The Long Fall

by Crouch, Julia

  The village is a bit of a walk – over an hour of uphill slog. Beattie really didn’t like it and bitched almost all the way up there.

  Every time she complained about how far it was, or how steep, or how shitty the road was, Jake muttered something under his breath, or tensed his shoulders.

  It’s odd, and I don’t understand it. It’s so lovely here; why would they feel worse than in Athens? Sure, we had fun back there, but being here on the island, living on our beach, just seems so much healthier and simpler. I could stay here for ever.

  I’ve even had this little thought that they might be fighting over me. They might both be jealous of each other. Who’d have thought it? These two exotic creatures both wanting a piece of little Emma James.

  Oh, put your swelling head away, Emma.

  But still I can’t help thinking what it would be like now if Jake and I had never met Beattie. We’d have walked to the village hand in hand. We’d be here now, in this cave, curled up together, instead of him sleeping over there, and me here, next to Beattie.

  Aw, but she looks so sweet when she’s sleeping – more how she really is beneath that snappy, domineering exterior, like who she showed me she was when we were in the shower. I love her so much as a friend. I’m glad she’s here. And anyway, me and Jake can wait.

  We’ve got the rest of our lives.

  So, in other news, I ate tonight! There wasn’t a menu, so the waiter – a boy about my age, who introduced himself as Giorgios – took us in to the kitchen, which looked like it hadn’t changed for centuries. A middle-aged woman – who is so like Giorgios she must be his mother – stood at an ancient-looking stove, stirring a stew in a giant cast-iron pot. On the wall above her head there was some sort of religious icon of the Madonna, and beside that an ancient shotgun, hanging from a richly embroidered strap.

  The mother – Giorgios introduced her as Elpiniki – pulled great earthenware dishes from the oven, unleashing smells of meat and wine and cinnamon and nutmeg, and put them on the scrubbed wooden kitchen table for us to choose our meal. We all had the same: a lamb stew with onions and nutmeg. It was delicious, and I ate half the bowlful!

  ‘The waiter seems to like you, Emma,’ Beattie says as we’re finishing our food.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ I say, darting a quick look at Jake, who is concentrating a little too hard on his plate.

  ‘Sure he does. Look at him.’

  I turn towards the boy, who is about my age. Our eyes meet and he quickly glances away, a blush creeping across his cheeks. He’s actually rather beautiful, a proper Adonis, with olive skin, thick curls and a classic profile. If it weren’t for Jake . . .

  ‘Asshole,’ Jake mutters and Beattie and I laugh.

  The boy comes over to take our plates.

  ‘Where you come from?’ he asks us, his accent almost too thick to be decipherable.

  ‘America,’ Beattie says quickly.

  Jake sits back in his chair, smoking and looking bored.

  ‘You stay here?’ Giorgios asks.

  Beattie and I tell him about our beach. Through gestures and the few words of English he has, he tells us that he fishes off that beach and he’ll bring us some barbounia next time he’s out there.

  We say that will be awesome, and he heads off with our plates.

  ‘What the fuck’s barbounia?’ Jake says. ‘Some sort of missile?’

  ‘Some sort of fish, I hope,’ I say.

  ‘Asshole,’ Jake says again.

  ‘Jealous?’ Beattie says.

  And Jake tells her to go fuck herself.

  I really have to do something with my friends . . .

  At the village shop, which was still open even though it was really late, we bought bread, three six-packs of water, tomatoes, cheese, honey and three enormous plastic bottles of stinkingly cheap wine. Then we lugged it all back down the hill, which was pretty scary in the dark, because I hadn’t thought to bring my torch.

  It was only when we got back down here that I realised I’d left my bag behind.

  I’m sure it’ll be OK. Giorgios will have picked it up. He’ll know it was mine. My only worry is my diary – I’d die if anyone read it. Still, I don’t reckon he’s got enough English to make sense of it.

