“What happened? Why …?” The question refuses to form itself, as Alex stumbles to a halt. The boy is too close to the cliff-edge, and something warns him to advance no further.
“It wan’t my fault …”
The slurring of words that he noticed earlier is more pronounced now, and he watches the way the boy sways. His instinct is to reach out and drag him from the edge, but he is just too far away, and any movement now …
“He was there when I opened the door. He wan’t s’posed to be there. They said he was in … Queensland’. He wan’t s’posed to be …”
“It’s alright, Marco. We’re here now. You want to tell me what happened?”
The boy looks at him, then turns awkwardly towards the cliff-edge, and sways dangerously.
“A’right? Wha’s a’right? It’s over, Alex …” He turns back to face his friend. “It’s over …”
The tears are beginning to flow. Alex takes a step forward.
“Stay back! I don’t need you, you understan’? I don’t need … anyone …”
The distance is still too great to make a lunge, and the older boy freezes.
“Everybody needs someone, Marc. We’re here for you, just trust me. We’ll work it out …”
“Sure! We’ll work it out. Wha’you gonna do? Visit me in jail? I killed him, man. I knocked the drunk bastard on his arse and he smashed ‘is head on the fireplace. He wan’t s’posed to be …”
“It wasn’t your fault, Marc. It’ll be alright … What did you take? The pills. What are they?”
The boy begins to laugh uncontrollably. Then as suddenly as it started, the laughter stops dead.
“What’s it matter? Blue pills, pink pills, white pills …” He looks confused for a moment, then his face clears, as if he is suddenly in control. “ ‘Don’t do drugs …’ they said. ‘Be a good boy …’ ‘Work hard and do well …’ Well, I did what they said, and … What’s it matter?”
A movement further down the hill catches his attention. Alex follows the line of his gaze. Two figures struggle up the path, one male, one female.
“It’s the others. They’ve come to help you, man. You don’t have to be alone.”
But as he looks back towards the cliff-edge, the boy takes another step backwards.
“We’re all alone, man. Din’t you figure it yet? We’re all —”
And suddenly the ground is giving way, crumbling beneath his unsteady feet. He sways, and his arms swing out to balance his body, but he has lost control. Alex lunges desperately to grab him, but he twists towards the empty air and drops silently from view …
TIM’S STORY
We were maybe thirty metres away when Marco disappeared over the edge. Chrissie screamed, and I felt suddenly faint. The contents of my stomach forced their way into my throat, and my head went all light.
But there was no time for feeling anything. Alex had dived for the edge of the cliff, trying to grab the kid, and now he was lying looking down.
I heard him scream. One word.
“Marco!”
Then he swung his legs over the edge and began to climb down.
By the time we reached the point where we could see over, Alex was four or five metres down the rock face, struggling blindly with his feet for a foothold. And from where we lay, looking down, we could see the reason for his urgency.
Osterley Point is not a sheer drop. Not quite. And Marco’s body had lodged on one of the rocky outcrops, maybe ten or eleven metres down the face. There was blood on his face, and one of his arms was sticking out at a sickening angle, and there was no way of telling if he was dead or alive.
What was clear was that the slightest movement — perhaps even the wind — would send him plummeting the rest of the way to the rocks below. It was just a knob of rock, not even a ledge, and Alex was halfway down to it.
While Chrissie fumbled with her mobile to call for help, I looked on helplessly.
The wind tears at him, whipping his long hair back into his eyes, and making his shirt flap wildly against his back. His fingertips scream for relief, but there is none to be had.
For a moment he leans tightly in against the rock-face, struggling for breath, trying to take the weight on his feet and ease the pain in his hands. Then he is feeling carefully for the next foothold; looking down just enough to see the cliff a few centimetres below his striving foot, but not enough to see the yawning emptiness which is all that separates him from the foaming rocks below.
Another small movement, and another, and he is almost level with the boy. His foot slips, and his heart stops, but his heel catches on a sliver of rock, and he steadies himself. And breathes again.
The final manoeuvre onto the outcrop itself is the worst of the whole nightmare climb. The boy’s body blocks his way, except for a single precarious foothold at the extreme left of the formation. Crablike, he positions himself above the boy, then reaches down carefully with his left foot, anchoring it on the rock. From that position, he must swing his other leg out over the boy’s body, and find purchase on the rough surface of the rock, without overbalancing.
He senses the eyes watching from above, and takes a breath. Then his leg is in the air, and his strong fingers are all that remain to keep him from tipping over and tumbling to the rocks below. He feels them slip, then hold, and his foot touches something solid.
Slowly he lowers himself until he is astride the outcrop, facing the rock-wall, with his arms around the warm body of the boy. The boy moans slightly, but does not wake. At last, he allows himself a small vestige of hope. For as long as there is strength left in his muscles, the boy will not fall.
CLAIRE’S STORY
They took Marco and Alex to the hospital in the rescue chopper.
