The Long Fall

by Crouch, Julia

  The boy smiles again and I realise he has very kind brown eyes.

  ‘What are you reading?’ I ask him as he gives me my change.

  He holds his book up. It’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, in English.

  ‘I love that book,’ I say. ‘Your English must be very good.’

  ‘I try,’ he says. ‘Plenty to practise on here.’

  He points into the back of the shop, where I see, in the shadows, shelves of second-hand books, mostly in English.

  ‘Wow,’ I say, going over to take a closer look.

  ‘I buy and sell,’ he says.

  ‘I’ve got five books back at the hostel which I’ve done with. Would you buy them off me?’

  ‘If they’re not too shitty condition,’ he says. ‘Or I swap. One of my books for two of yours.’

  ‘Cool,’ I say. ‘So where have you got with Tess?’

  While Beattie personifies boredom, the boy and I chat about the book. I’m pleased to find that he agrees with my theory that Hardy objectifies Tess.

  ‘Hey, come on, Emma, we gotta meet Jake in ten minutes, remember,’ Beattie says, coming over from where she’s been dawdling at the back of the shop, and pulling on my arm like a nagging child.

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘No one told me.’

  ‘Bye,’ she says to the boy and pulls me out of his shop.

  ‘I’ll be back with my books,’ I say to him.

  ‘I look forward to it,’ he says, as we step out into the sunlight.

  ‘What was that about?’ I ask Beattie.

  ‘You were going on for ages.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I was bored. And anyway, I’m sure Jake wouldn’t want you to get too cosy with that booky Greek kid.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You know exactly what that means, Ems.’

  ‘Look. There’s nothing going on—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yada, yada. Yeah. Look at me. Gooseberry Bea.’

  ‘That won’t happen,’ I say. ‘I promise.’

  We sit down at a café a few streets away from the shop and order a couple of beers.

  ‘What did you get me, then?’ Beattie holds out her hand.

  ‘I feel really bad about this,’ I say as I pull the hair clasp out of my bag. ‘The boy turned out to be so nice.’

  ‘So? He was nice before you lifted it.’

  I place the thing in her palm.

  ‘Well, it might be a lovely keepsake for the future.’ She turns it over in her hands and smiles. ‘Not much use right now, though.’ She demonstrates how pointless a clasp is when your hair is about one inch all over.

  ‘Oops.’ I hadn’t really thought about anything other than going for something small enough to fit in my palm.

  Our beer arrives and we both take long, thirsty draughts straight from the bottles.

  ‘I’m going on a diet,’ Beattie says.

  ‘What? Why?’ I say. ‘You’re just the right size.’

  ‘Nah,’ she says, grabbing a tiny pinch of flesh at her belly. ‘Look at that. Gross. I’m going on the Emma diet. I’m just going to eat what you eat. I’d love to be as slim as you.’

  I shift uncomfortably. She’s only seen me shrouded in this black thing. I know what I look like naked. It isn’t a pretty sight.

  ‘Still, plenty of food in this though, eh?’ She tilts her bottle at me.

  ‘Keeps me going.’

  ‘Oh yeah. I got you something, too.’ She reaches inside her bag and pulls out the first volume of Robert Graves’s The Greek Myths. She holds it out to me, smiling.

  ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘Course I did. While you two were yattering away out front, I made the most of my time in back. I remember what you said on the rocks about all that mythology stuff. Take it. Go on.’

  I have no choice but to take the book from her hands. The way she’s holding it out is drawing too much attention. I flip through it. She chose well. It’s very scholarly and thorough – just the thing for me. It’ll be a great thing to read before Cambridge – if I ever get around to it, of course. It’s been, what, three days since Ena left me The Women’s Room and I haven’t even started it. I’ve not read a word of anything.

  ‘Don’t I get a thank-you?’ Beattie says, folding her arms and sitting back in the cheap plastic chair.

  ‘You shouldn’t have, Beattie.’

  I mean this not in the English polite manner of receiving a gift, but quite literally – I really wish she hadn’t stolen the book from the boy.

  ‘In any case,’ I say, ‘it hasn’t gained us anything – I was going to go back and swap my old books. I would probably have chosen this one anyway. Now there’s no way I can go back to that shop.’

