk whistling across the linking span from one section to the next, swinging my stick. A plush but conventional elevator bears me up to the highest available floor, still a few levels down from the actual summit of the section. The dark, tall, musty-smelling corridors up here seem familiar now, in their general character at least; the exact lay-out remains a mystery.
I walk beneath the ancient, age-grimed flags, between the niches occupied by stone-remembered officials, past rooms full of whispering, smartly uniformed clerks. I cross dim, white-tiled lightwells on rickety cross-corridors, peer through keyholes into locked, dark, deserted passages whose floors are inches deep in dust and debris. I test the doors, but the hinges have rusted.
Finally, I come to a familiar corridor. A large round patch of light glows on the carpet ahead, where the corridor broadens out. The air smells damp; I'd swear the thick, dark carpet squelches with each footfall. I can see tall pot-plants now, and a length of wall which ought to hold the entrance to the L-shaped lift. The patch of light on the floor has a shadow in the centre of it which I don't recall. The shadow moves.
I reach the light. The great round window is there, still staring down-river like a huge handless clock-face. The shadow is cast by Mr Johnson, Dr Joyce's patient who refuses to leave the cradle. He is cleaning the window, polishing the glass at its centre with a rag, an expression of rapt concentration on his face.
Behind and a little below him, in mid air, well over a thousand feet above sea-level, floats a small trawler.
It is suspended on three cables, it is black-brown in colour, rust-streaked above the waterline and barnacle-encrusted below it. It floats slowly towards the bridge, rising as it nears.
I walk towards the window. High above the drifting trawler are three black barrage balloons. I look up at the still-polishing Mr Johnson. I knock on the glass. He takes no notice.
The trawler, still rising, heads directly for the great round window. I bang on the glass as high as I can reach; I wave my stick and hat and shout as loudly as I can, 'Mr Johnson! Look out! Behind you!' He stops polishing, but only to lean forward, still smiling beatifically, breathe on the glass, and then start polishing again. I hammer on the glass near Mr Johnson's knees; as far as I can reach, even with my stick. The trawler is twenty feet away. Mr Johnson polishes happily on. I beat on the thick glass with the brass knob on the tip of the stick. The glass chips, cracks. Fifteen feet; the trawler is level with Mr Johnson's feet. 'Mr Johnson!' I thrash at the cracking pane of glass; it finally smashes, spraying shards. I stagger back from the hail of fragments. Mr Johnson is scowling furiously in at me. Ten feet.
'Behind you!' I scream, thrusting my stick out to point, then running for cover.
Mr Johnson watches me run, and turns round. The trawler is a fathom-length away. He dives to the deck of his cradle as the trawler crunches into the centre of the great round window, its keel scraping the rail of Mr Johnson's cradle and showering him with barnacles. Panes shatter, glass showers down onto the broad landing; the sound of breaking glass competes with that of creaking, fracturing metal. The trawler's stem grinds through the centre of the window, its metal frame bends like a huge spider's web, making a terrible groaning, screaming sound. The structure around me shakes.
Then it stops. The trawler appears to bounce back a little, then scrapes and grates its way up over the top part of the great mandala, breaking more glass as it goes; barnacles and fragments of the shattered panes fall together onto the carpet, beating at the broad leaves of the nearby pot-plants like some hard, fierce rain.
Then, incredibly, it is gone. The trawler disappears from view. Glass stops falling. The sounds of the boat's scraping progress up the side of the remaining floors of the upper bridge quiver through the air.
Mr Johnson's cradle swings to and fro, gradually slowing. He stirs, looks about him, and stands up slowly, spears of fallen glass sloughing from his back like glittering snakeskin. He licks at a couple of cuts he has sustained on the backs of his hands, carefully brushes his shoulders free of some dusty grains of glass, then walks along his still slightly swaying platform and picks up a short-handled broom. He starts to brush the fragments of window-pane off the cradle, whistling to himself. Every now and again, as he sweeps, he looks, with an expression of sad concern, at the bowed-in shattered mess of the great circular window.
I stand and watch. He cleans up his cradle, checks his supporting cables, then bandages his still-bleeding hands, finally he takes a good look at the wrecked window and finds some bits which are both unbroken and not yet washed; he starts cleaning these.
Ten minutes have passed since the trawler impacted; I am still alone here. Noboby has come to investigate, no alarms or warning signals have sounded. Mr Johnson carries on washing and polishing. A warm breeze blows through the smashed window, ruffling the torn leaves of the pot-plants. Where the doors to the L-shaped elevator were, there is now a blank wall, with niches for statues.
I leave, my quest for the Third City Library again abandoned.
I return to my apartment, and an even greater disaster.
Men in grey overalls are moving in and out of the doorway, loading all my clothes onto a trolley. As I watch, another man appears, straining under a load of paintings and drawings; he piles them onto another trolley and returns inside.
'Hoy! You! You there! What do you think you're doing?' The men stop and look at me, perplexed. I try to tear some of my shirts from one tall fellow's arms, but he is too strong, and simply stands, blinking with surprise and holding stiffly onto the clothes he has taken from my room. His mate shrugs and walks back inside my apartment. 'You there; stop! Come out of there!'
I leave the oaf with my shirts and dash into my rooms; they are in turmoil; grey-overalled men moving everywhere, putting white cloths over furniture, carrying other pieces outside, taking books from my bookcases and putting them in boxes, removing pictures from walls and ornaments from tables. I gaze round; stunned, aghast.
'Stop this! What the hell do you think you're doing? Stop it!'
A few turn and look, but they don't stop what they're doing.
One man is making for the door with all three of my umbrellas; 'Put those back!' I shout, blocking his way. I threaten him with my stick. He takes it from me, adds it to the collection of umbrellas and disappears outside.
'Ah, you must be Mr Orr.' A large, bald man wearing a black jacket on top of his overalls, holding a black hat in one hand and a clipboard in the other, appears from my bedroom.
'I certainly am; what the hell's going on here?'
'You're being moved, Mr Orr,' the fellow says, smiling.
'What? Why? To where?' I shout. My legs are shaking; there is a sick, heavy feeling in my stomach.
'Umm ...' The bald man looks through the papers on his clipboard. 'Ah, here we are: level U7, room 306.'
'What? Where's that?' I cannot believe this. U7? That surely means under the rail deck! But that's where workers, ordinary people live. What's happening? Why are they doing this to me? It must be a mistake.
'Don't rightly know, sir,' the man says cheerfully, 'but I'm sure you can find it if you look.'
'But why am I being moved?'
'Absolutely no idea, sir,' he chimes happily. 'You been here long?'
'Six months.'
More of my clothes are taken out of my dressing room. I turn to the bald fellow again. 'Look, those are my clothes. What are you doing with them?'
'Oh, returning them, sir,' he assures me, nodding, smiling.
'Returning them? To where?' I shout. This is all very undignified, but what else can I do?
'I don't know, sir. Wherever you got them from, I suppose. Not my department exactly where they go back to, sir.'
'But they're mine!'
He frowns, looks at his clipboard, ruffling paper. He shakes his head, smiling confidently. 'No, sir.'
'But they are, dammit!'
'Sorry, sir, they're not; they belong to the hospital authorities; says so here - look.' He shows me the clipboard; a sheet of paper details my purchases of clothes from shops on the hospital's credit lines. 'See?' He chortles. 'Had me worried for a second there, sir; that would've been illegal, that would, removing any of your stuff. You could have called the police, you could have, and quite right too, if we'd touched any of your own stuff. You shouldn't go -'
'But I was told I could buy what I liked! I have an allowance! I -'
'Now, sir,' the man says, watching another load of coats and hats go past, and ticking something off on his clipboard, 'I'm not a lawyer or anything like one, sir, but I've been doing this sort of thing for longer than I care to think about, and I think you'll find, sir, if you don't mind me saying, that all this stuff actually belongs to the hospital, and you only had the use of it. I think that's what you'll find.'
'But -'
'I don't know if that was explained to you sir, but I'm sure that's what you would find if you were to investigate the matter, sir.'
'I...' I feel dizzy. 'Look, can't you stop, just for a moment?' I ask. 'Let me phone my doctor. Dr Joyce - you've probably heard of him; he'll sort this out. There must have -'
'Been a mistake, sir?' The bald man laughs wheezily for a moment. 'Bless me, sir. Sorry to interrupt you like that, but I couldn't help it; that's what everybody says. Wish I had a shilling for every time I've heard that!' He shakes his head, wipes one cheek. 'Well, if you really think so, sir, you'd better get in touch with the relevant authorities.' He looks around, 'The phone's around here ... somewhere ...'
'It doesn't work.'
'Oh it does, sir; I used it not half an hour ago, to let the department know we're here.'
I find the telephone on the floor. It's dead; it clicks once when I try to dial. The bald man comes over.
'Cut off, sir?' He looks at his watch. 'Bit early, sir.' He makes another note on his board. 'Very keen those boys at the exchange, sir. Very, very keen.' He makes a little papping noise which his mouth and snakes his head again, obviously impressed.
'Will you please, please just wait a moment; let me get in touch with my doctor; he'll sort this out. His names is Dr Joyce.'
'No need, sir,' the man says happily. An ugly, sickening thought occurs to me. The bald man looks through the sheets of paper on his clipboard. He runs a finger down one of the papers near the back of the bundle, then stops. 'Here we are, sir. Look, here.'
It is the good doctor's signature. The bald man says, 'See, he already knows sir; it was him authorised it.'
'Yes.' I sir down and stare at the blank wall opposite.
'Happynow, sir?' The bald man does not seem to be attempting either levity or irony.
'Yes,' I hear myself say. I feel numb, dead, wrapped in cotton wool, all senses reduced, ground down, fuses blown.
''Fraid we're going to need those things you've got on, sir.' He is looking at my clothes.
'You cannot,' I say wearily, 'be serious.'
'Sorry, sir. We've got a nice and - I might add, sir - new set of overalls for you. You want to change now?'
'This is ridiculous.'
'I know, sir. Still, rules are rules, aren't they? I'm sure you'll like these overalls; they're brand new.'
'Overalls?'
They are bright green. They come complete with shoes, shorts, shirt and rather rough underwear.
I change in my dressing room, my mind as blank as the walls.
My body seems to move of its own accord, performing the motions it is expected to; automatically, mechanically, and then stopping, waiting for a fresh order. I fold my clothes neatly, and as I fold my jacket, see the handkerchief Abberlaine Arrol gave me. I take it from the breast pocket.
When I go back into the sitting room, the bald man is watching the television. It is showing a quiz programme. He turns it off when I enter, bearing my bundle of clothes. He puts his black hat on.
'This handkerchief,' I say, nodding at the handkerchief on top of the bundle. 'It has been monogrammed. May I keep it?'
The bald man motions one of the men to take the bundle of clothes. He takes the handkerchief and looks down a list on his clipboard. He taps at a point on the list with a sharp pencil.
'Yes, I've got the handkerchief down here, but... no mention of it having this letter on it.' He shakes the handkerchief, looking closely at the blue, embroidered O. I wonder if he will have the stitching unpicked and present me with the thread. 'All right, take it,' he says sourly. I take it. 'But you'll have to pay the value of it out of your new allowance.'
'Thank you.' It is curiously easy to be polite.
'Well, that's that,' he says, efficiently. He puts his pencil away. I am reminded of the good doctor. He points to the door; 'After you.'
I put the handkerchief in a pocket in the garish green overalls and precede the fellow from the apartment. All but one of the other men have gone; the last man holds a large piece of rolled-up paper and an empty picture frame. He waits until his superior has locked and chained the door, then whispers something in his ear. The foreman holds out the rolled paper, which I realise is Abberlain Arrol's drawing.
'Is this yours?'
I nod. 'Yes. A gift, from a fr -'
'Here.' He shoves it into my hands, then turns away. The two men walk away down the corridor. I head for the elevator, clutching my drawing. I have gone a few paces when there is a shout. The bald foreman is running towards me, beckoning. I walk to meet him.
