Falling Over (9 page)

And then he was in his bed, and all he was thinking about was the horrible way that that boy, Jay Neuworth, had fallen from the top of the building...; then he rolled the wrong way and felt a convulsive pain in his side. He vomited over the side of the bed, and passed out or fell asleep again. When he awoke the world still lurched between clarity and hangover;  between sick guilt and the pain from his wound.

He knew that he wasn’t going into work and that he should call in sick, but he turned onto his good side and closed his eyes instead, desperate for a respite from the way the world slid from one state to another before his nauseous eyes.

~

It was two weeks afterwards when he returned. He told himself that he wouldn’t look up, wouldn’t continue to look for someone who wasn’t there. He ducked his head and shielded his eyes as he approached the grey office block. His swipe-card no longer worked, but one of the security guards recognised him and let him in. But then he said “Know where you’re going sonny?” so maybe he
wasn’t
recognised. “Yes,” he said, “twelfth floor,” and he plunged into the lift.

The empty lift shook as it climbed upwards. He looked at its paper-thin metal walls and imagined them fading away, so that he could see the drop that he was slowing being raised above. He thought of the wind outside
his
office, the cool air, the rattling fragile windows.

He stepped out the lift onto the twelfth floor, his mind curiously blank. There was nothing sensed behind him, that was all gone now. He wondered just what Jay Neuworth had been
feeling
, what terrors and vertigo, but such thoughts were no good now. He lowered his head. He walked towards his office, ignoring the glances from unknown temps. The ‘new boy’ was no longer there; or at least, there was no one there with Jay’s appearance anymore. The manager wasn’t surprised. The idea of some doppelganger, some revenant, had fallen away like a mirage in a world that had returned to being clear and steady and...

He opened the door to his office, and saw one of the sub-managers sitting behind his desk. The light from the windows behind stung the manager’s eyes – someone had removed the blinds, and rearranged the furniture.

“Christ,” the sub-manager said, “you’re supposed to be...” The manager stepped forward angrily, feeling confused by the way the familiar room looked completely different. The feeling of double-vision came back and he almost raised his fists; but he stopped as the door behind him opened. The hair on the back of his neck pinpricked and he felt the last two weeks drop away. He felt sick and tearful again. The boy’s note had cited harassment and bullying at work; people who didn’t even know his name threatening to fire him. But surely
he
had done nothing wrong, he had barely even spoken...

The manager took a step backwards, jerkily.
His
manager was behind him. “Ah,” she said. “Didn’t you get our letter? How did your swipe-card work, it should have been deactivated...” The company had a policy of making people easy to sack, from
his
manager’s staff downwards.

He wanted this double-vision that felt like blindness to end; he wanted the guilt even though he had done nothing wrong to end. The door was still open behind him, and in another world he no doubt left through it... He felt a rush of cold air, felt the tall building sway and rattle. The windows shook with the wind. He felt gentle, almost inviting hands on his back. In front of him was a rectangular gleam of cold clear light – the windows had always seemed fragile, never more so. There was a very tiny increase in pressure. He took one step forward, a second, then lurched to a third. Almost a run... He felt his legs tense in preparation, and he lowered his head to expose his neck.

There was a feeling of cold air, and everything seemed to coalesce in one direction. Somewhere far above or below him, an alarm screeched. So
this
is what it felt like, he thought. So this is what I do deserve, after all.

The Time Of Their Lives

Vince thought he was the only kid staying at the hotel, until he saw the girl at breakfast. Normally he wouldn’t have made eye contact, for he was a naturally shy boy and she looked a year or two older than him. And she was a
girl.
But twenty-four hours of seeing nothing but grown up faces (and wrinkly ones, at that) made him reckless and he risked a smile, a little wave.

