Peter Campbell Falling

The first thing he noticed once he got up there, other than the wind whipping him in the face, was the way isolated noises would work their way up and free of the crowd of sounds on the ground, so that, every so often, the sound of a joyful child shouting through laughter or the chorus of a birdsong from the trees in the park; the acacias, beeches and the other kinds that he didn’t know about. It was beautiful, thought Peter Campbell, and that should have been his first inkling that his plan, the one that he had given birth to, nurtured against his will and let fester like a tortured child trapped at the bottom of a well, somewhere deep in the recesses of what he imagined was his true self; the one that he tried never to let anybody know of or see, was not going to be something that he could execute.

Up there, he stood and looked down, standing on the flapping grey asphalt strips that sat atop the two looming brown towers, with their jutting balconies, two each side of the building on every floor, all the way up, each one long since coloured grey from their original white, the cumulative build up of exhaust fumes that silently work their way around the world and up into the atmosphere long since having forced a repaint upon those who lived within. The wind was fast up there; it hit with force from every direction, so much force that nature threatened to push its own agenda and, with it, Peter down, past sixteen floors, down and to his death on the paving slabs and on the faces and clothing of those unfortunate to be stood too near the spot that gravity would deign fitting for his exploding end. His green denim train driver’s hat - which, he had always suspected, made him look pretty ridiculous anyway, trumpeting out loud the unease he felt in his heart and mind at having been born at this time, with these people and this way of living that left him withered up inside and alienated from everything and everyone in his life - blew away from his head, leaving his matted brown hair exposed, lifted up and pushed down and from both sides simultaneously from the strength of this wind.

“If I’m not going to do it, I may as well go home” he thought as he, again, looked down. “Or, maybe, to the National Gallery to look at the girls”

Peter Campbell often made his way to the National Gallery to look at the girls. The girls came from all around the world, he imagined, and they would leave the gallery, having stood before the art and appreciated it in ways alien to Peter, and walk to a coffee shop or a nice café, where they would write in their journals or work on their own art, perhaps taking off their scarves in winter and resting them over the back of a comfortable chair, fit to sit in for hours and do whatever it was beautiful women of culture and sophistication did. He imagined. Peter Campbell imagined a lot but, mostly, he imagined he was happy. He imagined he was happy in the arms of a beautiful love; a lasting love that offered him a new life, maybe far away, maybe in the same town but a new life, nevertheless. Find the girl, get the girl and the life would follow; that was another plan of Peter Campbell’s and, like all of the others, its execution remained beyond him.

He had, almost straight away, chanced himself into and perfected a certain routine. He would wake up in the morning, disconsolate and unknowing on the days wherein his mind would turn against him and compel him upwards; up to the top of one of those two brown and grey towers, neither of which he lived in. Upon reaching his summit, the highest point he would reach in his life, he would take from his pocket a letter. These were letters he addressed to unknown and unobtained lovers; the girl from the coffee shop with the Japanese design tattooed on her back, the woman from the train who had locked eyes with him and, he had felt, understood and accept his entirety, or the woman with the brown eyes who crowded his dreams by herself. Reaching the top, he would take the letter and, knowing them to be forever undeliverable, tear them up and return them to sender; the cruel world below, bit by fluttering bit.

How would they fall in love with him, these women? How would he move from casual observer, he imagined – the reality resembling more “strange man staring”- to lover, friend and confidante? This was the fatal flaw in his plan and it was a fatal flaw that, day by day, edged him ironically closer to successful execution of another one of Peter Campbell’s plans; the plan that had led him to be standing here and now, on the asphalt, atop one of the two brown and grey towers. Not today though. He knew it wouldn’t be today.

Peter was sure that there was something wrong with him. At some point in his life, he was sure, something had happened to him and he had split in two. He sometimes thought that he must be crazy, since he knew it wasn’t normal behaviour for a man of his age to regularly make his way up, via a piss and graffiti stained lift, up one flight of stairs, pushing through one fire escape door and up and out to stand on top of one of two brown and grey towers that cast shadows onto the nearby park. One of those two towers, neither of which he lived at but which, he felt sure, he would eventually die at. It was the behaviour of a crazy person but, before he could get himself comfortable with his new crazy person persona, Peter would remember that he had never jumped and then he would feel like he would never jump and then he would feel that he wasn’t crazy. And he wasn’t crazy, not really; he was something else altogether. Peter Campbell was sad. He was sad and he was lonely and it was more than he could bear to think about but it was all he ever thought about.