He shakes the clipboard in my face. 'Not so fast, chum,' he says. 'There's the small matter of a broad-brimmed hat.'
'This is the office of Dr F.Joyce, and a very good afternoon to you indeed.'
'This is Mr Orr; I want to talk to Dr Joyce; it's very urgent.'
'Mr Orr! How nice to talk you! How are you, this fine day?'
'I... I'm feeling quite terrible at the moment, as a matter of fact; I've just been thrown out of my apartment. Now can I please talk to Dr Joy -'
'But that's terrible, absolutely terrible.'
'I agree. I'd like to talk to Dr Joyce about it.'
'Oh, you want the police, Mr Orr, not a doctor ... unless; well, I mean obviously they haven't thrown you out off the balcony, or you wouldn't be around to -'
'Look, I'm grateful for your concern, but I don't have much money for this phone, and -'
'What, they didn't rob you as well, did they? No!'
'No. Now look, can I please talk to Dr Joyce?'
'I'm afraid not, Mr Orr; the doctor's in conference at the moment ... ahm ... the ... let's see ... ah, the Buying Procedures (Contracts) Committee New Members Subcommittee Elections Committee, I think.'
'Well can't you -'
'No! No, silly me; I tell a lie; that was yesterday; it's the - I thought that sounded wrong - it's the New Buildings Planning and Integration Standing Sub-'
'For God's sake, man! I don't care what damn committee he's on! When can I talk to him?'
'Oh well, you should care you know, Mr Orr; they're for your good too, you know.'
'When can I speak to him?'
'Well, I don't know, Mr Orr. Can he call you back?'
'When? I can't hang around this call box all day.'
'Well, how about at home then?'
'I just told you! I've been thrown out!'
'Well, can't you get back in? I'm sure if you get the police -'
'The doors have been chained. And it was all done with official authorisation and signed by Dr Joyce; that is why I want to sp-'
'Oooooh; you've been relocated, Mr Orr; I see. I tho-'
'What was that noise?'
'Oh, that's the beeps, Mr Orr. You have to put more money in.'
'I haven't got any more money.'
'Oops. Oh well, nice talking to you, Mr Orr. Bye now. Have a nice d-'
'Hello? Hello?'
Level U7 is seven levels beneath the train deck; quite close enough for one to be able to distinguish the difference between a local train, a through-train express and a fast goods by their vibrations alone, even without the concomitant rumbling/screaming/thundering noise as confirmation. The level is broad, dark, cavernous and crowded. On the floor below there is a light engineering and sheet metal works; above, six more levels of accommodation. An odour of sweat and old smoke pervades the thickened atmosphere. Room 306 is all mine. It contains only a single narrow bed, a rickety plastic chair, a table and a thin chest of drawers, and it is still crowded. I smelt the communal toilet on my way here, at the end of the corridor. The room looks out into a lightwell hardly worthy of the name.
I close the door and walk to Dr Joyce's office like an automaton: blind, deaf, unthinking. When I get there, it is too late, the office is closed; doctor and even receptionist gone home. A floor security guard looks at me suspiciously and suggests I get back to my own level.
I sit on my small bed, stomach rumbling, head in hands, looking at the floor, listening to the shriek of metal being cut in the workshop below. My chest aches.
There is a knock at the door.
'Come in.'
A small, grubby man wearing a long, shiny coat of dark blue comes in, shuffling sideways through the door; his eyes flicker round the room, and hesitate briefly only on the rolled-up drawing lying on top of the chest of drawers. His gaze settles on me, though his eyes don't meet mine.
''Scuse me, pal. New here, aren't ye?' He stands by the open door, as though ready to run back out through it. He sticks his hands into the deep pockets of his long coat.
'Yes, I am,' I say, standing. 'My name is John Orr.' I offer my hand; his grabs mine briefly, then scuttles back to its lair. 'How do you do,' I just have time to say.
'Lynch,' he says, addressing my chest. 'Call me Lynchy.'
'What can I do for you, Lynchy?'
He shrugs. 'Nothin'; just bein' neighbourly. Wondered if there was anythin' ye wanted.'
'That's very kind of you. I would be grateful for a little advice regarding an allowance I was told I would receive.'
Mr Lynch actually looks at me, his not-recently-washed face seeming to glow, albeit dully. 'Aw yeah, I can help ye with all that stuff. No problem.'
I smile. In all the time I lived in the more elevated and refined levels of the bridge not one of my neighbours even wished me good-day, far less offered help of any kind.
Mr Lynch takes me to a canteen where he buys me a fishmeal sausage and a plate of mashed seaweed. They are both appalling, but I am hungry. We drink tea from mugs. He is a carriage sweeper, he explains, and occupies room 308. He seems quite unduly impressed when I show him my plastic bracelet and tell him I am a patient. He explains how to go about claiming my allowance, in the morning. I am grateful. He even offers me a small loan until then, but I am too beholden to the man already, and refuse, with thanks.
The canteen is noisy, steamy, crowded, windowless; everything clatters, and the smells do nothing for my digestive processes. 'Chucked ye out, just like that, eh?'
'Yes. My doctor authorised it. I refused to undergo the treatment he had in mind for me; I assume that's why I was relocated, anyway. I may be wrong.'
'What a bastard, eh,' Mr Lynch shakes his head and looks fierce. 'Them doctors.'
'It does seem rather vindictive and petty, but I suppose I have only myself to blame.'
'Total bastards,' Mr Lynch maintains, and drinks tea from his mug. He slurps his tea; this has the same effect on me as nails scratched down a blackboard; I grit my teeth. I look at the clock above the serving hatch. I'll try to contact Brooke; he will probably be at Dissy Pitton's soon.
Mr Lynch takes out tobacco and papers and rolls himself a cigarette. He sniffs powerfully, and makes a grunting, snorting, catarrhal noise at the back of his throat. A hacking series of coughs, like a large sack of rocks being shaken vigorously somewhere inside Mr Lynch's chest, completes his ante-cigarette preparations.
'Ye got to go somewhere, pal?' Mr Lynch says, seeing me glance at the clock. He lights up, producing a cloud of acrid smoke.
'Yes. I had best be off, actually. I'm going to see an old friend.' I get to my feet. 'Thank you very much, Mr Lynch; I'm sorry to rush off. Once I'm in funds again, I hope you'll allow me to return your generosity.'
'No problem, pal. If ye want a hand tomorrow, give us a knock; it's my day off.'
'Thank you. You are a kind man, Mr Lynch. Good day.'
'Aye. Bye-bye.'
I get to Dissy Pitton's later than I intended, footsore. I ought to have accepted Mr Lynch's offer of money for the train fare; I am amazed at how much less pleasant walking becomes when it is adopted due to necessity rather than idle choice. I am also aware of being seen as the uniform I wear; my face would seem to be invisible for all practical purposes. Nevertheless, I pace, head up, shoulders back, as though I still wear my best coat and suit, and I believe my stick is more obvious in its absence than it was when actually held and swung.
The doorman at Dissy Pitton's is not impressed, however.
'Don't you recognise me? I'm here most nights. I'm Mr Orr. Look.' I hold up my plastic identity bracelet for him to see. He ignores it; he is embarrassed, I think, at having to deal with me and still tip his cap and open the door for customers.
'Look, just clear off, right?'
'Don't you recognise me? Look at my face, man, not the damn overalls. At least take a message to Mr Brooke ... is he here yet? Brooke, the engineer; small dark fellow, slightly hunched ...' The doorman is taller and heavier than me, or I might try to force my way in.
'You clear off now or you're in trouble,' the fellow says, glancing down the broad corridor outside the bar as though looking for somebody.
'I was here the other night; I was the chap who gave that fellow Bouch back his hat; you must remember that. You held the hat in front of him and he threw up into it.'
The doorman smiles, touches his cap, lets a couple I do not recognise into the bar. 'Look pal, I've been off the last two weeks. Now just you fuck off or you're going to be sorry.'
'Oh ... I see. I'm sorry. But please; if I write a note, would you -'
I get no further. The doorman takes another look round, discovers the corridor to be deserted, and punches me in the stomach with one heavy, gloved hand. It is stunningly painful; as I double up, he lands another blow on my chin, jarring my whole head. I stagger back, ringing with pain; he cracks me across the eye. It is the shock of it, I suppose.
I hit the planking of the floor in a daze. I am picked up by the rump and neck of my overalls and dragged and scraped across the deck, through a door into the cold open air. I am dumped on an open metal deck. Two more heavy blows strike my side; kicks, I think.
A door slams. The wind blows.
I lie for some time, the way I was dropped, unable to move. A throbbing, pulsing pain builds up sickly in my belly; without seeing where I am (I think there is blood in my eyes), I vomit up the fishcake sausage and seaweed.
I lie on my cramped bed. The man and woman in the room above are having an argument. I am racked with pain; I feel nauseous but hungry at the same time. My head, teeth and jaws, my right eye and temple, my belly, guts and side all ache; a symphony of pain. In all this, the nagging whisper that is my old injury's echo, the deep, circular chest pain I am so used to, is quite drowned out.
I am clean. I have washed my mouth out as best I could and placed my handkerchief over my cut eyebrow. I am not quite sure how I walked or staggered back here, but I did, my dazed pain like drunkenness.
I find no comfort in my bed, only a new place to appreciate the waves of pain which flood me, beating on the body's shore.
In the end, but in the middle of the night, I drift off to sleep. But it is an ocean of burning oil I am cast adrift upon, no sea's repose; I pass from waking agonies which the reasoning mind can at least attempt to place in context - looking forward to a time when the pain has ceased - to the semi-conscious trance of torment in which the smaller, earlier, deeper rings of the brain know only that the nerves scream, the body aches, and there is no one to turn crying to for comfort.
I do not know how long I have been here. A long time. I do not know where this place is. Somewhere far away. I do not know why I am here. Because I did something wrong. I do not know how long I will have to stay here. A long time.
This is not a long bridge, but it goes on for ever. I am not far from the bank, but I will never get there. I walk but I never move. Fast or slow, running, turning, doubling back, jumping, throwing myself or stopping; nothing makes any difference.
The bridge is made of iron. It is thick, heavy, rusting iron, pitted and flaking, and it makes a dead, heavy sound beneath my feet; a sound that is so thick and heavy it is almost no sound, just the shock of each footfall travelling through my bones to my head. The bridge seems to be solid iron. Perhaps it was not once, perhaps it was riveted together once, but now it is one piece, rusted into one, decaying into a single rotting mass. Or it may have been welded. Who cares.
It is not large. It bridges a small river I can see through the thick iron bars which rise from the edge of the balustrade. The river flows straight and slow out of the mists, under the bridge, then just as straight and slow away again, into the same damned mist downstream.
I could swim that river in a couple of minutes (if it wasn't for the carnivorous fish), I could cross this bridge in much less than that, even walking slowly.
The bridge is part of a circle, perhaps the upper quarter in terms of height. Its whole forms a great hollow wheel which encircles the river.
On the bank behind me, there is a cobbled road leading off across a marsh. On the far bank are my ladies, reposing or disporting in a variety of small pavilions or opened wagons resting on a small meadow surrounded - so I see on the odd occasions when the mist thins slightly - by tall, broad-leafed trees. I walk for ever towards the ladies. Sometimes I walk slowly, sometimes fast; I have even run. They beckon to me, they wave and hold out welcoming hands to me. Their voices call to me, in tongues I cannot understand, but which are soft and lovely to me, warm and beseeching to me, and which fill me with furious desire.
The ladies walk back and forth, or lie among satin pillows in their small pavilions and broad wagons. They wear all sorts of dress: some severe and formal, covering them from neck to sole, some loose and flowing, like silk waves on their bodies, some thin and transparent, or full of carefully positioned tears and holes, so that their full, young bodies - white as alabaster, black as jet, gold as gold itself- shine through as though their youth and primed nubility was something bright that burned within them, a warmth my eyes detect.
