On the Edge

by Jane Jesmond

  ‘Where’s Kit?’

  ‘He’s gone to London,’ she said. ‘Back tomorrow.’

  ‘Not to borrow more money,’ I said before I could stop myself.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just I saw Grid today and Kit borrowed money off him. Do you know how much it was, Sofija? He wouldn’t tell me. And we have to pay him back.’

  ‘He said it was a gift.’

  ‘I don’t care. We have to pay it back.’

  I was furious with Kit.

  ‘I don’t know. It was between Kit and Grid. Your father called,’ Sofija added and slapped another pillowcase onto the ironing board. ‘That’s why Kit’s gone to London.’

  ‘From South America? Or is he back?’

  I hardly cared. The one thing you could say about my father was that he was never there when you needed him. At least my mother was physically present even if her mind was away with the fairies.

  ‘From South America. And Kit threw some stuff in the car and went. No time to explain but he said it was good. Said to tell you that.’

  I guessed Pa had come up with some money.

  ‘And Talan called,’ she said. ‘For you. Wants you to get in touch. He’s working today so it might be tricky but he’ll be in the mine tomorrow. Not much reception there so if you leave a message, he’ll call you back.’

  For a moment I couldn’t think what she meant and then I remembered Kit telling me Talan was deeply involved in renovating the old mine workings at Cambervale.

  I told her I’d call him tomorrow and went upstairs where I hunted online for Seb’s blog. The one Grid had mentioned. It was mainly about his writing but also featured posts on his inspirations (both exotic and everyday), his thoughts on the world (on the whole, not good) and a few more personal ones on depression, his love life and free running – including one on why he started.

  The Romans understood the link between mind and body; Mens sana in corpore sano. A healthy mind in a healthy body. I’ve never given it much thought. Until now.

  You see, I’ve taken up free running and it’s changed my life. Quite simply, it’s set my mind as well as my body free. I feel as though I’ve returned to the freedom of my childhood when the physical exploring of my world, punctuated with small achievements such as the first time I rode a bike or racing down the path to be first to plunge in the sea, went hand in hand with mental discoveries like reading and understanding the power of words. But somehow, as I became an adult, I stopped pushing myself physically and focussed entirely on the pleasures of the mind. Exercise was a bore. Or dangerous. I might sprain a muscle if I ran too much. Or fall if I tried to climb. Or drown if I swam anywhere other than in the safe confines of a noisy and chlorinated swimming pool. The philosophy of avoiding risk had crept into my soul.

  A few setbacks at work, the failure of a pet project I’d spent months on and I became depressed. I stopped writing, gave in to the pressure to become mediocre at work, went out every evening and drank to distance the misery. Another one of life’s casualties. How mundane. How mediocre of me.

  And then, quite by chance, I discovered free running. A lucky encounter with a few practitioners via an old friend, a wild and wonderful old friend who’d always told me danger was the stuff of magic and most of us were too shit-scared to live life to the full. So I tried my first climb. Up the front of a three-storey hotel where we were drinking. And I got to the top. Looking back, I’ve no idea how. But as I sat on the roof and (cliché warning) stared at the stars, despite the pain in my oxygen-starved lungs and my stomach retching from the unaccustomed exertion, I felt more alive than I had for months. Probably years.

  Since then, barely an evening has gone by without me taking to the streets with a few free running compatriots. We don’t talk, we just do. We challenge ourselves. We take risks. We glory in the pleasure of movement. We leap into the dark trusting only in ourselves to succeed. And it’s made me happier. More confident. Readier to take risks in the rest of my life. To fight against mediocrity. To deal with the dull days.

  A healthy mind in a healthy body. A happy, stimulated mind in a happy, stimulated body. A free mind in a free body. We were born to run and jump and take risks. Both mentally and physically.

  No wonder Mark blamed me. He must have known straightaway who the wild and wonderful friend was. Besides, my words, my stupid, bragging words ran through the blog.

