THE GLASS KEY
A short story of 5000 words
© David Lowe, November 1994
The glass key twinkled on Joe Welby's ring like an exotic jewel. Confused, the old caretaker held the key up to a grimy window. A rainbow of flickering colours wheeled across the floor as it caught the afternoon light. Could the key be made of crystal? Joe flicked at it with his fingernail. There was a dull metallic clinking noise, like neither crystal nor glass. So what was the key made of? And how had it got on to his key ring?
Suddenly there were hurrying footsteps approaching. Joe quickly let the big ring of keys fall to his belt and turned to see who it was. A weary-looking little man with silver hair was walking towards him, eyes down. Out of respect, Joe stooped and put a finger to his cap. 'Goodnight Mr Fleming,' he said.
Without looking up, Fleming muttered something and was round the corner and gone.
For months it had been like this. Dark rumours of bankruptcy and retrenchment. Fleming, the head of the factory, like a man under siege in his office, rarely emerging and unavailable to staff. It was hard to believe that Fleming was twenty years younger than Joe himself.
The glass key forgotten for the moment, the caretaker moved about the old building locking up for the night, thinking of the past.
He had been hired by William Fleming's father, Frank, as a young man of nineteen, in 1951. Those had been the glory days for Fleming's Clocks. The war was already a memory, and orders were flooding in. But it was not to last. Loyal to the firm which had offered an unskilled boy a chance in life, Joe stayed to witness a series of body blows rock the company; cheap foreign imports, expensive court cases from radium clockface painters, the arrival of digital. Four factories became one, but Fleming's held on grimly. After the old man died, his son attempted to take the company upmarket, producing beautifully finished wall clocks and prestige pocket watches. For a while it had worked, but in recent years even that strategy had failed. Now the banks and their consultants effectively ran the factory. Lines of cheap alarms and watches were supplemented by a dribble of work producing parts for scientific instruments. Fleming's was no longer a household word, but the company survived.
Floor by floor, Joe locked up and turned off the lights, leaving the old building to the rats and pigeons. In the front door he caught a glimpse of his reflection: a tall, skinny man in overalls, hair thin and grey without his work cap. It was hard to recognise the nervous, excited young boy who had first opened that door all those years ago. Joe sighed and turned away.
Street lights flickered on as he tightened his scarf against the cold wind blowing off the river and began the long walk down the road to the bus stop. The red and blue neon sign above the factory was broken again, probably by vandals. 'LEMING'S CLOCKS,' it said.
Joe's bus was delayed. By the time he got home, his wife Gwen was already in bed.
There were no photographs of grandchildren on the mantelpiece: after two stillborn babies neither of them had had the will to try again. For some reason many who had worked at the clock factory had experienced similar problems.
Joe fixed himself a simple meal of sausages and tinned vegetables, reading through the day's junkmail as he ate.
When the weather was warm he would paint in the evenings; mostly still life subjects, using oils when he could afford it. Usually he painted in the backyard shed, but at this time of year the cold aggravated his arthritis and gave him cramps. Gwen forbade him to paint in the house, saying the fumes from the paint gave her head-aches. Although Joe smelled nothing himself, the argument was an old one, and he did not have the energy to restart it now.
Joe washed up his dishes and then doodled with a piece of charcoal in his sketch book; trees, fishes, birds, his own face. After midnight he still did not feel tired, but went to bed anyway, out of habit, in a separate room to his wife.
On his way to work the next day, Joe was almost skittled by a black BMW. The driver was talking on his mobile phone, and did not see the old man. Such events were increasingly common on the roads around the factory.
Where once there had been wharves and warehouses, now there were elec-tronics and software companies. The Fleming's building was the last remaining pre-war structure on this part of the waterfront, and the only one with a jetty. As far as the new tenants were concerned, the silted old river was there for views, not commerce. Their trade was done over telephone lines.
As usual, Joe was the first to arrive at the factory. Autumn leaves were piled against the front door. Joe brushed them aside with his foot and reached for the ring of keys on his belt. The transparent key glinted up at him like an unexpected memory. Cold wind forgotten for the moment, Joe put on his glasses and looked closely at the key. It was shaped in the old-fashioned way, with an oval ring and a long shaft branching off into a T shape. The face was unscratched and blank, with no manufacturer's imprint. Could it be a practical joke from one of the staff? But what was the point? And what, if anything, did the key open? The questions multiplied. Joe decided that for the moment he would keep quiet about the strange glass key. He opened the front door and entered the building.
