Mark Haddon - The Pier Falls - And Other Stories

His solution, like his solutions to all of our previous practical problems, was elegant and efficient. We felled and trimmed two ungurahui trunks, lashed ropes around one end of each, heaved them upright, threw the ropes over a high branch then cantilevered them across the gorge beside one another to make a rudimentary bridge.

The monkey was gamey and fibrous but we were in a jovial mood so it mattered little. We finished our meal, repacked our equipment and began our crossing. Bill insisted that he be our canary and go first. The oily wood bounced a little but held firm and he gained the far side to universal applause. I followed him and was granted, midway, the most extraordinary view upriver to smoky, mauve highlands as if I were a bird suspended on the very air. I felt the giddiness coming back and dared not turn round to take in the opposing view. Edgar shouted out to me to “get a bloody move on, man” and I completed the journey looking only at my feet. I was followed in turn by Arthur and Edgar, leaving only Nicholas on the other side.

When he was halfway across, however, the left-hand trunk cracked and split. As he dropped he threw his arms around the right-hand trunk and clung to it as the broken spar separated into two sections which fell beneath him into the rapids, bouncing several times, booming loudly upon each impact, before lodging themselves between the wet rocks.

Every detail of the following minute is imprinted sharply upon my memory — the wood bending like a bow under Nicholas’s weight, his feet circling as if by sheer force of will they might conjure steps from the empty air. To my shame I stood motionless not knowing what to do. Arthur, however, threw his own pack to the ground, urged Nicholas to hang on, climbed astride the remaining trunk and began shifting himself out over the drop. Were he unburdened Nicholas might have been able to inch towards us, hand over hand, but he was carrying a heavy pack. It was Arthur’s intention, I believe, to cut the straps with his clasp knife. He did not arrive in time. The two men were still some ten feet apart when Nicholas’s remaining strength failed him. He looked towards us with what appeared to me to be an expression of embarrassed apology, his fingers loosened and gravity took him. I cannot help but wonder whether, if his brother had still been alive, he might not have clung to life a little longer.

He seemed to fall very slowly. Perhaps it was a trick of the mind but I have a very clear memory of sketching out the elements of the letter we would have to write to his grieving parents during the one or two seconds of his terrible descent.

I assumed that he would be swept instantly away but he struck a large, flat boulder which lay midstream dividing the current. He came to rest in a sitting position so that if you had not seen what went before you might have thought he was simply taking a rest while crossing the river, except that his thigh was folded sideways just above the knee. He did not move for half a minute and I hoped earnestly that he was dead for it was not possible to survive a wound of that nature this far from civilisation (his brother had died from an infection contracted after being scratched by a thorn, an injury which would have been utterly unremarkable in England). Then he began to move, rubbing his face and looking around like a man waking from a doze, surprised at where he had slumbered.

Bill untied the rope from the remaining ungurahui and looped it around the nearest palm. Edgar asked him what he was doing and Bill replied, “What does it look like I’m doing?”

Edgar told him not to be a fool.

“So we are to stand here and watch him die?” asked Bill.

Edgar drew his handgun and I thought for one awful second that he intended to shoot Bill for his insolence, but he did not point the gun at Bill. Instead he turned towards the gorge where Nicholas sat swinging his head slowly from side to side in the manner of an injured bear.

Arthur cried out, “No!” but Edgar did not pause. The shot was perfect. Nicholas seemed to shudder as the bullet entered the top of his head, then he rolled sideways off the rock, the foam was briefly pink and he was gone.

No one spoke. The echoes of the shot died away until there was only the roar of the river and some nameless bird calling from deep in the jungle like a rusty wheel being turned. Edgar slotted his handgun back into its leather holster and refastened the buckle.

“Dear God in heaven,” said Arthur.

“It would have ended in no other way,” said Edgar. “Better that it was swift.” His voice did not waver. I heard neither sorrow nor regret, though Nicholas was a man he had called a friend for many years. “Perhaps one of you would like to say a prayer to mark his passing.”

After a pause Arthur slowly removed his hat, took a deep breath then proceeded to recite Psalm 39 in its entirety and, as far as I could tell, without a single error. “I will take heed to my ways: that I offend not in my tongue. I will keep my mouth as it were with a bridle: while the ungodly is in my sight…”

When he had finished I asked him how he had been able to remember the words so perfectly. He said, “I wish I could forget them. My sister died of scarlet fever two years ago. I attend her funeral every night in my dreams.”

“We should keep moving,” said Edgar. “We have only three more hours of daylight left to us,” and I had the unsettling sensation that he had removed a mask he had been wearing for many years.

I began our expedition thinking that Edgar’s ambition, his sangfroid, his bravery and self-belief were admirable. I see now that it is possible to demonstrate these qualities to such a degree that they become an illness, dangerous both to oneself and to those around one. I came to understand that he had never possessed any genuine interest in the professed purpose of our travels and that if we were to find Carlysle and his men still alive deep in the jungle it would please him only if this involved some further adventure, such as rescuing them from violent aboriginals. The entire expedition was for him simply an arena in which he might try his courage and strength to their limits, and the greater our difficulties the more he relished them. He reminded me of no one so much as the eponymous hero of “The Boy Who Left Home to Learn Fear,” one of the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm which I had read as a boy.

I realise now that when Arthur and I had rooms on the same staircase as Edgar at Oxford we did not really know him. In truth it would be more accurate to say that we were simply two among many people who were in awe of him. His not being an intellectual did not matter because he was the kind of man who made other men wonder whether being an intellectual was perhaps a little shameful. I can vividly recall the five framed Punch cartoons of his uncle, all of them featuring a globe, spinning on the man’s finger, crushed beneath his foot, served to him on a plate or subjugated in some other symbolic manner. Edgar talked repeatedly of his intention to surpass his uncle in some way and none of us doubted that he would succeed. He was almost comically handsome. He had a scar down the side of his face which he had acquired falling downstairs when he was four years old but he carried himself with such martial dignity that everyone thought of it as a duelling wound, even those of us who were party to the secret. He had been awarded Blues in both rugby and fives and was, in short, one of those men who take it for granted that they are liked and admired, that wealth and opportunity will flow naturally to them and that this is simply the nature of the world. Consequently they never learn how to make a compromise or earn respect, they never need to imagine how the world might appear from the point of view of another person, they never truly love and they are never truly loved.