The Body in the Clouds (31 page)

‘Where's this place we're going?'

‘Middle of the city—one of those new apartment blocks. You been away long?'

Long enough not to know about new apartments in the middle of the city. Every second image through the window showed cranes, or hoard-ings, or deep pits waiting to be filled. Disoriented by the route, he thought for a moment the car was heading in the wrong direction, and was about to say something when the city's skyline appeared from the crest of a hill—recognisable enough, even with its new spires and heights—and he leaned back again. He wondered why he'd never found a correspondingly familiar view of London. He knew pieces of it—Big Ben, the Eye, the dome, the Battersea Power Station—and he could count off the bridges along some of the river's reaches, but he couldn't have drawn the shapes of glass and steel running alongside any section of the river the way he thought he could here, even if this city's topographies and connections were blurry in his mind. Sydney set itself up like a stage; maybe London, so much older and more organic, didn't like to pose so much.

He closed his eyes, back above the rows of rich sandstone cliffs and buttresses that he'd watched during the plane's descent. Their colour had been high, exaggerated by the early sun like the colours in the city were now, and any water tucked between them had turned to quicksilver as the plane crossed them. The first time he'd seen that happen was the first time he'd flown anywhere—a holiday when he was a kid, with Charlie and Gramps. Where they'd been going, he'd forgotten; all he could remember was how astonishingly big the country had looked, and Gramps's stories about the ‘poor buggers sent out to map that with a bit of flour and a compass and off to try and measure the lot'. They'd seen quicksilver water. They'd seen their plane's shadow skating fast over the land's surface. They'd seen mountains and valleys, and ridges lined up like stored scenery with empty space behind—there was something comforting in the fact these things had still looked the same this morning.

Eyes open now, the city itself looked like a cardboard cutout of shapes and blocks, with nothing behind its façade but that space, or a drop, or maybe even the edge of the world. One of those tricks your mind could play—he glanced up towards the clouds, their picture-book shapes nothing like the complex landscape of crevasses and peaks and spots of rainbow he'd just flown through. How quickly, how easily, you could move from above to below.

When he opened his eyes again, he was deep in the city's canyons, horns blasting and cars cutting in front of each other, all haste and self-importance. A bunch of kids—the girls looked so young, which made Dan feel old—tumbled out of a bar, headed for a convenience store with bright lights cutting the bright morning and shelves heavy with milk, lol-lies, dailies and glossy magazines. Straining to read the newspaper posters, to see what was happening in the world, Dan's head jerked against the window as the car swerved and the driver swore.

‘Jesus—sorry.' One of the girls had lost her footing, falling into the path of the car and jumping back, wide-eyed and gasping. The driver pulled into the kerb and Dan wondered for a moment if he was going to check that the girl was all right, or abuse her for being in the way. But, ‘It's this building,' he said. ‘Just ask at the desk and they'll buzz you up.'

‘How much do I . . . ?'

‘Taken care of. Just ask at the desk and they'll let her know you're here.'

More than a decade ago, in his taxi to the airport, Dan had imagined Charlie walking back to her single room in the hollow of one of Sydney's inner-city gullies.
Nice that life's going well
, he thought as the heavy glass doors opened automatically to let him in.

The elevator pushed up far enough and fast enough to make his ears pop twice, the hall beyond its smooth doors quiet and sepulchral with thick, dark carpet and too many mirrors. He looked left, right, left again, heard a door click somewhere, and saw a line of light widening in the gloom.

‘Charlie?'

‘Down here. I'll just hold the door open so we don't lock ourselves out on top of everything.'

‘On top of . . .' Trying to turn his case into her doorway, hug her, and make some proper greeting, and then it seemed as if the wall had fallen away from her apartment and he was about to be sucked off the edge of its dangerously high floor. He staggered against the vertigo, his arm reaching for the sofa.