They undress for me, slowly, sometimes, while watching me; their large sad eyes are full of longing, their slender, delicate hands going softly to their shoulders, opening, sloughing off, brushing away straps and layers of material as if they were drops of water left after a bath. I howl, I run faster; I scream for them.
Sometimes they come to the lip of the bank, the very edge of the bridge, and tear their clothes off, screaming to me, clenching their little fists and moving their hips, going down on their knees, legs spread, crying to me, holding out their arms to me. I scream then too and throw myself forward, I sprint for all my worth or, stiff with desire, hold my prick like some stunted flagpole in front of me, running and shaking it and bellowing with frustrated desire. Often I ejaculate, and - fall weakly, used up, to the hard iron surface of the bridge's curved deck, to lie there, panting, sobbing, crying, beating the flaking iron surface with my hands until they bleed.
On occasion the women make love to each other, in front of me; I wail and tear my hair. They take slow hours sometimes, gently kissing and stroking, caressing and licking each other; they cry out at orgasm, their bodies jerking, clutching, pulsing in time to each other. Sometimes they watch me as they do this, and I can never decide whether the look in their large, moist eyes is still sad and longing, or satiated and mocking. I stop and shake my fist at them, yell and shout at them. 'Bitches! Ingrates! Bloody torturers! Hellbags! What about me? Come here! You come on here. Here! Come on; just step on! Well throw me a fucking rope then!'
They do not. They parade, they strip, they fuck, they sleep and read old books, they make meals and leave small rice-paper trays of food on the edge of the bridge so that I can eat (but sometimes I rebel; I throw the trays into the river; the carnivorous fish demolish food and tray) but they will not step onto the bridge. I recall that witches cannot cross water.
I walk; the bridge revolves slowly, rumbling and shivering just a little, the bars which rise from its edges moving slowly, stroking through the mist. I run; the bridge quickly revs up, matches my speed, quivering beneath my feet, the bars on either side of me making a soft ripping noise through the mist-filled air. I stop; the bridge stops. I am still above the centre of the small, slowly flowing river. I sit. The bridge remains static. I jump up and throw myself towards the bank where the ladies are; I roll, scramble, I hop or skip or jump; the bridge rumbles one way or the other, never more than a few steps out of step with me, and always, always, bringing me back, in the end, to its shallow summit, its mid point over the sluggish stream. I am the keystone of the bridge.
I sleep - usually at night, sometimes during the day - above the centre of the waters. I have several times waited until the very centre of the night, feigning sleep for hours, then up! Jump! Bursting away, with one mighty leap! A single bound! Ah-ha!
But the bridge moves quickly, not fooled, and in seconds I am, whether running or leaping or rolling, back above the centre of the stream again.
I have tried to use the bridge's inertia against it, its assumed momentum, its own terrible mass, so I run first one way, then the other, trying by these may rapid changes in direction to catch it out somehow, fool it, outwit it, bamboozle the bastard, just be too damn quick for it (of course I always try to make sure that if I do get off, it will be on the bank which holds the ladies - don't forget the carnivorous fish!), but without success. The bridge, for all its weight, for all the solid massiveness of it, which ought to make it slow to move and hard to brake, always moves just too fast for me, and I have never come closer than half a dozen strides from either bank.
There is a breeze sometimes; not enough to clear the mist, but sufficient, if the wind comes from the right direction, to bring to me the perfumes and bodily odours of the ladies. I hold my nose; I tear strands from my rags and stick them up my nostrils. I have thought of stuffing rags in my ears as well, and even of blindfolding myself.
Every few tens of days, small men, swarthy and thick-set and dressed as satyrs, come running out of the forest behind the meadow and fall upon the ladies, who after a show of resistance and displays of coquetry, surrender to their small lovers with unaffected relish. These orgies go on for days and nights without pause; every form of sexual perversion is practised, red lamps and open fires light the scene at night, and vast quantities of roasted meats, exotic fruits and spicy delicacies are consumed along with many skins of wine and bottles of spirits. I am usually forgotten on such occasions, and even my food is not left on the bridge, so I starve while they sate their every appetite to the point of gluttony. I sit and face the other way, scowling at the dank marsh and the unreachable road crossing it, quaking with anger and jealousy, tormented by the whimpers and screams coming from the far bank, and the succulent smells of roasting meats.
Once I grew hoarse screaming at them, hurt my ankle jumping up and down, and bit my tongue while cursing them; I waited until I needed a crap, then threw the turd at them. Those obscene brats used it in one of their filthy sex games.
After the small dark men dressed as satyrs have dragged themselves back into the forest, and the ladies have slept off the effects ofaheir multifarious indulgences, they are as they were before, if a little more apologetic, even wistful. They make special dishes for me and give me more food than usual, but often I am still upset, and throw the food at them, or into the river for the carnivorous fish. The look sad and sorry, and go back to their old habits of sleeping and reading, walking and undressing and making love with each other.
Perhaps my tears will rust the bridge, and I shall escape it.
Today the mist cleared. Not for long, but for long enough. On my bridge without end, I have reached the end.
I am not alone.
When the mist lifted, I saw that the river went straight into the clear distance for ever, on either side. The marsh lines it on one bank, the meadow and forest on the other, without a break. A hundred paces or so upstream there is another bridge, just like mine; iron, like part of a circle, and edged with thick iron bars. There was a man inside it, gripping the bars and staring at me. Beyond him, another bridge and another man, and so on and so on, until the line of distant bridges became an iron tunnel, vanishing to nothing. Each bridge had its own road across the marsh, each had its ladies, pavilioned and carriaged. Down-stream; just the same. My ladies did not seem to notice.
The man in the bridge downstream from mine stared at me for while, then began running (I watched his bridge revolve, fascinated by its steady smoothness), then stopped and stared at me again, then at the bridge downstream from him. He climbed up onto the parapet, up the bars and over them, and then - after only the briefest of hesitations - dropped into the river. The water frothed red; he screamed and sank.
The mists came back. I shouted for a while, but I could hear no other voice from up or down stream.
I am running now. Steady and fast and determined. Several hours so far; it is growing dark. The ladies seem worried; I have run right over three of their food-filled trays.
My ladies stand and watch me, sad and large-eyed, somehow resigned, as though they have seen all this before, as though it always ends this way.
I run and run. The bridge and I are one now, part of the same great steady mechanism; an eye the river threads. I shall run until I drop, until I die; in other words, for ever.
My ladies are crying now, but I am happy. They are caught, trapped, transfixed, heads bowed; but I am free.
I wake up sceaming, believing I am encased in ice more cold than that produced by water, so cold that it burns like molten rock, and under a grinding, crushing pressure.
The scream is not my own; I am silent and only the sheet metal works shrieks. I dress, stumble to the toilet block, wash. I dry my hands on the handkerchief. In the mirror, my face is puffed and discoloured. A few teeth feel somewhat looser than they did. My body is bruised but nothing is seriously damaged.
At the office where I register to claim my allowance I discover that I shall be on half allowance for the next month, to pay off the amount I owe on the handkerchief and the hat. I am given a little money.
I am directed to a second-hand store where I purchase a long, worn coat. This at least covers the green overalls. Half my money is gone now. I start to walk to the next section, still determined to see Dr Joyce, but I feel faint before long, and have to take a tram, paying cash for the ticket.
'Casualty is three floors down, two blocks to Kingdom,' the young receptionist tells me when I walk into the good doctor's outer office. He goes back to his newspaper; no coffee or tea is offered.
'I would like to see Dr Joyce. I'm Mr Orr. You might recall we spoke on the telephone yesterday.'
The young man lifts perfectly clear eyes to look at me tiredly, up and down. He puts one manicured finger to his smooth cheek, sucks air through luminescently white and flawless teeth. 'Mr ... Orr?' He turns to look through a card index.
I feel faint again. I sit down on one of the chairs.
He glares at me. 'Did I say you could sit down?'
'No, did I ask for permission to?'
'Well, I hope that coat's clean.'
'Are you going to let me see the doctor or not?'
'I'm looking for your card.'
'Do you remember me or not?'
He studies me carefully. 'Yes, but you've been relocated, haven't you.'
'Does that really make such a difference?'
He gives a little, incredulous laugh, and shakes his head as he searches his index.
'Ah, I thought so.' He pulls out a red card, and reads it. 'You've been transferred.'
'I'd noticed that. My new address is -'
'No; I mean you've got a new doctor.'
'I don't want a new doctor; I want Dr Joyce.'
'Oh do you?' He laughs, and taps the red card with one finger. 'Well I'm afraid it isn't up to you. Dr Joyce has had you transferred to somebody else and that's all there is to it, and if you don't like it, tough.' He puts the red card back in the index. 'Now please go away.'
I go to the doctor's office door. It is locked.
The young man does not look up from his paper. I try to look through the frosted glass in the door, then I knock politely. 'Dr Joyce? Dr Joyce?'
The young receptionist starts to snigger; I turn to look at him, just as the telephone rings. He answers it.
'Dr Joyce's office,' he says. 'No, I'm afraid the doctor isn't here. He's at the annual conference for senior administrators.' He turns in his seat and looks at me as he says this, watching me with a look of spiteful condescension. 'Two weeks,' he grins at me. 'Do you want the long-distance code? Oh yes, good morning officer; yes, Mr Berkeley, of course. And how are you? ... oh yes? Has he? A washing machine? Does he really? Well that's a new one, I must say. Mm-hmm.' The young receptionist looks professionally serious and starts taking notes. 'And how many socks has he eaten? ... I see. Right. Yes, got that: I'll get a locum down to the launderette right away. That's quite all right officer, and may I wish you a very good day indeed? Bye now.'
My new doctor is called Anzano. His offices are about a quarter of the size of Joyce's, and eighteen floors below them, with no outside view. He is an old, tubby man with sparse yellow hair and matching teeth.
I get to see him after a wait of two hours.
'No,' the doctor says, 'I don't think there is much I can do about you being moved. Not what I'm here for, you understand. Give me time; let me read your file; be patient. I've got a lot on my plate just now. I'll get round to you as soon as I can. Then we'll see about getting you well again, what do you say?' He tries to look cheerful and encouraging.
'But in the meantime?' I ask, feeling tired. I must look a terrible sight; my face throbs, and vision out of my left eye is restricted. My hair is unwashed and I have been unable to shave this morning. How can I convincingly lay claim to my earlier way of life, looking the way I do; so badly dressed, and in every sense, I suspect, beaten?
'Meantime?' Dr Anzano looks perplexed. He shrugs. 'Do you need a prescription? Have you enough of anything you've been -' he is reaching for his prescription pad. I shake my head.
'I mean what is to be done about my ... situation?'
'Not a lot I can do, Mr. Orr. I'm not Dr Joyce; I can't issue grand apartments to myself, let alone my patients.' The old doctor sounds a little bitter, and annoyed at me. 'Just wait until your case is reviewed; I'll make whatever recommendations I think fit. Now is there anything else? I'm a very busy man. I can't go whizzing off to conferences you know.'
'No, there was nothing else.' I get up. 'Thank you for your time.'
'Not at all. Not at all. My secretary will be in touch with you about your appointment; very soon, I'm sure. And if there is anything you need, just give me a call.'
I return to my room.
Mr Lynch comes to my door again.
'Mr Lynch. Good day.'
'Oh, fuck; what happened to you?'
'An argument with an unhinged doorman; do come in. Would you like this seat?'
'Can't stay; I brought this.' He shoves a folded, sealed piece of paper into my hand. Mr Lynch's finger marks remain on the envelope. I open it. 'Post left it stuck in the door; could have got stole.'
'Thank you, Mr Lynch,' I say. 'Are you sure you can't stay? I was hoping to repay your kindness yesterday by inviting you to dinner this evening.'
'Aw, sorry pal, no. Got overtime to do.'
'Oh well, some other time then.' I scan the note. It is from Abberlaine Arrol; she confesses to quite brazenly using a fictitious dinner-date with me tonight to get out of an engagement of potentially terminal tedium. Will I agree to be an accomplice after the fact? She includes the phone number of her parents' apartment; I am to call her. I check the address; the note has been forwarded from my old rooms.
