Chapter Six

FALLING

I can’t be sure what time I was finished drinking the last of my whiskeys. It was possibly moments before the barmaid refused to serve me another drink on the grounds I couldn’t even stand up properly, never mind walk straight. It was kind of those two door supervisors to help me down the stairs, although they needn’t have pushed me out of the doorway quite so hard so that I almost tripped and landed in the middle of the main road in rush hour traffic.
How I got back to the house is beyond me, and I should really remember as it was only a few minutes ago.
Did I get a taxi? Yes, I must have done.
Was I sick on the way home in the taxi?
Using the garden gate as a means to turn back around and survey the way I have just walked/staggered/lunged by leaning on it and swinging back and forth I can make out that yes I did in fact get a taxi and yes I was in fact sick, on the road and a bit on the door of the black cab. I wave at the taxi driver who is now wiping my vomit from his baby and I think he waves back. I can’t really hear what he has just said but that doesn’t matter, I’m pissed, nothing matters.
Using the garden hedge to steady myself I start my long and perilous journey to the front door. Key in my hand...no, wait, that’s not my key that’s a cigarette lighter...but I don’t even smoke? Where the fuck is my key? No matter.
I land on the doorstep with my head and relax. It’s comfy down here on the pebbledash pathway, and look, the clouds are parting and...and it’s sunny! For the first time in over a month the sun’s rays massage my aching winter ravaged body. I’ve missed you sun, but I’ll be seeing a lot more of you soon when I arrive in Cape Africa in South Town for Christmas. And Lisa’s going to be there too! I love Lisa, she’s so fantastic and...
“For fuck sakes Billy, what the hell are you doing lying on the garden path,” Paul shouts at me as he opens the front door and almost trips over my head.
I smile up at him, what a great guy, and say, “I’m telling the truth on the garden path, not lying, and the truth is you my friend are my bestest friend.”
He rolls his eyes at me and I laugh at this, accepting his hand as he pulls me up to my feet.
“I only left you two hours ago, how the hell did you manage to get into this state in such a short time?”
I shrug, sensing with my acute sense of sensibleness that this is a rhetorical question.
“I think you need to go to bed mate,” Paul tells me as he lifts me into the house and we help each other up the stairs and into my room.
No sooner is the door open I manage to stumble the few steps to my bed and fall on top of the mountain of pillows, a precaution for when I am falling a lot in my sleep. Paul leaves the room, closing my door and I roll onto my back, reaching out to open my curtains so that I can feel that glorious sun on my face again. The curtains and pole come crashing down on top of me but that’s fine. I shrug them to the floor and get undressed, lying naked above my covers so that the dwindling rays massage my whole body. I can feel a tingling sensation in my legs, it is moving across my torso and up my neck to my face. I turn over onto my front, feeling suddenly energised but at the same time quite drowsy. I need to sleep. I’m pissed and I need to sleep. I close my eyes and the sun is behind my eyelids, momentarily burnt into my retinas and shining bright into my soul. It is growing, engulfing my whole line of sight, the tingling now feeling as though it is moving my whole body, charging me up into a great explosion which does not come. Instead the sun dies out and I begin to fall aslee...begin to fall asl...begin to fall...I’m falling!
My bedroom door slams open to Candy, another one of my house mates, standing there, hands on hips and a bemused smirk across her pretty face. I open my eyes properly and notice that I am now at the other side of the room and on the floor.
“Bad dream?” she asks and I blink a couple of times before standing up, my feet still tingling from the sun. She throws me a pair of shorts from the pile of dirty washing by the door and I quickly slip into them.
“No, not at all, I was just drifting off and then...” I stop as I glance out of the window. All traces of daylight have disappeared and it is now raining hard. Shaking my head I ask her what the time is, to which she smiles sweetly and tells me it is quarter past nine.
Quarter past nine! How did that happen?
“Paul,” I call out but there is no answer.
“He’s out love,” Candy tells me.
“What time did I get home?”
She shrugs and then adds, “it was before six because I got back then and you were sleeping like a little naked baby on top of your covers.”
