The Long Fall (16 page)

The man shrugs. ‘Two thousand.’

‘Each?’ Jake says. ‘You gotta be kidding, man.’

In the end we bargain him down to two thousand drachma for all three, which he insists on us paying upfront.

‘What if we don’t like it?’ Beattie says.

She was annoyed about having to part with the money: she’d probably been hatching a running-away plan. But the man just shrugged again and said that we would like it, that he was the best tattooist in all of Piraeus.

Jake goes first, on the basis that he claims already to have one tattoo, in a place that neither of us has seen, but – as he puts it – we might if we got lucky. Beattie and I push him towards the back room, and we sit making faces at each other as we listen to the whirr and buzz of the needle and the occasional curse from Jake. When he comes out, he looks strained and pale – but excited.

‘Look!’ he says, holding out his arm for us to see. ‘This guy is some kind of artist. He’s got it perfect. Perfectly symmetrical.’

He’s right. Underneath its bloom of blood and swelling, the design is indeed flawless.

‘Next!’ the tattooist calls from behind his chain curtain. Beattie and I look at each other.

‘I’ll go,’ she says and strides into the back room. Jake takes her seat, which is next to mine.

‘Did it hurt?’ I ask, tracing the design on Jake’s arm with my fingertips, enjoying the contact.

‘A little,’ he says. Then he brings his other hand up to my cheek. ‘Don’t do it, Emma,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘You don’t have to get it done if you don’t want to,’ he says. ‘Don’t let her force you into it.’

‘She’s not forcing me into anything.’ I pull away from him.

To be honest, I’m getting a bit fed up with his attitude towards Beattie. She’s a natural leader, and he has some sort of issue with that. But it’s unfair on her and I find this idea he’s got that I can’t stand up for myself a bit insulting, too.

‘I’m doing this of my own accord,’ I say. ‘I’ve always thought about getting a tattoo and this is completely the right time and place. I don’t want to forget these days and you guys, not as long as I live.’

Jake sighs and lights a cigarette.

I was lying, of course. I’ve never considered a tattoo before, and, even before I had it, I was playing the scene in my head of when my parents see it. They’ll hate it. They think tattoos are for rough sorts. My mother once pointed out a woman on the bus with a little black bow inked on her ankle.

‘She’s only good for one thing,’ she whispered to me.

Beattie comes out proudly displaying the bloodied design on her arm. It matches Jake’s completely.

‘Be careful,’ she says to me, as I stand to meet my fate. ‘He’s a bit of a creep.’

I waver for a moment. Can I refuse to go in? Clearly not. Not to go ahead will set me apart, spoil the balance we have.

‘Fuck him,’ I say, under my breath, not loud enough for the tattooist to hear in his little backstage booth.

‘Good girl,’ Beattie says.

She hoots with laughter when I pull my
mataki
evil eye out of my bag and hold it out in front of me as if it were a cross and the tattooist a vampire.

I part the metal curtains and go inside. He’s sitting by what looks like a repurposed dentist’s chair, smoking another cigarette, knocking back a glass of what could be water, but which is more likely, from the alcoholic fumes in the room, some sort of spirit.

And he really does smell awful. An oniony, turdish stench of unwashed hot-climate armpits. The fan spinning behind him just circulates the stink.

‘Sit down,’ he says, motioning to the chair. I do as I am told and he presses a button to recline me.

‘Do I need to be lying back?’ I say.

‘Easier for me,’ he says. ‘Bad back.’

I watch out of the corner of my eyes as he dabbles his needle in the ink, his concentration mostly on the TV positioned over my chair, which is showing the same football match the old boys were watching in the bar.

Then he turns and smiles at me, treating me to a gust of heavy breath and the sight of the black gaps where most of his teeth should have been. He bares the underside of my forearm and lies it on the armrest of the chair.

‘You nervous, little girl?’

I smile politely and nod. All I want to do is run away. It’s all coming back to me, horribly. I can feel the rasp and scrape of the stones of the wall as I was pressed into it. I can feel the panic rising.

‘Drink,’ he says, offering me a bottle from beneath his chair. ‘Go on.’

It feels impossible to refuse, so I tip the bottle to my lips. It isn’t disgusting ouzo, for which I’m thankful –– instead, it’s something far rougher, far fierier.

‘Ha!’ The tattooist laughs as I choke on the stuff. ‘Is
Raki
, spirit of my home island, Kriti.’

I grip the evil eye in my hand as he puts his needle to my skin and it starts buzzing. The pain is like sunburn being stung by a wasp. I can’t stop myself crying out.

‘Stay still, or I fuck up,’ the tattooist says. He leans against my arm, but he is at such an angle that his shoulder presses into my breast. I try to tell myself that this is entirely different to Marseille – I have volunteered for this. But the feeling of being constricted, of painful things being done to my body, is too much. I’m scared I’ll hit him.

