Walking on Glass

PENTON STREET

Outside the Belvedere pub, in Penton Street, a table stood on the pavement, guarding the pub's open cellar doors. They must be expecting a delivery from the brewers, Graham thought. The table, wood and formica, standing over the two opened traps of the cellar, reminded him of the chair in the corridor of the School, just before he left.

He was almost at the top of the low, building-disguised hill now; the road had all but flattened out. A few cars went along Penton Street, but it was quiet after the bustle of Pentonville Road, which he had just crossed. He looked over to the far side of the street, at some shops, a cafe. The area seemed unable to make up its collective mind whether it was run-down or not.

A copy of that day's Sun newspaper tried to wrap itself round Graham's feet, caught in a sudden dusty gust of wind. He stepped out of it and let it flatten against some roadside railings. He smiled, recalling Slater's apoplectic reaction to Sun readers. The best time, Graham thought, was when - only a few weeks ago - they had been sitting in Hyde Park. Slater had decided that as they were all going to be around during the summer anyway, they should arrange days out, and had therefore organised a Saturday afternoon picnic, having made up his mind on the Friday that the following day would be hot and sunny, which it was.

Slater had invited Graham, Sara, and a young man Graham assumed was Slater's latest conquest, a short, muscled ex-soldier called Ed. Ed had short fair hair and wore cut-off jeans as shorts, and a green Army T-shirt. He sat on the grass slowly reading a Stephen King novel.

They had talked, at Slater's instigation, about what they would do if they won a million pounds. Sara refused to play; ask her if she ever did win, she said. Ed thought carefully, and said he'd buy a big car, and a pub somewhere in the country. Slater didn't know what else he'd do, but he'd had this great idea for using at least some of the money; go to the American South, hire a crop-dusting plane and a willing pilot, fill the tanks with a mixture of chilli sauce and indelible black ink, then fly over the biggest Ku Klux Klan march of the year. That would make their eyes water; paint the mothers! Yippee!

Graham said he would use the money to create an ultimate work of art... it would be a map of London, with every single street and house shown, and on it would be traced - in black ink, funnily enough - the path, the route that each individual person in London took that day, whether by train, tube, bus, car, helicopter, plane, wheelchair, boat, or on foot.

Sara laughed, but not unkindly. Ed thought it would be difficult to arrange. Slater pronounced the idea boring, and said that it would be boring even if the map was coloured and/or you used different-coloured inks for the trails, and anyway, his was a much better idea all round. Graham thought Slater sounded a bit drunk, and didn't reply-he just sat with a knowing smile on his face, and grinned briefly at Sara, who smiled back.

She wore a light summer dress with a high, elegant neck, and a big white hat. She had on white shoes with round toes and rather old-fashionedly large clumpy heels, and silk or silk-look stockings, or tights, which Graham thought were unnecessary on such a warm day. She leant against a tree, looking beautiful. When she put her head back, and put her arm behind her neck, he kept glancing, quickly, ashamed, at the dark length of curled hair in the exposed armpit.

Slater, in white trousers and striped blazer, complete with battered boater (real straw, Graham noticed), sat cross-legged on the grass holding a plastic cup full of champagne (he'd told Graham and Sara each to bring some food: he'd bring a Magnum).

From money, they had gone on to politics:

"Edward," Slater said. "You can-not be serious!"

Ed shrugged and lay back in the grass, one arm propping up his cropped head as he read the paperback gripped, spine broken, in his other fist. "I reckon she's done all right," he said. He had a vaguely East London accent. Slater bounced the heel of his free hand off his forehead.

"My God! The stupidity of the English working class never ceases to amaze me! What do those murderous, money-grabbing, self-seeking... bastards have to do to you before you start getting angry? Good grief! What are you waiting for? Repeal of the Factory Safety Act? Compulsory redundancy for all trade unionists? The death penalty for cleaning windows for gain while claiming the dole? I mean, tell me!"

"Don" be daft," Ed shrugged. "It isn" her fault; it's the recession, isn" it? Bleedin" Labour couldn't do no better; just nationalise everything, wouldn" they?"

"Edward," Slater sighed, "I think there's a place on the Editorial Board of The Economist just waiting for you."

"Well, you can come out with all these smart answers," Ed said, still reading, or at least looking at the paperback, "but most people just don" see things the way you do."

"Yes," Slater said, hissing. "Well, there's an open sewer at the bottom of Chancery Lane you can blame for that."

Ed looked puzzled. He looked round at Slater. "What's that, then?"

"Oh, good grief," Slater said. He collapsed back in the grass melodramatically, but left his hand holding the champagne sticking up. "Bingo!" he gasped.

The general election was in a few days. Slater couldn't believe that people really were going to vote the Conservatives back in. Graham wasn't so sure it was such a bad thing, but he kept this private; Slater would have exploded. Graham agreed slightly with Ed; he didn't think anybody could do very much about the economic situation of the country. Certainly he thought the Tories spent too much on arms, especially nuclear weapons, and maybe they should spend more on things like the Health Service, but he admired Mrs Thatcher a little, and she had had a famous victory in the Falklands. He knew it was all rubbish, but he had felt a sort of grudging pride when the Army marched into Port Stanley. Ed didn't seem bothered about letting Slater know what he thought; Graham wasn't sure whether to admire him or feel sorry for him.

He felt somewhat put out when he realised that Ed probably wouldn't care what he thought.

Ed stood up. "Well, I think I'll go an" hire a boat. You want to come?" he looked at Slater, then Graham, then Sara, who shook her head. Slater lay on the grass while Graham looked at him.

"There's a terribly long queue," Slater said. They had already discussed hiring a boat.

"If we don" queue we won" get a boat," Ed shrugged. He stuffed the paperback into the rear waist of the denim shorts, against the small of his back. Slater said nothing, stared at the sky. "Well," Ed said, "I can queue anyway. You come down later when I'm nearer gettin" a boat, if you like." He stood there.

"Sometimes," Slater said, addressing the sky, "I think it would be nice if they just got the war over with now. One ten-megaton over Westminster now, and we'd hardly know a thing... just vaporised dust mixed up with the grass and the soil and the water and the clay and the rock..."

"You're a right bleedin" pessimist," Ed said. "You sound like some of them C.N.D.-ers sometimes, you do." He nodded down at Slater, hands on hips.

Slater kept staring at the sky. Then he said, "I do hope you're not now going to tell me once again what a fine bunch of lads you met in the Army."

"Shit." Ed turned away, shaking his head, and started walking off towards the Serpentine and the boat houses. "Well, if you don" want to fuckin" defend yourself..."

Slater lay there for a moment, then jerked upright, spilling a little of his champagne. Ed was about ten yards way. Slater shouted after him, "Well, when it does fall, and you do fry, I just hope you remember what a fucking wonderful idea you thought it was!" Ed didn't react. People in nearby deckchairs and other groups of people also sunning themselves did, though, looking over.

"Sh," Sara said lazily. "You won't do any good shouting at him like that."

"He's an idiot," Slater said, collapsing back on the grass.

"He's entitled to his views," Graham said.

"Oh, don't be stupid, Graham," Slater snapped. "He reads the Sun on the bus every morning going to work."

"So?" Graham said.

"Well, my dear boy," Slater said, talking through rictused lips, "if he spends half an hour each day shovelling shit into his brain, you can't expect his ideas to do anything else but stink, can you?"

"He's still entitled to his views," Graham said, feeling awkward under Sara's gaze, her cool regard. He played with a few blades of grass, twisting them in his fingers. Slater sighed.

"If he had any of his own, I might allow you that, Graham, but the question is: are the proprietors of Fleet Street entitled to Edward's views? No?" He came more upright, leaning on one elbow and looking at Graham. Graham made a face and shrugged.

"You expect too much of people," Sara told Slater. He looked at her through hooded eyes, one eyebrow raised.

"Do I indeed?"

"They're not all like you. They really don't think the way you do."

"They just don't think, period," Slater snorted. Sara smiled and Graham was glad she was talking; it let him look at her, drink her in, without either of them feeling embarrassed.

"That's just it," Sara smiled. They do, of course they do. But they believe in different things, they have different priorities, and a lot of them wouldn't want some perfect socialist state even if you could bring it about." Slater snorted with derision at this.

"Great, so they're now getting ready to vote themselves five more years of cuts, poverty and exciting new methods of incinerating millions of our fellow human beings. Certainly a long way from your ideal socialist state; what is this, the de Sade school of political sociology?"

"So they get what they deserve," Sara said. "Why do you pretend to care so much more about them than they do themselves?"

"Oh, fuck," Slater said, "I give in." He collapsed back on the grass. Sara looked at Graham, smiled and raised her eyebrows conspiratorially. Graham laughed quietly.

