The Long Fall (14 page)

8

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

And boy, did I sleep.

It’s only much later in the afternoon, when the heat’s gone off the day, that I wake to what I think is a mosquito just outside my makeshift sunshade. But then I realise it’s someone giggling. I lift aside the scarf and there are Beattie and Jake crouching on the next-door bunk, their knees almost right in my face, passing a bottle of ouzo between them.

Just for a minute they look like they’ve been caught out.

Hmmm.

‘Aha!’ Jake says. ‘She rises!’

‘What are you two up to?’ I say, smiling. By the size of their pupils they’re pretty speedy.

‘Ta-da!’ Beattie holds out a palm full of silver coins.

‘What’s that?’

‘Spoils. Yours. From your books.’

‘You didn’t?’ I say.

‘Sure. We wanted to ask you first, but you were so out of it, we decided to go ahead anyway.’

‘We went in your rucksack. I hope you don’t mind?’ Jake says.

‘Of course not.’

And I really didn’t mind. What’s mine is theirs. The only thing I don’t want them to see is this journal, but I keep it in my day-bag pillow while I’m sleeping. And
The Women’s Room –
which I really want to read, despite Ena’s inscription – was safe, still tucked under my mattress. I could see it from where I was lying on the lower bunk. What I only realise now as I’m writing this – because when we got back tonight I wanted to look up ferries and things – is that in among the books they sold was my
Let’s Go
,
which initially I thought was a bit of a bummer
.
But I suppose I don’t need it now I’ve got Jake and Beattie. We can find our own way, together.

‘Anyhoo,’ Jake says. ‘It worked out well, because the gift-shop guy was all like, “you stole my book” at Beattie. But she told him it was you and that you’d like just disappeared off to Turkey owing her money, but had left the books, so she thought she’d bring them in and see if she could get something back for them.’

‘When he told us about the stolen book, I offered him two of yours in exchange, like some sort of good girl,’ Beattie says. ‘But he was so cute, he just said that since you’d ripped me off too he’d buy all five off of me. So there you go.’

She tips the coins into my hand.

I blink and shake my head.

‘You OK, Em?’ Jake says. He looks a little crestfallen at my reaction.

‘I mean, like, I was doing you a favour,’ Beattie goes on.

Well, it can’t be undone. And in any case, I’m not planning on seeing that boy again, so I decide just to fold my mortification away. Perhaps I’m being too English about it. Too hung up. Beattie would say that, probably. She might be right.

‘So, then, what’s up for tonight?’ Beattie says, shifting over to the end of my bunk.

‘The beach?’ I look at my handful of money. ‘I reckon I’ve just about got enough for the subway fare.’

‘Cool,’ Jake says. ‘We stopped at the drugstore on our way back, so we’re all set.’ He hands me the ouzo bottle and a couple of pills and smiles at me with his blue, blue eyes and somehow all the problems that Beattie has dumped in my lap seem to melt away.

She can be a bit of a liability, though. What would it be like if it was just me and him? If she’d never bumped into us at that restaurant?

We didn’t ever get to the beach, of course. We just ended up in The Milk Bar all evening, getting wasted.

9

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

Beattie’s done it again.

This morning, after a lost day and night of drinking and pills, Jake had another lie-in. That boy can sleep! He’s conked out again now, while I write, between me and Beattie – who is also sleeping. We’re in the National Garden again, his beautiful cheek resting up against my thigh.

When he’s this close I can imagine him touching me more, and kissing me. I really would like that, I think. The idea of sex scares me, though. I’m not sure if I could cope with that, not after The French Shit. So I’d like Jake and me just to hold hands and kiss and perhaps he could put his arms around me. Perhaps it would get to the point where I could tell him what happened to me and he would understand and wait until I was ready.

Am I in love, I wonder? Am I in love with Jake?

Anyway. Back to what Beattie did (second instalment).

So, earlier on, she and I left Jake another note and headed off to The Milk Bar, where we started with a couple of coffees – Nescafé for her and a
metrio
for me (a Greek coffee that’s not too sweet, which I really, really like). She had a yoghurt and honey as well, but couldn’t persuade me to take one. They’re massive and full of fat and really expensive. It would be a waste of drachma. I’ve completely thrown my budget to the wind the past couple of days and, even with Beattie’s ‘found’ money, I’ve really got to be careful now.

‘Have you noticed how Jake changes when he’s out of it?’ Beattie asks me, licking runny honey off the back of her spoon.

I nod. ‘He’s one of us, though,’ I say quickly. I can’t bear the thought of her saying something bad about him.

‘Certainly.’ Beattie leans forward, puts her hand on mine and whispers, ‘I even think it makes him kinda interesting.’

‘Me too,’ I say, smiling at her.
Do
I have a rival here, I wonder? Do I have to keep my eye on her?

I drain my
metrio
and take a Karelia out of its dainty, white box. Man, are they harsh, though. But I’m getting used to the taste: the roughness may even be anaesthetising my throat against the hot, thick dust of this polluted city.

‘Fuck it,’ I say, and I wave at the waitress and order a beer.