This was Joe's favourite time of day. He went from room to room opening doors and switching on lights, bringing the old building back to life for another day. Every room of the factory, from the assembly lines to the executive offices on the top floor, contained a Fleming's clock. It was one of Joe's jobs to wind the old clocks and keep them synchronised. Though he told no one, he used a digital watch, hidden deep in one of his pockets, to set the clocks.
When the workers arrived there were few familiar faces. It was not like the old days, when everyone knew everybody. These days staff turnover was high, and the workers mostly from Vietnam and Korea, with little English. Communication was mostly restricted to a nod or a nervous smile. Apart from Stavros in Sales, and Fleming himself, all of the old guard were gone. All except one.
Joe was emptying a waste paper bin in the Accounts section when he was startled by a voice from behind him.
'How's your wife, Rubens?' It was Glenda Blair, an enormous beaming woman in a floral print dress.
'Fine, fine,' said Joe, making his escape.
Glenda and Gwen had known each other when his wife had been Frank Fleming's secretary. The nicknames had started after Joe broke off an affair with Glenda, a lifetime ago. Before things had turned sour, he had given her one of his paintings as a gift. Thankfully she didn't call him Rubens or Rembrandt when other people were around.
After he had finished his rounds and emptied the ashtrays Joe went to the tiny second floor room where he kept his mops and brooms and sat down for a rest. For a brief time he slept in his seat. When he awoke, his ring of keys was sitting on the bench in front of him, the glass key uppermost. In copperplate script, cut neatly into the surface, was a number: '717'. Strange. He had been sure the face of the key was blank. Joe took the key in one hand and ran a callused finger over the number. Suddenly there was a red stain on the glass. The cut was so sharp it took a moment for Joe to realise what had happened. The edges of the copperplate number were as sharp as a knife. And then he realised the significance of the number.
His finger wrapped in a handkerchief, Joe left the little room and went down the corridor. On the stairs he bumped into a group of young men in suits hurrying down. The consultants glared at him as they went past. Joe smiled apologetically. Floor after floor he climbed. Pigeons, disturbed, flew ahead of him. Past Admin-istration, past Management, to the seventh floor.
At the top of the stairs Joe paused for breath. This floor had not been used since the heyday of the factory. Now it was filled with junk. He could hear the roof creaking as the old iron warmed up in the morning sun. Picking his way along care-fully, Joe blew dust from the numbers on the doors: 710, 711, 712. It was as he had remembered. Number 716 was at the end of the corridor. Oh well, so much for that theory.
Then he noticed a low door on the right. Flush with the wall, he had almost missed it. Joe stooped to read the copperplate numerals. 717. Carefully, he took the glass key and inserted it into the lock. The door opened with a click.
Joe crouched down and entered the door. When he stood up he found himself in a perfectly square room. The walls and floor were brilliant white. On one wall was a large, circular window with a hinge in the middle, slightly ajar. A shaft of sunlight poured through the window on to a delicate, beautifully crafted, mahogany table. Following a sudden impulse, Joe reached out and touched the wood. It felt like warm skin, without even a thin layer of dust. He looked up and saw the ceiling was a domed vault, nothing like anything else he had seen in the building. In fact the whole room was an enigma. Why was it here? The atmosphere was like that of a church. Even the noise of the street below seemed muted. There was no chair, but Joe felt light and supple on his feet; as though helium balloons were attached to his limbs with gossamer thread.
But there was something else. Something missing. At last he realised; there was no clock. The ticking which filled the rest of the building like a steady heartbeat was absent here. Joe walked to the window. He could see beyond the river, beyond the industrial area, beyond the city even, to the cool blue mountains on the horizon. Looking the other way, he could just make out the ocean through the haze of exhaust. Despite the pollution outside, the air inside the room was sweet and cool, but not cold.
