The Long Fall (12 page)

3

2 August 1980, 8.30 a.m. Athens. Peta Inn roof.

For fuck’s sake.

Break out the slimming pills indeed. Been for a pee, my hand is hurting from all the scribbling and there’s still no sleeping going on. Like Coleridge, then, but with no person from Porlock to interrupt my writing. Most of the hippies have woken now because of the heat, but Beattie is just snoring on. Sweet. How I envy her.

But at least I can get all this down . . .

Jake leads us up a narrow, steeply climbing street. ‘So I spent some time the other night with this guy who had been here for, like, months,’ he says. The buildings are behind us now. To our right is a stone wall, and between the olive trees lining the other side of it, we can see the shapes of the city way below us.

‘He was broke, stuck here working in some bar trying to get the air fare together to get back to Jefferson City or some shit hole of a place. He said this is the place the Greek kids come and hang out at New Year. It’s the best view you can get of the city. It’s called Areopagus Hill, but the Greek kids call it
vrahakia
, which means little rocks.’

We round a bend in the street. Jake leads us past some gates which, he says, are the entrance to the Acropolis, then we cross a gravelled area and we’re standing at the foot of what looks in the dark like a small mountain with steps carved into the side.

‘We go up,’ he says.

‘Oh man,’ Beattie groans. ‘Shall we humour him, Em?’

‘We’ll never hear the end of it if we don’t.’

‘Be careful, the rocks are really uneven,’ Jake says. ‘You’d be better taking those off.’ He points to Beattie’s leather sandals. ‘You don’t want to fall.’

And there it is again, the weird look in his eyes. There is definitely something odd about this boy.

But even so, I do think he fancies me. And I do him.

Oh God, I do him.

We scrambled up the steep stone steps until we reached the top of the rocks – which was a lot closer than I’d thought from the ground. I nearly fell twice at the top – the going was extremely rough, and I was pretty drunk and whatever. But the view was amazing. Behind us loomed the Acropolis with the Parthenon sitting on top, lit up like some sort of fairy castle, and stretching from left to right in front of us were the twinkling lights of Athens, backdropped by distant mountains looming blue into the night sky.

Up there, high above the smog cloud that cloaked the city, I felt I could really breathe properly for the first time since Marseille.

Being on those rocks early this morning felt to me like some sort of rebirth.

‘Take care,’ Jake says.

He’s a little up ahead of Beattie and me, leading the way. ‘You can’t see it in the dark, but there’s a pretty steep drop over there.’ He disappears behind the lip of a rock.

‘Jake?’ I call, worried that he’s failed to follow his own advice.

‘I’m just here,’ he says, as I crest the peak. He’s curled himself into a rounded hollow, almost like an armchair. ‘You get the best view from here.’

I drop down so that I’m sitting next to him. He puts his hand on my shoulder – which makes me prickle with pleasure – and points. ‘Can you see the glow of the dawn over there?’

‘Hey!’ Beattie arrives on the rocks behind us. ‘Thought I’d lost you guys! There’re some goddamn Greek kids coming up behind us.’

‘So we’re not alone up here,’ Jake says.

‘Nope,’ Beattie says. She seems a bit pissed off about it.

‘Not necessarily a bad thing,’ he says. ‘More people up here to chase away the ghosts.’

‘Whatever,’ Beattie says, slipping down to join me and Jake. The three of us sit, backs to the cool rocks, like a family watching TV on their sofa, me in the middle, my leg resting against Jake’s. The Greek kids settle themselves in another hollow a little way from us. It feels like we’re an audience waiting for a play to begin.

‘What a beautiful city,’ I say. I’m almost a bit teary because of it.

‘Yeah, but you don’t want to stay too long,’ Jake says. ‘It sends you crazy. That guy I met was totally demented.’

‘The heat’s enough to drive you mad,’ I say, nodding. ‘And it’s so full-on all the time.’

‘What are your plans?’ Beattie asks me, pulling the ouzo out of her bag and unscrewing the lid. She seems edgy. Her foot’s tapping out a crazy rhythm on the rock. That’ll be the speed, I suppose.

‘I want to go out to the islands,’ I say. ‘I want to visit the places mentioned in the
Odyssey
and the
Iliad
. I want to be a lotus eater!’

‘You what now?’ Beattie says.

