As Laing stood on the balcony, accepting a drink from Charlotte, the noise of the party came down from the bright air, as if the sky itself had been wired for sound. Charlotte pointed to a fragment of glass on Laing's balcony that had escaped his brush.
"Are you under attack? I heard something fall." She called to Wilder, who was lounging back in the centre of her sofa, examining his heavy legs. "It's those people on the 31st floor."
"Which people?" Laing asked. He assumed that she was referring to a specific group, a clique of over-aggressive film actors or tax consultants, or perhaps a freak aggregation of dipsomaniacs. But Charlotte shrugged vaguely, as if it was unnecessary to be more specific. Clearly some kind of demarcation had taken place in her mind, like his own facile identification of people by the floors on which they lived.
"By the way, what are we all celebrating?" he asked as they returned to the living-room.
"Don't you know?" Wilder gestured at the walls and ceiling. "Full house. We've achieved critical mass."
"Richard means that the last apartment has been occupied," Charlotte explained. "Incidentally, the contractors promised us a free party when the thousandth apartment was sold."
"I'll be interested to see if they hold it," Wilder remarked. Clearly he enjoyed running down the high-rise. "The elusive Anthony Royal was supposed to provide the booze. You've met him, I think," he said to Laing. "The architect who designed our hanging paradise."
"We play squash together," Laing rejoined. Aware of the hint of challenge in Wilder's voice, he added, "Once a week-I hardly know the man, but I like him."
Wilder sat forward, cradling his heavy head in his fists. Laing noticed that he was continually touching himself, for ever inspecting the hair on his massive calves, smelling the backs of his scarred hands, as if he had just discovered his own body. "You're favoured to have met him," Wilder said. "I'd like to know why. An isolated character-I ought to resent him, but somehow I feel sorry for the man, hovering over us like some kind of fallen angel."
"He has a penthouse apartment," Laing commented. He had no wish to become involved in any tug of war over his brief friendship with Royal. He had met this well-to-do architect, a former member of the consortium which had designed the development project, during the final stages of Royal's recovery from a minor car accident. Laing had helped him to set up the complex callisthenics machine in the penthouse where Royal spent his time, the focus of a great deal of curiosity and attention. As everyone continually repeated, Royal lived "on top" of the building, as if in some kind of glamorous shack.
"Royal was the first person to move in here," Wilder informed him. "There's something about him I haven't put my finger on. Perhaps even a sense of guilt-he hangs around up there as if he's waiting to be found out. I expected him to leave months ago. He has a rich young wife, so why stay on in this glorified tenement?" Before Laing could protest, Wilder pressed on. "I know Charlotte has reservations about life here-the trouble with these places is that they're not designed for children. The only open space turns out to be someone else's car-park. By the way, doctor, I'm planning to do a television documentary about high-rises, a really hard look at the physical and psychological pressures of living in a huge condominium such as this one."
"You'll have a lot of material."
"Too much, as always. I wonder if Royal would take part-you might ask him, doctor. As one of the architects of the block and its first tenant, his views would be interesting. Your own, too…"
As Wilder talked away rapidly, his words over-running the cigarette smoke coming from his mouth, Laing turned his attention to Charlotte. She was watching Wilder intently, nodding at each of his points. Laing liked her determination to stick up for herself and her small son, her evident sanity and good sense. His own marriage, to a fellow physician and specialist in tropical medicine, had been a brief but total disaster, a reflection of heaven-only-knew what needs. With unerring judgment Laing had involved himself with this highly strung and ambitious young doctor, for whom Laing's refusal to give up teaching-in itself suspicious-and involve himself directly in the political aspects of preventive medicine had provided a limitless opportunity for bickering and confrontation. After only six months together she had suddenly joined an international famine-relief organization and left on a three-year tour. But Laing had made no attempt to follow her. For reasons he could not yet explain, he had been reluctant to give up teaching, and the admittedly doubtful security of being with students who were still almost his own age.
Charlotte, he guessed, would understand this. In his mind Laing projected the possible course of an affair with her. The proximity and distance which the high-rise provided at the same time,.that neutral emotional background against which the most intriguing relationships might develop, had begun to interest him for its own sake. For some reason he found himself drawing back even within this still imaginary encounter, sensing that they were all far more involved with each other than they realized. An almost tangible network of rivalries and intrigues bound them together.
As he guessed, even this apparently casual meeting in Charlotte's apartment had been set up to test his attitude to the upper-level residents who were trying to exclude children from the 35th-floor swimming-pool.
"The terms of our leases guarantee us equal access to all facilities," Charlotte explained. "We've decided to set up a parents' action group."
"Doesn't that leave me out?"
"We need a doctor on the committee. The paediatric argument would come much more forcefully from you, Robert."
"Well, perhaps…" Laing hesitated to commit himself. Before he knew it, he would be a character in a highly charged television documentary, or taking part in a sit-in outside the office of the building manager. Reluctant at this stage to be snared into an inter-floor wrangle, Laing stood up and excused himself. As he left, Charlotte had equipped herself with a checklist of grievances. Sitting beside Wilder, she began to tick off the complaints to be placed before the building manager, like a conscientious teacher preparing the syllabus for the next term.
When Laing returned to his apartment, the party on the 31st floor had ended. He stood on his balcony in the silence, enjoying the magnificent play of light across the neighbouring block four hundred yards away. The building had just been completed, and by coincidence the first tenants were arriving on the very morning that the last had moved into his own block. A furniture moving van was backing into the entrance to the freight elevator, and the carpets and stereo-speakers, dressing-tables and bedside lamps would soon be carried up the elevator shaft to form the elements of a private world.