'OK?' Mr Lynch says, hands stuck in the pockets of his coat for all the world as though his trouser turn-ups are full of stolen lead and he is desperately trying to hold them up. 'No bad news, eh?'
'No, Mr Lynch, in fact a young lady wants me to take her out to dinner... I must make a phone call. Don't forget though; after this, you have first call on my meagre abilities as dinner-host.'
'Whatever you say, pal.'
My luck holds. Miss Arrol is in. Somebody I take to be a servant goes to find her. It takes several coins; I have to assume the Arrol apartments are of considerable size.
'Mr Orr! Hello!' She sound breathless.
'Good day, Miss Arrol. I received your note.'
'Oh, good. Are you free this evening?'
'I would like to meet then, yes, but ...'
'What's wrong Mr Orr? You sound like you have a cold.'
'Not a cold; it's my mouth ... It's ...' I pause. 'Miss Arrol, I would very much like to see you this evening, but I'm afraid I ... have suffered something of a reverse. I have been relocated, effectively demoted. Dr Joyce has had me put down, as it were. To level U7, to be precise.'
'Oh.' There is a flatness to the tone with which she pronounces this simple word which says more to me, in my feverish state, than a whole-hour of polite explanations about propriety, places in society, discretion and tact. Perhaps I am expected to say something more, but I cannot. How long do I wait, then, for some other word? Two seconds at most? Three? Nothing measured in bridge time, but long enough to pass through an instant of despair to a plateau of anger. Shall I put the phone down, walk away, make of this dirty thing as clean and quick an end as possible? Yes, now, to appease my own bitterness... but it is not in me. In a moment though, to spare the girl further embarrassment.
'Right, sorry, Mr Orr; I was just closing the door. My brother hanging around. Now, where have they moved you to? Can I help? Would you like me to come over there now?'
Orr, you are a fool.
I dress in the clothes of Abberlain Arrol's brother. She arrived here an hour before the time we arranged to meet, with a suitcase full of cast-offclothes, mostly her brother's; she reckons we are near enough the same build. I change while she waits outside. I was loath to leave her in such a vulgar area, but she could hardly have stayed in the room.
In the corridor, she is leaning, back against the wall, one leg drawn up behind her so that she rests one buttock on her foot, arms folded, talking to Mr Lynch, who looks at her with a sort of wary awe.
'"Oh no, dear,"' Abberlaine Arrol is saying, '"we always change ends at half-time."' She sniggers. Mr Lynch looks shocked, then snorts with laughter. Miss Arrol sees me. 'Ah, Mr Orr!'
'The same.' I make a small bow. 'Or rather, not quite.'
Abberlaine Arrol, resplendent in baggy trousers of rough black silk, matching jacket, cotton blouse, high heels and dramatic hat, says, 'What a dashing figure you cut, Mr Orr.'
'Bluntly spoken.'
Miss Arrol presents me with a black cane. 'Your stick.'
'Thank you.' I say. She puts out her arm, waiting, so I offer mine and she takes it. We face Mr Lynch, arm in arm. I can feel her warmth through her brother's jacket.
'Don't we look quite fine, Mr Lynch?' She asks, standing straight, head back. Mr Lynch shuffles his feet.
'Aw yeah; very ... very ...' Mr Lynch searches for a word. 'Very ... a very ... handsome couple.'
I would like to think that is just what we are. Miss Arrol seems pleased, too.
'Thank you, Mr Lynch.' She turns to me. 'Well, I don't know about you, but I'm starving.'
'So, what are your priorities now, Mr Orr?' Abberlaine Arrol rolls her whisky glass around between her hands, gazing through the blue lead glass and the light amber liquid at the flame of a candle. I watch her malt-wetted lips glisten in the same soft light.
Miss Arrol has insisted on buying me dinner. We sit at a window table in the High Girders restaurant. The food has been superb, the service discreetly efficient, we have space, fine wine, and an excellent view (lights twinkle all over the sea where the trawlers anchor the barrage balloons; the blimps themselves are vaguely visible, almost level with us, dull presences in the night reflecting the bridge's massed lights like clouds. A few of the brighter stars are also visible).
'My priorities?' I ask.
'Yes. Which is more important; regaining your position as one of Dr Joyce's favoured patients, or rediscovering your lost memories?'
'Well,' I say, only now really thinking about it. 'Certainly it's been rather uncomfortable and painful, coming down in the bridge, but I suppose I could eventually learn to live with my reduced rank, if the worst comes to the worst.' I sip my whisky. Miss Arrol's expression is neutral. 'However, my inability to remember who I am is not something ...' I give a small laugh, 'that I can ever forget. I'll always know there was something in my life before this, so I imagine I'll always be looking for it. It's like a sealed, forgotten chamber in me; I shan't feel complete until I've discovered its entrance.'
'Sounds like a tomb. Aren't you afraid of what you'll find in there?'
'It's a library; only the stupid and the evil are afraid of those.'
'So you'd rather find your library than regain your apartment?' Abberlaine Arrol smiles. I nod, watching her. She took off her hat as she came in, but her hair is still up; her head and neck look very fine. Those beguiling crinkles under her eyes fascinate me still; they are like a tiny guard she has put up; a line of sandbags beneath those amused, grey-green eyes; confident, secure, unaffected.
Abberlaine Arrol stares into her glass. I am about to comment on a small line that has just formed on her brow, when the lights go out.
We are left with our candle; other tables glow and flicker with their own small flames. Dim emergency lights come on. There is a dull background of muttering. Outside, the lights on the trawlers start to disappear. The balloons are no longer visible in the reflected light of the bridge; the whole structure must be dark. The planes: they come without lights, droning through the night, from the direction of the City. Miss Arrol and I stand up, looking out of the window; various other diners gather alongside us, peering out into the night, shading the weak emergency lights and candles with their hands, noses pressed against the cool glass like schoolboys outside a sweetshop. Somebody opens a window.
The planes sound almost alongside us. 'Can you see them?' Abberlaine Arrol asks.
'No,' I admit. The droning engines sound very close. The planes are quite invisible, without navigation lights. There is no moon, and the stars are not bright enough to show them.
They pass, seemingly unaffected by the lack of light.
'Think they did it?' Miss Arrol says, still peering into the night. Her breath mists the glass.
'I don't know,' I confess. 'I wouldn't be surprised.' She is biting her lower lip; her fists are clenched against the dark window, an expression of excited anticipation on her face. She looks very young.
The lights come back on.
The planes have left their pointless messages; the clouds of smoke are just visible, darkness upon darkness. Miss Arrol sits down and takes up her glass. As I raise mine, she leans con-spiratorially across the table and says quietly. 'To our intrepid aviators, wherever they may come from.'
'And whoever they may be,' I touch her glass with my own.
When we leave, a faint odour of oily smoke is just detectable over the more palatable smells of the restaurant itself; the equivocal signal of the vanished aircraft merging with and blown through the structural grammar of the bridge, like criticism.
We wait for a train. Miss Arrol smokes a cigar. Music plays in the soft-class waiting room. She stretches in her chair and stifles a little yawn. 'I beg your pardon,' she says. Then, 'Mr - oh look; if I can call you John, will you call me Abberlaine, never "Abby"?'
'Certainly, Abberlaine.'
'Right then ... John. I take it you are less than totally delighted with your new accommodation.'
'It's better than nothing at all.'
'Yes, of course, but ...'
'Not that much though. And without Mr Lynch I'd be even more at a loss than I am already.'
'Hmmm. I thought so.' She looks preoccupied, and stares hard at one of her shiny black high-heels. She rubs one finger over her lips, looks seriously at her cigar. 'Ah.' The finger caressing her lips is lifted into the air. 'I have an idea.' Her grin is mischievous now.
'My paternal great-grandfather had it built. Just a minute; I'll find the lights. I think -' There is a dull thud. '-Bastard!' Miss Arrol giggles. I hear a rapid rubbing sound; rough silk between smooth flesh, I suspect.
'Are you all right?'
'Fine. Just bumped my shin. Now then, those lights. I think they're ... no. Damn this, I can't see a thing. You don't have a light do you John? I used my last match on the cigar.'
'I'm sorry, no.'
'I know; could you give me your stick?'
'Certainly. Here. Is that ...? Have you ...?'
'Yes, thank you; got it.' I hear her tap and scrape her way through the darkness. I put my suitcase down on the floor, waiting to see whether my eyes will adjust sufficiently or not. I can see vague hints of light over to one corner, but the interior of this place is quite black. From further away, Abberlaine Arrol's voice comes back, 'It was to be near the marina. That was why he had it built. Then they built the sports centre on top. He was too proud to accept the compensation buy-out, so it stayed in the family. My father is always talking about selling it, but we wouldn't get much for it; we just use it for storage. There was some damp on the ceiling, but it's been repaired.'
'I see,' I listen for the girl, but all I can hear is the sounds of the sea; waves brush the rocks or the piers nearby. I can smell the sea, too; something of its fresh dampness pervades the air.
'About bloody time,' Abberlaine Arrol says, her voice muffled. A click, and all is revealed. I am standing near the door of a large apartment, mostly open-plan and split-level and full of old furniture and packing cases. From a high, damp-stained ceiling an assortment of complicated light clusters hang; varnish peels from old, panelled walls. There are white sheets everywhere, half covering ancient, heavy-looking sideboards, wardrobes, couches, chairs, tables and chests of drawers. Other pieces are still totally covered, wrapped and trussed like huge, dusty white presents. Where there were vague areas of light before, there is now a single long screen of blackness where unshuttered windows look out into the night. Abberlaine Arrol appears, flat, broad hat still in place, clapping her hands together, rubbing dust off them, from a side room.
'There, that's a bit better.' She looks around. 'Bit dusty and deserted, but it's quiet, and a bit more private than your room on U7 or wherever.' She hands me back my stick, then starts pacing through the assembled furniture, whipping back sheets and covers, glacing underneath, raising a storm of dust as she investigates the contents of the huge room. She sneezes. 'Should be a bed around here somewhere.' She nods to the windows. 'Might be an idea to close the shutters. It never gets very light in here, but you might be woken in the morning.'
I make my way down to the tall windows, a length of obsidian framed in crackled white paint. The heavy shutters creak as they swing across the dust-dimmed panes. Outside and below I can see a broken line of white surf, and a few lights in the distance, mosdy navigation and harbour beacons. Above, where I would expect to see the bridge, there is only darkness, starless and complete. The waves glitter like a million dull knives.
'Here,' Abberlaine Arrol has found a bed. 'It might be a bit damp, but I'll find some more sheets. Should be some in these cases.' The bed is huge, with a headboard carved from oak to resemble a pair of immense, outspread wings. Abberlaine stamps off through the clouds of dust to rummage through stacked chests and packing cases. I test the bed.
'Abberlaine, this is really very kind of you, but are you sure you won't get into trouble for it?' She sneezes powerfully from a distant packing case. 'Bless you,' I say.
'Thank you. No, I'm not certain,' she says, pulling out blankets and bundles of newspapers from the chest, 'but in the unlikely event my father did find out and was annoyed, I'm sure I could talk him round. Don't worry. No one ever comes down here. Ah.' She discovers a large quilt and some sheets and pillows. She buries her face in the quilt, breathing deeply. 'Yes, this seems dry enough.' She brings the bedding over in a bundle and starts to make the huge bed. I offer to help but am shooed away.
I take my coat off and go in search of the bathroom. It is about six times the size of room 306, level U7. The bath alone looks as though it could float a sizeable yacht. The toilet flushes, the sink runs too, the shower and bidet both spray efficiently. I pause in front of the mirror, brushing my hair back, smoothing my shirt, checking my teeth for bits of trapped food.
When I return to the main room, my bed has been made. The huge oaken wings are spread over a white duvet of duckdown. Abberlaine Arrol has gone. The apartment's front door swings gently to and fro.
I close the door, put out most of the lights. I find an old lamp and perch it on a packing case by the side of my huge, cold bed. Before I put the light out I lie for a while, looking at the great hollow circles long-dried waters have left on the plaster above me.