‘I used to love the Greek myths when I was younger. It’s why I’m here,’ I say, which isn’t exactly true, but while I’m speaking I totally believe it, the drugs and the drink leading me on – I want to seem more interesting, I suppose. ‘But basically I just want to find somewhere completely unspoilt and just chill for a bit. There are places where they live like they did back in the olden times, you know, even speak a version of Ancient Greek.’ It’s only when I finish that I realise I’ve just parroted what Jake told me earlier. I glance over at him, but he just winks back.

‘Hey, now I get you,’ Beattie says, passing me the ouzo, which I’m drinking, even though it tastes completely disgusting. ‘Sounds cool. And you, Jake?’

He nods and I notice how long his eyelashes are. ‘Exactly the same.’

‘Hey, we could go together, all three of us!’ Beattie says, putting her arm around me.

‘Great idea.’ Jake does the same and I’m sandwiched between them, really enjoying the feel of my new friends.

And that’s how it happened. We’ve almost automatically become a threesome. We popped a few more slimming pills and, as the dawn crept across the sky, its paleness disguising the fact that it was actually the rising of a sun whose heat would have us pinned down by midday, we made our plan.

We’re going to stay in Athens for another two nights while we work out which island will meet our needs, which are (we decided):

1. Not touristy, authentically Greek (we talked a lot about authenticity)

2. Sandy beaches

3. High cliffs

Number three was added by Beattie, who said she just wanted to lie out flat on sand and do very little after all her chasing around Europe, but that occasionally she needed to climb something to avoid running to fat.

Jake seemed to find that irritating. In fact, I don’t think he likes Beattie very much. I can’t see why. She’s a bit full on, but I sort of admire that.

By the time the horrible ouzo had gone, we had been joined by quite a few other people – travellers as well as Greek kids. In my heightened state, I remarked that the rocks had taken on a holy aspect, as if they were some sort of temple, conveying something quite solemn to the birth of this friendship of ours.

‘A sort of consecration,’ Beattie said, taking my hand.

I felt a rumble in my stomach: a stir of something not unlike love.

4

2 August 1980, 10 a.m. Athens. Peta Inn roof.

Jesus, my hand is hurting from all this writing. Writer’s cramp from writer’s spew: a sort of reverse writer’s block. Writer’s bulimia!

Nearly ready at last to turn in, though. I’ve taken a couple of Valium, so I hope that’ll help.

So it turns out that Beattie is also staying at Peta Inn! She arrived from the railway station after I ran into Jake on the stairs. The level of coincidences between me and her make me even more convinced that our meeting’s been preordained somehow, that we were fated to meet.

The three of us tripped home, hand in hand, with me in the middle all the way. I like being in the middle!

Luckily, Ena’s bed was still empty when we got back here – it must have been about five in the morning and everyone else on the roof was still asleep: legs, arms and other body parts drawn out of their sleeping bags by the dawning heat. Beattie moved her stuff from the bed she took earlier, crawled into the bunk under mine and took a couple more Valium.

By the time I returned from the bathroom, she was fast asleep. That’s when I took the extra slimming pill. I guess it was because I didn’t want the night to end.

So that worked, then.

I’m knackered now, though. I’ve made a makeshift sunshade by tying the corners of my PLO scarf to the bed-ends so I’ve got a sort of low-lying tent to shade me from the sun.

Jake’s still over at John’s Hostel, but he says he’ll move over here after he’s taken a nap. People are beginning to get up now, but Beattie’s still out for the count. The great thing is that for the last half-hour, Mick the hairy Australian has been slowly packing his rucksack. He says he’s off to the Peloponnese. Sparta. He says he ‘wants to see some rock down there they used to throw sick babies off of.’

He asked if I’d like to ‘split the joint’ with him. It was a tempting offer, but I declined. I’ve got a far more exciting plan in place. The next few weeks – at least – are sorted with Beattie and Jake. I’m going to have the time of my life. Who knows? Perhaps we might even stay out here, spend months, years, even the rest of our lives like this, travelling around the world, taking things as we find them.

There are worse ways of living a life.

Mick’s gone now. I’ve thrown my sleeping bag onto his empty bed to reserve it for Jake. I like the idea of him sleeping next to me up here. We could hold each other’s hands and swim off into oblivion and then there would be no one else but me and him and we would ride away on our bunk-bed boat to

5

2 August 1980, 4 p.m. Athens. National Gardens.

Oops. Woke up at midday, sweltering, with my face pressed up against this book and my cheek all inky!

