Imagined Slights Read online

  The day of the unveiling arrived, and Az and his mother watched Michael and the old man haul the device up from the workshop and carry it out on to the landing platform. The device was covered by a tarpaulin, so that all anyone could say about it was that it was twelve feet long, thin at either end, bulky in the middle and angular all over. Az thought of the dinosaur skeleton in the Museum of Ancient Artefacts.

  "Well?" said Az's mother, giftwrapping her impatience in a laugh.

  "One moment," said his father. "First, a short speech."

  As before, the family groaned, as they were expected to.

  Pretending not to notice, Az's father ruffled his wings and grasped his lapel like a politician. "Once," he began, "long ago, we were not Airborn but Groundling, and we lived an earthbound life, circumscribed on all sides by natural boundaries - mountains, rivers, seas. Since then, the race has moved onwards and upwards, and now we live lives as close to perfection as it is possible to get. We are paragons, living embodiments of all that the Groundlings aspired to. This is our heritage and our privilege. A privilege that should not be denied to anyone. Least of all, to flesh of my flesh." Here, he looked straight at Az, and suddenly everyone - except Az - had a pretty good idea what lay hidden beneath the tarpaulin.

  There might have been more to the speech, but Az's father sensed that the game was up, and, like any good showman, he knew he should not let the audience get ahead of him, so with a grand flourish he swept back the tarpaulin, revealing his creation to the world.

  Four faces were reflected in a relief mosaic of burnished copper. Three of them gawped, wide-eyed. The fourth grinned with pride.

  Finally, someone spoke. It was Az's mother.

  "Wings," she exclaimed, the word tailing up into a question.

  "Wings," her husband confirmed, bringing the word back in to land.

  And wings they were. Larger than lifesize, correct in every detail, lovingly crafted in beaten copper. A pair of metal, mechanical wings. Every feather was there, perfect down to the fine comb-teeth of its filaments and pinned into place with a free-floating bolt; every joint, too, from the ball-and-sockets at the base of the armatures to the hinges at the elbows; and a complex system of pulleys and wires connected the ensemble to a leather harness which was just the right shape and just the right size for the torso of a boy of twelve.

  "Come on then," said Az's father, taking Az by the shoulder. "Let's try them on, shall we?" Michael stepped forward to help, and together he and the old man loaded the wings on to Az's back and tightened the straps of the harness around his chest.

  Az submitted passively to the fitting, not knowing what to think, not really thinking anything. The wings were very heavy, and when his father and Michael let go, he teetered and would have overbalanced if Michael had not caught and steadied him.

  Az barely listened as his father explained how the wings worked. "You see, they're designed to take the action of the muscles in your shoulders and translate it into wingbeats, so you'll simply be employing the natural abilities God gave you. You may have some trouble adjusting to them at first, but that's only to be expected. There's no reason why instinct shouldn't take over almost straight away. Trust me, Az. You'll be up and soaring in no time."

  Bookended by Michael and his father, Az staggered to the edge of the landing platform, the wings making a soft shimmering clatter with each step as hundreds of copper feathers shook against one another. He peered down. The rippled surface of the cloudtop was awfully far below. The bird-trawlers plying their trade down there looked as tiny as gnats.

  He glanced back over his shoulder. At first he could see nothing but copper wing, but he dropped his shoulder slightly and the wing flattened out, and then he could see his mother. There were tears in her eyes. "Go on," she said to him, smiling bravely. "Don't be scared. You'll be fine." But he wasn't scared. He was embarrassed. The clench of his jaw wasn't one of determination but of humiliation. He felt clumsier than ever burdened by these huge metal prostheses. He felt neither Airborn nor Groundling but a horrid amalgamation of the two. A joke, a parody. What would they think of him at school when he turned up on Monday morning strapped into this ugly clattering copper contraption?

  "I don't think I can go through with this," he said. "Nonsense," said his father, mistaking the tremor in Az's voice for fear. "Michael and I will make sure you're all right, won't we, Michael? Whatever happens, you won't come to any harm. Trust us."