  Beattie roars with laughter. ‘You are soooo straight,’ she says. ‘Seriously, Emma, do you really think it’s all about getting the thing? I mean, honey, this hair slide is completely fucking useless, but the fact that you took it for me means the world. It’s the buzz that’s the important thing. The thrill of taking. And who’s to know whether old Romeo there’ll notice anything missing from his precious shop anyhow? His head’s way too firmly inserted in the clouds. Did you see the way he went back to his book after we walked in? If that was me, I’d be on us like white on rice. Go on, tell me you didn’t feel the buzz when you lifted the hair thing?’

  I shrug. I felt something, but it hadn’t been entirely pleasurable. However, I don’t want Beattie to suspect I’m as boring as I actually am, so I give her a little half-smile.

  As promised, we headed back to the hostel to fetch Jake, who said he wanted to go down to The Milk Bar for lunch. This, we have decided, is our new place – we’re giving Manos’s a wide berth in case The Australian Shit decides to come looking for us.

  But I was feeling pretty sick at heart by then. Even though it was lovely to see Jake, and I would have liked to have spent the rest of the morning with him, I needed a rest from Beattie. So I said I had a headache – which I did – and, while they went off for lunch, I lay down where Jake had been sleeping, hanging my big PLO scarf from my own bunk above to shade me and give me a bit of privacy. His sleeping bag has the sweet warm scent of him, so, hidden by my scarf, I’m holding it close to me, as if it contains him. When I’ve finished writing this up I’m going to try reading the book Beattie stole for me, but I’m pretty sleepy now.

  8

  5 August 1980, 2 a.m. Athens. Peta Inn roof.

  And boy, did I sleep.

  It’s only much later in the afternoon, when the heat’s gone off the day, that I wake to what I think is a mosquito just outside my makeshift sunshade. But then I realise it’s someone giggling. I lift aside the scarf and there are Beattie and Jake crouching on the next-door bunk, their knees almost right in my face, passing a bottle of ouzo between them.

  Just for a minute they look like they’ve been caught out.

  Hmmm.

  ‘Aha!’ Jake says. ‘She rises!’

  ‘What are you two up to?’ I say, smiling. By the size of their pupils they’re pretty speedy.

  ‘Ta-da!’ Beattie holds out a palm full of silver coins.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Spoils. Yours. From your books.’

  ‘You didn’t?’ I say.

  ‘Sure. We wanted to ask you first, but you were so out of it, we decided to go ahead anyway.’

  ‘We went in your rucksack. I hope you don’t mind?’ Jake says.

  ‘Of course not.’

  And I really didn’t mind. What’s mine is theirs. The only thing I don’t want them to see is this journal, but I keep it in my day-bag pillow while I’m sleeping. And The Women’s Room – which I really want to read, despite Ena’s inscription – was safe, still tucked under my mattress. I could see it from where I was lying on the lower bunk. What I only realise now as I’m writing this – because when we got back tonight I wanted to look up ferries and things – is that in among the books they sold was my Let’s Go, which initially I thought was a bit of a
bummer. But I suppose I don’t need it now I’ve got Jake and Beattie. We can find our own way, together.

  ‘Anyhoo,’ Jake says. ‘It worked out well, because the gift-shop guy was all like, “you stole my book” at Beattie. But she told him it was you and that you’d like just disappeared off to Turkey owing her money, but had left the books, so she thought she’d bring them in and see if she could get something back for them.’

  ‘When he told us about the stolen book, I offered him two of yours in exchange, like some sort of good girl,’ Beattie says. ‘But he was so cute, he just said that since you’d ripped me off too he’d buy all five off of me. So there you go.’

  She tips the coins into my hand.

  I blink and shake my head.

  ‘You OK, Em?’ Jake says. He looks a little crestfallen at my reaction.

  ‘I mean, like, I was doing you a favour,’ Beattie goes on.

  Well, it can’t be undone. And in any case, I’m not planning on seeing that boy again, so I decide just to fold my mortification away. Perhaps I’m being too English about it. Too hung up. Beattie would say that, probably. She might be right.

