The Fall Guy

by James Lasdun

  It struck him that in a peculiar way the difficulties he’d hoped to resolve during his stay up here in Aurelia were being resolved, now, in spite of everything. Perhaps even because of everything! It was a strange thought: that in order to win this reprieve, he’d had to do precisely the things he had done. That killing Grollier was, in fact, the necessary condition for this second chance at life . . . A vertiginous thought. And yet it too seemed to have something dimly plausible about it. In the darkness of the little guesthouse with the dwindling rain pattering erratically on the shingle roof, it seemed to him he might have just stumbled, rather late in life (and very late, in comparison with his cousin Charlie), on some fundamental secret about happiness and fulfillment.

  He knew where he was going to go, of course. He hadn’t been there since he was a boy, but as he lay thinking of it now it was as vivid to him as though he’d been living there all his life. He saw the bustling port with its pink customs building and wooden houses drowning in hibiscus and frangipani. He remembered the narrow cement road that wound up through the old coconut plantations into hills where the air smelled of goats and nutmeg and woodsmoke. He thought of the little restaurant high above the yacht harbor where they’d sit on the balcony every afternoon, counting the different blues of the bay and watching the sinking sun throw javelins of shadow through the forest of masts. There was no airstrip on the island, and at that time there was no ferry either, and the journey itself was one of the highlights of the holiday, with its combination (irresistible to a schoolboy) of luxury and inconvenience. They’d fly to Barbados, then squeeze into a series of successively smaller planes and air taxis until they arrived on the neighboring island, where, as night fell, they’d board the “schooner” (an old wooden banana boat) to their own island, sharing the broad-planked deck with islanders carrying caged guinea fowl and sacks of mangoes and soursops. Once they’d reached the open sea, the crew would raise two rust-colored sails that bellied out enormously in the warm breeze, and the rest of the journey would pass without any engine racket, just the bubbling of their wake and the chatter of island voices with their beautiful, lilting English. The stars would come out and after an hour they’d start to see the glitter of the little port and catch that sweet fragrance from the hills, and the feeling of imminent adventure would be almost overwhelming.

  Drifting to sleep, he saw the blue-shuttered Tranqué Bay Hotel where they’d wake to the brilliance of the Caribbean morning, and race each other past the old stone ruins to the beach. It was there, after they’d swum and breakfasted, and installed themselves on deck chairs in the shade of the stately palms, that his father would look up at the turquoise house on the hillside across the bay, half hidden in foaming blossoms, and announce that if the family ever came into any serious money, that was the house he would buy.

  Well, the family was about to come into some serious money.

  thirteen

  He woke early. The air was moist, cluttered with scents from the wet trees and some late-blooming roses. He breathed in deeply as he walked down the little rocky path. It was his last day at the house: he was sure of that now, and he felt a sentimental wish to supply himself with good things to remember about it. The air, always so fresh and sweet compared to Bushwick, was one of those things.

  Chloe was in the utility room off the kitchen, putting sheets in the dryer. She straightened up, hearing him come in.

  “Hi, Matthew.”

  There were dark circles under her eyes. She and Charlie had still been quarreling when he went to bed last night. He was curious to hear what Charlie’d had to say for himself, though he didn’t feel he should ask directly. Chloe was looking at him, her expression a little uncomfortable, as if she had something difficult to report but wasn’t sure how to broach it.

  “Want some breakfast?” he asked airily. “I thought I’d make shirred eggs.”

  “Actually, I was wondering if I could ask you a favor?”

  “Of course.”

  “Would you mind running into town and picking up some pastries? It’s just that we have to get the place ready for these visitors, and Shelley’s away, so I thought we’d keep the cooking to a minimum.” Shelley was the cleaner.

  “No problem.”

  “Thanks, Matt.”

  He drove into town, reluctant to believe this errand was really all she’d had on her mind. She’d wanted to talk about Charlie, he sensed, but had qualms about doing it. Which suggested she’d had something less than flattering to say about her husband. In other words, it was all exactly as he had predicted! The only surprise was how quickly the process had begun. It crossed his mind that Chloe had spent the night in the guest room, too appalled by what she’d learned about Charlie to sleep with him. He quelled an impulse to rejoice, but he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t gratified by the idea of Charlie’s domestic contentment being shattered.

  He pulled in behind the hardware store, parking by their fleet of hydraulic machines—diggers, augurs, log-splitters, leaf-mulchers—that stood along the rental section like strange, demonic beasts. Early to Bread was busy, and it was several minutes before his turn came at the register. He ordered the usual selection of muffins and scones and took them back to the truck.

  There was no sign of life in the house when he got back. He arranged the pastries on a dish at the center of the kitchen table and went to the guesthouse. His bus didn’t leave Aurelia till two in the afternoon but he thought he might as well get his packing done. It didn’t take long. As he looked around the octagonal room one last time, it occurred to him he could replicate it where he was going. Not the view, of course; he’d be looking over the sapphire waters of Tranqué Bay or somewhere like it, assuming all went well, but the furnishings and the rough plank walls. And maybe there would be a view of a pool through one of the windows someday, with a butterfly garden next to it just like Chloe’s. At this thought the image of Chloe herself, charged by the realization that he wouldn’t be seeing her again, flooded him with an emotion so intense she seemed almost palpably present in the room, and for a moment he had the impression that he could smell her scent, and that if he were to reach out he could touch her living hand.

