by Fiona Walker
‘Liz – Liz,’ Francis was trying again, now only a few feet away, yet shouting loudly into the wind. ‘It’s Kizzy I love, not Legs. Trust me. I just don’t want to see this lovely young woman here die!’
‘No. Francis,’ Legs protested weakly, head swimming through layers of dizziness now. ‘You’ve got it all wrong! Don’t say that—’
‘Be quiet, darling, I’m dealing with this. Now don’t worry, Liz – I’m not going to make any sudden moves; I have a broken toe. Let’s all be sensible about this. In the words of Kipling, “Hold on when there is nothing in you except the Will which says to them ‘Hold on!’”’
Legs closed her eyes. Liz was right. He was a horrible, bullish, poetry-quoting bore and he did sound like a Tory MP.
‘Now Liz, you are going to keep on holding tight to Legs’ legs,’ he went on. ‘And I am going to come alongside you veeery slowly and take hold of Legs’ legs.’
The blood rushing around her head and the adrenalin on full choke was playing tricks on her as she started to giggle. It all sounded so silly, all those legs.
‘Stop that, darling,’ Francis’s voice was rigid with tension, making him sound like Basil Fawlty once more. ‘You’re not helping.’
With great effort, she stopped giggling, hysterical panic and hysterical laughter all muddled up. Her eyes raked the cliff below her for the climber, but she could see nothing. It must have been an illusion, brought about by the fitful, desperate head-rush of certain death.
‘Right, Liz,’ Francis had edged much closer, his voice much louder. ‘I am going to—’
‘Get back!’ she screeched, swinging around so that Legs swayed sideways too, net skirts catching on the rocks and bringing down a shower of loose scree.
‘Oh please, Lord, no,’ she whimpered, and then almost passed out as a firm arm steadied her shoulders and she gazed out through layers of net to see Byrne standing on the ledge beneath the overhang, his upside-down head level with hers. He pressed his fingers to his lips.
‘“If you can fill the unforgiving minute—”’ Francis droned on, quoting Kipling again.
‘Will you shut up!’ Liz screamed at him. ‘I can’t think straight.’
Legs let out a moan of fear as she slipped yet lower, but this time two arms had her safely in their grip
As strong as Nureyev whirling Margot Fonteyn overhead, he lifted her away from Liz’s grip and slid her down one of his broad shoulders, turning her the right way up and landing her lightly on the ledge beside him where she swayed groggily, blood rushing away from her head again. His arm reached out like a fairground safety bar, pressing her back against the rock-face beneath the overhang.
‘Oh fuck,’ came a shocked voice from above, ‘I’ve just dropped her.’
Francis’s wail of grief could have graced a repertory production of Lear as he stood on the edge of the cliff screaming at the sea. It was existential.
‘It was an accident!’ Liz was shrieking too, barely audible over Francis’s screams and the rush of the wind. ‘It wasn’t my fault! It was an accident. That poor girl.’
Francis let out another howl.
For a terrifying moment, Legs thought he was going to push Liz over and possibly even jump himself, but he seemed to gather himself together remarkably quickly and, as sirens and blue lights raced towards the clifftop, he sobbed: ‘You are right, of course. I saw it all. It was an accident. A tragic accident. The police must be told straight away,’ his voice tapered away as he limped off to greet the emergency services pursued by a sobbing Liz.
Legs’ eyes bulged in fury. He hadn’t even looked over the edge to check if she was hanging there. She knew he was pretty phobic about the sight of blood and gore – and seeing a lover’s body smashed on the rocks would be a sight no man would willingly endure – but surely he could have tried? He was a total coward.
She turned her head to look at Byrne, seeing his big, dark eyes like two clifftop braziers. Again, he held a finger to his mouth and then nodded to her far side, where the ledge widened as it ran up towards the cliff’s edge at the Lookout.
Swallowing in terror, she started to shuffle along sideways, gripping tightly on to his arm. Together they edged twenty yards to a point where it was possible to turn around and clamber onto the plateau of windswept scrub and heather directly beside the old hermit’s cave.
