by Bella Pollen
Jump, his father said. Jump and I’ll catch you.
Jamie peered down. The sides of the cliff began moving in on him.
Let go and I’ll catch you. I promise.
‘I’m scared, Dada.’
Don’t be scared, Jamie. Trust me and let go.
Jamie hesitated, then he rolled away from the cliff wall and dropped into the emptiness. From somewhere high above him came a scream, but he felt no fear. He felt nothing in his slow, gentle spiral down, only a powerful and serene peace.
79
Letty stood silent, her forehead pressed to the glass of her bedroom window.
This island is where I belong, she’d told Nicky. It’s where I feel the possibility of hope and faith, and every morning when I look out of the window, I fall in love with it all over again.
She remembered that day at Gebraith so well. She’d been so angry with him. Three-year-old Alba had been sticky with chocolate. ‘Piggy back,’ she’d demanded, and Nicky had wordlessly hoisted his daughter onto his back and started down the hill.
Had this been the moment, all those years ago, when the crank of fate began its slow turn?
‘You seem to have an innate distrust of your own country,’ Nicky had accused her.
‘And you don’t?’ she’d retorted. ‘With everything you know about their methods.’
‘I couldn’t very well do my job if I did,’ he’d replied. Nicky, solid, truthful, passionate about his country’s democratic values.
He had put his faith in the government and, when it failed to live up to its promise, those first lethal curies of disillusion had been released. If the MoD had taken seriously the report on Gebraith’s safety, had they taken action to put it right, Nicky would have considered that fair play and that would have been the end of it.
She knew now why Nicky hadn’t told her. He would never have shattered her peace of mind without first finding a way to put things right. Finding a way out.
Tom couldn’t have been more wrong. Nicky was exactly the man she thought he was.
‘Mum.’
Georgie was standing in the doorway.
As mother turned to daughter, her face softened and it seemed to Georgie as though the steel pins that had shored up her spirit for so long had finally been removed. She looked tired, older perhaps, but she no longer looked broken.
Letty held out her arms and Georgie went to her. ‘I’ve been such a fool,’ Letty said.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Georgie mumbled into her shoulder. ‘If I hadn’t lied to those men. If I’d told you earlier . . .’
‘No.’ Letty released her. ‘You did the right thing and now . . . well, it makes sense of so much. It explains so much.’ After a moment’s hesitation, she gave Georgie the piece of paper she was holding. ‘I want you to read this.’
‘What is it?’ Its surface was soft and creased into a hundred tiny triangles from repeated folding.
‘It’s from your father.’
Georgie held herself very still. ‘Dada left a letter?’
Letty didn’t flinch under her daughter’s hostile gaze. ‘Yes.’
‘When did you get this?’
‘They found it just after he died.’
‘And you didn’t tell me?’ Georgie’s voice rose. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Georgie,’ Letty said quietly. ‘You know why.’
Georgie sank down on the bed. My darling love . . . quickly she scanned through the lines . . . protect you and the children . . . the only way out . . . She looked up wildly.
‘So he did abandon us.’ Her voice broke. ‘He did jump.’
‘No!’ Letty took the crumpled paper from Georgie’s hands.
‘Then how—’
‘Georgie, look at this. It’s not what you think. It’s not even a letter, it’s a collection of thoughts. They found it on his desk. Do you know what I think this is? All I think this is? A practice run for a conversation he dreaded having, nothing more. Trust me, if your father wanted to leave a suicide note, he would leave one – in an envelope, and properly addressed. He would never have left us like . . . well, like this. I know Dada, he would never do that.’
‘But he’d smuggle someone out of East Berlin in the boot of our car?’ Georgie said cruelly. ‘Did you know he could do that?’
Letty sat down beside Georgie. ‘I think he felt desperately guilty about the danger he put you in, his moment of madness, and for whatever reason, perhaps he was besieged by so many worries, perhaps because I didn’t make it easy for him, he couldn’t find a way of telling me about Gebraith.’