When had it happened? He could never pinpoint any specific moment or time when these feelings had started. He knew that he had been happy once or, at least, he had not been miserable. What precise moment, what second had it been that he had switched from being a happy person, oblivious to the world through sheer force of quiet joy, to the man he was now; stood on flapping asphalt, on top of one of two brown and grey towers that loomed above the ground and cast shadows on the park nearby, looking over and wondering. Wishing. But never doing.

Whenever these thoughts came to him, Peter Campbell’s mind was suddenly awash with snapshot images of a life once lived. There he was again in the arms of his lover, Emily, laying in the sunshine at the park in which they had often gone to feed the ducks. How curious it was that the simple act of throwing bread to ducks, who would eat anything, could bring such joy to a man’s life that the imagery should be permanently embedded in the depths of his psyche and ready, at any time, to rise up and torment him. There he would be again, underneath a white sheet, bathed in light, naked with Susanna.

These moments were unbearable for him. The memories of love brought with it, just as suddenly, the memories of loss. Peter felt betrayed by his own brain and wished over everything else that he might one day escape it. It was this wish that, in turn, gave rise to that plan that led him here to now, yet again, stood on flapping asphalt, atop one of two brown and grey towers, neither of which he lived in, looking down and hoping to be able to jump this time.

His worst fear was perpetual reincarnation of the same soul, the same mind; battered, bruised and broken and locked inside a new way of being; starting out on a new journey through youth to misery. Peter Campbell felt sure that, if there were such a thing as perpetual reincarnation, this was to always be his pre-destined lot.

How had it happened? He didn’t know and, stood on the flapping asphalt, atop one of the two brown and grey towers, neither of which he lived in, feeling maudlin and insignificant; a place and a feeling that he now knew with all the familiarity that he should have been sharing with a lover, now it seemed as if none of it mattered much at all. Insignificance is a challenge to a mind like Peter Campbell’s. A challenge he often felt he could rise or, rather, fall to with great aplomb and splatter on the pavement below like a falling bomb. But he wouldn’t. Not today.

And so began the descent. As routine as the climb to the top, with all its attendant feelings of certainty and dissonance; isolation from and internalised confrontation with a world that, Peter would imagine, sneered at and rejected him but, in reality, never noticed him; another miserable face in a miserable crowd. Peter Campbell wasn’t hated, he was ignored. He wasn’t despised because he wasn’t even there. The thoughts he thought and the feelings he felt were not unique to him and he was breaking no new mental frontier for mankind in happening upon them; they were, for a lot more people than he had ever appreciated, simply the way it is; the human condition we have been conditioned to accept and to suffer with in silence. Were that silence to ever be broken, were everyone to drop their guard and to say out loud, to eachother “I’m not coping”, would it even bring the Peter Campbells solace? Would it do them good to know that, rather than suffering in isolation and silence, they were all suffering together aloud? No, it was the hope that sustained them all; the hope that, one day, they might wake up and be free of the invisible chains that held them inside themselves; the hope that one day they might be somebody else. Somebody normal and un-tormented.

“What goes up, must come down” Peter thought to himself as he descended the floors in his piss and graffiti stained vessel. The trick, he thought, was in coming down hard. Hard and fast. Make gravity do your bidding, make it a slave to your will, an accessory in your demise. All this thinking. All this thinking on one theme and no respite, no release. Was he, Peter Campbell wondered, destined to spend the rest of his life trapped in this cycle? The thought was yet another thing for him to enter onto his list of things that made life unbearable.

Down the lift went, past floors of doors and nothing more, open them and find diversity; each door revealing and interior reflecting the tenant’s creativity, devotions, triumphs or poverty. Behind those doors life played out to a soundtrack of clunking feet and over loud televisions and stereos. It was there in various ways, news of dissent and dismay or loving and laughter carried through the thin walls and ceilings and, in winter, those sounds were joined by a hacking cough that spread from one wall to another, up and down the blocks.

Ping!