Chapter 43
Legs embraced solid ground with such passionate relief that she half expected to sink into it and take root there. Eventually, she let Byrne prize her up into a sitting position, and he stooped down to pick her up, carrying her into the cave.
‘Thank you thank you thank you!’ she sobbed, clinging to him. ‘You saved my life.’
He settled her down on one of the rickety chairs and then stepped back, raking his fingers into his hair which had been whipped wild by the sea-spray and wind.
It was sheltered from the wind inside the Lookout, and very dark, just a faint thread of moonlight stealing in between black outs of cloud cover. Byrne started pacing around, still supremely edgy.
‘What is this place?’ He looked at the old furniture and effects, eyes squinting into the darkness.
‘An old hermitage. We used to come here as kids.’
‘You and Francis?’
‘All of us.’ She was starting to regain her breath at last, her heartbeat gradually coming down, but her teeth rattled like castanets at a fiesta and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could last without a large brandy and a warm hug. She stood up unsteadily. ‘We must go out there now and tell them I’m OK.’
‘Why?’ he snapped.
‘They think I’m dead!’
There was a pause and Byrne seemed to gather himself together, shaking his head briefly, clearing his thoughts.
‘Of course.’ He stepped back into the shadows. ‘You must go to Francis.’
She picked her way cautiously towards the entrance then turned back to him. ‘Aren’t you coming?’
‘Not right now.’
‘You must, please, Byrne. I need you. I can’t …’ Her eyes filled with tears as she looked from him to the cliff path. ‘I’m scared.’
‘Hey.’ He rushed forwards to wrap his arms around her. ‘Hey. Shh. Poor little one, poor Heavenly Pony.’
She clung onto him gratefully. She could hear his heart pounding in his chest, impossibly fast. The warmth of his body against hers gave her strength, and she curled more tightly into it, listening to his breathing, her teeth no longer chattering as her hands reached up to his face, fingers exploring the sharp angle of his jaw and the soft hollows beneath his ears.
He trapped her hands with his, gently pulling them away and holding them together under her chin as though in prayer, his eyes blazing into hers through the darkness.
Aware of her bare fingers, she blurted. ‘I dropped your ring – well Delia Meare did. I’m sorry. I’ll buy you another one, I promise.’
‘Delia Meare was the woman on the cliff?’ His brows creased, trying to place the familiar name.
‘She wrote The Girl Who Checked Out,’ she explained, still getting to grips with it herself.
Byrne took a moment to make the connection, then looked stupefied. ‘Oh God, I sent that to you,’ he remembered. ‘Strange correspondent; brilliant plot.’
‘She’s Kizzy’s mother. Didn’t you see the likeness?’
‘Funnily enough I wasn’t studying her too closely.’ He looked up at her sharply from beneath his curling black brows. ‘Why would Kizzy’s mother want to kill you?’
‘The poison pen letters have been a sort of misguided attempt to capture our attention including Gordon’s – yours – and Conrad’s.’
‘I know it’s hard to get representation these days, but surely that’s a bit excessive?’
‘I just hope she doesn’t try the same stunt with the Booker judges.’ She leaned closer into him, desperate to be hugged. She couldn’t stop shaking, her teeth chattering and her body uncoordinated.
He let
go and stepped away, his forehead creased with discomfort. ‘I’m going back to Ireland tonight.’
‘No!’ She reached out for him again, but he crossed his arms defensively in front of his chest.
Then suddenly, in technicolour, high definition, 3D flashback, she remembered what she’d discovered before her imagination became so overactive that she’d started running around the cellars, lanes and clifftop in a panic, imagining a murderer on her tail. ‘Oh Christ, Byrne, the letter!’
Face immediately shuttered, he looked away. ‘Forget about it.’
‘I wrote it over a year ago, but it was never intended to be sent. That is, I did send a version, probably almost as bad only with fewer spelling mistakes and no Donne, but Francis never acknowledged that one, and then this—’
‘I said forget it! I should never have read it. It’s your private business.’
‘It’s not!’ she implored desperately. ‘I love you! Gráim thú. Let’s run away together like we planned. Let’s live for the moment. I love you.’