‘But then how did he—’
‘Georgie, I don’t know what happened on that roof. I doubt we’ll ever know, but I have to believe, I do believe your father’s death was an accident.’
Georgie sat silent for a minute. ‘Do you think what he did was so very bad?’
‘I think it’s as he said – he was trying to protect us,’ Letty said simply. ‘Protect a place I love.’
She stood up and moved to the window. Outside, clouds had merged to form a solid bank of grey. The wind had dropped and an eerie stillness had descended over the island.
‘You have to tell the others,’ Georgie said eventually. ‘Jamie will work it out eventually and Alba will work it out sooner.’
Letty nodded. She couldn’t have got it more wrong, she knew that now. An imagined truth was always more frightening than the actual truth and she should have understood that long ago. She stared at the sky, her attention caught by a low humming noise. All of a sudden, an orange naval helicopter appeared from the east, flying low over the machair. She frowned. ‘Where are the others, anyway?’
80
She had as good as killed him. Hunted him down and driven him off the cliff like a wild pig. She sank to her knees and rocked backwards and forwards, a low keening noise coming out of her. Hoarsely she kept calling out his name, until finally, recklessly, she grabbed at a bunch of heather growing around the top of the cliff’s spine and lowered herself over the edge. She no longer cared if she lived or died but she had to get to him before the water took him. The rock was slick, the moss covering it spongy with water. She managed the first twenty feet in seconds, and when the descent steepened, spread her arms wide as Jamie had done and slid on her front, holding her face as far away from the cliff as possible. Almost immediately the corner of a ledge caught between her ribs and she had to fight for breath. As her speed increased her arms felt as if they might snap out of their sockets. Something ripped across her cheek but even had she wanted to, there was no way of stopping. It was over fast. Her legs hit the ground, jarring her spine. She stumbled and turned, only to be caught full in the face by an incoming wave. Choking, she rubbed desperately at her eyes, then blinked in disbelief.
Jamie was not there.
She shouted. A couple of nesting fulmars ruffled their wings back at her. She yelled his name again. It was impossible. She could feel the undertow sucking at her calves, but the water was surely not deep enough to have taken him back out to sea. She tried to grasp the enormity of what had happened. He must be there, he must. Floundering in the storm, a greater black-backed gull flew drunkenly towards her, veering away at the last minute with a screech. Another wave made her legs buckle. She struggled towards the tunnel and braced herself against the arch, scanning the water repeatedly, but as her eyes slowly adjusted to the light, realization came to her that the shadows and contours of the opposite wall possessed an oddly three-dimensional quality, a gradation of black in the rock. She rubbed viciously at her stinging eyes but yes, it was still there and all of a sudden she remembered. Her father’s cave. She pushed away from the wall and splashed wildly across the channel.
He was lying inside, on the floor. When she saw him she forgot she had killed him. She forgot he had dropped sixty feet. He was curled in a foetal position and the way his legs were hiked up, the way his arm was thrown over his face made the air snag in her throat. How many times in this last year had he
r mind veered away from this image? How many nights had her dreams transported her to the wasteland beneath the embassy? And not once had she found the courage to walk around the body of her father. To look at his face; to face his death. ‘Jamie,’ she whispered. She fell to her knees. What if his head was crushed? What if he was disfigured? She forced herself to touch him, to lay a hand on his arm but his eyes were closed and his skin clammy.
‘Jamie,’ she pleaded. ‘For God’s sake.’
A tremor shook him. His eyes jerked under their lids. ‘Why do you hate me?’ he mumbled, but his eyes remained closed.
Alba pushed back her tears. The air in the cave was arctic and he had to be badly hurt. People died of hypothermia, they died of shock or internal injuries. People died so bloody easily. ‘I don’t hate you.’ Quickly she stripped off her anorak and spread it on top of him. She could keep him warm. He wasn’t dead and she could keep him warm. At least she could do that.
‘Yes, you do.’
‘I hate everyone.’ She said it automatically, but her mind was clicking. Behind them water was surging along the channel, but aside from the immediate entrance, the cave was dry and another good foot above sea level, though how much higher the tide would rise was anybody’s guess. She had to move him.
