Virtue (40 page)

I tuck the card away in the letter rack on my desk, carry Henry upstairs to shoot the breeze with Harriet.

To my surprise, there’s someone already up there. Mike is back, sitting in his chair with a mug of coffee clutched in his hand. Blimey. I know I told him to come round any time, but I didn’t expect him to take me up on it
that
quickly. They’re chatting in easy tones, go ‘Hi’ without pausing when I come in. Harriet says, ‘Sleep okay?’ and I say, ‘Yeah. Like a sloth.’ Then, to Mike, ‘I didn’t hear you arrive.’ He sort of shrugs. You often don’t hear the doorbell from my room; I guess I must have been more asleep some of the time than I thought. ‘You look rough,’ I continue.

‘Mmm,’ says Harriet. ‘We ended up making a bit of a night of it.’

‘Four bottles of red wine,’ says Mike, ‘I think my head’s going to burst.’

I rattle the ibuprofen, which are still sitting on the coffee table alongside the CD cover. ‘Took some,’ he says.

‘I asked Mike if he’d like to stay for something to eat,’ says Harriet. ‘I hope that’s okay.’

I’m more than happy. PC Gillespie may be looking rough, but rough can suit a man. Today he’s wearing a black T-shirt that moulds over a nice torso which reveals itself to be built more for speed than lifting, and a pair of upper arms that make my knees go weak. They bulge like well-fed pythons, and the shirt, cut for the leanness of the body, is stretched beyond patience. He gives me a sheepish grin, looks a bit like a handsome Stan Laurel. Bless.

‘He can stay,’ I say.

‘Great,’ says Harriet. ‘Then he can set up the barbie.’

An hour later, we’ve realised that, competent though he may be in many departments, Mike Gillespie is absolutely pony at getting a fire going. Nothing works. I mean, I know the charcoal’s a bit damp from sitting out on the balcony, but, as I point out, a real man can make a fire from two sticks and a magnifying glass.

‘All right,’ says Mike. His face is purple from puffing on the tiny single flame he managed to produce for two minutes before it sobbed its last and died. ‘As you’re so clever, perhaps you’d like to try.’

I hunt through Harriet’s art supplies, find the white spirit and a lump of cotton wool.

‘No,’ says Mike. ‘You cannot be serious.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because people die in barbecue fires every week, that’s why.’

‘I think it’s out.’

‘It’s definitely out,’ says Harriet.

‘They’re about as famous last words as “Somebody lend me their lighter I can’t see where the smell of gas is coming from”.’

‘He’s quite sensible, our pet copper,’ I say to Harriet.

‘Very sensible,’ she replies.

‘Tell you what I’ll do,’ I say. ‘I’ll make cotton-wool balls and put some on and throw them on the barbie.’

‘Please don’t,’ Mike begs. He’s looking seriously worried now.

‘So what are we meant to do? Starve?’ I tease. Men are so sweet when they’re trying to look all brave in front of chicks.

‘You don’t have a grill?’

I laugh hollowly.

Harriet says, ‘I tried to heat up a pizza and fell asleep.’

I explain, ‘She got drunk and tried to heat up a pizza and passed out leaving the plastic salt pot on top of the stove. By the time I came home, there was melted plastic salt pot all over the grill and smoke everywhere.’

I put some white spirit on a wad of cotton wool. Stand just inside the doorway ready to throw it. ‘Please don’t,’ begs Mike.

‘Duck, cissy,’ I reply, and throw it.

Nothing happens.

‘See?’

I douse another wad, throw it again. It lands four or five inches from the first, settles on the coals.

‘I know what I’m doing—’ I start to say, turning towards him.

Whump!

A ball of flame shoots up from the barbie, making me jump. The wind is blowing towards the french windows, and carries a thick cloud of acrid black smoke into the room.

I swear. A lot. Slam the windows shut. ‘What else was there on those coals?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Harriet. ‘There’s loads of stuff out in that shed.’

We throw open the window on the other side, and the smoke gradually begins to clear. On the balcony, the conflagration dies back to a mild roar, settles to a healthy burn.

‘Please don’t do something like that again.’ Mike dabs exaggeratedly at his forehead. ‘I don’t know if my heart can take it.’

‘Aah, you big wuss.’ I elbow him in the ribs. Deliberately stay there for a second against his body. Yes, this may be a little forward of me, but Nige has gone now, and you know what they say happens to she who hesitates. ‘You’re going to have to develop a stronger constitution if you’re going to hang around with us, you know. If you’re really good, we’ll teach you how to make napalm out of diesel and soap.’

