The Long Fall

by Crouch, Julia

  ‘I’m hardly that.’

  ‘“She look like de angel of de lord!”’ Tilly waved her hands in the air, continuing her impression of Maria, who hailed from one of the West African countries where Martha’s Wish built schools, and whose continuous Christian pronouncements were a great source of amusement to all the other canteen staff. ‘“Praise de lord for your angel mudda”,’ Tilly went on.

  ‘Self-censorship, Tills,’ Mark said sternly, his eyes pointedly flicking to their most immediate neighbours, who were clearly earwigging what was going on. Although Kate was sure that Tilly wasn’t consciously displaying casual racism – it was just an accurate impersonation of an extreme character in her life – to an outsider it would look just like that.

  Feeling her old friend shame stalking around her, Kate tried a couple of deep breaths. Her heart rate was up and she needed to seize control before it got out of hand.

  ‘Well, here’s to you, Mum, anyhow, and to Martha’s Wish.’ Tilly reached over for the champagne bottle and refilled her glass.

  ‘It’s all good for Martha’s Wish, that’s for sure,’ Kate said.

  ‘Amen to that.’ Mark polished off the last oyster. ‘Now, having kept us waiting for nearly half an hour, can you decide what you’re going to have, Tilly? I don’t know about you, but I’m starving, oysters are hardly filling, and I have precisely one hour in which to eat.’

  Tilly fell silent and stared at the menu, twirling a blond curl around her finger, her eyes lowered behind mascara-smudged lashes. She was so present, so assured, so alive. She so reminded Kate of herself at eighteen, sometimes frighteningly so.

  Finally, Tilly looked up. ‘I’ll have the steak frites with Roquefort sauce.’

  Kate smiled. The one major difference between her daughter and her younger self was that Tilly had grown up with such a robust appetite. A source of great pride, this was one less box for her to tick on the guilt list she lugged around in her heart.

  The waiter took their orders, then brought the Barolo Mark had picked out, pouring while the family sat in silence. After he left, Kate sat back and took in the moment. They were all there, the people she loved. She didn’t need to do her habitual family head count. The evidence was in front of her. Those who remained were all safe, all well, all accounted for.

  ‘I’ve got an announcement to make,’ Tilly said, and both Mark and Kate looked at her with raised eyebrows. When she had their full attention, she went on, ‘I’ve finally decided what I’m going to do with all the vast reserves of cash I’ve stockpiled from the chips job.’

  Even though they were able to hand Tilly money whenever she needed it, Kate and Mark saw it as vital that their privileged daughter learned its value. They had sent her to a very good private girls’ day school – state schools in South London being, in Mark’s view, out of the question – but Kate considered it an important part of her education to realise that there were other, less lucky people in the world. It was because of this that she had taken her along on the West African field trip that resulted in the Face of Kindness photograph. And, for the past two Christmases, Tilly had arranged, off her own bat, to help serve dinners at a homeless shelter.

  In October, she was going to Bristol University to read drama. Mark had wanted her to do English at his old college at Oxford, whereas she had been set on drama school. The final plan was a compromise that had taken Kate a lot of work to broker between the two of them. Until she went up to university, the deal was that Tilly could live at home in Battersea for free, but any extras would have to be saved up for from her earnings. Rather impressively, she had applied herself to putting aside every spare penny. The last time Kate had asked, she had stashed over two thousand pounds.

  ‘So then, what’s it to be?’ Kate said, bracing herself.

  ‘I’m going travelling.’

  It was as Kate had feared. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m orf to Greece,’ she said, her arms out as if she were taking a bow at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

  Kate gasped. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going to Greece,’ Tilly said again, frowning at her mother’s extreme reaction. ‘And then I’ll slowly work my way back up north.’

  ‘But why?’ Kate said, and Tilly looked at her as if she were mad.

  The waiter arrived and seemed to take an age to put their plates down in front of them.

  ‘What on earth do you want to go travelling for?’ Kate said as soon as he had left. Suddenly her goat’s cheese soufflé didn’t look as appetising as it had on the menu, and her damn heart was racing again, knocking against her ribcage, almost deafening her. She reached in her pocket and touched the stone with the hole in it.

