High Rise - Ballard James Graham - Страница 39

Wilder waved to the children, but none of them saw him. Their presence revived him, and he felt a surge of triumph at having climbed all the way to the roof to find them. The strange, scarred man in the blood-printed jacket lying on the steps behind him had not understood his game.

One of the children, an infant boy of two, was naked, running in and out of the sculptures. Quickly Wilder loosened his ragged trousers and let them fall to his ankles. Stumbling a little, as if he was forgetting how to use his legs, he ran forward naked to join his friends.

In the centre of the sculpture-garden, beside the empty paddling pool, a woman was lighting a large fire from pieces of furniture. Her strong hands adjusted a heavy spit assembled from the chromium tubing of a large callisthenics device. She squatted beside the fire, stacking the chair-legs as the children played together.

Wilder walked forward, shyly hoping that the woman would notice the patterns painted across his chest. As he waited for the children to ask him to play with them he saw that a second woman was standing ten feet away to his left. She was wearing an ankle-length dress and a long gingham apron, her hair drawn back off her severe face and tied in a knot behind her neck.

Wilder stopped among the statues, embarrassed that no one had noticed him. Two more women, dressed in the same formal way, had appeared by the gate. Others were stepping forward among the sculptures, surrounding Wilder in a loose circle. They seemed to belong to another century and another landscape, except for their sunglasses, whose dark shades stood out against the blood-notched concrete of the roof-terrace.

Wilder waited for them to speak to him. He was glad to be naked and show off his body with its painted patterns. At last the woman kneeling by the fire looked over her shoulder at him. Despite her change of dress he recognized her as his wife Helen. He was about to run forward to her, but her matter-of-fact gaze, her unimpressed appraisal of his heavy loins, made him stop.

By now he was aware that he knew all the women around him. Dimly he recognized Charlotte Melville, a scarf around her bruised throat, watching him without hostility. Standing next to Jane Sheridan was Royal's young wife, now a governess supervising the smallest children. He recognized the jeweller's widow in her long fur coat, her face made up like his own body with red paint. Looking over his shoulder, if only to confirm that his escape was blocked, he could see the stately figure of the children's-story writer seated in the open window of the penthouse like a queen in her pavilion. In a last moment of hope he thought that perhaps she would read him a story.

In front of him the children in the sculpture-garden were playing with bones.

The circle of women drew closer. The first flames lifted from the fire, the varnish of the antique chairs crackling swiftly. From behind their sunglasses the women were looking intently at Wilder, as if reminded that their hard work had given them a strong appetite. Together, each removed something from the deep pocket of her apron.

In their bloodied hands they carried knives with narrow blades. Shy but happy now, Wilder tottered across the roof to meet his new mothers.