  I wished I’d read it while Seb was still alive. While I could still have told him how wonderful he was. And how right he was.

  And meant it.

  Because, of course, none of it was true. Grid’s accident had shown me no risk was worth what had happened to him. Danger was the stuff of magic. No it wasn’t.

  I wondered what words had come to Seb as he’d jumped between those two building and misjudged the distance. If he’d seen how wrong he was as his hands flailed the air on his way down to meet the hard and unforgiving concrete that had smashed his brain into bits.

  The air in my bedroom crammed itself full of other thoughts. The ones I was trying to ignore. I’d reached the end of the line, though. Run out of places to hide. Time to face up to what lay behind Grid’s words. I opened the window and leant out into the night and made myself start…

  And I started with Grid.

  I made myself look at the day he fell.

  The early part. When we arrived at the tower having trekked along miles of overgrown paths, stamping on brambles and nettles. Although it was a March day, the weather was mild and I was hot. Sweat trickled down my back and through my hair and I hadn’t brought enough water. The others, Grid and Vince and Ricky, looked at the tower and shook their heads. It’s too old. Too crumbly. Too dangerous. We can’t climb it, they said. And I was furious.

  I goaded them. I knew exactly how to do it. How to raise my eyebrows and sigh. When to wonder out-loud exactly what the problem was. And all the rest of the guff. In the end, I said I would climb it on my own. And they could watch.

  And so, of course, we climbed together.

  And Grid fell.

  Because the tower was too old. Too crumbly. Too dangerous.

  And some kind of cosmic revenge made me the one who had to decide to cut the rope. To save Vince and Ricky. To save myself.

  I forced myself to look at the aftermath. Part of me was sorry for the girl I was. Nothing in her life had prepared her for facing up to what she’d done. What she’d become. She told herself time and time again she’d had to cut the rope. What she couldn’t tell herself was that we’d never have been on the tower in the first place if it wasn’t for her.

  I watched her race into the embrace of drugs and parties, anything to keep the demons away. She didn’t climb. She’d promised Kit and the promise made her angry. Instead, she took cocaine and talked about climbing. A lot. All the guff about adventure. About pushing yourself. About breaking boundaries. About fear being the killer. She talked and talked and talked as though the words would fill the cracks splitting her in two.

  I don’t remember Seb being there. I don’t really remember anyone being there. But he must have been. I only remember all the nights melting into one long dark span, shot through with neon letters flashing at club entrances and spotlights changing colour to the thump of music. The glint of mirrors and the glitter of eyes.

  I kept very still and stared out of the window into a night whose dark was only shot through by the beam from the lighthouse and answering flashes from the buoys out at sea. The cold and the damp swaddled me and held me tight. Not that I was going to move. I let everything I’d been running from catch me up. I turned and faced her as she raced towards me. It was time to meet the person I’d become because I was going to have to find a way to live with her. And what she’d done.

  Twenty

  Cambervale had been tidied up since I was last here. The tangle of brambles on the slopes had disappeared and been repl
aced by rhododendrons and azaleas and a path that wound along the banks of the stream. I stuck to the path for a while, trying to get my bearings. From time to time I came across a tree or part of the bank I remembered but they were like islands in an unknown sea. I’d lost the knowledge that linked them together.

  Where was the bloody mine? I’d thought it would all come back to me when I got here but it hadn’t. I was heading for the entrance to the lower of the two levels, known rather uninspiringly as ‘Number 2 level’. I was sure, though, that it wasn’t by the stream so I left the path and clambered up the slope. It was a typical Cornish day: soft, grey and damp. The sun had come out briefly and warmed the air. Fly weather, and they were out in force, buzzing around and irritating me even more than my inability to find the mine. But about halfway up the slope, between the stream at the bottom and the top where the shrubs and trees gave way to open moorland, I came across some of the ruins that pockmarked the valley. These were familiar. Once, a whole section of them had toppled over as we were running down the slope to paddle in the stream. It hit the spongy grass with a thud and we clambered back up to see a pile of stones where there had been none before and a hole in the building as though a giant had taken a bite out of it. I knew where I was now. The entrance to ‘Number 2 level’ should be a short distance above me and to my left.