The girl smiled too, but nervously, and she didn’t pause in the chewing of a strand of her long hair. She was sitting at a table in the corner of the hotel dining room, with a shrunken looking old lady who had one crooked hand laid possessively on the girl’s knee. Vince noticed they both had a congealed and completely uneaten fried breakfast in front of them, before his own grandma pulled his hand and led him to a free table. From his seat Vince couldn’t see the girl anymore. His grandfather was hovering, dithering behind him.

“Alfred sit down!” his grandma snapped tiredly. Vince’s granddad did so. He looked around.

“Where are we?” he said. He glanced at Vince suspiciously, but didn’t say anything else. Vince’s grandma made a sound halfway between a tut and a sigh.

A waiter appeared, fresh faced and grinning, as if tending a room full of cantankerous old people was
just
how he liked to start his morning. Vince ordered the full English (because his parents weren’t here to tell him no) as did his grandfather. They both wolfed it down when it came, although his granddad looked a little surprised at its arrival. His grandma stirred a spoon through her figs and cereal, stained her lips with tomato juice. She was ill in some unspecified way that Vince didn’t understand, and he’d been told to make allowances for her.

After he’d finished, Vince started to fidget – the quiet, stealthy sound of all the old people eating around him made him feel unsettled; the occasional shout by a loud voice into a deaf ear made him jump. The hotel’s dining room, with its blotchy wallpaper and shabby carpet looked old; it
smelt
old, as if the same old meals just kept getting reheated and served again, because none of the old-timers actually ate them...

The young waiter stood aside to let them pass as they left, but he didn’t smile or even look at Vince (who was after all closest to the waiter’s age) but only at his grandparents. He had a greasy face, Vince noticed, as if he’d applied some kind of ointment minutes before. He said something to his grandma about “the evening’s entertainments” but Vince wasn’t really listening (what entertainment would there be in a dump like this anyway?) because he was looking for the girl. But she was gone; her breakfast was still untouched, and as the waiter went to collect the plates his grandma laughed nervously at something he’d just said, and his grandfather loudly complained that he didn’t understand who that man was.

~

Vince’s mum and dad had seemed nervous when they had proposed that he go on holiday with his grandparents; Vince had been nervous too, for he’d heard them arguing about it the night before, when they’d thought he’d been asleep. Their angry voices had woken him, and he’d sneaked to the top of the stairs to listen.

He didn’t know why all the shouting; he’d been on holiday with granddad and grandma before, so why shouldn’t he again? But his Mum (they were her parents; both his grandparents on his father’s side had died before he’d been old enough to remember them) started crying. Vince couldn’t tell what she was saying but his father’s next words were uncertain and had lost their conviction.

“It’s too much,” he said, “for a boy of Vince’s age... For Vince.”

The next morning, while his Mum was packing his case, his Dad had made sure Vince had his mobile number and whispered to him: “Promise to call if anything happens to your granddad or grandma.”

But nothing had happened, to them or anyone else as far as Vince could tell – by the end of their first full day they’d exhausted the possibilities of the quaint Cotswolds village – the tea rooms, the model village, the ducks on the river. Vince had permission to go off alone as long as it wasn’t far, and he’d found an old arcade machine in the local chippy – its graphics not just worse than those of his games console at home, but worse than the one he’d had before that. Nevertheless he fed ten pence pieces into it, building up extra lives until his grandma came to drag him back to the hotel for dinner.

He didn’t see the girl, or her grandmother, all day.

Back at the hotel he went to his room – at first the idea of his own hotel room had been exciting, but that had been another novelty that had lasted less than a day. For a start, he hadn’t realised how much time he’d have to spend
in
the room, because his grandparents rested so often, and insisted he did the same. And it was an old person’s room – a carpet with the pattern faded out, doilies on the dresser, a painting of a stag not quite straight on the wall. A fly lay stiff on its back on the window sill. And an old, ticking clock that kept Vince from thinking straight. A door connected his room to his grandparents’ – they could unlock it from their side, but there was no key on his.

