How Far We Fall

by Jane Shemilt

  ‘I should advise you that the station closes at six p.m. I am sorry for this unfortunate turn of events on your holiday.’ They stare at him incredulously. Beth wonders if he has any idea how his words sound, though of course there are no words that would comfort Ed and Theo, or even Jake.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he repeats, sounding more human. He walks out with a measured tread and shuts the door quietly. They hear a car start up and move away.

  ‘I’ll drive you,’ Albie says. ‘I know the way.’

  ‘No.’ Jake’s voice is decisive. ‘I’ll take them.’

  No one says anything else. There is nothing to say, everything is being felt. The family seems to have drawn together, as if closing ranks against outsiders. Albie leaves the room and Beth retreats to the kitchen, quietly assembling a tray of glasses and a bottle of whisky. They begin to mutter together; she pads about barefoot, focusing on every word.

  ‘God …’ Theo is still crying. There are comforting noises from Jake and footsteps as someone paces, probably Ed. He is making inarticulate sounds as if he is swearing or sobbing.

  ‘What the fuck are we supposed to do?’ Theo asks after a while. ‘I don’t want to stay here now …’

  ‘Dorset,’ Jake murmurs. ‘Jenny will need you.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ed’s voice. ‘Of course. We must go to Mum.’

  ‘If we are going to Islay, it makes sense for us to pack up here and leave for good when we go,’ Jake continues.

  ‘Why did that man say “anything else would be speculation”?’ Theo’s voice quavers. ‘Dad must have fallen, mustn’t he?’

  There is a long pause. ‘I think he was telling us some people might think he did this on purpose.’ Ed sounds cautious, protecting his brother again.

  ‘He was more cheerful recently, though.’ Theo has begun to weep again. ‘Better since we arrived than he’s been since those children died.’

  ‘That’s because he’d convinced himself he had the evidence to prove his innocence. I wish—’

  A glass slips from her fingers and crashes on the tray. The boys look up through the archway into the kitchen, Jake gets to his feet. Beth proffers the tray quickly.

  ‘Have something to drink. It might help.’

  Ed looks away, his face is dark with grief but not suspicion. Not yet. Jake shakes his head silently. Theo takes a glass but doesn’t drink.

  ‘We need to get our stuff together,’ Jake tells the brothers. All three walk past her and climb the stairs in silence.

  She makes cheese sandwiches for their journey and a thermos of coffee, but in the pantry the remains of Sophie’s fruit cake are now a pile of dark crumbs. Closer, she sees mice have been at work. They must have been swarming all over the cake: dark droppings like miniature bullets are scattered on the plate and the table. She searches the shelves for apples or a packet of biscuits instead, jolting when the back door slams. In the kitchen Albie is standing with the sandwiches in his hand, the thermos still on the table with the bowl of half-mixed flour and butter. They listen to the sound of the car roar up the hill, then he goes to the bin and throws the sandwiches away, a violent movement.

  ‘That’s a waste, Albie.’

  ‘A waste?’ His laugh is new, hollow-sounding, more of a sob than a laugh. ‘That’s rich. It was a sandwich, Beth, that’s all. A fucking sandwich.’ He walks into the garden and the door slams again.

  24

  Jura. Summer 2018

  Albie leans against the bonnet of his car checking ferry times on his mobile, his case by his feet. Beth brings out two cups of strong coffee on a tray, caffeine to keep him awake for the drive. He has been sleeping poorly, waking often. They walk into the garden, pausing to sip from the steaming cups. The wet grass shines with a thousand tiny rainbows but dark splinters of shade are scattered beneath the trees. She is scared. Albie’s silence feels dangerous; since the boys left two days ago he has hardly talked at all. They circumvent the branches still scattered on the lawn, their leaves withering. This morning her face looked parched in the mirror, the lines by her mouth more deeply etched, as though something had broken inside her and she had begun to wither too.

  ‘How long before you come back?’

  He shrugs.

  ‘I’ll be fine. You mustn’t worry about me. I won’t have a car, of course, but there’s plenty of food …’ She’s rambling and she never rambles; she doesn’t want him to leave.

