Simon Clark - The Fall

The man who sold ice creams gnawed his thumbnail. It was already rough and frayed from being chewed, but he worried at it nonetheless, turning the problem over in his mind. He’d seen a God-given sign of his own death, his doppelgänger . What should he do? Was there a way to escape it?

The old man looked up as the ice-cream seller slowly walked towards him.

‘Fine weather,’ the old man said with conviction. ‘There’s nothing like a summer’s day.’

The ice-cream seller managed a nod accompanied by a tiny grunt.

‘You know,’ the old man continued, almost as if he was talking to himself, ‘I can remember a summer’s day like this when I was four years old. My father brought me fishing to this very spot. He was a big man, arms like tree trunks, and when he was fishing he’d wear this straw hat, you know? A straw boater? It wasn’t the thing you’d normally see a working man wear in those days. I think he found it somewhere, but he’d always insist on wearing it when he fished… A bit thin on top, I suppose… Didn’t want the sun to burn his scalp. Anyway, he wore that boater and cast his line into the water while I sat on the bank eating plums – big soft purple plums, sweetest things I ever tasted. I remember it all as plain as day. I remember the juice trickling down my fingers. And I remember my father stood just there by that tree stump. Course, it was a sapling then, more than 75 years ago…’

The old man talked on in a voice that was low, slow and even soothing. The man who sold ice creams listened. The normality of an old man remembering sunnier, happier days was reassuring. He found himself listening eagerly as if the voice was a lifeline thrown at him across the seething chaos of his stormy mental seas.

‘My father tilted the boater like so.’ The old man echoed the action. ‘So the brim came low over his eyes. He smoked a cigarette – gave him a lot of pleasure it did, too. There was no harm in cigarettes in those days, or eating meat, or even drinking a cup full of cream if you wanted to. At least, nobody thought there was any harm in it. People weren’t scared by what they ate or what they smoked. They knew nothing about tar levels, cholesterol, saturated fats and nonsense like that. It was all different then. Better. You left your back door unlocked when you went out. Children played in the streets. They were safe. And I remember sitting right there on that bit of banking with those plums on a summer’s day 75 years ago, and I remember it as clear as crystal. A brass band played marching songs over yonder in the amphitheatre. There were girls in pretty dresses that were so long they touched the ground. My father caught a pike that was as big as me. Monster of a fish it was, and a devil of a time he had reeling it in. As he was dragging it up the bank just there, he bent down to grab it by the gills and his hat fell off in the water. He loved that straw boater. And, you know? The current took it out into the middle of the river. A chap in a boat had to fetch it for him.’ The old man smiled, his face creasing into a thousand lines. ‘I wish I could live it all over again. And you know, I wouldn’t change a thing. I’d love it. Just love it .’ When the old man said the word ‘love’ his whole body seemed to swell. He didn’t so much say the word as will part of his soul into it until it appeared to pulsate with an energy all of its own. ‘I loved growing up here. I can remember it all as clear as people remember yesterday.’ His face darkened. The smile vanished. ‘But you get old. And you can’t remember what you did yesterday. You can’t remember what you did five minutes ago. My mother went the same way. You know, Alzheimer’s? You forget the names of your family. You forget you drank a cup of tea five minutes ago and you sit there asking over and over for another cup. It sends people barmy. No… I wouldn’t inflict that on my worst enemy. I won’t let myself go like that.’

With that the old man walked decisively forward into the water.

The ice-cream seller felt as if he was snapping out of a trance.

The old man floundered forward. In five paces he was out of his depth and swimming forward, blowing out his cheeks with the effort, his breathing noisy, then spluttering as he took in a mouthful of water.

The ice-cream seller pulled off his shoes as he ran into the river’s shallows. There he snatched up the old man’s walking stick that drifted on the current and held it out to him. It was a useless gesture. The old man was by this time a good 20 yards off shore. There the water had a blackness about it that spoke of cold depths.

‘Grab this!’ the ice-cream seller cried. ‘Come on, swim and grab this.’ Even as he shouted the words at the old man, who was still swimming out towards the middle of the river, he knew that what he shouted made no sense. The old man hadn’t fallen into the water simply by accident. He’d walked into it deliberately. Just as he now swam out into the deepest part deliberately.

This was suicide.

The ice-cream seller couldn’t swim.

Wildly, he looked round.

He saw the man on the launch standing on the deck while sipping a drink from a glass.

The man’d seen everything.

The ice-cream seller ran splashing through the shallows towards the launch.

‘Can you see him? Can you see him’

The blond man didn’t react. He stared back, sipping his drink.

The ice-cream seller shouted: ‘Untie your boat; we’ve got to rescue him. He’s going to drown out there! He’s going to drown! ’

The blond man gave a little shrug and sat down on a lounger on the deck.

Stunned, the ice-cream seller looked for anyone else who might be able to help. He ran wildly up the grass slope in the direction of the car park. All the time he was shouting.

He glanced back to see the old man, who now swam on his back with a lazy stroke; he was gazing at the sky with a look of wonder on his face.

Sam Baker had just that minute bought a drink from the vending machine by the visitors’ centre when he saw a man in a white uniform running across the car park, shouting wildly while pointing back at the river.

Zita had gone to wash her face in the ladies’ – and to beat her head against the cubicle doors if the fancy took her, she’d told him. He’d hoped she’d been attempting a little whimsy, but he half wondered if she, too, had sensed that pit of insanity opening its deep, dark throat at the back of her mind.

Now a man in white, with red and yellow stains on the front of his jacket, was running barefoot towards him across the tarmac.

Maybe that insanity was well and truly infectious, after all.

Jud looked up from where he sat on the bench. ‘That’s Brian. What’s eating him?’

‘Probably the same thing that’s eating us all,’ Sam said, hearing the bitterness in his voice. ‘You don’t go through the experience of sliding back one week and come out the other side all happy-smiley.’

The man shouted. ‘In the blasted river! There’s an old man. He’s drowning!’ He gestured. ‘I can’t swim and that stupid jerk on the boat won’t bastard well do anything.’

Jud threw his waistcoat to one side and ran across the car park. Sam followed. The man in white didn’t wait and ran back down the slope in the direction of the river. The bare soles of his feet were blackened with dirt.

At the bank all three stopped. Sam scanned the water but saw nothing. Apart from the two moored boats there were no others on the water. A pair of swans glided serenely by.

‘He was there.’ The ice-cream seller pointed. ‘Out there in the middle. Just swimming on his back.’ He ran down into the water until he was up to his knees, then stopped and turned his head this way and that like a nervous kid getting ready to cross a busy road. ‘He was there! You believe me, don’t you?’ He looked back at Sam. ‘There’s his walking stick… oh, Jesus. He must have gone under. We’ve lost him!’