Simon Clark - The Fall

At that moment the truck driver must have braked.

The wheels slowed.

He’s going to stop; he’s going to stop; he’s not going to run me over : those were the words hammering joyfully through Lee’s head.

The truck did stop.

Only not soon enough.

Still on his back, Lee raised himself up on his elbows to watch the two huge tyres as black as the gates of death come rolling forward and pass between his splayed-out legs. They crunched up over his groin, shattering the pelvic bone, before stopping on his stomach.

The bolt of pain wrenched him up into a sitting position. His face slapped against the hot rubber of the tyre. Yet despite it all, some small part of his brain coolly compared the deep zig-zag cut of the tyre’s tread to the jagged lines of valleys on a map. It even marvelled at specks of a white, chalky grit adhering to the rubber.

And he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was going to die there in the road.

Slowly, remorselessly, the rear wheels bore down on him, bursting his stomach, crushing his liver and kidneys.

He screamed.

But no sound came out.

Only blood.

It burst from his mouth in a great gush of crimson.

The man who sold ice creams from his candy-striped van in the amphitheatre car park returned home to find a man lying on top of his wife in their bedroom. It was clear enough what was happening. The stranger was digging himself into her as if convinced that if he could only get in deep enough he’d hit a big red button inside her belly that would set off every klaxon, bell and siren in Casterton. Probably make the Town Hall floodlights flash, too, and then the lady Mayor would sing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ from the top of the clock tower.

Sarah wasn’t complaining. She was giving her lover loud enough encouragement.

In the open doorway of the bedroom the ice-cream man stood open-mouthed, and unnoticed by the two lovers. His hand clutched the edge of the door so tightly he felt his fingers must surely sink in through the plywood panels.

At that moment he didn’t know what appalled him most.

His wife’s enthusiastic and noisy infidelity, or the fact that her boyfriend had the insolence to wear the ice-cream man’s pyjama top.

He couldn’t take his eyes from that pyjama top. Lost in her own universe of pleasure, his wife’s hands clutched at the striped fabric, pulling it tight across the man’s broad back.

This was too much.

The man who sold ice creams stepped back through the bedroom door and onto the landing, shaking his head, his chest so tight with shock he could hardly breathe.

Right now, more than anything, he wanted somehow to blindly stagger downstairs and get away from the house. But he found himself leaning forward to peer through the crack where the door was hinged to the frame.

Oh, God Almighty. This was like seeing the aftermath of a terrible car smash. He was shocked, revolted, horrified. But he knew he had to look.

They’d finished by this time. With a satisfied groan, his wife’s lover lifted himself up, then rolled onto his back to gaze contentedly at the ceiling.

That’s when the man who sold ice creams knew he’d lost his mind.

Because the man who lay there all sweaty and red-faced in bed was no stranger. The ice-cream man found that he was staring at an identical copy of himself.

Jud Campbell, the historian who’d lectured in the amphitheatre, returned to his narrow boat where he lived with his wife. He unbuttoned his gold waistcoat as he walked.

The boat was moored on the river bank just a moment’s walk from the amphitheatre itself. He soon noticed a flash river cruiser moored behind his own boat. It had been secured pretty badly, too. The aft lines were loose, allowing the boat’s arse to drift outwards where it might get clipped by other passing boats.

A blond-haired man, dressed in a white dressing gown, sunned himself on the deck of the big cruiser. He was drinking from a can of beer and smoking the biggest cigar that Jud had ever seen.

‘Excuse me,’ Jud began politely. ‘I noticed your aft lines are slack.’

The man pulled on the cigar before shrugging. ‘So?’

‘The stern of your boat’s being pulled out by the current. There’s a chance you might get hit by a passing boat.’

The man wasn’t interested. ‘Seems okay to me.’

‘The river’s plenty wide enough at this point, but there’s a sandbank just out there and it’ll force the bigger river traffic close to the shore.’

‘Oh, fuck off,’ the man said casually and returned to gazing out over the river while sipping his beer.

Jud shrugged. He believed he was being polite and neighbourly. If the arrogant twat wanted to sit there with the boat’s arse dragging out into the water where it’d get crunched by one of the big river barges then it was his lookout.

Shaking his head, he walked up the gangplank onto the narrow boat, where he paused to wipe a mark off its brass bell. The Tiber-Lizzie was Jud’s pride and joy. A magnificent 70-footer, it was powered by a new Mitsubishi four-cylinder diesel; the boat boasted a waxed pine interior, stem-to-stern carpets, fitted kitchen, Eberspacher central heating and an all-steel hull painted in a cool, unflustered oak-leaf green. Along the full length of the cabin’s exterior Jud himself had painted a fine dragon in red and gold. And there, studded like jewels along its flanks, were the brass porthole frames that Jud would lovingly polish every week without fail.

Jud had heard that when men reach 40-something they transfer their affections from their now-grown-up children to gardens, dogs, aviaries or aquariums (but rarely to wives); he guessed his time had come and he’d switched his affections, and his desire to nurture, to the Tiber-Lizzie . His wife would sometimes click her tongue and tell him he was obsessed to the point of madness with the thing. But secretly she was pleased he sunk his energies into what was, after all, their home, and not into cultivating a fixation on which dog or nag would be first across the finishing line, gambling away their life savings in the process.

In the cabin he found Dot sitting in front of the portable TV while scowling with surprising ferocity at the Radio Times .

Pleasingly plump in the way that Arabs are supposed to find so attractive, she was normally so cheerful that Jud found himself experiencing a mild sense of shock at her angry expression.

‘They’ve got it all wrong, Jud,’ she snapped.

‘Got what all wrong, dear?’

‘I want to watch Columbo but I’ve got this Through the Keyhole rubbish instead.’

‘You’ve got the right channel?’

‘What do you take me for, Jud? Of course I’ve got the right channel.’

‘Maybe the magazine is wrong?’

‘This is the Radio Times ,’ she said primly. ‘It is never wrong.’

‘Oh,’ he said mildly again while slipping off his waistcoat before carefully folding it into a tissue-lined box. His wife referred to his waistcoats as ‘stage gear’ and he looked after them with scrupulous care. ‘Perhaps the tennis overran. They might have substituted a shorter programme so they can get back on schedule again.’

‘Jud. Don’t treat me like a simpleton.’ Her voice was actually softening now she was no longer bottling up the frustration here alone on the boat. ‘Look, it’s all gone to buggery. Today’s Tuesday.’ She shook the TV guide. ‘2.45, it says here. Columbo .’

‘And we’ve got Through the Keyhole instead?’

‘Yes, and according to the Radio Times , Through the Keyhole was on yesterday afternoon, Jud. Yesterday .’