  ‘Where do I start? OK. I want to see more of the world. It’s not like you’ve exactly treated me to the most exotic holidays. Cornwall, Cornwall and Cornwall.’

  ‘And New York and West Africa,’ Mark said. ‘You’re in danger of sounding a bit spoiled.’

  Tilly snorted. ‘Come on, Dad. A family visit and a Martha’s Wish field trip. Don’t really count as holidays, do they? Thanks to you being always busy at work and Mum’s issues with planes, I was the least travelled girl in my class.’

  ‘Touché,’ Mark said, holding up his hands.

  ‘Why to Greece of all places?’ Kate said.

  ‘I want to visit the birthplace of The Drama,’ Tilly said, oblivious to the well-disguised unravelling of her mother next to her. ‘I want to see the skene, the parados, the Orchestra. And, um, let’s see.’ She counted the reasons off on her fingers, which Kate noticed were almost as chapped and raw-looking as her own and wondered if she was provided with washing-up gloves at work. ‘Cradle of civilisation? Sandy beaches? Beautiful countryside? Warm and welcoming people? Blue, blue, blue, blue sea?’

  ‘Greece is jolly nice, Kate,’ Mark said. ‘And Tilly’s a big, sensible girl now. We’ve got to let her go one day.’

  It was all right for him. His experience of the country was utterly benign, consisting solely of two weeks in Corfu as a fifteen-year-old, staying with a school friend whose family owned a vast estate on the north-east shore. He remembered it as My Family and Other Animals with gorgeous Italian girls thrown in.

  But for Kate it was the most inauspicious place in the world. A place that had pulled her towards it along a path of misery, and then completely derailed her life. She didn’t want her daughter to go travelling, and, call her superstitious, but she certainly didn’t want her anywhere near Greece. It would be tempting fate.

  Kate realised she was stroking the side of her nose, the place that she knew could often end up raw and red if she didn’t watch what she was doing.

  ‘It’s very different these days, as you well know,’ she told Mark, forcing her hand down and trying a more reasoned tactic. ‘I saw this documentary. Athens is seething with feral dogs and drug addicts. There are riots; people set fire to themselves in front of the parliament building. It’s a desperate place.’

  ‘Don’t believe everything you read in the papers,’ Tilly said. ‘And in any case, that’s just Athens, Mum.’ She rolled her eyes. She was used, after all, to having an overprotective mother, and had learned through the years to bear this burden of the surviving sibling with good humour. ‘You remember Ilona, the Greek girl from school, right? She’s working front of house at the National at the moment and she says it’s nowhere near as bad as they make out on the news, even in Athens. And it’s great on the islands – people are so glad to see tourists, and everything’s super cheap, so I’ll be able to stay a really long time.’

  ‘Tuck in, Kate,’ Mark said. He and Tilly had made good headway with their meals, but Kate had yet to start her food.

  She looked at her plate, fork poised but stilled.

  ‘Look, if you’re worried about Tilly in Athens,’ Mark said, glancing at something that had flashed up on his iPhone, ‘I’ll make sure she stays somewhere nice, in a safer part of town.’

  Tilly shook her head, making her skull-shaped earr
ings clatter as she did so. ‘Thanks, Dad. But I’ve already booked a hostel online. I’m doing this on my own.’

  ‘Already booked?’ Kate said. Her voice squeaked. To try to disguise her panic, she slipped a tiny piece of the soufflé between her lips. The salty, rich taste nearly made her gag.

  Tilly turned to face her. ‘Mum. Calm down. It’s all sorted. I’m flying out on the tenth of April.’

  ‘But that’s two weeks’ time! Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’

  ‘Two and a half. And I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d kick off like this. Look: it’s been a shit spring so far. I want to find some sunshine. I’ll be staying a week in Athens, then I’ll travel around and play it by ear.’

  ‘How long will you be gone?’

  ‘I’m aiming to be back in September.’

  ‘You can’t last six months on two thousand pounds!’ Kate said, her voice rising another octave.