Marco was alive. Just. And Alex appeared to be fine. They couldn’t tell us any more than that before they took off.
By the time we reached the hospital, Marco was in surgery, and Alex was waiting for us, a dressing on his cheek, where he’d scraped it on the rock-face. But it wasn’t the physical injury that worried me.
There was a look in his eyes that I hadn’t seen there before. Not even when Abuelito died. An emptiness.
I’d expected him to be relieved — at least a little. Maybe even proud of himself. The rescue people were talking about a medal, in spite of telling him he’d been a damned fool to try it, and that they were lucky not to be fishing his mangled body out of the surf.
Instead, he was almost emotionless. I hoped it was just the shock, but something told me it ran deeper than that.
Still, we had a long night of waiting ahead of us, and then wasn’t the time to bring it up. I sat down next to him in the waiting room, and he stared at the Coke-machine, as if it held all the answers.
There were no answers from the doctor when she finally came to talk to us, only guess-work.
They’d set his broken arm and pinned it, reinflated a punctured lung, and strapped the broken ribs on his right side. For the rest, it was mainly cuts and bruises and abrasions. All pretty serious, but manageable.
What she couldn’t tell us was whether Marco would ever regain consciousness.
“You see,” she said, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, “there was fracture of the skull.” She pointed to a spot just behind her own right temple. “We had to drain it, to relieve the pressure. We don’t know what permanent damage there might be …”
Alex turned away at that point, and leaned his head against the painted wall.
“We just have to wait and see. At the moment he is in intensive care, but it might be days — or longer — before he wakes up. For now, we’ve done all we can.”
After she’d gone, I turned to Alex, but he was already moving away down the corridor. I looked at Chrissie, who nodded.
“Go with him. He’s going to need you. We’ll wait here for a while, in case there’s any news. And don’t worry. I’ll get the others home.”
I kissed her, and took off after him.
B
y the time I made it to the car park, he’d located his car, where Tim had left it, and he was fumbling with the key. His anger had made him clumsy.
“I can drive you if you like —” I began, but he cut me off.
“I can drive myself!”
Then he was in the car and squealing his tyres out of the lot.
I reached the house a few minutes after him, and what I heard as I drove up scared me more than the look I’d seen in his eyes.
The amp was turned up well beyond distortion, and the music that was tearing the speakers apart was tortured and full of the kind of pain that, for him, was beyond any other form of expression.
As I made my way inside, the tempo of his playing increased, until it seemed too fast for human hands to play.
I entered the room and stopped. Alex was standing facing the door, but his eyes were closed, tears flowing freely from under the lids. The notes were screaming, higher and higher in pitch, until they could go no higher, and as he stretched for that last note, the string snapped.
He stopped. And the sudden silence was almost physical.
He opened his eyes, and though I was standing right in front of him, I could swear he didn’t see me. An animal cry of pain swelled in his throat, and in one motion he tore the guitar from around his neck, raised it above his head and began smashing it again and again into the top of the amplifier.
It was his favourite guitar, his pride. An old S.G. Gibson, fully restored, that he’d bought out of his first royalty cheque.
I watched it crack and splinter as he swung it up and down, again and again, until all that remained was the tortured neck, with strings coiling around it like tom muscles.
And then it was over.
He sat down on the bed and remained motionless. I moved to sit beside him and slid my arm around his shoulders.
That was when he turned to me and spoke.
“It’s over, Claire,” he said. “It’s not going to destroy anything else.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but the way he said it sent a shiver down my back.
He looked down at his hands, like they belonged to someone else. I pulled his head down onto my shoulder but he resisted and pulled away.
“He warned me,” he said. Though I wasn’t sure it was really me he was talking to. “Abuelito. ‘Is just music,’ he said, ‘Is not life …’ ”
Slowly he turned his head and looked at me.
“ ‘You take care, Alejandro.’ That’s what he said. ‘Is all you can do …’ Take care … I took care alright. I took good care. Of him, and Marco. And everything …”
Then he pulled me to him, and held me tightly for a long time.
35
MIRACLES
TASHA’S STORY
We took turns standing watch. Two at a time, practically around the clock, so that there would be someone there when Marco woke up.
Not if … when.
In spite of what Symonds had done, we were still “family”, and although the band was on hold — maybe permanently — nothing was going to change the way we felt about each other. Nothing.
Marco was going to find someone who loved him nearby when he woke up, even if it wasn’t a blood relative.
After all, he wasn’t so lucky in the blood relatives department.
For better or worse, Donny Faalo was going to live. His skull was too thick to take any permanent damage, but he woke up with one mother of a headache the next morning.
I think they’d probably have waived the restraining order if he’d made any attempt at all to find out how his son was doing, but he hadn’t even asked. As far as he was concerned, the kid had ceased to exist the moment the court stuffed his schemes.
