The Long Fall

by Crouch, Julia

  It puts him off. Swearing, he pulls his filthy dick out of me, then suddenly, shockingly, brings his knee up sharply between my legs. I think I scream, but all that comes out is a hiss of exhaled shock. Then, standing over me, he quickly kicks me hard in my stomach. Just to cap off the pain and the insult and the humiliation.

  Putain.

  He pulls off his scarf and spits on my face, big glob of hot, rancid gob.

  The siren is so loud, for a moment that’s all there is. But then it moves away, it’s going past the end of the alley. It’s not stopping, it’s off to save someone else, somewhere else.

  This is it, then, I think. I’m not saved. He’ll kill me now.

  Or worse.

  I lie still, eyes shut, prepared to die.

  But nothing happens.

  Like a bad dream, he’s gone.

  I wait there as long as it takes for my soul and my body to find each other again. Squashed into the angle between the wall and the footpath, I watch the sun filter through the waving grasses above me. A line of poetry repeats over and over in my brain like some sort of madness, Glory be to God for dappled things – Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘Pied Beauty’. I learned it off by heart for my A Level.

  I don’t know how long I stayed there, but at some point I was finally able to pick myself up. I pulled out my scarf and wrapped it round my shoulders to cover the grazes and cuts and gouges in my flesh. Somehow, I got myself back to the youth hostel, where Hans the warden and the German boys greeted me as if nothing had happened, because, of course, for them that was how it was.

  I managed to smile and say a few inane words while I picked up my rucksack from the luggage store. I excused myself, saying I didn’t feel too well, that I thought I’d eaten some bad fish at lunch. Perhaps it was because the light’s poor in the big hall, but they didn’t notice my knees and legs, which were cut and bloody. It saved me some awkward questions, anyway.

  I scrubbed at myself under the scalding shower until I was raw. I wanted to sluice him away, wash him down the squatting toilet at the end of the cubicle, which, disgustingly, serves as a drain for the shower.

  But still I feel dirty.

  I don’t think I’ll ever be rid of him.

  It hurts so much everywhere. After my shower I looked between my legs with my make-up mirror, angling it so it caught the light. I’ve never done that before, so I’ve nothing to go on, but I look as sore as I feel.

  A right bloody mess.

  Soiled.

  How dare he do this to me?

  The worst thing, though, is that I let it happen to me.

  I was stupid.

  I’m a young woman on her own and I take a little footpath shortcut when I could have walked the long way round on the safe main road.

  I was moronic to be wearing just a little skirt and a vest top, even though it’s one of the hottest days of an early summer heat wave.

  I was an idiot not to turn back when I saw him walking towards me from the other end of the alleyway.

  It’s all my fault.

  I don’t know what to do.

  KATE

  2013

  ‘Want to watch TV with me?’ Kate called up to Tilly’s bedroom from the kitchen as a kind of a peace offering. But there was no reply.

  Mark had returned to his office and his American clients, promising to be back by midnight. Mother and daughter endured a tense taxi ride back from the restaurant, Tilly making no effort to conceal her frustration with what Kate knew looked like an irrational and clinging objection to her travel plans.

  If only she could tell her daughter what had happened to her: how Greece had turned what was – because of France – already a terrible episode in her life into a complete, all-consuming nightmare.

  She tried to tell herself that her fears were completely irrational, that the same things weren’t going to happen to Tilly. That, precisely because they had happened to her, like lightning striking twice they were statistically less likely to happen to her daughter.

  But it didn’t wash.

  Trying not to enjoy the comforting emptiness that followed a good vomit, Kate opened a bottle of red, poured herself a large glass, and called upstairs again. But Tilly probably couldn’t hear her above the music she was playing, which was clearly audible two floors away.

  She was a strange bird, Kate thought, preferring Greece to New York, liking Sondheim instead of whatever it was other young people listened to. Not like Kate had been, back when she was a teenager, troubling her elderly parents at all hours with the Clash, the Police, and The Damned.