  It was silent in the ruins. Utterly silent. No wind to rattle the trees and no birds foraging in the brambles. A chill prickled over my skin. Shit. Maybe it had been a mistake to come here by myself.

  I thought I knew fear. When I climbed. When I hung over the earth with only the tips of my fingers keeping me out of gravity’s claws, tightening every muscle in preparation for a swing to the next hold. Then I knew fear. And like a spice sprinkled over the moment, it enhanced every sensation.

  But this fear was different. It was a sucking monster that drained the strength out of my limbs and left me shaking. I was tired, I told myself. Jumpy and wrung out after seeing Grid yesterday. And Mark. That was all. I gritted my teeth, shook the feeling off and ran up the slope to the mine entrance.

  Talan was there, sitting on a low wall as if he’d been waiting for me. In his old checked shirt and thick corduroy trousers he looked more like the boy I’d played with than the grave policeman who’d spoken to me at the lighthouse or even the serious young man who had taken me to the cinema and the Friday night disco. He was smoking a tightly rolled cigarette and looked up when he heard my footsteps.

  ‘Jenifry! I thought you’d call. You didn’t have to come all the way out here.’ His voice was less clipped than before as though he was enjoying the long vowel sounds of his Cornish accent. He smiled and patted the wall next to him. The fright that had driven me up the slope drained away at the sight of him, so solid and reassuring and familiar. Please God, let him tell me the powder was cocaine. I hadn’t been able to face hearing that it wasn’t over the phone. If it was, then I’d tell him about Nick. Leave him to sort it out and go back to London. Away from whoever was trying to kill me. Away from Ma and Kit and Sofija. Leave Pa to sort out their problems. It was time to grow up anyway. Time to get a job. Time to live sensibly, and I didn’t think I could do it here in Cornwall.

  If it wasn’t cocaine, I didn’t know what I was going to do.

  And now Talan was in front of me, I couldn’t bring myself to ask the fateful question. I sat down beside him.

  ‘Kit told me about the old mine and I came to take a look,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve picked a good time. I was just taking a break.’

  ‘You all alone?’

  ‘Yeah. Most of the others have dropped away. Given up.’

  The mine entrance was behind us. I turned and looked. A red metal door opened into a dark hole surrounded by wooden boarding. It looked small. Too small for comfort. I shuddered.

  ‘Still not keen on going underground?’

  ‘No. Sorry.’

  ‘I remember. No guided tour then.’

  ‘Maybe later,’ I said. ‘But tell me about the mine.’

  He took out a tin box, rusted round its edges, and rolled another twig thin cigarette.

  ‘It’s been closed since the First World War. Couldn’t make a profit out of it any more so they sacked the miners and shut it down. Criminal really, but that’s what happened everywhere.’

  I nodded. It had been rammed into us at school that the closure of the mines had been the death of many communities in Cornwall. I’d seen the pictures of the displaced miners. Tough little men. Dark and Celtic and not saying very much. Waiting for trains at Redruth and Penzance, arms folded, bags at their feet. Heading off to South Africa and the Americas. Most of them had never been further than St Austell. It must have been exciting for some of them, though, heading off to strange lands.

  ‘Tore the heart out of this place, it did,’ Talan said.

  I wasn’t sure if this was true. There’d been casualties, of course. People had suffered. But many had prospered, sent money back home that had given their families a good life and even funded schools and hospitals. Some had returned, richer in money and experience and bought land or started businesses. But I didn’t want to argue with Talan.

  He talked at length about the mine. I didn’t follow it all but I got the gist. There were two levels. Number 1 level, which was the upper level, was the oldest and linked by a shaft to Number 2 level, the entrance to which was behind us. It gave him an odd feeling, he told me, when he touched the marks on the rock and the joints on the timbers, to think they’d been made by his ancestors.