Suddenly the handkerchief binding his bloodied finger slipped off. Joe was bending to pick it up when he realised that the bleeding had stopped. Beneath the layer of dried blood he could not clearly see where the wound had been. Through the open door he heard someone calling his name.
'Joe? Joe? Can you hear me?'
Quickly Joe bound the handkerchief back around his finger and turned to leave the room. He took one last look before closing the door. The room was like some strange, glowing vision.
The voice was getting closer. 'Where the hell are you Joe? Are you hurt?'
Joe closed the door and walked down the corridor, trying not to creak the floorboards as he walked. The voice was coming from the floor below. Quietly, Joe hurried down the stairs. One flight, two flights. There was no one around in Admin-istration. Joe splashed some water from a tap in the Mens on his cut finger, washing the blood off, before climbing back up a floor to find the owner of the voice.
It was Stavros from the front office, red-faced and anxious. Before coming to Australia he'd been an air traffic controller. Since then it had taken him thirty years to get from the factory floor to Sales. Joe met him at the top of the stairs.
'I heard you calling, Stavros. Is something wrong?'
Stavros was not in a good mood. 'Where the hell have you been Joe? We thought you must have had an accident.'
'I can look after myself, you know. Where is everybody?'
'Everybody's gone home. Except me. I get the job of looking for a stupid old bugger like you. There was blood on your desk. We thought you were hurt.'
Joe was confused. 'What do you mean everyone's gone home? Why-'
'Have you hit your head or what? It's five o'clock. Of course everyone's gone home.' Suddenly Stavros noticed the bloody handkerchief. Annoyance turned to concern. 'Hey you have hurt yourself. Give me a look at that.'
Joe drew back. 'It's nothing. Just a little cut.'
'All right mate, I know. You can look after yourself. Well next time you go disappearing, don't expect me to come and find you.'
'I'm fine Stavros. Thanks.'
But Stavros was already going down the stairs. 'See you tomorrow, then,' came the voice from below. 'If you remember to come to work, that is.'
Joe barely heard. Making sure no one was looking, he pulled the digital watch from his pocket and checked it against the Fleming's watch on his wrist and the clock on the wall. All roughly agreed that it was five o'clock.
Somehow the whole afternoon had gone.
That night Joe didn't feel that he could tell his wife about the secret room. She watched television in the next room while he ate his meal. When she went to bed, he wrapped a blanket round his bony shoulders and ventured down the yard to the back shed. The moon was not yet up, and it was very dark beneath the dull city stars. In the shed he found a torch. Slowly, painfully, he folded up his easel. Paints and brushes went into a bag. The old bottles and plastic pieces of fruit he used for paint-ing still lifes went into another.
Next day, at the first opportunity, Joe made his way to the seventh floor, clutching carry bags. On the second trip he carried the easel from his office to room 717.
The room was just as he had remembered it. Gripped by a strange excitement, Joe set up his easel on one side of the room and arranged the props in the pool of light on the table. As he began to paint, a bird flew through the slightly open window and balanced on the table.
It was not an ordinary bird.
Although it was about the size of a pigeon, it was less like a pigeon than any bird Joe had ever seen. The first thing he noticed was the eyes: deep, black, intelligent pools. Not daring to breathe, Joe stood very still. He noticed that the beak was also black and shaped like a dove's. The bird's body and tail were of a deep, unworldly blue, merging to a kind of purple at the breast. And then the bird spread its wings...
It was like the moment when Joe had first looked into a kaleidoscope as a child, endlessly multiplied. Feathers of every imaginable colour seemed to weave themselves together as he looked, building up patterns which would collapse in upon themselves before coming together again in astonishing new ways. Joe felt himself spinning into the colours, hypnotised as if by a sparkling watch. Then the bird closed its wings again. Sleepily, it blinked its eyes, and hopped atop one of the wine bottles. The bird stood still, watching Joe with an expectant expression.
Joe began to paint. Plastic fruit and wine bottles forgotten, he painted with a sure hand, confidently mixing colours and applying the paint with an authority he had never known before.
When he was finished there were two birds in the room; the one standing before him and the one on his canvas, both equally alive. Suddenly, the bird on the table opened its wings. With a blinding flash of colour it circled the room once before flying out the gap in the window and away.