  The sea shimmers beyond the cliffs, the colour reflecting the sky, that endless blue of infinity. The space around a murder is larger than you think: the time before can stretch for years; the time after might do the same. She walks with Albie up and down the garden, he turns and turns like an animal in a cage that’s too small. She wipes her eyes quickly with the back of her hand; he hasn’t noticed her tears. She is tired, that’s all. She’s hasn’t slept either; these are the tears of exhaustion.

  ‘Are you sure I have to stay, Albie? I’d far rather come home with you.’

  ‘The police will come back. Someone needs to be here. Ed will return for his father’s things at some point.’

  The marks under his eyes are dark green, his face is white. He starts muttering but he doesn’t look at her, he seems be talking to himself.

  ‘I’m almost but not completely certain that when he hit his head on the rocks he would have been killed outright.’

  Almost but not completely certain; there are gaps between those words where you could stumble and be lost. She puts her hand into his palm and curls her fingers to hold on.

  ‘The policeman said part of his skull was missing; if it happened then, he wouldn’t have felt the impact of the sea. He wouldn’t have experienced drowning.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It must have happened then.’

  ‘I tell myself we all die of brain damage, the brain dying as the blood stops. We don’t feel that, or do we?’ He doesn’t wait for an answer; his eyes are wild. ‘Maybe we do; the language centres might die before consciousness does, so no one can tell us what happens or if it hurts.’

  They walk back and forth on the lawn. The grass is getting longer now, the little flowers have gone, though thyme still clings to the walls. She can hear the old song as clearly as if Ted were singing it to her in the garden.

  Tell her to find me an acre of land

  Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

  Between the salt water and the sea strand

  Then she’ll be a true love of mine.

  How many true loves are you allowed? One? Two? Is your true love the first one, someone you loved when you were young, or the man who would do anything for you, no matter what you ask? What happens if they both leave?

  ‘… but perhaps he didn’t hit his head.’ Albie’s voice is strained. ‘The light was bad; it might have just looked like that, from the top of the cliff.’

  He has pulled his hand away and is walking so fast she has to run to keep up.

  ‘So if he was alive when he entered the water, would that shock have been enough to make him unconscious?’ He is muttering; she can hardly make out the words. ‘Or perhaps he survived that too; Ted’s a survivor. He would have had time to hate me then.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he was conscious—’

  ‘Though even Ted wouldn’t survive the swell against the rocks; his skull would have opened like an egg.’

  ‘You have to stop this, Albie. What’s done is done.’

  He stares at her as if she were a stranger he can hardly recognise.

  ‘You’ve been through a traumatic time—’

  ‘Ah. I thought that was Ted.’ A harsh laugh.

  ‘When my parents died, at first I saw continuous images of crushed bodies strewn across a road.’ She glances at the branches around them. ‘But after a while it became like a film that I watched sometimes, about people I didn’t know.’

  ‘So that’s how you coped, by distancing yourself?’

  ‘It’s how everyone copes.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’ He sounds an
gry. ‘If you block out the terrible things that happen, how will you ever come to terms with them?’

  She stands under a tree, trembling. They’ve never had an argument like this before; they’ve never even had an argument.

  ‘At some point you have to let them go.’

  ‘We are completely different, then.’

  ‘Ted would have said the same.’

  ‘What?’ He turns on her in fury. ‘Do you dare offer me advice from your experience together?’

  ‘You told me that,’ she falters. ‘You said he advised you to put everything out of your mind when you had to operate, focus ahead.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he replies after a pause. ‘I’m forgetting what he taught me already.’

  You’re not forgetting, she tells him silently; it hasn’t occurred to you yet to use Ted’s advice to cope with his murder, the murder you are already regretting. She feels fresh tears sting and turns her face away.

  He looks at his watch. ‘I must go.’ He walks to the car and she follows. ‘I’ll come back when I can. There’ll be stuff to bring home in the car, curtains, seat covers, all the linen. Things go mouldy here over winter. He glances around as if saying goodbye to the house and garden, but he doesn’t look at her. ‘After that I doubt we’ll return till next summer.’