She hurt his eyes. She sat in the shadow of the tree, but the whiteness of her skin, the bright shoes and stockings and dress and the hat all reflected sunlight from the brilliant sky, and he could hardly look at her for the glow which struck his eyes.

He drank his champagne. It was still cool; Slater had brought the bottle inside a cool-bag, and it lay by the tree trunk, in shadow like Sara. Slater had been genuinely offended when Graham, told to bring glasses, turned up with only plastic cups. He thought Graham would understand.

Graham had been a bit worried about Slater meeting Sara; the last time either of them had seen her had been earlier that same week, and he thought Slater might have mentioned it. They had gone together up to Half Moon Crescent, on a day when Sara had suddenly cancelled their afternoon walk along the canal. She'd been abrupt, even distressed over the phone, and he had been worried. He had decided to walk up that way anyway, just to be there, in case there was anything obviously wrong. Slater had been concerned, too, both at Graham's obvious agitation, and at Sara's state as Graham described it. Graham didn't mind his friend coming along: he was glad of the company.

They started out walking, but then on Theobald's Road Slater insisted on getting a bus. Graham pointed out that a 179 only went as far as Kings Cross, which wasn't very far and not even in exactly the right direction. Slater said it was in roughly the right direction, and anyway his new shoes were tight and he didn't want to walk all that way. At King's Cross he got them a taxi. Graham said he couldn't really afford... Slater told him not to worry; he'd pay. It wasn't far.

In the taxi. Slater suddenly remembered something; he had a present for Graham. He dug into his jacket pocket. "Here," he said, and handed Graham something hard wrapped in tissue paper. Graham unwrapped it as the cab went up Pentonville Road. It was a small glazed china figurine of a woman, naked, with large breasts and her knees bent, feet under her buttocks, legs spread out. Her tiny face was set in an expression of ecstasy, her shoulders were thrown back as though she was forcing her conical breasts higher, and her hands were down at her hips, open and delicate, each finger carefully moulded. Her genitals, in the quick glance Graham gave them, seemed rather exaggerated.

"Is this supposed to be some sort of joke?" he said to Slater.

Slater took the figurine back with a grin and produced a pencil from his inside pocket, "No," he said, "it's a pencil sharpener; look," and he inserted the pencil between the model's legs.

Graham looked away, shaking his head. "It is just a little bit tasteless."

"I have more taste than anchovies in garlic butter, you young pup," Slater said. "I was just trying to cheer you up."

"Oh," Graham said, as the taxi turned left. "Thanks."

"Huh," said Slater, sitting forward in his seat to make sure the taxi driver went the right way as they approached Half Moon Crescent. "I spent several days making that for you."

"I said thanks," Graham said, then, "Oh, tell him to stop here; don't want to get too close." He checked the street to make sure Sara wasn't around; they were still in Penton Street, but you never knew.

The taxi stopped. "Let's have a drink," Slater said.

"I'll tell you one thing," said Graham, as Slater led him across the street into a pub called the White Conduit.

"What?"

"You forgot about how to get the shavings out." Graham held the china figure up in front of Slater's face. Slater frowned, looked at the over scale-sized orifice. His lips tightened.

"It's your round; I'll have a pint of lager," he said, and went to sit at a window seat looking down the short stretch of Maygood Street to Half Moon Crescent.

They heard Stock's bike ten minutes later. They both stood up and looked over the top of the window curtains, which hung from a brass rail halfway up the window. A large black BMW bike turned down Maygood Street. The person riding it wore black leathers and a black, full face helmet with a heavily tinted visor. "Yup," Slater said, "that's our man,"

Graham caught a glimpse of the bike's number: STK 228T. It was the first time he had seen the bike since that night in January when he first met Sara, when they had arrived here in the taxi. He hadn't thought to look at the bike properly then, and had always avoided coming up this way when he knew Stock was about. The rider straddling the machine got off it, took its key out and went - not entirely steady on his feet, Graham thought - to the door of Sara's flat, and put a key into the lock. Seconds later he was gone.

"Did you think he looked six foot?" Graham said, looking at Slater as they sat down. Slater nodded, took a drink.

"Easily. Looked a bit tipsy, I thought. What a hunk, though, eh?" He waggled his eyebrows up and down theatrically. Graham let his shoulders slump, and looked away.

"Do you mind?" he said. Slater nudged him.

"Don't take it so hard, kid. I'm absolutely certain it'll all work out. Believe me,"

"Are you really?" Graham said, turning to his friend.

Slater looked into Graham's face for a few seconds, watching him bite his lower lip, then his own lower lip trembled and finally a smile burst out over Slater's face as he turned away, shaking his head, sniggering.

"Well, to be honest, no, but I was trying to be encouraging. Good grief, how on earth should I know?"

"Jesus," Graham breathed, and finished his half pint of bitter. He stood up, sighing. Slater looked at him unhappily.

"Oh God, you're not going out in a huff, are you?"

"I'm just going outside for a little bit... to have a look round. I won't be too long."

"You know," Slater said, weakly slapping the table top beside his drink, "Gates, you're going to have to get those lines right before we hire the ice-breaker." The last few words were barely comprehensible as Slater collapsed, forearm on table, head on forearm, his back shaking as he laughed, muffled grunts of mirth echoing off the floor beneath him. Some of the older customers in the bar looked at him suspiciously.

Graham frowned deeply at Slater, wondering what on earth he was talking about, then left and went for a quick, stealthy walk round the back of Half Moon Crescent and up a little side alley, listening for any shouts or arguments from inside the flat. There was nothing. He went back to the pub, where Slater had bought him a pint. As Graham sat down Slater started to shake and his face went red; tears appeared in his eyes, and finally he had to splutter, "Fucking Norwegian bastards!" He fell sideways on the bench seat and doubled up with silent, spasmic laughter. Graham sat, feeling terrible, hating Stock and Slater and feeling sick about Sara and what she might be doing right now, and half-wishing that the pub landlord would throw Slater out.

Luckily, despite his threats. Slater did not tell Sara he and Graham had been there that day. They sat in the park later that week, getting slightly drunk on the champagne, and Slater talked about lots of things, but not that.

"I've just had this great idea," he announced from the grass, holding up his plastic cup. They had almost finished the champagne.

"What?" Sara said. She sat against the tree, Graham's head on her shoulder. He was pretending to be asleep so that he could keep his head there, near her soft, warm-scented skin.

"Interdopa," Slater said, waving the cup around at the still blue sky. This hippy turns up on your doorstep, bums a fag off you and shoves a lump of crumpled silver paper into your hand..."

"Put me down for the inaugural run," Sara laughed gently. Graham wanted to laugh, too, but could not; better to rest here, feel her lovely body shake, tremble under his head and touch...

He still remembered that feeling; weeks later he could still shiver at the thought of it. It was like the first time he had ever spent a night with a girl, back in Somerset. The next day, with his friends in the pub at lunchtime, watching a local football match in the afternoon, having dinner with his parents that evening, later watching a film on television at a friend's house, he kept having flashbacks; a flesh-memory of the feeling of that young woman's skin would suddenly make him shudder and his head swim. He recalled with some shame that he had been naive enough at the time to wonder if this feeling was love. Luckily he hadn't talked to anyone about it.

He could see the White Conduit ahead now, and he remembered how wretched he had felt that afternoon. Since then he had been back here once again when he knew he wasn't expected. He'd said to Slater he was going home, when they parted at lunchtime in the sandwich bar in Red Lion Street, but in fact he came up here, and saw Stock arrive on the bike not long after he started watching. This time Sara was visible, moving about in the room she usually greeted Graham from when he pressed the entryphone buzzer. Stock had let himself in, and Sara had not reappeared.

Graham felt sick, and left soon afterwards. He got throwing-up drunk all by himself in Leyton that night.

The day in the park had been good, though. He had kept his head on Sara's shoulder for ages, until his back and neck ached, but she hadn't appeared to mind, and once had even stroked his hair, absently, with one caressing hand. Ed had come back later on; he'd had a half-hour's row on the Serpentine.

"You should've come down when I was nearer the front of the queue, you should," he told them. He had bought some small dumpy cans of McEwan's Export, and handed the others one each. He sat down to read.

"You see?" Slater said loudly, still lying down, his voice slightly affected by the champagne he'd drunk. This man is a fucking socialist at heart and even he doesn't realise it!"

"Give it a rest, Dick," Ed told him mildly.

Slater poured the last of his champagne over his own forehead. "He calls me Dick," he gasped in a strangled voice, and rolled over onto his face. "Me: the communal ranger, superhom, the pinko pimpernel, the man in the Faberge mask; I'll scratch the mark of Zero on your foreskin, you -"

"Shush now," Sara ffitch said, her voice resonating in her chest, buzzing Graham's head with glorious sensation. Slater went quiet; he started snoring lightly a few minutes later.