  I’ve been thinking about Jake and Beattie, about what’s going on between them. Perhaps it’s not me. Perhaps it’s because they’re such urban animals. Looking at them both sleeping, they look completely out of place away from buildings and beds and bars. If barbounia are fish, they’re like barbounia out of water here.

  But they’ll come round. It’ll just take them a short while to get used to it. And if it is about me, well, I’m just going to have to make sure I divide my attention fairly between them both.

  For me, it’s magical. I’m here in our cave, writing by flickering candlelight, although I hardly need it because the moon is full and fat, lighting up the white walls of our new home. The only sounds are the odd sigh and whimper from my sleeping friends, the sea hushing the shore, and the wind rushing in the mountains far above us. The cave both amplifies and softens these sounds, and everything seems as if it is a beautiful dream.

  I truly believe that if I were to die here, I would be happy.

  17

  14 August. 1980, 5 p.m.(?) Ikaria. The beach.

  I’m sick.

  Something I ate, possibly. But we all had the same last night, and I’m the only one who’s ill. It’s more likely just a bug. Or perhaps my system saying it’s had enough of all the abuse I’ve been doling out to it over the past fortnight. Anyway, I’ve emptied myself out both ends and now I’m all shivery and feverish.

  Bollocks.

  At least it’s forced Jake and Beattie to work together a little. They’ve made me a shady bower from driftwood and sleeping bags, so I can lie on the beach, where a cool breeze can get at me. I don’t know where they are. Off swimming, perhaps. Together, I hope.

  I’ve no idea how long they’ve been gone. Time’s taken on an odd quality today.

  I’ve hung my evil eye on the entrance to my little shelter, to make sure I don’t get any worse.

  Been reading The Women’s Room. Mira has found herself and gone to university, but she finds living a new, freer life really hard. Won’t be like that for me, thank God. I’m more like Chris, the daughter of the uncompromising feminist Val. Though, unlike her, I had old-school parents. But that’s all behind me now. I’ve been reborn into the lives of my friends. Anything’s possible for me.

  My head’s pounding and the sleeping bag I’m lying on feels squelchy with my sweat.

  I close my eyes and it feels like I’m on a boat, rocking on a stormy sea. I’ve just lain here all day, listening to my shallow, wheezy breaths and marking how the sound distorts, as if someone’s playing around with volume and bass.

  Can’t write any more.

  OK, something amazing has happened.

  I’m just dozing under my shelter when I feel a touch on my arm. I open my eyes and there’s Jake, his face close to mine. He’s out of breath, like he’s been running. He helps me sit up and gives me a fresh bottle of ice-cold water, which I gulp down.

  ‘Emma,’ he says.

  He takes my hand and looks at me.

  ‘I need to tell you something, Emma.’

  At his touch, and the seriousness of his tone, I feel my empty stomach churn, as if it’s trying to eat itself up.

  He looks at me with those wide, lovely eyes, those eyes that seem to steal the colour from the Greek sky and concentrate it into something even bluer. Then he sighs.

  I swirl under that gaze. He leans over and puts his forehead to mine. Then – I can’t believe he does this – he kisses me, gently at first, but then it becomes more than that. I find myself knotting my fingers into his dark curly hair. It’s like coming home, this kiss. It’s what we’ve been heading for since the moment I ran into him on the staircase in the Peta Inn.

  It’s everything.

  He pulls away and put
s his forehead to mine again, his eyes closed.

  ‘I’ve wanted to do that for so long,’ he says.

  ‘Me too.’ I pull him to me again.

  I pull him to me!

  I kiss him and I run my fingers, at last, up his back and into his hair. I swing myself round so that I am straddling him. I feel him, his erection, press against me, into the space between my thighs.

  But he holds me away. ‘You’re so lovely and kind and clever. I—’

  I push towards him and cover his lips with mine. We kiss again, joining everything together.

  I know it’s wrong for all of us. The way things are between him and Beattie, this will bust up our little group, our gang of three, our Triskelion.

  It’s certainly not being fair with my attentions!

  If he and I become a couple – as it seems at this moment, as I reach down for him and he moans, his dark head thrown back against the rocky wall of the cave – it will be the end of everything.