  Will they ever want to come back? She watches him settle in the car; he turns to look at her through the glass but he doesn’t smile.

  ‘Safe journey, my love,’ she says, but the car has already started to move and he is looking ahead to the road.

  25

  London. Summer 2018

  ‘It was easy, Albie. Dead easy.’ Is that supposed to be a joke? He can’t tell if she’s laughing or crying. Both, maybe, hysterical perhaps.

  ‘Wait a minute. I’ll go somewhere quieter.’

  With the phone to his ear, he walks from the ward to the Department of Neurosurgery. The tab bearing the inscription Professor E. Malcolm is still fixed to the third door on the left. Loss jolts, the unexpected shock from an electric fence. He shoulders his way in, dumps his briefcase and sits at the desk. The locum has been extended; he is officially ‘holding the fort’, that’s what he was told by the selection committee. They have to advertise the consultant job, shortlist applicants, hold interviews. Rules were rules but he was privately assured the job would be his from now on.

  He has barely been into this room since his return two weeks ago, has not yet sat in the chair. Ted’s chair. Ted didn’t sit much either, now Albie understands why. He is on his feet constantly running the wards and the lab in Ed’s absence. Ted had insisted he’d given the lab to his son because he knew Albie was too busy – could that have been, after all, the truth? Doubt opens, the gulf beyond a cliff; he steps back.

  A family photo stands on the desk in front of him. Framed in silver, it shows Jenny, with darker hair, Ted laughing with his arm around her. The two young boys pulling faces, and a teenage girl with fair hair in her eyes. Ten years ago at least, a happy family, though Beth was seeing Ted then, sleeping with him. She had lied to the wife and children in the photo, she had lied to him. How many more lies have there been? He turns the photo upside down on the desk.

  ‘Albie? Are you still there?’ Her tone is sharp.

  ‘You sound different.’ When he left, she had looked different too. Her composure had vanished, along with the smooth Madonna face and the way she lowered her eyes as if guarding secrets – which she had been, of course, for years. ‘Are you eating enough?’

  ‘I’m all right.’ Her voice softens. ‘I miss you. Ed hasn’t turned up yet. Have you seen him?’

  ‘He hasn’t been in touch. No one knows where he is or even if he’s coming back.’ He turns up the sleeves of the white coat; he’d forgotten his and Ted’s swamps him. ‘Bridget asked me to head up the lab for now so I’m doing that too.’

  ‘Everything you wanted.’ Her tone is flat, as if she has reached the end of a journey but the destination isn’t as she’d hoped.

  ‘Everything we wanted,’ he corrects, but he understands how she feels, he feels the same. The day Ted asked him to do the locum, he’d been transported to the cliffs of Jura, gazing up at the stars, his career about to launch. He moves on the hard seat, trying to get comfortable. The last time he was on those cliffs, he had been staring downwards instead to the churning water far below.

  ‘I was telling you about the police,’ Beth continues. ‘It was easier than I’d thought. They simply listened and took notes. They searched the house, I’m not sure why – nothing turned up. They said they might need to return to check details.’

  ‘And the vials?’

  ‘No sign. I’ve looked everywhere twice now; I’ve been in the loft and the shed where you keep the mower.’

  ‘The cliff path? The cliff top?’

  ‘I went up again yesterday. If I missed anything the first time, it’s not there now. All gone.’ Again the strange, sharp laughter.

  He looks about the room. The files on the shelves are stacked high, Ted’s framed certificates cover the walls. The years of study, the operations, the hours of research have vanished now. Ted’s dreams, his friendship, the man himself – all gone.

  ‘Are you still there, Albie?’

  ‘I’ve got to go. I need to check equipment for some trials I designed, start over …’

  His beloved notebook is still missing despite searching since his return. He will have to start from scratch, design everything again.

  ‘More trials.’ A quiet sigh comes down the phone. ‘Well, we got away with it, Albie.’ She sounds exhausted rather than triumphant.

  ‘Try to sleep,’ he tells her. He’s exhausted too, a bone-deep tiredness; his sleep is still broken by nightmares.