Faded and dull, left-overs from an old complaint, they look down on me like ancient painted images of my own chest-held stigmata.
I reach out to the old lamp, and turn the darkness on again.
I luv the ded, this old basturt sez to me when I wiz trying to get some innfurmashin out ov him. You fukin old pervirt I sez, gettin a bit fed up by this time enyway, an slit his throate; ah asked you whare the fukin Sleepin Byootie woz, no whit kind a humpin you lyke. No, no he sez, splutterin sumthin awfy and gettin blud all ovir ma new curiearse, no he sez I sed Isle of the Dead; Isle of the Dead that's whare yoo'l find the Sleeping Beauty, but mind and watch out for the - then the basturt went and dyed on me. Fukin nerv, eh? Ah wiz ded upset but thare you go these things are scent to trie uz.
Canny remember whare it wiz I herd about this Sleepin Byootie but it must hav bean sumwhare, ken. Av been gettin arownd a fare bit resently whot with all that majic an that; playce is stowed owt with majishins and wizerds and whitches these days; canny wolk intae sum citays withowt trippin over sum barsturd doin wun aw they spels or incanntashins or turnin sumbudy inta a frog or bumrag or a spitoon or sumhin. Clevir bugirs but ye can hav to mutch majic ah rekin; sum bugirs got tae spred the manure and bild hooses and plant seads an that sort ov stuff, ken? Things that majic duzney wurk very well on. Fyne fur hydin gold and turnin peepil intae things thayd rathir no be turnd intae an maykin foalk furget things an that sort ov stuf, but no fur fixin a bugerd waggin wheel or sloppin the mud oot yer detachit hovil aftir the rivir's burst itz banks. Dinnae ask me how majic wurks maybe ther's onlie so mutch to go round or peepil who can do it keep majicin up things that cantsel out whit uthers have dun, but wun way or the uthir it canny be oll its craked up tae be or ah suppose the wurld woold be toatally fukin wunderffil an happy an aw that an folk woold live in peece an harminy an so on; thatill be the day, if ye ask me. Enyway its no like that ataw, so it isnay, an just as well to say I, coz utherwyse thay wooldnae need peepil like me (an itid be ded fukin boarin to).
Noaw, ahm doin no to bad these days; servises mutch in dimand like thay say; maynly becoz all these wizerds an that are so fukin sofistikaytit that they forget thers sum things a sord can do a spel canny, speshily when yoor oponent is only expectin a spel and no a sord! Aw, ahve got sum majic armir an this enchantit dirk that thinks itz a daggir and stuff like that, butt ah doant like tae use them hings to mutch; bettir to relie on yer own arm an a sharp blaide, thats whit I say.
My first is in day but never in night,
My second's in dark but unseen in light;
My middle's a twin in daughter, not son,
While the fifth's not in two, but in three and one;
The final's in first, not middle or last,
And my whole is in sheath; got an Elastoplast?
Nevir mind that its just the fukin dirk talkin; the ansers daggir bye the way; just that the stupit thing canny spel write. Bludy daft wee hi-pitched voyce its got too, reely gets on ma nerves sumtimes, but the things cum in handy on a few okayzhins; it can see in the dark an tel whose frend and fowe an a coupil of times ahl sware its jumpt rite out of ma hands an flown like a bird intae sum basturts throat that was givin me a hard time. Usefyule gadjet. A lassy geeze it; a bonny yung whitch sum worlok had the hots fur an she didnae want tae play; ah wiz hired tae kil the old bugir and the young whitch giv us the daggir fir a reward; sed it wiz oanly a copey, but it came from the fewtcher an might cum in yousefyul; that wiznae ma only reward either. See these whitches? Fukin majic in bed, to. Must look her up agen sumtime.
Enyway, ah herd about this Sleepin Byootie sumwhare an startit tyrin to find out whare she wiz shakked up but it wiznae eesy. Fyneally got a haud of this old basturd that telt us about the Ile of the Deid but then went an kilt him befoar he coold tell uz all he coold have; to fukin hastie, thats ma truble, awlways tias been Dut ye canny teech an old dug new tricks like they say. Not that am that old; dont ge me rong ye have to be yung and fit to be a sordsman (maybe that wiz whot the whitch - but nevir mind that). Whare woz I? Aw I; the ileland ov the deid.
Wel, too cut a long story off at the knees, an after meny ecsiting adventchures an that, I endit up gettin this sorserir tae cunjur up a way intae sumthin called the Underwurld; ment roasting live cats over a slow fyre fur abouwt three weeks, but at leest it wurkt. The sorserir gave me directshins an sum advyce an that, but ah had a nippy heid at the time coz and been drinkin the wine the night befoar an so ah didnae reelly take in aw he wiz sayin an besides ah woz all ecsited coz ah wiz getting tae go intae the Underground at last. 'Beware Lethe, the waters of oblivion, young man!' the sorserir sez, an ahm stand in thare in the cellir ov his castle wi ma heid loupin thinkin Ah wish yed said that tae me last night befoar ah startit drinking the wine. 'Beware whit?' ah sez tae him. 'Lethe!' he shouts. 'Aye, OK pal,' ah told him, and steppt intae this funny star-shaped thing hed paynted on the flair ov the cellir.
Hellova a place this, ah thoght. Aw these folke shoutin and screamin an waylin and champin there teath an chained to wals and tunnils; whot a fukin racket an me with a hangover. Got reely pissed aff an tryd killin a few a these noisey basturts but even when they wer hakked about they still kept on shoutin and screemin an thrashin an that; toatal waiste of time. Ah kept on goin doon these tunnels and saw aw these burnin pits an icey puddles wi screemin peepil in them, an kept ma sord handy an wished ahd brot a bottil of skoosh wi me coz I wiz ded thirsty.
Had tae wolk fur fukin miles so ah did; kept thinkin ther might be a train along in a minute, but nae luck, just all these basturts howlin an screemin oll the time and lodes of smoake and flaimes an ice an howlin winds an fuk knows whot. Ah thot about having a drink aw watter from won of the icey pools but ah kept thinkin abowt this watter of Leeth or whatevir it woz, so ah didnae.
It got qwieter after a whyle; went up this long tunnil intae sumhin a bit mair like daylight thogh it wis still pritty dull an depressin; endid up at the bottom of this big clif lookin out ovir this rivir wi clouds an mist an that aw ovir the playce. No a bludy soul abowt, no even wun aw those bubblin basturts chained to the waws or anyhin. Startin tae think the sorserir had givven us a bum steer. Stil ded thirtsy an nota sign of a pub or enyhin, just aw these rocks an this rivir flowin slowly past. Ah wanderd along the bank fur a bit an found this punter shovin a big round boulder up this hill. Lookt like he did this a lot, judjin from the groov hed worn in the hillside. 'Haw Jimmy,' ah sez, 'ahm lookin for this ferry; whare dae ye catch the steamer aboot here? There a pier here-aboots, aye?' Basturt didnae even turn roond. Rold this huge fukin chuckie right tae the tap aw the hill. But the the rok cums rollin aw the way back down agen, and the ignorant buggir chases aftir it an starts rollin it back up the hill agen. 'Hi you,' ah sez (didnae hav eny effect). 'Hi, hied-die-baw; whare's the fukin pier fur the steamer?' Ah slapt the basturd over the arse wi the flat ov ma sord and went in frunt of the big stane he was rollin up the hil an lent agenst it to stop him.
Just ma fukin luk; the bampot didnae evin speek proppir; sum forin lingo. Aw shite, ah wiz thinkin. Ah tried tellin him whit ah wiz after wi sine language; thot he seemed tae understand but he stil wiznae tellin, so ah told him ahd help him roll the rok up the sloap if he told me. Sneeky basturt got me tae shuv the stane up the hil first. Got it tae the tap; he held it an ah got a few wee stanes tae hold it thare. Fella wiz qwite delightit; he points doon the bank of the rivir and sez 'Karen,' or sumthin' like that, then skips aff in tae the mist, leavin the big chuckie at the tap aw the sloap.
Mair fukin trampin along the side of this bludy misty rivir, and then ah see this muckle grate bird flyin throo the mists; ah watcht it land on this big bit aw rock whare this guy waz chaned up, and the bird gets stuck right in, rips the basturd open and starts munchin away at his insides; the bloake wiz howlin and screemin fit tae raze the deid, but when ah got thare I must have fritened the big bird aff, coz it beat it. Climbed up tae see how the guy wos, but hed healed right up; no even a scar whare the eegil or whatever it wiz had been havin its tea. 'Scuse me pal, am ah on the right road fur the steamer, aye?'
Anuther bludy furiner. Tryed the sine langwitch agen but seemd like he wiznae havin it, just kept shoutin and shakin his chanes. Toatil waist of time; like tryin tae pik yer nose wi yer gluvs on. The big bird came back an started screetchin an divin at ma heid. Wiznae in the mood fur eny nonsense, so I took a swipe at it with ma sord and chopt one of its wings aff; bird fell intae the rivir an floated off screetchin and flappin. The guy on the rok startit flappin as weel an rattlin his chanes. 'Aw, never mind jimmy,' ah told him, and got back down aff the rok.
Nae pier, nuthin. Stood lookin out across the rivir an thinkin about havin a drink from it.
My first is in lad, but never in lass,
My second's in case and also impasse;
My centre is paired -
'Just you shut the fuk up,' ah told the dirk, shaking it in frunt ov ma face, coz ah woz ded annoyed that ah didnae seem tae be gettin enywhare an ma heid wiz stil ded sair.
His first is in coracle, but oracle, no;
His next is in ship but not Limpopo.
Third's in Golden Apple but not Golden Fleece,
Fourth is in Forth, not Peloponnese.
Fifth's not in firth but -
'Anuthir peep oot aw you ye wee basturt an youl be talkin to the crabs and the fishes, right?' ah sed to the dirk, but then ah saw this punter in sum kinda oary boat cumin throogh the mist. Ugly looking big basturd dressed aw in blak rags soay wiz. Stannin up in the boat wi his arms crossd lookin ded hotty. Couldnae see how the boat wiz movin; probly majic, ah dare say. He grounds the boat on the shoar beside me an ah got on. He holds oot hiz haund. Ah shook it. 'The fare littil man,' he sez, still holdin oot his hand. Aw-aw, ah thoght.
Took oot ma sord; ye canny fuk aboot wi these weerd forrin punters. Put the tip at his throate; he didnae seem botherid though. 'You Karen?' ah sed. 'Charon,' he sez, like he wiznae cayrin. 'Well ah havnae got eny muny on me pal, so how about just put it on the slate, OK?' The big fella wiznae havin it though. Shakes his heid. 'There should be coins on your eyes; all the dead must have the fare to pay the ferryman.' Grate, ah thoght; wun of them loup-holes. 'Ah, but ahm no deid,' ah tells the punter. He seamed to think about this. 'Security is so lax these days,' he sez, an size. 'Perhaps there is something you can do for me though, if you're handy with that lump of metal.' He ment the sord; ah coold tell. 'Whit ye wantin, pal?' ah sez.
So ah got ma sale doon the watter fur the price of a dug's heid; punter wanted the heid of this dug name uv Serry-bruce that lived on the far shoar, on the Ile of the Deid; sed the dug woold never miss it, an he needed a figure-heid fur his roary-boat, furbye. Pritty weerd sort of thing to ask fur if ye ask me, but ah suppose peepil get a bit ecksentric and daft, stuk out here in the stiks.
Misty an dark on the uthir side ov the river as wel. Left Karen stannin in his boat an went off up the roade towards this big sorta palace thing on a cliff, keepin an eye open for this big dug Serry-bruce. Just as weel ah did; basturt jumpt me in this big coartyard place right on the clifside. Fukin thing had three heids! Snarlin and droolin it wiz. Saw whit the big fella ment about it no missin a heid. Lopped one affnae problem, wunderin how meny licences ye'd need for this thing; wan or three? Then duz the basturdin hownd no go an grow back the heid ahd just cut aff? Aw, fuk this, ah thoght.
