Girls Fall Down (19 page)

‘I think we're on level ground from now on,' he said, though she continued to lean against him, her hand pressing into his back. He didn't take his arm away. They turned to the right, the mud sucking and clinging to their boots. The wind was muffled by the wooded hills on either side of them, but his ears and fingers were stinging with the cold. He aimed the flashlight ahead, and then swung it to either side, looking for any signs of habitation.

‘Wait for me a sec.' He let go of her and walked off the edge of the path, into the snow beneath the trees, circling the flashlight around him, trying to see into the woods as far as he could, but he wasn't good with darkness, he couldn't see much. She probably didn't remember that either. He stood at the edge of a deep gully, hearing water running below; came back to Susie, and she leaned into his chest again, wrapping both her arms around him.

They walked on, and then he saw a signpost on his left, between two hills. ‘Okay. That'll be the brickworks.' He led her off the main track to a smaller path that ran sharply downwards, and he could make out the shape of the old brickworks now, and a smaller building at the side lit up with orange security lamps. They crossed a concrete plaza, ponds and wetlands spreading out around them, and then they were beside the great hulk of the abandoned factory, which had been haphazardly tidied and repaired, a strangely inaccessible cultural monument. The wind was worse here, howling around them in the broad exposed flat.

Susie shook her head. ‘This doesn't look right,' she said. ‘I don't think he'd live near a, an attraction. And it's not far from the road, listen.'

‘Well, it's maybe not a very successful attraction. But I don't know. Anyway, it sounded like he was a ways behind it.'

He turned the flashlight into the factory hall, picking out the blurry shapes of men in sleeping bags among the twisted piles of old machinery, and pointed to them wordlessly. Susie left his arm and
moved skittishly towards the men, veering at an angle, but then she saw empty bottles lying by the sleeping bags and shook her head and returned.

‘They were drinking,' she said. ‘Derek doesn't drink.'

‘He could've started.'

‘No. He wouldn't. Anyway, they're just crashing. Your guy said he had a tent, right? He's settled in.'

There was another mud path, narrow and sloping upwards, leading on beside a fence. It ran by the parts of the brickworks that had never been restored, that were smashed and boarded up and covered with graffiti. There were no lights here; Alex turned the flashlight on again. Susie tripped on a tree root and fell again, and cut her knee, and he bent and took her back into his arms. Thistles bit and lodged in their clothes.

The path led them around a corner, to the back of the vast dark walls. In the beam of the flashlight Alex saw a sign with a hazard symbol and the words
Asbestos and silica contaminated area. Do not enter.
They passed the warning, around the corner of a barbed-wire fence into a clearing. Not far beyond them was the railway overpass, towering on massive concrete pilasters, reaching up far above their heads, far beyond where he could see.

He stopped, and lowered the flashlight. ‘Susie. Look.'

Somewhere up the hill was another light, distant, below the railway bridge, a small wavering point.

‘Oh,' whispered Susie. ‘Oh dear. I think it is.'

‘We're going to have to get up the hill.'

At first it was thick with dried grass and weeds, waist-high for Alex, nearly chest-high for Susie, a crackling barricade. He couldn't climb up with his arm around her, but he stretched out one hand behind him, and she held it and followed him, stumbling through the vegetation. They reached the first concrete foot of the underpass, and here the slope turned muddy, and much steeper, clogged with fallen trees and stones.

Alex released her hand and grabbed on to the branches of the dead trees to pull himself along, bent over, fighting gravity. Susie, beside him, was on her hands and knees now, unable to get up the
hill any other way. He slid and fell onto his hands himself, dragged himself upwards on another branch.

He reached the next concrete foot and boosted himself onto it, then stretched down and grabbed Susie's arms, hauling her awkwardly up.

Anchoring himself against a tree stump, he turned to look up the last expanse of slope. The light had gone out. Alex aimed the flash-light that way, and it illuminated the outline of a tent. A green tent, just like the man had said.

‘He must have heard us coming,' said Susie.