The lift came to a halt at the ground floor and the battered steel doors opened to reveal a vision in black on the other side. She stood about 5”3, 5”4, which Peter had always felt would be the perfect accompaniment to his 5”7, 5”8; she had big, brown eyes that dominated her face as she peered up to look into Peter’s blue ones. She had her black hair cascading down into curls that Peter instantly imagined unravelling and re-twisting and her skin was olive to contrast with his white. On top of the curls, she wore a black beret, an accessory that, until now, had always seemed to Peter to be the absolute height of pretentiousness in women’s fashion was suddenly transformed into a marker of sophistication; any idiot girl wearing such an item was as guilty of impersonation as the man who, pretending to be a doctor, performs surgery and accidentally kills a man. Peter was prone to exaggeration, maybe, but this woman, little more than a girl, that stood before him was, undoubtedly the single most beautiful woman living now or who had ever lived. In her 5”3, 5”4 frame, she carried all of the answers, comfort and reassurance that Peter had been seeking his entire life. He resolved right then and there that he would never again journey up to stand on the flapping asphalt and look down. He was going to love her and roll around in parks with her, be naked under white sheets with her and create new memories all of their own together and, eventually, create new minds and devote their lives to giving them the very best of memories.

The doors began to close. Peter snapped back. Why hadn’t she gotten in, he wondered? She hadn’t gotten in because he hadn’t gotten out. She, Sabine Patulea, regarded Peter curiously. She wondered why he hadn’t gotten out of the lift, mainly, but, also, there was undeniably something that had struck her when the doors had slid open and she had seen him standing there.

He was a nice height, this man, Sabine thought, and she had liked his tousled brown hair that fell in different directions, his blue eyes and pale colouring. She had even found it endearing, the way that he had been startled by her, but now she wondered if she could get into a lift with him, since he didn’t appear to be getting out. Instinctively, she jammed her foot in the door when he made no effort to pass her and, instantly, she regretted the decision. The regret was difficult to fathom, however. She shared this lift, soaked in piss and covered in graffiti every day; with Mrs Patel from the floor below and the fat man who never wore a shirt, always stank of sweat and carried strong beer with him in a can. Why had this most depressingly mundane setting been transformed into a moving den of awkward intimacy?

Now, his life could split in two again or, rather, the two disparate parts would be reunited. She had the power. She stepped into the lift and pressed 4. The lift doors sealed themselves and fate.

Movement began and the 2 in the dial of numbers, rising in twos, lit up momentarily, to be replaced by 4 a few seconds later, then 6, then 8, then 10. Still silence. Since the initial reveal of the steel doors, no further eye contact had been made. The tension in the air was palpable but equally misinterpreted by both parties. To Sabine – not her real name; she’d changed it from Suzanne which, she had always felt, was the name of a spinster, a name to grow into and fall back on if all else failed – the tension was alien and slightly bizarre; she felt it just as keenly as Peter Campbell, but she could not put a name to it. Peter Campbell could and the name was “self loathing”. Here he was, stood next to the woman he was sure was to be his wife in every conceivable sense and yet…and yet…not this time.

“I’m Peter” he finally said, in a voice that croaked rather than spoke past the point of “I’m”.

“I’m sorry?” Sabine replied tentatively

“Sorry” began Peter “I said I’m Pete…”

“Ping!” cried the lift

“…r” finished Peter

He looked up at the row of illuminated numbers, now a full set. The last one said 16.

“Fantastic” thought Peter

The doors slid open. Sabine stepped out. Peter looked down, crestfallen. That had been his window, his doorway to another life; the life he had planned and wanted. The doors began to slide shut again as Sabine prepared to walk out of his life. She stepped out of the lift and his head fell down low. The doors were sliding. They slid. Right until they hit a foot.

“Peter?” Enquired Sabine

“Yes?” squeaked Peter, before he cleared his throat and croaked “yes?”. Because that was way cooler.

“I think I would like to know you” she said. Sabine’s voice lilted in the middle of all of her sentences, which gave her the air of an ingénue or some kind of pixie. Peter didn’t know what the hell he was thinking about; he never normally thought words like ingénue, because he wasn’t certain how to spell or pronounce them properly. He was reasonably certain that Sabine sounded like one of them though.

He was still in the lift. The beautiful woman he had fallen in love with before a word had passed her lips was outside of the lift, saying she wanted to know him, and Peter Campbell was where he had been and as silent as always.