So here we are in the National Gardens.

Jake and Beattie are on either side of me, sleeping. I’m sitting here, smoking and writing. There’s absolutely no wind at all today so we’ve come here to escape the heat that makes your skin feel two sizes too small. The trees and dense shrubs provide a sort of barrier against the smog so the air’s almost fresh compared to out on the streets.

We’re not on our own in this little fenced-off clearing – there are about thirty other people here, mostly other travellers. But there’s also a sprinkling of Greek tramps. Everyone except me is stretched out fast asleep on the grass. I’ve only slept for about two hours since Areopagus Hill. It was Jake, really, who woke me this morning, clattering around installing his stuff in the bunk next to mine. I didn’t mind, of course; I’ve got him on one side and Beattie’s underneath me. What more could I want?

It’s a total new start for me.

Anyway.

It’s peaceful here now, but it hasn’t been like that all afternoon. My new friends have surprised me, but it’s actually just made me like them more. I thought it was just Jake, but it turns out they’re
both
quite edgy, actually.

It started when we were talking about how far we would go with things.

‘I guess I can’t help myself,’ Beattie says, swigging from one of the beers we’ve brought into the National Gardens with us.

‘What do you mean?’ Jake’s lying on his back on the dusty grass, his face covered by a straw cowboy hat. When he speaks, the hat wiggles in a way that makes me smile.

‘It’s just I have to keep pushing things,’ Beattie says. ‘Do you know what I mean?’

‘Give me an example,’ I say, lighting up a Karelia.

‘I’m always looking for a way to make a situation more exciting, more dangerous.’

Jake sighs beneath his hat. His arm is still against mine. The nearness of him makes it quite difficult to concentrate on what’s going on. I’m itching, and it’s not just my mosquito bites.

‘It started back home,’ Beattie says.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘This hunger for danger.’

‘That so?’ Jake says, sitting up and leaning his shoulder into mine.

‘Sure.’ Beattie’s eyes flick to the point where Jake and I touch.

‘Back in New York City?’ Jake asks.

Sometimes when he speaks to her, I hear scorn in his voice. I hope my friends are going to get on. It’ll be awful if they don’t: I don’t think I could choose between them.

‘Of
course
back in New York City.’ Beattie rolls her eyes at him in a way that makes me think she’s picked up on his snarky tone as well. ‘Me and my friends, we have this riff on situations. We call it The Dangerous Game.’

‘What do you do?’ I ask.

‘Well, it started off just simple stuff, like, say, lifting a lipstick from the drugstore. Then it got bigger – we learned to pickpocket, and that was pretty cool, but we got so good it didn’t really give us the buzz any more. Then we’d do stuff like, I don’t know, go have conversations with these dudes hanging out on street corners, like up in Harlem. Like there we were, rich white kids from the Upper East Side, playing ourselves, but a stupid version of ourselves, really badly buying drugs in a totally uncool way that would get the dudes all het up. That was hilarious, but then it started getting tricky. One kid I know had a knife pulled on him. Another got taken down an alley and had his face trashed. That was too much, really, so we stopped all that. But we kept on with other stuff, like climbing onto the ledge outside my friend’s apartment on the fortieth floor. Running across the subway track. Yeah. Streaking through Central Park. Spitting off the Empire State Building. Dangerous shit like that.’

‘We never did anything like that in Ripon,’ I say, and laugh.

‘Like Russian Roulette but without guns,’ Jake says.

‘Exactly.’ Beattie flashes an almost-too-much smile at him.

‘Wow,’ I say.

Beattie lies back and stretches herself on the grass like a cat.

‘Lie back, Ems, it’s so much cooler down here.’

I lie down and allow the world to spin behind my eyelids. Shortly, Jake stretches out too, lying beside me. His hand nearly touches my own – I feel the electricity of his presence just beyond my fingertips. The sad thing is, though, that if we’re to stay a threesome for the island trip, Jake and I can’t really get together. Whatever he and I want (and I’m pretty certain he wants the same as me), it will have to wait until . . . until what exactly?

‘Do you think of the future at all?’ I ask them both as we lie there. ‘Or the past?’

‘No,’ Beattie says.

‘It’s weird, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘It’s like I can’t imagine myself being, or having been, anywhere else other than with you two, right here and right now, lying on this grass, looking up at that palm tree.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Jake says. ‘It’s like nothing I ever did was ever real until I got to now.’