Like a man waking from a dream, Joe breathed deeply and took in his surroundings before looking upon what he had done. The painting before him seemed to contain all of the beauty and cruelty of the world, wrapped in the costume of a bird. The bird was life and death, love and hate, fear and wonderment.
Joe looked until he could look no more, until the sun had fallen below the horizon and the room was dark. At last he put the canvas aside and left the room. Like a ghost he locked the factory and walked along the river. The wind whipped leaves against his legs, but he did not feel the cold.
For the following hours Joe felt like an actor playing a script, waiting for the chance to get off the stage and return to real life. There was no one he could talk to about what had happened. Even if there had been someone, there were no words to describe his experience.
The next day he left a note on his office door saying he would be back in a few hours. Something was afoot at the factory, and no one seemed to have noticed his absence the previous afternoon.
The painting in room 717 was as he had remembered it, fascinating and yet unbearable to look at. With a shiver, Joe rolled up the canvas. When he looked up the bird was back.
As quietly as he could, Joe readied a new canvas and prepared his paints. Like a patient model, the bird waited for him, watching with its head at an angle.
At last he was ready. As Joe touched his brush to the canvas the bird spread its wings. It was as though a chest of jewels had been opened. Dancing colours filled the room. Already Joe was painting, splashing the colours on. And then something changed. It was as though the walls of the room had disappeared, replaced by primeval trees and mountains. Still Joe kept painting, furiously slapping new colours over old. He could smell the jungle now, and a hint of sulphur from a hot spring or volcano. And in amongst it all the bird was no longer a bird, but a unicorn, nostrils flared, watching him from the other side of the clearing. Joe painted until his palette was dry. Exhausted, he closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them he was back in the room, and the bird was gone in a flutter of wings.
Back in his office it was late afternoon again. There was a clamour of voices below. Still half-dazed from his experience, Joe went downstairs to see what was happening.
The meeting was already breaking up.
'What's happening?' asked Joe of one worker. 'What's going on?'
But the man just averted his eyes and walked past him. Then someone tapped Joe on the shoulder. He whirled to find Stavros, toothless and scowling as ever.
'At least you needn't worry about being fired for slacking off now, Joe.'
Had he been discovered? Like a guilty child, Joe tried to keep the anxiety out of his voice. 'What do you mean?'
'The factory's being sold you stupid bugger,' said Stavros. 'Auctioned off. Week after next.'
Joe's head was whirling. 'But-'
'Think of it as early retirement.'
Stavros gestured at Joe's paint-spattered overalls with a sad grin. 'Least you'll have plenty of time to paint now,' he said.
Fearing that he had somehow brought on the cataclysm by opening the room upstairs, Joe didn't paint for the next few days. But the nightmare didn't go away. One week later, as he was finishing up for the afternoon, Joe bumped into Fleming in the corridor.
'Evening Mr Fleming,' he said.
But this time the usual ritual was not observed. Fleming stopped and embraced the caretaker warmly. Shocked by this unusual display of affection, Joe stood stiffly. Finally Fleming released him and looked him in the eye.
'You've worked hard for this company Welby,' he said. 'I want you to have this.'
Fleming handed him a package and walked away, not looking back.
Inside the package was a wad of twenty dollar bills and a gold watch inscribed 'Frank Fleming, 1943'.
When Joe got home his wife had already heard about the factory's closure on the news. She had even been to the bank to check on Joe's superannuation fund.
'Had to come,' she said. 'Good job too, filthy old place. But I don't want you under my feet stinking up the place with paint fumes. All right? You're going to have to find something productive to do.'
The body of William Fleming was found in the river, not far from the factory, early the next morning. By the time Joe got to work a small crowd was being dispersed by police. The ambulance was already gone. Suicide was the initial theory. The head of the factory had been found with his pockets weighed down with clocks.
At a meeting for the remaining staff that morning, few tears were shed for William Fleming. Most of the workers had never known their employer. Of more immediate importance was the fact that a buyer for the factory had already been found. There would be no auction after all, and Fleming's Clocks was to be demolished, with everything to be stripped and sold. To compensate for the lack of notice, all staff would be given extra golden handshakes and expected to leave no later than the next day.