Three hours! How can I have been sleeping for three hours? I have just closed my eyes this very second.
“Would you like a coffee? You still reek of whiskey.”
I nod, grabbing my towel which is sort of hanging up over the clothes rack that is my wardrobe, “I’m going to grab a quick shower,” I tell her as I bolt past her and across the landing to the bathroom.
“You ok Billy?” she asks through the bathroom door to which I groan a yes and jump into the sobering ice spikes which are better at waking you up than any cup of coffee.
Ten minutes later and I’m downstairs sitting at the kitchen table, Candy facing me, cups of coffee between us.
“Did you fall again?” she asks me once she’s rolled herself a spliff and lit it.
I nod, “I guess so, but this time it was different. Usually I have been asleep for moments before I fall, this time it was over three hours.”
She shrugs because she does not have any insight into my strange sleeping patterns to add, and so I too shrug, smiling a little and accepting the spliff as she offers it to me.
I still feel as though I’m half asleep.
Am I, or is this just the hangover kicking in for the second time today?
“Do you ever fall?” I ask my fellow stoner.
“Sometimes. It has never ended with the crash your falls do though. I just jump and wake myself up, happy that the bed cushioned my descent.”
I laugh at this. I wish I could have it that easy. I haven’t woken up across the room for nearly four months, and usually the booze helps me avoid any unpleasantness at all. Usually I will get a decent night sleep when I’m pissed out of my head. Why not this time?
I pass the joint back to Candy and she gets up from her seat, coming around the table and giving me a hug, “you’re a strange one Mr. Johnson but I love you for it, now I’m off meeting everyone down the pub, fancy joining us?”
I shake my head, “nah, I think I’ll try a bout of sobriety for the rest of the evening and besides, I don’t fancy like going out in this weather.”
Candy shakes her head, and as she picks up her coat and handbag mumbles, “I don’t know, you and the bloody rain. It’s any wonder you didn’t decide to go to university somewhere along the equator, then you’d have your precious sun almost all year around.”
She comes back around and gives me a quick kiss on the cheek, “and before I forget, your phone has been going off like mad for the past hour.”
“Shit,” I curse, getting up and heading off upstairs to try and find the stupid thing. I was supposed have given Lisa a call at half past five.
“No wanking in the living room,” Candy shouts up after me.
“Why would I when there’s your crisp and clean double bed up here,” I shout back down but she’s already gone and with her departure the front door slams shut.
I find my phone in my jeans pocket and check the screen. Shit! Eighteen missed calls from Lisa and three text messages which don’t seem all too great either.
IF UR PISSED AGAIN U CAN 4GET RINGING ME L8ER!!!
That was the nice one.
Oops.
Scrolling down the list I see that dad has rung me too and I then remember Paul’s message from dad to give him a ring. I select his name and press call.
The phone rings nine consecutive rings before I hear dad’s voice, slightly out of breath. He has probably legged it from the kitchen to his office upstairs so that he can receive his telephone call in private. Is he even aware that it is Friday and that mum’ll be out at bingo so he’s the whole house to himself? Probably not, that’ll be the old age creeping in.
“Hello?” he answers and I can hear his leather armchair squeak as he sits down.
“Hiya dad it’s Billy, Paul mentioned you’d asked me to ring you over the weekend...”
A pause...he’ll be trying to recall this particular conversation which he shared with Paul just five short hours earlier. It’s the old ‘forgetful Professor’ routine, fun at first but contrary to my previous remark about dad’s memory, he’s as sharp as a razor. Alarmingly so actually, he remembers everything.
“Oh, yeah, hi William, I just wanted to know if you were getting on alright. It seems like ages since we’ve had a chat, however brief that might be, outside of the lecture theatre.”
I smile, “well you keep setting us a million essays with added reading material every week dad, I usually quite busy.”
There’s a pause before, “hmm, and are you still doing most of your work upstairs in the corner booth at the pub?”
“It’s quieter than the house and a great place to observe our species taking a step back through the evolutionary process, first by degenerating the ability to speak and then losing the capacity to walk upright. It’s great watching the fifth monkey revert back to image of its ancestors.”
