Bright Air (7 page)

Finally we reached a door marked
LIBRARY
, and she stopped and indicated another door nearby with a label
ROSALIND
on it. ‘My room is close by, you see? So convenient.’

The library door opened into a small room lined with bookcases on three walls, the fourth with tall French windows leading onto another veranda and dense greenery beyond.

‘The library is Anna’s special baby,’ Rosalind said. ‘There were no books here before she came. We used to sit like zombies in front of the TV, but now we have a reading group. We have a section of normal-print books …’ she indicated one wall, ‘as well as large-print books, and over there audio books.’

There were several armchairs, one occupied by a silver-haired woman wearing headphones, who seemed marginally less comatose than the folk in the corridors.

‘Wait here and I’ll see if I can find Anna for you.’

While I waited I idly scanned the authors on the shelves—Sayers, McDermid, Paretsky, Christie, Walters, Lord, Cornwell,
Evanovich … It took a moment for the penny to drop. When I opened the covers I found ‘A. Green’ written inside many of them, some yellowing with age. I remembered a conversation with Luce years before, joking about her flatmate’s choice of reading matter. Anna had three kinds, strictly segregated into separate piles on her floor, as if she were afraid they might contaminate each other—coursework textbooks, feminist theory and crime fiction.

‘Anna will be along in a moment.’ Rosalind had reappeared at my side. ‘Do you like murder mysteries, Mr Ambler?’

‘Er, not much. Do you?’

‘Oh yes, I’m an addict—many of us are. And the wonderful thing is that, at our age, we can read them again and again without remembering who done it. Why do you look puzzled?’

‘Well, don’t you find the idea of murder, death, a bit …’ I was embarrassed, but she helped me out.

‘A bit close to the bone?’ She laughed. ‘Not at all. Bring it on, the more gruesome and gory the better. Goodness, I worked for thirty years in the coroner’s office. I saw plenty of the real thing.’

‘Is that right? I bet Anna’s interested in all that. Do you talk to her about your time there?’

‘Yes, of course. She’s always checking forensic details with me to make sure the authors have got it right. Can you tell time of death from stomach contents? Can you fit a silencer to a revolver? That kind of thing.’

‘But what exactly attracts you to stories like this?’

She cocked her head and fixed me with her bright eyes, and said, ‘Resolution, Mr Ambler. Something sadly lacking in the real world, you might say.’

Over her head I saw Anna standing in the library doorway.
‘Thank you, Rosalind,’ she said, ‘it’s time for your rest now,’ and my guide smiled sweetly and left.

Anna looked at me cautiously. ‘What are you doing here, Josh?’

‘I’ve brought you the police report. Damien came good; he dropped it in at the hotel.’ I handed her the package, which she took, hesitating for a moment before opening it and reading the title of the report.

‘Have you read it?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Made a copy?’

I shook my head, then followed her to an office further down the corridor. On the way I caught a glimpse of an entrance hall with a receptionist’s counter.

‘What on earth were you doing, coming in the back way?’ The office was tiny and crowded with machines and files. She opened the lid of a photocopier and slid the report in.

‘The entrance wasn’t clearly marked. Where’s your office?’

She shot me a rueful glance. ‘This is it.’ She turned the page. ‘Want a cup of tea?’

‘Where’s the cocktail bar?’

She smiled. ‘Four blocks away. The cluey ones sometimes make it there. Take a seat anyway.’

I cleared a pile of magazines from the only chair and squeezed onto it. ‘How long have you worked here?’

‘A couple of years. I had an aunt living here I used to visit. I started to help out with the bingo games and the outings, and next thing they offered me a job.’ She glanced at my face. ‘What? You think I’m mad?’

‘Well, no, I mean, obviously this is very valuable work. But how the bloody hell do you stand it?’

She bowed her head to the copier. ‘It has its rewards.’
Then she added softly, ‘I’m embarrassed.’

‘Why?’

‘You’re comparing this to the exciting life you’ve had, making piles of money in London, and wondering where I went wrong.’

‘Not exactly. It was exciting at times, but also a bit scary, and lonely, too, sometimes. The truth is, things didn’t quite work out as I’d planned—nor did the piles of money.’

‘Oh? What happened?’