It’s only an hour off midday – we’re in the last bit of shade before the sun fully hits the street – so it feels almost reasonable to be moving straight from breakfast of sorts to alcohol.

‘Make that two, will ya?’ Beattie says to the girl serving us, who can’t be more than twelve years old. Then she gets back to talking about Jake. ‘It’s like his normal gentleness gets overtaken by some kind of dangerous guy,’ she says.

The girl brings us our beers.

‘At least he’s on our side. All that fighting at Manos’s was only because he was defending me,’ I say.

‘Your hero! Ta dah!’

‘And me, a damsel in distress.’

‘At jeopardy from a pissed-up Antipodean.’

I blink. Beattie entirely copied my accent with that last line. She’s got a real gift – not only has she mastered Ripon, but she also softens her own quite deep voice to something much lighter and more like my own. What’s also uncanny is the way that, when she does me, she takes on my character too. Jake pointed it out last night, and, although it’s hard to recognise your own mannerisms, she’s got me down to a T.

We sit in silence, drinking our beer. A dog cocks its leg in the street just in front of us and pisses on the pavement. We watch as the thick yellow stream runnels through the dust, heading towards a barefoot, purple-clad boy squatting on the ground with a tatty velvet board of shitty earrings for sale. He seems oblivious as the piss hits his foot and pools around his baggy trouser bottoms.

The sun nudges the morning shadows further towards the wall, scorching Beattie’s leg. She leans back in her chair and puts her hands behind her head.

‘We’ve gotta get out of this place,’ she says. ‘It’s doing my head in.’

Despite her wildness, I really do like Beattie. And up until what happened next, what she’d done hadn’t been
so
bad. She made amends for the book she stole, and she was right about the wallet she found – the money would only have been taken by someone else. Looking at it like that, the only person who had really done any wrong was me, nicking the hair clasp.

But then . . .

A girl and boy roll up along the street, almost entirely swamped by their luggage of two heavy backpacks, a day sack – which the girl wears on her front – and a large pouch dangling from the man’s neck. When they reach The Milk Bar they stop and, panting like dogs from the heat, stick their noses into their guidebook – the same edition of
Let’s Go
as mine was. I wonder if perhaps it’s the actual copy, bought from the gift shop, but theirs is in a lot worse state than mine.

‘Is this it?’ the boy asks the girl.

I recognise his accent as being from somewhere up near where I come from.

‘Aye,’ the girl says, firmly placing her as Yorkshire too.

‘Do you speak English?’ the boy asks us. ‘Can you mind these for us while we go in and order?’

They dump their rucksacks at the table next to ours and go inside.

Given what happened to the lost wallet, I wonder briefly whether we’re the right kind of people for them to entrust with their stuff.

But I don’t know the half of it.

They come back out followed by the young waitress, who has two Amstels on a tray for them. They sit and drink, then the boy leans over towards us. ‘Bloody hot, intit?’ he says.

The girl waves at us from her seat. ‘I’m Laura, he’s Tom.’

‘I’m Trudy and this is Joanie,’ Beattie says, smiling as I frown at her.

‘Where you from?’ I ask.

‘Harrogate,’ Tom says. ‘Going back on the Magic Bus tomorrow at the crack, worst luck. I could have stayed out here for ever.’

‘No way!’ I start, imagining that the three of us would start on a long conversation about places, people and events we had in common. ‘I’m from—’

‘You just arrived in town?’ Beattie asks, interrupting me and offering them a cigarette.

‘Just got back from the islands. We’ve been out there two months now. I’d forgotten what a dump Athens is,’ Tom says.

‘We’ve been blinded by beauty,’ Laura says. Her face, mostly hidden by a beaten-up straw sunhat, is like a little elf’s. ‘You look sort of familiar,’ she goes on. ‘Where’re you from?’

Beattie leans across between us, obscuring Laura’s view of me. ‘Can I get in more beers?’

‘Cheers, love,’ Tom says.

She nods at the waitress, motioning at our empty bottles. Then she turns the back of her head to Tom and Laura and mouths the words ‘Dangerous Game’ to me.

As the girl comes by with four more beers, Beattie sits back and angles herself towards Tom and Laura. ‘Which islands have you visited? We’re heading out soon, so if you’ve got any recommendations . . .’

‘Well,’ Tom says, ‘we discovered a little piece of heaven on earth.’

It’s a strange turn of phrase. One I wouldn’t have put in the mouth of someone so ordinary-looking. But people surprise you sometimes, don’t they?

‘Really?’ Beattie says.

Tom nods and takes a swig of his beer. ‘Place called Ikaria. Hardly any tourists at all, just a handful of backpackers like us. The people are right friendly, hitching is a cinch, you can camp just about anywhere and they’ve got some of the bloody best beaches and mountains in the whole of Greece.’

‘You have to go to this beach called Nas,’ Laura interrupts. ‘And the honey is out of this world. It’s like butter.’

There’s something drippy about her I don’t like at all. She reminds me too much of home.