  She could picture Tilly now, lying on her big, red, velvet sledge of a bed, reading and letting the music swirl around her. Even if she wasn’t going to come down, it was good to know she was so close.

  She picked up the bottle and glass, padded across the surgically clean glossy white floor of the vast, open-plan living space and turned on the TV, aiming to find something easy and mindless to take her brain away from what she had already tagged Tilly’s Bombshell.

  The whole business reminded Kate of when, shortly after Martha had been taken away from them, Tilly had gone crazy over animals and started begging for a cat. It seemed that the more Kate argued that her own allergies rendered owning anything other than a hamster out of the question, the more her daughter claimed she needed one. In the same way Tilly had chosen, of all the nations in the world, the three places which, were allergies to countries a possibility, would have made her mother very ill indeed.

  France and Italy would make breathing difficult, but, bad as they were, they were mere staging posts on the way to anaphylactic-shock-inducing Greece, scene of the most terrible thing Kate had ever done.

  If only she could tell Tilly. But it was out of the question.

  As the TV came to life, Kate was confronted by the reverse of the brain massage she was seeking: that damn Face of Kindness image, this time framing an item on Newsnight about girls and schooling in West Africa. No doubt this was Sophie’s work, to ‘keep up the momentum’.

  Kate passed her hand over her eyes. She had consented to do only one TV interview to coincide with the photo winning the prize. Initially, she had felt guilty about her reticence to parade herself everywhere, but relief now far outweighed all that.

  Nevertheless, something niggled inside her: a sense of things falling out of her control. She had never intended to become what the newsreader was describing on the voiceover to the image as the founder and figurehead of Martha’s Wish. She had only ever wanted to balance out the bad she had done in the world with a little good, working behind the scenes and turning the awful (Martha’s death) into the wonderful (schools for girls). But Sophie said she was needed to add personality to the brand.

  ‘Like Bob Geldof and Band Aid,’ she had said.

  After a discussion about the merits or otherwise of the photograph – including a coruscating contribution from a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, a striking young woman with beaded plaits tied up in a Kente cloth, who accused Kate of being little else than a twenty-first-century imperial invader – the programme moved on to an item about a polar bear in a provincial zoo who was displaying bipolar disorder symptoms. Kate flicked off the volume, stretched out on the vast sofa, hugged a cushion to herself, and settled back for the next item: footage of bloody riots in one of the West African countries where Martha’s Wish was building schools for girls.

  She watched a young man being pushed over, his head being stamped on by a soldier who couldn’t have been much older than fourteen. The camera lingered, for just one second, on the blood pooling around the man on the ground’s hair, then it jolted up again to rejoin the fray.

  The world was such a dangerous place. Couldn’t Tilly just be satisfied with staying in her velvet room with her books and her Sondheim?

  Kate closed her eyes.

  EMMA

  26 July 1980, 1 p.m. Somewhere between Marseille and Nice. Train.

  I’ve escaped.


  I’m done with France.

  It’s been three days and I haven’t felt like writing. So, along with my body and brain, that bastard’s fucked that up for me as well.

  I’m not going to let him win, though. So here are my words.

  Thought seriously about going home and forgetting all about this travelling on my own bollocks. But I can’t. Not after all the talking I did, all the arguing with Mum and Dad that I’d be safe, and I could look after myself and all of that, all of the telling of my plans to people at school and watching their astonished faces when I said I was going on my own . . .

  I’ve only been away six days, and look what’s happened.

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go back and face all the questions and the told you so’s.

  No. Going back now would be admitting defeat on every level.

  I’M NOT GOING TO LET HIM WIN.

  In fact, now I’m on the move I feel I can almost actually breathe again.

  So yah boo sucks, attacker.

  Perhaps I can even use it all later? When I’m a proper writer.