A pretty girl, blonde, wearing a short bouncy skin and a thin pink top through which Graham could just make out the outlines of her nipples, passed him on Penton Street. He watched her walk by, but didn't make it obvious.

He had always worried about this. He didn't want to be sexist, but how the hell did you not look at attractive women? He didn't say anything to them, or try to touch them; he'd never dream of that; he despised the stupid idiots who did that sort of thing; they made him ashamed to be a man; they were the sort Slater accused of "carrying their brains in their scrotums" (or did Slater say "scrota'?); but looking...as long as it didn't embarrass the woman... that was all right.

Especially now, or maybe, with a bit of luck, until now. It had been a strange, awkwardly sexual time for him. He had been worrying - of all things! - about masturbating.

He found it difficult, almost unpleasant to think of Sara at night, in bed, before he went to sleep. But to think of other women, previous sexual encounters, seemed wrong too. It was absurd, it was crazy, it was like being pubescent again, or worse; it didn't even make much sense in terms of the beliefs he had worked out long before about sexual fidelity, but there it was. He hated the idea of pornography, even soft pornography, but he had almost come round to the idea that it might be better to buy one of the glossy girlie magazines and accept the inhuman, labial beauty of those seductive image-women; it would at least absolve the release of his sexuality from the responsibilities of the real world.

"Most people's ultimate sexual fantasies, their idealised desires, are built of clay," he recalled Slater saying. Slater had just discovered that most of the weight of a glossy magazine came from kaolin, the same clay used in a morphine mixture to clog up people's guts when they had the runs. Graham seemed to remember Slater had been talking about gay photo-mags, but the point was the same.

Anyway, what did it matter now? It might all be over soon; all the worrying and waiting and empty desiring. He was opposite the pub now; he would turn the corner on to the short length of Maygood Street, and there would be Half Moon Crescent.

The name fascinated him.

He made a symbol of it:

)

_

2

Half. Moon. Crescent.

MR SHARPE

Drunk!

He sat on a park bench in the small triangular piece of ground which was called Islington Green. Mr Sharpe sat by his side; they were both drinking from large bottles of cider. Mr Sharpe was smoking a cigarette. Steven felt quite drunk.

"I mean," Mr Sharpe said, stabbing at the air with his cigarette, "they don't "ave to stay where they fackin" well are, do they? "Course they don't... do they?" Steven shook his head in case Mr Sharpe was really asking him a question. Most of the questions seemed to be rhetorical, though. He couldn't remember what Mr Sharpe was talking about now. Was it the Jews? The Blacks? Scroungers?

Mr Sharpe was a small man of about fifty-five. He was going bald and his eyes looked yellow in the grey-pink skin of his face, which was lined with grey stubble. He wore a big old coat and working boots. He had approached Grout in the pub he had gone to, the Nag's Head. Steven usually avoided pub drunks, and it was fairly obvious Mr Sharpe was the resident PD in the Nag's Head that lunchtime, but Steven was quite drunk himself, and apart from Mr Sharpe seeming to be encouragingly worried about conspiracies -Grout hadn't entirely given up the idea of finding a fellow exile and cooperating to escape together - Mr Sharpe had also displayed what appeared to be genuine good-heartedness when Steven told him it was his birthday. A few small tears had come to his eyes, in fact, when Mr Sharpe shook his hand for a long time and wished him many happy returns several times in a loud voice.

Steven had bought most of the drinks from then on, as Mr Sharpe wasn't working and didn't have very much money, but Steven didn't mind. He showed Mr Sharpe all the money he had, explaining that he had been paid off that day.

"The cans," Mr Sharpe had said, spitting inadvertently, "the fackin" cans; I bet it was them unions, wasn't it?"

Grout hadn't been sure about that, but he told Mr Sharpe he wasn't sorry anyway. He did say he couldn't spend all the money, of course, he had to keep some by for his rent and food and things, and he had to wait for his unemployment money. Mr Sharpe said he was quite right, but to watch out; there were plenty of smart jewboys and big black muggers around; the jewboys would swindle it off you and the niggers would slit your throat as soon as look at you.

After the pub shut at three, they went over to the Green with a couple of bottles of stout they had bought to carry out. Steven had bought Mr Sharpe a packet of cigarettes, too, and some matches. "You're a gent, Steve, that's what you are; a gent," Mr Sharpe had said, and Steven felt almost as good as when the policeman had called him "sir'. He sniffed, eyes tingling.

They drank the bottles of stout, then Mr Sharpe said why didn't they nip over to the off-licence in Marks and Sparks on Chapel Market and get a couple of bottles of cider? It was cheap. In fact, if Steve would lend him the money; a fiver, say... no, make it a tenner, seeing as he felt generous and Steve was a real pal... he'd get the drink himself, seeing as Steve had been so generous in the pub and all. He'd pay him back next Wednesday, when his Giro came through.

Steven thought this sounded fair, and so he gave Mr Sharpe two ten pound notes. "Have twenty," he said. Mr Sharpe was taken aback and said again what a gent Steven was. He went off to the shop and got four bottles of cider and a canon of cigarettes.

Although he felt drunk, Steven didn't feel all morose like he usually did when he'd had a lot to drink; he felt quite happy, sitting on the bench under the trees of Islington Green with the traffic rushing harmlessly by all around. It was nice to have somebody to talk to, somebody you felt was on your side, who didn't laugh at you or show contempt for you, who felt sympathy for the way you were treated but not pity for who or what you were; somebody who wished you happy birthday. He didn't mind that Mr Sharpe was doing all the talking.

"You take the likes of my old boss, right?" Mr Sharpe was saying, drawing smoky patterns with the cigarette he held between his fingers. "Good bloke, good bloke, you know; strict but fair; wouldn't stand for any nonsense or people turning up late or anyfink, but straight, know what I mean? In the textile trade "e was; "ad to mix with a lot of Jews. Didn't like it, of course, but that's business, innit? "E went bust last year, didn't "e? "Ad to lay me an" the rest of the lads off, see? Recession, it was, basically, but also the fackin" unions. "E used to give them short shrift, I can tell you; wouldn't "ave them in the place, an" quite right too, say I, but "e reckoned they'd got at "im be'ind "is back, like, an "e's a smart bloke, right? Anyway, it was the recession what really did it, "e said, and "e said "e was really choked "e "ad to let us go on account of "ow we'd all stood be'ind "im. An" we did; when "e explained to us what was "appenin" a couple of years ago, we didn't take no pay rise, did we? We even took a pay cut last year, that was "ow much we was prepared to look after our jobs, see? Not like these fackin" union cans; we was responsible, we was. Yeah, "e was really choked, Mr Inglis was. That was "is name, was'n" it? 'Inglis by name and English by birth, and proud of it', "e would say." Mr Sharpe laughed.

Steven took his blue safety helmet off and wiped his brow. He would have to go for a pee soon. It was lucky there were toilets at one end of the Green. "Yeah, "e's a good bloke, that Mr Inglis. An" you know wot "e told me? "E told me "e didn't even make a profit the last five years. These fackin" Troskyists, they talk about bosses an" that, but they don't know nuffink, do they? I know, "cos one of my nephews; "e's a Troskyist, isn't "e? Little can; I nearly knocked "is bleedin" teeth out last time I saw "im; only tryin" to tell me I was one of them racialists, wasn't "e? I said, 'Lissen, son,' I said 'I've worked with blacks an" I've even made friends with some of them, which is prob'ly more than you've ever done, an" I quite liked some of "em; they was Jamaicans - not these little Pakkie cans -and they was okay, some of them, but that don't alter the fact there's too many of them over "ere, an" that don't make me your racialist, now, does it?' Little can. That's wot I told "im. Straight, I did." Mr Sharpe nodded aggressively, reliving the confrontation.

Steven was toying with the leather sweatband of the hard hat.

He was hot. It was probably safe to take the hat off; there was no scaffolding nearby. He put the hat down on the bench, between him and Mr Sharpe, who went on,

"Where was I? Oh, yeah; Mr Inglis, "e said "e "adn't made a profit for five years, but people think just because "e rides round in a Rolls-Royce, people fink "e's bleedin" rich, don't they? They don't know, see, that it don't even belong to "im; it's "is company's. Even "is "ouse isn't "is; it's "is wife's, innit? "E'd just as soon drive a Mini, but people in the trade wouldn't take "im seriously, would they? Specially them jewboys."

Steven shook his head, thinking this seemed to be required. He wasn't all that happy about this mention of a Rolls-Royce. He considered telling Mr Sharpe about the dangers of disembowel-lings by Rolls-Royce mascots, but he thought he'd better not.