His first is in canine, but in feline, not;
His next is in teeth and also garotte,
The third is in bark but not there in bite,
While the fourth's -
'Here boy! Fetch!' ah shoutit at the big dug, an took the wee dirk oot while it wiz still jibberin away an threw it over the cliff. The dug fell fur it.
Lookd over the clif and saw Serry-bruce hit the roks down at the bottim. Ded pleased with masell so ah woz, until the fukin heid ahd just cut aff went rollin over the edge right beside me; made a grab fur it but it fell doon an splatterd ovir the stanes at the bottim of the cliff too. Basturt! ah thought. Loss me wee dirk too; set offintae the big palace in a no very good mood. It wiz ded dark inside. Ah couldnae hav been lookin whate ah wiz goin coz a giv ma heid a terribil dunt on some ded low doorway; startit seein stars; it wiz like buttin a marble statyou or sumthin, so it woz. Could hardly see; think ma heid wiz bleedin too, blud gettin in ma eyes. Ah wiz blunderin about an tryin to feel whare the hell a wiz, bumpin intae things and swayrin an cursin an blindin an that. Next thing ah knew thare's this hissin and the sound ov arrers shootin past ma heid an skitein aff pillers an waws an the stanp flare. Ah still coold hardly see, but ah coold just aboot make oot sum funny-lookin basturt in the shadows, hissin at me an tryin to shoot arrers intae me. Oh fuk, ah thought. Wish ah still had that wee dirk with me.
Her first is in limestone, but not lapilli,
Her next is in ossiferous, but not ossify.
The third's in demand, but -
'Stop fukin jibberin an cum here!' Ah just aboot saw the wee dirk floatin near ma haund; grabbed it an threw; then dyeved fur the flare. Whoever wiz makin the hissin noyse sort of made a stranglin, chokin sound, then stoppt. Went ovir an had a look at this horribil lookin wuman that had been slingin these arrers at me; still couldnae see propir, but ye shoold hav seen the state ov her hare; tolk about rats tales! Couldnae hav washed it in years. Left her lyin fayce down in her own blud; the wee dirk was stuk in her throate; ah pullt it out. Sware that horribul wimins blud wiz burny, like asid or sumhim. Nevir mind, ah thoght; keep lookin fur the Sleepin Byooty.
'Aw wait a fukin minnit!'
Bombed oot agen! Whit had happened was Id fynelly found this wee sorta chamber thing; only place in the whole palace with anythin in it; rest wiz empty. Nae mair horribil wumin or dirty grate dugs wi two meny heeds, but nae tressure eyethir. Ah coold tell this wiz all goantae be anuthir toatil wayste of time an ah wuznae very pleased alredy, but at leest, ah thought, there shoold be this byootyfull sleepin lassy; ment tae be ded luvly; suppoasd to wake up with a kiss; whit ahm goantae giv her shoold make her reelyfukin lively, ah thoght.
But its a man! 'Aw fuk!' Just a room an a man lyin in bed, all white-faced an asleep. There's these big things like metal chests on theyre sides all clustered around him an wee bit things like strings attached tae him. Fuk aw else. Ahm about to slit the basturts throate just on generil principils when this bit ov the waw suddenly starts talkin to me, an this paintin appears on it, only the paintin moves! Its a wumin's fayce; a no-bad lookin lassy with red hair. 'Don't,' she sez. 'Who the fuk are yoo?' ah asks her, no killin the guy but goan up tae this pictcher an tolkin tae it. 'Don't kill him,' the lassy sez. Ah tap the pictcher but it sounds like glass. Ah go intae the room behind it, but its empty tae; damn things no a windy or anyhin like that. 'Why no? Why shouldnae ah kill him?' ah asked the womin. 'Because he will become you; you will kill yourself and he will live again, in your body. Just leave now, please. Don't look at the Medusa's face, and don't take the -' then the pictcher goes all funny an her voyce disappeeres; sounds like that horribil womin hissin. Ah gave the screen a dunt with the end of ma sord but it just broke. Got a bit of glass right on the heid; startit bleedin agen. 'Aw cum on,' ah sez, wipin the blud off ma brows. Turned to go, then ah saw this wee gold thing like a statue of a big frog or sumthin, sittin on a windy-ledje. Liftit it up an it felt hevy enuoph to be gold, so I put it in ma breeks pocket an desided it wiz time to shoot the craw, like they say. Left the bampot lyin in the bed toatally unmollested; seemed half deid enyway so what the fuk. Thohgt aboot lookin for the lassy in the pictcher, but ah wiz gettin tired an ah still hadnae had anythin tae eat or drink so ah deside, time tae go hame. Went back through the dark bit an nearly tripped ovir the body ov the horribil wumin. Remembered Karen; thoght there probly widnae be much left of eny wan of that damn dugs heids evin if ah coold get doon tae the bottim of the cliff; so ah cut aff the horribil wumin's heid an slung it ower ma shoulder. Her herr wiz like sneks, ahm no kiddin.
Got bak doon tae whare Karen wiz waiting in the oary boat, aw tall dark and ugly an still wi his erms crossd an lookin ded hotty an dissdanefool. 'Haw Karen,' ah sed. 'The dug wiznae thare; will this wumin's heid dae insted, aye?' Ah held the horribil wumin's heid up an waved it at him. The guy froze. Ye widnae credit it; basturt turned tae stone right in frunt of ma eyes. Big buggir went strate throo the botom of his boat like a statyou an settled on the sand unnerneeth; the roary boat sank around him. 'Aw fur fuk's saik? ah shoutit, an threw the horribil wumin's heid doon intae the watter. Just ma fukin luk, eh? Whyse it happin tae me? I thoght. Sat doon on the shore an just aboot felt like greetin. Just wiznae ma day, ah desided; nae luk at oil.
Then ah thoght I herd a noyse cumin from ma pockit; took oot the wee goldin statyou an lookt at it. Stil lookd sortof like a frog, though it seamed to have wings or sumthin on its bak. Enyway, ah looked at it, then at the watter, an I thoght; whit the hell, ah'll swim it. Had tae leeve the majic armer an ma new curiearse an that; ah put the sord over ma back tied to ma belt, with the belt loopd rownd the wee golden statyou as well, then ah waded intae the watter and startit swimmin. Still had ma good socks on, wi the majic dirk stuck down wun. Canny swim proper like, but ah can dae the doggy-paddle, ye ken? Got tae the far bank eventually. The watter in the rivir didnae tayste too bad, an ah woz thirsty enyway. Stood on the far bank neer the big rok whare the man was chaned up. Nae sign of the ded eegil. Bloak on the rok wiz deid too thogh; sumthin inside him seemed to have swelled up an burst oot ov him, all ovir the place, like wun of them cancres or whitevir. Lookt like livir. The wee gold statyou seamed to make anuthir noise, just ded faint like. Ah wundered if it really woz sayin sumthin or weathir it wiz just the dunt on the heid ahd got earlier maykin me heer voyces. Stil, the wee thing sounded like it was maikin a noyse. Ah held it up tae ma ear. That woz ma big mistaik.
'Well my boy, that was damned decent of you to come and rescue me from the infernal regions. Didn't think the Sleeping Beauty dream-telepathy would work, between worlds; or that you'd make it. Should have known you'd easily pass for a shade though; you were never exactly brilliant at the best of times, were you? You know I'd swear these rocks look metamorphic, not igneous ... well, come on my little Orpheus, let's get you out of here before you get yourself turned into a pillar of peppercorns or whatever. I suggest -'
(An ahm thinkin Aw naw)
His first is in -
'Oh good grief, a bardic knife-missile. How on earth or anywhere else did you come to get hold of that? Or did it get hold of you? Whatever; if there's one thing I can't stand it's machines that talk back: SILENCE!'
An its mooth was shut. Not anuthir peep from the dirk. But the wee golden frog that ahd held up neer ma ear isnae gold enymore, an its sittin on ma showder now an lookin like a wee cat wi wings an its voyce sounds awfy -
'Familiar?' It sez, 'Why, my boy, that's absolutely correct!'
'Aw shite!'
An abandoned searching ... the smell of salt and rust. Darkness down here, buried under the structure like something thrown away, wandering through the light and shade within the sound of the sea ...
I wake slowly, still immersed in the barbarian's rough thoughts, my thoughts entangled. Soft grey light seeps round the edges of the shutters into this wide and cluttered space, outlining the shrouded furniture and feeding my struggling consciousness as though it were a growing shoot struggling out of the clinging clay.
The cold white sheets are twisted around me like ropes; dozily I try to roll over, to become comfortable, but cannot. I am trapped, tied down; panic fills me in an instant, and suddenly I'm awake, cold and sweating and sitting up in the bed, wiping my face and looking round the room's dim quietness.
I open the window shutters. The sea surges round the rocks thirty feet below. I leave the door to the bathroom open so that I can hear its slow roaring breath while I bathe.
I breakfast in a modest bar off the Concourse Edgar. Waiters swipe at nearby table with long white cloths. Seagulls call and circle through the air, crowding round an out-jutting building, where kitchen scraps are being thrown out. The wings of the birds flash white; the cloths of the waiters crack and flap across the tables. I came here via room 306 to see if there was any mail for me; nothing. The sheet metal works screamed below. I linger over my last cup of coffee.
I wander from one side of the bridge to the other. Most trawlers now have two barrage balloons. Some balloons must be anchored directly to the seabed; orange buoys mark where their cables meet the waves.
I have a sandwich and a waxpaper cup of tea for lunch, sitting on a bench looking up-river. The weather changes, growing colder under a sky gradually becoming overcast. It was early spring when I was washed up here; now the summer is almost over. I wash my hands in the rest room of a tram station and take a tram - hard class - to the section where the lost library should be. I search and search, I try every elevator shaft there is, but none contains the L-shaped lift I'm looking for, or the old attendant. My enquiries meet with blank looks.
The surface of the firth is grey now, like the sky. The barrage balloons strain at their cables. My legs hurt from climbing stairs. Rain spatters against the dirty glass of the high corridors where I sit and try to regain my strength.
Beneath the summit of the bridge, in a dark, dripping corridor, I find a pool of small white balls lying under a broken skylight. The balls have a dimpled surface and feel very hard. As I stand there another ball comes flying through the broken skylight and drops to the floor of the corridor. I drag a moth-eaten chair from an alcove, put it under the skylight and climb up, sticking my head through the broken pane.
In the distance there is a tall old man with white hair. He wears plus-fours, a jumper and a cap. He is swinging a long thin club at something in front of his feet. A white ball comes sailing through the air towards me.
'Fore!' the man shouts; at me, I think. He waves; the ball bounces near the skylight. He takes his cap off and stands, hands on hips, looking at me. I get down off the chair and find a stairwell leading to the summit. When I get there, there is no sign of the old man. The trawler is there though, surrounded by workmen and officials. It is lying beneath a damaged radio tower, the deflated barrage balloons hanging over the girders nearby like broken wings. It is raining and blowing hard; oilskins and great-coats flap and glisten.
Early evening, dull and wet; my feet are sore and my stomach rumbles. I buy another sandwich and eat it on the tram. It is a long and tiring walk down the monotonously spiralling steps to the Arrols' old apartment. My legs ache by the time I get to the right floor. I feel like a thief in the deserted corridor. I hold the apartment's small key in front of me like a tiny dagger.
The apartment is cold and dark. I switch on a few lights. The grey waters crash white outside; a damp salt smell fills the chill rooms. I close the windows I left open this morning and lie down on the bed, just for a moment, but fall asleep. I go back to the moor where impossible trains chase me into narrow tunnels. I watch the barbarian stalk an underworld of pain and torment; I am not him, I am chained to the walls, crying out to him... he lopes on, dragging his sword. I am on the revolving iron bridge again, pounding for ever over the rusting torus through which the river flows. Running and running in the rain until my legs ache -
I wake again, damp with sweat, not rain. My legs feel tense, cramped. A bell rings. I look groggily round for a phone. The bell rings again, twice, and I realise it is the door. 'Mr Orr? John?'