  Spun out the sickness story at the Marseille youth hostel. I hardly moved – partly because every part of me hurt, partly because not a bit of me wanted to. The German boys brought me some bread and soup, but I couldn’t face eating.

  Some Dutch girls arrived yesterday and took over my dormitory. They talked too loudly around me, asking me questions, laughing.

  I could see them making faces at each other about me. I don’t blame them. All they got from me were grunts and monosyllables. I only wanted to sleep, but they were making it impossible. So, this morning, I packed my rucksack, drew my strength around myself and set off for the train station.

  I stuck to main roads, and kept my wits about me. Kept on thinking I saw him, of course. Twice I had to cross the road because I thought a man was following me. I could feel eyes slide over me, read their minds, smell their thoughts.

  I felt naked, even in my jeans and T-shirt. And my blondeness marked me out. Along with the fact that I’m small and only eighteen, it made me an easy target.

  So as I walked I got an idea. When poor Tess of the D’Urbervilles is cast out by Angel Clare and wandering the countryside looking for work, she gets round the problem of creepy men by putting on an old dress, tying a handkerchief round her face and snipping her eyebrows off. So, instead of attacking her, the next passing slimeball jeers and calls her a ‘mommet of a maid’.

  Like Tess, I could deal with that.

  It was a plan.

  Dipped into a supermarket and bought some dark brown hair dye. A little further along the road to the station, I stopped at a clothes shop with shirts and cotton skirts pegged up outside, slapping in the wind. There, in among all the glitter and purple and leopard print was the perfect garment: an oversized black T-shirt dress that would come halfway down my calves.

  Twenty francs, it cost. A whole day’s budget, but it was worth it.

  Had a couple of hours to kill at the railway station before my train to Milan. Let’s Go says there’s a shower in the ladies’ toilets. So, for two further francs, I was able to put my new look together.

  I’m in there a long time – the dye takes forty minutes to set. At one point the suspicious, beady-eyed old lady on duty bangs loudly on the door and asks if tout va bien avec Mademoiselle.

  ‘Oui, oui,’ I say, trying to sound as carefree as possible.

  It’s the first time I’ve showered since the night it happened, and there’s a full-length mirror in the cubicle. I’m shocked by my bruises – an odd, blue stain starts around my navel and blooms up to my ribs and down to my hip bones. That’s where he kicked me.

  Then, turning round, I see the scratches, grazes and more bruises where I’d been shoved up against the flinty wall. I’m particularly raw where my pelvis meets the skin of my back. That’s what makes it so uncomfortable to sit, or lie down.

  It’ll get better, though.

  I’ll get better.

  So, finally, I rinse the dye off and look at a new, dark brown-haired me. Then, without really thinking what I’m doing, I get my nail scissors and start chopping at my hair, sticking my fingers into it, pulling it away and cutting it all about two inches away from my scalp.

  The old lady bang-bangs on the door again.

  ‘Mademoiselle?’

  ‘Presque fini, madame,’ I say. ‘Juste dix minutes.’

  I suppose she was worried I was committing suicide or something. Well, I wouldn’t do that. Wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  I hear her harrumphing away back to her station.

  When I finish, I look at myself in the mirror. I’ve given myself Sid Vicious hair. I look like some sort of punk. I look like a stranger.

  It’s good.

  I put on my new T-shirt shroud and wind my red and white PLO scarf around my head – like Tess’s handkerchief. Decide against getting rid of my eyebrows, though.

  Scoop up my shorn hair and stuff it in the supermarket carrier along with the dye box, and try (unsuccessfully) to clean the brown dye stains off the tiles (Madame can’t have been too pleased when she saw them). Then I bundle out and politely thank her before scarpering into the bustling railway station where, thankfully, my train’s waiting at the platform.

  It feels good having hair like this, like I’m not trying to please anyone. With sunglasses, I’m almost completely hidden. I’m also so odd-looking, people have been giving me a wide berth. It’s like a security blanket.

