Holloway Falls

by Neil Cross

  Lenny eased her away.

  He said: ‘Elly. This is Will.’

  She looked at Holloway.

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  Holloway could not smile. He shifted his position. Whatever he did, it looked like what a murderer would do. So he just stood there, on the cold doorstep in his summer clothes, while the house’s fragrant warmth radiated out to him.

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Eloise. ‘Right. OK.’

  She nodded, vaguely, and stepped aside to let them enter. She pressed herself almost flat to the wall when Holloway passed her. Lenny took him to the sitting room. Shepherd hung back. He scuffed his shoes on the welcome mat, and closed the door behind him.

  Eloise had not moved.

  Shepherd set his bag down.

  Quietly, he said: ‘How are you?’

  She whispered: ‘How do you think I am? I’m like someone whose husband just brought home a murderer.’

  ‘He’s not a murderer,’ Shepherd hissed back. ‘That’s the point.’

  By now, though, it hardly seemed to matter.

  Eloise ran a hand through her hair. A few strands of her blunt fringe stood vertically. She looked at Shepherd as if she had never met him.

  She said: ‘Right. This has gone too far.’

  She ran upstairs. On the first landing, she leaned over the banister and called Lenny. The house froze.

  Lenny went stomping upstairs like a loose-limbed teenager about to be berated.

  Shepherd and Holloway sat silently in the sitting room while upstairs Lenny and Eloise argued.

  After a few minutes, Shepherd said: ‘Fancy a cuppa?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Holloway. ‘Please.’

  ‘Milk?’

  ‘A bit. Just a dash.’

  ‘Sugar?’

  ‘Please. Four.’

  ‘Four?’

  ‘Please.’

  Shepherd was gone a long time, far longer than it took to prepare two cups of tea and find some biscuits. But when he returned, Holloway had not changed his position and Eloise and Lenny were still screaming at one another.

  Holloway took a chipped mug. He thanked Shepherd.

  ‘He should’ve called ahead,’ he said.

  Shepherd dunked a stale digestive, then folded the crumbling, sodden disc into his mouth.

  ‘What can you do?’

  ‘You can’t blame her,’ said Holloway.

  Shepherd agreed.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  Eloise packed her suitcase and left that evening.

  If they expected her departure to make Holloway anxious for his continued safety, it didn’t. Lenny insisted with some passion that Eloise would under no circumstances go to the police, or mention Holloway’s presence to anybody. He became tearful at the thought of her wounded but absolute loyalty.

  Holloway told him he understood, that it was OK, that he appreciated the reassurance.

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ said Lenny, for his own benefit.

  ‘Of course,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Of course she will,’ said Holloway. He might have been injected with Novocain.

  ‘Right,’ said Lenny. He clapped his hands and tried to look cheerful.

  The room, the house, was suffused with a sense of unreality.

  ‘Anything else, before I get some sleep?’

  ‘There is one thing,’ said Holloway. ‘I’d like to see my aunt.’

  They tried to talk him out of it, but it was no good. The next morning, Lenny drove Holloway to Bristol. Shepherd stayed at home. Holloway was pleased to be free of him, if only for a few hours. Shepherd’s dolorous presence made him uncomfortable. That discomfort made him feel grudging and at fault.

  Holloway remembered little about his final days in New Zealand. He lay in his hotel bed, watching television and eating sporadically and badly. He rose only to write, then destroy letters of explanation and apology to Dan Weatherell.

  Meanwhile, Lenny was co-ordinating a flight home for the three of them. Every three or four hours he checked up on Holloway, by phone or in person. And several times a day, he phoned Dan Weatherell, to assure him that Holloway remained safely locked away in his hotel room.

  Shepherd took the opportunity to go and watch the test match.

  Holloway didn’t see much of him. He thought that Shepherd seemed somewhat depressed. This suggested that he’d come as something of an anticlimax. Perhaps in this was rooted his guilty antipathy.

