Looking Down (11 page)

The room was empty. There was the stirring of a diaphanous curtain at an open window, a single slipper on the floor, but she was not there – she simply wasn’t there. He was exposed in a room, facing rumpled bed covers, with feathers on the pillow, and she was not there.
Shit.
He was losing it, losing everything to an illusion. He stumbled towards the window.

‘You cunt.
’

The voice hissed from behind his back. He felt the cold shock of a sharp blade digging into his buttock. ‘You
bastard
.’

Steven stood very very still. He was so inclined; it came naturally. Everything about him shrivelled.

‘Oh Christ,’ she said. ‘Wrong bastard.’

The way she removed the knife hurt. Not that it had penetrated far, but it still hurt. It would bleed inside the Lycra and stick it to his leg. He regarded the tableau of the empty bed and continued to stay very very still, and slowly raised his arms above his head, pausing to pull the skullcap further over his forehead. It made a slight, snapping sound. She heard it and he felt the point of a blade in the small of his back. The erection died completely. This time the blade felt dangerously close to the base of his spine; he tried not to squirm.

‘Don’t move. Put your hands on your head. It’s a very sharp knife.’

The voice was harsh and calm, increasing his fear.

‘Sit on the bed. No, don’t, you might bleed. Sit on the window ledge. Slowly.
Go on
.’

He felt as if he was in a film; it was not a role he relished, and for all his fear there was a bewildering disappointment that he could not see her and the feeling of
zing
, dependent on seeing her, had temporarily gone. He turned and sat on the window ledge. The large sash window behind him was wide open and the material of the curtain tickled his hands. Sitting there with his hands above his head, unable to support himself, felt precarious. He tried to visualise the street below and knew it was a long way down. He was balanced on his small, muscular buttocks, one of them bleeding.

‘Keep your back straight. Don’t move your hands. Just
don’t.
’

He kept his eyes shut to assist his balance, holding his spine stiff, and then opened his eyes.

The sash of the gown was still knotted tight, but the gown itself was skewed sideways. The hair was a glorious mess. She held the knife in one hand, extended outwards, with her other hand gripping the elbow to keep her wrist steady. The knife was only a do-it-yourself Stanley knife with a tiny, triangular blade. They were indeed sharp but she couldn’t do much harm with that, although she could certainly hurt and scar. He felt marginally better, until he remembered how easy it would be to fall out of the window if she stuck it in him. She moved closer to him and he felt worse.

‘What do you want?’

You. I want you
 . . . 
ZING.

He could not speak.

‘What do you want before, before I cut your nose off?’

His voice emerged as a strangled whisper.

‘I’m only a burglar.’

‘How did you get in?’

‘Climbed through the window at the back.’

The high falsetto was part nerves, part disguise. He hoped it made him seem harmless.

‘Through the studio?’

‘If that’s what it is, yes.’

She started to laugh. It was a rich chuckle and did not go on long enough before it stopped and she adjusted her hold on the knife.

‘A
burglar?
Just what I need.’

She moved dangerously close, waving the knife with a steady hand.

‘A bloody burglar, hmm. How timely. Perhaps you were sent from heaven. Look, why don’t you just take it all and save me the trouble? Richard needs shaking up. I just don’t want the bastard being so comfy, OK? And I thought you were him, sneaking back for a quick poke to make everything all right. Take it all, and maybe we can start all over again. How soon can you move it?’

He was still trying to expel his own breath, and it felt like
umphh
, and he let it out, slower than slow.

‘Take
everything?
Oh, whenever.’

She adjusted the robe, tightened the sash, and was all business. With an hysterical gleam in the eye which showed she wasn’t. She was suddenly very pale with sculptured white cheekbones, vulnerable and lovely, even with the knife.

‘Oh Christ,’ she said.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Never could take drink. Lousy with it. Feel sick. Look, just take that sodding picture, for now, come back another time with a van, and we’ll forget the whole business. Just take the picture and get out.’

‘Which picture?’

‘The one on the easel, of course.’