‘Stop!’ I say.

He lifts his needle and looks at me.

‘What’s the matter now?’ he says.

‘I want Jake to be in here with me,’ I say. The only way I can see it through is with him in here.

The tattooist shrugs.

‘Jake!’ I call, and he is there in an instant, the chain curtains clattering behind him.

‘Will you hold my hand?’ I ask, my voice small, my eyes motioning to the tattooist’s shoulder, which still presses against me.

Jake gives the man one of his looks, which makes him move a little away from me. Then my lovely boy sits at my side, holding the hand of my free arm, and I suddenly feel safe. That’s how he makes me feel. It’s how I can cope with Beattie and all the trouble she nearly gets us into. Because Jake is there.

He’s got my back, as he’d say.

The session seems to go on for ever, far longer than it’s taken either Jake or Beattie to get theirs done. But in the end, when I’m near to passing out with the smell, the pain, the endless buzzing of the sharp needle, the tattooist lifts his instrument and stands.

‘All done,’ he says, standing up and turning his back to us to put his tools and inks away. I hold my arm up against Jake’s.

‘Awesome,’ Jake says.

I nod.

We are identical.

By the time we get out onto the street, it’s dusk.

As we make our way to pick up our rucksacks, I notice Beattie has a carrier bag dangling from her hand.

‘What have you got there?’ I ask her.

‘Here? Oh, it’s just my new pet,’ she says, lifting out the tattooed green Scottie dog. ‘He was too good for that creepy little old man. I’ve liberated him.’

We both stop and look at her.

‘What’s the problem?’ she says, looking at us. ‘It’s good news for you chickens. We’ve done two Dangerous Games today, so we can have a day off tomorrow.’

Riding back on the subway, each jolt of the train set off the pain of the tattoo, which stings like someone’s pressed a hot iron against it. But it feels oddly great! I’ve read that people who self-harm say they do it to make themselves aware that they exist. Where the hurt inflicted by The French Shit and The Australian Shit made me feel ill and defeated, this pain – pain I have bought for myself, my own choice – works for me. I feel more alive than ever before.

Perhaps Beattie’s right. Like the pain of the tattoo, playing the Dangerous Game also wakes me up. It’s a good thing. No one’s really been hurt, have they? I promise myself I’m going to be less judgemental, less responsible, less goody goody, less concerned about what everyone else thinks.

I’m going to burn in the light of the flames, like Beattie!

The tattoo is my blood bond on that.

We got back to Peta Inn and, luckily, our beds were still free up here on the roof. It’s like we never left.

We’re tired, sticky, and our arms are sore. So we’ve turned in early.

In Athens, and in bed by ten. Who’d have thought it?

13

10 August 1980, midnight. Athens. Peta Inn roof.

It’s still a little muggy now, but last night was the most airless I have known it here. If I didn’t know better –
Let’s Go
said
that it hasn’t rained in Athens in August for over a thousand years – I would have suspected a brewing storm.

So, yet again, I had a sleepless night, sweating and smoking to keep the FUCKING MOSQUITOS off me.

Something lovely happened today!

Low because we should have been arriving in Ikaria this morning, we crawled out of our tangled beds when the sun got too hot and slumped on our two top bunks, me and Beattie on one, Jake on the other, sharing a bottle of wine that Beattie had somehow got hold of. Wine for breakfast. Nice.

They’d slept better than me, but were still pretty groggy. And we’d all been bitten to shreds. Some of Beattie’s bites have got infected, too, so they’re like pus-filled blisters. I want to pop them, but she won’t let me near them.

‘I stink,’ Beattie says, putting her nose to her armpit.

‘Me too,’ I say.

‘I didn’t like to mention it,’ Jake says.

‘Asshole.’ Beattie spills some of the wine from her bottle over her head, then she flops back, wine flicking from her hair all over her already-stained mattress. ‘I need a shower.’

‘Me too,’ I say. ‘But I don’t know if I can face it.’

The one Peta Inn shower is filthy and gross. It also has no lock on the door and only a horrible, mildewed curtain between the cubicle and the rest of the bathroom. I tried it once when I first arrived, but, too scared of someone stumbling in on me
Psycho
-style, couldn’t even bring myself to switch it on, which was annoying, because Dimitri charges fifty drachma for ten minutes of hot water, which he controls from somewhere behind his desk.

Jake’s offered to stand guard outside the door, but I don’t want to impose on him like that – the corridor outside is dark and stifling, and anyway, if someone did try to get in, I wouldn’t want to be the cause of another fight like the one with The Australian Shit.

‘Hey, we could have one together,’ Beattie says to me. ‘We can watch out for each other, save money and give Dimitri a thrill at the thought.’