‘Bloody hell, Charlie,' he said. ‘Look at your bloody view.' It reached across the air his plane had just breached, out towards the thin line of purple-blue hills that rose up from the city's plain, eighty, ninety kilometres away or more. Between the here and the there, the city poked up glass and metal and steel. Angular shapes caught the morning sun and gave way to the colours and shapes of cheek-by-jowl living intercut with trees, water, road. So many windows up so close; so much space so far away.

‘Your heights thing,' she said. ‘Sorry.' She watched as he steadied himself and took half a step forward, unsure of how to get back to some kind of greeting. In the end, he stepped back again and balanced on the arm of the lounge.

‘This is some place you've got. It's good to see you. I didn't know which perfume to get. How's Gramps?'

‘Don't worry about the perfume. You should call your mum, let her know you're here.' They were frozen, awkward, in the wide, light room, and the silence lasted a little too long. Then, ‘Good flight?' asked Charlie, but her voice was flat.

Dan rubbed his eyes. ‘Weird flight,' he said, blinking. ‘Near-death experience when another jumbo cut underneath us just out of London. Spent the transit stop looking for a lost boy's family. Then the old man sitting in front of me died halfway to Sydney. And I was having the weirdest dreams—Gramps's story, you know, diving off the bridge; I don't know where I thought I was, or what I was thinking. I was him, but it wasn't him. I don't know.' It sounded nonsensical, disconnected and abbreviated like that.

Charlie shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and the silence thickened again. ‘Do you want a shower or something?' she said finally, crossing into another room and coming back with a towel. ‘You'll feel better when you're a bit less scruffy.' That was more like her voice, and she threw the towel at him, smiling at last as his hand jumped and caught it. ‘Have a shower. I'll make coffee. Then we can talk. Bathroom.' She pointed away from the wall of glass.

Pulling his shirt over his head, he could smell the cake of soap he'd used in the airport. He shook his limp hair, peered at himself in Charlie's mirror, wished she'd said, ‘But you still look the same, you haven't changed at all,' as if those phrases would have had some extra power, like spells or incantations. Leaning closer under the bright yellow light, he clocked the freckles, the lines, the pastiness of his skin after so many British summers. The marble bench was cool under his hands, against the tops of his legs.
A few days ago
, he thought,
I was on a Ferris wheel with Caro
,
and then
Charlie rang, and then I saw her photo in a tube station on my way to work, and now
—he squinted—
and now I'm here.
He rubbed at his eyes until he saw flecks of silver, purple, blue behind their lids, and when he opened them again he almost swooned.
Like I saw her yesterday. Like this is nothing out of the ordinary. I don't know where the fuck I am.

Standing under the running water, he was almost split in half by the shower's pressure, full and hot. He could feel every muscle in his shoulders, his neck, his back, could feel himself letting out a long deep breath that he didn't remember taking in. He was in Sydney. It had been a long flight. Everything would be fine. Maybe Gramps was fine—maybe it had turned out to be nothing. Good to be here, wherever here was. Up in the air and Charlie on the other side of the door. It felt like home. He turned the tap to full cold, wincing against the water's icy needles—hadn't done that for years. Every day until he left for England, he'd finished every shower with the cold tap on full, icy water pricking his skin. It was a nod to summer, to cold showers after long swims, but in England the showers never had enough pressure, the summers never had enough heat. He'd never even been tempted to try. Here, in Charlie's bathroom, he adjusted the taps around without thinking. It really did feel like home.

She was sitting at the table, facing the window, her coffee in front of her and a second mug at the seat opposite. ‘So you don't have to look at the view,' she said, pointing. ‘Better? Find everything you need?'

The coffee was strong, dark and hot; it ate into the roof of his mouth as he took too big a gulp. Turning a little, he braved a glance at the window and what lay beyond.

‘Don't you find it distracting?'

‘I'm not here that much,' she said, blowing across the top of her mug. ‘Your mum rang, while you were in the shower—she's coming over, be here lunchtime or so. We had a late night, that's why we thought we'd send someone to pick you up instead of coming ourselves. I thought your mum could use a bit of a sleep-in.' The quiet push of her breath across the coffee. ‘Of course I still see her all the time; and yes, she lets me know how you are . . .' This in response to some question playing across his face. ‘Anyway, so Gramps,' she said. ‘Turns out,' another long pause. ‘Gramps, yes, he passed away last night—we were just back from the hospital when you rang.'