She was a bit mad, and looking ill, and admitting weakness: now was the time. Steven braced himself, ready to spring, already planning the route out, thinking, I know what’s happened, she’s fallen asleep drunk, might not have set an alarm, might not have locked up, don’t want to hit her. She moved faster, dropping the knife and punching him hard in the stomach. His back sagged back through the window and he screamed, arms flailing and grabbing for the side of the window, feeling himself move out into space, carrying the scream with him. Then he felt his right arm grabbed. His head banged hard against the frame and he was hauled back just as he thought he was gone, was pushing himself forward until he was a crumpled heap on the floor. He did not know how he had got there. The sound of frightened, stertorous breathing filled the room. Steven no longer cared about the knife. He sat up, shakily, flexing the damaged hand. She was sitting back on the bed, panting, gazing at the hand.

‘Oh my God, I didn’t do that, did I?’

‘What, kill me?’

‘It wasn’t me took off your finger with this knife. was it? Did I do that?’

‘No, of course not. It’s been … like … that … since I was four.’

Perhaps it was relief made him smile. Or just the sight of her, which made it all come back with alarming force. Another perfect composition, the same colours, the same force field.
Woman Sitting
 . . . 
Zing.
He had been going to plead with her, threaten her, and what he said in his usual, pleasantly deep voice was: ‘You are absolutely one hundred per cent, drop-dead gorgeous.’

A profound silence fell. He could hear the ticking of the alarm clock by the bed. She looked at him, quite the most fearless woman he had ever encountered, increasingly lovely and inviolate. He would have gone to prison for life rather than strike her.
She sniffed, then eyed him up and down, the grin spreading over her face, and that chuckle beginning in her throat. The roving eye took in the shape of him and ended with the skullcap, which covered his head and furrowed his forehead, pushed his eyebrows together, making him squint.

‘And you look completely silly. Oh, bugger, wait a minute.’

She raced from the bed with her hand over her mouth into the en-suite bathroom. There was the sound of retching, of taps running, and groaning. Steven walked over to the window and shut it halfway down. She would need air, but not that much. By the time she came back into the room she was less pale, with pink patches appearing on her cheeks. She did a double-take when she saw him sitting on the window ledge, and her eyes went straight to the floor, where he had left the Stanley knife untouched, exactly where it had fallen. She sat back on the bed.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

The word startled him. It was, in the circumstances, so entirely inappropriate it almost overbalanced him. What was she, this divine creature, who apologised to someone who must have given her the fright of her life? Was she so schooled to please she said sorry for being sick to a thief? He felt desperately foolish and ashamed, and, perversely, still smarting from being told he looked silly. She still looked magnificent.

‘Don’t say that,’ he mumbled. ‘It’s me who should say that. Shouldn’t have done this. Sorry. I thought you’d have some big, hairy-chested man in here with you.’

She giggled.

‘If only. Now what was it you wanted?’

He cleared his throat.

‘I really only came to explore. There’s something I’m looking for, you see, and I thought you might have it . . .’

‘You
climbed
in?’ she asked.

‘I said so.’

‘Can you climb out?’

‘I suppose so, but I was rather relying on immobilising the alarm which doesn’t cover this bit, picking a lock if need be, I’m good at that, and going out the door. If that’s all right with you.’

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘But you’ve got to take that bloody awful picture. Is there anything else you’d like?’

He thought, sitting on the window ledge, one leg crossed over the other, with one foot wagging.

‘I hadn’t actually had a chance to look. I was rather distracted by you.’

He could no longer disguise his voice. The neutral accent would never give him away. The richness of her voice surprised him and added to her charm.

‘Another time, then,’ she said, getting to her feet, tapping his shoulder and leading the way out of the room. Her touch was electric through Lycra. His bum was stiff; the cap was still over his eyes. She would never know him again. He followed her into the vestibule bit where he had waited for
zing
, and watched as she went into the room through which he had entered and came back smartly with a small painting wrapped in a towel. She deposited it in his arms, and he stood awkwardly with his arms wrapped round the thing. She led him down the long corridor to the door, opened it and stood back from it.