Sabine stepped back. The door slid closed whilst Peter stood in silence. He looked up as it was closing and caught a direct glance into the brownest, most beautiful, biggest eyes he had ever seen and they shook him out of his torpor. But the lift was moving now, in the only direction it could; it was heading downwards and away.

“Ping!” said the lift, and the number 12 was illuminated.

“Shit!” thought Peter, as he pushed his way past a startled Mrs Johnston, a Scottish woman in her 50s with an alcoholic husband, neither of whom Peter would ever know, because he was away. Away and up the flights of stairs. Up and round, up and round at the top of every flight; up towards that asphalt roof he knew so well but where he intended to stop short of for today and forever after this one.

Up one flight he ran, grabbing hold of the banister to use his momentum to push him halfway up another before he even really thought about it, then another, and another and more and more until he reached where he wanted to be and who he wanted to be with. Floor 16. Where this girl lived. Who’s name, he realised, he did not know. Peter pushed open the door that separated floor from doors in a hurry and, in doing so, the back of his forward right foot caught the front of his trailing left foot and caused him to trip. He stumbled forward at first for a few steps until he lost his balance, fell forward and smacked his head against the front door of number 64 and sprawled out on the floor in a heap. He didn’t see Sabine – who’s name he still did not know, but she knew his – anywhere. Until the sound of the smacking head against the wooden door brought an answer. The door opened in on itself, Peter looked up, Sabine looked down. Peter had found Sabine and Sabine had found Peter. Reunited, though they knew nothing about each other whatsoever at this point.

Sabine had heard a knock at her door and had come to investigate. Perhaps a knock was the wrong word, since “a knock” always brought with it the promise of another knock and another and another until the door was opened. This was not a knock though, this was more like a thump. And, so, a single, solitary thump at the door had caused Sabine to turn on her heels, having discarded her beret, checked her face in the mirror and, in doing so, she looked herself right into those big, brown eyes and missed Peter; the man she had never really met.

Sabine walked down the hallway, along stripped back floorboards that she had painted white herself and up to the heavy front door, which she had also painted white. She allowed herself one further glance in another mirror that she had placed just to the right of the door and left with its original black colouring. Sabine opened the door and met Peter, the man she had never met but who she had wished, without even realising it, would be the source of the single knock against her door. Possibly, it had been more of a thud.

The door opened up and Peter, all at once, knew how it felt to be the man who discovers that he has won the jackpot on the pools draw in one letter and learnt that he has terminal cancer in another. He had hit the right door, the girl was there and this was a source of immediate and intense joy to Peter. The difficulty was that he was sprawled out on the floor and that his head, which had been resting against the door, had fallen forward when it opened, where it opened and had now come to rest in between the girl’s legs. This was pretty over familiar stuff on his part and Peter knew it. As instinctively as he had felt that this girl was someone special for him, he knew he had blown it. There was unlikely to be any coming back from this.

Sabine looked down and saw a head looking up from between her legs. She felt no threat at all and couldn’t help but let out a giggle, which she hoped would not be interpreted as assent. It was, after all, highly unusual for a man she had never met to be laying between her legs; she couldn’t really see how the situation had come to be, and yet, here he was; sprawled out and looking up at her.

“He has pretty blue eyes” Sabine thought to herself, as she opened her mouth to speak

“She has beautiful brown eyes” Peter thought to himself, as he maintained his gaze into her face, terrified to look anywhere else for the potential legal ramifications such a glance could provoke. There it was again. Her sing-song voice, which lilted in the middle of her sentence again, as if to prove that how endearing it had been before had been no accident. She was like a dealer in fine loveliness.

Here was a hand being extended to him and, with it, a world he had given up on believing in. Here was a face much closer to his as he rose and now was a shock that induced by his logical left brain being shouted down by the flighty right. Almost every bit of Peter Campbell was a man who allowed life to pass him by on the riverbank whilst he was sucked under by the current. Almost every bit of Peter Campbell was reconciled to a life devoid of love. Almost every bit of Peter Campbell had wanted to die before and protested his foolishness now. Almost every bit. Almost. There was one bit of Peter Campbell left, maybe that flighty right brain, maybe his big left toe; unaware of the internal conflict, Peter Campbell cared little because, for Peter Campbell, there was no conflict. Peter Campbell was already engaged in the act of slowly turning his head to the girl as he rose. Peter Campbell was already engaged in the act of parting his lips and bracing for contact. Peter Campbell was still alive. Peter Campbell was in love.