The tent was pitched under the last wall of the underpass, where it drew even with the top of the hill. There was a small level area around it, scraped clean, and two milk crates holding something, he couldn't see what. The slope where they were was steep, precipitous; they struggled further up, mud-covered, scraped, and then, some yards from the tent, Susie put her hand on his arm.

‘Stay here,' she said. ‘You'll have to stay here.' She squeezed her eyes tight shut and opened them again. ‘I have to do this.'

He stayed on the hill, in the wind, leaning against the broken trunk of an old tree. And he watched her, Susie, on her hands and knees in the mud, crawling unsteadily up the hill, over the rocks, towards the doorway of the green tent.

She stopped outside the front flap, still on her knees. The person in the tent must know she was there.

‘Derek?' he heard her whisper shakily.

There was no answer from the tent right away.

‘Derek?'

‘Is that Susie-Paul?'

‘Of course it is.' She sat down in the mud and wrapped her arms around her legs.

‘That doesn't make sense.'

‘Oh, for fuck's sake, Derek. Who else would climb all the way up here just to look for you?'

The light came on inside the tent, and then a man opened the flap and crept out, holding a lantern in one hand and a book in the other. ‘Well, hello then,' he said.

He didn't look much like the man in the photo. He was horribly thin, emaciated really, and he had mouse-coloured hair down to his shoulders and a straggly beard, a scabbed-over cut on his forehead. He bobbed one leg nervously as he sat, tapping the book against his knee. The glasses were gone, and his eyes, Susie's deep brown eyes, looked freakishly large in his sunken face.

‘You're not well,' she said.

‘I'm fine,' said Derek. ‘I'm doing quite well, in fact.'

‘You look like you're starving.'

‘I've been reducing my caloric needs. But I don't starve. I'm exploring the possibilities of agriculture.' He waved his hand around the small level zone. ‘As you can see, I'm engaged in subsistence farming.'

‘Jesus.'

‘In the interim I still have some needs I can't meet from the surrounding land, but I hope to achieve complete self-sufficiency by
2005
.'

‘Oh, yeah. You and North Korea,' said Susie. And unexpectedly, Derek's face lit up in a luminous sweet smile. Susie's smile.

‘Oh, Susie-Paul. It
is
you.' He put his hand out and stroked her arm, and she raised her face to him. ‘It's always so good to see you,' he said.

‘Then why have you been hiding from me?'

Derek tilted his head to one side. ‘But I don't, baby girl. I never would.'

‘I haven't seen you for three months. I didn't know if you were dead.'

He ran his hand down her arm again, leaning towards her. ‘You're my baby sister soul. You can't be far away from me, can you? You're with me here every day. We're together eternally. You remember.'

They looked so much alike now, their eyes on each other. ‘No,' said Susie softly. ‘This is what you're imagining, Derek. I've never been here before.'

‘I'm sorry, baby. I'm sorry you can't remember. I want to look after you. I wish you'd let me.'

He came close to her, a small submissive movement of his head. She took his hands and held them in her lap. ‘Oh God,' she whispered. ‘I've been so worried.'

‘It's all right, baby. It's really all right. You know I'll look after you.'

She reached out and stroked his wild hair. ‘Derek, Derek, it's going to be winter soon, you can't go on living here.'

‘This is a good place,' said Derek. ‘This is a safe place. They can't get the brainwashing chemicals at us here.'

‘Oh no. Not the brainwashing chemicals again.' Alex saw a dark trail of mascara run down her face and knew she was crying.

‘Susie-Paul, of all the people in the world, you are the one I need to save. I need to help you. Don't you understand that?'

‘I love you, Derek, but you're out of your mind,' said Susie, her voice full of tears. ‘You have a mental illness. Your theories about sodium pentothal and computer rays, they are not real. I do not talk to you when I am not here, and I have never been here before.'

‘But of course you have,' he said. He touched her face, running a finger gently over her smeared mascara. ‘We're the same person, baby. We were born together. We're the same body forever, and I can't be safe without you.'

‘No, Derek. We're not. We're really, really not.'

‘We could be. If we were together.'

‘No. Not ever, Derek. That's not who I am.'

