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There are some benefits to being mad. Not angry, but utterly, barking mad. I ravaged the pavement with the toe of my shoe, flung loose stones several metres ahead of my stride, and all but growled at the unchallenged stares as I passed. The letter remained firmly crumpled within my fist, which, as I reviewed the action, did little to enhance any illusion of sanity.
Not that I had ever succeeded at maintaining the facade of grace for more than a few seconds.
The itching muscles in my fingers were not appeased when I flung one leg over the seat of my motorbike, though I was less pressed to press the straining digits against an unsuspecting jugular.
And not entirely metaphorically.
Though not desperately either.
The moment the carefully maintained machine roared to life beneath me, I cautiously eased it toward the traffic.
Or lack thereof.
Truthfully, rare was the occasion any street remained this clear. Even in a less populated area, there was still an unrelenting collection of the young generation—perhaps even my own generation—that felt any problem could be solved with a few spare pence and a tank of petrol. The money could be used for placing foolish, improbable bets, while the petrol fueled rebuilt automobile engines that had been better left to the scrapheap. They were wild, crazed, utterly mad.
It was intoxicating.
Racing was my greatest vice Keane found most deplorable. Not out of any stereotypical ideas, mind. He was always pleased to find female employment benefiting from the modern feminism.
But racing?
That wasn’t simply a vice.
A sin.
It was an addiction.
And, like his precious cigarettes and Irish whiskey, the need was only enhanced by a heightened emotional state.
Joy.
Mourning.
Fury.
I instinctively leaned down upon the handlebars; allowing the speed to steadily increase as I did so.
Now that, that was life.
Pushing the limits.
Finding the edges.
I pushed the engine even harder. Not much. I was still arguably within the speed limit. Or at least near to being so.
While the letter remained gripped beneath my right hand, the weight it carried had long since been flung behind me. I was several stone lighter, in fact. Variably weightless.
Floating easily toward an unnameable utopia.
I encouraged the speedometer just a few millimetres further until—
There had been no sudden collision of metal on metal, nor the dreaded flesh torn open by jagged tire rims.
There was only the uncontrollable convulsion of one’s eardrums as a shriek of horror turned every available eye upwards toward the burning heavens. It took me longer than many onlookers to find the point of hysteria. To my defence; however, most of the swelling crowd was not pinned to the pavement by an uncomfortably hot motorbike. I peeled the metallic contraption from my miraculously unbroken limps and stretched my neck toward the skyline.
Where a wavering figure balanced precariously on the ledge between life and death.
“Good God!” A creaking sack of bones edged near my shoulder, yet again I had no intention of looking at the man’s face until a police constable rushed toward us from the murk.
I groaned.
Of course the officer on call would be Sergeant Crowley.
“Doctor Obner, sir, just the man we need.” And Old Windy too? Christ. “Do you think you could talk a young man back through the window?”
“Who is the young man?”
“Young Cambell, sir. Seems he got himself into quite a state.”
“A state?” I scoffed. “He’s on the ledge.” Crowley graciously ignored me.
“Obner, you’re one of those psychological men. Couldn’t you get him to see sense?”
“Up there? Sergeant, it would take an hour for me to climb the steps, and even then I wouldn’t know what to say.” The old man shook his head. Was it the lighting that made his face green? “Don’t you have a man for these sort of emergencies?” They did have a man. A truly magnificent, talented man.
Who happened to be the very same individual gaoled and shunned by their own blind stupidity.
Cropley paled.
“We couldn’t release Professor Keane to do it. That would be against all regulations.”
“Miss Lawrence then.” My head jerked at the mention of my name.
“I’m a writer, not a psychologist.”
“But you have worked with the professor before.” Old Windy desperately insisted. “And you are young. Campbell may trust you more.” Not to mention I was less likely to vomit the moment my head leaned out the window.
“Still, if Keane is unable to help him, wouldn’t it look strange if I did? What if something went wrong?” Sergeant Crowley opened his mouth, yet his voice was subconsciously blurred with something Keane himself had said on a similar occasion years before.
“And if we do nothing and the boy dies? Who will be guilty then? No, Lawrence, you must do this. For the sake of that young man, you must.”
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THE STAIRS GREW STEEPER in tormenting synchronisation with the lead spreading through my boots. A life had been placed upon my shoulders.
An entire life.
A life so short and fragile all the earth might shatter should it be snuffed of its light.
The accompanying officer marched before me as an executioner precedes the damned. Head throbbing with every cutting breath, I frantically grabbed at the one question corroding my mind.
What the hell was I supposed to do?
Save Ross Cambell.
Certainly, that was the essence of the mission, but not even the most careful and exact plans always succeed. There is always a variable—an undying sense of elemental control—upon which the odds balance. I could find failure just as easily as I could accomplish victory.
There is no room for failure when a life is involved.
Therefore, I would succeed.
I must succeed.
But what is success, Lawrence? Is it better to save a boy’s life and subject him to decades of hell, or let him die in peace? Think, Lawrence. Think. What is success?
What would it be to let him die? I could stand by silently as a witness. I could look away from the rift of tragedy.
But I could never again not know.
And in that instant, I was shoved into the brink of reality as a door opened and I caught the first strangling glimpse of a thin, quaking arm on the other side of the open window.
“Ross?”
“Go away! Go away, or I’ll jump!” Gone was the admiration and confidence. Gone was the muffled mumbling or carefully chosen verbosity. Gone was the young man.
Abandoning a small, frightened, child to take his place.
I took a different approach.
“I’m here to help.”
“I don’t want help. It was my fault.” A few distinct sniffles bubbled through from outside, but I stood at bay.
Patience, Lawrence. The worst you could do is frighten him further.
So I waited.
