Falling: 20th Anniversary Edition
288
Falling: 20th Anniversary Edition
288Paperback(20th Anniversary ed.)
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781760293925 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Allen & Unwin |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2018 |
| Edition description: | 20th Anniversary ed. |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.90(d) |
| Age Range: | 13 - 17 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
When they bring Caitlin home, I'm standing by the side of the road. Nobody has told me when she will be discharged from the hospital, but I have a premonition and have been standing there all morning. I wander about a bit, nip the dead heads out of the geraniums on the windowsills with my barely healed fingers, and grind blades of grass, green again after the rain, into brown shreds. Because of the dense cloud, it looks as if the house, covered in climbing roses, and the convent further down the hill are sheltered under a gigantic waterproof tent. What strikes me most is that the shutters are open: they've been closed all summer to keep out the heat. Now, moist air is blowing in through them.
When the ambulance drives past, I'm standing with my back to the house, on the inside of the bend. Because of the rustling of the wind in the trees, I haven't heard it coming. It's driving up the slope slowly from around the curve, the engine rumbling in low gear. I have plenty of time to look in through the windows. Caitlin is not on the stretcher in the back, as she was three weeks ago, when she was being carried away with sirens screaming. She sits on the driver's right, confidently looking ahead, as if she is used to travelling in ambulances. ('I can't figure you out,' I said to her once. She turned half towards me and answered: 'We were forced to move time and again. That makes you forget how to make close friends.')
The driver takes the bend cautiously. I follow their movement not just with my eyes and my head, but with my whole body, slowly turning, my arms hanging limp by my sides and my chin sticking out a little. Before I quite realise, we are looking into each other's eyes. I want to nod, blink my eyes at her, call out something, but my face turns to stone. She looks at me the way you look at a passing building, or at a pedestrian you don't know and take no notice of. She looks normal, no different from usual, except for the yellowish tinge of her face. She is sitting up straight, stretching her neck out the way some waterbirds do just before flying off. I know how she talks, and how she moves when she says something. I can see the way she will look at something, blink, turn round and say: 'What did you say?' She seems like quite an ordinary girl, the way she is sitting there, a girl who rides her bike down a slope and climbs back up on foot, a girl who, on warm days, walks up to her knees into the water of the pond and suddenly, unexpectedly, with a shout, throws herself full length into the water. A girl who yells: 'Shit, the brakes aren't working!' when she is driving through the hills without her mother knowing.
Our eye contact lasts no longer than half a second — my eyes instantly focus on a point in the distance and she looks down to the road surface — but it feels like an eternity. I become totally conscious of the way I am standing here, in jeans, bare feet in my shoes, craning my neck to see her properly. My hands are still bandaged in a few places. I rub my fingers together to feel the pain, but the wounds are dry, and nearly all have healed over. I am only aware of a kind of insensitivity round my fingernails, and a velvety hypersensitivity where new skin has grown. Suddenly I know why I am standing there so openly: I want to behave as if I am not ashamed of what has happened.
As soon as the white ambulance has disappeared behind the trees, I walk around the house. I say nothing to my mother, who is bringing the garden chairs onto the back porch and covering the cushions with plastic. I go inside and upstairs to the bedroom that was once my grandfather's. I shut the door behind me, and, when I hear my mother coming inside, turn the key. The two suitcases which I have been packing earlier this morning are standing in the middle of the room. I pick them up and put them next to the wall. Next I try to shift the writing desk under the skylight without making a noise, but I can hardly manage: the timber floor is uneven and the desk heavy. The legs make a scraping noise. I climb onto the table and, through the gap in the foliage of the treetops, I look at the courtyard in front of the convent building.
I'm in time. The ambulance is just arriving. It slows and stops. The driver gets out, jumps almost, as if to show how healthy he is. Half skipping, he walks round the car and opens Caitlin's door. First he brings out two grey crutches and leans them against the open car door. He offers his left arm. Caitlin's hand appears on his white sleeve. As I see the movement of the hand to the sleeve, the hair on the back of my neck stands on end. For a moment it is as if I feel her hand on my arm. I know her hands are never clammy, but always cool and dry, as if she regularly washes them under the cold tap. I have touched them nearly every day, every time we went down to the town along the path that shepherds once used, and took the shortcut, clambering over Challon's Bluff.
He helps her get out. While she is laboriously busy moving herself out of the car, I can see nothing unusual. For long seconds I believe that everything has actually turned out all right. But then she makes a quarter turn. She now has her face towards me, throws her head back lightly and stays motionless for a moment. Of course she knows I'm here, standing on the table watching her. I can't see the expression on her face, because the distance is too great. It starts raining gently. A flight of doves drifts in, as if lost, and lands awkwardly a few metres behind her. She takes a crutch under each arm and places her legs apart a little. Now I can see clearly that her left foot is gone.