The second night, he’d just about got used to the ticking clock when the noise started – it took him a few seconds to identify it as music, for it was muffled and had a scratchy, trebly quality, like it was being played on old-fashioned equipment. And it was old-fashioned music too – Vince didn’t know how old, but it made him think of black and white film of pre-war dances.

Despite its muffled nature the music was
loud
, coming from somewhere on the floor below. Vince looked at the gap underneath the connecting door to see if it had woken his grandparents, but there was no light on in their room. They were both somewhat deaf, he remembered, and slept with earplugs in.

A waltz, Vince thought, a jive, is that what they call this kind of music? Was it
meant
to be this loud and distorted? He knew he wouldn’t be able to fall back to sleep while it was playing.

He got out of bed and walked across the room in the dark (he didn’t want to risk his grandma seeing a light through the door and knowing he was up). He cautiously opened the room door – outside, the deserted hotel corridor seemed to pulse and shimmy with the music’s beat. He was surprised it didn’t seem to have woken anyone else.

Making sure he had his room key in his pyjama pocket, Vince quietly shut the door behind him, and cautiously went down the spiral stairs to the lobby. There was no one around, no one complaining at the reception. There weren’t any lights on, and the air was grey as if full of dust; Vince’s friend at school had told him dust was made up of dead people’s atoms, but Vince wasn’t sure if he believed him.

There was a pause in the music, and Vince thought he heard cheers and applause – even those sounds were scratchy, as if just old recordings. The music started again – was it the same tune, Vince wondered; it all sounded the same to him, old music, but wasn’t it
exactly
the same tune?

The music was coming from the back of the hotel lobby, where there was an old carved wooden door, marred with an incongruous plastic
Staff Only
sign. Vince cautiously moved towards the door and put his ear to it. The music seemed to be simultaneously coming from behind the door and to be muffled by distance, as if the door opened not onto the hotel kitchen or office, but onto a vast, echoing, empty plain, where the same tune repeated itself until devoid of meaning... Vince didn’t dare try the doorknob to see if it was locked or not.

Stepping away, he noticed two small faces carved into the old wood of the door – Vince had learnt about those faces at school, the theatrical masks of Comedy and Tragedy. These ones were heavily stylised – the weeping face of Tragedy was deeply lined and its open mouth showed one peg-tooth. Comedy was smooth-faced and its mouth was flung open in a manic grin. But Vince didn’t like it so much – the grin seemed too wide, too strained, too full of boisterous and uncontainable desires. Someone who grinned like that might do
anything
. Comedy also seemed to be weeping, although with laughter, Vince supposed.

He felt hands on his shoulders and whirled around in the grey darkness...

The girl he’d seen at breakfast yelped and jumped back. He flinched at the noise, although surely no adult would be able to hear it over the music. They both stared at each other uncertainly for a few seconds. Then the girl beckoned him forward and cupped her hands round his ear to speak to him. She was just wearing a nightdress and her bare arm brushed his.

“This happens
nearly
every night,” the girl said into his ear, her breath tickling. “Not last night, when you arrived, but every other night I’ve been here.”

“What does your gran... grandma say about it?” Vince asked, speaking back into her ear. He could smell shampoo in her hair, and he briefly noted that it smelt nice, before wondered why he’d think such a thing.

“My granny says she doesn’t hear it,” the girl said. “She says I’m making it up! She sleeps in another room to me so I’m not sure if she
really
can’t hear it.”

“How... how long have you been here?” Vince asked.

“About a week. Two more days to go, ughhhh!” She paused, looked nervously at her bare feet then back at Vince. “I know you came yesterday because there’s no other kids here, so I noticed you.” She looked around the hotel lobby which still echoed with the music. “I better get back, I don’t want to get into trouble. What’s your name?”

“Vince,” he said, “what’s..?”

“Alice,” the girl said, and turned and ran – although she looked older than Vince she still ran like a kid, an unsteady, clattering sprint up the wooden stairs. After a few seconds, Vince followed her, but she was already out of sight.