“Indeed,” dad tells me with a stern body to his tone before the old deep sigh and then, “you are alright aren’t you Bill. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that you’re drinking somewhat excessively. I’ve seen it a thousand times sitting in on my lectures, the bloody shot eyes, the ability to focus on anything coherent...”
I cut him off here, this is beginning to sound like another one of Professor Johnson’s lectures, “dad I’m a university student, I’m living to uni life, I’m making the grades and I’m enjoying a healthy social life. Look, it’s a Friday night and I’m not out painting the town red am I, I’m talking to you instead.”
Another quick sigh to say he’s satisfied and his worrying is over for the moment, “Ok. Now what’s this I hear about your bad dreams coming back?”
As a kid I could never seem to settle at night. Put me out in the garden on a beautiful summer day and I’d sleep forever, but come night time mum and dad used to say I was like a junkie turning my back on the gear. It was like a fever which never broke but which would constantly turn out hot and cold flushes. Eventually I’d knacker myself out enough so that I would fall asleep, only to be woken from ‘bad dreams’ which were in fact my old friend the sensation of falling and then waking up with a start. Sleep therapy was an expensive waste of time, the Doctor could find nothing wrong, and so I was drugged every night. This stopped the falling and the sweats for a decade, until I reached puberty and then it seemed my body had bigger problems to worry about. The falling has only really started again in the last year or so, since I’ve been living away from home and my night dose of night nurse. These days a belly full of beer and whiskey is my night nurse but it doesn’t always work.
“Dad, they’re not bad dreams, I’m not waking up in the middle of the night crying like a baby and wanting my mum, this is me drifting off to sleep and then suddenly being snapped back to reality so hard I manage to throw myself out of bed” and across the room (although I’m not going to mention that).
“And how often does this happen? When was the last time you fell?”
I check my watch, “urrrrr...thirty five minutes ago was the last time it happened and they occur night, often several times a night. It’s back to the same drill as when I was younger.”
“And they’re more often when the weather’s warmer?”
“Yep, as soon as the sun is out I’m like a jack in the box all night.”
I wait for the next question, is he going to ask me to name the Capital of Brazil for ten bonus points? I hope not, I’m crap at Geography. Like dad, I’m a little bit of a history buff.”
“This isn’t affecting your studies is it William, because if it is I’ll enquire about you seeing another specialist.”
“Dad, don’t worry. I’m fine...well, I’m better than fine actually, Paul has invited me on his family Christmas holiday to Cape Town at the end of term, and for free as well.”
“That’s, that’s fantastic...” he stutters and then pauses, probably trying to muster a little more sincerity in his tone because we both know he would much rather have me at home for Christmas. Our family may not be a large one, Just Dad and uncle Eric on his side and my grandparents and my mum’s sister on hers, but what we lack in size is made up in prezzies. Ha ha, I’m a big kid at heart, “we’ll miss you on Christmas day.”
“Yeah, I know, but you’ll still have uncle Eric to play Jenga with, no doubt he’ll leave it until late in the evening as usual before turning up but hey...”
“I’m concerned Billy,” dad tells me now. Just what I need, dad chill out for once in your life! Were you actually born with your stuffy Professor’s jacket and half moon specs on?
“I’ll be fine. We’re staying at their gated house with swimming pool and...”
“No, not about Christmas, I’m sure you’ll have a great time and I wish I was going in your place, no, what I’m concerned about is your sleeping and I don’t want you to think that you can’t speak to me about anything that might be on your mind. No matter how silly it may sound.”
My phone beeps, call waiting, it’s Lucy.
“I’m fine Dad, listen, I’ve got another call I need to take so I’ll speak to you soon ok?”
We say out goodbyes and I laugh at dad’s last words. I wonder how he’d respond if I told him I seem to be able to literally catapult myself across my room while I’m asleep? Or if when I told him about...shit, what am I doing going of on a tangent, Lisa’s on the line waiting for me to speak.
“Hi there sexy,” I tell her.
“DON’T YOU HI THERE SEXY ME!!!”
Women.