  At the airport, Holloway remembered assuring the clerk that he had packed his own luggage. He remembered the low whine of the engines and the horrid, piss-and-shit-stink of the chrome lavatory several hours into the long flight. But most of all, he remembered the way Eloise had thrown herself at Lenny when he arrived home.

  He saw in that moment that Eloise would never have left Lenny, had it not been for the arrival at her door of William Holloway, surrounded by the flickering aura of his lost, imagined women.

  Yet Lenny accepted her temporary absence with equanimity. He did not doubt her intentions or worry about what she might be doing. He did not construct imaginary betrayals. And so neither did Holloway. It had not occurred to him to examine or question the nature of this confidence in Eloise.

  Lenny was as different from Holloway as it was possible for a man to be, who shared a mother culture. Even his unlimited paranoia was the fountainhead of an abnormal joy.

  Holloway did not see himself in Lenny. Lenny was a mystery to him. Yet he found his company familiar and comfortable.

  When Shepherd told Holloway about Dryden, about It’s a Wonderful Life and Joanne Grayling and Charles Manson and Helter Skelter, it sounded fractured and unconvincing. It left Holloway feeling galled to have been tracked down by an obsessive freak.

  But in Lenny’s mouth it all made sense. Lenny was sane and articulate and animated and fervently evangelical. He illustrated each of his points by clapping or punching his hand. He gave Holloway pages of research materials. These included a five-page printed document whose first entry was dated 63 BC: ‘countless numbers of Jewish citizens deliberately jump to their death when Pompey captures the city’.

  But it was the last page Holloway was interested in.

  1978:Jonestown, Guyana. Jim Jones leads 913 members of the People’s Temple to their deaths, by drinking cyanide­-laced Kool-Aid.

  1993:Vietnam. Believing they will go straight to Heaven, fifty-three villagers commit mass suicide with primitive weapons.

  1993:America. Seventy members of the Branch Davidian cult die when fire ends a fifty-one-day siege by police and federal agents of the ATF.

  1994:Switzerland. Forty-eight members of the Solar Temple are found burned to death in a farmhouse and three chalets. Five further bodies, including that of an infant, are found in Montreal.

  1995:France. Sixteen members of the Solar Temple are found burned to death in a house in the French Alps.

  1997:Canada. Five members of the Solar Temple are found burned to death in a house in Saint Casimir, Quebec.

  1997:America. On the same day, thirty-nine members of the Heaven’s Gate cult are found dead after committing mass suicide in shifts. Previously, many had genitally mutilated themselves.

  1999:UK. Rex Dryden cons approximately 400 followers of his fake millennial cult, the Temple of Light, into drinking what he claims to be poisoned Lucozade.

  2000:UK. Rex Dryden instructs unknown followers to enact the first of many millennial sacrifices, ordering the murder of prostitute Joanne Grayling. His reasons for choosing Joanne Grayling, if any, are currently unknown.

  ‘Dryden’s been dropping hints and clues,’ Lenny told him. ‘He’s been taking every opportunity to go on the record about his obsession with It’s a Wonderful Life. Obviously he’s instructed whoever was sent to kill Joanne to refer to it at every opportunity. P
ossibly he sees it as an allegory of death and redemption. Or the demise of capitalism. The extinction of global super corporations. Whatever. He’s using specific symbolism, but it’s peculiar to his own mythos and difficult to interpret. It might not even be consistent. It doesn’t need to be. These movements have a certain internal logic, a self-sustaining momentum. Once the adherents have chosen to believe, they believe no matter what.

  ‘Dryden’s the first modern celebrity to run a genuine death cult. And it was Dryden, or Dryden’s followers, who did this to you.

  ‘He thinks he’s a Lord of Misrule,’ said Lenny. ‘The Old Trickster. King of the World. Prince of the Air. Well, he’s not,’ he said. ‘He’s just a cunt.’