‘God.’ Beattie rolls over to face us, propping her head up on one hand. ‘Will you two listen to yourselves. Have you quite taken enough drugs today yet?’

At that I start giggling, and Jake joins in. Soon the three of us are curled up on the ground, shaking with laughter, Beattie on one side of me, Jake on the other.

Then the odd thing happened.

A siren starts at the entrance to our fenced-off part of the garden. The gates open, and in stream three uniformed park attendants, one with a megaphone, shouting something so distorted that, even if it were in English, I wouldn’t have understood it.

While he shouts whatever it is at us, the other two men go around the lawns shaking the sleepers awake and making those lying down sit up. They come over to us and a rough pair of hands pulls me up by the shoulder. I gasp in pain, because it still hurts where The French Shit pressed down on my ribcage. I’m still pretty badly bruised there under my T-shirt dress.

As soon as I make a sound, Jake jumps to his feet, like someone’s flipped a switch inside him. ‘Hey, man. What the fuck are you doing?’ he says, towering over the park attendant, who, with his bulging eyes and large double chin, has something of the air of a squat frog.

‘No sleeps,’ the man says. ‘No allowed sleepings.’

‘Don’t touch her like that.’ Jake’s whole body twitches. I’m scared he’s going to hit the little park guy.

‘Cool it,’ Beattie says. She steps in and puts a restraining hand on Jake.

The park attendant sneers something at Jake, his throat blooming with indignation.

‘Don’t talk to me like I’m a piece of shit on your shoe, man,’ Jake says, shaking Beattie off and taking a step towards him. ‘DON’T touch her and DON’T talk at me like I’m shit.’

The man may not understand Jake’s words, but he doesn’t mistake his tone. He leaps out of his reach, pulls a whistle out of his pocket and blows two short blasts. His two companions steam over to join him, flanking him on either side, arms folded, eyeing Jake.

Time stands still as the three men face the – my? – tall boy. The crickets, which have been carrying on their racket almost constantly in the bushes, stop, leaving nothing but silence.

A walkie-talkie crackles in one of the men’s pockets, making us all jump, then the silence falls once more. The other people in the park, all of whom have meekly obeyed the park guys, now watch the action closely, no doubt hoping for a fight to pierce the boredom of the long, hot afternoon.

Jake’s rubbing the tips of his fingers together, like he’s rolling invisible cigarettes. Something tightens in him. He’s like a catapult pulled right back. While I don’t fancy the idea of him launching into the park attendants and landing us all in the shit, and while being so close to potential violence is kind of scary, I can’t help but be fascinated by this new side of him.

I like that I have this fierce friend on my side, protecting me. I like that his affection and loyalty are rare and precious, not fripperies he hands out unquestioningly.

Then Beattie steps into the hiatus, positioning herself between Jake and the men, smiling at the first park attendant.

‘Please,’ she says, her voice sweeter than I’ve ever heard it – almost flirtatious. ‘He’s just very tired.’ She turns to stroke Jake’s arm. ‘He needs to sleep.’ She mimes sleep by tucking her hands at the side of her head. Then she reaches into her bag and pulls out a thousand-drachma note. Reaching forward to shake the man’s hand, she palms it to him.

A thousand drachs! That’s nearly three days’ budget for me. I had no idea Beattie was so loaded.

She stands back, puts her hands on her hips and, smiling up from a coyly lowered face, stretches her chest out in her white T-shirt. From the looks on their faces, not one of the park attendants fails to notice that her breasts are almost completely visible through the thin fabric. ‘Just two hours’ sleep, OK?’

I like that. I like that she used their stupid dog-sex-hunger as a weapon against them.

The first park attendant glances down at the note in his hand and audibly swallows.

‘
Endaxi
,’ he said, pocketing the money and holding up two fingers. ‘Two hour. Next time, police. Understand?’

‘
Efharisto
,’ Beattie says and, astonishingly, she steps forward and kisses the man on the cheek. He goes bright red, turns to signal to his mates, and leads them off sharply, out of the garden.

‘Yeah, man!’ the German hippy near us says, giving Beattie a peace sign before stretching himself out on the lawn to resume his siesta.

‘You’re such a douche, Jake,’ Beattie says, rolling her eyes at him.

So they’ve gone back to sleep again. I wish I could, too. But I’m too excited, I think.

And how come Beattie has so much money she can just flash thousand-drach bills around like that?