“I don’t know. It’s your place.” I sought for an answer. “Are you trying to make him better? Are you trying to—well, redeem him?”

Silver laughed. His laughter rang around that bare moonlit rooftop. The people in the top flat just below us must have heard him. Perhaps they thought it was an angel laughing or, more likely, sound from next-door’s television. “I’m not a redeemer, Clo. I suppose I like him. I’ve never met anyone else who does.”

“He doesn’t pay you rent?”

“No one pays me rent. I tell myself I’m not—well, harboring him, giving shelter to a thief, I mean. He’s got a room of his own in Cricklewood.”

But he has access to the roofs because he lives in your place. I didn’t say this aloud. I didn’t have to.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Silver said.

“You always do.”

“I’ve been into one or two flats myself. From the roofs, I mean. I couldn’t resist it, just to look.”

“But you didn’t steal anything.”

“No. It was curiosity. Like your Mabel. Come on, let’s go on.”

We went as far as the second dome that night. All the blocks in Peterborough Avenue were the same height but each about three feet from the next one, making two chasms to cross. We jumped. I don’t believe I could do it today, I’d no longer have the nerve. I shudder when I think of the two of us springing across a canyon forty feet deep, its depths lost in shadow, nothing beneath to save us if we fell, not even a twig on a branch, not a wire or narrow pipe. Silver went first, his hands stretched out to catch me as I followed. If I was afraid at the time, I don’t remember fear. The achievement was all, the successful leap, and to make it as soundlessly as possible. We giggled at the thought of people below us listening and attributing the thud of our footfalls to a bird landing heavily. I once saw a heron from Regent’s Park on a roof in Russia Road. Such a big bird would make a resounding thump as it landed on slates. We clung to each other and laughed in triumph, in the mild night and the soft moonlight sinking to our knees, and embraced, kissing feverishly, as happy as could be.

“Not here,” said Silver, laughing. “There are limits.”

“I bet Wim would do it on a roof.”

“I bet Wim has.”

So just beyond the tower of the winds we turned back, leaving the others to whatever their pleasure might be, and returned to ours.

Chapter 11

11