‘But you hate me the most.’ Jamie blinked out into the dimness.
‘Jamie, how are you even talking?’ she whispered. ‘How are you not dead?’
‘I told you it would be okay.’ He touched his chest. ‘A fulmar was sick on me and then I was sick too.’
‘Well, you smell like a donkey’s bottom. Can you move your fingers and toes? Can you walk?’
‘Will you still hate me when I’m older and not so annoying?’
Alba shook her head impatiently. ‘How did you get in here if you can’t walk?’
‘Dada carried me.’
‘Jamie,’ she beseeched.
‘Dada carried me in his mouth.’
‘Jamie, please.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Stop staying that.’
‘But it’s true,’ Jamie insisted. He had felt the jaws of the bear like a father’s kiss on the back of his neck.
‘I told you not to move. I told you I’d get help.’ She knelt on her hands to stop her wringing them. ‘Oh God, why did you have to jump?’
‘Dada told me to.’
‘Why, for God’s sake? Why would Dada tell you to jump?’
‘Because he knew he’d catch me.’
‘I thought the bear caught you?’
‘Yes, Alba,’ Jamie said with infinite patience. ‘I told you already.’ He closed his eyes. He had put his arms around the bear’s neck and held him close. He had felt the warmth of his father’s body. He had felt the beat of his father’s heart restart his own.
Alba took a deep breath. ‘Jamie, there’s no bear here.’
‘He went back to get help. He ran away from the wrestler and now he’s gone back to fetch him.’
Alba suddenly noticed a milky wash of blood seeping from under Jamie’s head. ‘Did you hit your head?’ she asked, deliberately casual.
‘A bit.’
Alba moved her fingers around the back of his skull until they connected with a pulpy area – two seams of ragged flesh. Blood was welling over her fingers in slow rhythmic pulses. She felt dizzy with fear. Was it blood or spinal fluid? Either way he needed help, he needed a doctor. She thought back to the bird skulls she’d left on the table. Her mother was used to her children’s feral, subsistent lives. Why would she even notice they were missing?
‘Is my brainbox leaking?’ Jamie asked.
‘Your what?’ Alba forced herself to concentrate. What were the basic rules of first aid? Keep them calm, keep them warm, keep them alive.
‘My brainbox. It’s where I keep all my information and words and intelligence and I don’t want any of them to leak out.’
‘God forbid.’ Alba wrenched off her boot and dragged down her damp sock.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Jamie, why do you think the bear is Dada?’
‘He just is, Alba.’
‘Keep still.’
‘I know why you don’t believe me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you don’t believe in anything. You don’t believe in the bear, you don’t believe in God or Father Christmas and you don’t believe in Dada.’
Alba bit her lip and held the balled-up sock to the wound in his head. A spray of dirty foam blew in off the thundering channel and drifted across the threshold of the cave. The water was rising.
‘Jamie, you understand that Dada is dead, don’t you?’
Jamie turned his head carefully towards her. In the dark, his bright falcon’s eyes gleamed. ‘You worked that out too?’
‘I didn’t need to work it out.’ She looked at him strangely. ‘Jamie, Dada died. He fell off the roof of the embassy and the fall killed him.’
‘No,’ Jamie said.
‘It was an accident. It was the day of the circus. Mum told you, don’t you remember?’
‘No! Mummy never said anything like that, Alba, never.’
‘Well, that’s what happened.’
‘That’s not what Mummy told me,’ he said stubbornly. ‘She said Dada had an accident and then after that he got lost. Everyone said he was lost. No one said he was dead. I only worked it out because he never came back.’
‘Jamie, if you had jumped off that cliff and died, do you know what people would say? They’d all talk in soft voices to Mum and say, “I’m sorry you lost your son.” Nobody ever says the word dead. No one ever says it because . . . because it’s just too awful.’
Jamie pushed her hand away. ‘How could he fall? He’s a grown-up. Why does everyone lie to me? Why?’
