Fall Girl (17 page)

He drains his glass, bends his head forward and rubs the back of his neck with one hand. Then he tilts his head the other way and looks up at the sky. ‘You mustn't think the girls who like me are cheap,' he says finally. ‘It's not always just a necklace. Sometimes they want a holiday. A European car. And they don't just
like
me. They love me, usually at first sight.'

All at once I see Daniel Metcalf as a young man, with women like Greta hovering and complimenting and touching his arm and fluttering their eyes. He did not have a family like mine to provide solid ground beneath his feet. He would not have known who to trust.

‘An occupational hazard, I guess,' I say.

‘Interesting, since I don't have an occupation. What's amazing,' he says, ‘is how they never know who I am. “Really,” they say. “You're wealthy? I had no idea!” They love me just for who I am.'

‘You'll be pleased to know,' I say, ‘that I know exactly who you are. I see you as a big fat cheque book, with legs.'

He laughs. ‘That's refreshing, at least,' he says. ‘You might be the only woman I've ever met who's admitted that.'

I was right all along, my reticence, the way I did not overtly flirt with him. Women do that to him all the time. Now I know how to proceed. I must be aloof, not touch him, not behave as Greta has said. I think back over all I have read, things that I now know about evolutionary theory. I clear my throat a little and lean back on my elbows, hang my head backwards.

‘Look at the stars,' I say. ‘Aren't they magnificent? I've often wondered what early man thought of the stars.
Homo habilis
.
Homo
erectus
. The stars seem amazing to us, and we know what they are.'

Daniel pours more wine for himself, and for me. ‘Perhaps they thought the stars were the children of the sun and moon. Or the souls of long-dead warriors.' He takes a sip. ‘Maybe they are. Maybe they were right and we are wrong.'

‘It must be a comfort, to believe in things like that. That those who've passed are watching over you.'

The wine is tingly on my lips. I should not have drunk so much. My lips are probably stained red. Drinking red wine: this is an amateur's mistake. When working, you should only drink white wine or champagne or pale spirits. There is nothing more unconvincing than discoloured teeth. And even then the drinking should not be real. Take a tiny sip, tip a little in a pot plant when no one is looking.

‘If people knew more about the history of science,' I say, ‘they wouldn't be so judgmental about other people's wacky ideas. Science has had some pretty wacky ideas too.' My head suddenly seems too heavy for my neck to support. I stretch out on one side on the blanket, rest my head in my hand.

‘Wacky? What's wacky about science, other than your project of course? All those serious geniuses doing serious genius stuff.'

‘Oh there're plenty of oddball theories. Plenty. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, for a start.'

He raises one eyebrow. ‘Is that even English? What is that?'

‘It's English all right. It was a full-on scientific theory in the mid-eighteen hundreds. It means that the development of an embryo goes through the same stages as the evolutionary history of the species. “Ontogeny” means the growth and development of an individual. “Recapitulates” means repeats. “Phylogeny” means the evolutionary history of a species.'

‘Thanks for explaining.' He laughs. ‘No, thanks. It's much clearer now. Students must queue to get into your lectures.'

‘Look,' I put down my tumbler, digging it into the sand so the wine will not spill. ‘See right here, on your neck?'

This was intended to be an example of the fascinating nature of biology, but instead I stretch out my hand and smooth the short waves of his hair behind his ear. This is wrong, badly wrong. It means I am not different from all the other girls who wanted necklaces and stuff. His hair is coarser than mine, and straighter. It has only a slight kink in the end that wraps around my finger. I hold my breath, I don't dare swallow. But he doesn't speak or move away. He stills and looks right into my eyes.

I have to focus. Although taking advice from Beau is a habit I hope never to develop, I try to picture Daniel as a chicken. His hair could be soft brown feathers. Now I feel like touching it again, to feel if it is soft or wiry through my fingers. This positive visualisation was a stupid idea. He is certainly no type of bird. Perhaps if I thought of him as a crocodile.