* * *
'Lucas!' my mother calls from downstairs.
'Yes,' I reply without moving. Caitlin keeps looking in my direction while the driver reaches inside the car to get her luggage. He brings out a blue striped sports bag, is about to put it down but hesitates and, after a few quick words from Caitlin, slings it over his shoulder by its strap. He disappears half into the car again and produces two bunches of flowers.
'I know what you're doing,' my mother calls. I hear her coming up the stairs. Like a cat, I jump from the table. Using every last ounce of strength, I lift and put it back in its place without letting it touch the floor. There are two books on it, great hefty novels which my grandfather must have been reading in the long months before his death. They have shifted, and I put them back where they were. Before my mother gets to the door I turn the key again. She comes in, her hands still wet from the rain on the garden chairs, quickly glances round the room and smiles.
'I could have sworn you were standing on the table,' she says and sits down on the edge of the unmade bed. She dries her hands on her shirt and gets a packet of cigarettes out of the breast pocket.
'I heard she'll be allowed to go home soon,' she says, flicking a metallic coloured lighter. With her head she gestures towards the skylight. 'It's as well we are leaving. There is still such a lot of gossip down there. I am so fed up with this bloody little town. Perhaps they will have forgotten about it all by next summer.'
I say nothing, can say nothing, because all this time I see the amputated leg in front of me and realise that for three weeks I have refused to think about this scene. In my head I become aware of a strange sound that wasn't there before. It's like a Chinese orchestra with lots of bells, and then it changes into a buzzing noise. I sit down so I'll hear it less.
'How is the packing going?' She points at the suitcases. 'I've looked in all the cupboards. They're clear of our things. My bathers I'll leave here, I never use them at home anyway. It's odd, but I seem to have more room in my suitcases than when we came. Yet I'm leaving hardly anything behind. On the contrary, there are a few things I am taking, things he would never let me have.' She sucks on her cigarette in a childish sort of way. 'If we can, I would like to leave tonight. The last train's at seven-twenty.' The buzzing noise in my head is now echoing around the hills. Somewhere a tree is being pulled down and cut into firewood. Because I don't answer, she leans over until her face is nearly against my ear. She is so close I can see the join in the paper of her cigarette. 'That way there might be just enough time for you to say goodbye to Caitlin. I've got a pot of begonias which will only die here. It's on the windowsill outside. Just say they're from me.'
'I went in yesterday,' I say quickly. The noise of chainsaws in the hills has a strange effect on me: I keep hearing the whine of the saws even at night, the way a young mother keeps hearing her baby crying even though it is already asleep. 'We've said goodbye.' She looks at me as if she knows full well that I am lying. Two streams of smoke come from her nostrils. She lets the ash drop into her free hand.
'And you'd better hurry,' she says as if she hasn't heard me. 'While she's still in hospital you can see her. Once she's home, Soeur won't let you in and you'll be left out in the cold. You know what she is like. Since the accident even Copernicus isn't allowed through her gate.' Copernicus is my grandfather's old tomcat who always lies by the back door, even when the house is deserted. His whiskers reach down to the ground, and he is about as easy to move as a mountain range. Fortunately, his independent and cheeky way of walking melted Soeur's heart, and until three weeks ago she'd let him share the dishes she put out in her garden for her numerous cats. The week after the accident, Copernicus became very thin. One afternoon we saw Soeur throwing stones to chase him out of the convent garden, and since then we've been buying cat food in the supermarket.
My mother stands up. The mattress is filled with old wool which has no more bounce in it, and gives off the smell of winter rooms with every movement. 'If you don't, Caitlin might think you don't want to see her again,' she says, nearly whispering. The whining in my head is now so loud that I don't dare let my jaws move apart. I nod, but even that hurts. When she is gone, I stare for minutes at the cigarette smoke which hangs beneath the skylight.
* * *
MY MOTHER KNOWS IT as well as I do: I can't visit Caitlin. Yet, for the last couple of days, she's been sending me down to town where the hospital is, one time with nut biscuits she baked herself, the other with flowers from her garden. Each time, I've wrapped the presents. I've taken the old shepherds' path down, but at Challon's Bluff I've stopped and sat down. I've stayed there the whole afternoon, thinking, constantly running the film of that summer through my head, and always surrounded by the noise of chainsaws. Mostly it was misty, occasionally it rained. Each time, towards evening, I returned home empty-handed. The presents from my mother would be lying in the gorge next to the bluff.
