It's difficult to describe how he fell. It's hard to say what an outsider would have seen. To me the way his body crumpled would suggest weight pushing him down, or the abyss somehow pulled on his body like a magnetic force attracting human flesh. One second standing there, the next he was over the edge and gone. The sun was trying to burn the eyes from my head, but I couldn't tear my gaze away from the spot where moments before he'd been standing. His silhouette was burnt onto my eyeballs; seconds after he'd gone he would be dead. His image still alive in my eyes after his eyes could no longer see.
I'd been damaging my eyes picturing this man damage himself for the final time. The rock would take him, there was no soft option waiting below. The bulk of the crowd would rush forward in its morbid desire to see someone else's demise, perhaps to be glad that the horror of death was not theirs today. For some the nightmares would follow, possibly for months or even years. For others with harder souls it would be one hell of a pub story, and, for some, digital phone gold to post online. In the next five minutes a relation in hot Mumbai could watch cold death.
At this moment all the eyes were fixed towards the sun silhouetting the balustrade, not on me. So what do I do next? Pick up the voice recorder like it's my own, and place it in my pocket. Nobody else on the terrace sees this apparent theft. I have no desire to look over the precipice to see the image that was already burnt into my mind. I knew the fate awaiting anyone who plunged from that balustrade. There was no point looking into the abyss, I knew what was down there.
I placed money for my beer on the table. I didn't think my compatriot had paid. Yes he had! Without any hesitation I made my way to the car through the rapidly chilling day and joined the usual fume-filled snail-crawl of cars off the mountain into Granada. On the way down I listened to easy music, and took a Bluetooth phone call. Only when I reach the free moving, night time motorway does my fascination overcome me. It's time to listen to the story trapped inside the voice recorder.
I plug into the central system of my BMW coupe. When the digital machine started I thought I might gain some insight and understanding from a dead man's words. I drove at a steady pace staying on a longer motorway only route so I could listen without the interruptions associated with travel on crowded roads.
I hoped to hear it all in one sitting. My day had started at 4:30am, and twelve unique hours later it had ended with the 4:30pm death plunge. The machine was running and for the first few seconds, silence. Had he wiped it? Then a cough, then silence, then another cough,
Oh, get on with it
. Finally, the words cameâ¦
This is an accurate account of the words inside that digital memory.
The live digital confession of a man who no longer exists!
The recording machine's digital memory was decoded, producing words in a stranger's voice. This is what he said:
“How can I start my story?” (He paused at this point for several seconds then continued.)
“To be more accurate this is a confession! I have discovered after many years of wilful ignorance I've done things that you would describe as bad, very bad. This term is grossly understating some of the horrors I have been party too. As for committing murder, my personal jury is still out on that one. Evidence doesn't always tell the truth, does it?
“I'm also struggling to come to terms with strange and incredible events outside of the normal world, in a mysterious universe full of strange creatures. As I journeyed through this fantastic place I was shown the truths that lead to this confession. I was taken there, I lived there, and it's burnt into my psyche. I am tortured by the beautyâ¦
“The wrongs I've committed were not always with malicious intent and sometimes with little understanding of the final horror my actions would bring. The damage to other people's lives, the problems I have brought to other people's doors, and the cold end I've given to some are all in this confession. I will start with the mundane, my name and age. The construction could be looked upon, I suppose, as a curriculum vitae of taking the wrong path and slipping into evil.
“I now call myself Peter Henry Jackson. That's my current surname, for all my life it's been Peter. The Henry Jackson bit was a gift from a fellow Nazi, not that I follow Nazi doctrine. I was given the name in a previous life, a time when I mixed with a heartless man. I'll come to that part later. I'm now in my fifth decade, though I don't believe it. In fact I feel about twenty-five-years-old and full of spirit. I suspect the girls I look at think I'm an old pervert and don't see the younger soul inside me. Time is difficult isn't it?
“Vanity makes me fight insidious age. I do a lot of cycling, don't smoke or drink too much. Okay, sometimes I push the bottle a bit. However, people still think that my true age is about forty-eight or so. That's what my friends tell me â Liars! Soon I will be sixty, and now, physically, I look good, too bloody good.
“The ironic thing about this last statement is that I have battled cancer, and during this illness I began to understand my lost history and it's horrors that lead to this very unusual confession. I know I'm going to die but it doesn't show to the world in the accepted stereotypical ways of baldness, terrible skin, and a horrible greyness. That manifestation of the cancerous me has gone, I have passed through that terrible dark stage. I no longer remind people of a victim of famine and plague. I am now robust for the world to see, and not robust in any way at all behind the facade!