  ‘Chill pill, Mum! I’ll just have to earn some money while I’m out there then, won’t I? I’ll pick up some bar work or pick tomatoes or something.’

  ‘And take the jobs from Greek people who really need them?’ Kate said. She looked to Mark, who was busy keying something into his iPhone, chewing his lip. He had a lot of American clients, so evenings tended to be very busy. He was not available, at any rate, to give her any kind of support.

  ‘It might not be Greece, though. I’m planning to wend my way back up through Europe as the weather gets warmer. Croatia, Italy, France.’

  ‘France!’ Kate’s hand went to her chest.

  ‘Yes, France. Heading west to Marseille and then up.’

  Speechless, Kate cut her soufflé into tiny pieces.

  ‘I don’t know what your problem is, Kate,’ Mark said, finally surfacing from his screen. ‘At least it’s only Europe. At least she’s not heading off to bloody Cambodia or Ghana or something.’

  ‘I’d hoped that if you had to go away, you’d go and stay with Uncle Julian in Brooklyn again,’ Kate said to Tilly. ‘He was looking forward to taking you to all the Broadway shows.’

  She glanced at Mark, whose lips had almost imperceptibly pursed at the mention of his brother. Like many men raised in boarding schools, he had enormous difficulty with the notion of homosexuality, connecting it only with the abuse that had been meted out to him by the older boys. His opera singer brother’s coming out was therefore a source of submerged personal conflict for him. It had been far simpler for their father – he had simply cut Julian out of his life and will.

  ‘Muuum,’ Tilly said, sighing, her good nature nearly exhausted. ‘Two grand is hardly going to last me ten minutes in New York. And really, I want to have adventures on my own, not go and stay with my dad’s nice cosy brother.’

  ‘On your own?’ Kate said, dropping her fork. Despite the comfortable ambient temperature of the restaurant, she could feel a sweat breaking out at the base of her spine. ‘You’re going on your own?’

  ‘People do travel on their own, you know. I’ve thought it all through. I’m going to be like Orwell, or Laurie Lee, or Hemingway or Byron – stepping out there to meet the world. If you’re on your own, you’re freer, more open to new experience.’

  ‘But they’re all men, Tills,’ Kate said, reaching out to grasp her daughter’s hand, to give her one of the few pieces of wisdom she had picked up on her own travels that she dared share with her. ‘It’s different for men.’

  ‘Mother!’ Tilly tried to defuse the tension building between them by putting her other hand to her chest like a character in a Restoration drama. ‘I’m shocked to hear that coming from a woman of the twenty-first century!’

  ‘And those men were writing a long time ago. It’s a much more dangerous world these days.’

  ‘Yep, we haven’t got the Somme, the Napoleonic Wars, the Spanish Civil War . . .’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ Kate wiped her free hand across her forehead. The conversation was making her feel quite dizzy – as if everything were spiralling out of her control, like when Martha was ill, or before, when—

  She shook her head to dispel the thought.

  ‘But you’ve hardly been anywhere on your own, darling,’ she said, holding her daughter’s hand as if she were a balloon in danger of floating away. She tried to sound reasonable. ‘Not outside London.’

  Mark looked up again from his iPhone. ‘All the more reason for her to give it a go.’

  Kate looked at him aghast. He should be taking her side, shouldn’t he? Did he want Tilly to go away?

  ‘Yes. And I’m eighteen now,’ Tilly chipped in. ‘I could join the army now if I wanted.’

  ‘But you don’t want to do that, right?’ Kate said quickly.

  Tilly and Mark looked at each other, then burst into laughter.

  ‘Look,’ Tilly said, when she and her father had finally regained their composure. She touched Kate’s shoulder, as if she were the mother appeasing the daughter. ‘Didn’t you want to have adventures when you were my age?’

  Feeling bones tense beneath her fingers, Tilly instantly withdrew her hand and put it over her mouth. ‘Sorry,’ she said, as the air around their table seemed to drop in temperature.

