Me the Cliff
First? Ground rules.
I’m a cliff. I don’t breathe. I don’t even eat or drink or anything like that.
But I move. If you look at me over big time. Geological time. Big bang boom continental drift kind of time.
I also hear. No, not hear. Listen.
And I can think. But I can’t remember when I when I first thought. It might have been when I first became a cliff, snapping away from some other landmass. I don’t know. Maybe all land thinks? I don’t know that either.
Those are the ground rules. Ground rules? I am the ground. So I pun as well? Does it count if it was an accident? Wait – I guess I also foreshadow.
Sorry. To recap.
Don’ts: breathe; eat; drink.
Dos: move; listen; think; dabble in cheap literary techniques.
I know people do all of these things. I’ve heard them. They walk and stand on top of me to look out at the swirling brown sea. They make oooh aaah big stretch see it was worth it in the end Marjory now give us that flask noises. Scuttle and tumble, stomp and harumph. Some have strong confident breaths while others a rasping wheeze. Or wheezy rasp.
I like listening to it all.
I like the rustle of the gossamer thin pet-poo bags and the way they’re always accompanied by people talking to their dogs. Some congratulating them on their yield, some telling partners that this is why dogs shouldn’t have dairy – always with an air of sanctimony that belies the bag of wet shit in their hand. I hear the swish of tails skimming the top of the grass as people speak with a dainty kindness that I imagine would make me happy if I were a dog. I like to imagine being a dog. All that bound and pant and roll and sniff. Burrow and trot.
I like the sounds of the people that stay in the daytime too. Cackling friends on picnic blankets, or the hiss and squeal that follows the thrompthromp of a rehearsed proposal, their tongues feeling suddenly thick in the mouth.
Sometimes people come up here to drink away from prying eyes. Sometimes they dare each other to piss over my edge. Sometimes they fuck on the grass in the twilight the moonlight the midday sun. None of this is recent. There’s been hundreds of years’ worth of it. Every generation thinks they’re the first to fuck.
There’s stories about me the cliff. And they slap against each other like the waves and mix and turn against alongside above below me.
Sometimes the maiden throws herself from the cliff because her betrothed was courting another woman, another man, or she’s the one that’s been found out. Or she receives a letter saying the loved one died at sea and goes mad with grief. Drowns trying to swim out to them.
Sometimes there isn’t a betrothed at all and the maiden throws herself into the sea due to sins committed in the town. Sometimes the maiden’s a sensitive young man who can’t bear it anymore, or a mother that’s had enough. Or a widower. Or a spinster. Or a. Or a or a ora oraoraoraa.
None of them are true. They’re all true.
But not everything that happens atop me the cliff is grim.
I once heard an opera singer.
He stood with a film crew and boomed out a song.
I recognised it as Italian. I understand what something means to be Italian. As a sound. As a concept.
I might need to update my list.
I heard the big boom bang sound that came from the singer, but also the mighty bloodthump of the hearts assembled atop me the cliff. I heard the leaning of each blade of grass trying to get closer to that massive voice.
It was wonderful, even though they stopped recording quickly. The sluicing waves against my base are too loud, and unable to keep rhythm.
Disappointment sounds as beautiful as song. The director’s was a tinkling sharp thing, flecked with irritation at having to reschedule, while the cameraman’s creaked like a tree branch bending in the wind before it snaps.
The singer wasn’t too bothered, but I suppose he can hear that song whenever he likes given he carries it in his throat. I heard him think about the change of venue to an indoor broadcast, his pride sounding like the tearing of a boat sail.
Anyway, they took their photos and left their tyre marks and litter.
A lot of the romance of me, the cliff, ends up this way. Beauty and delight followed by empty crisp bags snagged in the gorse.
But I grew to love that sound. Opera, Italian.
Gregory Campbell fifty-seven listened to Italian opera when he brought young men to the edge of me the cliff. Which he did a lot.
The opera would stop and they’d talk. The talk would be kind, searching, lingering on the precipice of an offer. I’d hear laughs, intakes of breaths. Orgasms and the exchange of money. I could hear the difference between spunk that was flung from a hand or spat out.
Gregory Campbell would say he’d never done anything like this before. A lot. He’d beep boop an app on his phone, and then he’d beep boop the electric start on his car. The stereo always played opera Italian. There’d be mutually exchanged fictions. For Gregory, sometimes this meant denying he was married, sometimes it was saying he was deeply unhappily married. His male partners would lie their own lies too, with things like ‘I empathise’ and ‘That doesn’t sound easy Gregory Campbell’.
The more Gregory Campbell fifty-seven brings the men to me the cliff, the more I learn. I learn the difference between Verdi Puccini Rossini. I learn about other dead maidens. Butterflies Madame. Toscas. Maidens that don’t go off me the cliff, but still die.
‘This is very interesting’, the men lie.
One man refused to lie. This man says very clearly that if Gregory Campbell forces his way down the back of his throat like that again he’ll bite his cock off and post it to Mrs Campbell. Gregory makes a hollow little laugh to make light of the situation and the new man stays silent. I can hear the truth of his threat in the gaps. Where Gregory lies under his true name, this man tells the truth under a fake one.
Seasons come and go, and I hear the sound of opera Italian approaching me the cliff twice a week with the honest man. But Gregory gets Attached. The man says ‘Gregory, you’re getting Attached.’ A reprimand. He uses the word Addict in the same way. You’re like an Addict, Gregory, he says.
