Catch Me When I Fall (7 page)

lake at the end of the tangled stretch of land, a dozen or so higgledy-piggledy bedrooms with the suspicion of damp under the wallpaper. It was perfect: trees for adults to climb; water for them to fall into; a long, shuttered dining room where they'd have to sit round a single table together in the evenings, no other building for miles and miles. It had been bought recently by friends of friends of Meg, who wanted to get away from their stressed life in London and were now discovering what real stress was, among the cowpats, under the dripping trees.
"This feels good,' I said. "It reminds me of when it was just you and me.'
"Yes," said Meg, with a hollow laugh. 'Those were the days.' There was a pause. I thought she was looking at the map. 'I suppose it's all right. About Deborah. I mean, I hope she won't sue us.'
"I hope she will,' I said. "We'll show her.'
Meg just coughed.
London feels like a different city according to which way you leave it. When you head towards Oxford, it seems to dribble on and on and then you blink and everything's green. Water sprayed up from the wheels of cars as the rain, which had been threatening all morning, started to fall at last. I turned on the windscreen wipers and, through the arcs swept clear with each stroke, saw a grey, sodden, empty landscape. I turned on the radio, jabbed at buttons, jumping between stations, then gave up and turned it off again.

Corinne and Richard were waiting. They'd lit a fire in the large sitting room, and made a pot of coffee. Corinne handed round a plate of little sponge cakes with raspberries on top and I devoured two, one after the other, my cheeks bulging like a hamster's. I stretched out my legs to feel the warmth of the flames and sighed. The stream gushed and burbled outside, and when the

sun came out from the heavy clouds it threw weak beams of light over the wooden floor.
'Maybe I should do it,' I said.
'Do what?'
"Run away from London.'
'I wouldn't call this running away, exactly' 'Escape,' I said dreamily. 'Begin afflict.' 'What? Afflict?"
'Begin afresh,' I corrected myself. My eyelids were dragging down, so I snapped them open, sat up straighter, gulped my good, strong coffee, listened to the rain on the windowpanes. The garden outside was damp green; on Saturday, seven men and five women would be playing games out there.
'Right,' I said, reaching for the last cake. 'To work."

We went to the bedrooms first: fine, except that a fire blanket and mini-extinguisher were needed on the top landing. Then we visited the kitchen, which had a blissful half-sized door that opened on to the gushing stream.
'Is this safe?' asked Meg, always the practical one.
'We're not opening a cre here,' I said.
'We keep it locked,' said Richard. 'It's an architectural feature.' With some difficulty, I drew back the heavy set of bolts, pushed open the little hatch, and pushed my head out. Flicks of water stung my cheek and the wind whipped my hair across my
face. I sighed and closed my eyes.
'Holly?'
'Mmmm. Coming.'
I pulled my head in, shut the door.
'Do you want to discuss the food for Saturday evening?' "I'm sure it's fine.'
"I've done a menu for lunch, and breakfast on Sunday and made a list of ingredients that are available for them to use in the

curry you want them to cook, so if you care to look at it and ' "I'm sure it's fine,' I repeated.
'Oh.' Corinne looked taken aback, but she rallied brightly. 'Then there's the drink."
'I trust you completely.'
"But '
"Just make sure that there's more than you think necessary, then double it. Let's go and have a look outside.'
"Do you want to borrow some boots? The grass is still wet.' 'It doesn't matter."
Meg and I walked past the stream, through what must once have been a vegetable garden and over the spongy ground towards the lake. It was gorgeously dank and green. I picked up a stone and threw it into the water, watching how the duckweed closed over it immediately, leaving no trace. We looked at each other and giggled.
"I'm looking forward to seeing them fall off their raft into that,' I said.
'We want them to recommend us to their friends,' said Meg.
"We'll give them blankets and we'll sparkle and flutter our eyelashes at them,' I said. 'They'll recommend us.'

Meg pulled a face. "You make us sound like escort girls," she said.

"Aren't we?' I said.
'Stop it, Holly," she said. 'Don't talk like that. You've seen the letters we've had -raised productivity, improved morale.'
I put my arm round her shoulders and she put her hand on
mine. "That's right, my dear,' I said. 'I've read the brochure. Do you notice something?'
'What?'
"There are some birds making an annoying noise and the wind is rustling in the trees, but apart from that it's almost quiet. It's difficult to believe that London's in the same world.'