This time, of course, I feel stronger. I know Caitlin isn't in the hospital, so I tie a ribbon round the pot of begonias and begin the descent along the old shepherds' path. Besides, I have a particular question for the doctors and nurses. It has been hounding me for the past three weeks, and I want an answer. I slither down Challon's Bluff, more slowly than usual because I can't use my hands properly, and walk on along the winding road. Since my last visit to the town — the day I went to the police station — everything seems changed. The leaves lie ankle deep and the berries on the bushes spread a sweetish smell. At the foot of the cypress near the plateau lie stones which have rolled there from higher up, and the mosquitoes that normally swarm here have been replaced by solitary wasps, attracted by the smell of rotting fruit. I walk carefully. Caitlin always got down first; she loved speed and the sound of stones rolling under her feet. ('Why do you always go so fast?' I asked her once. 'Because I'm made to win,' she replied.)
The road seems shorter but more dangerous than it used to be. The last stretch is the most difficult. You have to cut through Monsieur Orchamp's garden, making sure he doesn't notice. If he does, you risk having to go halfway back up the hill because he'll come after you, waving his stick, his dog at his heels. The best place to wait for the coast to be clear — Orchamp inside, the dog busy with something, no cars in the street — is right behind the compost heap. I crouch, the pot of begonias between my feet, and while I wait, I remember the many times I have sat here waiting with Caitlin. Because of the stench, we always got away as fast as possible. We walked through the strawberry patch as far as the street, jumped over the flowerbeds beside the drive and strolled inconspicuously along the footpath, like any other couple.
This time, too, the stench is unbearable. Monsieur Orchamp is nowhere to be seen and there is no traffic, yet I stay, sitting rigid, behind the compost heap. Sweat drips down my armpits. I wait and hesitate. It is a full ten minutes before I dare go onto the street.
I walk through the streets of the town, shoulders hunched. Housewives with baskets and shopping bags walk past me, men with moustaches and glasses, carrying ladders and bags, children in prams and on bicycles. I walk close to the walls of the houses. Just past the tin works I think I hear someone call 'Lucas!', but I don't look round and pretend I am deeply absorbed in my thoughts. I make a two-kilometre detour so I won't have to go through the Cercle Meunier, where the Arabs live in dilapidated flats and where I would certainly be recognised.
The entrance to the hospital is an automatic door. For other visitors, the glass panels slide apart, but before I can manage to get through, it seems for a moment that the doors are going to slide shut in my face. The electronic eye notices me just in time. I go in and walk over the white marble floor like a skater who doesn't trust the ice. I know the building. My grandfather was in here for weeks before he went home to die. It is cool and full of pot plants. But it has become a different place: it is the burrow into which Caitlin has withdrawn like a wounded rabbit. Everyone has been to see her, except me. For hours she has talked with her visitors, probably told them all the details. Everyone knows everything and I know nothing.
The lady at reception does not ask if she can help me. She looks at me and immediately looks back to her computer keyboard.
'Name?' she says impatiently because I am silent.
'Lucas Beigne,' I reply quickly, a bit startled.
She types in a few letters and frowns at the list which appears on her screen. 'No one of that name here,' she says curtly. 'Hasn't been before either. Or are we talking about maternity? Is Lucas a baby?'
'No,' I say quickly, gulping air. I look around me. Groups of people carrying flowers are waiting. There is no one there I recognise, but many of them will have read everything in the papers. Because they have nothing to do except wait for me to get out of the way, they look at me. I wriggle my hands into my pockets to hide the bandages.
'Meadows, perhaps?' I say so softly I have to repeat it. The d-sound pops against my powder-dry palate.
'Caitlin Rose?' she asks without looking up. More heads turn in my direction. I shift my weight onto my other leg and bend over as if the brochures with the various tariffs are endlessly interesting. The receptionist taps the screen with her biro. 'You're not very well informed. Miss Meadows left this morning. She'll be coming back after the weekend.'
'Oh,' I say in order to express surprise. 'Left? What ward was she in then?' I try to read the number of her room on the screen, but the letters are too small.
'Orthopaedic, on the third floor, but she isn't there now. Really.' I thank her, but she doesn't hear me. She looks over my shoulder at the people behind me.
'Name?' she says. I move aside and walk to the end of the corridor, where the lift is.
In the lift, I can smell myself. The polished metal doors show a fantastically deformed reflection of my face and my body. When the doors open, there is no one in the long corridor in front of me. But I can sense presences everywhere. The doors to the rooms are open. The sound of TVs comes from several directions. I walk ahead, every now and then catching a glimpse of a face as it is turned towards me. They're mostly old people, their skin as faded as the light that comes through the net curtains, except for a few young girls Caitlin's age. They all have long black hair and deep-set eyes.
Behind me comes the sound of a cart being pushed along the corridor. A nurse looks over its top. Her wooden sandals flipflop on the chessboard-pattern tiles with every step she takes, and the dozens of bottles on the cart clink together in the same rhythm. I walk towards her and wave when she looks as if she is about to go into one of the rooms.
'Caitlin Meadows?' I say as I reach her. Her face has a strange colour, as if all this illness around her is making her ill. Her hairline is red and so are her eyelids. She is wearing a coverall over her bare skin.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Falling"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Anne Provoost.
Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
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