Alba opened her mouth to reply then remembered her mother’s silent weeping. She tried to imagine reading her father’s suicide note out loud to Jamie like some dreadful bedtime story and she understood then she couldn’t cross that line. Her father was a coward, Alba thought bitterly, to leave them like this, but especially he was a coward for leaving Jamie and she didn’t know whether she could forgive him.
‘He was watching the circus being built from the roof,’ Jamie went on. ‘Every day, he told me.’
‘Jamie, he could have tripped or felt dizzy, people have stupid accidents all the time.’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter anyway, Alba, because he’s here now. He promised to come back and he did. This is his cave. This is where he’s been waiting for me. These are all his things.’ There was an almost fanatical timbre to Jamie’s voice, Alba thought as she looked distractedly around her. Collected against the walls of the cave were tangled lengths of seaweed and a few scattered bottles. In the corner, she could just make out the outline of an old mine, salted and pockmarked with rust.
‘He’s coming back for us, Alba.’ Jamie’s eyes were closing. ‘He promised me.’
Of course I promise, the bear had said. Don’t I always come back?
‘Jamie,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t go to sleep.’ His lips were colourless. Small flecks of saliva had dried in the corners of his mouth.
‘He promised, Alba. You believe me, don’t you?’
She hesitated. ‘Okay, yes, Jamie, I believe you.’
Jamie stretched out his arm and touched the tips of his fingers to hers.
Alba looked down at the small white hand, so close, so hopeful. After a moment she took it in her own and squeezed.
She’d been staring into the darkness a long time before she noticed it – a pinprick of light, far back in the cave. Carefully she extricated her hand from Jamie’s and felt her way along the wall. The floor was on a steep incline and as she moved deeper into the cave, the light mysteriously disappeared. The air smelt oily, earthy. The ceiling began closing in on her. She crawled on, eventually banging her head sharply as she came to a dead end. Disorientated, she tried to turn. There was the light again, now coming from a tiny hole, right above her head. She worked at enlarging
it with her finger until she could get a fist through. Encouraged, she scrabbled at it with her hands, but her nails scraped against rock. She sank to her haunches, hope unspooling.
‘Alba!’ came the plaintive cry. ‘Alba, where are you?’ ‘I’m here, it’s okay.’ In the murky light she could just make out the blue of her anorak covering Jamie and she frowned at an idea half-forming.
‘Jamie, it’s okay. I know what to do.’ She fetched a piece of seaweed, stripping off the ribbons until she was left with a bare, three-foot-long stick. Easing her anorak off Jamie, she wrapped it tightly along the whole length, winding the hood strings diagonally back over the brightly coloured nylon until the thing resembled a makeshift umbrella. She crawled back to the end of the cave and pushed the stick through the hole. Initially it resisted, the seaweed bending wilfully, but she forced it upwards, loosening the hood strings and poking them through after it. The wind took it immediately. She hunched her knees and gripped the stick with both hands, holding it steady, keeping it upright as it jerked and quivered. After a while the ache in her arms consumed her. She squeezed her eyes shut against the pain and so she could not have known that Jamie kept forcing his eyes open, checking she was still there. Checking that she hadn’t left him.
81
He ran. There was little strength in him, but he ran anyway. Behind him was a confusion of shouts, the rumble of Land Rovers and tractors, the thump and drone of a helicopter. For the second time that day he ran towards the cliffs. The first time he’d left the wrestler behind. Now he would guide him to the cave. The wind was sweeping the last of the storm away in quick, efficient gusts. A clean light washed over the sky. Beneath his feet, the ground was spongy and heavy-going. His legs were weakening but he was so nearly at the loch. It lay ahead of him, shining like a silver spill of mercury. From there it was a straight line to the sea and if the end came after that, well, no matter. Life, death – neither ever worked out the way people imagined. Who can predict how the fate of one person will interlock with the destiny of another, and as he struggled on a phrase came to him out of the blue. Everything and every event is pervaded by the Grace of God. Yes, he thought. Yes . . .