Somehow I am sitting closer to where his head is resting. Then, unbelievably, I touch his skin. I run my middle and third fingers slowly around the curve of him a few inches under his jaw, starting in the fine hair of the nape near the bones of his spine and finishing in the soft space above his collar bone. Then again, then again: my fingertips sear three imaginary lines into his skin. At the end of my final sweep the pads of my fingers stop and linger as though they were waiting to feel the pulse of blood in the base of his throat. He shuts his eyes. He does not move or seem to breathe. I can only feel the movement of my fingers and the warmth of the blanket underneath my legs.

‘Here,' I say. ‘When you were an embryo, you had pharyngeal arches right here on your neck.' This is a terrible mistake. I have found my very own self-destruct button.

‘When I was an embryo. That's quite a while ago. I can hardly remember. What are pharyngeal arches?' he says.

‘Gill slits.' My hand feels cold now that it is back in my lap. Bereft. ‘As you grew, they moved. The top one became your lower jaw and bits of your ear.'

As I speak my hand moves again: this time, my thumb runs along the edge of his jaw, pausing at the tip of his chin. Then I brush the back of my fingers behind his ear.

‘But they were never actually gills,' I say. ‘You could never breathe water. And they weren't there because humans are descended from fish. Because we aren't. Descended from fish, I mean.'

If he is going to pull away, make an excuse, reach for the wine, he will do it now.

‘I could not breathe water. And the gills slits were there not because we come from fish,' he says, and he opens his eyes.

The memory of the texture of his skin imprints on me. It is rougher than it should be, as though he worked outdoors instead of doing nothing for a living.

‘Right. And here.'

I move closer. I am almost behind him now and I cannot see his face, which is probably just as well. I lift the edge of his shirt where it lies on the top of his jeans. His lower back is exposed. He will feel this now—the night is warm but there is a cool breeze. He will feel the night air on this bare triangle of skin. In one movement I lay my palm flat on the small of his back, and here I am not slow and rhythmic like a finger tracing the curve of a throat. I am firm. His back feels hot compared with the air and my hand; I start a little. My fingers reach around his hip, indenting, digging a little into his side. His back is smooth and I wish my palm could stay there forever. If he moved, my hand could stay there. I feel a sudden desire to scratch the surface of him with my nails and hook my fingers to pinch his flesh. I would like to hold him still. I would make him cry my name.

‘Here is your coccyx, this flat bone at the bottom of your spine,' I say, low into his ear. ‘It's also called the tailbone because when you were an embryo, your tail was here.'

He takes a deep breath, then releases it. ‘I had a tail?' he says.

I am breathing in sympathy with his rhythm. The only place we are touching is here, my hand in the small of his back. A wave of lethargy overtakes me and I cannot keep my body upright any longer so I lie down and I am stretched out flat in the space behind him; a mirror, an echo.

‘Yes, you had a tail. Right here,' I say. ‘But that's got nothing to do with primitive ancestors. It's not because we evolved from something with a tail. It's about our basic body blueprint, the similarities we share with all vertebrates. We're all animals you know. All connected.'

‘Right,' he says. ‘Tail not about ancestors. Got it.'

The wine, the smell of him, the way the small hairs on his neck move with my breath. My face is tingling. Any moment now he will pivot around on his side and face me and perhaps our roles will reverse. Perhaps he will put his hand on the small of my back, fingers facing down my spine, and his fingers will move the smallest distance and slide under the waistband of my trousers, force their way under the elastic of my pants.

There is a loud shout from down on the beach and the backpackers begin singing a drinking song. I shake my head. I have been touching him, which was the opposite of my intentions. Concentrate, I tell myself. Drink some water. I blink a few times and spin away from him, sit up, crawl back to other side of the rug where I started.

‘So they thought that humans duplicated the different stages of our evolutionary development while in the womb. That human embryos are first fish, then salamanders and tortoises and chickens before they become people. It's a great theory. It's a shame it's not true. It sounds true. We should all carry it around with us, the weight of our past, the remnants of what we used to be.'

‘When you put it like that I don't like it. It seems like a terrible burden. Carrying around everything you've ever been,' he says. His voice seems muffled by the dark.

‘I guess you're right,' I say. ‘Everyone is entitled to a fresh start.'

‘What do you want, really?' he says.