I get off the bed and smooth my hair down. Abberlaine Arrol stands in the doorway in a long dark coat, grinning like a mischievous schoolgirl. 'Abberlaine, hello, come in.'
'How are you, John?' she sweeps in, looking round the lit room then turning, lifting her head to me, 'All right here?'
'Yes, thank you. Can I offer you one of your own chairs?' I close the door.
'You can offer me one of our wines to drink,' she says, laughing; she spins round once on one foot, sending the coat belling out. A heady odour of some musky perfume and drink flows past me. Her eyes sparkle. 'Over there.' She points to a chest, half covered by a white sheet. 'I'll get some glasses.' She heads for the kitchen.
'That was a rather sudden departure last night,' I say, opening the chest; it contains racks of wines and spirits. Clinking noises come from the kitchen.
'What was?' she says, coming back with two glasses and a corkscrew.
I select something not too old and precious-looking from the wines. 'I was taking a look round the place and when I came back in here, you were gone.' She hands me the corkscrew, looking mystified.
'Was I?' she says vaguely. Her brows crease. 'Oh dear.' She smiles, shrugs, flops down onto a sheet-covered couch. She is still wearing her coat, but I can see black-stockinged legs, black high heels and a touch of red at throat and coat hem. 'I've been partying,' she explains.
'Really?' I open the wine.
'Hmm. Want to see my outfit?'
'Why not?'
She stands, handing me the glasses. She unbuttons the long black coat, sweeps it from her shoulders and throws it over a chair. She pirouettes.
She is wearing a bright red clinging satin dress; it is knee length, but slashed to the top of her thigh. As she turns I see a slim length of white flesh between the dense black of stocking top and an edge of black lace above. The dress has a high neck which almost conceals a thin black choker. The shoulders are padded, the bust ... not.
Abberlaine Arrol stands, hands on hips, facing me. Her arms are bare, and a dark down on them has the effect of edging them in black. Her carefully made-up face looks amused; we are sharing a joke. Suddenly she turns and digs in a coat pocket, pulling out what at first I take to be another pair of stockings; they are matching gloves though. She pulls them on, almost to her shoulders. She chuckles from deep in her chokered throat, does another pivoting turn. 'What do you think?'
'I take it this wasn't a formal party?' I pour the wine.
'Sort of fancy-dress; I went as a loose woman but I got tight.' She holds her hand up in front of her mouth as she laughs. She curtsies when she takes her glass.
'Well, you look stunning, Abberlaine,' I tell her soberly (another curtsy). She sighs and runs a hand through her hair, then turns, walking away with measured steps, tapping an old tall cupboard of some dark, heavily varnished wood, running her long gloved fingers over it; she drinks her wine. I watch her as she moves round the covered and uncovered furniture of the room, pulling open doors, looking in drawers, lifting the corners of sheets, rubbing her hand over dusty glass-fronts and stroking the lines of inlays, all the time humming and taking small sips from her glass. I feel forgotten for a moment, but not insulted.
'I hope you don't mind me coming here," she says, blowing dust off a standard lamp's shade.
'Of course not. It's nice to see you.'
She turns; that smile again. Then she looks, frowning, at the grey sea and rainclouds beyond the long windows, and puts her hands to her bare upper arms, still holding her glass. She sips from it; it is a curious, oddly touching action; a small, snuggling, almost childish gesture, quite unconsciously beguiling. 'I'm cold.' She turns to look at me, and there is something almost mournful about her grey eyes. 'Can you close the shutters? It looks so cold out there. I'll put the fire on, shall I?'
'Of course.' I put my glass down and go to the shutters, slow-slamming the tall wooden boards over the dark day; Abberlaine persuades an old, hissing gas fire to light, then squats down on her haunches in front of it, gloved hands held out to it. I sit on a sheet-shrouded chair nearby. She watches the flames. The fire hisses.
After a while, she seems to wake from some daydream, and says, still looking at the fire, 'Did you sleep all right?'
'Yes I did, thank you; very comfortable.' She has left her glass lying on the tile fire surround; she lifts it, drinks. Her stockings have a criss-cross design, small Xs within larger Xs; a stretched lettering of sheer material, moulded to her legs in curved patterns of stress; pulling here, lightened by the shown flesh beneath; relaxing there, where the stockings go dark, the compressing grammar of those Xs and Xs densed over the girl's pale skin.
'Good,' she says, quietly. She nods slowly, still fire-fascinated, the red dress reflecting the yellow-orange flames like a ruby mirror. 'Good,' she repeats.
The warmth of the fire heats her skin; the smell of her perfume builds slowly in the air between us. She breathes in deeply, holds it, then sighs out, still staring at the hissing fire.
I drain my glass, pick up the bottle; I go over to the girl and sit beside her to fill her glass and mine. Her perfume is sweet and strong. She comes down from her haunches to sit on the floor, legs to one side, one arm behind her, supporting her. She watches me fill the glasses. I put the bottle down, watching her face; her lipstick is slightly smudged in one corner. She sees me looking. One eyebrow arches slowly. I say, 'Your lipstick ...'
It is the handkerchief which she had monogrammed I take from my pocket. She leans forward to let me wipe the offending red mark. I feel the breath from her nose on my fingers as I touch her lips through the fabric.
'There.'
'I'm afraid,' she says, 'I left some on quite a few collars.' Her voice is quiet and low, almost a murmur.
'Oh,' I say, mockingly disapproving, shaking my head, 'I wouldn't go kissing collars.'
She shakes her head. 'No?'
'No.' I come closer to her, to gently touch her full glass with mine.
'What, then?' Her voice does not go quieter; it takes on another resonance instead; conspiratorial, knowing, even ironic. This is invitation enough; I haven't exactly thrown myself at her.
I kiss her, just lightly, watching her eyes (and she kisses back, lightly, and watches mine). She tastes faintly of wine and something savoury; also a hint of cigar smoke. I press forward a little and put my free hand to her waist, feeling her warmth through the smooth red satin; the fire hisses busily behind me, warming my back. I move my mouth slowly over hers, tasting her lips, brushing her teeth; her tongue comes out to meet mine. She moves, straining away to one side for a moment so that I think she is drawing away (her brows crease), but she is just reaching for a place to put her glass down; then she holds me by the shoulders, eyes closing. Her breath comes a little quicker against my cheek and I kiss her more deeply, abandoning my own glass on a chair-arm.
Her hair is fine and smells of that musky perfume, her waist feels even more slim than it looks, her breasts move within the red dress, held but not confined by something she wears beneath the satin. Her stockings are smooth to the touch, her thighs warm; she hugs me, grips me, then pushes away, puts her hands to either side of my head and looks at me, her bright gaze going from eye to eye. Her nipples form little red mounds under the satin. Her mouth is wet, smeared red. She gives a little shuddering laugh, swallows, still breathing hard. 'I didn't think you would be so... passionate, John,'she says, through-her breath.
'I didn't think you would be so easily fooled.'
A little later: 'Here. Here. Not the bed, it'll be too cold: here.'
'Is there anything you have to do first?'
'What? Oh, no, no. Just ... oh come on, take that damn jacket off, Orr ... Shall I leave this stuff on?'
'Well, why not?'
Abberlaine Arrol's body is encased in blackness, strapped and ribbed with obsidian silks. Her stockings attach to a sort of front-laced silk corset; another pattern of Xs form a cantilevered stripe from pubis to just below where a separate brassiere of sheer silk, transparent as her stockings, cups her neat, firm breasts; she shows me where it unfastens in front; her cami-knickers - black gauze over the deeper black curls - stay on, loose enough. We sit together, kissing slowly, not moving yet, after I first enter her; she sits there upon me, stockinged legs round my rump, long-gloved arms beneath mine, gripping my shoulders.
'Your bruises,' she whispers (I am quite naked), stroking the places where I was kicked and punched with a tantalising softness that raises my hairs.
'Never mind,' I tell her, kissing her breasts (her nipples are almost carnation-pink, quite thick and long, with little indented creases, pink puckerings, at the tip; the aureoles smooth, raised and round), 'forget about them.' I pull her back so that I lie on my pile of discarded clothes and her red dress.
I move slowly under her, watching her, outlined against the flames of the hissing gas fire. Abberlaine hangs in the air above me, riding me, her hands on my chest, her head down, the parted brassiere dangling like her thick, black hair.
Her whole body is contained by the lingerie, an absurd trapping on her, who could need nothing else to make her more desirable save breath itself; just a moving force behind those bones, that flesh, and the mind that wears and inhabits all she is. I think of the women in the barbarian's tower.
Xs; that pattern within a pattern, covering her legs, another rneshing beyond our own. The zig-zagging lace of her camiknickers, the criss-crossing ribbon holding the silk across her body; those straps and lines, the sheathed arms like stockinged legs themselves; a language, an architecture. Cantilevers and tubes, suspension ties; the dark lines of the suspenders crossing her curved upper thigh, under the knickers and down to the thick black stocking-top. Caissons, structural tubes, the engineering of these soft materials to contain and conceal and reveal that softness within.
She cries out, arches her spine, head thrown back, hair hanging between her shoulder blades, her fingers splayed, arms in a V behind her, extended and straining. I lift her, suddenly conscious of myself within her inside that structure of dark materials, and as I strain, taking her weight, suddenly in that moment I am aware of the bridge above us, towering into the grey evening with its own patterns and criss-crossing and massed Xs, its own feet and legs and balanced stresses, its own character and presence and life; above us, above me, pressing down. I struggle to support that crushing weight - Abberlaine arches further, shouting; grips my ankles with her hands - then comes down groaning like some crumpling structure, my own invasive addition to the girl's body (structural member, indeed) pulsing with its own brief beat.
Abberlaine collapses on top of me, panting and relaxing; limbs sprawled. She lies on me, breathing hard, perfumed hair tickling my nose.
I ache. I am exhausted. I feel like I have just fucked the bridge.
I stay inside her, softening but not withdrawing; after a while she squeezes me from inside. It is enough. We start to move again, more slowly, more softly,
Later, in the bed which was cold but which warms quickly, I carefully remove all the black material (part of its effect, we decide, is to more exactly delineate areas for a concentrated programme of caresses). This final time takes the longest, and contains, like the best works, many different movements and changes of tempo. Its climax chills me though; something makes it worse than joyless, makes it frightening, terrifying.
She is beneath me. Her arms grip around my sides and back; towards the end she wraps her slim, strong legs round me, pushing at my rump and the small of my back.
My orgasm is nothing; a detail from the glands, an irrelevant signal from the provinces. I shout out, but not with pleasure, not even from pain. That gripping, this pressure, this containing of me as though I am the body to be dressed, enfolded, strapped and parcelled, lined and laced, sends something crashing through me: a memory. Ancient and fresh, livid and rotten at once; the hope and fear of release and capture of animal and machine and meshing structures; a start and an end.
Trapped. Crushed. Little death, and that release. The girl holds me, like a cage.
'I must go.' She holds out her hand as she comes back from the fireside with her clothes. I take her hand, squeeze it. 'Wish I could stay,' she says, looking sad, clutching her few thin pieces of clothing to her pale body.
'That's all right.'
A few hours. Her family expect her now. She dresses, whistling, unselfconscious. A foghorn sounds from far away. It is quite dark beyond the shuttered windows.
One quick trip to the bathroom; she finds a comb, brandishing it triumphantly. Her hair is hopelessly tangled, and she has to be patient, sitting, coat on, on the edge of the bed while I carefully comb her hair, making it smooth again. She digs into a coat pocket and comes out with a small pack of thin cigars and a book of matches. Her nose wrinkles.
'This whole place smells of sex,' she announces, taking out a cigar.
'It doesn't, does it?'
She turns to look at me, holding out the pack of cigars; I shake my head. 'Hmm. Disgusting behaviour,' she pronounces, lighting up. I comb her hair, slowly removing the entangled results. She blows smoke-rings, grey Os, towards the ceiling. She puts one hand onto mine, moving it along with the comb. She sighs.