  ‘How much longer? It’s strange here on my own.’

  ‘Wait till Ed’s visit, I’ll come up after that.’

  As he walks towards the lift, it’s as though he is walking away from her or she is moving away from him, becoming a small figure getting smaller all the time, in a room in a house on an island in another country, far away.

  He leaves the hospital for the Institute next door; the new trials must start soon if the lab’s reputation is to be restored. The stands and automated syringes he ordered months back have been stored in Ted’s room, still in boxes. Unlike his hospital office, though, Ted’s room in the lab is now locked. Down the corridor he glimpses Bruce’s face turn towards him then away, a door is opened and Bruce disappears from sight.

  Albie walks down the corridor and enters without knocking. Bruce is sitting behind his computer; he looks up, the wary expression is replaced by a swift smile. ‘Good to see you, Albie.’

  Albie nods. Bruce is lying. He is not glad to see him; he had scurried into his room like a rat. This is the first he’s seen of his friend since his return – Bruce, slacking again. It’s time he was moved on.

  ‘Where have you been for the last two weeks, Bruce?’

  ‘Managerial course, Birmingham. I was there when I heard the news actually; poor Ted. Bloody awful.’ His eyes fill with tears. ‘I gather no one has a clue what happened.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Uninvited, Albie sits opposite.

  ‘Bridget thinks it was suicide; as lab manager she feels partly to blame. She’s upset she wasn’t more sympathetic about the trial results. I told her Ted would never have taken his own life.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘He thought the trial had been sabotaged. It gave him hope. He’d planned to talk about it with you.’ Bruce stares at him; beneath the sorrowful overlay, Albie detects a harder gleam. His friend is sounding him out.

  ‘Sabotage wasn’t mentioned,’ Albie replies. ‘Though I gather he’d searched in the lab for clues. Has anything been found since then?’

  ‘There have been a couple of official searches but nothing’s turned up. Meantime, I see myself as the standard bearer, taking things forward,’ Bruce continues, looking down modestly.

  Is this a joke? Bruce
lifts his head but his gaze is unsmiling. ‘You know how fond of me Ted was, from the very beginning.’

  Albie stares. What other fictions does Bruce tell himself?

  ‘You look startled,’ Bruce murmurs. ‘He trusted me with your virus technology three years ago.’

  The unforgettable moment that was followed by all the other moments. A day of sun and hope; the autumn trees, Ted’s hand on his shoulder. Skuld, whose words all came true.

  ‘It all started for me back then,’ Bruce says complacently. ‘You passed on some gossip from Skuld. You won’t remember—’

  ‘I’m surprised you do.’

  ‘Because it made a difference. A seed had been planted though I did my best to ignore it at the time.’ He shakes his head, looking rueful. ‘I almost failed my PhD; then I remembered that scrap of gossip: someone had believed in me. I worked like a dog from then on.’ He laughs briefly. ‘Skuld has always refused to give me more details about what she overheard.’

  ‘Have you seen her recently?’

  ‘She left a couple of weeks ago to work at the Royal Free, but those words seem prescient now.’

  ‘You’ll have to remind me what they were.’ He watches Bruce clear his throat, a fussy, self-important sound.

  ‘A mark, Albie. She told you I would make my mark.’

  ‘Does that involve a takeover?’ An attempt at a joke, but his voice trembles with anger.

  ‘Hardly necessary. Ed seems to have vanished and I’ve cleaned up my act. Killed the booze and the fags.’ He leans forward and whispers, ‘No more porn.’ He sits back again, wriggling to make himself comfortable in the seat. ‘I got top marks in the leadership module on the course last week.’

  A pulse is beating in Albie’s head. ‘Surely you know Bridget asked me to hold the fort?’

  ‘Temporary measure, I’m told. I’ve asked for a meeting with the board members tomorrow.’ Bruce sounds different, determined. His hair is neater. Close up, his skin is clear, he smells of aftershave. He glances at his watch. ‘I need to do a cell count on the SP 9271 culture lines. Hang around, we’ll do lunch.’