"But I'm glad to say," Mr Sharpe said, smiling, lighting another cigarette, "e's managed to get back on "is feet again. I "appened to see "im the other day when I was looking for a job; "e's got a new place up in Islington Park Street making dresses an" all an" repairing machines. "Course, the place is full of these little wog wimmin, but, like Mr Inglis says, "e'd love to "ave whites working for "im but people've got lazy, "aven't they? "E can't find white wimmin to work for them wages, an" why? Cos the fackin" money they're gettin" from the government an" from workin" on the side's too much, that's why. Mr Inglis, "e'd love to take me an" the lads back on for the machines, but the fackin" unions they've priced us all out of a job, "aven't they? Mr Inglis can't afford to take on more than a couple of experienced blokes an" all the rest are these YOPs or wotever they're called; you know, them young kids wot the government pays you to train, an" that."

Steven nodded. He watched the reflections of the trees above him as they slid and swayed about the shiny blue surface of his safety helmet. It really was the most lovely shade of blue. He took it off the bench and put it on his lap.

"An" that stupid young nephew of mine, "e'll tell you they won't take our jobs! Little poof. I think "e's on that canopus stuff; I bet if you looked at "is arms you'd find them pot-marks. I tried that stuff, you know; when I was in the navy I did, out in wogland somewhere; some fackin" place... but it didn't do nuffink for me an" anyway I wasn't that stupid to take enough to get me "ooked, was I? Not me, mate; give me a pint an" a fag an" I'm quite "appy."

Mr Sharpe puffed on his cigarette and took a drink of his cider.

Grout was thinking about beer crates. He'd had one, once; he remembered coming down Essex Road, on the very bit of pavement they could see in front of them, over the grass. The crate had seemed like such a good idea at first; a way round searching for parked cars all the time. He had taken the beer crate, which he'd found behind a pub one night, with him when he went to look for work one day, about a year ago. Whenever he was running out of breath and there were no parked cars or low walls to protect him from the laser-axles, he simply had to put the crate down on the ground and then stand on it. Safety at last!

It had been a brilliant idea, but people treated him like some son of maniac. Young men shouted at him, women with children avoided him, a gang of kids started to follow him. He threw the crate into the canal eventually, cruelly hurt not just by the reaction people had exhibited, but also because he knew he didn't have the strength of character to resist them; he couldn't take that much scorn, he couldn't keep up such a high profile for long.

Yes, it had hurt, but he liked to think he had learned from the experience. He knew how cunning they were now, how carefully they made sure that he had no easy ways out. Mere ingenuity wouldn't help him live any easier here. He had to concentrate on escape, on finding the Key, the Way Out. Maybe he should ask Mr Sharpe about Hotblack Desiato. He seemed to know the area a bit, though Steven couldn't remember having seen him before either in the Nag's Head or anywhere else... but he said he lived locally. Maybe he would have some idea.

Yes, he supposed, the beer crate hadn't been such a good idea; it had shown them too obviously that he was on to them, that he felt contempt for them. He had to be more subtle.

"... what a little can, eh? Calling me a can..." Mr Sharpe was saying. Steven nodded. He really must go to the toilet soon. He took the safety helmet and hung it on the end of the bench. He put his bottle of cider down on the tarmac at his feet; it wobbled and fell, and rolled away spilling cider from the top for a couple of seconds before he could get hold of it again. He set it down more carefully.

"Oops-a-daisy," he said.

" "Ere, Steve," Mr Sharpe said, nudging him with his bottle, "you wanna watch that. That's precious stuff, that is. You can't afford to go wasting precious stuff like that, now can you? Not on your burfday even you can't, eh?" Mr Sharpe laughed. Steven laughed too, and got up from the bench. His tummy hurt a bit. He staggered slightly as he left the bench, and his right foot hit the plastic carrier bag with the rest of the drink and the carton of cigarettes Mr Sharpe had bought. "Steady on," Mr Sharpe laughed, putting out one hand to catch Grout.

"Just going to the lav," Steven said. He patted Mr Sharpe's hand and started off.

" "Ere, Steve, do one for me!" Mr Sharpe shouted after him, and laughed. Steven laughed too.

He didn't feel too bad, but he couldn't stand up properly; it was like having appendicitis or something like that. He walked bent over. Luckily it wasn't too far to the public toilets.

In the gents he had a good long pee and felt much better. He was quite drunk, he knew, but he didn't feel sick. Actually he felt pretty good. It was nice to have somebody to talk to, somebody who seemed to understand. He was glad he had met Mr Sharpe. Steven combed his hair slowly and carefully. It was a pity there was nowhere to wash his hands, which were a bit sticky, but never mind. He took some deep breaths to clear his head.

Outside the toilet, he stood looking at Jim's Cafe, across the street. Maybe he would treat Mr Sharpe to a meal. That would be nice. He swayed slightly as he went back into the little park. There were quite a few other men in the park. Some of them looked very poor and dead-beat, and Grout felt sorry for them.

When he got back to the bench, Mr Sharpe had gone.

He stood looking at the bench, swaying, staring at it, trying to work out if it really was the right bench. At first, though it seemed to be in the right position, he thought it couldn't be, because his good blue hat wasn't there, hanging on the end of it. The carrier bag and everything else had gone, too. He looked, mystified, at the nearby benches. Just a few tramps. He scratched his head. What could have happened? Maybe it wasn't the right bench, maybe he was in completely the wrong place. But no, here was quite a lot of grey cigarette ash on the ground, and an empty cider bottle lying behind the bench, against the concrete kerb which separated tarmac path from green grass. His own bottle had gone.

He looked round. Traffic buzzed down Essex Road; buses moved redly up and down Upper Street. What could have happened? Had the police mistaken Mr Sharpe for a tramp and taken him away? Surely not the Tormentors; they wouldn't dare do anything so flagrant, so against the rules, would they? Just because he and Mr Sharpe had been getting on so well?

He kept looking around, thinking that suddenly he would see Mr Sharpe waving from another bench, beckoning him to come and finish his cider and stop being so stupid. Maybe Mr Sharpe had moved to another bench; that must be it. He looked round all the other benches, but all he saw were tramps and dead-beats. Had they done something to Mr Sharpe?

It had to be the Tormentors. It was one of their tricks, one of their filthy tests. He didn't believe it was the Jews, like Mr Sharpe had said; he knew it was the Tormentors. They had done this. He'd get them, though, he swore. He'd get to the bottom of this, right now!

He went to the nearest tramp, an old man lying on the grass. He had very long greasy black hair and a collection of plastic carrier bags spread out on the ground around him.

"What happened to my friend?" Grout said. The tramp opened his eyes. His face was very tanned and dirty.

"I didnae do anythin', honest I didnae, son," he said. A bloody drunken Scotsman! Grout thought.

"What happened?" Grout insisted.

"What, son?" The Scot tried to lever himself up off the grass, but couldn't. "I didnae see anythin', honest. I've just been sleepin', honest. I havnae touched anythin', son. Don't you accuse me. Honest. It's no crime to sleep, you know, son. I've been abroad, you know, son, to foreign countries."

Grout puzzled over this last statement, then shook his head. "You're sure you didn't see anything?" he asked carefully, showing this drunk Scot that he at least knew how to speak correctly. He put some menace into his voice as he finished. "Quite sure?"

"Aye, I'm sure, son," said the Scot, "I've been sleeping; that's what I have been doing." He seemed to be waking up, making an effort with his speech. Grout decided the man probably knew nothing. He shook his head and went back to the bench, standing beside it, looking about.

A tramp a couple of benches further up towards Upper Street was waving at him. Grout turned and went up the path to the man. This one was even older and grubbier than the Scot snoring on the grass, cuddling one of his carrier bags. Where on earth were all the clean people. Grout thought.

"You lookin" for yer frand, muster?" My God! This one was Irish! Where were all the English people? Why didn't they send some of this lot back where they came from?

"Yes, I am looking for my friend," Steven said coldly, carefully. The Irishman nodded towards the apex of the small triangle of park, towards the bus-stops on the far, north-bound side of Upper Street.

"He wen" up that way. Took all yur stuff," the Irishman said.

Grout was puzzled. "Why? When?" He scratched his head again.

The Irishman shook his head. "I dunno, muster. He just up "an wen" as soon as you wen" down to the toilets; I thought you'd had an argument or somethin', so I did."

"But my hat..." Grout said, still unable to fathom why Mr Sharpe would do such a thing.

"That blue thing?" the Irish tramp said. "He put that in huz bag."

"I don't..." Grout said, his voice trailing off as he walked slowly up in the direction the Irishman had pointed.