‘Stinks, though, doesn’t it?’ says Harriet. ‘Petrolly.’

‘That’s just left over in your nose. It’ll have burnt off by the time we put the food on.’

We make piripiri chicken from the freezer, potato and melon salad with chives from the windowbox, and a big tomato salad. We camp out on the balcony to eat, sitting in a row on chairs against the wall, feet up on the railing, food in our laps, watch the light die from the sky, the trains clatter past, and wipe the juices off our plates with half an old baguette Harriet has found in the freezer and revived on the dying embers. It’s nice. Sort of family without the grief. When it gets too cold, we go inside to kick back around the coffee table.

I make coffee, and we all light cigarettes.

‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ I say to Mike.

‘I don’t really,’ he replies. ‘I just like to have the odd one so nobody can call me a non-smoker.’

Harriet, lying full-length on the sofa, slaps her tummy. ‘Boy, that was good,’ she says. ‘It’s nice to eat proper food for a change.’

We mumble in agreement, fall silent.

‘Tell you what,’ Mike says after a while, ‘I can still smell that smoke.’

‘Me, too,’ says Harriet. ‘We must remember not to do that again.’

We’re quiet again for a bit, then Harriet says, ‘Tell you what, I can
really
smell smoke.’

‘So can I,’ I say. ‘Is the barbie out?’

‘Yes. I think so.’ She goes out onto the balcony to check, comes back nodding. Walks over to the staircase door, saying, ‘What’s that noise?’

Mike is suddenly upright in his chair. ‘What noise?’

‘Weird. Can’t you hear it?’

I can, now she’s pointed it out. It seems to be coming up the stairs. A sort of explosive crackle like—

‘Popcorn,’ I say. ‘It’s popcorn.’

Harriet makes to open the door, and Mike leaps from his seat, covers the distance in half a second flat and hurls her to the ground. ‘Don’t open that!’ he shouts. ‘Get away from the door!’

‘Ow,’ shouts Harriet, more discombobulated than hurt. ‘What?’

‘Don’t you get it? There’s a fire down there!’

‘What?’

‘Shh!’

We all look at each other, suddenly solemn in the machine-gun staccato of Harriet’s corn kernels exploding on the stairs.

‘Christ!’ says Harriet.

‘Where’s the phone? I’ll call the fire brigade,’ says Mike, who has suddenly assumed that air of authority I remember from the restaurant. Despite my fear, I think: he’s a good person to have around in a crisis. Impressive.

Mike locates the phone under the
A–Z
. Listens for a dialling tone. ‘Dead,’ he says. ‘Someone’s cut it.’

Harriet and I exchange guilty glances. ‘Well, actually we forgot to pay it.’

‘Oh, bloody
hell
,’ he says. ‘Can’t you two do
anything
?’

I give him my mobile. ‘
Okay
,’ he says. Dials. ‘Oh, hi, Lorraine,’ he says. Good God. He knows the people on the emergency switchboard. ‘It’s Mike Gillespie, Chelsea. Fine, thanks. You? Good. The kids? Good. Yes, well, I was wondering if you could patch me through to the Pimlico fire people. No. We’ve just got a bit of a fire here.’

Harriet and I retreat onto the balcony. I don’t believe this. This is just totally un-bloody-believable.

‘He’s gossiping,’ says Harriet, who also seems to be thinking about our companion rather than the situation. ‘He’s bloody
gossiping
.’

‘Keep your hair on.’ To my amazement, I’m quite calm. And the fact that Harriet is pacing like a caged tigress merely serves to make me calmer. Maybe I’ve just had too many crises now; maybe I’ve got inured.

‘Keep my
hair
on? It’ll all be burnt
off
by the time he finishes asking about Lorraine’s sister-in-law’s father’s lumbago.’ Harriet seems to be panicking enough for both of us. I put a hand on her arm and she freezes like a rabbit when a hawk passes overhead.

‘Don’t exaggerate. He’s only being polite.’

Mike sticks his head round the door, phone glued to his ear. ‘What’s the combination for the front gates?’

We tell him. He goes back in.

‘Well, there are times and times for politeness,’ she says, ‘and in the middle of a bloody great fire isn’t one of them.’

Mike appears, giving me back the phone. ‘They’re on their way,’ he says.

‘Oh, good,’ says Harriet. ‘I
do
feel better.’

‘I’ve wet that blanket on the sofa and put it over the door,’ he says. ‘We should be reasonably safe up here. Everybody okay?’

He walks round the balcony, looking down at our small empire: the yellowing rowan, the brackish waters of the lock, the piles of rusting metal that used to be bits of Thames barges.