  Lenny steered with his right hand and evangelized with his left. There was still a lot he wanted to tell Holloway about, not all of it connected with Rex Dryden. Holloway didn’t mind, any more than he minded Lenny shifting gears with teeth-grinding inefficiency and appearing to change lanes at random. His driving was accompanied by a discordant choir of outraged horns.

  But Holloway grew tense when they entered Bristol’s city limits. He pulled the borrowed beanie hat over his ears and turned up the collar of his jacket. Then Lenny said: ‘You look like a car-thief,’ and he turned the collar down again.

  They parked outside the nursing home. The ticking of the engine accentuated the silence in the car. The home was grey against the milky winter sunshine.

  Lenny said: ‘Are you sure about this?’

  Holloway was eating a king-sized Mars bar.

  ‘I deserted her,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not like you had a choice.’

  Holloway screwed up the wrapper and dropped it on the floor. Lenny’s eyes followed it, returned to his passenger.

  ‘I’m scared she’s going to die,’ said Holloway.

  Lenny rested his forehead against the steering wheel.

  ‘It’s just such a risk,’ he said.

  Holloway grinned.

  He said: ‘Look, if I get arrested, you can dedicate yourself to my release.’

  Lenny smiled tightly. ‘They will call the police,’ he said. ‘The minute they see you.’

  Holloway’s hand rested on the door handle.

  ‘Do you think she knows?’

  ‘About what? Joanne and that?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Didn’t you say it was Alzheimer’s?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Lenny leaned over Holloway to retrieve his tobacco tin from the glove compartment. He began to roll a cigarette.

  ‘Then no,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t know.’

  Lenny licked the gummed paper, lit the cigarette. The smoke seemed very blue against the colourless winter backdrop.

  ‘But if you have to do it,’ he said. ‘You have to do it.’

  Holloway opened the passenger door and stepped onto the pavement. He took a step or two towards the nursing home. He imagined Hetty opening the door, seeing his face. His aunt Grace, not knowing he’d been away. The sweet, powdery smell of her.

  He walked through the gates and up the drive and stood at the bay window. He knew that, behind the yellowing net, Grace remained in her unknowable limbo. He wondered if time moved for her at all. When she knew, however transiently, that apple cake Billy had come for her, did she see a child? Or did she believe herself to be humouring a delusional madman?

  He wanted Hetty to know that he didn’t kill Joanne. He wanted to make a cup of tea in the kitchen and share a plate of biscuits with her, Jammy Dodgers or Rich Tea, and talk about what had happened, the places he’d been.

  But if she opened the door to him, she would only see a murderer. She would say, Oh my goodness, and she would slam the door and she would run to the telephone on the desk and she would call the police. Or she would be silent and shocked, one hand at the gold St Christopher round her throat, and she would allow him entry like Eloise had, and hang back, around the telephone, and mutter fearfully into the receiver while he kneeled at Grace’s side.

  He squinted through the tiny gaps in the net, but inside he could see only gradations of shadow. Any movement might have been the vibration of his own eye. He knew that anybody inside could see him quite clearly, a scruffy man with a woolly cap pulled down over his ears, cupping a hand over his brow and pressing his face to the glass. So he jammed his hands in his pockets and turned away. He half ran, half jogged a step or two and joined Lenny in the hire car.

  Lenny had kept the engine running. The moment Holloway was inside, he pulled the car away with a screech. By the time a male nurse came to the door, they were too far away, and too wreathed in smoking rubber, for him to take down the car’s registration.

  By the time they arrived back in north London, it was dark. Lenny parked outside the house. For a while they sat silently in the car, listening to the engine tick. Through the sitting room window they could see a blue, flickering light. Shepherd, alone on the sofa, watching television.

  They stepped from the car, shivering. Condensed breath ascending to the yellow sodium haze. On the pavement, they exchanged a meaningful glance, shut the car doors quietly, and went to the pub.

  It was almost empty. A few drinkers, older men, clung to the darker corners and tatty booths. Holloway went to the bar and got two pints of Guinness.

  Holloway set the pint on the table before Lenny. ‘You were right,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t have gone.’

