by Jane Jesmond
The rope gave. A matter of millimetres. Even less. But I felt the drop in my bones.
My eyes scanned the wall above. The top of the parapet gleamed briefly as the beam passed overhead again. Not far to climb. But the surface was smooth. Super-smooth. No holds. No edges. No cracks. Nothing. I’ve climbed cliffs you’d think were impossible. Flat sheets of granite, smooth to the eye as butter sliced by a hot knife. Nature loves imperfection, though and there’s always a ridge or an edge in the rock your fingers and feet can use to swarm up the face. Even if you can’t see it, you can feel it. But the lighthouse was man-made, its surface grainy, gravelly, slippery in the wet.
The rope dropped again. A micro millimetre. A whisper of a movement but enough to tingle the sweat pores in my palms and sharpen my breathing, as if a hundred blades cut through my body and sliced through the confusion. Sliced through it and let it fall away. I felt alive, like I only ever do when I’m climbing. Even coke can’t compare to it. I laughed. Fuck the rain. Fuck the cold. It was just me and the wall.
I ran my hands over the surface: up, down, side to side, seeking a fault or a crack I could widen.
Slow. Too slow.
As if my hands and brain were disconnected. I forced them to keep moving. All I needed was a hole big enough to jam a fingertip in. Inch by inch, my fingers searched, over and over again, but there was nothing.
Except the rope.
Use the rope.
It slipped again.
The moment when the rope would snap hurtled towards me and fear fired my sluggish neurones. I grabbed the rope and pulled myself up the lighthouse. Hand over hand, inch by inch, until my feet hit the bottom of the viewing platform and I flattened them against its side and pushed. Thrust out and up, forcing the grit into the flesh of my soles and toes. Dragged my body up the parapet, hauling on the rope’s fraying strands. Suddenly the rope came alive, twitching as its strands snapped and unravelled.
Shit.
I hurled an arm over the top of the parapet, gave a last kick, heaved myself up and over and tumbled onto the rough, wooden floor of the viewing balcony.
Adrenalin shook my limbs as I rolled onto my back. The sky was stormy black. There should be stars, I thought. There should be fireworks. There should be great, roaring bursts of rockets to celebrate this moment. Only the lighthouse beam travelled across the sky in its majestic orbit. I counted the length of its circuits as my breathing calmed. And then there was nothing but a slow fall into blackness as my consciousness drained away once more.
I woke again to cold and pain. My head and nose hurt along with the flesh under my arms and round my back where the cord had bitten. I made myself move to the doorway round the far side of the viewing platform, where the tower gave me some protection from the wind coming off the sea, wrapped myself in a tarpaulin that was lying there and tried to think as rivulets of rain gathered in its cracks and creases and ran in streams onto the wooden floor.
I huddled in the doorway for a while waiting for something to make sense. It could have been a few minutes. It could have been a lot longer. Time became elastic so some minutes stuck to me and held on for an age and when they let go the minutes waiting behind them shot past in a blur. And when I finally thought to try the door handle, it opened and I tumbled inside.
The quiet of the musty interior, out of reach of the storm, calmed my shaky brain. I brushed the worst of the water off my face, noticing my hand did what I wanted without hesitating. The strange disconnect between body and brain was passing.
Shit. Drugs. It must be. What have I taken? How the fuck did I get here?
The last thing I remembered clearly was the hotel room. How had I ended up two miles along the coast, hanging off the lighthouse? God knows I’d come to in some strange places before. Crept out of strangers’ houses as the first lightening of dawn dimmed the street lamps; been woken by cleaning ladies hammering on the door of the toilet cubicle in whichever bar we’d ended up in the night before. Come to, leaning against the closed grille of the tube station and, once, propped in someone’s doorway with a faint memory of an angry taxi driver. The memories were always vague. And lost in the glittering blur of bars and drinks and mirrors dusted with the last few grains no one had yet taken. Saving them for a last gum smear before heading out into the night. But I always had some memory of how I’d ended up where I was. Nothing like this utter blankness.