The developer, Halverson, arrived that afternoon in an expensive-looking convertible sports car. An impatient man, he met with the staff briefly to explain his intentions. It seemed the date of demolition was to be brought forward. Any staff able to assist in removing saleable items from the building were to be paid handsome bonuses. At the end of the meeting Halverson asked if there were any questions. Glenda Blair, up the back, put up her hand.
'Are you planning to wait until after William Fleming's funeral to demolish the building?'
'I don't think that tragic event has anything to do with-' Halverson cut himself off. 'Shit!'
Halverson leapt from the podium and ran outside. A sudden storm had blown out of nowhere and was drenching his car. Staff tittered as Halverson grappled to unfold the roof of his convertible.
Next day Joe arrived at the factory early to find the front door already ripped off its hinges. Demolition people had been working through the night, and were now on to the upper floors. With mounting fear in his throat, Joe picked his way through the rubble. Workers were knocking down walls on the third floor.
There was a gaping hole in the stairway between the sixth and seventh floors. Joe was considering leaping it when a stern voice yelled at him from below.
'Hey you! Don't you know you're not allowed up here without a hard hat?'
Joe turned to see a wiry, angry-looking man. 'I'm sorry. I didn't realise-'
'Well you do now, so get out of here.'
Joe hesitated for a moment.
'Now,' said the man firmly. Joe obeyed.
The caretaker did not go home that night. He waited by the river for the demolition crew to go home. When it became obvious that they would be working all night, he waited for their next meal break before using his wire cutters to get through the newly erected perimeter fence. Soon he was on the sixth floor. Some of the spill from the arc lights outside dimly illuminated the hole in the stairway. Joe jumped, and just made it to the other side. Feeling his way slowly down the corridor, he reached Room 717. Inside, everything was as he had left it, only now the table was in a pool of moonlight. Sadly, Joe began picking up his paints and still life props. He was about to fold up the easel when there was a fluttering noise behind him.
It was the bird, glowing in the moonlight like a wet seal. Curiously, it angled its head to one side and winked at him. The movement was so human Joe felt his heart thump in surprise.
Paint me, it seemed to say to him. One last time.
This time the room's walls were like those of a planetarium. Ordinary darkness became shades darker than anything Joe had seen. Stars appeared in the darkness, individually at first, and then there were clusters and galaxies of them, wheeling breathtakingly around him. The bird became a constellation, and then took the form of a woman, picked out in points of light. Working blind, Joe painted what he saw, each stroke placed as precisely as if he were forty years younger, and working in daylight.
The woman seemed to come closer, and closer. At last, with a flash like a supernova, normal darkness returned, and the bird was gone.
It was finished then.
Firmly, Joe closed the window to the outside world.
When he reached the perimeter fence again it was almost dawn. Too late to ring his wife. It was Saturday anyway. She would still be asleep.
Joe began walking home. Distracted by the images whirling in his head, he got lost. Somehow suburbs had given way to concrete warehouses and industrial buildings. The street ended at a river. Joe did not realise which river it was until he found himself back at the Fleming's factory.
A crowd of youths, families and retired people were gathered behind a cordon across the street, waiting expectantly.
'What's going on?' Joe asked one of them.
'Big bang,' said the youth.
'Should be loud enough to wake you up grandpa,' sniggered another.
Joe turned and saw the holes in the walls where the demolition charges had been laid. Had he been in the building two nights? How long had he been walking?
With a new urgency, Joe grabbed one of the youths by the arm. 'When?'
'Let go of me you fucking pervert!'
Joe released him and approached an elderly woman standing nearby.
'When is it going to blow up?' he asked her.
'Er... Twenty minutes, so they say,' she replied. 'But it's been delayed twice.'
And then Joe noticed the holes in the windows. Vandals had broken many of them with stones over the last few days. His eyes found the corner of the seventh floor. The small, circular window of room 717 was unmistakable. It, too, had been broken.
Joe settled back to wait for the inevitable. 'Fifteen minutes,' said a voice over the police megaphone.
'Why are we waiting,' came the answering chant from the young section of the crowd.
And then he saw a flash of colour, high in the sky. The bird circled the building once, twice, and then shot like a dart through the hole in the window of room 717.