  "Will you at least hold on to me?" Az implored.

  "The only way to learn to fly is the way I learned," said Michael. "The way we all learn." "What way is that?" said Az doubtfully. "The hard way," said Michael, and with a grin that was devoid of malice and yet still wicked, he grabbed Az's arm. Az's father on the other side did the same, and together, chanting "One, two, three", they heaved Az out over the edge and into space.

  And let go.

  There was a moment of sheer disbelief, followed by a moment of sheer terror. Then all that was lost in the sickening uprush of falling. The weight of the wings yanked Az head over heels on to his back, and down he went in a wind-shivered rattle of metal. Down he plummeted, making no attempt to right himself or flap the wings, unable even to entertain the notion of saving himself. Down in a state of dreamlike apathy, with no thought except that he was going to die. Hypnotically down, past building after building, past windows and doorways, past light aircraft and happy citizens out for a Saturday morning glide. Down, down, down, with no hope of rescue, and no desire for it either. Down without a gasp or a scream, for an elastic stretch of seconds, the landing platform above receding, the house and all the houses around it shrinking, the sky growing smaller and filling up with more and more city. Down towards the cloudtop and the Ground from where the Airborn race once sprang and which now lay forever hidden.

  There was a tentative knock at the door. "Can I come in?" "Sure, Dad."

  Az glanced up from the book he was reading, an adventure story about sky pirates, as his father entered the room. The old man's head was contritely bowed, and his wings drooped so low their tips were almost touching the floor. The look of shame that hung on the old man's face was so comical, Az could hardly fail to smile. His father gestured at the edge of the bed. "May I?"

  Az nodded.

  The old man sat down. There was a long silence while he deliberated over his next move, then he reached out and laid one hand on Az's leg. He patted the leg, the action affectionate yet mechanical. It was clear that he had several things to say but no idea in what order to say them.

  Az helped him out. "I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings." "My feelings?" "By not trying." "Oh. Well, I wouldn't say my feelings were hurt, exactly. I was a little ... disappointed? No, not even that. I did hope... Well, it doesn't matter now. How I feel doesn't matter. It's how you feel that matters."

  "I feel fine. Honestly." "The doctor said there may be some delayed shock." "I feel absolutely fine, Dad. Guilty, though." "Guilty?" "For letting you down."

  "You didn't let me down, Az," said his father with an exasperated laugh. "How can I get that into your thick skull? I don't mind. Really I don't. It's enough for me that you're alive and well."

  "Well, I think I did. I mean, the wings would have worked. Almost certainly. Definitely. If I'd tried. I just didn't try. I didn't want to try."

  "Oh," said his father. For his own pride's sake, it was what he had been hoping to hear. "Well, anyway, you'll be pleased to learn that I've taken the damned things along to the scrapyard. Never again." "But you are going to carry on with your inventions."

  Az's father frowned. "Perhaps. The fun's sort of gone out of it."

  "But what about making your million?"

  "It's just a dream."

  "Dreams are important."

  "Az," said his father, then paused. "When your mother was pregnant with you, the doctors suggested she ... she shouldn't have you. Health reasons. She wasn't so young any more. But she was prepared to take the risk. Quite determined, as a matter of fac
t. And because she was, I was, too. We both wanted you more than we'd ever wanted anything, no question about it. And when you came, we couldn't have been happier. We loved you the instant we set eyes on you. You were different, but that only made you special." His father looked deep inside himself. "Even so, it hasn't always been easy. You understand. For any of us. The looks we sometimes get, that mixture of compassion and disappointment, like we've somehow betrayed the whole race. Sometimes... Anyway, what I'm saying is, I was wrong to try and make you the same as everyone else. I'd convinced myself I was doing it for you, but of course I was just doing it for myself. And now I can't help thinking what would have happened if Michael hadn't been so quick off the mark, if he hadn't caught you when he did..."