  ‘So, then, what’s up for tonight?’ Beattie says, shifting over to the end of my bunk.

  ‘The beach?’ I look at my handful of money. ‘I reckon I’ve just about got enough for the subway fare.’

  ‘Cool,’ Jake says. ‘We stopped at the drugstore on our way back, so we’re all set.’ He hands me the ouzo bottle and a couple of pills and smiles at me with his blue, blue eyes and somehow all the problems that Beattie has dumped in my lap seem to melt away.

  She can be a bit of a liability, though. What would it be like if it was just me and him? If she’d never bumped into us at that restaurant?

  We didn’t ever get to the beach, of course. We just ended up in The Milk Bar all evening, getting wasted.

  9

  6 August 1980, 2 p.m. Athens. National Gardens.

  Beattie’s done it again.

  This morning, after a lost day and night of drinking and pills, Jake had another lie-in. That boy can sleep! He’s conked out again now, while I write, between me and Beattie – who is also sleeping. We’re in the National Garden again, his beautiful cheek resting up against my thigh.

  When he’s this close I can imagine him touching me more, and kissing me. I really would like that, I think. The idea of sex scares me, though. I’m not sure if I could cope with that, not after The French Shit. So I’d like Jake and me just to hold hands and kiss and perhaps he could put his arms around me. Perhaps it would get to the point where I could tell him what happened to me and he would understand and wait until I was ready.

  Am I in love, I wonder? Am I in love with Jake?

  Anyway. Back to what Beattie did (second instalment).

  So, earlier on, she and I left Jake another note and headed off to The Milk Bar, where we started with a couple of coffees – Nescafé for her and a metrio for me (a Greek coffee that’s not too sweet, which I really, really like). She had a yoghurt and honey as well, but couldn’t persuade me to take one. They’re massive and full of fat and really expensive. It would be a waste of drachma. I’ve completely thrown my budget to the wind the past couple of days and, even with Beattie’s ‘found’ money, I’ve really got to be careful now.

  ‘Have you noticed how Jake changes when he’s out of it?’ Beattie asks me, licking runny honey off the back of her spoon.

  I nod. ‘He’s one of us, though,’ I say quickly. I can’t bear the thought of her saying something bad about him.

  ‘Certainly.’ Beattie leans forward, puts her hand on mine and whispers, ‘I even think it makes him kinda interesting.’

  ‘Me too,’ I say, smiling at her. Do I have a rival here, I wonder? Do I have to keep my eye on her?

  I drain my metrio and take a Karelia out of its dainty, white box. Man, are they harsh, though. But I’m getting used to the taste: the roughness may even be anaesthetising my throat against the hot, thick dust of this polluted city.

  ‘Fuck it,’ I say, and I wave at the waitress and order a beer.

  It’s only an hour off midday – we’re in the last bit of shade before the sun fully hits the street – so it feels almost reasonable to be moving straight from breakfast of sorts to alcohol.

  ‘Make that two, will ya?’ Beattie says to the girl serving us, who can’t be more than twelve years old. Then she gets back to talking about Jake. ‘It’s like his normal gentleness gets overtaken by some kind of dangerous guy,’ she says.

  The girl brings us our beers.

  ‘At least he’s on our side. All that fighting at Manos’s was only because he was defending me,’ I say.

  ‘Your hero! Ta dah!’

  ‘And me, a damsel in distress.’

  ‘At jeopardy from a pissed-up Antipodean.’

  I blink. Beattie entirely copied my accent with that last line. She’s got a real gift – not only has she mastered Ripon, but she also softens her own quite deep voice to something much lighter and more like my own. What’s also uncanny is the way that, when she does me, she takes on my character too. Jake pointed it out last night, and, although it’s hard to recognise your own mannerisms, she’s got me down to a T.

  We sit in silence, drinking our beer. A dog cocks its leg in the street just in front of us and pisses on the pavement. We watch as the thick yellow stream runnels through the dust, heading towards a barefoot, purple-clad boy squatting on the ground with a tatty velvet board of shitty earrings for sale. He seems oblivious as the piss hits his foot and pools around his baggy trouser bottoms.

  The sun nudges the morning shadows further towards the wall, scorching Beattie’s leg. She leans back in her chair and puts her hands behind her head.

