I turned my body, faced into the window again, and kicked in the broken glass and the half-burned sash. I raised the remaining sash, making a cavity in which to seat myself. “I don’t know.” I seemed to keep on saying I didn’t know. “If you won’t wait for them, can you reach me? If I lean forward, can you take hold of my hands?”

“I’ll try.”

He got very carefully and gradually to his feet. He was facing me. I saw him sink. I saw the remains of the balcony dip, give a final shudder like an earth tremor and tear itself away from the wall. It made a crumbling roar as it fell. Silver leapt for the window and I caught his hands. Below him was a void, a great wound in the wall where the balcony had been. He made no sound but hung there, suspended from my hands. It was the pylon all over again, I and my lover on the heights, high above the abyss.

I knew I couldn’t hold him. It was even harder than with Daniel. Him, at least, I had held around the waist, I had held on to his clothes, and would have saved him if help had come sooner. Now all I had was my hands and Silver’s. I slid backward into the opening where the window had been. I put his right hand on the lower frame, though I knew I’d lacerate it in the process on the chips of glass. I bent as far forward as I could, reaching for his underarm. By the time the other hand was on the frame and he was wincing, his face contorted from the pain of the glass splinters, I had both my hands under his arms. He began pulling himself up, careless of his cut hands. Strength comes at these times, though from where you don’t know. There’s a final spurt that seems to stem from absolute, ultimate need. Thin though I was and three-quarters of his weight, I made my gargantuan effort and lifted him till his upper body was lying across the sill. His poor hands hung bleeding inside the black and filthy wall.

The first ladder was put up against the brickwork as he brought one leg and then the other over the sill and down onto the floor of the room. I kissed him and I kissed his bleeding hands. “You saved my life.”

“It was time I saved a life,” I said. “It’s good it was yours.”

A fireman’s head appeared in the window opening. “My God,” he said. “A couple of kids.”

Chapter 34

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