It’s balmy on the night Gregory Campbell fifty-seven dies. He asks the honest man with the false name to penetrate him. I hear his voice quiver, the guard lowering and the shame he’s cocooned himself in for decades sheds. The offer is declined. Gregory asks if this is something they can discuss in future, for a fee. The man says that not everything is a transaction. You can’t buy your way through everything Gregory Campbell, he says.
Something in Gregory breaks. The vulnerability too uncomfortable for him to bear, perhaps? Or maybe he just can’t stand to be told no.
I hear Gregory go apoplectic. That’s the word the other man uses. Apoplectic. He calls the honest man dark and disgusting names. He threatens him. He hates him he loves him.
There’s a recognition in the other man’s thoughts that this needs to end. It sounds like a hollow tin hitting the floor after being knocked over. It’s too difficult, he thinks. Gregory Campbell has bought his time, his mouth, his arsehole. I hear uncertainty in the young man’s thoughts. He wants to buy all of me, he thinks. It’s the first time he’s not been completely sure of his own safety. It’s uncharted territory. The edge of the map, he thinks. Fresh air. Get out of the car. Give yourself space to run, he thinks. Getoutgetoutgetout.
He gets out.
The tide on Gregory Campbell’s anger has gone out, leaving hurt and pain. He too steps out of the car and locks the door out of habit. Beep boop. Don’t you dare walk away from me, he screams. The dryness of his throat makes his words scrape against the warm dusk twilight. I imagine timpani and think of hot Italian summers where the sea isn’t brown.
The other man stays calm as Gregory Campbell fifty-seven shouts twee things about love and cruel things about how he earns his living. Promises of a better life, threats and apologies. To be honest, I find it dull. Flat. Out of tune.
And yet the other man remains calm. He considers the night warm enough to walk home. Anything other than getting back into that car. With the shitty opera.
It’s at this point I think less of the other man.
He considers his route. Is there a way down from me the cliff that isn’t accessible by road? Would Gregory Campbell know the same shortcuts? How much does Gregory Campbell know about the many different ways towards the town?
He does some mental arithmetic. The cost of changing phone numbers, the cost of moving to the next town along. The cost of losing income over a night a week a month if he has to do a flit.
YOU’RE NOT LISTENING TO ME, shouts Gregory Campbell.
I stop hearing timpani.
Gregory has been doing his own calculations. A life without the other man isn’t worth living. So he must beg. My life is on the line, thinks Gregory Campbell.
He begins striding towards the man, then he breaks into a run.
I don’t think Gregory Campbell is trying to hurt him. I think he wants to throw himself at his feet. A grand romantic gesture. To supplicate. To claw and beg and hold and grab. To get his money’s worth.
But the human mind isn’t a calculator, so the other man bolts to the right to create some distance.
Gregory Campbell tries to turn. He twists his ankle and falls. He goes over the edge of me the cliff. He dies.
The other man leaves in the opposite direction, not stopping until he gets back home. I hear his steady heartbeat as he strides down the path. I hear only one thought. He is right. It is warm enough to walk home alone.
❦ ❦ ❦
Later, the police come and put their plastic tape around the little bench and stand very still. There’s the tippy tap tap of a stylus against a screen. They look a bit sad and choose their words carefully. Gregory Campbell, male, fifty-seven years old. They say it must have been a slip because of the value of his nearby abandoned car.
Besides, jumpers often leave the keys behind, they say.
They have their little discussions, and I hear the words between the words. His wife called in the missing person report, they say with a bite on the word ‘wife’. Their hums are poignant. Pointed.
They leave.
❦ ❦ ❦
The car remains until Mrs Campbell arrives with a friend and the spare key. I expect to hear grief and loss in her words, but there’s a shrill glee, the squark of a bird of prey.
The friend is equally cruel. They discuss how divorce gets you fifty percent, but death gets you everything. They discuss how he did her a favour. They discuss the body, and how there’s no way the funeral can be open casket.
Was the body that bad, asks the friend.
No, says Mrs Campbell. Her voice is honeyed with the expectation of her own punchline.
But if I see his face, she says, I don’t trust myself not to smile.
When they start the car, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci blasts from the speakers.
Turn that shit off, the friend says.
❦ ❦ ❦
For a while it’s quiet. Ooh it’s morbid, the walkers say. Fifty-seven’s no age, they coo. The poor wife, they whisper. Respect for the dead withers and wilts until it’s time for the rumours to start. I heard he was embezzling, someone will say. Another will imply drug dealing, or human trafficking. Well, what else do people do out here at that time?
Threads of story will lash themselves around the facts like guy ropes on tent pegs. Dramatic ironies will be stitched in and sympathies assigned. Did you hear about the whistle-blower who (accidentally?) died the night before the hearing? Something like that.
The honest man isn’t in any retelling of the story. He doesn’t even get a name in this one. Of course, the police find phone records and meetings between Gregory Campbell and the man before they settle on accidental death. Besides, the twisted ankle in the post-mortem provides a good enough explanation for a night wander gone wrong. Good enough in as much as it protects Mrs Campbell’s pride and the stellar reputation of the town. And its house prices.
The police imply that the young man ought to move on. And he does.
As for me the cliff, I wait for the next story. I listen. I long for opera, Italian.
Daniel Draper is a prize-winning writer from Derbyshire whose work is inspired by folklore and the uncanny of the everyday. His writing has appeared in print, online, and in audio form. If he isn’t writing or teaching, he’s probably on Twitter @MrDraperMaths.