But he was a stone wall of self protection, his head low and shaking slowly, so that all she could see was his lovely, wild black hair in thick heroic tufts on his crown.
‘“I love you”,’ he quoted bitterly, and she remembered the moment he’d told her that he loved her under the lamp-post and she’d believed him even though he was only teaching her a lesson. ‘You write it eighteen times in your letter to Francis.’
She closed her eyes as she realised he’d counted them up while she had been counting down the minutes through dinner.
‘Nineteen if you count the quote from Donne’s “Batter My Heart”,’ he added.
And suddenly Legs realised she was talking to Gordon Lapis now, just as she had been that night walking back to the Book Inn. Paranoid, infuriating, hyper-critical Gordon, her old friend and sparring partner, so clever and so contrary. The two halves of Byrne coexisted so closely under his skin. To kiss one was to taste the other, the bitter skin on the sweetest fruit.
‘I know you’ve written things you regret,’ she said hoarsely. ‘I’ve heard you say it.’
‘But I can’t take them back,’ he replied coldly, ‘What’s written, once read, is like ink in skin to me. You can’t undo that, however much you long to go back and change it.’
‘Well, it’s not like that for me! It’s never been like that for me. My love-life might be short on emotional damage compared to yours, but its annals are still layered with Tippex and eraser crumbs, and if I could spend life leaning on the backspace key I would. Unlike you, my writing isn’t a matter of public record. When I want my words to be published, I’ll get another tattoo, ink on skin.’
‘Take my advice and stick to shapes,’ he muttered, ‘or hire a copy-editor first. Your spelling’s atrocious.’
She knew his flippancy was born of hurt. He was more Gordon than ever. But knowing it did nothing to quell her rage. Her voice was climbing scales of panic: ‘That letter you read was never meant to be read. I should have destroyed it a year ago.’
‘Live for the moment, live with the consequences.’
‘But don’t ever die young wearing men’s underpants,’ she said shakily.
He shrugged, turning away. ‘It worked for Ptolemy.’
‘Why did you kill him?’
‘I figured if I had to sacrifice my life for him, he could return the favour.’
‘So you made up a rule saying he loses his immortality if he falls in love?’
‘I just wanted him gone.’
‘You must really mistrust love to want to publicly destroy it like that.’
‘That’s right.’ He steepled his fingers over his nose, and looked across at her. ‘I built an invincible boy and killed him for love. What a fucking waste.’
Legs shook her head angrily. ‘He doesn’t die for love, Gordon. He dies because he can’t live with love. You won’t let him. That’s the fucking waste.’
He stared at her for a long time, taking this in.
‘People can hurt you when you love them.’
‘Like Poppy hurt you by running away?’
‘This isn’t about Poppy. I only came back here to teach Hector a lesson.’
‘I don’t believe that. This has been all about Poppy from the very start.’
‘Hector screwed up my father’s life!’
‘And I’m sure you entertained ideas of throwing punches in retaliation, humiliating him, seeing him financially ruined and sexually undermined, all of which you’ve achieved in some way or another, but Poppy has always been your primary target. You wrote Ptolemy for her in the first place, Byrne. It’s so plain to see, and so heartbreaking. It’s the longest and saddest letter an abandoned child could write home to his mother, a story about a boy who can never grow old and can never love. This is all about her; Ptolemy is all about Poppy. He’s you as a child, isn’t he? He’s your avenging angel and you brought him back to his mother after all these years, only to kill him in front of her eyes. If that isn’t revenge, I don’t know what is.’
His eyes blazed from his face. There was a yawning silence before he spoke.
‘I can’t change it,’ he hissed. ‘It’s out there now.’
‘And your fans are heartbroken. They’re in outcry. They blame you for murdering their favourite hero; no matter that you created him in the first place. You just shot your career to hell days before you’re due to go public. But what the hell – you upset your mother, which is all this was ever really about, so you got what you wanted. Now you can go home to Ireland and bury your head under a Bushmills.’
‘I am not ashamed to stand by my work.’