  Kate narrowed her eyes at her. ‘I didn’t have the luxury,’ she said, quietly. ‘Did I?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Tilly said again, closing her eyes.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Aware that she might be going to pass out, Kate bent to pick up her handbag.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Mark asked, touching her arm as she shakily got up.

  She breathed out then smiled at him as if she were steady as a rock. ‘I’m fine. I just need the loo.’

  She hurried across the dining room and got down the stairs to the toilets as quickly as she could manage without creating a stir.

  And when she was there, she knelt over the toilet, stuck her finger down her throat and allowed herself the comfort of throwing up all the very little she had eaten.

  EMMA

  23 July 1980, 9 p.m. Marseille. Youth Hostel.

  Today is the worst day of my life.

  Something worse than anything I ever thought would happen to me has happened.

  To me. The bright girl with the brilliant future.

  To me. The fucking stupid girl.

  I’m on my own in the youth hostel girls’ dorm. The laughter of Hans the warden and the German boys in the big hall downstairs jumbles with the Jimi Hendrix, echoing up the stone stairs and travelling down the corridors to tangle in my ears.

  They bought wine and cooked up some moules and invited me to eat with them.

  But I can’t.

  I don’t know what to do.

  I don’t know what to do.

  I don’t know what to do.

  I can’t believe it really.

  To make sure it actually happened, I’m going to write it all down, even though it’s going to hurt, every detail I can remember.

  So, after my late lunch and a stretch out on the beach, I get the bus back up from town and take the pretty, grassy footpath that runs from the bus stop to the youth hostel, between the high stone wall of the old chateau and the high metal-fenced boundary of another large property. It’s quiet, late afternoon, still light. The wind has dropped and the sky sings with blue.

  I’m happy.

  I was happy.

  A thickset man is up about a hundred yards ahead of me, walking in the same direction. I think nothing of it. I only even frown slightly when he reaches the end of the path, turns and starts walking back towards me.

  I think perhaps he’s forgotten something. As he gets closer, I notice he’s got sunglasses on and this red cotton scarf tied around the lower part of his face, like a cowboy. I look away, keep moving. But I wrap the strap of my day bag around my hand, ready to swipe if I need to.

  Even then I think I’m being stupid. I still have the chance to turn and run, but I don’t do it.

  You see, I thought at the time that it would have been insulting. I had to give him the
benefit of the doubt. Just because he was a thickset man with a scarf over his face didn’t necessarily mean he was going to be a danger to me.

  But.

  Just as I’m moving over to the side of the narrow lane to make space for him to pass, he grabs me. He’s strong, and at least three times my size. I try to swing at him with my bag, but he just catches it in his big fist. He looks at me, his eyes full of hate.

  Why hate?

  But it chills me, tells me I’m in trouble.

  Please, I say in French. Please.

  Putain, he says.

  He seizes my shoulders and forces me to the ground. I try to push him away, but he’s too much for me.

  He shoves me against the bottom of the drystone wall, pulls up my top and rips away my underwear.

  It was so easy to get at me. I was wearing my jeans skirt and a vest top.

  But it was hot. What was I supposed to wear?

  Please, I say again. I’m a virgin. Je suis vierge.

  I am.

  I was.

  There wasn’t a boy worth it in Ripon.

  And now look what’s gone and happened.

  What a waste.

  He jams his hand over my mouth, forcing my head back over a stone. Just a little push further and he’ll break my neck. Then, with a great shove, so quickly, he breaks into me and, just for a second, it feels as if my soul is forced out of my body.

  It’s fast, brutal, short.

  It hurts so much. In every possible way.

  I try to imagine I’m somewhere else. Still on the town beach I lay on after lunch, drinking in the sunshine. I strain to hear the kiss of the waves on the shore, instead of the slapping of his fat belly against my bare chest while he humps and grunts and shoves, one arm supporting his upper body on my ribs while the other pins my hands above my head, nearly snapping my bones.

  The worst is the smell of him. Even after the shower I took when I got back here, it still sticks in my nostrils – old wine, Gauloises, stale sweat like old garlic. Something of fish.

  Then, somewhere – oh hope! – I hear a siren. A police car, I think, come to save me. It’s getting closer.