“The fact is people I meet in the street say how good I look. This is another irony not lost on me. A few years ago I got super fit and people used to tell me how very ill I looked. Now people I meet in the street without prompting or knowledge of my cancer say things like, âYou're looking good, you must have found somebody'. My experience of finding somebody is usually very draining, so what do they mean? Love lifts you up where you belong. Am I quoting song lyrics?
“So back to this confession of a life less good. I had prostate cancer, quite young for it, though that doesn't give me any cheer as if I'd achieve something by doing it quite young. I suffered from secondary tumours, and these cancers unchecked usually metastasise into far more deadly bone cancer. How can something be more deadly than something that's deadly? I had an operation a few months ago. Going into theatre you've signed all these papers allowing them to do what is necessary to save your life, not the quality of your life.
“A very worrying thought when what is necessary to save your miserable life could leave you with no muscular control in your lower body and, the biggest horror of all, permanent double incontinence. You have no choice, you've signed all the papers and you're floating down hospital corridors on a trolley drugged out of your mind. You're away with the fairies, and you don't care.
“They've performed all the tests but nothing is certain until they go in there and have a dig around. What a horrible expression, âto dig around'. Inside your body digging around among your organs like being on a treasure hunt! It's only after the knife has cut away deceased flesh you discover how much of a winner you've been in this lottery of bleakness.
“Frankly I came out of it with more intact than I really deserve. I walk okay and I'm in control of my own farts! On the second day after the operation, the sensation of a fart building up was a bit of a joy. The knowledge that you can actually feel your bowels filling with gas gives you the belief that you will be able to control them. I deliberately farted. It was a fart and not a vile mess. The best smelling fart in my entire life was full of strange delight. This milestone had me laughing out loud for several minutes. You might think a strange thing to laugh at? Not at all, the knowledge that you won't be shitting yourself for the rest of your days is something worth laughing over, a joy!
“In the first months after the operation, I had the penis of a five-year-old. The thing shrunk to the size it was before my post-puberty fumbling and by all accounts might never fully recover. Things did improve a lot with help from my friends. I'll get to that later on, much later on!
“Pissing my pants was another indignity following surgery. A year or two could see the end of this problem. At first I was using five nappies a day. I'm dry at night when I lie down. I discuss this with the doctor and I sound like a bloody toddler who's got knowledge beyond his years. âOh, he's dry at night'. Great!
“Then, of course, there's the chemotherapy, a poison in the bloodstream eradicating the cancerous cells and destroying many of the good cells in the same holocaust of the blood. It clears your system of almost everything including, on bad days, your will to go on. Days into weeks, these become long months, and the shadows grow across your face, a reflection of the poisons travelling inside you. Vomiting becomes so commonplace you can excuse yourself almost like you're going to cough.
“Do you mind if I vomit for a minute? Ah, that's better! Bit of a conversation stopper. Time and pain harden you against other people's sensibilities. Sympathetic eyes at the bedside drive you to want to claw at them, so I've slapped a face or two. Be cheerful, I'm trying to be!
“Then there's the radiotherapy. It burns. Invading your body slowly, the first few sessions are very innocuous making you believe it's ineffective. At first the whole thing seems as innocent as someone shining a torch on you. It isn't! If I'm going to burn in hell; I started to cook behind that foot thick lead door.
“Tests are not over and I still do not know if they've got it all. None of this now matters. During the nightmare months I discovered much of my terrible past, and in the last few days revelations have revealed the full scope of my evilness.
“I've not come to terms with my odious history and start this confession at a moment when physically I might fully recover. Do I deserve to, and do I want to?
No!
“The following confession will tell you why.”
On this day my raging hormones triggered events that would change the course of my life forever. These were the moments I took the first step down a dangerous road, out of the world of adolescence and into the heavy footfalls of adulthood. I had no clue then, but that night was to be my last family meal around the old farmhouse table.
I'll try to be accurate in my remembrance of what was said during these times, and the way the words were spoken.
“What the hell is that smell?”
“It's Brut for men, it drives the girls wild,” I said. (Even then I was exuding vile odours.)
Leaning in the doorway and grinning at me was Jane, my sister. Her eyes had a mischievous glint.
“Brutal for women don't you mean? The smell is sickening. . It smells worse than the bloody farmyard,” she said.
“What do you know about seventeen-year-old girls?” I said in response.
“It may have passed your notice but I am a twenty-one-year-old girl, and I know what girls like.”
I looked her up and down. Jane was dressed head to foot in black leather, wild dark hair was everywhere. I suppose if she hadn't been my sister, Jane would've been quite attractive. Of course I'd never tell her that, she would always be the older sister who tormented the five-year-old me in the farmyard. Her games invariably had something to do with accidents and animal waste. So no matter how attractive she was, I could never tell her, brothers never do.
“You're not a girl, you're a biker” I said. What a feeble response.
“I'm a girl that rides a motorbike! That so-called perfume is disgusting,” she said.