  "But he did, and I'm fine. It just wasn't meant to be, Dad. That's all there is to it." "Please believe me when I say that I had your best interests at heart. It simply never occurred to me... I just assumed that to fly must be your dream, your greatest, wildest dream."

  "Oh, it is, Dad, it is. I dream about having wings all the time. The thing is, I've got so used to the fact that it's never going to happen, it doesn't bother me so much any more. Sometimes it's better to have a dream and not have it fulfilled than make do with something that's like your dream but not quite as good."

  "Say I'm forgiven anyway." "You're forgiven anyway." "Thank you." The old man thought about tousling his son's hair, but checked himself. That was something you did to little children. To boys. Instead, he patted Az's leg one more time, and left the room.

  Az shut his book and turned over to look out of the window.

  Cloudcap City, his home, lay suspended in the bright afternoon sunshine, shadowless and huge, its interstices busy with traffic, thriving with life. It pleased Az to think that, even if only for a handful of seconds, he had plunged through that city unaided, unsupported; that he had had a taste of flight, however brief and unwelcome. It filled him with a weird kind of serenity.

  In this world he would always be a floorbound, wingless freak. There was no changing that. But in his dreams...

  In his dreams, he would always be able to fly.

  Satisfaction Guaranteed

  When Nora stepped out into my headlights there was no way I could avoid her. The front bumper embraced her legs and she jackknifed flat over the bonnet, arms outstretched, face to the windscreen, staring at me through the glass, looking me straight in the eye. She and I held each other's gaze for what felt like for ever, although it could only have been as long as it took for her to slither back down on to the road. My foot was squashing the brake pedal and my hands were squeezing the life out of the steering wheel; Nora was spreadeagled and already dead. Yet, in spite of this, in that protracted moment of eye contact sparks of recognition crackled between us, and I knew that our love was meant to be.

  I was driving home from Janice's house, where I had been told that it was over between us, whatever we had was over, all over; where I had been called "overbearing", "too demanding" and "an emotional cripple", for which I instantly forgave her because I was none of those things; where I had been accused of trying to run her life for her, and vilified simply because I liked to know where she was when I wasn't with her, as if that wasn't a perfect expression of my love for her.

  I had left her in tears. I was in tears, that is, not Janice. Her eyes were as dry as bones, and as white and as hard. I drove away from her house along blurred, stinging streets where neon lights shone like starbursts and houses glowed like images in stained-glass windows; and then Nora stepped out into the glare of my headlights, and I didn't see her in time because I was blind with tears because Janice didn't love me any more. From which I can only conclude that fate intended that Nora come and throw her arms out to me over the bonnet, gazing at me in her death as though I was the only one who could ever make her happy again, before tumbling floppily out of sight. From the timing of it, the serendipity of it, I can only believe that Nora was meant to be mine.

  I don't know how long I sat in the stalled car, hearing the engine tick as it cooled. I only know that when I opened the door and stepped out, I was as nervous as a virgin groom on his first night with his new bride. I moved silently to where Nora's crumpled form lay flat on the tarmac. She was wearing a creamy-white suit, and her skirt had rucked up an inch or so above her knees. Her head was thrown back to expose the curve of her neck, and a small trickle of blood was leaking from one ear.

  I stood over her for a long time in the empty street, waiting for her to stir, moan, breathe, flutter her eyelashes, twitch one manicured fingertip. When I was quite sure she was dead, I bent down, slid my arms under her, picked her up and carried her to the car.

  She weighed next to nothing, and her lightness, along with the perfect scarlet O of her lips and the resilient rubbery stiffness of her limbs, made me think of an inflatable doll - the kind you get from those windowless shops in side streets, the kind that lie there without a life of their own until you inject your own animation into them.

  No one saw me as I laid her across the back seat and drove her home with me. And no one saw me carry her, all dressed in white, across the threshold of my house. It was a private, special moment, marred only somewhat by the cracked-knuckles sound made by her head rolling around loosely on her shattered neck.