Anxiously, Joe waited. One minute. Two minutes. The bird did not come out. When the policeman nearest him was not looking, Joe ducked under the cordon and ran for the perimeter fence. He was halfway up the wire before they saw him. Joe fell to the ground with a heavy thump on the other side and limped awkwardly towards the building.
'Crazy bastard,' giggled a stoned teenage girl at the front of the crowd.
Inside, the building was nothing but a shell. Shafts of sunlight punched through holes in the walls where the demolition men had laid their charges. The police were unwilling to venture far into the unstable interior, and Joe soon left them behind him. Higher and higher he climbed, towards the seventh floor.
Outside, the developer was furious.
'What do you mean you can't get him out of there?' he demanded of the police superintendent on his mobile phone. 'That lunatic's gonna put my whole operation off schedule.'
'I'm sorry sir, but you can't go ahead until he's out of there.'
Halverson hung up in disgust.
Meanwhile Joe had reached the seventh floor. With trembling hands, he opened the door to room 717. The bird was sitting on the window sill, preening itself. Joe threw up his hands to frighten the bird outside. 'Hah! Hah!'
But the bird did not move. Joe edged closer. Stretching, he had almost reached the bird when a blast from a warning siren outside frightened it - the wrong way. The bird flew past Joe and through the door, into the building.
Money was changing hands outside. One of Halverson's minions was dispensing instructions to some of the wilder-looking kids who had gathered to watch the blast.
'Go round the back of the building, and then come back and tell the cops you saw that crazy old man climbing out over the fence back there. Okay? There'll be that much again if you do it right.'
With an easy grin, one of the youths grabbed the money and sidled off.
The bird was sitting on an exposed girder. Slowly, Joe edged closer to it. 'Just let me put you outside. Okay? I don't want to hurt you.' But at the last moment the bird flew away. Again and again he cornered the bird, always with the same result. Sweat dripped into Joe's eyes. His leg hurt from where he had fallen off the fence.
He tried not to let the fear creep into his voice. 'Easy does it. Easy does it. Come on now.' Joe lunged and the bird flapped away to the other side of the room.
Outside, the crowd were getting restless. 'Boring, boring,' went the chant. By now the police superintendent had arrived at the site. He was in Halverson's caravan when a constable ushered in a raggedy-looking kid.
'Excuse me sir, but this boy says he's got some information.'
After ten minutes four more youths had arrived to corroborate the story. 'A dirty old wino or something he was. Jumped over the fence at the back and ran away.'
Three police cars were sent to comb the surrounding blocks, finding nothing.
'Five more minutes,' the superintendent told the developer. Halverson fumed.
In his pursuit of the bird, Joe had reached the edge of a chasm on the seventh floor. A girder had fallen down and taken out two floors. Beyond the drop the bird balanced on a ledge. Joe had given up calling. There was nothing more he could do. He put his head in his lap and began to cry.
Outside, the superintendent's nerve had cracked. The countdown had re-started. Every minute a siren sounded, and excitement was building in the crowd.
Joe reached up to wipe the tears from his face and felt claws grip his fingers, a weight on his hand. He opened his eyes to see the bird quietly sitting there, blinking when the siren sounded. Joe stroked the bird's silky feathers in wonderment.
'What are you? Where did you come from?'
And the bird looked at him with its strange eyes and made no sound.
Quickly, carefully, Joe made his way to the nearest window, carrying the bird. The first one was jammed shut. He tried not to panic.
'One minute,' said the megaphone voice. 'Thirty seconds.' And then the siren sounded three times in quick succession.
Three puffs of smoke appeared on each wall of Fleming's Clocks. The building rippled like a curtain of water. Then the sound hit, much louder than fireworks; a series of enormous bangs. Babies cried and people cheered as the factory toppled and fell into itself in slow motion. The crowd clapped and whistled. In his caravan, Halverson still wasn't happy. 'And about fucking time too,' he said.
The noise of the explosion resounded back and forth across the river until it died away to nothing. Where the building had been, a huge cloud of dust blew up and rolled across the river. Strangers smiled at each other and gathered their belongings as a brilliantly coloured bird flew out of the billowing dust and towards the sun.© David Lowe, November 1994