We began to make our way up the spiral steps, Jack in front, going as fast as he could, his camera case strapped to his back. As we got halfway up, I could feel the chilly wind blowing down the steps, the pale ginger light beckoning from above.
For as long as we could remember, for as long perhaps as Jack could speak, he had wanted to be up high. At first it was the top of the stairs, the attic, but then it was tall buildings, hills, cliffs—wherever he could see the view from the top.
We would go up to Parliament Hill and look out across London. Jack would sit on my shoulders, banging his little heels on my chest, and I would point out all the buildings on the skyline: the Telecom Tower, the Gherkin, Canary Wharf.
When he got older, he printed out pictures of skyscrapers—the Burj Khalifa, Taipei 101, the Shanghai and Petronas towers—and stuck them to the wall around his bed. He said he was going to go up them all.
At the top of the Monument, we were the only ones on the viewing platform, and I was surprised by how narrow it was up here, a circular alleyway enclosed by a wire mesh, the walls daubed with a crumbly white plaster.
“So how was school today? Did you learn anything?”
He was still wearing his gray school trousers and green Amberly Primary polo shirt.
Jack didn’t answer, too busy trying to peep over the barrier.
“Jack?”
He sighed like a teenager. “Math, reading, writing and PE,” he said rapid-fire and then looked up at me. “Daddy, why is it called Monument?”
“Do you remember I told you about the big fire in London?”
“In the olden times?”
“Yes, in the olden times.”
“So they built this to remember the people.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what people do sometimes. They build things to remember people.”
“Why was there a fire?”
“Well, it started close to here, just around the corner, and in the olden days lots of the houses were made out of wood.”
“And they build all the houses again?”
“Yes.”
“That’s cool.”
Jack tried to peep over the barrier again. Cool. Ever since he had started school, everything was cool.
“Do you want to go up in the air?” I asked. “That way you can see something.”
“I’m not too big now?”
“You’re big but not that big,” I said, lifting him onto my shoulders. I could feel him turn his head, moving his little hips, his heels on my chest.
We moved closer to the edge and looked east down the river. Amid the gray, there were just a few dashes of color: a smudge of green trees along the river; a red asphalt children’s playground squeezed between two buildings.
“Look, Daddy, I can see Tower Bridge.”
“Wow, yeah, you can. Do you want to take some pictures?”
He nodded solemnly, and I could feel him tug at his bag and carefully take out the camera.
Jack started to take photos, and I could feel him swiveling his hips, trying to get the best possible view. He liked to take photos from up high, and we printed out some of his best ones to add to the collection around his bed. The morning sun taken from his bedroom window. A weekend in Dorset, a white lighthouse against a purple sky. Raindrops against the windowpane taken from the top of Canary Wharf.
Jack had stopped moving and sat motionless on my shoulders, and I thought something might be wrong so I looked up at him but he was just still, staring out over the city, like an old yeoman surveying his land.
London was all Jack had ever known. His dragons were Tube trains, and he knew the bears would eat him if he stepped on the cracks in the pavement. He went to Chinatown for dim sum when he was two, and he could name all the bridges that crossed the Thames. He loved it all. Watching the summer sunset from the South Bank. Jumping the fishy puddles in his rain boots at Billingsgate. The throaty warm wind at the entrance to the Tube. The grime that feels a part of you.
We stood like that for a while, a four-armed giant, listening to the police sirens in the distance, the gray hum of traffic, the static of the city, a sound you would only notice when it was gone.
* * *
Jack was quiet on the Tube on the way back. I knew he was counting the stops, a trait he had inherited from Anna. She still did it, every time she got on. A quick little glance up at the map, and then the gentlest quiver of her lips as she ran through all the stations in her mind.
She memorized all of her journeys when she got to London. I used to test her, give her a little quiz. Without pause, she could tell me how to get from Piccadilly Circus to Camden Town or the fastest route from Lancaster Gate to Regent’s Park. Sometimes it was easier to consult Anna than a map.
It was still raining when we stepped out of the Tube. We were going to the play center in Hampstead, the one that offered mother-and-baby yoga where you could only get organic bhajis and Sumatra-roast coffee. As Jack headed toward the ball pit, I found a table and ordered an Americano. I listened to two women at the next table talking about another mother, whose child refused to eat, who had her wrapped around her little finger. That was what happened, they agreed, if you bottle-fed and gave them all that processed rubbish.
I drank my coffee and checked email on my phone. There were pitches for start-up investments, some paperwork from our accountant. I had been asked to speak at a tech-incubator event, something about nurturing a new way of thinking in virtual reality.
Jack