‘And the best part is,’ Tom says, ‘we found this little farm where we picked tomatoes in exchange for a hut to sleep in, two hundred drachs a day each and as much food and wine as we could fit inside us.’

‘We didn’t spend a penny!’ Laura says, patting her day sack. ‘Almost all the money we brought with us, we’re taking back home.’

‘Cool,’ Beattie says, and I think
Oh no.

Tom unzips his backpack and pulls out a map, which he unfolds onto our table.

‘There,’ he says, pointing to an island not far off the coast of Turkey.

‘Is it anything to do with Icarus?’ I ask, and all three of them look at me, frowning. ‘You know, Icarus, who didn’t do what his dad said, flew too close to the sun, melted the wax on his wings and fell into the sea and drowned.’

Tom shrugs. ‘I wouldn’t know. I’m a chemist.’

And Laura just giggles.

‘It’s got great surf,’ Tom says.

‘But you have to be careful,’ Laura adds. ‘The currents are awful dangerous around the north coast.’

I’m surprised by this. I’ve always thought the sea around Greece was calm and blue, but then I guess those stories of storms in the Odyssey must have some grounding in fact.

‘And are there cliffs and sandy beaches?’ Beattie asks.

‘Loads,’ Tom says. ‘It’s a bit windy, but apart from that, it’s paradise on earth.’

‘Perhaps we’ve found our place,’ I say to Beattie.

‘Talking about which, we’ve not got anywhere to stay tonight. Any ideas?’ Tom says.

I’m just about to recommend the Peta Inn when Beattie jumps in.

‘There’s a really good place up Mitropoleos called Funny Trumpet Guest House,’ she says. ‘It’s meant to be the best in Athens. If they’re full, you can keep heading up that way.’ She gestures with her hand towards Mitropoleos, which is in the complete opposite direction to Nikis, where we’re staying. ‘There’s loads of cheap places up there. But don’t take your backpacks while you look – it’s way too hot for that. Just leave them here and we’ll mind them for you till you find somewhere.’

‘Would you?’ Laura asks, her little white teeth showing through her pretty smile.

She actually looks fit to drop. A lot of travellers arriving in Athens do – especially the smaller girls, for whom lugging round twenty-five-pound rucksacks in the midday heat is a serious challenge. Even if it weren’t for being attacked so regularly, my neck and shoulders would still hurt from carrying my rucksack.

‘Sure,’ Beattie says. ‘I know what it’s like. It feels like running free when you can leave the baggage for a while.’

‘Cheers,’ Tom says. ‘Let me buy you a couple of beers to say ta.’

‘Listen to Mr Moneybags,’ Laura says, giggling.

He signals again to the waitress for two more, and she brings them to our table to line up against our unfinished drinks.

‘Leave that, too.’ Beattie points at the day pack Laura is still wearing clamped to her front. Laura looks at Tom, who nods.

“Thanks,’ she says, taking it off and handing it to Beattie, circling her freed shoulders.

‘Weighs a ton,’ Beattie says, putting it down at her feet.

‘It does pull on my neck a bit.’

Tom places a pile of coins on the table for our beers while Laura fishes out a map and gets Beattie to point out where Funny Trumpet is.

But I knew that Beattie was sending them off on a wild goose chase. Funny Trumpet is indeed supposed to be the best hostel, but everyone knows you have to book up in advance well before you turn up. There was no way they were going to find a bed there.

We watched them drift off along the street like sunburned children, freed of all their luggage except the pouch, which Tom kept around his neck. The shops were all closing for their long afternoon breaks and, apart from our poor, hardworking girl waitress and an old man dozing on a chair in the shade of a closed greengrocer’s awning, there was not a Greek to be seen. The muzz of morning beer mixed with midday sun descended on me. It’s a great feeling. The trick is to keep it topped up with just enough alcohol to stop it turning into a headache, but not so much that you start slurring, become incoherent or fall asleep.

‘What was all that about?’ I ask Beattie as soon as Tom and Laura are out of earshot.

She sits back and taps the side of her nose.

‘But why did you make up names for us?’

‘So they won’t be able to find us,’ she says. Then she hauls the day pack up onto her lap, unzips it and rummages around. ‘Stupid girl, leaving her bag with me.’

‘What are you going to take?’ I say. ‘Not her passport and stuff?’

‘Nah. We need her to be able to go home on the Magic Bus tomorrow. Just stuff like . . . Ah.’

She pulls out an envelope that had been tucked away at the bottom of the bag.

‘“Almost all the money we brought with us, we’re taking back home”,’ she says, patting the day bag and copying exactly Laura’s thick Yorkshire accent and simpering tones. ‘Oh no you ain’t, honey.’

And I just sit there, my mouth hanging open, as she counts out two hundred pounds in twenty-pound notes and slips the remaining forty back into the envelope, which she places back right at the bottom of the day pack.

‘What?’ she says, catching my shocked expression. ‘It’s not like they’d budgeted to have this much. I’m doing them a favour. Life should never be too easy.’ She stands up. ‘Now we’d better clear outta here before they get back.’