Pain in my hands dragged me back to the here and now, where I crouched in the dim and quiet of the lighthouse stairs. I’d dug my fingers into the crumbling wooden floor and driven splinters into the grazed and battered flesh. Cold seeped into my bones. I’d think about all this later. Now I needed to get back to the hotel.
I felt for my phone with some idea of calling a friend or a cab but I didn’t have it with me. Had I left it in the hotel, charging up on the bedside table? Not that it mattered. I was in Cornwall, not London. And in an area that was quieter than quiet. I looked at my watch. It was a few minutes before one o’clock. No chance. If you wanted a taxi here, you booked it the day before. As for friends, they’d all left Cornwall. At least the ones you could call at one in the morning when you needed help. Which left my family: Kit, Sofija and, I supposed, Ma – and even if I’d had a phone I wouldn’t call them. Two years ago, I’d have called Kit straightaway. A few months ago, I might still have called him. But not now. No way.
Tregonna was closer than the hotel but I couldn’t let Kit see me wrecked like this. He’d be furious and I couldn’t bear that. I just couldn’t bear any more of that. I’d get back to the hotel by myself. I stood up and started down the steps. The door at the bottom of the lighthouse was open, swinging and banging in the storm. I went out and onto the coast road.
Three
It’s a a mile or so from the lighthouse back to Craighston village. Fifteen or twenty minutes tops. Unless you have bare, sore feet and torrents of rain drumming on your head. I almost gave up on the tarpaulin, not sure if the barricade it gave me against the rain was worth the struggle to hold it tight against the wind. It might be easier to dump it and walk free. But then the rain would beat against my head again. Its noise was already starting to eat away at my brain and cut my thoughts into pieces.
Keep walking. Get to the hotel. Keep walking.
Ahead, the road ran past one of the great lumps of granite that litter this part of the coast. The lighthouse beam lit up the clouds behind it and, for a moment, the rock’s outline was sharp and harsh.
The beam circled away and the rock became less distinct. More of a dark hole looming over the road than a thing of any substance. Its shape shifted slowly. A trick of the night, I thought. But the closer I got, the more the granite became a living thing, a great bear maybe, moving its weight from leg to leg as it readied to rear up and snatch me with a great clawed paw. My feet slowed and my heart thumped. I forced myself on. It was only a rock. There were no bears in Cornwall.
Keep walking. One foot in front of the other.
It was a drug dream. A phantasm called into life by the cells in my brain flailing in paranoia as the chemicals ebbed to nothing. But knowing that didn’t help. The bear waited for me. Any minute now, it would lean forward and amble towards me. I’d smell its damp fur and the faint rust of blood and my skin would feel the heat of its body before it lashed and raked me with its claws.
A light came from behind me and lengthened my shadow out onto the road. It lit the cracked and folded surface of the rock and chased the vision of the bear away. A wave of spray washed over my legs and feet as a car sped by. The shock of it made me stumble and fall onto the scrubby grass at the side of the road. I’d heard nothing. The rain on the tarpaulin and the battering of the wind blocked out everything else. When I struggled back up, the car had stopped a few yards ahead. Its driver must have seen me. It reversed and something about its slow creep unnerved me. Fear, hot and raw, poured acid through my veins, blanking out e
verything but the glistening car rolling noiselessly back towards me.
My hands met a thick branch in the short grass, enmeshed in strands of bramble. I ripped the spiky tendrils away, not caring that the thorns tore my fingers. I gripped the stick and waited.
The car stopped on the opposite side of the road from where I stood. It was a bit battered. Lines of rust curled along its dents. A river of shiny tarmac separated us. Rain ran down the windows and obscured the figure inside. A dark grey blob of a face turned to stare at me and the window rolled down. The stick dug into my palm. A man. I waited for him to put his head out of the window. The stick waited. He said something but it was lost in the storm.
A little rational thought sneaked into my brain. A Good Samaritan, it said. He wants to help. The man leaned back into the driver’s seat and the dashboard light of the car caught his face. It was not the face of a Good Samaritan. His eyebrows hooded his eyes, making black holes. His face was a mask. I willed him to leave but he leaned out of the window.
