On the Edge

Three

Three

It’s a a mile or so from the lighthouse back to Craighston village. Fifteen or twenty minutes tops. Unless you have bare, sore feet and torrents of rain drumming on your head. I almost gave up on the tarpaulin, not sure if the barricade it gave me against the rain was worth the struggle to hold it tight against the wind. It might be easier to dump it and walk free. But then the rain would beat against my head again. Its noise was already starting to eat away at my brain and cut my thoughts into pieces.

Keep walking. Get to the hotel. Keep walking.

Ahead, the road ran past one of the great lumps of granite that litter this part of the coast. The lighthouse beam lit up the clouds behind it and, for a moment, the rock’s outline was sharp and harsh.

The beam circled away and the rock became less distinct. More of a dark hole looming over the road than a thing of any substance. Its shape shifted slowly. A trick of the night, I thought. But the closer I got, the more the granite became a living thing, a great bear maybe, moving its weight from leg to leg as it readied to rear up and snatch me with a great clawed paw. My feet slowed and my heart thumped. I forced myself on. It was only a rock. There were no bears in Cornwall.

Keep walking. One foot in front of the other.

It was a d**g dream. A phantasm called into life by the cells in my brain flailing in paranoia as the chemicals ebbed to nothing. But knowing that didn’t help. The bear waited for me. Any minute now, it would lean forward and amble towards me. I’d smell its damp fur and the faint rust of blood and my skin would feel the heat of its body before it lashed and raked me with its claws.

A light came from behind me and lengthened my shadow out onto the road. It lit the cracked and folded surface of the rock and chased the vision of the bear away. A wave of spray washed over my legs and feet as a car sped by. The shock of it made me stumble and fall onto the scrubby grass at the side of the road. I’d heard nothing. The rain on the tarpaulin and the battering of the wind blocked out everything else. When I struggled back up, the car had stopped a few yards ahead. Its driver must have seen me. It reversed and something about its slow creep unnerved me. Fear, hot and raw, poured acid through my veins, blanking out everything but the glistening car rolling noiselessly back towards me.

My hands met a thick branch in the short grass, enmeshed in strands of bramble. I ripped the spiky tendrils away, not caring that the thorns tore my fingers. I gripped the stick and waited.

The car stopped on the opposite side of the road from where I stood. It was a bit battered. Lines of rust curled along its dents. A river of shiny tarmac separated us. Rain ran down the windows and obscured the figure inside. A dark grey blob of a face turned to stare at me and the window rolled down. The stick dug into my palm. A man. I waited for him to put his head out of the window. The stick waited. He said something but it was lost in the storm.

A little rational thought sneaked into my brain. A Good Samaritan, it said. He wants to help. The man leaned back into the driver’s seat and the dashboard light of the car caught his face. It was not the face of a Good Samaritan. His eyebrows hooded his eyes, making black holes. His face was a mask. I willed him to leave but he leaned out of the window.

‘Go away,’ I screamed. ‘Leave me alone.’

His voice carried through the storm. ‘You need a lift.’

It was not a question but I shook my head.

‘You need a lift,’ he said again and opened the door. ‘Where are you going to? There’s not much nearby.’ Fear pressed my hands tighter round the stick and lifted it a couple of inches. ‘Let me give you a lift. You’re wet through. You can’t stay out in this storm.’

I stepped back and pushed one hand towards him with the palm flat, like a policeman directing traffic. He hesitated and I grabbed at the last shreds of control, holding the fear tight inside me as I turned and staggered away onto the path.

The car started up. I heard it through the drum of the rain because every cell in my ears was straining backwards. The urge to whirl round and smash the car whipped my blood to a froth but I held on to myself. Drugs, it was the drugs doing this to me. I was sure. And I stumbled towards the great rock, reached it then ran behind a low boulder split off from the main bulk.

I looked back. The car hadn’t moved. I lifted my hands to shade my eyes against the glare of the headlights; he turned them off. I could see him now, leaning forward and staring at me through the back and forth of the wipers. We stayed like that for an age. Gazing at each other, until the lighthouse beam went overhead once more and dragged my eyes upwards. When I looked back he was getting out of the car. Its inside light shone briefly and my eyes took a snapshot. He was the wrong shape for a climber. Too square. But powerful in a contained sort of way. A good man to have at the belaying end of the rope.

He unfurled an umbrella. Gaudy, striped, promoting some sporting event, it looked all wrong in the battering wind and rain of the storm but its incongruity calmed me. The noise of the blood whacking against my ears lessened.

‘I can’t leave you here like this,’ he shouted. The rain was slowing and lightening. It would stop soon and all of a sudden, like a baby’s tears. He took a step towards me and I slipped sideways and further round the rock. ‘I won’t hurt you.’ He sounded pissed off. Monumentally pissed off. He muttered something I didn’t catch. ‘I’m Nick,’ he called. ‘Nick Crawford. I live up beyond the fields.’ He jerked the umbrella inland to where a smaller road ran high up but parallel to the coast road, linking a straggle of cottages and small farms.

‘Go away.’ I tried to shout but my words had no force and I wondered if he’d even heard them.