  Then his fingers find their way between my legs and, despite everything I want, I freeze. I am not ready to be touched there.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and he lets me gently move his hand away. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, it’s—’ he starts to say, but I silence him with a kiss and I feel like I could perhaps . . . but then he moves his lips away, takes my face in his hands and looks at me. I see he has tears in his eyes.

  ‘Listen, Em, I’ve got to tell you something, something you’re not going to believe at all—’

  ‘Hey, where did you get to, Jake-o!’ Beattie appears out of nowhere, dropping to her knees so that she is next to Jake at the edge of my shelter. At the sound of her voice, I jump away from him, as if we have been caught doing wrong. Which, in a way, I suppose we have.

  She takes in the scene in front of her. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Jake’s just getting an eyelash out of my eye,’ I stutter.

  ‘I’m great at eyelashes. Let me see.’ Beattie elbows Jake out of the way, kneels at my side and pulls my eyelid down. Several painful moments follow, of her prodding and me pretending that I can feel it.

  ‘Perhaps it’s gone round the back?’ I say.

  ‘You sure?’ she says. ‘I could see if I can find something to make into an eye bath.’

  I shake my head. ‘It’s fine.’

  Free from her attentions, I look for Jake. He’s sitting over by the entrance to our cave, smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer, looking daggers over at Beattie.

  Oh, Lordy.

  18

  14 August 1980, night. Ikaria. The cave.

  My fever’s really on one now. I need paracetamol or I’m scared I’ll end up hallucinating, or having a fit. It happened to me once when I was younger. I’ve tried cooling down with seawater, but it’s really not doing the trick.

  I’ve finished The Women’s Room. I said I identified with Chris. I didn’t realise how much we had in common: it turns out that, like me, Chris is raped by a stranger. I cried so much when I read that bit. But I’m luckier (stronger?) than her. She lets it change her whole life. Whereas I’m determined not to let The French Shit ruin mine. With Jake’s help, I can pull through all this. You see, women and men need to live together and work together, or it all ends in unhappiness.

  Beattie and Jake have gone up to the village, to get some more supplies and to eat. I hope they get on OK together. I asked them to see if they could find my bag. It’s got all my money in it, not to mention my first journal and my passport.

  I’ve tried to start The Greek Myths, but I just can’t get into it. It’s all about the creation of the world, about the Goddess of All Things rising naked from Chaos. Sort of know how she feels, but it’s all a bit beyond me at the moment.

  Shivery.

  So this is weird.

  I’ve found something really odd.

  I looked in Jake’s rucksack for paracetamol. I was sure he wouldn’t mind. He’s sort of my boyfriend now, after all.

  There was nothing in the outer pockets, so I decided to look in the main body of the bag, where, sweetly, he keeps his stuff all neatly folded. I didn’t want him to know I’d been rummaging around, so I lifted things out carefully, placing them in a way that’d help me get them back in the same order.

  Holding a T-shirt to my nose, I inhaled his scent. Like some lovesick teenager.

  I pulled out a nylon pouch, like a washbag, and opened it. Inside there was a bottle of Tylenol – which the pack says is paracetamol. I fished out a handful of the pills, took two and was about to put the bottle back when I saw that the pouch also contained two passports.

  I shouldn’t have looked at them, but I did. The first was Jake’s, although you wouldn’t be able to tell it from the photograph because, like my own, which was taken when I was fourteen and still a child, it looked like another person altogether.

  But the other passport was Australian. When I opened it, my skin prickled into goosebumps that had nothing to do with my fever. Unlike Jake’s, this photo was a very good likeness of its owner. Unmistakable, in fact.

  It was The Australian Shit. The man I thought I recognised in the drawing on the posters back in Athens. The man whose body was found dumped behind bushes at the Agora. I remember thinking he was weaselly, mean and pinched-looking, but in his passport he looks more innocent. You can see he was someone’s son.

  And now, if I was right about the posters, he’s dead, unidentified, lost to his parents.

