The Long Fall

by Crouch, Julia

  And no one stepped in to help me.

  Unable to sit there any longer, I paid for my beer then found a little shop where I bought a bottle of red wine and a packet of Drum. At the last minute I picked up two oranges as a gesture towards nutrition.

  Ignoring Let’s Go’s warning that while they might be cheap, they were also bleak (I was beyond caring: I just wanted to sleep) I went for one of the seedy little hotels lining the streets around the station. The barely alive crone at the desk charged me a thousand lire for a small single (sounds a lot, but it’s only about seventy pence). So here I am, smoking and drinking and scribbling in a grubby little room with a sick-makingly filthy toilet across the corridor and paper-thin walls, through which I can hear the thumps, grunts and groans of a couple having sex.

  It sounds better than my own experience, but only just.

  When I got here, there was a pubic hair on my bed pillow, which I removed with a bit of tissue. A cockroach still squats at the top of the wall above me. I hope he doesn’t jump. It’s one in the morning and people are still thundering up and down the corridor, talking loudly, laughing and shouting. I’m cold and alone.

  But at least there’s a lock on the door. And at least I’m a bit drunk.

  Still can’t read anything but Let’s Go. Wish I could.

  KATE

  2013

  ‘Kate.’

  She opened her eyes to see Mark looking down at her. He was home at last from his call with his American clients. She squinted at her watch. It was one in the morning.

  ‘Oops. Must’ve dropped off.’

  ‘Well, that’s unusual,’ Mark said, raising an eyebrow. It wasn’t, of course, and he knew it. ‘Drink? Or have you had enough?’

  ‘Cup of chamomile would be nice.’

  Mark crossed over to the kitchen and put the kettle on, crashing around in the cupboard for a mug. She could tell by the set of his shoulders – immaculately straight in his sharp dark blue suit – that he was tense, irked about something.

  ‘How were the Americans?’ she asked, sitting up slowly. She adjusted her hair, which she knew would be sticking out at angles, then she arranged the cushion – which she had still been hugging when she fell asleep – neatly behind her, hiding her glass underneath the sofa. Mark hated coming home to disorder. She wasn’t a great fan of it herself.

  ‘Not great.’ Mark poured himself a generous measure of single malt. ‘The Corbetti Fund is looking decidedly dodgy. Dallas is not happy.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  Kate had no idea what Mark did at work, other than invest for clients, using his innate charm and an extraordinary ability to work money. Even when she had been his secretary at the big investment bank before they married and he left to set up his hedge fund, she never really understood what all the financial stuff was about, or why it was so important. Her role had been to deal with the soft side – arranging meetings, making sure Mark knew the names of clients’ children and wives, that sort of thing. Although she knew she had the intellect to grasp the bigger picture, she entirely lacked the motivation.

  But she liked to show him that she was on his side.

  Mark set her tea on the low table in front of her, and almost fell back onto the sofa, bringing with him the vetiver notes of the scent he had specially made for him by an Italian count in his Florentine perfumery.

  She moved round to face him, watching as he cradled his glass, warming the whisky with the palms of his hands. He had dark circles under his eyes and his skin, tanned from a recent skiing trip – with clients, of course, Mark never did just pure recreation – looked sallow in the pool of light from the lamp hanging just above them.

  ‘Poor you.’ Kate picked up her mug and took a sip of tea. Its grassy cleanliness chased away the stale taste of wine that had set in her mouth and furred up the back of her teeth.

  ‘Tomorrow’s another day.’ Mark ran his fingers through his short, silver hair, which she knew felt like velvet, and leaned back into the sofa, a little apart from her.

  She reached out and threaded her fingers through his. He held her hand tightly, as if she were somehow grounding him, when, in fact, the normal dynamic in their twenty-five-year marriage was the reverse. She felt grateful that he occasionally let the balance swing like that.

  ‘It’s been a good day for you, though,’ he said.

  Kate nodded. ‘Great for Martha’s Wish.’