He left the small park, waited for the traffic to clear, then crossed the road, over to the other side of Upper Street, keeping down by the roadside rather than going up the stepped curb onto the raised section of pavement, because he was afraid of things falling off buildings and he didn't have his hat. A horrible knotted feeling, a pain, started to eat at his guts; he felt the way he had in the home, when all the children he'd befriended were adopted or sent away, and he wasn't; the way he had when he got lost down by the sea at Bournemouth, on an outing. This can't happen to me, not on my birthday, he kept thinking. Not on my birthday.

He went down the side of the street, round the parked cars nose-in to the slanted curb, down to the bus-stops, looking all the time for Mr Sharpe. For some reason he kept thinking that Mr Sharpe would be wearing the blue hat, and he found himself looking for that all the time instead of Mr Sharpe, who, he now realised, he probably couldn't have described very well if a policeman had asked him to. He wandered down, the terrible feeling growing in his guts like a live thing, wringing him, squeezing him. People mobbed about him, on the pavement, by the bus-stops, down ramps and out of buses; blacks and whites and Asians, men and women, people with shopping trolleys or bags of tools, women with children in push-chairs or dragged along from one hand.

Older children ran by, screaming and shouting. People ate hamburgers from polystyrene boxes, chips from bags, they carried shopping or parcels, they were old and young and fat and thin and tall and little, dull and gaudy; he started to feel dizzy, as though the alcohol or the sultry air was dissolving him, as though the pain inside was wringing him out like a wet towel, twisted and squeezed. He staggered, pushed past people, looking for the blue helmet. He could feel himself being dissolved, his identity sapped from him, lost in this siege of faces. He got to the side of the curb, made sure there were no buses coming, then stepped out on to the in-set bus lane, turned round and started to head back the way he had come, further out from the crowd now, staggering and swaying his way back. He looked over his shoulder, but there were still no buses coming, ready to swing into the bus-stop lane and crush him, only traffic from the lights further down charging up the street, engines roaring. He heard a bike engine, revving, coughing. He kept going, heading back for the park; maybe Mr Sharpe would have come back. The holes he had repaired were around about here...

Rough, screaming engine noises shouted at him. He ignored them. A bike engine, spluttering, a diesel engine, revving. He felt suddenly dizzy and disoriented for a moment, filled both with a sudden panic and an unsteadying conviction he had been here before, seen this all before. He glanced up at the sky for a second, and felt himself stagger. His head cleared and he did not fall into the stream of traffic, but it had been close. He heard a great thundering noise then, a noise like a car hitting something, but probably just the sound empty lorries or trucks make when they go over those speed-ramp things, or holes in the road, too fast. He turned round slowly, still feeling strange, to see if it was one of the holes Dan Ashton and the squad had done. He bet it was.

A woman screamed from the pavement.

He looked up again, into the blue, blue sky, and saw something sailing out of it, like a reflection sliding over a globed, shiny blue surface.

A spinning cylinder.

A bike and a flat-bed truck flashed by on one side. He stood, transfixed, thinking; my hat... my hat...

The tumbling aluminium beer barrel hit him right on the top of his head.

CHINESE SCRABBLE

They sat, covered in their furs, in a small open area near the summit of the Castle of Bequest.

A few decrepit towers and decaying fractions of floors with rooms and chambers rose into the shining grey sky to one side of them, but most of the apartments were empty and useless, only good for rookeries. Stones, great slabs of slate, lay tumbled all around the small cleared area where they sat. A few stunted trees and bushes, little more than overgrown weeds, poked out from the mass of fallen, fractured masonry. Ruins of arches and columns lay about them, and while they played Chinese Scrabble, it started to snow.

Quiss looked up slowly, in surprise. He couldn't recall it snowing for... a long time. He blew some of the small, dry flakes off the surface of the board. Ajayi hadn't even noticed; she was still studying the two small remaining plastic tiles balanced on the little bit of wood in front of her. They were very nearly finished.

Nearby, perched on a pitted, flaking column, the red crow sat, puffing on the green stump of a fat cigar. It had taken up smoking at about the same time they had started playing Chinese Scrabble. "I can see this is going to take some time," it had said. "I'd better find some other interests. Maybe I can contract lung cancer."

Quiss had asked it, casually, where it got the good cigars from. He should have known better, he told himself later: Tuck off," the red crow had said.

"I liked that other game you played," the red crow announced suddenly, between puffs, from the column. Quiss didn't deign to look at it. The red crow balanced on one leg and took the short stump of the cigar out of its beak with the other foot. It looked pensively at the glowing end of the cigar. A flake of the quietly falling snow landed on it and hissed. The red crow cocked its head, looking up accusingly at the sky, then went on, stuffing the cigar back into its beak (so that its words came out oddly distorted). "Yes, that Open-Plan Go was all right. I liked that board, the way it seemed to stretch for ever in all directions. You two looked proper twats, I can tell you, standing in the middle of an infinite board, cut off at the waist. Real dickheads you looked. Those dominoes were just stupid. Even this is pretty boring. Why don't you just admit defeat? You aren't going to get the answer. Throw yourself off the edge over there. Doesn't take a second. Dammit, at your age you'll probably die of shock before you hit the fucking ground."

"Hmm," Ajayi said, and Quiss wondered if she had been listening to the bird. But she was still frowning deeply at the tiles on her little ledge of wood. Talking to them, or herself.

In a few days, if Quiss had counted correctly, they would have been together in the castle for two thousand days. Of course, he recalled proudly, he had been there longer than she had.

It was good, counting up the days, working out the anniversaries so that they could celebrate them. He had started working them out in different number-bases. Base five, base six, seven, eight, of course, nine, ten, twelve and sixteen. So two thousand days would be a quadruple celebration, as it was divisible by five and eight and ten and sixteen. It was just a pity Ajayi didn't share this enthusiasm.

Quiss wiped his head slowly, dislodging some small cold flakes of snow. He blew some more off the board. Perhaps they would have to go back in soon, if the snow kept up. They had got bored with the games room, and the weather had seemed milder, so, after much cajoling of the seneschal, they did finally get permission to have the small table with the red jewel in it unbolted again from the floor (an apparently simple job which absorbed three - sometimes more - constantly arguing attendants armed with oilcans, screwdrivers, hammers, bolt-cutters, tweezers, wrenches and pliers for all of five days) and transported up through the upper levels of the castle to what was, by default, thanks to the crumbling architecture of previously higher storeys, the castle's roof. In this sort of elevated courtyard, surrounded by stunted trees and fallen stones and distant turrets, they had played the game of Chinese Scrabble for the past fifty-odd days. The weather had been kind; no wind, slightly warmer than before (until today) and the sky still grey, but bright grey. "Maybe it's spring!" Quiss had said brightly. "Maybe this is high summer," Ajayi had muttered dourly, and Quiss had got angry with her for being so pessimistic.

Quiss scratched his scalp. It felt funny since the castle barber had cut his hair. He wasn't sure if the hair was growing back or not. His chin and cheeks, which had been grizzly with mottled stubble for nineteen hundred days in the castle, now felt smooth to the touch, though still lined with age.

Quiss made a funny little laughing noise as he thought of the castle barber, who was neurotic. He was neurotic because he had the job of shaving every man in the castle who didn't shave himself. Quiss had heard of this odd character long before he met him; the seneschal had told him of the barber shortly after Quiss had arrived in the castle, in answer to his inquiry whether there were any other relatively ordinary human people in the place. Quiss hadn't believed the seneschal at first; he thought the grey-skinned man was joking. A barber who shaves everybody who doesn't shave himself? Quiss said he didn't believe such a person existed.

"That is the provisional conclusion," the seneschal had said gravely, "that the barber has arrived at."

Quiss met the barber much later, when he was exploring the middle levels of the castle. The barber had a huge, splendidly equipped, almost totally unused barber's shop with a fine view of the snow-filled plain. The barber was taller and skinnier than the seneschal, and had deep black skin. He had white hair, and was half-bald. He shaved the right side of his scalp, to the skin. The left side had a fine head, or half-head, of curly white locks. He shaved his left eyebrow off, but left the right intact. He had half a moustache, on the left-hand side. His beard was very full and bushy, on the right side only; otherwise he was clean-shaven.

The barber wore thick white spotless overalls, and a white apron. He either didn't speak the same language as Quiss, or had forgotten how to speak, because when Quiss had entered the brass-railed, red-leather-chaired barber shop he just danced around Quiss, pointing at his hair and beard and twittering like a bird, his hands and arms fluttering about as he danced. He flapped a big white dusty towel at Quiss and through pleading, imploring motions tried to get him to sit down in one of the chairs. Quiss, wary and suspicious of people who shook and trembled a lot even at the best of times, but especially so when they wanted to come near him with anything resembling long scissors and a cut-throat razor, had declined. Later, though, he found out that the barber had a steady hand when actually carrying out his duties. The seneschal's hair still grew, and he had it cut by the barber.