“It's not perfume, its aftershave. If you were a proper girl you would know it's irresistible.”
“If I was a sow I might find it slightly attractive,” she said.
There was no arguing with her. I could never win. You never win against big sisters, and if you score a few points feminine guile will score revenge points ten times over.
“What the hell are you doing watching me anyway?” I said.
Her response was to tell me that dinner was ready down in the farmhouse kitchen. I always attempted, without success, to avoid the tension zoo around the family table. I dragged my disappointing face away from the mirror. Why do you always develop an enormous spot on a Friday night, never on Monday or Tuesday? I'd prodded at the pustule without hope. Reluctantly I plodded down the stairs of our 1960s farmhouse into the grand communal kitchen. With the assembled family waiting, I regarded this as entering the lion's cage in the circus ring.
Tonight dinner would be a special torture for me. I had to force it down onto a nervous stomach. This was a fact of life for me. Every time I faced crisis my stomach churns forcing me either to dry heave or rush to the toilet. Tonight would be no exception because I was out on the town with my best mate Bob Wilson.
Better than that, tonight we would be grooving (sounded good in 71) at a small intimate party. We were told we'd meet a girl or girls who were easy. Tonight of all nights might be the big moment, the time when we would become men. We were convinced that tonight we'd lose our virginities.
This is nothing new. Several times in the last year we'd ventured out on similar missions that ended in fruitless snogging sessions. Sometimes we gratified base desires touching drunken girls in the most intimate of places. What these girls thought of us we never ever found out. Most of the time we never saw them again, and if we did we were ignored with passion. It was more than obvious our techniques were not that of experienced lovers. The only wildness we were arousing in these girls was the animal instinct to run. Friday night facial eruptions never helped either!
Smiggy had arranged the small party tonight because Smiggy had connections. A couple of years older than us he could always be found down at our favourite pub, The Cauldron. How we got to know this little twisted work of art I don't remember, but he was one of the slimiest little maggots you could ever wish to meet. Not that we knew this at that time, though I think we sensed it, but we ignored it because we thought he could arrange things. This was Friday night and when we'd bumped into him on the Wednesday he'd told us he'd fixed it. “The girl really loves it. She's always gagging for some dick, can't leave it alone,” was the charming way Smiggy had described this teenage girl.
Crude in hindsight, but in our defence we were seventeen-year-olds driven by too many wild hormones. He assured us that during our intimate party we would score with the girl or girls. Sex was a sure thing. I had my best friend Bob for moral support.
Bob Wilson looked like George Best. He was a perfect copy, and as handsome as George. This was the end of the good news and where it all started to go wrong for Bob. The problem was he had 100% less style, no style at all. He wore great clothes and succeeded in transcending any advantage they gave him. His twitchy, nervous style of speaking combined with a God-given gift for the inappropriate never let him down. Without fail he could offend the mildest teenage girl, always picking the wrong topic. He suffered slaps across the face or total indifference. We were a great team, Bob with his good looks and no class, with me hiding behind loud clothes and louder perfume â sorry aftershave!
All this fake machismo made me feel more nervous than I'd ever been in my life. Going sober to a party with a sure thing was daunting. The first move tonight would be to down a few pints in the pub before we ventured off on the road to our manhood. My stomach was very nervous and I dry retched my way down the stairs.
Running the gauntlet of the family dinner table was always a torture when the aunties were over from the old cottage. In the old days the cottage was the main farmhouse, but now occupied rent-free by my opinionated scrounging aunties, both closet Nazis. The old cottage was over a rise out of sight from the farmhouse, so if you were lucky you didn't have to see the old girls. Sadly it was too close, and they would invite themselves over for a free dinner on a regular basis, a far too regular basis.
The modern kitchen was dominated by an old Victorian farmhouse table. Around this expanse of wood were gathered the oddest assortment of mismatched chairs. Each of the chairs had arrived as if by magic and reflected the personality of its occupant. Where they came from nobody seemed to know, but these chairs will always be etched in my memory. Most had been standing mismatched around the table all my life. I can never remember a tablecloth and always the oddest place settings scattered around, never anything formal. I was the last in the house to join the happy throng. Being the youngest wasn't good news, I'd be easy prey for my auntie's attentions.
The aunties, Beatrice and Violet, took over all conversations, and were dominating and more solidly Victorian than the table. Both war widows with sad and different stories, they shared a common hatred of everything German. Nazi Germany had taken their beloved Sidney and Joe away from them. They had a mint imperial smelling bitterness, unbroken after more than two decades alone.
My aunties formed an evil alliance as bad as any evil axis. These old ladies were my fascists. Anything, and I mean anything, I could do was never good enough. I was the big disappointment because I wasn't going into the family business. It was the livestock that I hated so much, finding the hideous-smelling crowded pens uninteresting. It was always bitterly cold at 5am no matter what time of the year. This wasn't the life for me. I was going to be a dentist or at worst a dental technician with a clean laboratory, more money and fewer hours. Best of all, no mountains of shit, I loathed animal waste, steaming piles of shit. You could keep farming!