‘There’s one of those buzzer release thingies for the front door, so I’ll give you two minutes to get out, buzz it and then it closes all by itself. So you’d better be quick, Mr Burglar. Just get rid of it. Goodnight.’

He went. There was no choice but to go, fumbling down endless stairs where he would otherwise have run, clutching the
thing
to his chest. And he did not want to climb. He was shaking like a leaf in rain and his muscles seemed an impediment, so he had to get out and breathe air and . . . On the bend of the wide stairs, level with Sarah’s door, at which he looked longingly and said no,
he heard voices. Oh Jesus, that gorgeous bitch had called for the cavalry, buzzed them in instead, and here they were, coming to collect him. A posse of boys in blue, quicker to respond to the calls of the rich than the poor, thundering upstairs to find a damsel in distress and a man in a silly cap halfway down with a stolen
thing
in his arms and no nerves in his whole body. Oh, shit.

Only it did not sound like the cavalry. It sounded furtive, a posse of people coming upstairs without putting on the lights. Sarah’s door to her smaller, almost forgotten flat was recessed, with a small security light next to the bell. He flattened himself against it, obscuring it, looking towards the dim light from the window which, at this point, also led into the well of the building and gave blurred, indistinct light. He imagined himself as a doorstop and crouched alongside Sarah’s door like a dead dog. She had a huge letterbox low in her door which he could feel through his shoulder blades. The movement towards him seemed to have paused on the stairs. Steven uncrouched, shoved the painting through the slit, pushed the surrounding towel after it, put the black gloves back on his hands and crouched again, with his gloved hands over his face, first and second finger V-signed, showing only his eyes.

Like the eyes of a cat on a country road, ready to reflect, if only there was light to reflect. The shuffling continued towards him and he had an inexplicable conviction, based on nothing at all, that it had nothing to do with him. The shaking stopped; he simply shrank. Inside the cap, his head was damp with sweat. Steven only ever sweated from his head. A posse rose up the stairwell into sight. The posse consisted of a couple, dragging the reluctant form of a girl by the armpits, while she grunted without making any more protest than non-cooperation, so that her feet dragged on the ground and the stairs barked her shins but she still stepped, one in three. Steven had done that stuff at school when he had been bullied, pretending to be hurt when he
wasn’t, but he knew he could not judge if this was voluntary. There was a slight
clink
from a bright chain round her neck. He wondered if she was thumped or drugged, opened the slit of his fingers. Level with his own, he caught the other set of eyes of the woman, dragging, pretending to be dragged or being dragged upstairs. Minty. The eyes met: hers blinked and closed; his remained open, so fixed he imagined them as spotlights. The posse of the couple, and the man in the rear with nothing to do but pick up Minty’s feet, wearily continued their dreary process out of sight.

It was Minty, even though he had not immediately remembered the name. The only thing he remembered about Minty was that she had a paintable face and a story and she was the same girl he had seen once, sitting forlornly with Fritz downstairs, and he had been briefly bored by Sarah talking about her. He had not shared her concern, could not see why the girl couldn’t just
go.
But the sight of a woman being dragged was shocking, sinister with overtones of rape and savagery, except for the fact they all looked so tired, more like a sullen family bringing home an errant daughter. They did not act as if they were embarking on any kind of party. It was more the fatigued footsteps of work being done en route to a funeral. Still, he stood and waited, outraged enough to race after them yelling
Oi, what do you think you’re doing?
until he realised what he was. The burglar in the building, looking one, dressed like one, with a skullcap on his head and a burglar’s implements strapped to his waist and stolen property shoved through a letterbox.

Steven raced downstairs to the empty foyer. The front door was unbudgeable smeared glass: he had missed the time slot the Vision had given him. She would not be standing by her own front door waiting to let him out, she would presume him long gone with relief . . . she would be putting that knife back under her feather-strewn pillow. His alternative clothes were round the
back by the dustbins. There was a way from here to there, but he could not think of it.