A hundred or so days ago, Quiss had sent an attendant to tell the barber Quiss would be coming down soon to have his hair cut. Either the minion got the message wrong or the barber misunderstood it, or couldn't wait, because he arrived in the games room a short time later, carrying a portable barbering kit. Quiss let him cut his hair while Ajayi looked on. The barber had seemed pleased, gibbering away to himself quite happily as he skilfully trimmed Quiss's mottled hair and shaved off his beard.

The red crow had watched, too, which was a pity, because it had kept telling Quiss the barber would cut his throat just as proficiently if he asked him to nicely; after all, what was the alternative? Madness, or a slip on the stairs one day...

Quiss stroked his chin, still finding - after a hundred days - the smoothness novel and pleasing.

He had no luck in getting the attendants to brew or distil something alcoholic from the kitchens" supplies. And he never had found that open door again, or any open door. All of them were closed and locked these days. The last interesting thing he'd found was another stupid joke, and one he didn't even fully understand.

He'd been deep in the castle's lower levels, looking for the door, or for the small attendant who had discovered him in the room (he still had dreams about those alien brown arms, that blue sky with the contrail across it; that sun!), and he had heard a steady, monotonous thumping noise far away, down a network of tunnels and corridors.

He followed the pounding sound until he came to an area where the floors of the corridors and alcoves were covered with fine grey dust, and the air was hazed with the same dry stuff. The floor shook rhythmically to the pounding. He went down some broad, worn steps to a cross-corridor, and sneezed on the dust.

A small attendant wearing grey boots and no cowl-brim scuttled along the broad corridor the steps led down to. It stopped when it saw him.

"Can I help you?" it squeaked. Its voice was very high, but at least it was civil. Quiss decided to take advantage of this.

"Yes, you can," he said, holding a bit of his furs over his mouth and nose to keep the swirling dust out. His eyes smarted. The pounding was closer, down the corridor where large double doors faced him. "What the hell's that noise? Where's all this dust come from?"

The attendant regarded him quietly for a moment, then said, "Come with me." It walked off towards the double doors. Quiss followed. The double doors were made out of plastic, with clear plastic inserts at about human head-level. On one of the doors there was a large symbol like this: D. It reminded Quiss of a half-moon. On the other door, the right-hand one, there was this symbol: P. The attendant swept through the doors in a cloud of dust. Coughing, holding the furs tighter over his mouth, Quiss held one door open and looked through.

Inside a huge cavern of a room, hundreds of minions scurried about in the grey mist. There were conveyor belts, overhead cranes and hoppers, buckets and wheelbarrows, and a narrow-gauge railway system with rails - where they could be seen through the piles and drifts of dust - which looked very similar to those Quiss had noticed in the castle kitchens. The whole place was filled with clouds of fine grey swirling dust, and shook and echoed to the continuous pounding, crashing noise he had heard more distantly earlier. The noise was being produced by a single gigantic machine in the very centre of the room. The machine appeared to be made up largely of great man-thick metal columns, tangles of wire and cables, and a cagework of constantly rising and falling gates of metal mesh.

In the centre of the machine something massive-looking flashed silver in time to the pounding noise. Above the centre of the machine, also in time to the beat, a silver metal cylinder rose and fell. Grey, oddly crafted blocks or sculptures went in at one side of the machine; dust blew out at the other side. Dust and rubble. The rubble was carried away on a conveyor belt to huge vats Quiss could just make out in the powder-hazed distance. The dust was apparently meant to be sucked up by extractor ducts in the ceiling (again, similar to the system in the kitchens), but a lot of the dust seemed to be evading the intakes. Quiss could see - through all the dust in the air - great drifts of it piled like frozen waves around vats and conveyor belt housings. In several places grey-booted minions were shovelling the grey dust into wheelbarrows or small hopper-like wagons on the narrow-gauge railways. Other minions were wheeling full, grey-heaped barrows up perilously narrow planks and gantries to the lips of the giant vats, and tipping the dust in; a lot of it billowed out again.

As far as Quiss could make out in the grey gloom, from the vats large overhead buckets scooped up grey, viscous fluid, which was poured into moulds on conveyor belts which disappeared into long, hissing machines; at the far end of the machines the moulds were stripped off the grey sculptures which were then minion-handled or trolleyed to another conveyor belt which led into the pounding machine in the centre of the room...

"What in hell's name is this?" Quiss said incredulously, choking on the dust.

"This is dee pee," the attendant said primly, standing in front of him, arms folded. "This is the nerve centre of the entire castle. Without us, the whole place would simply grind to a halt." It sounded proud.

"Are you sure?" Quiss said, coughing. The minion stiffened.

"Have you any other questions?" it said coldly. Quiss was looking at the objects which he thought of as sculptures as they moved steadily along the conveyor belt to their destruction. They were funny shapes: 5, 9, 2, 3,4...

"Yes," he said, pointing at the shapes, "what are those meant to be?"

"Those are," the attendant said pointedly, "numbers."

"Don't look like numbers to me," Quiss said.

"Well, they are," the minion said impatiently. That's the whole point."

"The whole point of what?" Quiss said, laughing and choking in almost equal parts. He could see he was annoying the small minion, and thought this was good fun. He'd certainly never seen numbers that shape before, but of course they could easily be numbers in some alien language or system. Ajayi might even have recognised them.

"The whole point of what we're doing here," the attendant said, as though trying to be more patient than it really felt. "This is the number-crunching room. Those are numbers," it said, enunciating clearly as though for some small and wilfully obtuse child, and motioning behind it to the conveyor belt with one arm, "and this is where we crunch them. That machine is a number-cruncher."

"You're crazy," Quiss said into the fur over his mouth.

"What?" the attendant said, stiffening still further and then jolting forward, drawing itself up to its full - if still modest - height. Quiss coughed.

"Nothing. What do you make the numbers out of? What's that grey stuff?"

"Plaster of Salt Lake City," the minion said, as though only an idiot would ask such a question. Quiss frowned.

"What the hell's that?"

"It's like Plaster of Paris, except duller," the minion said, then turned and stamped off through the drifts of grey powder. Quiss shook his head, coughed, then let the plastic doors swing to.

Ajayi was still looking at the board and her two remaining tiles, staring from one to the other. Then she put her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, and closed her eyes, looking thoughtful.

The snow collected in the thin grey hairs of her head, but she still did not notice it was snowing. Her expression of concentration intensified. They were nearly finished.

Chinese Scrabble was played on a gridded board, a little like an infinitely small square section of the Go board they had played on hundreds of days ago, but in Chinese Scrabble one placed small tiles with pictograms on them into the squares formed by the grid of lines, not small stones on the interstices. They hadn't needed to come up with any complicated things like infinitely long pieces this time, but the problem had been the choice of pictograms they had been saddled with at the start of the game. Apart from anything else, they had had to learn a language called Chinese.

That alone had taken them over seven hundred days. Quiss had nearly given in several times, but Ajayi kept him going somehow; the new language excited her. It was a key, she said. Now she read even more.

Ajayi opened her eyes and studied the board again.

The meanings and possibilities of the pictograms in front of her filled her mind as she tried to fit the last two tiles somewhere into the network of skewed pathways she and Quiss had created on the small board.

Chinese was a difficult language, even more difficult than the one she had started studying, the one called English, but they were both worth all the effort. They were even worth the effort of having to drag Quiss along the same educative road. She had helped and cajoled and prompted and shouted and insulted until he could get by in the language they had to play the game in, and even once he had just about grasped the basics she still had to keep helping him along; she'd been able to work out roughly what tiles he still had on his side as the game had entered its final, most difficult, stage, and had deliberately left him easy openings so that his imperfect grasp of the language would not prevent him getting rid of the last of his tiles. The result was that now she was stuck, unable to see where she could put the last two pictograms she had left. If she couldn't place them somewhere, make one or two or more new meanings, they would have to start again. The next game wouldn't take as long as this one, which had lasted thirty days so far, but she was worried that Quiss would get impatient. He had already grumbled several times that she hadn't taught him the language properly.

But the language had been a marvellous, magical gift for her. To enable them to play the game properly, they of course had to understand Chinese, a language from the castle's Subject place, the still un-named planet all the books appeared to originate from. The seneschal had therefore provided them with a dictionary which gave Chinese pictograms and their equivalent in one of the languages common to both sides in the Therapeutic Wars, an ancient, long-deciphered battle-code so elegant its utility as a language had ensured its survival after its secrecy had evaporated.