  ‘Cheers. It doesn’t matter. No harm done.’

  ‘Not for lack of trying. Cheers.’

  Lenny lifted his beer and took a small sip. He did not reply.

  ‘Story of my life,’ insisted Holloway.

  Lenny set the glass back on the table. He sighed.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ he said.

  He did not mean that Holloway should tell him about it.

  Holloway took a long draught from the glass. It left a foamy white moustache.

  He said: ‘I was married for fourteen years.’

  Lenny hummed a long, uninterested affirmative.

  But Holloway went on.

  He said: ‘She was too good for me.’

  Lenny nodded. They were quiet for a while. He could feel Holloway looking at him. He gave up. He sagged and nodded again, this time to show that Holloway should continue.

  Holloway wiped his upper lip. He said: ‘You’ll hear men say they never looked at another woman.’ He looked sheepish, and for a while he watched people come and go at the bar. ‘But in my case, it was true. I never did. Not seriously anyway; not for more than a second. She was absolutely the only woman for me. Do you know what that feels like?’

  Lenny shrugged.

  ‘Elly and I are happy,’ he said. ‘I suppose it could change.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  He laughed.

  ‘You don’t even know us.’

  ‘I can tell,’ said Holloway.

  Lenny was disarmed. He looked at the table.

  He said: ‘Yeah. Well. You know.’

  ‘The thing is,’ said Holloway. ‘Despite everything, I never felt at ease. I always thought she’d married beneath her. And over the years, you know, I began to wonder. The first time we—’ and again he was overcome by coyness. ‘The first time we did it, was back at her student digs. At the time she was going out with this bloke. Sam. And, over the years, I began to think: if she could do that to him, could she do it to me?’

  ‘And did she?’

  Holloway laughed.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  He seemed elated, bitterly delighted by the admission. ‘No, she didn’t. Not until I left her.’

  He chuckled, as if it was too funny for words.

  Lenny drew in his jaw. He thought for a bit. Then he said: ‘I thought she left you.’

  ‘That’s not how she saw it.’

&nbs
p; ‘What about Dan Weatherell?’

  ‘He came later.’ Holloway stared into his pint. ‘I used to tease her,’ he said. ‘About men. Men on TV, actors, men in the street, men she worked with. Trying to work out who she might be attracted to. It was all a big joke. Ha ha. She played along. She was good enough to pretend it was a joke. But over time I suppose I wore her down. I badgered her.’

  ‘It happens,’ said Lenny.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Holloway, doubtfully.

  ‘Did you talk about it? As a problem, I mean.’

  ‘We tried to. She tried to. But there were no—’ He fought for the right word. Then he said: ‘I thought she was humouring me.’

  Lenny was confused.

  ‘So in the end, it was you who left her?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  He enjoyed Lenny’s expression.

  Shortly before Christmas, Kate told him about Dan Weatherell.

  At first Holloway was stupefied. He could only think to ask how long it had been going on.

  Six months.

  He remembered her looking at him with unendurable pity. And then, gently, she said: ‘You left me first.’

  He looked at her, bewildered, trying behind his eyes to rewind the last six months.

  ‘What?’

  ‘For your job.’

  He snorted derisively through both nostrils.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  She said: ‘Will, look at yourself. You’re never home.’

  He drew a long breath. Pinched the bridge of his nose.

  He said: ‘I hate my job.’

  Something like laughter welled up inside him.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said.

  The idea seemed pornographic. He looked around himself, as if for something misplaced.

  Then he punched his wife in the face.

  By the time the police arrived, he had destroyed the contents of the sitting room, the indices of their marriage: the furniture and their photographs, the television and the VCR: he had ripped the curtains from their rails and thrown chairs through windows. He ground shattered glass into the carpet, upended the table at which they ate their Sunday lunch, and ripped the legs from it. He used the legs as clubs. He bellowed terrible words and things that were not words at all. Kate made a ball of herself in the corner, behind an upended bookcase, her knees drawn up to her broken face.