‘Go away,’ I screamed. ‘Leave me alone.’
His voice carried through the storm. ‘You need a lift.’
It was not a question but I shook my head.
‘You need a lift,’ he said again and opened the door. ‘Where are you going to? There’s not much nearby.’ Fear pressed my hands tighter round the stick and lifted it a couple of inches. ‘Let me give you a lift. You’re wet through. You can’t stay out in this storm.’
I stepped back and pushed one hand towards him with the palm flat, like a policeman directing traffic. He hesitated and I grabbed at the last shreds of control, holding the fear tight inside me as I turned and staggered away onto the path.
The car started up. I heard it through the drum of the rain because every cell in my ears was straining backwards. The urge to whirl round and smash the car whipped my blood to a froth but I held on to myself. Drugs, it was the drugs doing this to me. I was sure. And I stumbled towards the great rock, reached it then ran behind a low boulder split off from the main bulk.
I looked back. The car hadn’t moved. I lifted my hands to shade my eyes against the glare of the headlights; he turned them off. I could see him now, leaning forward and staring at me through the back and forth of the wipers. We stayed like that for an age. Gazing at each other, until the lighthouse beam went overhead once more and dragged my eyes upwards. When I looked back he was getting out of the car. Its inside light shone briefly and my eyes took a snapshot. He was the wrong shape for a climber. Too square. But powerful in a contained sort of way. A good man to have at the belaying end of the rope.
He unfurled an umbrella. Gaudy, striped, promoting some sporting event, it looked all wrong in the battering wind and rain of the storm but its incongruity calmed me. The noise of the blood whacking against my ears lessened.
‘I can’t leave you here like this,’ he shouted. The rain was slowing and lightening. It would stop soon and all of a sudden, like a baby’s tears. He took a step towards me and I slipped sideways and further round the rock. ‘I won’t hurt you.’ He sounded pissed off. Monumentally pissed off. He muttered something I didn’t catch. ‘I’m Nick,’ he called. ‘Nick Crawford. I live up beyond the fields.’ He jerked the umbrella inland to where a smaller road ran high up but parallel to the coast road, linking a straggle of cottages and small farms.
‘Go away.’ I tried to shout but my words had no force and I wondered if he’d even heard them.
He did nothing for a moment and then went to the boot of the car. I thought about disappearing into the night but the path to the village was right by the road at this point and the cliffs fell sharply away on the other side. No hope of escaping once I left the rock. He came back round and I saw he’d put on a creased yellow oilskin.
‘Can you drive?’
The words took a while to make sense. I nodded.
‘Take the car then. I can walk from here.’
He gestured to the door and half-bowed like the doorman of a fancy hotel showing me the way. The rain stopped. He put out a hand from under the umbrella and laughed.
‘It’ll be a lovely night now, you’ll see. It’s always like this. One minute rain, the next clear, the next… well, you never know. Look, the car’s running. Get in it and go…’ He closed the umbrella and shook it. ‘Where are you going to?’
I found my voice. ‘The hotel in Craighston. The Seagull.’
‘OK I’ll call round tomorrow morning and pick it up. You can leave the keys at reception if you don’t want to see me.’ He laughed and I found myself wanting to laugh with him. He was as crazy as I was.
He started to walk away, then turned. ‘What’s your name? It would help to know.’
‘Jen Shaw.’
‘Jen Shaw. Short and sweet. Goodnight, Jen Shaw. Safe journey home.’
He walked away and I fixed my eyes on his back, watching in case he made a sudden turn and raced back, but, as the distance between us grew, he became less and less distinct until all I could make out were the luminous strips on his jacket bobbing up and down like two demented caterpillars dancing against the black.
Nick Crawford. Not a name I knew. Not a local name. And he didn’t look or sound local. He must be an incomer. A recent one. I would have remembered if I’d met him before.
The sky was clearing. Only a few wisps of cloud remained and they were scudding inland, fleeing the wind coming off the sea. The dampness on my face was drying and I tasted the salt of the wind on my lips. It was chilly. The great beam of light passed overhead once again and ignited cold sparks in the sky. I shivered. No sign of Nick Crawford. He must have turned off the road to climb up to his house.
