went on, “and with his good hand will hold my coat in place there. In that way the ropes will run smoothly over it and not be cut. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“And you will not have to go near the edge-only let out rope and pull in when you are told.”
“I don’t know. Supposing I let it slip.”
“Well, that would be bad, because then you would have only Hans to deal with, and he would certainly make sure that you slipped, too.”
The teeth, as he smiled, were like rows of gravestones. Suddenly he picked up a coil of rope from the lead beside him and put it in my hands.
“Get ready to take the strain,” he said, “and remember that it stretches. I don’t mind how slowly I go down or how quickly I come up. Hans will give you the signals to lower, stop, and raise.” He pointed to a ridge in the lead. “Brace your feet against this. So.”
The day Mum died, the Imam came and intoned verses from the Koran. Now taste the torment of the fire you called a lie.
Miller slipped the end of the rope around my chest and knotted it firmly. Then he hauled in the slack. “Are you ready, Arthur?”
I nodded.
“Then look at Hans.”
I let my eyes go to Fischer’s legs and then his body. He was lying on his right side with his shoulder on Miller’s coat and his right hand on the tackle ready to guide it. I dared not look any nearer the edge. I knew I would pass out if I did.
I saw Miller put a pair of gloves on, step into the sling, then crouch down and move out of sight.
“Now,” Fischer whispered.
The strain didn’t come suddenly; the stretch in the nylon had to be taken up first. My hands were slippery with sweat and I had looped the rope round the sleeve of my left arm to give me more purchase. When the full strain came, the loop tightened like a tourniquet. Then the pressure fluctuated and I could feel Miller bouncing in the sling as the tackle settled down.
“Steady.” Fischer held his right hand palm downwards over the tackle.
The movement in the block by the anchor rope beside me ceased.
“Lower slowly.”
I let the rope slide round my arm and the bouncing began again.
“Keep going, smoothly.”
I went on paying out the rope. There was less bouncing now, just an occasional vibration. Miller was using his feet to steady himself against the wall as he descended. I watched the coil of rope beside me growing smaller and had another terror to fight. The end of the rope was tied round my chest. I couldn’t untie it now without letting go. If there were not enough rope in the coil to reach the shutter below, Fischer would make me move nearer to the edge.
There was about six feet left to go when he raised his hand. “Stop. Hold still.”
I was so relieved that I didn’t notice the pain in my arm from the tightened loop; I just closed my eyes and kept my head down.
There were slight movements on the rope, and, after a moment or two, faint clicking sounds as he went to work on the metal shutters. Minutes went by. My left arm began to go numb. Then, there was another sound from below, a sort of hollow tapping. It only lasted a moment, before Fischer hissed at me. I opened my eyes again.
“Lower a little, very slowly.”
As I obeyed I felt the tension in the rope suddenly slacken. Miller was inside.
“Rest.”
I loosened the rope on my arm and massaged it until the pins and needles began. I didn’t try to massage them away. They kept my mind on my arm and away from other things, such as the day the games master had made me dive. When you got into the cadet corps you had to be able to swim, and, once a week, all the boys in each squad who couldn’t do so were marched to the Lewisham Public Baths to take lessons. When you had learned to swim you had to dive. I didn’t mind the swimming part, but when my head went under water I was always afraid of drowning. For a time I didn’t have to, because I kept telling the games master that I had bad ears; but then he said that I would have to get a doctor’s certificate. I tried to write one myself, but I didn’t know the proper words to use and he caught me out. I expected him to send me with a note to The Bristle, but instead he made me dive. I say “dive.” What he did was pick me up by one arm and a leg and throw me in the deep end; and he kept on doing it. Every time I managed to get out, even while I was still choking up water, he would throw me in again. One of the attendants at the Baths had to stop him in the end. He was married, so I wrote a letter to his wife telling her how he messed about with certain boys in the changing cubicles and pestered them to feel him. I was careless though, because I used the same handwriting as I had used on the certificate, and he knew for certain it was me. He couldn’t prove it, of course, because he had torn up the certificate. He took me into a lobby and accused me and called me an “unspeakable little cad”; but that was all he did. He was really shaken. When I realized it, I could have kicked myself. If I had known that he actually had been messing about with boys in the cubicles, I could have put the police onto him. As it was, I had simply warned him to be more careful. He had thin, curly brown hair with an officer’s mustache, and walked as if he had springs on the soles of his feet. The term after that he left and went to another school.
Fischer hissed at me and I opened my eyes.
“Take the strain.”
I wrapped the rope round my waist this time so that I could use my weight to push away from the edge if necessary.
“Ready?”
I nodded and held on tight. There was a jerk as Miller got his weight into the sling again. Then Fischer nodded.
“Up.”
I started to pull. The friction of the rope against the coat on the edge of the roof made it terribly hard. The sweat ran into my eyes. Twice I had to stop and knot the rope round my waist so that I could wipe my hands and ease the cramp in my fingers; but the coil got larger again and then Fischer began to use his good hand on one of the ropes in the tackle.
“Slow… slower… stop.”
Suddenly the tackle ran free and Miller, grinning, was crawling across the roof towards me. He patted my leg.
“Merci, mon cher collegue,” he said.
I shut my eyes and nodded. Through the singing in my ears I could hear him reporting to Fischer as he gathered in the tackle.
“All those we counted on and a few more to garnish the dish. I even fastened the shutters again.”
I felt him untying the rope from my chest. When I opened my eyes he was clipping the velvet bag to his belt. Fischer was fumbling with the knots in the anchor rope. I crawled over and began to help him. All I wanted was to get away, and I knew that they would have to help me.
Fischer with his injured hand needed help to get back onto the upper roof level. Then, Miller somehow managed to heave me up high enough for me to claw my way over the ledge. I crawled then on my hands and knees to the shelter of the big cupola. By the time Miller reached me, I was able to stand up.
We started back, as we had started out, with Miller in the lead. This time, however, there was no turn to make. We left the White Eunuchs’ quarters on our right and went on over the kitchen roofs to the wall by the Gate of Salvation. There was one awkward place-for me, that is-by the old water tower, but I somehow got past it on my hands and knees; then we were on the wall overlooking the Courtyard of the Janissaries.
There was a row of tall plane trees close to the wall, and Miller used an overhanging branch as an anchor for the tackle. He lowered Fischer first, in the sling, and then me; but he wouldn’t use the sling himself, because that would have meant leaving the tackle in the tree. It was not the tackle itself he cared about, he said; he didn’t want to leave any traces behind of how the job had been done. He got off the wall by looping the anchor rope over the branch and sliding down it. Doubled like that, it wasn’t quite long enough to reach the ground, so he dropped the