Derek moved his hand down her neck, his shoulders bending. Then he lowered himself to the wet ground and lay his head in her lap, and she curled over him, still stroking his hair.

‘I know it's not easy for you,' she said. ‘I know it was really, it was confusing for you when Mom died. But this is not a solution.'

Derek lifted his head and looked up at her, his legs twitching, his tongue flicking nervously over his lips. ‘Don't lie to me, Susie-Paul.'

‘I'm not lying. What do you mean, I'm lying?'

‘Susie-Paul.' There was a dangerous edge to his voice. ‘You know they're not dead. You know this is just a trick. You need to stop telling lies.'

‘For Christ's sake.' Susie sat up sharply. ‘Stop it, Derek. Of course they're dead. Mom had cancer. Dad had a heart attack. They died.'

‘Stupid,' said Derek, the word a brittle snap. ‘You know it's not true. You're letting them trick you.'

Susie choked down a hiccupy whimper and pushed back, moving away from him. ‘Cut it out. I buried them, Derek, I saw the coffins going into the dirt. People die. They're dead.'

Derek shook his head again, quickly. ‘They're still watching you, baby. They're still after you. I know because you tell me. You tell me all the time.'

‘Derek! Stop!' She clenched her fists in front of her mouth and began to sob.

Derek was squatting by the tent, staring at her seriously, and he was twitching a bit but there was no question that Susie, muddy and drunk and weeping, looked far more crazy than he did. ‘Just shut up,' she said, her face glistening in the light of the lantern, streaked and wet. ‘I fucking buried them, Derek. They're under the fucking ground.'

‘I didn't mean to make you feel bad,' he said softly.

Alex could hardly tell what the noise was that Susie made, but he thought it was meant to be a laugh. ‘Well, that's great. That's just lovely. Everything's fine, then.'

He moved towards her again, suppliant, almost crawling, and put his hands on her knees. ‘Susie-Paul. Baby sister. You know I never mean to hurt you. I'm sorry. I'm a bad person. I'm sorry.'

‘You're not bad, Derek.' She wiped her smeared eyes and lowered her head again to his. ‘You don't have to apologize.'

‘I love you, baby.'

‘I know. I know.'

Alex didn't think that he'd moved; he hardly thought that he'd breathed. But he must have done something, because Derek's head lifted suddenly and he glanced down the hill.

‘You brought a person with you.'

‘He's my friend.'

‘I don't like that.'

‘Well, tough luck,' said Susie.

Derek sat up and frowned towards Alex. ‘I don't know why you have to involve other people.'

‘Because other people matter to me. You just have to live with that.'

‘It's really not safe,' said Derek, shaking his head in disapproval. ‘I've told you that before. These are not safe people.'

Alex tried to catch Susie's eye, not knowing if he should go back down the hill.

‘Anyway,' said Susie. ‘None of this is why I'm here. We need to find you a proper place to live.'

‘This is better than where I was before.'

Susie looked around the underpass. ‘You know, honest to God, it's probably not much worse. But the rooming house did at least have some heating.'

‘People tried to hurt me there.'

‘What I want, what I hope is that we can find you a better place. There's some money from Mom's will, it's not a lot but … '

The change was like an electric shock, so fast Alex was dumb-founded. Derek leapt up, his fingers reaching and convulsing like snakes, his voice a high screech.

‘You
bitch
! You fucking
bitch
!' He grabbed at her sleeve, shaking her arm hard, but Susie didn't seem frightened; she dropped her head in resignation and wept but didn't move away. ‘You think you can trick me that way?' he shouted, still shaking her arm, his other hand moving clawlike near her face. ‘You think I'm an idiot? You
fucking bitch
!'

‘Shut up, Derek,' said Susie quietly.

‘Get out of here! Get out!' He pulled away from her and hurled himself back into the tent, zipping the flap closed. ‘Go away
now
, bitch!' Susie buried her head in her knees, sobbing, Derek screaming from the tent, ‘Go
away
! Go
away
!'

And Alex moved, scrambling up the slope towards her and taking her wrist. ‘Susie. Come.' She shook her head, waving him away with her other hand. ‘Come on, come on, honey,' whispered Alex.