With the passing of the rain a kind of peace settled in my brain.
I peered into the car. The seats were battered and the interior grey with age but it was clean. And probably warm. The thought of heat drove everything else out of my mind and I opened the door and got in.
I turned the heating to full and locked all the doors. The glorious warmth drove the chill from my body in violent shakes. I didn’t care. They would pass. My feet hurt as the feeling came back but not enough to stop waves of drowsiness engulfing me. It was awesome. Like swimming in hot soup. My thoughts left my body and went wherever they go when I sleep, and I passed out.
I don’t know how long I was out for. Long enough for the steering wheel to make a dent in my face and the dribble from my mouth to crust in a vampire drool. The car stuttered and rumbled again. I opened my eyes and saw a face looking in at me through the windscreen. Shock tingled through my veins and I screamed. The face vanished. I flicked the headlights on full and they caught a figure disappearing round the back of the rock. I thought they had a torch but it was difficult to tell in my half-asleep state. The car was locked. But there could be another key. Probably in Nick Crawford’s house. Hanging on a hook by the back door or in a bowl on a shelf in the hall. That was where it would be. Nothing to stop him picking it up and coming back down to the car. Or giving it to the grey figure I’d just seen.
I forced myself to be reasonable. It was probably an insomniac like Ma taking advantage of the break in the weather to get some fresh air. Or someone from the fishing boats heading home and curious as to why a car was parked and running on the headland road. So I focussed on the controls of the car, released the handbrake and, careful of my bruised and grazed feet, drove off. I made it back to the hotel safely, although tremors and stray thoughts snatched at my concentration.
The clock in reception showed half past five and there was no one around. I panicked for a moment in front of the door to my room. I had nothing with me. No coat. No bag. Nothing but the tarp. So no key. The brass door handle slipped and rattled in my shaky hands – then opened. I fumbled the clothes off my body and turned the shower on full, letting the hot water sluice the mud and dried blood off my skin. My head hurt and when I put my hand up to check it, I fou
nd a large bump covered by a tangle of blood-matted hair. Another injury to add to the tally of cuts and grazes. I let the water run gently over my head. It flowed pink through my hands, with a few flecks of solid blue. I wondered what they were. Bits of tarpaulin maybe? The wobbles were severe now, as well as the tiredness. I patted myself dry and, for the first time, thought back to the evening before. Or tried to. Tried very hard. But nothing came. And I don’t mean the kind of jumble of images those druggy nights often left behind. The grating edges of words and laughter you chase but can’t quite grasp. No, this was a total blank. Rien. Nada. Nothing. As if my memory had stepped off a cliff.
One minute I’d been sitting on the bed, the next, the wind and rain were battering me against the lighthouse wall. Panic started to flood my head. The air in my room thinned and my lungs snatched at what was left. An anxiety attack, I told myself. Common when coming down. Breathe slowly. Distract yourself. Watch TV. Make a hot drink. Whatever works for you. None of it worked for me.
So I thought again of the climb up Luna Bong. I’d leave everything else till tomorrow. Maybe then my scrambled brain would have found the missing hours. With the memory of the rock beneath my fingers soothing me, I went to bed and fell asleep as the last few metres of the climb dissolved into the blue sky.
Four
I woke up, lying flat on my back, with my hands clawing the sheets for holds on the slippery walls of the lighthouse. Grey light peered round the edges of the thick curtains. I knew where I was. The hotel. Safe. In bed.
For a moment I thought the lighthouse had been a dream.
I dreamed a lot in rehab. Everybody does. It’s a way of escaping. Some dreamed of their childhoods, most dreamed of their drugs, but I dreamed of climbing. So I thought it was another of those dreams until I got out of bed and winced as my grazed and bruised feet hit the floor. Until I went into the bathroom and saw the clothes and the tarpaulin lying in muddy dampness on the floor. Questions raged through my brain. What had I done? Why had I been at the lighthouse?