‘You don’t regret it! That’s great! You should get it tattooed on your chest in Gaelic: “I killed Ptolemy Finch and I don’t regret it.” Hollywood will rewrite the end, but Gordon Lapis could never compromise his artistic integrity and admit he got it wrong. What’s written, once read, is like ink on skin to you, after all. Remind me to get “Allegra requires discipline to achieve amelioration” tattooed on my buttocks. It was in my school report at thirteen. Once written …’
‘You should go into psychoanalysis,’ he muttered. ‘And your arse is too small for that tattoo.’
‘Never do a job you can’t spell; the same goes for tattoos. How about “take firmly in hand”?’
‘I’m sure Francis will attend to that.’ He turned sharply away.
‘He doesn’t like tattoos.’ She wanted to weep, knowing that fear had made her attack when all she longed to do was throw her arms around him and beg him to take her with him. But he was a wall of defensiveness now, ten brick courses higher than before for her onslaught.
He moved further away. There was a long pause. Then she heard a piece of paper being unfolded.
‘There’s a reply.’
‘What?’
‘To your letter. There was a reply with it. It’s here. I was going to put it in a bottle and throw it out to sea, but I guess it’s quicker to hand-deliver it on his behalf. You two don’t want to wait another year for the post to deliver, after all.’ He handed her the page. ‘He writes beautifully. Better than I ever could.’
‘I can’t read it.’ She thrust it back.
‘Here – use this as a torch.’ He reached through his pockets and pulled out a lighter; as it sparked, she recognised the big Zippo from the charred frock coat.
‘Thanks.’ She took it from him and thrust the paper over it.
‘What are you doing?’ He whipped it away from her as it caught light, damping out the flames against the wall. ‘What is it with you and setting light to things?’
‘I said I can’t read it.’ The words came through gritted teeth.
‘After I’ve gone, then,’ he snapped, pressing the lighter into her hands followed by the letter. ‘Then burn it for all I care. I almost did. But you must read it first. I’m sorry I misjudged Francis. I had no idea of the strength of feeling you two share. I should have listened that first night we talked, when you s
aid you still loved him. It’s his ring you should be wearing by now. You were right to cast mine out to sea.’
‘I don’t! You shouldn’t. That is, I – I should really talk to him, yes. He thinks I’m dead, after all. He deserves to know the truth about everything.’
He nodded, turning away.
‘Don’t leave tonight,’ she begged again. ‘Wait until I’ve spoken with him.’
He shook his head. ‘Second thoughts are never as original as first ones.’
‘Of course they are! Like second love and second chances.’ Her throat was so clogged with tears, she gasped out the words as though drowning.
‘You once told me sexual chemistry needs to be built slowly, and you were right. Ours simply blew up in our faces.’
‘It’s more than that.’
He shook his head. ‘You’re right about me too. My canon is pure self-defence, full of self-pitying hubris. I’ve turned love into a punishment. Now I’m about to start my life sentence, so I don’t want visitors.’
‘Can I write to you?’
‘I’d rather you didn’t.’
Mortified by his coldness, Legs pushed past him out onto the cliff path.
As she disappeared into the night, she passed Fink the basset hound, who had clearly endured a laborious and windy time navigating his way up the steps from the cove. His ears were blown inside-out now, as he rejoined his master with an ecstatically loud greeting, panting from his exertions between happy howls. What Legs couldn’t hear over the wind was the dog letting out a frustrated whine as he was forced to retrace his steps back along the cliff path alongside his anxious master to monitor her precarious, tearful progress back to firm ground.
Ears still flapping, he did as he was told, watching mournfully as she disappeared between the gorse bushes.
Just for a moment, Leg paused in her tracks and listened.
‘Gráim thú.’ She could have sworn she heard the words on the wind. But as she looked back, she saw Byrne turning away to take the track down to the village without a backward glance.
Legs stumbled along the cliff path, wobbling around on her oversized plastic shoes on the uneven footing with faster steps until she was running, netting skirts flying up into her face, out over the bracken and heather, across the tufty grass tussocks and rock boulders, through the pointed promontories of woodland to the parkland and the caring, professional arms of the emergency services.