  Walked down the train corridor until I found a compartment with a woman in it. Even better than that, she’s a nun! Perhaps she thinks I look so weird that she doesn’t dare answer my questions, but she doesn’t seem to speak French or English. So I’m hoping she’s an Italian nun. If she is, and if she’s travelling to Italy, I’m sticking with her.

  Nothing can happen to me with a nun in my carriage, surely?

  26 July 1980, 4 p.m. Italy. Train.

  Screw you, France.

  Just done the final train change at Ventimiglia. I’ve stuck by my nun through both. We’ve managed to communicate a little through sign language and she’s offered me some chocolate (which I refused), but mostly she just sits with her eyes closed, fingering her rosary and muttering to herself, unaware that she’s guarding me.

  It must be great to be a nun. Such a simple life.

  Under her disapproving gaze, I’ve had two beers from the buffet car. Again blowing my daily budget, but I like the muzziness it threads around me. Before I had the beer, I felt like I had ants crawling around the base of my neck. Now I don’t. The magic of alcohol.

  Tried to read, but can’t concentrate. Though I can write now. I feel like writing and writing, writing it all out. What’s that about?

  I’m always thinking of what I should have said or done after something difficult happens. I play it over in my mind, with me being bolder, firmer, stronger than I was at the time. Speaking up for myself.

  So this is what I think:

  I was stupid to let the thing happen to me in the first place – I should have read the signs, pre-empted the attack, turned and run, not been so naïve in the first place to think that I could just travel around on my own and not be attacked.

  I was even stupider in the way I dealt with it afterwards. I should have got the group of nice German boys to go and find my attacker. I should have told the police, so he wouldn’t do it again to some other poor girl.

  I know all this now – though at the time I was in shock. All I wanted to do was hide in my bed.

  I’m still numb now. I couldn’t tell anyone about it. I couldn’t. Wonder if I ever will? I just want to hold the awfulness inside myself until it dissolves.

  But if I’d gone to the police, and if they’d believed me – which is doubtful – it would’ve meant having to give up on my big adventure. It would all have gone public, Mum and Dad would have found out – and I couldn’t bear that – and the story could even have followed me to Cambridge.

&n
bsp; ‘Oh, Emma James? She’s the girl who got raped in France.’

  No, thank you.

  I’m not going to let him make me suffer any more than he has already.

  I’m going to call him The French Shit. It feels useful to define him in some way. It might stop me thinking every man’s going to hurt me.

  Got to stop thinking about this. It’s like each time I think about it, it happens all over again.

  Mind fucks.

  26 July 1980, 10 p.m. Milan. Pensione Lulli.

  Arrived in the early evening, just before it got dark. Said goodbye to my nun. Another little death. Bones aching from bruises and sitting so long on trains.

  To save money after an expensive couple of days, toyed with the idea of staying put in the station for the night. But the whole place was full of sketchy men, all – despite my new look – leering at me. Decided not to risk it.

  Sat at a café, rolled a cig, ordered a beer and looked at Let’s Go. Thought about camping, since I’ve lugged the tent here in my rucksack. But the campsite’s miles away, and I don’t really think I’m ever going to be able to sleep soundly with just a thin bit of canvas between me and the world. Not any more.

  The creeps are really determined here. While I was flicking through my guidebook, two men sat at the spare chair at my table (not at the same time, thank God) and tried to talk to me. I ignored both of them and tried to appear to be absorbed in reading. The first gave up quickly, but the second seemed to be insulted that I wasn’t bowled over by his charm. He stuck his face between me and my page and rattled off some nasty-sounding Italian. His breath stank of brandy.

  I hated the anger in him. It reminded me too much of The French Shit. I wanted to stand up and scream at him or take my book and bat him out of my sight, hurt him. Instead, my cheeks burning, I just angled my body away from him. Thankfully, there were a lot of people around, so nothing too awful could have happened. Eventually he gave up, and, after one final slurred round of swearing, he left.

  But I was chilled by his attitude.