  Mark was nothing if not supportive of the charity. He had been delighted when, a year after Martha’s death, Kate had told him about her plans. She suspected he was even rather relieved. He had seen how bad things had got for her when there was too much silence.

  ‘It’ll be cathartic for you,’ he had said.

  He didn’t know the half of it, though.

  His theory was that Kate blamed herself for Martha’s death. She had put the fact that her youngest daughter was falling over a lot down to her having grown so quickly that she didn’t know where she ended and the world began. By the time she got round to taking Martha to the doctor, the tumour was inoperable and the cancer had spread to her lungs, kidneys, liver.

  And yes, she did take on the guilt for that. But what he didn’t know was the deeper, karmic, sins-of-the-mother reasoning that Kate applied to Martha’s death. Because of the unthinkable thing she had done before she even met Mark, it had, in her view, been entirely inevitable. She had no right whatsoever to a happy motherhood.

  So the chance to do good through the charity went far beyond Mark’s notion of catharsis. It was an atonement. Partial, but enough – Kate hoped – to buy the continuing health and happiness of her remaining daughter.

  Mark had even provided her with twenty thousand pounds to seed the project. This was a symbolic gesture because he had always said the generous sums of money flowing from his business into the household were as much hers as his. Every account they owned was in joint names, and from there Kate was charged with the financial management, siphoning cash off into savings accounts and other schemes, paying bills and doing all the purchasing for the running of the household. She had no idea what proportion of his earnings he kept to reinvest in his own business, but she knew it was so vast that it made the sum he entrusted to her mere pocket money in his eyes: not worth bothering about at all. As far as she knew, he had never even glanced at one of their personal bank statements.

  But, even so, Kate found Mark’s financial vote of confidence in Martha’s Wish very welcome – a sort of permission. So she got the website and logo professionally designed and employed a manager to come in and set the ball rolling in an office that Mark had persuaded one of his key investors to provide by way of a tax break.

  This benevolence was just one of the ways he cared for her. It was his thing: Mark looked after Kate. He was her protector. She was certain that her tiny, youthful waifishness and consciously constructed helplessness was what drew him to her in the first place, and she had held on to all of that except the youthful part.

  ‘I didn’t much care for being on the television, though,’ Kate said, squeezing his hand. She didn’t like the idea of her day outshining his.

  ‘I couldn’t tell.’

  She nudged his arm. ‘You just want a high-profile charity wife like your New York chums, don’t you?’

  He smiled.

  ‘Making your stint at the helm of capitalism more palatable for the public.’ She put her arms together to force a cleavage and assumed an overly concerned stare. ‘“Whaddaya know, a banker with a heart.”’ It was a passable imitation of Sally Marshall.

  He looked round at her and smiled, trying, a little unconvincingly, to be a sport.

  He seemed so weary tonight. She leaned over and kissed his cheek which, underneath the day’s-end stubble, was still firm at fifty-four. In the past couple of years he had graduated smoothly from handsome devil to silver fox. He’d told her that recently a matron in Miami airport had insisted he was George Clooney; she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  But even
in all this goodness, in the past year or so she had begun to sense that he was holding something back, as if, all the time he was with her, he was silently counting in his head.

  She put these doubts down to her constant conviction that she did not deserve a single piece of the good fortune her marriage to him had brought her.

  It was almost as if she was expecting it all to come to an end.

  She laid her head on his chest, wishing that she could read the Morse code of his heartbeat. Hooking the index finger of her free hand, she surreptitiously rubbed the knuckle against the tip of her nose, knowing she was reddening it further.

  There was always make-up, though. Concealer.

  His arm moved around her shoulders, and he brought his hand to rest on her breast.

  ‘Let’s go to bed,’ he said, his voice hoarse with whisky and something else.

  EMMA

  27 July 1980, early hours. Milan. Pensione Lulli.

  OK, at about three in the morning – I’m not sure exactly, because I forgot to wind up my watch – I’m woken by people hammering on my door, shouting for someone called Maria. About three different voices, all male, all Italian, laughing and cooing at first, trying to coax this Maria out of what they suppose is her room.