With that key Ajayi could unlock any of the languages original to the un-named globe. It had taken her only a few days to find a Chinese-English dictionary, and after that she could read the books she found far more easily. She learned Chinese, for the game, and English, for her own reading, alongside each other, becoming relatively fluent in the Indo-European system long before the more tricky Oriental tongue.

It had been as if the whole, massive crumbling ruin of the castle suddenly became transparent; now there were so many more books she could find and take and read and enjoy; a whole culture and entire civilisation was spread out before her, for her to study as she wished. She was already learning French, German, Russian and Latin. Soon Greek, and from the Latin, Italian shouldn't be too big a step (her English was already helping her with the ancient Roman language). The castle was no longer the prison it had seemed before; it was a library, a museum of literature, of literacy, of language. The only thing which still worried her was that she could not find any way to translate the markings on the slates. Those cryptic, buried symbols still meant nothing. She had scoured wall after wall of books but never found a single mention of the strange, simple markings somehow etched inside the grained rock.

But that was a small worry in comparison to the immense satisfaction she felt with her discovery of the key to the castle's original tongues. She had started methodically to read all the classics of the un-named planet's past, having discovered long before a book which acted as a guide to the literature of that world. Apart from the occasional foray further forward in time - to whet her appetite - she was being quite strict with herself in keeping to a chronological exploration of the books she had discovered and stored in her rooms. She was now, at the end of this first and - she hoped - last game of Chinese Scrabble, just starting the age of the Elizabethan dramatists in England, and was already starting to get excited about reading Shakespeare, desperately hoping he hadn't been over-praised in the later critical works she had already encountered.

Even having only got that far, she had still missed out a lot; there were still books she had to find, or go back and read, once she had read through to the last era books were still printed in (or the castle's records stopped; she didn't know what had happened; did some cataclysm overwhelm the world, did they move on to some other form of communication, or did the castle only contain works up to a certain period in the world's history?).

"Come on, Ajayi," Quiss said with a sigh. "I finished ages ago. What's keeping you?"

Ajayi looked up at the old, mottle-haired man, with his smooth cheeks and broad, lined face. She arched one eyebrow, but said nothing. She would have liked to have thought that her companion was making a joke, but she was afraid that he was serious.

"Yeah, get a move on," the red crow said. "My cigar's getting put ,out by this fucking snow."

Ajayi looked up then, and realised it was snowing. Somehow she had been aware that Quiss kept blowing the board in front of her clear every now and again, but she had been so involved with trying to find a niche, or two, for the remaining tiles on her side of the board that it hadn't got through to her properly that what he was blowing off it was snow.

"Oh," she said, suddenly aware of it. She looked around, seemingly confused for a second. She pulled the collars of her furs up closer around her neck, though if anything it had become slightly milder since the snow started to fall, not colder. She frowned at the board, then looked up at Quiss again. "Should we go back to the games room, do you think?"

"Oh gods no," the red crow said in an exasperated voice, "let's get this over with. Shit." It pulled the cigar from its mouth, glared at its wet, black end, then tossed it away with a flick of its skinny black leg. "No point in asking either of you bastards for a light," it muttered, then shook its head fiercely, stretched its wings half-out, and fanned its tail. It shook itself free of the snow gathering on its back. A couple of small red feathers floated down to the soft ground, like strange flakes of blood in the white fall.

Ajayi went back to staring at the board.

Quiss had given up all hope of carrying out some sort of coup-de-chateau. The seneschal was in an impregnable position, he discovered, because he was beyond time. Five hundred days ago some of the scullions Quiss had befriended were working in the kitchens when a temporary stove collapsed, sending a huge vat of boiling stew crashing down on the seneschal, who was walking by it at the time. Half a dozen scullions saw what happened next; one second the seneschal was there, walking, the next he was disappearing under the gigantic metal cauldron as it fell and cracked and split, flooding an entire section of the kitchens with molten stew. Two of Quiss's little attendants were only metres away, and had to jump for their lives into the sink with the dishes they were cleaning to escape the tidal wave of steaming, bubbling broth.

A moment later, the seneschal was walking past on the other side of that sink unit, telling the section under-cook to find out who had been responsible for the building of the temporary stove, get them to construct another, and then burn them alive in it. He went on to his office as though nothing had happened. No body was ever discovered when the remains of the shattered stove and cauldron were cleared up. One - still stunned - scullion said the seneschal had simply materialised, right in front of it.

Quiss wasn't a fool. There was no way you could go against power like that.

He had also given up the idea of trying somehow to short-circuit the process which occurred when they finished a game and gave an answer to the riddle they had been set. The red crow had told him what happened - the last creature in the castle Quiss would have expected to be so forthcoming, but it had obviously decided that by telling him it would discourage him still more and thus send him a little further along the road to self-destruction.

Quiss couldn't recall the whole story now, but it went on for a long time and involved the waiter whispering the answer in a room full of bees which then built some sort of nest which something called the message crow ate and then started flying.

After that there were some more funny beasts, most of which seemed to end up eating each other, then a place on the surface of wherever-they-were with thousands of tiny lakes which thousands of animals marched on to and spontaneously combusted, melting the ice of the lakes in a certain sequence which some sort of organic communication satellite with a message laser recognised... after that it got even more complicated.

It was, in other words, foolproof. Impersonating or somehow coercing the waiter who did the whispering was pointless too; as a final check whoever or whatever arrived to take them away from the castle would ask the rooks and crows what they had seen, to make sure there had been no tricks employed.

The whole thing, of course, happened in some sort of time warp, which was why, despite the labyrinthine complexity of the answering process, they always found out the response to their answer within a matter of minutes. Quiss found it all very depressing.

Well, they were about to finish this game. Perhaps, he told himself, they would get it right this time. They had only about one good answer left to the riddle, which was worrying in one way but encouraging in another. Maybe this one had to be the right one, maybe they would finally say the right thing and get away from here.

Quiss tried to think of the things he used to try not to think about; the things he had missed so much at first that it had really hurt to think about them. He could think of them quite easily now, quite painlessly. The good things in life, the many pleasures of the flesh and mind, the joy of battle, plot and drunken reminiscing.

It all seemed so far away now. It felt as if it had all happened to somebody else, some young son or grandson, some other person entirely. Could it be that he was starting to think like an old man? Just because he looked like one was no real reason, but perhaps there was a sort of back-pressure, a feedback cycle of effect and cause which made his thoughts gradually fit the husk they filled. He didn't know. Maybe it was just all that had happened here in the Castle Doors, all the disappointments, all the missed chances (those brown woman-arms, that bright promise of a contrail, that sun, that sun in this overcast place!), all the chaos and the order, the seemingly purposeless, apparently directed insanity of the castle. Maybe it just got to you after a while.

Yes, he thought, the castle. Perhaps it makes us as we are, as we are to be. Perhaps it moulds us, like those numbers ever circling to destruction, reincarnation. Indeed: disintegration and break-up, an epilogue at birth... why not? He would even be sorry to leave, in some ways. The small minions he used as contacts in the kitchens were hardly the crack troops he was used to, or even battle-honed mercenaries, but they had their own nervous, inefficient attraction; they amused him. He would miss them.

He laughed at the thought of the barber, he recalled meeting the master mason, and the superintendent of mines; both surly, proud, impressive men he would like the time to know better. Even the seneschal himself was interesting once he could be persuaded to talk, ever disregarding his ability to evade catastrophe.

But a lifetime, or more than a lifetime, here?

Unbidden, the thought suddenly filled him with deep, awful despair. Yes, he would miss this place, in some strange, twisted way, if they were able to leave at last, but that was only natural; as a prison it was very mild indeed, and anywhere not unendingly unpleasant could inspire nostalgia given enough time, sufficient scope for the processes of memory to select the good and neglect the bad. That was not the point, that was simply not the point.

To stay here would be to fail, to give in, to compound and affirm the error he had made in the first place which brought him here. It was duty. Not to his side or even his comrades; they were not involved here. It was duty to himself.

How strange that only now, in this odd place, he should understand fully a phrase, an idea he had heard and dismissed all the way through his education and training!

"Ah!" Ajayi said, breaking Quiss's thoughts. He looked up to see the woman reaching over the board, cupping her hand and blowing into the half-bowl it formed, directing her breath down onto an area of the playing surface and scattering the snow flakes which had settled there. "There," she said, placing the two tiles down together in one corner of the board, then smiling proudly at her companion. Quiss looked at the two newly set-down tiles.

"That's it, then," he said, nodding.

"Don't you think it's good?" Ajayi said. She pointed.

Quiss shrugged noncommittally. Ajayi suspected he didn't understand exactly the new meanings she had made on the board.

"It'll do," Quiss said, looking not particularly impressed. "It's finished the game. That's the main thing."

"Well, thank Kryste for that," the red crow said. "I was just about falling asleep." It flapped from its perch on the broken column and hovered over the board, inspecting it.