"We're about to go back there.'
'What I'd really like to do is check into one of the rooms myself, go to sleep and you could wake me up when you come for the weekend."
"Unfortunately you've got a life you have to deal with. And a husband.'

Meg drove back and I tried to read the map, and talked. 'Since I couldn't book a room, what I'd really like to do is climb into the back and go to sleep.'
'Be my guest,' said Meg.
People always say that that's when they felt safest. Their parents would drive them back from somewhere late at night and they would sleep and feel safe. My main memory of being driven by my father is that we left London to go to some party and we didn't find it, and then my mum and dad started having a row and my dad lost control of the car and drove off the road and we ended up in a ditch. A farmer had to pull us out with his tractor. It was quite fun, actually.
I didn't crawl into the back but I did fall asleep and I only woke when Meg pulled up outside my house and said cheerfully that we were home.
'You're the best driver in the world,' I said. "I didn't feel a thing.'

7

And then it was Sunday evening and it was all over. I came back into the house to find Meg in Corinne and Richard's kitchen, her hands cupped round a mug of coffee. 'You can come out now," I said. "They've gone.'
Meg gave me a weary grin. 'Are you sure there isn't one hiding somewhere?'
I shook my head. 'I counted them all out,' I said. 'Is there any more of that?' Meg nodded at a cafeteria by the sink and I poured black coffee into a mug with a jaunty message written on it. 'I always feel there should be something more,' I said. 'Shouts of "'encore" and bouquets of flowers.'
'Just so long as their cheque doesn't bounce,' said Meg. 'How much sleep did you get?'
"I'm not sure. Did I sleep?'
'I did.'
'You always do.'
'It's not a crime, you know. Sleep's not immoral or lazy. You
don't have to stay up all night to prove yourself.' "I know that. Meg?" "Yes."
'Do you ever feel squeezed out?'
'Squeezed out?'
'Like one of those old cloths you use for wiping the floor. Then you twist it and lots of horrible dirty water pours out.'
'Let me get this straight,' said Meg. 'In this image, if you're the old cloth, the horrible dirty water must represent the employees of Macadam Associates with whom we've just spent the weekend.'

'And then you put the cloth into a cupboard and when you next find it, it's gone all stiff and nasty and crusty."
Her tone became more serious. It's Sunday evening. It's raining. You've worked solidly for days.'
'I don't know if "solidly" is the fight word. "Hollowly", maybe."
"You're tired,' she continued. You need to go home and see
Charlie and have a long bath and sleep without the alarm clock." "Yeah."
'We can come into work later than usual tomorrow. I think
we owe ourselves that, at least.'
"In lieu of paying ourselves.'
'Maybe we'll be able to take a proper salary before long. We're doing well.'
"Sometimes I think the only grown-up thing about my marriage
is that we've started to worry about our mortgage.' We'll be fine,' said Meg.
'You're being very reassuring this evening.' ..
She glanced at me briefly. 'That's my role, isn't it?" she said drily.
'What about you?" I said.
What do you mean?'
'Are you seeing that guy? Todd? Or was I so horrible to him that I scared him away from you as well as me?"
"I'm not sure,' she said. She stared straight ahead.
Have you seen '
Leave it. I don't want to talk about it."
"Whenever you do want to..." I said. I was going to add something, but I couldn't make the right words come out.
Everyone has their own story, but sometimes they don't know what the story is, or where they fit into it. Say your parents think of you as fickle and irresponsible; say your friends think you're a cheery extrovert; say at work they insist that you're the life

and soul of the party: and there you are, you're trapped in a version of yourself, in your narrow margins, and the terrible thing is that mostly you don't even know it. And because we're all a mystery to ourselves and we need other people to explain us and make us come true, you gradually see yourself like that as well. It's the story you think you're in. A comedy. A farce. You lose the other bits of yourself. But every so often you're allowed to see yourself differently, tell yourself differently. You become another story altogether, deeper and stranger and more interesting, with new meanings.
Meg and I earn our money by shaking people up, letting the pattern fall differently for a while. But then they go home, and we go home, and what's really different? Your old world closes round you, your old self returns. People think that they can change their lives and themselves. Build a raft and cross a lake, play a game where you have to relax and fall backwards into the arms of your colleague, sit round in a circle talking about all the things in your life you've ever done wrong and all the choices you regret. And then you'll be able to start again.
When I say 'you' I mean me, of course. Me, Holly Krauss, whom I can't escape however hard I try. I'd tried so hard that weekend, harder than ever before, the most energetic person among the whole crowd of energetic, intoxicated people, so that now my tank was empty, my cupboard was bare.
I was thinking about Stuart, one of the participants. He was about forty, maybe a bit older, gangly, with long, slightly dirty, straw-coloured hair and a faintly decadent air. He smoked foul-smelling roll-ups out of the corner of his mouth and wore a battered leather jacket at all times. He was the cynic of the bunch, and kept a faint sneer on his face during the group activities. He'd been my challenge, the one I was going to disarm. So I'd tracked him down after dinner, and we'd stayed up late, very late, until everyone else had gone to bed and there was