  Which is, in fact, my room.

  I don’t dare say anything in my young, lone, female voice. I just lie there, heart thudding, praying for them to go away.

  Perhaps learning to sound like a man would be a useful project.

  My silence gets to them. Thinking Maria’s playing hard to get, they raise their voices and rattle the door so much the key falls out onto the tiled floor. Scared they might be able to somehow reach it through the gap at the bottom of the door, I tiptoe across the room to pick it up. But because I’ve drunk all the wine, because the room’s dark, and because I forgot that when I get up and move, my bruises and aching muscles really, really hurt, I stumble into a wooden chair. Hearing the screech as it shunts across the floor, the men outside shout more, banging on the door so much I’m sure it’s going to cave in.

  I fish my Swiss Army penknife out of my rucksack and open it. I’ve never used a knife before, of course, and I don’t know what I would do if I had to, so, in a panic, I have a practice with one of my oranges.

  While the men keep banging, I stab and stab at the orange until it’s a pulp. I use my sheet to wipe the sticky juice from my hands, then crouch on this hard, musty bed, gripping my knife, ready to spring when the door finally gives way.

  I’m fierce now. I won’t ever let myself be attacked again.

  A woman’s voice echoes into the corridor from one of the other rooms: ‘Basta!’ She follows up with a torrent of something that sounds like a major Italian bollocking. The male voices die down, dropping to whispers.

  Then there’s nothing.

  I’ve no idea what happened. Did they go away? Or were they still there, just waiting outside my room until, thinking they had gone, I went outside to meet my doom?

  I lay there in the new silence, trying to still my beating heart and unclench my jaw. But I couldn’t. I didn’t get another wink of sleep.

  And now it’s morning, and I’m desperate for a pee, but I daren’t go out into the corridor to the toilet. For all I know, those men are still there, waiting for me.

  Should I just leave Italy? Mum told me to be careful here – she had her bottom pinched in Rome, on her one trip abroad. If those men last night and the dodgy types I saw yesterday in the station are anything to go by, she’s got a point.

  Still, not quite as bad (so far) as the France experience.

  But if I go now, I’m going to miss out on Leonardo’s Last Supper here in Milan. And Florence, too. I’ve ached to go there: the Uffizi, the San Marco Fra Angelicos, Michelangelo’s David. One of my main reasons for being here is to see them in the flesh. I’ve written essays about them for art history, for fuck’s sake.

  Am I going to take the risk, though?

  I don’t think I can face these big, strange, noisy cities.

  Not on my own, at any rate.

  All the noise, and the people. I need silence. A bit of peace.

  Is it me? Do I attract this sort of trouble?

  27 July 1980, 2 p.m. Milan. Central Station bar.

  When the midday heat made it seem as if the hotel-room walls were moving in on me, I decided it was time to make a move. My bag packed, I listened at the door for a long time until I was sure there was no one there. Then, with my penknife at the ready, I looked out into the corridor.

  Of course, there was nothing there but a couple of dust-balls and something that looked like a piece of dried-up animal shit, but which could also have been a large dead insect.

  After an argument with the old bag at the desk – I’d originally booked in for three nights, and she seemed to want paying for all of them, which there was no way I was doing – I managed to check out.

  Italy has not been a good time.

  Not as bad as France, but it could have been even worse if it hadn’t been for that woman shouting at the men in the corridor.

  I’m shaking now, just thinking about it.

  Crossed the road back to the railway station. Seemed so much friendlier in daylight, but Milan’s already lost me.

  Dizzy from no food – I’ve got one surviving orange, but my heart just isn’t in it – I’ve set myself up in this bar. I’m nearly floating from emptiness, but it feels quite good. I’m edgy, more alive, like I’m in control of at least one thing. I’ve got a half-litre of beer in front of me and now I’m sitting with this notebook and Let’s Go, trying to work out what to do.