  ‘We’ve gotta get out of this place,’ she says. ‘It’s doing my head in.’

  Despite her wildness, I really do like Beattie. And up until what happened next, what she’d done hadn’t been so bad. She made amends for the book she stole, and she was right about the wallet she found – the money would only have been taken by someone else. Looking at it like that, the only person who had really done any wrong was me, nicking the hair clasp.

  But then . . .

  A girl and boy roll up along the street, almost entirely swamped by their luggage of two heavy backpacks, a day sack – which the girl wears on her front – and a large pouch dangling from the man’s neck. When they reach The Milk Bar they stop and, panting like dogs from the heat, stick their noses into their guidebook – the same edition of Let’s Go as mine was. I wonder if perhaps it’s the actual copy, bought from the gift shop, but theirs is in a lot worse state than mine.

  ‘Is this it?’ the boy asks the girl.

  I recognise his accent as being from somewhere up near where I come from.

  ‘Aye,’ the girl says, firmly placing her as Yorkshire too.

  ‘Do you speak English?’ the boy asks us. ‘Can you mind these for us while we go in and order?’

  They dump their rucksacks at the table next to ours and go inside.

  Given what happened to the lost wallet, I wonder briefly whether we’re the right kind of people for them to entrust with their stuff.

  But I don’t know the half of it.

  They come back out followed by the young waitress, who has two Amstels on a tray for them. They sit and drink, then the boy leans over towards us. ‘Bloody hot, intit?’ he says.

  The girl waves at us from her seat. ‘I’m Laura, he’s Tom.’

  ‘I’m Trudy and this is Joanie,’ Beattie says, smiling as I frown at her.

  ‘Where you from?’ I ask.

  ‘Harrogate,’ Tom says. ‘Going back on the Magic Bus tomorrow at the crack, worst luck. I could have stayed out here for ever.’

  ‘No way!’ I start, imagining that the three of us would start on a long conversation about places, people and events we had in common. ‘I’m from—’

  ‘You just arrived in town?’ Beattie asks, interrupting me and offering
them a cigarette.

  ‘Just got back from the islands. We’ve been out there two months now. I’d forgotten what a dump Athens is,’ Tom says.

  ‘We’ve been blinded by beauty,’ Laura says. Her face, mostly hidden by a beaten-up straw sunhat, is like a little elf’s. ‘You look sort of familiar,’ she goes on. ‘Where’re you from?’

  Beattie leans across between us, obscuring Laura’s view of me. ‘Can I get in more beers?’

  ‘Cheers, love,’ Tom says.

  She nods at the waitress, motioning at our empty bottles. Then she turns the back of her head to Tom and Laura and mouths the words ‘Dangerous Game’ to me.

  As the girl comes by with four more beers, Beattie sits back and angles herself towards Tom and Laura. ‘Which islands have you visited? We’re heading out soon, so if you’ve got any recommendations . . .’

  ‘Well,’ Tom says, ‘we discovered a little piece of heaven on earth.’

  It’s a strange turn of phrase. One I wouldn’t have put in the mouth of someone so ordinary-looking. But people surprise you sometimes, don’t they?

  ‘Really?’ Beattie says.

  Tom nods and takes a swig of his beer. ‘Place called Ikaria. Hardly any tourists at all, just a handful of backpackers like us. The people are right friendly, hitching is a cinch, you can camp just about anywhere and they’ve got some of the bloody best beaches and mountains in the whole of Greece.’

  ‘You have to go to this beach called Nas,’ Laura interrupts. ‘And the honey is out of this world. It’s like butter.’

  There’s something drippy about her I don’t like at all. She reminds me too much of home.

  ‘And the best part is,’ Tom says, ‘we found this little farm where we picked tomatoes in exchange for a hut to sleep in, two hundred drachs a day each and as much food and wine as we could fit inside us.’

  ‘We didn’t spend a penny!’ Laura says, patting her day sack. ‘Almost all the money we brought with us, we’re taking back home.’

  ‘Cool,’ Beattie says, and I think Oh no.

  Tom unzips his backpack and pulls out a map, which he unfolds onto our table.