~

The next morning at breakfast Vince was going to ask his grandparents if they’d heard the music, but the thought of what Alice had said about her grandmother stopped him. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his grandparents, rather that he had the odd thought that Alice wouldn’t want him to speak about it, and the even odder thought that if Alice didn’t want him to do something, then
he
didn’t want to do it.

His grandma
looked
like she’d been kept awake all night by something, for she kept yawning and even ordered a coffee (a drink Vince had never seen her drink before) but she didn’t mention the music. Nor did she seem in bad spirits despite her tiredness; she was smiling more than usual. She was wearing a brooch Vince hadn’t seen before, a large dull blue stone; she kept fingering it as if to reassure herself she hadn’t lost it.

The same shiny faced waiter brought them their drinks – juice for Vince and his granddad and his grandma’s coffee. His grandfather looked worried.

“I thought you weren’t allowed...,” he said in a quavering voice.

“Oh Alfred,” his grandma said, “it hardly matters
now
, does it?” But she didn’t sound irritated like she normally did; she was smiling, and caught the eye of the young waiter and smiled even more. Vince was reminded of something but he couldn’t think what.

“Grandma,” he said suddenly, “how old
are
you?”

She paused mid-sip and looked at him over the top of her cup, and Vince wondered why he’d asked. He’d suddenly realised he didn’t know how old either of his grandparents were, and it had seemed a stupid thing not to know.

But after a long pause his grandma told him, and emboldened he asked how old his granddad was too.

“Well Alfred?” his grandma said. “Your grandson asked you a question.” But his granddad just looked perplexed; earlier he had seemed sharper, more like the joking old man Vince dimly remembered, but now he just looked baffled.

“How
old
am I?” he said, looking around the room.

“Hopeless,” Vince’s grandma muttered under her breath, then told Vince his age herself.

“So Granddad’s older?” Vince said. “By five years?”

His grandma frowned.

“It’s not how
long
you live Vince,” she said, almost snapping as if he had got something wrong. “It’s the quality of how you fill those years.” Her face softened again; she fiddled with her brooch and spoke looking at Vince’s granddad not Vince. “That’s why this holiday is so important...”

But Vince was no longer listening, for he’d noticed Alice come into the dining room with her grandmother, who was hunched over a stick. Alice had black bags under her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept at all (Vince had fallen asleep when the music had stopped just after midnight). His grandma noticed where Vince was looking.

“Probably a bit too old to be friends with you,” she said in a cautious tone of voice. “Probably best not to get...”

“I’ve already
made
friends with her,” Vince said, feeling annoyed with the old woman. “She’s called Alice, she’s nice.”

His grandma looked over her shoulder at the two of them.

“Is she... Is it just her and her grandmother?” she said. “Not... just the
two
of them?”

“Yes,” Vince said, “she has her own room too and... where are you going?” For his grandma had got up and was walking over to the young waiter; she had the look on her face she got when she was angry. Vince didn’t understand why; adults just seemed to make up new things to get angry about whenever it suited them.

His grandfather hadn’t noticed and was eating his fried breakfast in a clatter of cutlery; Vince couldn’t hear the conversation between the waiter and his grandma properly, but he saw the smile never left the waiter’s bland and greasy face.

“... will she pay?” Vince heard his grandma saying. She was gesturing over at where Alice and her grandma were sitting. The waiter appeared to be trying to say something placatory, but his grandma was still snapping. People were starting to notice.

“... ashamed!” the room heard her say. “A child!” Old faces turned up from their food in surprise; deaf voices asked each other what was happening.

Vince’s granddad had stopped eating and looked upset. “Why is she shouting? What’s happening?” he said with a mouthful of beans.

Vince looked back round for Alice, and saw she was already being hurried from the room by her grandmother. Alice looked somewhat shocked, and the small wave she gave to Vince was hesitant.