  ‘All those centuries ago,’ I said, but I’d stopped listening. The jitteriness had returned.

  ‘Did you get a chance to test the powder, Talan? Is that why you called?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it was anything, was it?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘It wasn’t cocaine, then?’

  ‘I mean, yes, it was something. It was cocaine.’

  Bells rang a clarion in my head and relief washed through me. Nick Crawford was the villain. No need to worry it was someone I knew. No need to wonder if my red Aston had revealed my presence even though it was tucked away in the car park behind the hotel. Time to leave this horrid mess behind me.

  ‘Have you told anyone?’ I asked.

  ‘Not yet. I wanted to talk to you first. Listen, Jenifry. It wasn’t a lot of cocaine. Are you sure it’s nothing to do with your family? With Sofija or Kit? Or some of their friends? I can forget it, you know. Just have a quiet word with them.’

  ‘No. They’ve got nothing to do with it. In fact, I didn’t even find it at Tregonna. I just said that in case I was wrong. It was somewhere else.’

  ‘Where?’

  Talan waited for an answer and I felt his presence become heavy. The boy I’d played with disappeared and Talan the adult, the policeman, took his place.

  ‘The new chap, Nick Crawford,’ I said. ‘You know who I mean? He was down at the point, at the lighthouse, with Gregory, when I met you.’ Talan nodded. He’d turned his face towards me and the cigarette burnt unsmoked in his hand. A trail of grey winding into the air, its harshness softened by the warm, coconut smell of gorse. I took a long breath and let the words out. ‘I found it in his house. Hidden in a sideboard he’d made. He’s involved in drugs. Deeply involved, I think.’

  Talan gave me a patient look and I felt myself being classified again as his inadequate ex-girlfriend who needed a guiding hand to stop her from doing something stupid. Irritation nipped at the edges of my temper.

  ‘He had lots of white powder,’ I said.

  ‘In the sideboard?’

  ‘I couldn’t really tell, although there was more than I got out. But there was lots of powder in the cupboard and any of it could have…’

  As I was speaking, I realised how lame all this sounded.

  ‘Jenifry, it could be any
thing.’

  ‘But you will investigate him, won’t you?’

  The relief I’d felt when Talan told me the powder was cocaine was trickling through my fingers.

  ‘I don’t think I can,’ he said. ‘It’s only a small amount. I couldn’t get a warrant to search his place on the basis of that alone.’

  ‘Can’t you just go and take a look?’

  ‘What? Knock on his door and insist on taking samples of all the products he keeps? I’d love to be able to, but there are rules.’

  Talan picked up his yellow high-vis jacket and a hard hat with a torch. He was going back into the mine and I was being dismissed.

  ‘Please, Talan. Do something about Nick Crawford. At least look into him.’

  He sighed and fiddled with the torch.

  ‘You’ll need to make a statement,’ he said.

  ‘You mean come down to the police station?’

  ‘That’s normally how we do it.’

  A wind as cold as if it had come from the depths of the mine behind us had blown the softness of the day away while we were talking. I buried my hands inside the sleeves of my coat but it made no difference. I didn’t want to go to the police station. What if I was being watched?

  ‘Do I have to?’

  His mouth twitched and I realised I wasn’t the first person to complain to him but refuse to commit. I couldn’t let it go.

  ‘I mean, of course I will. I’ll come down now. With you. If it means you’ll take it seriously.’

  He still looked unconvinced.

  ‘Please Talan, please look into Nick. I tried to find out about him, you know. No one knows where he came from. He paid Rachel cash for the cottage and the address he gave her was false.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I went there to check. And his website: it’s fake. He’s pinched the pictures from other websites. I bet he’s not even a carpenter really. Probably just buys the stuff and passes it off as his. Or maybe it’s stolen. Because Kit said Nick offered to get him some antiques for Tregonna. On the cheap. But he backed off when Kit told him he wasn’t interested. You’ve got to see how suspicious it all is. Turning up here out of nowhere. With a fake website.’