‘Only problem is,’ he comes back, ‘do you have any idea how strong that bridge is?’

Harriet shakes her head.

‘’Cause they’re going to have to get the ladder over it, and that’s a heavy bastard.’

‘The ladder?’ she asks.

‘Yes. Retractable crane thing with a platform on the top. For lifting us off this balcony.’

‘What do we need that for?’

‘How else were you planning to get down?’

‘Well,’ I say, ‘I guess we thought we might use the fire ladder.’

Mike explodes. Very quietly and that, but an explosion nonetheless. ‘Why didn’t you
say
you had a fire ladder?’

‘Well, I’m sorry you think we can’t organise a cockfight in a gay bar,’ says Harriet. She seems to be rallying. ‘But we’d hardly be allowed to live at the top of a very high tower with only one staircase without one, would we?’

‘Well, where
is
it?’

Harriet gestures at the shed.

The ladder is a slender, lightweight thing made of aluminium, but it takes a certain amount of bulk to get down six floors and it takes the three of us to manouevre it out of the shed and over to a clear patch away from the front door. Mike, slightly chastened, proves to be a good team-worker now that he’s not taking control in his copperish way. It’s him that suggests we try rolling it rather than carrying it, and it’s him that bruises the palms of his hands banging the holding pins through the holes in the hooks, works out how to attach the weights to the bottom so that, when we flip it over, the ladder drops down straight and true to the earth below. Then he says, ‘Okay. Who’s first?’

‘I’ll go,’ I offer. It’s not courage that makes me volunteer, but the fact that I’ve got no knickers on. Well, you don’t always put on knickers when you’ve been anticipating a quiet Sunday night lounging around the house. I want my hemline firmly on the ground by the time anyone else shows up.

He helps me up onto the railing and when I look down to rest my foot on the first rung, I realise just how high up we are. Funny. I never noticed it before. ‘Oh, God,’ I say, look back, panic-struck, into his eyes.

He looks back. Long and steady. It’s just me and him, alone in space.
Don’t flake on me now
, say his eyes.
We’ve done well so far. Keep going. You can do it. I’ll fall
, I reply without speaking.
I’m afraid I’ll fall. I’ll be swinging out in the air and the ground is so far away
.

Mike says, quietly, firmly, ‘Get both feet on the first rung. Take a grip and just stay there until you’re sure.’

I can’t
.

‘Don’t look down. Keep your eyes on mine.’

I find the rung with my foot. Slot it in.

‘Good. Now the other one.’

I can’t
.

‘Yes you can,’ says Mike. ‘Come on. You’re safe.’

I unhook my other leg from its safe purchase, swing out into space. Lurch. Feel the contents of my stomach shift, grit my teeth and cling harder with the arm that’s wrapped round the railing.

‘That’s good,’ he says. ‘That’s the worst bit. Find the foothold. Go on.’

My foot finds purchase. Now I’m clinging like a Mabel Lucie Atwell baby, chin over the railing, eyes like saucers.

‘One step at a time,’ says Mike. ‘Take it slowly and you’ll be fine.’

I won’t be fine. My hands will never hold me all the way down. I’ll be by the bathroom window and they’ll give up. Fear will make them lose their grip and I’ll pitch out into space
.

I gurgle and clutch tighter to the railing. ‘You won’t,’ he says, and never takes his eyes from mine. ‘You’ll stay on the ladder and step by step you will go to the ground.’

No I won’t. I know about falling. I do it in my dreams every night, only this time I don’t have the wings that will save me
.

‘First step’s the worst,’ he says.

Then he barks, ‘Anna, come
on
!’

This shocks me into action. I put a foot down, let a hand go, squeak again, grab the rung below and I’m moving.

Of course, he lied. The first step isn’t the worst. The worst is when you get below the balcony, when it’s too late to swarm back upwards, where the ladder is braced against nothing but thin air, and you find yourself swinging back and forth with every step you take. That’s the worst bit: when the wall in front of you approaches and recedes with jerky regularity and the ladder takes your spine through your stomach each time you put your weight onto a different foot.

A bead of sweat trickles from my forehead, avoids the eyebrow and lands directly in my left eye. Stings like Dettol and there’s nothing I can do. Can’t let go, can’t reach my shirtsleeve with my face without sending the ladder into a wild St Vitus dance that clatters my feet against the wall. Come on, Anna, just go. I decide to close my eyes. Try to set up a rhythm: foot, foot, hand, hand, foot, foot, hand, hand, ignore the ache in my arms, ignore the sickly wobble, ignore everything but the process of moving down the face of the tower.