“These modern girls showing their bottoms and fat legs get no respect from men!” Beattie boomed, showing the open page of a magazine to make her point to anybody who was interested. The picture featured a smart girl wearing a dress two inches above her knee, all very disturbing I didn't think.
“I think I would have worn a dress like that if I'd been eighteen now. I wish Jane would dress a little bit more feminine,” Violet said, looking across in the direction of Beattie, her thin high vinegar voice cutting through the air. Beattie couldn't have heard above the sound of the pressure cooker, though the suggestion that somebody should wear such a disgusting item would have shocked her older sister.
“You only say that because you've got good legs. Big legs like mine aren't suited to that style. I was very lucky when I was eighteen, meeting Sidney,” Beattie boomed. She had very good hearing when she decided to use it. When my mother asked for help her deafness was almost profound. She without any conscience expounded values she always failed miserably to demonstrate.
“We all covered up when I was eighteen,” Violet said, “but if I were eighteen now I'd show my knickers.”
“I didn't know you had such a wild side, Violet,” Jane said in surprise.
“I haven't got a wild side, I'm jealous of you young girls. And you, young lady, don't make the best of yourself with all that leather,” Violet responded.
“Looks like a boy, a ruffian, a ne'er-do-well!” Beattie boomed. My sister looked back uninterested and uncaring.
The evil axis legs debate had now finished. It was time to attack fresh prey, namely me!
“My God, what the hell is that smell?” Beattie said. She watched me with gimlet eyes whilst building her next bout of criticism. I always promised myself one day I would get revenge. Was my day ever going to come?
“Yes, what is that smell? It's really sickly like vanilla and chocolate but worse,” Violet added.
“Look at your hair, it's just too long. You look more like a girl than a boy. Those shoes, they're higher than good girls wore in my day. Bad girls wore shoes like that,” Beattie boomed at me.
“I'm not a bad girl, Auntie, I'm a boy,” I exclaimed.
“You're wearing high-heeled shoes and sailors' trousers, flares I think you call them, and that hair. A common girl would dress like that for a night out with soldiers,” Beattie said, and then buried her head in the magazine. She'd had the last word.
“This is 1971, the world has changed and I'm changing with it. This is new and wild,” I said. Beattie and Violet snorted with derision.
“I think Peter looks nice. He's only seventeen he's allowed to make a few mistakes.” My mother, Iris, voiced this over the sound from the pressure cooker, the steam making her ghostlike in the room. A comment I couldn't decide on. What was she saying?
“Dinner is ready. All sit down and stop arguing,” My mother said. This carried weight, everyone was quiet. My mother's words always held a quiet authority. She'd been snatched away from the middle classes. Her grandfather was a gentleman farmer, and my father, John, a hard-working farm boy who had first seen my mother at a country fair. I think my mother wanted to escape the constraints of the family home. My very grand grandmother always schemed for her to marry someone from the right circle. She fell in love with John and I never heard my parents argue. I cannot recall a single harsh word between them.
Tough as my father was, my mother had quiet well-spoken strength. Through the haze of steam I could see her move towards a switch next to the door. It sounded bells in the farm buildings, and only at lambing time could we ignore the call for a family dinner around the large Victorian table. John my father and George my studious, quiet, twenty-three-year-old brother would be at the table within two minutes.
My father said little after the hard labour of his fourteen-hour-day. George would hardly speak to me. He thought I was letting the family down by not helping with the farm. He'd studied hard at agricultural college, and was always talking about modern agricultural methods. One day he would be the boss, and it would be like working for Hitler, a dictator, a fascist.
The chairs around that table were a mismatched broken bunch, and the people around that table were as strange and different as each chair they sat upon. The chairs were held by their usefulness around that table. What was holding us together, blood bonds?
“Dad, will you run me into town later?” I asked, halfway through the pudding. There was a heavy atmosphere in the room that night as if a storm was building. I didn't know at the time, but it was.
My father removed a rag from a pocket in the overalls he always seemed to wear. He threw this soiled cloth at me and my clean clothes. The piece of material wasn't dirty, but the force of my father's action and his words shocked me.
“I do fourteen hours, you do nothing! You can walk and wipe the muck from your own stupid shoes. Help me some time and I might help you!” my father said. There was finality in this statement that indicated I should remain quiet. I didn't!
“Dad⦔
“Shut up now or you won't be going out!”
This was the end of my last family meal around the big table. My mismatched chair was about to be used for firewood.
My father and I were set on a hard path. Bitter arguments would fill the twisted future I would walk into tonight.