  And Jake has his passport.

  My hands shaking, I put aside a handful of Tylenol. Then I replaced the things in Jake’s rucksack exactly as I’d found them.

  Was this the thing he was going to tell me – the thing he said I wouldn’t believe, before Beattie joined us and he scuttled away? Some sort of confession?

  How the hell did Jake get that passport? I’ve tried to think back to the evening when The Australian Shit hit me, but the days and nights have got jumbled in my mind, and I haven’t got my first journal to check the facts right now. Wasn’t that when Jake and Beattie went out after I’d fallen asleep? When they found that wallet? Did Jake stay out longer than Beattie that night? Or did he go off on his own when she was asleep?

  And then it’s just possible that they found the Australian’s passport that night, perhaps dropped, or lost in a mugging gone wrong. Beattie does seem to have a talent for finding other people’s valuables.

  But then why didn’t they tell me?

  And isn’t that just too much of a coincidence?

  Oh God. Now my mind’s working overtime. Fuck.

  Despite what went on between us earlier (and even thinking about it, even now, I get a little tic of something – desire? – in the back of my throat), Jake is still something of a mystery to me. It’s hard to get a word in edgeways with Beattie always there, but even so, he’s not very talkative, and seems to have become even less so as the days pass.

  And there are the points when he loses it.

  Have I been blinded? Has my whole perception of him been coloured by the fact that the first time I met him he practically saved my life? And, of course, that I fancy him?

  Have I been a stupid little girl?

  And, although it feels like a lifetime, I’ve known him for less than two weeks. How much can you get to know a person in that short length of time? Especially when we are all of us away from anything we can call home, with no touchstones, no familiar points to hook ourselves onto, nothing to help us say ‘yes, that’s me’, let alone, ‘yes, that’s him’.

  And what do I know about Jake’s touchstones, anyway? Virtually nothing. While Beattie is happy to tell us all about her crazy life back in New York, and I’ve told them bits about Ripon, as far as I can remember (which might not be saying much), Jake has not once talked about his life back home.

  What do Bea and I know about him? Except – and this is the worrying thing – how out of control he can get.

  I can’t think straight.

  I need to talk to Beattie a
bout all this.

  19

  15 August 1980, not dawn yet. Ikaria. The cave.

  This is terrible. Terrible.

  The waves slap the rocks. Somewhere up the mountain a rooster is calling too early. A dog’s howling too.

  Beattie is finally sleeping next to me, like a poor, drowned rat. Even now I can feel the pain and the hurt coming off her in hot waves. I’ve had to prise myself away from her arms.

  I wonder if perhaps she has caught my fever.

  But it’s not that. It’s what Jake’s done to her, of course.

  I’m awake because I’m too stunned to sleep. Also, I’m keeping guard.

  I have no idea where he is. Up on the mountain somewhere. I don’t care. I just don’t want him to come down here.

  Can I excuse his behaviour? Put it down to drink or pills?

  No.

  I really liked him. I really liked him. I thought I loved him.

  But there’s no excuse.

  Are all men such bastards? Will they only ever think of one thing? Do they all feel they have the right to use us like this?

  After Beattie came back down to the cave and told me what Jake had done, I couldn’t believe it at first. It seemed impossible, so out of character, so not like the boy who had kissed me just hours earlier.

  I thought he was different.

  But he has this wild side . . .

  And then there’s the issue of the Australian’s passport . . .

  I never really knew him, did I? Hardly surprising, with all the drinking and the pills and the sun and now the fever. How can you get to know someone when you and they are out of it most of the time?

  Jake.

  What he’s done.

  She’s showed me the bruises, the red scrapes on her back and buttocks, where he dragged her over the rocks. The mess he’s made of her forcing himself on her, before she got away and ran down here to me.

  To me. For me to protect her.

  They could be my own injuries after Marseille. They are almost identical.

  ‘Where is he?’ I ask her.

  We’re not fit to stand up to him physically – even combined, we don’t measure up to him.