Dan felt his throat tighten and his eyes water, as the coffee seared a line from his mouth down into his chest.
I knew
, he thought,
I did know. And I should have
. . . He was crying properly now, and he rubbed hard at his eyes with his sleeves, like his six-year-old self.
Caro was right: I wanted to be here. And now she'll never meet him, never hear him tell his stories.
Which seemed suddenly the worst and loneliest thing.

He swallowed again, a mouthful of the dry, locked-in air, and reached over, unsure whether or not to take Charlie's hand. ‘Charlie,' he said, leaving his fingers near hers, on the table but apart. ‘Was it—did he— I'm so . . .' He saw himself standing too close to the space beyond a train platform, saw the silver bullet of another plane closing fast and near, saw the dull grey skin of the Russian man, his stillness.

‘Pneumonia; he was pretty frail the last couple of winters. Even stopped walking down to the bridge in the end, although he managed every day till last year. And then he stopped getting out much at all. At least he wasn't in hospital long—he didn't like being there at all. Your mum kept trying to work out ways we could kidnap him, but she's—well, your mum's not as young as she used to be either. These years since you left, mate—' an iciness nipped at the end of the clichéd word, ‘it's a bloody long time. Still,' she'd finished her coffee, ‘good that you're here now.'

‘The night you rang: Caro had just told me I should come home—she thinks I should work out which side of the world I want to be on.' He tried to smile, surprised by how much he already wished she was with him. ‘And then I spoke to you, about Gramps. And then the next morning I was standing opposite a poster at the tube station and I realised it had one of your photos on it. Gramps and Mum'd think it was a sign.' He shrugged; she mirrored his movement. ‘One of those photos where you were trying to flatten the bridge out, shoot straight along the front so you lost the arch altogether. You still shooting it, Charlie? You ever find a way to get up there?'

She glanced at her watch. ‘We could walk down now, if you want. Easy there and back before your mum gets here. I've tried to walk down most days since Gramps stopped.' Glancing at her watch again. ‘I just need to call a couple of people, if you want to . . .' She waved towards the sofas, her other hand already reaching for the phone.

Dan stood, took a couple of steps towards the window, his eyes watching the changing size of his reflection rather than anything on the other side of the glass.

The morning sun, risen directly behind the building, was igniting the glass in the windows in front of him; he could almost feel the movement of the earth as it turned towards the huge warm ball and piece after piece of the city lit up. Below, people were moving into their days—some jogging, some walking, some with their arms raised for taxis.

At the west-facing wall, Dan pressed his toes against the glass and worked his gaze down. Someone was crossing against the lights, too slowly for the traffic, although Dan realised after a moment he was only imagining the honking and the yelling from this entirely silent and sealed room. All he could hear was the hum of an air-conditioner and the low mutter of Charlie's voice. Poor old Gramps; poor Charlie, obviously struggling, the way she skirted around it, away from it. He wished he'd had something better to say. Tipping his forehead to touch the window, keeping his breathing slow, he watched as a man at the lights hit the pedestrian button again and again, so impatient that he finally looked up, way up, in exasperation. Dan was sure their eyes met.

He took half a step back again, lowered himself down to sit, trying to pick out buildings where he'd worked years before, buildings where friends had lived, probably didn't anymore. He leaned forward and looked north along the street.

But there was no trace of the bridge, obscured as it was by a nest of skyscrapers, metal and shiny reflective glass. It seemed wrong that the city's panorama could be missing its most identifiable piece. No matter how far he moved, he couldn't bring it into view, and he straightened at last, staring at all the windows and walls in front of him, wondering if this was Sydney at all—it could be anywhere. He lay down, his fingers patting the carpet's pile, and he wondered what Charlie meant exactly about his mum not being as young as she was, and his eyes closed, heavy.