‘I’ll tell you one day.’ I cleared my throat and changed the subject. ‘Rosalind showed me the library. She said it was one of your innovations. I’d forgotten how keen you were on detective stories. Still read them?’

‘Mm.’

‘You don’t think, well, that they might be colouring your judgement about what happened to Luce?’

She looked up sharply. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, life isn’t like that, is it? Things are left hanging, unresolved. Like with Luce—no reason for it, just a stupid accident. No body to farewell, no resolution.’

I thought for a moment she might be going to throw the report at me. Instead she turned the page, thumped the document back down onto the machine and said tightly, ‘I heard a dying man confess to killing my best friend, Josh. I’m not fantasising or mixing up fiction and reality. I heard it.’

‘Okay, okay. Sorry.’

‘Anyway, when I’ve finished doing this we can both go away and read it and see what we think, and you can make sure that my judgement isn’t
coloured
.’

I sat in silence while she finished the job. She handed me the copy and showed me to the front door. As I stepped out into the fresh air I said, ‘What’s with the shoes?’

‘What shoes?’

‘Outside in the service yard, there was a bag full of shoes.’

‘That’s the incontinents. It runs down their legs and they have to get new shoes.’

I hurried away, thinking that Anna’s grip on reality was probably pretty tight.

In other circumstances I’d have just put my humiliating experience with Luce and her friends on the climbing wall down to experience, and gone on to find a new girlfriend somewhere else. But the remarks I’d overheard in the changing room really annoyed me. Those blokes were a couple of years younger than me—I was just starting my master’s, while they were in the third year of their first degree—and I thought they were up themselves. Also there was Luce; I found I couldn’t stop thinking about her. So I decided I’d better get serious.

The following day I went to a climbing equipment shop and blew my budget on some essential items. The most important single thing I would ever own, according to the fanatic who served me, was my rope. We settled on a kernmantle nylon sheath and core, 10.5 millimetres thick, 50 metres long, weighing 3.45 kilograms. Next were the shoes, a pair of all-round, glove-tight lace-ups with sticky rubber soles that would be the next best thing to climbing in bare feet, I was assured. Then there was the harness (a waist belt with separate padded leg loops for a less intrusive fit), the helmet, the chalk bag, carabiners and a book. I decided to leave the slings and quickdraws and all the other arcane devices for another day.

Later I enrolled at an off-campus gym with a climbing wall, where hopefully word of what I was doing wouldn’t get back to Luce and her friends. I started weight training,
climbing lessons and jogging, and in the evening memorised the book and practised knots, until I knew my prusik from my klemheist and could tie a figure-eight follow-through in the dark. In my room I fixed up a fingerboard, a piece of timber with strips of wood nailed to it to hang from, to strengthen the grip of my fingers. Later my climbing instructor told me of a concrete retaining wall in a secluded corner of a nearby park, where climbers had glued artificial holds to the surface for bouldering practice. According to my book, bouldering—that is, solo climbing on low rocks or walls without ropes—was the best way to sharpen technique, and I became a regular visitor to the place.

Looking back now, I can barely recognise myself in all this secretive and rather obsessive activity. Although I saw Luce from time to time in the following weeks, helping her with her statistics assignments or going out to the pub, I didn’t mention anything about my training. I avoided seeing her with her friends, and made excuses for not going to their next climbing sessions while I desperately tried to get fit, strengthen the peculiar muscles that seemed to be crucial, and develop some minimal expertise. After a few weeks of excuses I could see that she was losing interest, and I realised I was going to have to make an appearance. They were all clearly surprised when I turned up, and more so when I put on my no-longer pristine shoes and made a reasonable showing on the wall. I was still hopelessly inferior to the girls, and to a lesser degree Curtis and Owen, but I actually outpaced Damien, who was probably still hung-over from lunchtime, and he generously conceded that I might be okay and said he’d shout us all at the bar.

We sat around a table together, Owen, Anna, Luce and I, with Damien and Curtis returning from the counter with beer, and they were friendly enough, but I still felt uncomfortable,
the outsider, their conversation and humour full of references I didn’t know and which they didn’t bother to explain. I remembered Luce saying that six of them had gone climbing in Yosemite together, and I wondered who the other one had been. Then Curtis raised his arm and waved to someone at the door, and I turned and saw a tall lean man wearing a black shirt and jeans. He had shoulder-length black hair swept back from his face, and as he made his way towards us I saw that he was limping heavily, putting his weight on a stick in his left hand.