Sabine was unaware of all of it, of course. She had her own process to manage and it was all she could manage not to start weeping. She felt such sadness radiate from this man on the floor at her feet. Empathy, the likes of which she had never known, hit and overwhelmed her like a tsunami, devastating her defences and her standard practised social convention. She had heard of love at first sight before now, of course, but she had been in love before and this was different. This was powerful. And she could feel it changing her life, even as she extended her hand to Peter Campbell, even as he rose. Even as he turned his face to his and she could see, for the first time clearly, the lines and imperfections that mapped out his face and made him beautiful. Even as his lips moved closer to hers. Especially when their lips collided and Sabine Patulea was in love.

Once more, Peter Campbell felt as if he were forced along by a current. It carried him into the arms of the girl he had just met, pushed his arms around her body and his momentum carried them both backwards and into her small flat. On the wall by the doorway hung a framed poster of a black cat with some French writing on it; a stylish oasis in the otherwise culturally bereft green hallway. Backwards they were pushed, past that black cat and along the green hallway to a white door. Their mouths still locked together, no further words exchanged between them, Sabine broke partially free of the embrace to fumble behind her back until she hit upon the handle and the door gave way and then backwards they were pushed, past that white door. The white door had given way to a white room with a wide double bed inside and little else. The bed had yellow sheets, yellow pillows and a crumpled yellow duvet resting on it. On the wall, there hung the print of a Hokusai tsunami that Peter had seen many, many times before. He had never been affected by it before, seeing it as merely ornamental and considering its purpose to be purely aesthetic and cosmetic; there to break up the monotony of a million student walls that would otherwise go blank. Now, he felt the full force of that wave crashing over him, drenching he and Sabine in frantic, kinetic love so that they were both mere vessels, carrying out a pre-ordained destiny and, now, for the first time, stood against that yellow bed, with its yellow sheets, yellow pillows and yellow, crumpled duvet, now, Peter Campbell was finally falling down. Now he was not alone and he was thankful for his prison cell mind that had rendered him incapable of leaping from that lonely, familiar spot on that flapping asphalt roof, on top of the grey and brown tower, wherein lived his love. Now he was happy.

That night they made love and each one knew at last, after a lifetime of false dawns, what the expression meant. Over and over, they locked themselves together and, when it was over, they held onto eachother tightly and found to their mutual delight that their bodies fitted and locked together perfectly, as each one told the other how they came to be laying there. Sabine told Peter how she had come to England from France, how she had felt herself a stranger in that land and in this until the time she saw the hurt in her eyes and knew, instinctively, that this was the force that had driven her here and she was to be his salvation as he was to give her purpose. She cried as Peter cried, as Peter held onto her tighter than before and told her everything; all the reasons he had had long, lonely hours to identify as the cause of his malaise and exclusion. He told her of the women he’d known before and the ways in which he had frozen and they had left him, he told her of the feeling he had had that had kept him awake in the nights and consumed him from within with acidic self loathing, how he, too, had felt on the outside of his own life looking in, completely powerless and how it had led him, so many times, to travel, with his crumpled letter in his sweaty pocket to the summit of one of those two brown and grey towers, in one of which they agreed that night he would now live so they need never be apart, onto the flapping asphalt, to peer over the edge.

Te next morning, Peter Campbell made his last trip to the summit of that grey and brown tower, in which he now lived. He made his way over to the piece of asphalt and he took his crumpled letter from his sweaty pocket. He looked down into the shadows cast on the park nearby and he heard the sound of childish laughter. He tore his letter into as many pieces as it could bear and he threw it down to the ground and the world below. It may never be his world, Peter Campbell thought to himself, but he was not afraid of it any more. As the pieces fluttered to the ground, Peter Campbell took the hand of the woman he was in love with, who he now had the rest of his life to get to know inside and out and to plant seeds within, the woman who had been stood with him the whole time and who would nurture him and comfort him when, as he was certain would happen, the darkness would, from time to time envelop him once more. She gladly accepted his hand and, together, they made their way down.