He wasn’t at the house that day for any reason that had anything to do with Marco. He’d just decided to delay his departure for Queensland after the court case, and he’d chosen the house as a place to squat. He knew it would be empty because Marco was staying with Alex, so he’d broken in through the back door and spent the week getting plastered and cursing everyone from his dead wife to the entire justice system.
The last thing he’d expected was for his son to turn up while he was in the middle of a bender. But this time, when he swung the inevitable punch, the kid had managed to duck under it, street-style, and push him backwards into the fireplace.
End of story.
When they let him out of the hospital the next day, he headed north in such a hurry that no one could see him for dust.
And Marco was better off. Family you’re stuck with. Friends you have some choice in.
It set me thinking though — about friendship, and what it should mean.
About Penny …
I stood on the footpath outside her house for over ten minutes before I could screw up the courage to go and ring the doorbell.
She was painting, and she answered the door with paint on her face, and wearing an old, over-sized shirt that was probably blue under the layers of drip marks and dark-green smears.
When she realised who it was, I saw the shutters go up. I didn’t blame her. It wasn’t her who’d said the things that were so hard to take back, the last time we’d spoken.
I still didn’t know how to take them back. I was sort of hoping that she’d give me some kind of help, but she didn’t. She just stood there, waiting for me to speak.
“I’m collecting on behalf of the Foundation for the Terminally Stupid and Pig-headed,” I began. “And I was just wondering if you’d like to make a donation.”
She almost smiled, but not quite.
“Come on, Pen,” I pleaded. “I’ve come to grovel, but you’ve got to give me a hand.”
She looked me in the eye for a long time, as if she was searching for something. She must have found it, because she smiled, finally.
“I believe the customary position is down on both knees, with the forehead touching the ground, and the palms of both hands facing up, while chanting ‘Mea culpa’ or some other suitable Latin phrase.”
I reached out and touched her hand.
“Can I come in?”
She was silent for a beat.
“Only if you can use a paintbrush.” She turned and shouted into the house. “Anna! We’ve got company. Time for a tea-break.”
She stepped back to let me pass, but I hesitated.
“Friends?”
She leaned across and kissed me on the cheek.
“Always were,” she said, and led me inside.
TIM’S STORY
For a week there was no change. He lay there and the machines functioned, checking his heartbeat and BP, monitoring his breathing. The nurses checked him every few minutes, and we waited.
But then, just like that, it was over.
Chrissie and I had the watch, but Max had dropped by and the two of them had gone for coffee.
They were an item now, the pair of them finally realising what everyone else in the band had known for months.
Anyway, I was sitting there, reading one of the year-old women’s magazines from the waiting room, when I looked up, and found him staring at me. He was wide awake, and just a little disoriented, but he was staring.
“Marco?” I said. Which was a pretty dumb thing to say, seeing as there were only the two of us in the room, but he just smiled.
“You were expecting Santa Claus maybe?” The words were no more than a whisper, but they told me all I needed to know.
Marco was back. Intact.
I reached for the call-button to contact the nurse …
CLAIRE’S STORY
The old guitar sat in the corner, untouched.
Since the night of the accident, he hadn’t played a note. I watched him turning all the events of the past two years over and over in his mind, looking for the moment it had all gone wrong.
But there were no answers.
Even when Tim phoned with the good news, he barely raised a smile.
All I could do was stand by and pray for something to happen.
&nb
sp; Me who never believed in miracles …
36
A PART OF THE COMMON SOUL …
The young man stands beside the window, looking out. The house is quiet. His father is at work, and Claire is across town visiting an old friend.
He watches how the sun colours the skyline as it sets behind the houses on the other side of the street and how the tree-shadows stripe the lawn beyond the glass.
Absently his fingers find the neck of the old guitar, and the strings sound.
Six notes plucked slowly, one at a time, lowest to highest.
“Manuel always said that stubbornness runs in families.”
He recognises the voice, and turns slowly.
Ardillo smiles and leans back across the bed, his hands linked behind his head. He rests against the wall, and regards the boy. The smile has turned ironic.
“I think in our case it might better be called stupidity.”
For a moment the young man is silent. Then he moves across to stand over his grandfather’s brother, looking down.
“I convinced myself that you were a figment of my imagination.”
Ardillo laughs.
“Maybe I am. Maybe you are mad, and talking to yourself. I knew a man once, back in Consuegra … Pedro Alvarez … He used to walk down the main street, talking to —”
“Why are you here?” The young man interrupts impatiently. The world has moved beyond humorous stories.
“Why? There is no ‘why?’ You know, Alejandro, sometimes we ask too many questions. And sometimes we just ask the wrong questions. I am dead, boy. And I have been dead for a very long time. Which tells me two things. One, that I do not have all the answers, and two, that it is not me who is running things. If it was, I would have found a way of not being dead — at least, not for quite so long. There probably is an extremely good reason why I’m here, and if I ever find out, I promise you will be the first to know.”
There is something comforting in the old sarcasm, and for the first time in many days, the young man smiles.
“I missed you,” he says. “When you left.”
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