He did nothing for a moment and then went to the boot of the car. I thought about disappearing into the night but the path to the village was right by the road at this point and the cliffs fell sharply away on the other side. No hope of escaping once I left the rock. He came back round and I saw he’d put on a creased yellow oilskin.

‘Can you drive?’

The words took a while to make sense. I nodded.

‘Take the car then. I can walk from here.’

He gestured to the door and half-bowed like the doorman of a fancy hotel showing me the way. The rain stopped. He put out a hand from under the umbrella and laughed.

‘It’ll be a lovely night now, you’ll see. It’s always like this. One minute rain, the next clear, the next… well, you never know. Look, the car’s running. Get in it and go…’ He closed the umbrella and shook it. ‘Where are you going to?’

I found my voice. ‘The hotel in Craighston. The Seagull.’

‘OK I’ll call round tomorrow morning and pick it up. You can leave the keys at reception if you don’t want to see me.’ He laughed and I found myself wanting to laugh with him. He was as crazy as I was.

He started to walk away, then turned. ‘What’s your name? It would help to know.’

‘Jen Shaw.’

‘Jen Shaw. Short and sweet. Goodnight, Jen Shaw. Safe journey home.’

He walked away and I fixed my eyes on his back, watching in case he made a sudden turn and raced back, but, as the distance between us grew, he became less and less distinct until all I could make out were the luminous strips on his jacket bobbing up and down like two demented caterpillars dancing against the black.

Nick Crawford. Not a name I knew. Not a local name. And he didn’t look or sound local. He must be an incomer. A recent one. I would have remembered if I’d met him before.

The sky was clearing. Only a few wisps of cloud remained and they were scudding inland, fleeing the wind coming off the sea. The dampness on my face was drying and I tasted the salt of the wind on my lips. It was chilly. The great beam of light passed overhead once again and ignited cold sparks in the sky. I shivered. No sign of Nick Crawford. He must have turned off the road to climb up to his house.

With the passing of the rain a kind of peace settled in my brain.

I peered into the car. The seats were battered and the interior grey with age but it was clean. And probably warm. The thought of heat drove everything else out of my mind and I opened the door and got in.

I turned the heating to full and locked all the doors. The glorious warmth drove the chill from my body in violent shakes. I didn’t care. They would pass. My feet hurt as the feeling came back but not enough to stop waves of drowsiness engulfing me. It was awesome. Like swimming in hot soup. My thoughts left my body and went wherever they go when I sleep, and I passed out.

I don’t know how long I was out for. Long enough for the steering wheel to make a dent in my face and the dribble from my mouth to crust in a vampire drool. The car stuttered and rumbled again. I opened my eyes and saw a face looking in at me through the windscreen. Shock tingled through my veins and I screamed. The face vanished. I flicked the headlights on full and they caught a figure disappearing round the back of the rock. I thought they had a torch but it was difficult to tell in my half-asleep state. The car was locked. But there could be another key. Probably in Nick Crawford’s house. Hanging on a hook by the back door or in a bowl on a shelf in the hall. That was where it would be. Nothing to stop him picking it up and coming back down to the car. Or giving it to the grey figure I’d just seen.

I forced myself to be reasonable. It was probably an insomniac like Ma taking advantage of the break in the weather to get some fresh air. Or someone from the fishing boats heading home and curious as to why a car was parked and running on the headland road. So I focussed on the controls of the car, released the handbrake and, careful of my bruised and grazed feet, drove off. I made it back to the hotel safely, although tremors and stray thoughts snatched at my concentration.

The clock in reception showed half past five and there was no one around. I panicked for a moment in front of the door to my room. I had nothing with me. No coat. No bag. Nothing but the tarp. So no key. The brass door handle slipped and rattled in my shaky hands – then opened. I fumbled the clothes off my body and turned the shower on full, letting the hot water sluice the mud and dried blood off my skin. My head hurt and when I put my hand up to check it, I found a large bump covered by a tangle of blood-matted hair. Another injury to add to the tally of cuts and grazes. I let the water run gently over my head. It flowed pink through my hands, with a few flecks of solid blue. I wondered what they were. Bits of tarpaulin maybe? The wobbles were severe now, as well as the tiredness. I patted myself dry and, for the first time, thought back to the evening before. Or tried to. Tried very hard. But nothing came. And I don’t mean the kind of jumble of images those druggy nights often left behind. The grating edges of words and laughter you chase but can’t quite grasp. No, this was a total blank. Rien. Nada. Nothing. As if my memory had stepped off a cliff.

One minute I’d been sitting on the bed, the next, the wind and rain were battering me against the lighthouse wall. Panic started to flood my head. The air in my room thinned and my lungs snatched at what was left. An anxiety attack, I told myself. Common when coming down. Breathe slowly. Distract yourself. Watch TV. Make a hot drink. Whatever works for you. None of it worked for me.

So I thought again of the climb up Luna Bong. I’d leave everything else till tomorrow. Maybe then my scrambled brain would have found the missing hours. With the memory of the rock beneath my fingers soothing me, I went to bed and fell asleep as the last few metres of the climb dissolved into the blue sky.