"I didn't know you could hover," Ajayi said to the bird; its wingbeats, just above them, disturbed the snow falling on them and the board, making artificial flurries.

"I'm not supposed to," the red crow said absently, eyes fixed on the board. "But then crows aren't supposed to talk either, are they? Yes, that looks all right. I suppose."

Quiss watched the red bird, flapping energetically above them. He made a face when it gave its disdainful approval of their game. The red crow made a sound like a sneeze, then said, "What's your contribution to the wit and wisdom of the universe this time, then?"

"Why should we tell you?" Quiss said.

"Why not?" the red crow said indignantly.

"Well..." Quiss said, thinking,'... because we don't like you."

"Good grief, I'm only doing my job," the red crow said, sounding genuinely hurt. Ajayi coughed on a laugh.

"Oh, tell it," she said, waving one hand dismissively.

Quiss gave another sour look, first at her, then the bird, cleared his throat and said, "Our answer is 'You can't...' no, I mean 'There is no such thing as either.' "

"Oh," the red crow said, still hovering, unimpressed, "wow."

"Well, have you got any better answers?" Quiss said aggressively.

"Plenty, but I'm not telling you bastards."

"Well," Ajayi said, standing up stiffly and dusting the powdery white snow from her furs, "I think we should get inside and find an attendant."

"Don't bother," the red crow said. "Allow me; it'll be a pleasure." It cackled with laughter and flew off." 'No such thing as either'; ha ha ha..." its voice trailed back to them as it flew away.

Ajayi picked the small table and the board up slowly and together she and Quiss made their way through the tumbled masonry of the roof towards the intact floors, some way off. Quiss watched the red crow flap slowly through the snow-filled air until he lost sight of it.

"Do you think it's gone off to tell somebody?"

"Maybe," Ajayi said, holding the small table carefully and watching where she put her feet.

"Think we can trust it?" Quiss said.

"Probably not."

"Hmm," Quiss said, stroking his smooth chin.

"Don't worry," Ajayi said, stepping over some cracked slate blocks as they made their way towards the shelter of a broken arcade, "we can always tell somebody ourselves."

"Hmm, I suppose so," Quiss said as they entered the arcade, stepping over some of its fallen columns and the remains of part of the roof. They came under the shelter of the roof where it was still good, and as they did so Quiss slipped on a patch of ice, crying out as he slid, putting out both hands, trying to steady himself on a column on one side and Ajayi on the other. He knocked the board.

Tiles scattered. Quiss fell heavily to the ground.

"Oh, Quiss!" Ajayi said. She put the board down quickly to one side. She went to the old man, lying on the ground, spreadeagled over the ice he had slipped on, eyes fixed on the vaulted roof of the arcade. "Quiss!" Ajayi said, kneeling down painfully by the man's side. "Quiss!"

Quiss made a strangled, choking noise; his chest moved up and down quickly. His face was grey. Ajayi put her hands to the sides of her head for a second, shaking her head, tears coming to her eyes.

Quiss gurgled, his eyes popping. She took his hand in hers, held it with both her hands as she leant over him. "Oh Quiss..."

The man sucked a huge, laboured gust of cold air into his lungs, his arms came up and he thumped his chest, then he tried to roll over on one side. When she saw what he was trying to do Ajayi helped him. He propped himself up on one elbow, then, with Ajayi's help, sat up. He banged his back with his clenched fist, weakly. Ajayi did it for him, harder. He nodded, his breath coming more regularly now.

"Just...winded..." he said, shaking his head. He wiped his eyes. "Okay..." he sucked in more air. He looked over at the board; the pattern on it broken and spilled. "Oh, shit," he said, and put his head in his hands.

Ajayi kneaded his broad back through the heavy robes and said, "Never mind about that, Quiss. As long as you're all right."

"But the... board, it's all... messed up..." Quiss gasped.

"I can remember how it looked, Quiss," Ajayi said, leaning close behind him and talking into his ear, trying to sound confident and encouraging. "I studied it for long enough, goodness knows. It's engraved on my memory! Don't worry about it. Are you all right? Are you sure?"

"I'm all right; stop...fussing!" Quiss said irately, trying to shove Ajayi away with one hand. She knelt back from him, her hands falling to her lap, eyes lowered.

"I'm sorry," she said, getting up slowly from her knees. "I didn't mean to fuss." She bent, sitting on her haunches, grunting with the effort, and started to pick the fallen Scrabble tiles out of the snow to one side, drifting in under the roof of the arcade, and off the ice-crusted surface of the slate slabs.

"Fucking ice," Quiss said hoarsely. He coughed, rubbed his nose. He looked round at the woman, carefully picking the pieces up from the ground and putting them on the board again. "Have you got a nose-rag?" he said.

"What? Yes." Ajayi said, reaching into her furs and bringing out a small handkerchief. She handed it to Quiss, who blew his nose loudly and handed the kerchief back. She folded it and put it away. Ajayi sighed. She wanted to tell him to get up; he'd catch cold sitting on the freezing slabs like that. But she didn't want to fuss.

Quiss got up with some difficulty, grunting and cursing. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as she picked up the scattered pieces, ready to help if he asked, or reach out quickly if he started to fall back again. Quiss stood, rubbing his buttocks and back, leaning against a column.

They could so easily die, she reminded herself. They might be fixed in one age, but it was an old and fragile one, a weak and accident-prone age. So far they had not fallen really badly, or broken any bones, but if they did injure themselves they would take a long time to get better. She had asked the seneschal about that, long ago. His advice had been: "Don't fall'.

She thought she had all the tiles. She counted them, all the ones on the board, and found there was still one missing. She got up, still stiffly, arching her pained back and looking round in the snow and on the slate flagstones.

"Got them all?" Quiss said. His face was still pale, but not as grey as it had been. Ajayi shook her head, still looking round about her.

"No. One missing." Quiss looked quickly over the slates.

"I might have known it. They won't let us answer the riddle now. I bet we'll have to start all over again. I bet it. That's what'll happen. This is just typical." He turned quickly away and slammed an open palm into one of the columns, staying facing away from her, breathing deeply, head hung down between his shoulders.

Ajayi looked at him, then lifted up the small table, to see if she had placed it on top of the missing tile when she put it down to help Quiss. But the tile wasn't there. "We'll find it," she said, gazing into the drifted snow. She didn't feel as sure of it as she hoped she sounded. She couldn't understand it; the tile couldn't have bounced so far, could it? She counted the tiles on the board again, then once more.

She began to get angry; at Quiss for falling in the first place and then for trying to shove her away; at the missing tile; at the castle itself, the red crow, the seneschal, the attendants; all of them. Where could the stupid thing be?

"Are you sure you've counted them properly?" Quiss said in a tired voice, still holding on to the column.

"Of course I have, several times; there's one missing," Ajayi snapped, her voice clipped. "Now stop asking stupid questions."

"No need to bite my tongue off," Quiss said huffily. "I was only trying to help."

"Well, look for the tile," Ajayi said. She could hear herself, and she hated herself for it. She shouldn't lose control like this, she oughtn't to snap at Quiss; it did no good. They ought to be sticking together through all this, not quarrelling like schoolkids or growing-apart couples. But she couldn't help it.

"Look," Quiss said angrily, "I didn't hit the fucking board on purpose. It was an accident. Would you rather I broke my neck?"

"Of course not," Ajayi said carefully, trying not to snap or shout. "I didn't say you did it deliberately." She wasn't looking at Quiss, she was moving her head from side to side, still scanning the snow and slates, seemingly intent on finding the missing tile, but her mind was all caught up in the words; she knew she wouldn't have seen the tile even if it had been quite obvious; she wasn't concentrating on the search.

"Maybe you'd rather I did, eh?" Quiss said. "Eh?"

She looked up at him then. "Oh, Quiss, how can you say that?" She felt as though he'd kicked her. There had been no need for him to say that. What made him say such things?

Quiss just snorted. He pushed himself away from the column with one slightly shaking arm, and as he did so, the missing tile fell out of one of the bottom hems of his furs, where it had lodged when it and he fell. At the same moment a small figure appeared at the far end of the arcade, from a door which led back into the main body of the castle. They both looked first at the fallen tile, then at the small attendant. It waved and called out in an excited voice:

"Did you say, 'There's no such thing as either'?"

They looked at each other again. Ajayi tried to answer, but had to stop, and patted the top of her chest with one hand; her throat seemed to have dried up, she couldn't get any words out. Quiss nodded enthusiastically. "Yes!" he shouted. He kept nodding his head.

The attendant shook its head. "No," it said, and with a shrug disappeared back into the castle.

Somewhere far away, beneath them in the ruins, a familiar voice cackled, crowing with distant laughter.