I look right into his eyes, square and true. ‘Relax,' I say. ‘You're safe with me. I only want the cheque.'

He opens his mouth to speak, and we both start at a noise coming as if from miles away, a scuffling on the rocks, murmured voices. Greta and Julius walking up the path toward the tents. Then I see them standing near the edge of the clearing, highlighted by the moon and each holding a torch. They were noisy on their approach, dragging their feet, talking loudly to give us fair warning. Greta is as pale as I have ever seen her. Julius looks ill.

‘Hope we're not interrupting anything,' Greta says. ‘We know we wanted the night off, to chill out for a while. But when we got to the beach the German backpackers invited us over for a few drinks.'

‘We were just talking,' I say. ‘Pull up some rug. Did you have fun?'

‘A most convivial social gathering,' says Julius. ‘They were very interested in my stories about Africa especially that time I was walking under a baobab tree and a cheetah almost jumped on my head, and I of course wanted very much to discuss the wildlife especially the wild boars in the Black Forest outside Düsseldorf.'

Greta and Julius are not themselves. They are speaking with an enforced naturalness but their eyes are darting and Julius is biting his lip. Greta flares her nostrils at me, and bites her cheek. I sit up straighter. I am beginning to have a bad feeling about this.

‘Oh, and Ella,' says Greta. ‘We have a surprise for you. The Germans had already picked up a solo hiker late in the afternoon who'd been having some trouble getting across the creek. Then they had dinner with their new guest and they'd already knocked back three plastic bags of wine by the time we arrived. You'll never guess who it was.'

Greta takes one step aside and buries her face in her hand. It is dark, but in the glow of our kerosene lamp I can make out a figure swaying behind her on the path. Julius steps aside also and shuts his eyes and drags his fingers across his forehead like he feels a migraine coming on. Standing behind them, looking bleary-eyed and damp-haired, wearing a faded blue tracksuit and runners and carrying a hard-shell suitcase, is Timothy.

Now it's my turn to shut my eyes. Tight. Perhaps I will never open them again. Perhaps this is some kind of dream. Yes. When I open them he will be gone.

I open them. He is not gone. He is standing there on my path in my national park in the middle of my sting wearing a tracksuit and looking like an inmate from a mental institution on day release. He holds his suitcase in his arms and it must be heavy. He jostles it and as he changes the angle it begins to drip, no doubt saturated with water from the creek. Drip. Drip. It is the loudest sound I have ever heard in my entire life.

‘Hello, er, Ella,' Timothy says. ‘Dear. My clothes. They're a bit wet.'

I am already tipsy. When I see Timothy standing between Julius and Greta I feel all the blood drain from my body, so the only thing I can logically do is drain all the wine from my glass in sympathy. I cannot summon up my usual frustrated anger. I don't even feel like hitting anything. I can do nothing but stare, as though a Neanderthal had walked out of the bush instead of a Timothy. Daniel stares too but he recovers quicker. He rolls away from me and to his feet, dusts himself off and walks over to Timothy.

‘Imagine our surprise.' Greta looks slightly frightened, probably of me. ‘We were just sitting down for a quiet evening of wine out of plastic bags and German drinking songs.'

‘Not me,' said Julius. ‘I have resolved never to drink alcohol. It would be disrespectful when my mother and fifteen brothers and sisters must walk so many miles to the well.'

‘They were just about to serve up the bratwurst when—you'll never guess,' says Greta. ‘One of the Germans—he wasn't actually one of the Germans, we know that now—who was asleep against a tree with a sombrero on his head, woke up. And lo and behold, it was…'

‘Such a coincidence, like an act of God,' Julius says. ‘This same very good friend of yours, Mister Timothy, whom both Glenda and myself had met in your company at the Zoology Department Christmas party, was right there. Like us also not German and no longer asleep.'

‘He didn't know us, at first,' says Greta. ‘He'd already had a few wines I'd say. We reminded him of our names so that now
he knows
our names
, and told him what we were doing here. So now
he knows
what we are doing here
. We told him you were working and perhaps it wasn't a great idea to disturb you but he insisted. He had made some new friends down there, among the backpackers. He was getting by on remarkably little German.'