  As he wheeled his suitcase through the pool gate, she came out of Charlie’s meditation garden, carrying her phone.

  “Oh, hi,” she said, putting the phone away. “You’re back.”

  He smiled, feeling the familiar jolt of reentry as he passed from that realm of secret communion with her to the plane of ordinary conversation.

  “I put the pastries on the kitchen table,” he said.

  She thanked him vaguely, and offered to reimburse him.

  “Don’t be silly.”

  She was looking even more uncomfortable than she had before.

  “Listen, Matthew . . .”

  He tilted his head sympathetically, convinced he was finally about to hear that his story last night had forced some fundamental reappraisal of the man she was married to. But he was wrong again.

  “I’ve just found out there’s a direct bus from East Deerfield at nine-thirty,” she said, speaking quickly. “I need to go in this morning anyway, so I thought maybe I should take you to that instead of the later one. How would that be? It’ll save us having to go out again in the afternoon, and it’ll also be a much quicker journey for you . . .”

  She sounded nervous, he thought. She must have been afraid he’d be upset about being turfed out early. But he was actually relieved not to have to linger. Aside from giving him more time in New York to organize himself, it would get him out of having to confront Charlie before he left, which he’d been dreading.

  “Whatever’s easiest for you.”

  “We’d have to leave right away.”

  “No problem. I’m all packed. I just need the key.”

  She looked blank.

  “To your house. I’m staying there.”

  “Oh. Right. I’ll get it.”

  She went ahead of him, moving briskly while he wheeled his sui
tcase over the lawn, and met him in the kitchen with the Cobble Hill keys.

  “Charlie’s still in bed, but . . .”

  “That’s okay. I’ll see him on Thursday.” It seemed important to maintain the fiction that he was going to be returning later in the week. “Assuming I’m allowed back . . .” He smiled ruefully, hoping the remark might finally get them onto the topic of last night’s row. But she didn’t respond, and as soon as they got into the Lexus she started her infuriating humming once again, the soft drone as effective a barrier to conversation as a diving bell would have been. She kept it up all the way through Aurelia and onto the county road beyond. He gazed out through the window, doing his best to ignore both the humming itself and the insensitivity it seemed to imply. Small houses straggled from the outskirts of town: dilapidated old clapboard cottages and the vinyl-sided bungalows referred to, in the optimistic American parlance, as “ranch” houses, as if they had a thousand head of cattle around the back. His mind went to his cramped apartment in Bushwick, with its living room window facing a wall, and a momentary gloom descended on him until he remembered he wasn’t going to be living there anymore. The new life he’d charted out last night seemed to be only fitfully present in his mind. He concentrated, trying to make it more real for himself.

  Still humming, Chloe turned onto Route 39, the busy highway into East Deerfield. He couldn’t help feeling a little hurt by her uncommunicativeness. He’d bared his soul to her, after all, and she’d obviously been moved by what he’d told her. At the very least, he thought, she owed it to him to reveal what Charlie had had to say for himself. Had he professed any guilt about his actions? Matthew wondered. Any remorse? Not that it would make any material difference at this point, but he’d have liked to know. He stared out again, watching the familiar old landmarks reel past: gravel quarry, furniture liquidation store, Swedish Auto . . . As they loomed up and disappeared, he tried to impress on himself that it was the last time he’d be seeing any of them; that this phase of his life, the American phase, was over. Here were the unfinished McMansions of a residential development abandoned after the financial meltdown, plywood walls blackening under peeling skins of Tyvek. Charlie liked to point these out as an example of why bankers needed to be regulated. “Repealing Glass-Steagall,” he’d declare in that righteous way of his, “was the banking equivalent of legalizing assault weapons.” It occurred to Matthew that Charlie too had disappeared out of his life for the last time; striding out through the kitchen last night and slamming the door behind him.

  “So what did Charlie have to say about what I told you?” he blurted, unable to contain himself any longer.

  Chloe stopped humming. They’d reached the traffic circle outside East Deerfield and she slowed down, taking the exit for the bus station. He saw the tip of her tongue dart out to moisten her lips.

  “You mean about the . . . thing at your school?”

  “Yes.”

  She paused for a long moment before answering, and kept her eyes steadily on the road as she finally spoke.

  “He said you were lying.”

  Matthew was too stunned to speak for a moment. It was as though Charlie had just punched him in the face.

  “What?” he said.

  “He said you’d made the whole thing up.”

  “My god! Did you believe him?”

  “No. I told him I thought that would be totally out of character for you.”

  “Thank you,” he said, hugely relieved. “And what did he say to that?”