only the sound of the wind and the stream outside. After we'd made inroads into the bottle of Scotch that Richard had left on the table between us, he told me about his two sons.
'They" re nearly young men," he said. 'I left their mother when they were three and two. I was hopelessly in love with this other woman, but that didn't last long. Anyway, they're teenagers now. Fecgal's almost nineteen, for God's sake. They have girlfriends and take drugs and I might as well be invisible to them. They look through me. I say things and they don't seem to hear me.'
"It'll change when they're older,' I said.
'Maybe. Probably. But it's the oddest feeling, as if I didn't exist. I'm like a ghost in my own life.'
He rolled another cigarette and put it into the comer of his mouth.
'I bet you never have that feeling,' he said, after he'd lit it and taken a long drag. 'I bet no one ever treats you as if you didn't exist. How could they? Anyway, you wouldn't let them, would you?' H gave a laugh.
'I don't know,' I said. 'I wish they did. I think I'd like it.' I asked him to roll me a cigarette and he did it in a few deft
movements. I poured us some more whisky. "Now, what about you?' "Me?"
'What's your story?'
My story. I considered the welter of anecdotes that were rehearsed and fairly painless by now: my father's business ventures, Which had seemed funny at the time but not so funny when I looked back at them years later. Or was it the other way around? Was it that they became funny when turned into anecdotes? Or my two expulsions from school, for unruly behaviour (the first) and drugs (the second). Or there was the time [ fan away from home, aged eleven, taking the beloved

family dog with me, all the way to the corner of the road. That was a sweet story. I could tell him that one. I shook my head.
"Another time. Now I need to go to bed.'
"I hate getting older,' he said.
I gave an internal groan. It was the darkest part of the night: early-hours, whisky-sodden confession time. "Why's that, then?"
'Everything, really. Doors closing. Dreams fading. Kids treating you like you're some old has-been. Everything seemed so easy when I was your age. You'd get drunk and the next morning feel fine. I'm going to feel shitty in the morning, but I bet you'll be as fresh as a daisy.'
'Speaking of morning..."
'You think, Is this it, then? The life I wanted. Is this all there is?" 'How old are you?' Forty? Forty-one? Surely it's a bit early
to --'
'And then there's sex."
'Stuart..."
'I don't know why I'm telling you this. Somehow I don't think you'll laugh at me. Not like some people. You see, I've always been good at sex.'
As if sex was like high-jump or mental arithmetic, I thought.
'Never any problem,' he continued. He sloshed more whisky
into his glass and downed it. 'Until the last couple of years." 'Ah," 1 said neutrally.
"Now, well, I can't -you know -rely on myself any more. If
you know what I mean."
"I think so."
"It's a vicious circle -the more I lose confidence, the more of a problem it is. Women don't know what it's like.' He went very red. 'I used to be able to control myself. Now it just.., well, it's over too quickly. Do you know what I mean?'

I made an indeterminate sound.
'Now you think I'm pathetic.'

'Not at all. I bet you'd find lots of your male friends have go
through something similar, only they never talk about it.' "You think so?' Im sure of it.'
'I keep thinking there must be some woman out there who help me through this. I've got a picture in my head, someone outwardly cool and collected.'
At least he wasn't thinking of me.
'But inside she's troubled and passionate.'
"Well...' I began.
"I should never have cheated on my wife. I would have bee all right then. Perhaps I'm reaping what I sowed. God's revenge, to make me a laughing-stock. Have you ever cheated on husband?"
'No.' I managed a tone of outrage that he should even assume
and added, 'We've only been married just over a year.' 'What's his name?" 'Charlie.'
'I hope Charlie realizes what a lucky man he is.'