  • Stay in Italy?

  • Leave?

  • Where to?

  • Athens? (Let’s Go says Greece is safer for women)

  • Or head north where the men are better behaved?

  • Berlin? I’d like to go to Berlin. But I want to lie on a beach again, like my beach of escape in my head when The French Shit was on me.

  • There are no beaches in Berlin.

  So Greece it is, then. Athens. Stay in the city as long as I can bear it, a couple of days seeing the sights to get at least some culture, then fuck off and find a lovely island with no tourists and just some sweet locals who will welcome me for what I am. Not as it seems to be here and in Marseille as a CUNT ON LEGS.

  I’m shocked. Never in a million years would I have thought that being a girl on your own would be so difficult. Perhaps it was going to a girls’ grammar school, where our (women) teachers told us that we were equal to boys in every way. I thought the whole world was like that, that the feminism Miss Higgs banged on about in English had nothing to do with me, because the world had changed, and we’ve got Patti Smith and Poly Styrene and old Thatch is running the country with her handbag.

  But I was wrong.

  Shudder.

  KATE

  2013

  Kate and Mark lay on their enormous white bed, the full moon silvering their bodies through the glass atrium some thirty feet above them. He was asleep, she wasn’t.

  For the first time in over two months, he had wanted her. Perhaps it had been the stress at work that had kept him at bay.

  He undressed her and laid her back on the pillows and performed what she had led him to believe were all the right moves, until she went through the motions of the orgasm she had not once ever experienced from another person.

  He was a considerate lover, though. Only after she had duped him did he allow himself his own release. And then, as usual, he fell instantly asleep. Coming was better than Temazepam, he once said.

  She wouldn’t know. Her post-coital mood was more one of lying on her back, touching her bones, turning some thoughts over, stopping others from penetrating her consciousness, until she relented and took a pill.

  ‘I’m not happy about Tilly going travelling,’ she found herself saying out loud.

  ‘Hmmm?’ Mark stirred.

  ‘I’m not happy about Tilly going away.’
>
  Mark lifted his head, a slight frown crossing his face. ‘I thought we’d covered all that in the restaurant?’ He tried to conceal it, but she could hear a tetchiness in his voice.

  Kate sighed, swung her legs out of bed and fetched a fresh cotton nightdress from her dressing room. Unlike Mark, who never wore pyjamas, she preferred not to sleep naked.

  ‘I know what your problem is,’ he said as she rejoined him.

  For a second she wobbled. She lay next to him and drew the duvet over herself.

  Did he?

  Did he really?

  She turned her head to look at him. He was such a beautiful man. Beautiful, but inscrutable.

  ‘I know it’s hard for you,’ he said, turning his face to her, catching her eye. ‘Your only child fleeing the nest.’

  She’s not my only child, Kate screamed in her head.

  Mark had a policy of not referring to Martha any more. It was as if to him the name was nothing more than part of the title of the charity.

  ‘But Tilly’s a sensible girl,’ he went on. ‘And you’ve got to allow her to spread her wings.’

  ‘I know all that.’ Kate sighed. She couldn’t possibly explain what really lay behind her reluctance. Not to Mark, not any more. The time for that – if there ever had been one – had passed long ago. And anyway, the kernel of her objection to the travelling plan – especially the Greek bit – was so illogical that, even if he knew all the shocking facts of it, he would still be hard-pressed to understand it.

  She didn’t have a leg to stand on.

  ‘Look. We’ll tell her that it’s not going to be all about lying on beaches and drinking retsina. She’s got to get to know the country as well, visit some ancient sites, get a sense of the history and culture.’

  ‘Oh, she’s already set on that. Didn’t you hear her in the restaurant?’

  ‘So what’s the problem? You could even nip out and visit her at some point, perhaps on an island. Get an authentic Greek experience. Bit of sun, sand and blue sea. Kick back your heels a little.’ He propped himself up on his elbow and looked at her. ‘Kate?’