Glass Read online

  Max looked up. I had never seen Dad cry. It felt like stepping through my bedroom door as a child, and hearing it slam shut, and realising there was no handle on the other side.

  ‘But she was a good person,’ he said vehemently. ‘She never did a bad deed in her life, and you all know it. She’d let you walk all over her, and she wouldn’t bear a grudge. And she might have thought she had nothing to show for it at the end of the day, but God did it make you love her.’

  Dad’s eyes burned; Max shook my useless hand; I felt like I was falling.

  And then that was that. My mother was buried. Everyone went back to their living. She had been; she was not. It had occurred to me before that my life somehow contained my death – that the story of my life had to end somewhere – but now I realised that the course of my life was determined all along the way by the deaths of others, her death contained in my life.

  I could hardly find a job now. It seemed like an insult, the idea that I might turn away from thoughts of her and start squirreling away money. That I might just set her aside, like an unconvincing book, fending off guilt by telling myself that I would get around to preserving her memory one day. Before this, grief had been as inconceivable to me as a black winter coat in a summer heat wave. And yet here it was. I put it on and it fit. It formed a layer between the world and me. It was heavy and stifling; it tired me out, made me hungry. Without her and with Max now in a flat of his own, the routines of the house fell apart, and we rarely remembered to shop for food. One day, there was nothing left in the cupboard but the half-finished pack of Dutch waffles, which had gone stale. I ate each of them slowly at the kitchen table, willing them to offer some kind of bite, but they were soft and chewy. They were the last food she had bought. We had eaten every other trace. Time was undoing her effect on the world already. I went shopping at the big Tesco so that I could buy more Dutch waffles, seven or eight packs. It was good to have them there.

  6

  Back to School

  Before I could think of finding a job, I decided to pay tribute to her, and to try to educate myself a little. I missed the way she would constantly feed me half-digested information like a bird to her chicks. It was only natural, then, that after her death I sought out a surrogate in the greatest pool of half-digested information in the world: Wikipedia. I did consider buying a selection of the popular For Idiots series when I found an offer on at W H Smith, but as I picked up Self-Confidence for Idiots, I wondered whether theirs was the right approach. And it wasn’t as if the internet was still stuck in the era of my schooldays, when homework had involved triangulating a single line of information on the Encarta CD-ROM with the unlimited untruths of Altavista, Lycos, Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves. Now we had Wikipedia, and it was learning more and improving every day.

  I started by learning about Wikipedia itself. The demographic for its top ten thousand editors was single males between eighteen and thirty with no partner, no children and a degree. Some people had made hundreds of thousands of edits, for no other reason than to contribute. It was a charity with 150 staff but four hundred million hits a month. Nature magazine said in a study that it was nearly as accurate as the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The Encyclopaedia Britannica only had about a hundred editors, but it did start in 1768. Some people had read the whole thing, all thirty-two thousand pages of it. I wondered if anyone would ever read all of the four million articles on the English language Wikipedia. I supposed it would be impossible now, that human knowledge had exceeded the capacity of any one human.

  Now, I’d be the first, or the second, to admit that I don’t know everything. But no one knows everything. By studying their behaviour, I had realised that many so-called clever people are really just people who know how to steer the conversation round to the things they know, and refuse to engage with topics that they don’t know. So I decided there would be two phases to my education: the gathering of any old information I could find, and the proud disseminating of said information. My method was to start off on the day’s ‘featured article’, and keep clicking through articles until I felt I had learnt everything I could take in that day. I became, to coin a word, a Wikipedophile. As I lay in bed each day surfing and eating my weight in Dutch waffles, I became fat (and as my vocabulary improved, corpulent).

  Over those first months, my grief wore in and I felt a little give in the shoulders. If grief had an equivalent of the Schmidt sting pain index, it might have relaxed from a 4 down to a 2.21 I felt guilty, in case it meant that I had begun to care less, but I was also seized regularly by a vague ennui. For all that Mum might have approved of my project, my life seemed to have lost its track. I decided that the thing to do was to retrace my steps. Whenever I used to lose something, my mother always told me to retrace my steps.