  Chloe glanced in the mirror, but stared forward immediately, as if avoiding his eye. He understood: she’d been put in an extremely awkward position, effectively having to choose between himself and her husband. No wonder she’d been looking so uncomfortable earlier. Still, at least she’d had the decency to abide by her own instinct for the truth. It certainly would have been easier to go along with Charlie’s monstrous little invention. She answered him, speaking with a kind of wavering but determined firmness:

  “He said you were a crook. He . . . he said you always had been.”

  “Christ! That’s a bit desperate, isn’t it?”

  “He said you’d been stealing things from him all summer . . .”

  “You’re kidding! What things?”

  She swallowed. She was gripping the steering wheel tightly, he noticed; her knuckles bright as candle flames.

  “Oh, little things . . . A pair of cuff links. Some money from his wallet. He said he’d seen you eyeing his father’s watch by the pool one day, like you were planning to take that too.”

  “I don’t believe it! Don’t you think he’d have mentioned that earlier if it was true?”

  “I told you, I didn’t believe him. We had a big fight about it, in case you didn’t notice.”

  Matthew nodded. They stopped at a red light. Chloe stared forward in silence. He could see the vein in her neck pulsating in sharp throbs. She’d closed her mouth and was breathing in deeply through her nose as if to steady herself. The light went green and as they moved forward she spoke again:

  “He said the reason he didn’t mention it earlier was that he felt sorry for you.”

  “Christ almighty!”

  “Personally, I think—”

  She broke off. The bus station came into view ahead, the grimy white pillars of its open hangar gleaming in the sunlight.

  “You think . . .” Matthew prompted her.

  “I think it was because he felt guilty.”

  “For what he did at school?”

  “Yes.”

  It took a moment for the implications of this to sink in.

  “Wait, you’re not saying you believe him, though, are you? You don’t actually think I stole from him, do you?”

  They’d reached the bus station. She pulled in and found a space at the back of the parking lot. She seemed extremely agitated, her small upper teeth biting down on one side of her lip as she maneuvered into the space.

  “Your bus is here. You’d better hurry,” she said. Her voice was breathy and he could hear a distinct tremor in it.

  “I’m confused, though, Chloe . . . You’re not saying you think I lied or . . . or stole from him, are you?”

  “Go on. You’ll miss your bus.”

  “But Chloe . . .”

  “Get out, Matthew!” she said, turning to him with sudden savagery.

  He opened the door, his confusion seeming to migrate to his legs as he climbed out and took his suitcase from the trunk. As he rolled it to the front of the car to say goodbye she pulled forward with an abrupt lurch.

  “Chloe!” he called.

  She stopped, just as abruptly, a few yards off from him. As he moved toward her he saw she was rummaging in her canvas bag. She thrust something toward him as he reached her window.

  “You stole this,” she said. “Didn’t you?”

  It was the gold and quartz Montblanc pen he’d found in their sofa.

  “I looked in your suitcase,” she said. “Just now when I sent you into town. I had to know if Charlie was lying to me.”

  “Oh.” His voice came like a strange sigh.

  “It wasn’t all I found.”

  He seemed to feel all the strength sluice out of him.

  “You were in the house that whole time, weren’t you?” Her face had darkened in blotches, contorted. She seemed barely able to speak. The pen was shaking in her hand like the needle on some dangerously overburdened measuring instrument. “You’d gone there to watch us, hadn’t you?”

  “No! That isn’t—”

  “And then you killed him.”

  “That’s not what happened. Wait, Chloe—” She’d started pulling away again. “I’ll tell you what happened—”

  “I was nice to you, is what happened,” Chloe said.

  He wanted to tell her everything suddenly. It seemed to him she’d understand. If anyone could understand, it was Chloe. But she’d pressed the window button and the glass was sliding up between them.

  “Chloe
—”

  “I hope you rot in hell, Matthew.”

  She’d reached the parking lot exit.

  “Chloe!” he called after her, his mind reeling. The window had closed. He watched her ease the car back into the traffic and drive off. For several seconds he was unable to move. Immense forces seemed to be pressing down, immobilizing him. It was as if the moment were too densely freighted with reality to pass through. He heard her words again: I hope you rot in hell . . . She knew what he had done, and her knowing it seemed to make it real for the first time. He had killed Grollier, taken his life. A feeling of horror surged inside him. The stark fact seemed to lie all around him suddenly, like some vast, untraversable desert. And yet, he thought, trying to steady himself, she’d brought him here, hadn’t she? She’d brought him here to the bus station, and that surely meant something. She could have called the cops to the house, told them what she’d seen, but she’d brought him here instead. So maybe she had understood in some way; seen that he wasn’t to blame for it; that Grollier, no less than himself, had been Charlie’s fall guy, one more surrogate for Charlie’s pain. Or maybe it was just that she was so intent on keeping her affair a secret from Charlie she’d chosen to pretend not to have seen what she’d seen. Either way she’d let him go, hadn’t she? Told him she knew what he’d done, told him to rot in hell, but let him go. Well, then, he thought, moving forward, he owed it to her to make it work.