And waited.
When no other sharp jolts of desperation shot forth from the thinning ledge for some time, I crept toward the gaping windowframe. After all, a hero remains a hero no matter the odds or connection.
“Ross, it’s Lawrence.” There was a gasp of realisation; the mind drawing together the strings between a man held well above the average man, and I, who had, by some strange force of the world, attached myself to this ideal. There was hope then. There was hope for a boy who stood, breathless and afraid, that he might again see a light flickering at the end of a bleak darkness.
With hope; however, came the two-worded doubt which clung to every child.
“Prove it.”
Damn.
My legs instantly cemented themselves to the precise centre of the room; drawing no nearer to the window, yet not retreating from the problem.
Everything stopped.
Breathing.
Sight.
Sound.
Everything.
I was at the edge of a cliff without reprieve. It was all on my shoulders now. All of it.
Hope.
Fear.
Everything.
It all stopped.
And then it came to me again; one enormous rush of energy that propelled my feet forward to the open window. My body paused on the edge of insanity before I cautiously levered one leg out of the building. Then the other. Christ. Don’t look down. I shouldn’t look down. Not then.
Suddenly, I was standing on the ledge with my right arm wrenched around the open window frame and my left hand clawing against decaying rows of red brick. Excruciating gasps of air suffocated my senses, tempting my pulsating mind into near spasms as I gradually released the painted wood. The warming air of spring choked my lungs with sweetness and created a slick layer of sweat between my flesh and jacket lining. Awful. Uncomfortable.
Though to resolve the problem would risk toppling head-first onto the blurring pavement.
Inch by inch I stiffly made my way along the stone path dangling precariously above hell. My heart screamed decibels into my brain until neither functioned as they should.
I was afraid, yes.
But Ross was terrified.
A sheen of tears covered his pale cheeks and his arms stretched wildly outward to each side; digging into the building’s exterior until bits of red dust came away. His cap had disappeared to free the shag mess sprouting from his scalp as each hair dove in a different direction. I glanced at his bleached knuckles, then to his watery eyes as they scanned the pavement below. For a foolish instant, I did the same; immediately feeling the ledge slip from beneath my feet as the pit of my stomach dropped the several floors between our two, trembling bodies, and the monstrous slabs of rock.
I pressed my back harder against the crumbling brick.
“So, you want to jump.” A bout of strangled sniffling and tears welled up on the child as his head nodded forward.
How many times had I been as that boy?
What nights of my youth were spared the sorrow of knowing I would again wake the following morning?
And then there was Keane—wise, loyal Keane—who forced the despair of others below deck and raised the one thing the poor, battered souls of the world most rely on.
Hope.
I dared another peek at the swimming street before grasping all my forgotten hopes and letting them fall to the wind.
“Ross, are you certain this is what you want to do?” Another not surfaced. Another dream lost. “Alright, then I’ll jump too.” It wouldn’t be a bad death. Not really. A few seconds of fear before rest. Rather like the monster under the bed.
A nightmare before the dream.
“You can’t.” Ross exclaimed; eyes blown wide at the very thought anyone with the thinnest connection to his hero might throw themselves down beside him.
As if perfection was contagious.
“Why not?” I asked. “I’m not scared. If you can do it, I can do it.” Now Ross’ head was shaking madly.
“No, you can’t. It’s not your fault. It’s mine.” My feet were beginning to numb within my boots.
“So you have a fault. We all have faults. I’m a terrible cook. There. That’s my fault. What’s yours?”
“No, you don’t understand.”
“Then make me understand.” I challenged. “Why would a young man with his entire life ahead of him want to throw it away?” A few fresh tears coursed down the lad’s face; pooling at the sides of his mouth and running off his chin.
“It is my fault the professor is in gaol. It was my fault. It was me.” Ah. The guilt of an entire society had crashed to his shoulders via the infamous newspaper. Good. Progress.
God, my legs hurt.
“Ross, even if—note the word ‘if’—you had anything whatsoever to do with his arrest, it will all right itself in the end. He will be freed soon. See? Nothing to worry about.” Unless he was found guilty of treason and—
No, I wouldn’t think about that.
Something else then.
“Keane actually has quite a few faults of his own, you know. He smokes too much. That’s one. He can be insufferable at times. That’s two. Oh, and he swears Yeats was better than Burns. That is actually quite an important one, so you had best write it down.” Throughout my short rant of the many vices of my long-standing companion, of which I could have named a great deal more, Ross had subconsciously shifted his thin form closer to me. Closer to the window. Closer to safety. I sighed; managing the dim outline of a smile despite the shockwaves of agony shooting through my burning limbs.
“Listen, Ross, we’ve been standing here an awfully long time. You must be hungry. Yes? How about you and I take this conversation inside over a cup of tea? With chocolate biscuits, if you’d like.” The boy, now nearer to a young man, grinned enthusiastically and took a considerably large step toward my outstretched hand.
But his legs had fared no better than mine.
First it was a trip. Then a stubble. Suddenly, he was inadvertently pushing himself away from the safety of the bricks and diving toward the edge of death. My arm came out again; fingers grabbing wildly for the cotton of his collar. In doing so, I too was required to move. I went after him.
Falling.
Gasping.
Vision blurring.
Cloth passed through my hand.
Then I stopped.
Immediately.
A sharp pain of strong fingers caught my angle, bashing my head and torso into the rock building at the jolt.
My fist opened.
The cloth was lost. Slipping away. Tumbling. Jerking.
Screaming.
Falling.
After lifetimes of breathless horror, a sickening thud of flesh and bone echoed upward from the pavement where the cotton I had once held desperately between my fingers grew matted with red. Broken. Silent. Mangled. Twisted. Bloodied.
Dead.