  I went to the milk depot. They looked like they were doing a roaring business. In fact, there was a brand new sign saying they had started offering long-life, the bastards.

  I walked back past the school with its tessellated fence. There were no children playing today. It must be shut for the Easter holidays. A Rice Krispies Squares wrapper was caught in the fence, and a cherry tree had been snowing over in the corner near the vegetable patch. People ambled purposelessly by. I suppose most people don’t have somewhere to be every minute of the day. At least, not in Salisbury, they don’t.

  I marched onwards until I reached the green by the cathedral and stopped to look up at the spire. I thought about my mother, the Russian doll, lying in two. My eyes watered a little – from the cold breeze. The clouds swam faster, and I began to feel a little nauseous as I stared at the tip of the spire. Again, I saw a red light flash on its tip. I wondered what it was for.

  ‘For the aeroplanes,’ said a voice. I looked to the source of the sound, which was a small lady with short curly white hair and hands clasped like a Grecian key.22 I recognised her as Dean Winterbottom, who had given the service at the funeral.

  ‘Do aeroplanes land near here?’ I asked, a little dazed.

  She smiled as if I had made a joke.

  ‘Ugly little bugger, isn’t it? Still, height regulations. The council insists.’

  ‘It looks like an aerial for receiving God’s thoughts.’

  ‘I’d never thought of it like that,’ she said. We stood in silence for a little while, looking up at the spire together. Then I felt her eyes on me. ‘Would you like to come in for a cup of tea? It’s rather cold, and you’ve been standing out here for a good hour now.’

  ‘Have I? Well—’ and here I looked back the way I had come to indicate the busy and fulfilled life that was waiting for me, ‘I’m sure I could stop for a cuppa.’

  We went inside the cathedral. I stared at the rich colours of the glass and imagined a great choir chanting. I wondered whether I was allowed to come and hear the choir if I wasn’t a proper Christian.

  ‘You see how it’s thicker at the bottom?’ Dean Winterbottom said, pointing to one of the larger panes. ‘It has flowed like that over time.’

  ‘That isn’t really—’

  ‘Not many people know, but glass is actually a very slow liquid.’

  ‘No,’ I said, knitting my brow, ‘That isn’t right, I’m afraid. Everyone says it’s a liquid, but it’s just the way they used to make the glass. Sorry.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I wish it was true.’

  For some reason I started crying. She looked at me kindly and held me by the shoulders.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you that tea.’

  Sitting in a little back office on a couple of worn and comfortable chairs, we talked a little about my mother. The Dean remembered the service, and my name. I really believed I was beginning to calm down. But when she started pouring out the tea in the little kitchenette, I sobbed with renewed vigour.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter?’ she asked, standing holding the milk bottle.

  ‘The milk,’ I wailed.

  ‘This?’ she asked, sniffing at it.


  I realised how absurd I must have looked, and immediately started laughing in the slightly manic way that follows a good cry.

  ‘Please, pour the tea. I’m sorry,’ I said, wiping my face on my sleeve. ‘It’s been a strange few months. I lost my job as a milkman. I don’t know anything else. I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing with my life. I don’t feel quite myself.’

  ‘I can pour the tea without milk if you prefer?’

  ‘No, milk is fine, thank you.’

  She brought the mugs over.

  ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place. As Jesus once said, “Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed.”’23

  ‘Did he?’

  She sat down, leant forward and clasped her hands on the table. Her eyes were powder blue.

  ‘So what is it you’re searching for?’

  ‘All I know is that I don’t know,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Could it be God?’

  ‘Maybe. I mean, I don’t think so, but I’m not going to rule Him out. I suppose I just want something to do, like everyone else.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ she purred. ‘Purpose.’

  We thought about that word for a little while.

  ‘And what are you good at?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘I pay close attention to detail. I’m honest, neat, good with my hands. I know a lot of trivia.’