A kiss before she goes, face washed, breath fragrant with the grey smoke. 'I'd stay if I could,' she tells me.
'Don't worry. You were here for a while; you came here in the first place.' I would like to say more but I cannot. That terror of being crushed, of being trapped, is with me still, like an echo deep inside me, still resonating. She kisses me.
When she has gone, I lie for a while in the large, cooling bed, listening to the foghorns. One horn is quite close; I may not be able to sleep tonight, if the fog doesn't clear. There is a faint, fading hint of smoke in the air. On the ceiling the discoloured rings on the plaster look like imprinted smoke-rings branded there by Abberlaine Arrol's cigar. I breathe in deeply, trying to catch the last traces of her perfume. She is right; the room does smell of sex. I am thirsty and hungry. It is only mid-evening; I get up and have a bath, then dress slowly, feeling pleasantly tired. I am putting the lights out, front door already open, when I see the glow coming from a doorway across the cluttered room. I close the door, go to investigate.
It is an old library, shelves bare. There is a television screen at one end, switched on. My heart seems to beat somewhere in my throat, but then I realise the picture is not the usual one. The screen is white, a textured blankness, I go to switch it off, but before I can, something dark closes over the view, then withdraws. A hand. The picture shakes, then settles on the man in the bed. A woman moves away from the camera; she goes to stand near the edge of the screen. She lifts a brush and pulls it slowly through her hair, staring ahead at at what must be a mirror on the wall. The view of the man in the bed is altered only slightly otherwise; a chair has been shifted, and the bed is not quite as neat as it was.
After a while the woman puts the brush down, leans forward, one hand to her brow, then pulls back again. She picks up the brush and moves away, passing in a dark blur beneath the camera. I don't get a good look at her face.
My mouth is dry. The woman reappears at the bedside, wearing a dark coat. She stands looking down at the man, then bends and kisses him on the forehead, smoothing some hair away from his brow as she does so. She picks a bag up from the floor, and leaves. I switch the set off.
There is a phone on the wall of the kitchen. The noise is there, not quite regular, perhaps a little faster than before.
I leave the apartment, take a lift to the train deck.
It is foggy; lights make yellow and orange cones out of the thick vapour. Trams and trains pass, hooting and clanking. I wander along the walkway on the outside of the bridge, hand on the tall rail at the walkway's lip. Fog blows softly through the girders; foghorns sound from the hidden sea.
People pass by, mostly railmen. I smell steam within the fog, and coal smoke and diesel fumes. In a railway workers' shed, uniformed men sit round tables, reading papers, playing cards, drinking from large mugs. I walk on. The bridge shudders beneath my feet, and a crashing, grinding, metallic noise comes from somewhere ahead. The noise echoes through the bridge, reflecting from the secondary architecture, bouncing through the fog-curdled air. I walk through a dense silence, then the foghorns sound, one after another. I hear trains and trams nearby slowing, stopping. Ahead, sirens and klaxons burst into life.
I walk by the very edge of the bridge, through the glowing fog. My legs ache again, my chest throbs dully as though in sympathy. I think of Abberlaine; the memory of her ought to make me feel better, but it does not. It was in a haunted apartment; the ghosts of that mindless noise and that nearly unchanging picture were there all the time, a hand's notion away, a switch-turning away, probably even when I first kissed her, even while her four limbs gripped me and I cried out in terror.
The trains are silent now; nothing has passed me in either direction for some minutes. Klaxons and sirens compete with the baying foghorns.
Yes, very sweet and good indeed, and I would love to dwell on that fresh memory, but something in me will not let this happen; I try to recreate the smell and feel and warmth of her, but all I can recall is that woman calmly brushing her hair, looking into an invisible mirror and brushing, brushing. I try to remember the way the room looked, but see it only in black and white, from up in one corner, just one bed in the clutter, and a man in it.
A train heads past me in the fog, lights flashing, heading towards the still-wailing sirens.
What now, anyway? Oh, more, much more of the same, that freshly sated part of my mind says; nights and days of that, weeks and months of that, please. But what, really? Another distraction, something else besides lost libraries and incomprehensible aircraft missions and faked dreams?
Either way, any of the ways, I can't see much good coming of it.
I walk on, into the rolling mists, into the gathering noise of sirens and shouts and crackling fires of a train wreck.
I see the flames first, rising through the fog like thick, quivering masts. Smoke rolls like a solid shadow in the mist. People shout, lights flash. Some railwaymen pass me, running, heading towards the wreck. I can see the rear of the train that passed me a few minutes ago; it is an emergency train, loaded with cranes and hoses and hospital cars. It moves slowly down the track, disappering behind the freight cars of another train two tracks away, nearer me; the first few freight cars are normal, still on the rails, but the next three have come off, their wheels lying in the metal troughs at the edge of the rails, neatly caught, as the bridge designers intended. The carriage beyond these lies diagonally across the tracks, its axles straddling a rail each. After that, each succeeding car is more damaged than the one before. The flames still rise ahead; I am near to their source, I can feel the heat beating through the fog onto my face. I wonder if I ought to retrace my steps; I'm probably not wanted here. In the fog it is confusing, but I think I am near the end of this section, where the bridge narrows like a distended hour-glass on its side, down to the bridge-within-a-bridge which is the linking span.
Cars are spilled across the tracks here, where the network of points leads the tracks within the main section of the bridge towards the funnel-neck of the linking span, where only a few lines cross to the next section. The heat on this side of the crashed train is quite fierce; jets of water from the emergency train on the far side of the wreck arc over the burning freight cars, hissing on their stoved-in wood and metal frames. Railmen with extinguishers move to and fro, others are unrolling canvas hoses and connecting them up to hydrants. The flames roll and shudder; the fires hiss as the water hits. I keep on, walking faster to get away from the heat of the flames. Water runs in the wheel troughs and draining channels of the deck, steaming as it goes beneath the pounding heat of the flames, adding its own vapour to the fog and the rising black smoke. Something has caught light above where the train burns, and drips molten fire onto the furnace of smashed cars below.
I have to put my hands to my ears when I pass one of the sirens, wailing away into the fog from a post by the track side. More railmen scatter past me, shouting. The fire is at my back now, roaring into the cluttered girder space. In front, the smashed train lies on its side, crumpled and askew, thrown across the tracks like something dropped from above, like a dead snake, the frames of the broken cars its fractured ribs.
Beyond that another train, larger and with long, windowed carriages rather than low slab-sided freight cars. Men swarm over its torn surfaces where they merge with the long, still solid shape of a freight locomotive, its snout buried in one of the tall carriages. I see people being pulled from the wreckage. Stretchers lie by the track; more klaxons and horns sound nearby, obliterating the foghorns below. I am halted by the sheer manic energy of this desperate scene, watching the rescue operation. More people are brought, moaning and bloody, out of the passenger train. An explosion bursts from the wreckage behind me; men run towards this new scene of catastrophe. The wounded are being taken away on stretchers.
'You!' One of the men shouts at me; he is kneeling by a stretcher, holding a woman's bloody arm while another man ties a tourniquet higher up. 'Give us a hand; take one end of a stretcher, can't you?'
There are ten or twelve stretchers by the side of the tracks; men run up and ferry them away, but many people are left lying, waiting their turn. I step over the rail, from walkway to trackside, go over to the stretchers, and help a railman carry one. We take the first stretcher to the emergency train, where medical orderlies take it from us.
There is another explosion in the wrecked freight train. When we come back with the next casualty, the emergency train has been moved back up the track, away from the danger of explosions; we have to carry the stretcher with a moaning, bleeding man on it two hundred yards to the end of the freight train, where orderlies relieve us. We run back to the passenger train.
The next casualty may well be dead already; he pours blood as soon as we lift him. We are directed by a railway official, told to take him not to the emergency train but to another train further down the track, in the opposite direction.
It is an express, held up by the crash and taking some of the victims on board before ferrying them to the nearest hospital. We take the stretcher on board. In what looks like a soft-class dining-car, a doctor is going from victim to victim. We put our bloody charge down over a white tablecloth, splattering blood, as the doctor reaches us. He presses down on the man's neck, holding it; I had not even noticed that was where the blood was coming from. The doctor looks at me; a young man. He looks frightened.
'Hold this,' he tells me, and I have to put my hand to the man's neck while the doctor goes away for a while. My fellow stretcher-bearer runs off. I am left holding the faint pulse of the man on the dinner-table, his blood flowing over my hands when I relax or try to get a better purchase on the ragged patch of skin torn from his neck. I grip, I press, I do what I am told, and I look at the face of the man, pale with blood loss, unconscious but still suffering, free from whatever mask he ever chose to meet the world with, reduced to something pathetic and animal in his agony. 'OK, thanks.' The doctor comes back with a nurse; they have bandages, a drip, bottles and needles. They take over.
I walk away, through the whimpering wounded. I find myself in a passenger carriage, deserted and unlit. I feel faint and sit down for a moment, then when I get up can only stagger as far as the toilet at the end of the carriage. I sit down there, head pounding, lights in my eyes. I wash my hands while I wait for my heart to catch up with the demands my body is making on it. By the time I feel ready to stand again, the train is moving.
I go back to the dining-car as the train slows; nurses and auxiliaries from the hospital crowd in, taking the stretchers. I am told to get out of the way by three nurses and two auxiliaries clustering round a stretcher being taken towards the nearest door; an injured woman giving birth. I have to head back for the toilet.
And I sit there, thinking.
No one comes to disturb me. The whole train becomes very quiet. It shakes and jerks a couple of times, and I hear shouts outside the translucent window, but the interior is silent. I walk down to the dining-car; it is a different one, fresh and clean and smelling of polish. The lights go out. The white tables look ghostly in the light shed by the bridge outside, still wrapped in fog.
Should I get off now? The good doctor would want me to, Brooke would; so - I hope - would Abberlaine Arrol.
But for what? All I do is play games; games with the doctor, with Brooke, with the bridge, with Abberlaine. All very well, and with her quite sublime, save for that echoing horror ...
Do I go then? I could. Why not?
Here I am in a thing become place, the link become location, the means become end and route become destination ... and in this long, articulated symbol, phallic and poised between the limbs of our great iron icon. How tempting just to stay and so to go, to voyage out bravely leaving the woman at home. Place and thing and thing and place. Is it really so simple? Is a woman a place and a man just a thing?
Good heavens young-fellow-me-lad, of course not! Ho ho ho what a preposterous idea! It's all much more civilised than that ... Still, just because it seems so offensive to my taste, I suspect there might be something in it. So what do I represent then, sitting here, inside the train, within the symbol? Good question, I tell myself. Good question. Then the train moves again.
I sit at a table, watching the stream of carriages alongside; slowly we gain speed, leave the other train behind in its siding. We slow again, and I watch as we pass the place where the wreck took place. Jumbled freight cars litter the side of the track, twisted rails rear from the scored deck like so much bent wire, and smoking debris gutters in the drifting fog under bright arc lights. The emergency train lies a little way up the track, lights bright. The carriage shakes gently around me as the train gathers speed.
Lights flare through the fog; we flash through the main station of the section, past other trains, past local trams, through the lights of the streets and thoroughfares and their surrounding buildings. We are still gathering speed. Quickly the lights start to thin as we approach the section's far end. I watch the lights for a moment longer, then go to the end of the carriage, where the door is. I open the window and look out into the fog, tearing past the window with a roar itself patterned by the unseen structure of the bridge, echoing the train's headlong progress according to the density of girder work and added-on buildings around the track. The last few building lights fall astern; I work my hospital identity tag loose, pulling it slowly and painfully from my wrist, licking it when it sticks, finally hauling it off regardless, cutting myself.
Across the linking span. Still well within the range my identity bracelet allows me, of course. A little circlet of plastic with my name on it. My wrist feels odd without it, after all this time. Naked.
I throw it out of the window, into the fog; it is lost the instant it leaves my hand.
I close the window and go back to the carriage to rest, and see how far I'll get.