  I took her upstairs and laid her out on the bed in the spare room. It was presumptuous of me to remove her clothes, but everyone hates to go to bed fully dressed, don't they? And I performed the deed as civilly as circumstances allowed, leaving her almost decent in her simple white cotton underwear. I arranged her body carefully, made her head comfortable on the pillow and wiped the blood from her hair with a damp cloth. I skimmed through her belongings for a name but found only a credit card with a surname and two initials, the first of which was N. So I called her Nora, after my mother.

  I switched out the lights and spent the night in the armchair by her bedside, keeping vigil over my Nora till dawn came. She slept soundlessly, peacefully. In the glow of daybreak, I saw what I thought was a smile spreading across her face, but it turned out to be just a wand of light that the sun had inserted through the gap in the curtains and was slowly running across her lips.

  I went over and drew the curtains fully open, then spent a happy half-hour examining the new woman in my life by the light of the rising sun. Her lips and eye-sockets had turned purple and the contours of her bare stomach and thighs, which I remembered from the night before as being tightly muscled and sharply delineated, had blurred, losing definition as her flesh had thickened. Her left arm jutted at an ungainly angle over the side of the bed, and her knees and elbows were swollen with large blue-black bruises. It was then that I noticed a certain ripeness to the air in the room - but then what bedroom doesn't smell in the morning, of farts and the sleep-steam of bodies? None the less I opened the window a crack before heading downstairs to make my breakfast.

  I thought about Nora all day at work. I signed documents and attended meetings and made telephone calls and dictated letters and thought about nothing but Nora. At lunchtime in the canteen Montgomery from Accounts asked me how Janice was, and I actually had to remind myself whom he was talking about. "Janice," I told him, with the look of a gladiator-in-love who has recovered from more wounds received in the arena than he can remember, "is ancient history." He wanted to know more, because my tone implied that I wasn't telling him everything, but I left him wriggling on the hook. It would have been premature of me to mention Nora when things weren't completely established between us, when a proper commitment had not yet been made. I'm superstitious about these things.

  Back home, I bounded upstairs to see how she was getting on. During the day she had swollen up as though someone had inserted a bicycle pump into her mouth and inflated her. Her fingers, once slender, now resembled pork sausages. Her flesh strained around the waistband of her panties and the wiring of her bra and, though it pained me to do so, I felt obliged to remove these undergarments, cutting the elastic with a pa
ir of blunt-nosed nail scissors. Naked on the counterpane, Nora was beautiful, Ophelian, delicately vulnerable. But she smelled worse than ever.

  It was all right for a couple of days. I could bear the smell on account of her beauty and the fact that she made so few demands on me, and I would look in on her morning and evening without fail, but the duration of these visits shortened as the smell intensified. I bought a bottle of perfume from the chemist's, the brand Janice preferred, and sprinkled it all over Nora and all over the room, but its sickly-sweet scent only added to Nora's sweetly-sick stench to create a nauseating blend of man-made and nature-made.

  We could not go on like this, and I told Nora so, and with masculine authority in my voice. The smell of her had pervaded the entire house. It was always there, always around me, in the atmosphere. Nowhere indoors could I get away from her. Even in the shower, lathering myself in shampoo and magnolia-fragrance soap, I could smell her amid the clouds of steam, and was reminded of earthy mist over early-morning moors.

  Janice noticed the smell when she dropped round, unannounced, to - in her words - "see how you are". She didn't mention the smell directly, but she kept casting her head to the side while she talked to me, raising her nose to the air like a cat.

  I behaved impeccably in her presence. Nothing I said or did gave her any impression that I was upset at the way she had treated me or that I was worried she might discover I had found myself another girl so quickly. I didn't want to hurt her feelings and I didn't want her to think me shallow, so we sipped tea and talked sensibly, like two grown adults, and as she was leaving Janice said, "I'm glad we can be sane and civilised about this, Gerald," and I replied, "Janice, I'm as sane and civilised as they come."