  ‘Are you good with heights?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Mmm.’ She pulled at a stray hair on her chin.24 ‘The Man Upstairs might have a job for you.’ She must have seen me shrink back, because she smiled reassuringly. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary, I promise you. At least, nothing that would make it into a Dan Brown novel.’25

  Nonetheless, I took a slurp of tea and checked my watch.

  ‘Something else is troubling you.’

  I squirmed.

  ‘But you have the answers you need. You only need to strip away the impermanent. I’m not talking about the Bible now. God isn’t bothered about eternity in the least, it is a very human concern. You need to find your little piece of eternity, wherever it is, and keep hold of it whenever you’re unsure.’

  She looked a little surprised at herself and when she unclasped her hands there were nail marks in her palms. We finished our drinks, she scribbled her phone number on the back of a Samaritans card, which I didn’t think was much of a coincidence, and I gave her mine, pondering to myself that I rarely exchanged numbers with someone in good faith. Although, not to mislead you, I remained, at this point, very much a virgin.

  I walked back out past streaks of stained light and into the whistling wind. I took the short route home. I supposed I was good with heights. But then, I supposed a lot of things.

  7

  Then I’m Cleaning Windows

  Dad was sat at the kitchen table wearing my mother’s apron, his face wrinkled and red around the eyes where he’d been rubbing them. He had broken into the novelty gift on the wall to get to the minibar bottle of whisky. God only knew what the sell-by date had been. It was probably vintage by now. I sat down at the other end of the table.

  ‘How are things?’ I asked.

  ‘Had a gap in the diary so I started early today.’

  ‘Why are you wearing the apron? You didn’t try to cook, did you?’

  He scratched his cheek and I could hear the bristles. Back when he was working, he used to shave every morning and some evenings. He looked over at the oven, in case, at this late stage, it might reveal its mysteries to him.

  ‘Why don’t I make you a fish finger sandwich?’ I suggested.

  He closed his bloodshot eyes and nodded slowly. I made one for each of us while Dad dragged last week’s newspaper over. He stared at the front page as if each line read ‘you have cancer.’

  After eating, I went to my bedroom and switched on the computer. I looked up aircraft-warning lights. Then I wondered if Salisbury Cathedral was one of the tallest buildings in England. Turned out it wasn’t. The tallest building was a skyscraper called The Shard that was just being completed in London.

  On a whim, I googled ‘glass’. It gave me some news results – one John Blades had been given an OBE for his services to the Queen, as her appointed window cleaner and sculptor of a life-sized glass statue of Churchill for the palace. He ran the country’s largest window-cleaning business, as well as a thriving glassblowing and sculpting workshop.

  I found an article which explained that the time it would take for glass to flow down a thick window would be many times longer than the existence of the universe. Flowing over thousands of billions of years like a tear down the face of God, dripping and splashing into the end of our world and through the beginning of the next. That was one of the reassuring things about glass, I supposed: its permanence.

  I thought back to the glass museum, to the strange realities of bending light, the way that, when it was perfectly clean, it looked almost like a solid slice of air. It seemed odd, otherworldly, even noble, that there were people who spent whole careers making sure that glass was clean and clear. Their life’s work was to preserve the ideal state of a unique material, a tribute to its timeless utility. Perhaps that’s what I could do. There was nothing stopping me, I supposed. I didn’t need GCSEs or work experience. If I bought the equipment, and cleaned people’s windows, and said I was a window cleaner, then that’s what I would be.

  I quickly discovered that there are an unusually large variety of products in the window cleaning profession, including different kinds of holster. There were many ladders, belts, karabiners, suction cups, cloths, wipes, sprays, gels and squeegees – enough to satisfy even an obsessive compulsive.

  There was only one person I knew who could wade through lists of consumer products with the galoshes of a practising Capitalist, and unfortunately it was my brother. Max brought meaning to his life through objects. They were his ‘raisin of being’, as the French might say.26 If Capitalism was a fungus feeding off the Western world, Max was a truffle pig. I sent him a message asking for his thoughts, and within the hour he’d picked his definitive arsenal, with alternatives to each product rated one to ten.