‘I don’t know . . .’ I hug my knees. I’m not too keen on people seeing me naked. I’ve got what you might call hang-ups about my body. But I really do need a wash and, anyway, we’ll soon be on a beach on our paradise island, our bodies exposed to the sun. At some point Beattie and Jake are going to see the rack of ribs on me, the hipbones that I know protrude at my back. They can’t have failed to notice – my arms and legs are a pretty good indication of what’s going on underneath my black dress.

‘Aw, come on, Em,’ Beattie says, sliding off her bunk and pulling her washbag out from where she stashes it underneath the bottom bed. ‘This is going to be fun.’

Knowing she won’t take no for an answer, I grab my own stuff and follow her down the stairs to Dimitri’s desk.

‘Hey, Dimitri,’ Beattie says, sidling up to him, her arm around me. ‘Em and me here want to have a shower.’

‘One hundred,’ he says, glancing up from a magazine spread of naked women doing things to each other. Charm is not one of his strong points.

‘You don’t understand.’ Beattie leans on his desk so that her breasts squash together into a cleavage at the neck of her vest top. She beckons at him with one finger so that he has to move in closer. ‘We want to shower together,’ she whispers.

Dimitri gulps, blushes and raises his eyebrows. Beattie moves her hand up to my hair, which she strokes as if I were some sort of cat. He looks at her breasts, then at her hand.

‘Seventy-five,’ he says.

‘Oh, come on, Dimitri.’ She rubs herself up against his desk. ‘We won’t use any more water than one person. In fact’ – again she leans in towards him, her finger tracing the body of a naked young woman in his horrible magazine – ‘we won’t be using water all the time we’re in there.’

‘Please, Dimitri,’ I say, trying to copy Beattie’s seductive act. I’m pretty useless at it, though.

He looks at us. The thought of what might be going on in his mind makes me feel quite ill.

‘
Endaxi
,’ he says at last. ‘Fifty. But just this once, OK? No more times than this.’

Beattie pays and we run upstairs laughing.

‘Stupid asshole. All men are the same,’ Beattie says as we burst into the shower room. ‘Think with their dicks. You just gotta use it, though, Emma.’

‘Jake’s different, though, isn’t he?’

‘Oh yes,’ Beattie says, looking at me seriously for a second. ‘Jake is very different.’

She pulls all her clothes off and I see her body. She’s fairly slim, but unlike me there’s no sticking-out bones. And she’s got proper, round breasts, not skinny little pockets like mine.

As Beattie turns the shower on, I take a deep breath, pull off my baggy black T-shirt thing and step out of my pants. She can’t disguise the little intake of breath that escapes her at the sight of me. Not only the bones, but also the bruises and grazes still fading from Marseille, and all of it set off by my black eye.

‘Oh, Emma,’ she says. ‘What happened to you?’

‘I fell,’ I say. I can’t tell her. I wish I could, but I can’t. ‘I fell down a bit of a cliff when I was in France.’

She puts her arms around me. ‘Poor you.’

I can’t help it. I start to cry. And Beattie holds me, letting me let go. For me, this is the moment that cements our friendship. Her reaction to the state of me isn’t revulsion, as I had expected – as I always expect of anyone – it’s compassion. Behind that wild, pushy, Dangerous Game-playing loudmouth is a truly good heart.

If only I could get Jake to see that.

The shower, which has been running hot all this time, has fogged up the little bathroom.

‘When we get to the island, everything will be OK, Emma,’ Beattie says, when I have calmed down a little. ‘Me and Jake’ll look after you really well. We’ll have you back eating again, and everything will be OK.’

I actually think it might, now.

She leads me into the cubicle and, very gently, washes me. The tenderness she shows me in that shower nearly makes me cry again. I haven’t been touched with such care since I was a baby. She looks at me with level green eyes that seem to reflect me back at myself, and she rinses the soap from my back, squatting to clean my legs, then between my legs.

I’m sure she didn’t intend it to be sexual – she was just cleaning me with care and love – but I actually felt something when she touched me. It was almost like she was erasing some of the brutality done to my poor body. Perhaps I could manage sex if I only do it with a woman? After all, those morons at school used to call me a lesbian.

But I don’t fancy women. I fancy Jake. I love Jake.

There you go.

I LOVE JAKE!!!!!

When Beattie is done, she wraps me in my towel then goes back in the shower to wash herself.

I stand on the other side of the shower curtain towelling myself down, watching her silhouette through the mouldy plastic, my throat so swollen with love and gratitude that I think I might stop breathing. For the first time in my life I have found a friend – two friends – who really understand me, who know instinctively how and who I am. My new, cool family.

And the day after tomorrow we go to paradise!