Curtis jumped to his feet and pulled another chair into the circle, and the man sank into it with a grunt, handing Curtis a fifty-dollar note which he took up to the bar.

Luce said, ‘Marcus, this is Josh. Josh Ambler, Marcus Fenn.’

I got up and stretched my hand out to shake his. His face was deeply lined and tanned, his hair touched in places with grey, and I saw that he was much older than us, maybe mid-forties. He regarded me impassively.

‘Josh has been climbing with us this evening, Marcus.’

‘Really?’ His voice was soft. Curtis returned and placed a large Scotch by his hand, and laid the change beside it. ‘What do you do, Josh?’

‘I’ve just started an MBA.’

His expression registered an involuntary wince and he took a quick gulp of whisky as if to clear a bad taste. ‘Merchant banker, eh?’ This caused general merriment.

‘That sort of thing. How about you? What do you do, Marcus?’

‘Oh, I work for this godforsaken institution, I’m sorry to say, and occasionally try to squeeze a little understanding into these guys’ heads. Fairly unsuccessfully, I’d have to admit.’

I couldn’t pin down his accent—Australian, certainly, but with what might have been an American flavour. His attention turned to Owen. ‘How’s Pop bearing up?’

Owen shook his head wearily. ‘Bushed. If you have some dope for crying babies, please can I have some.’ This was the first time I’d heard that Owen was a father. Apparently he was also married. ‘Suzi’s going spare.’

‘If she needs a break,’ Luce said, ‘I don’t mind doing the odd babysit.’

Owen seized on the offer. ‘We’d really appreciate that, Luce.’

Marcus was observing this domestic exchange with a sardonic smile, as if he found the whole idea vaguely pitiful.

There was karaoke in the adjoining room, and everyone looked up and listened as the next song began. It was an INXS track, and they all joined loudly in the refrain,
Falling down the mountain
, all that is except Marcus, who leaned forward, shaking his head as if some kind of joke was on him.

They were all big INXS fans, apparently, still grieving for Michael Hutchence who’d died just over a year before. Trying to get more of a handle on each of them, I asked what else they liked. Curtis was toying with heavy metal, Owen nominated Silverchair, Damien Shania Twain, Anna U2 and Luce Savage Garden (possibly for the name). Marcus said nothing, but I’d have put him down for Leonard Cohen. Seeing my lip curl at this selection, Luce said, ‘Well, what about you?’

‘How about The Fall?’

They looked blank, then sceptical, as if I’d made it up following on the INXS number.

‘Never heard of it,’ Owen said.

‘But you’ve heard their music. Remember that last scene in
The Silence of the Lambs
, when Clarice Starling stalks the
Buffalo Bill/Jame Gumb character through the dark house? The background music was The Fall, from their album
Hex Enduction Hour
. The track was called …’ I hesitated as if pondering, then looked straight at Marcus, ‘… “Hip Priest”.’

He stared right back at me, and there was a moment’s silence. They still thought I was making all this up, and probably taking a poke at their crippled guru.

Then Marcus suddenly tossed his head back with a short bark of a laugh. ‘You know, I believe he’s right.’ He slid the cash lying beside his whisky across the table towards me and said, ‘Get us another round in, merchant banker, eh?’

I grinned and got up. ‘Sure, Marcus.’

After that the evening went just fine, and when it was over Luce and I walked back to her place while the others got a lift in Marcus’s old Jaguar, which he was able to drive with his good leg. I asked Luce what had happened to him, and she confirmed that he had been the sixth member of their climbing group in California, fifteen months before, and that it had been on that trip that he had taken the fall that had shattered his left leg, just a month or so after Hutchence hanged himself, hence the references.

‘What happened?’

She shrugged. ‘He just tried to push himself that little bit too far. He was a really good climber, and he’d have been able to make the move without any problem ten years earlier, but I think he was trying to prove something to himself, or to us, and got taught a nasty lesson. It was a terrible thing when it happened, right at the end of our trip. We had to climb up to him and bring him down. He was in shocking pain. He was in hospital in San Francisco for a week before they could fly him back, and then in Royal North Shore for another six weeks.’