  A little of his excitement rubbed off on me, and in hindsight I ordered too much. I got a double-pouch holster and a ‘sidekick’ holster, which I decided to strap to my calf with a tiny squeegee, in case my primary squeegee somehow got disarmed. I ordered a scraper and various kinds of cleaning fluid. I resolved at some point to try them out on different panes round the house, and see which was the best. Because good wasn’t good enough – for once in my life, I wanted to be flawless.

  The ladder we had in the garage was not fit for purpose. It had three wooden steps, one of which was split, and a total height of about 1.2 metres. On Max’s advice, I opted for an Extension Ladder with Integral Stabiliser, Overlapping Rubber Feet and Non-Slip Rungs. If I couldn’t blame my tools, perhaps I wouldn’t be a bad workman.

  For two days I waited for my things to arrive. On the third day, nothing arrived either. I milled about, showed Dad how to peel potatoes, ended up doing them for him, and waited for the day to pass.

  The next day, the doorbell rang. I opened the door to discover that a lorry had jammed its way onto our small residential road. A man lifted up the shutters, and pulled out a very long, very shiny ladder. Then he got a couple of boxes out and made me sign for it all. So this was it, I had my equipment and I was all set. All I needed to do now was learn how to clean windows. I picked up the ladder and turned towards the house. I heard a clang and stopped. I turned back round. As I turned the second time, I heard another small clang and watched the tip of my ladder bump into the helmet of one of my neighbours, who was sitting stationary on his moped, eyes screwed shut, helmet slightly scratched.

  ‘Whoops,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t think people like you existed,’ he replied quietly.

  ‘I’m really sorry. You don’t make that mistake twice, do you?’

  ‘Apparently you
do.’

  ‘Well – sorry.’ And as I turned round I lifted the ladder so it was more vertical, and he ducked just in case. At least I’d got that lesson out the way. Otherwise, it could have been very embarrassing.

  I took everything out of the boxes and cellophane and laid it all out on the bed. Then I applied my belt, holstered the scrapers and put on my old walking boots. I looked in the mirror and saw something more than myself. At a glance I may have looked like a slightly overweight twenty-two-year-old with glasses. I may have borrowed my sense of personal armoury from a childhood love of spaghetti Westerns – and now that I looked at it, the leg holster might have to go – but for the first time since my mother died, I was a man with a purpose. I felt taller, my muscles taut, hand poised over the trigger of a cleaning-fluid bottle. I had a staring contest with my reflection. I squinted slightly, as if I was looking into the sun, and set my jaw like Clint Eastwood. Waiting, waiting. Who was going to make the first move? My left index finger twitched imperceptibly over the cleaning fluid.

  Bam! I drew the bottle, sprayed my reflection, right-hand-pulled a squeegee and I was off at the top of the mirror, snaking left down right down left chasing the fluid as it trickled inexorably floorwards – but I got there first and overtook it. Now I had time to slow down, to take my time on the corners and holster the fluid, pull out a J-cloth, still crisply folded from the packet, and wipe the fluid from the frame. The outdoor windows wouldn’t need such care, but this one wasn’t just a quick cleaning job. This was me sticking my flag in my moon. I wasn’t going to be a salesman or even a Silica-Based Window Panel Hygiene and Care Co-Ordinator. I was a window cleaner. I would make houses new again, let the sun flow freely into the corners of forgotten rooms. One day, I might even clean one of those giant glass erections27 in the big city. I wiped the last smudge on the window and looked back at my shimmering face. Canary Wharf, or Manhattan. The Big Smoke and the Big Apple. I imagined people on their lunch breaks in America, biting into ripe, chunky apples, and then I thought of London – people huddled on doorsteps smoking. Perhaps London wasn’t a city you lived in, so much as survived. But on the up side, it was only a couple of hours up the M3.