The Fall

5

‘Mint?’ he asked, offering her the pack as they sat on the seats looking down onto the amphitheatre’s central stage.

She gave a little shake of her head. The heavy plait swung. ‘I’ll stick to my fix of nicotine. Are you sure my smoking doesn’t bother you?’

‘Not at all… Oh, dang, that’s me, I guess,’ Sam said as his phone began to chirp. From his pocket he pulled out the black Motorola phone and thumbed the switch. ‘Hello… Oh, hi, Joe. Fine. Fine. Yeah, I’m on site now. Yeah, England’s great. They’re looking after me like I’m a long-lost son. How’s Bunty? You don’t say… Listen, have you got the nod for an overrun?’

Sam recognised this as an anxiety call typical of TV companies. He could imagine there’d been a meeting in the office of the lady upstairs (as the station manager was known). It would have begun sensibly and calmly enough, but as sure as eggs are eggs there’s always someone (and that someone is usually very ambitious and chasing your job) who will do their utmost to assassinate you. They don’t openly stab you full-square between the shoulder blades while snarling, ‘I hope you die in the gutter with rats gnawing your nose from your skull.’ But it’s certainly done in the same spirit. They start by raising quite rational questions about poor weather forecasts for the night of the show; go on to say that there are rumours that TV technicians are about to strike for higher pay; continue with reports that Sting or Eric Clapton is complaining of a sore throat – allegedly; and finish by speculating that sunspots might flare and fuck up the satellite link. With a few of these subtle doubts (all expressed with wide, innocent eyes, yet with the aim of eroding management confidence in the victim) the play works like magic. Station management suddenly becomes like a dog covered with fleas, madly chasing its own tail and yapping wildly until someone soothes it.

So, with Zita sitting beside him smoking, her long, red and oh-so-dangerous nails gripping the cigarette. he sat on the bench calmly telling Joe Kane sitting in his Fifth Avenue office three thousand miles away that everything was fine, everything was under control, nothing to worry about, and, yes, the sky was cloudless and sunny (a white lie really, Sam would concede; a few clouds were now moving like a formation of dark battleships over the horizon); that, yes, the British technicians were happy with their money – more than happy. Sam exercised the talents that had made him the youngest TV director at the station. It was more than simply sitting at the console, saying, ‘Camera one: close up of the umpire. Camera two: long shot of the team captain followed by pan to crowd.’ A trained monkey could do that. Being a director was all about managing the people around you, making them feel good, and ensuring you got them working with you, not against you. And, above all, it was about keeping the producers happy.

As he talked, he stretched out his legs, enjoying the warm sun on his body. He caught Zita’s perfume and found himself watching the way she sat with her knees together, balancing the clipboard as she wrote. Her body looked tautly muscled beneath the tiger-skin leggings and cropped top. Although he devoted most of his attention to his conversation (and a goodly portion to Zita) he noticed the amphitheatre was filling up. These would be mainly tourists bussed in from the big hotels in York. They carried cameras, camcorders, shoulder bags, and fiddled with maps, or with the bust of Claudius or Zeus that they’d just bought at the site shop. For some reason Laurel and Hardy, Dracula and King Kong had taken the bench to his right. He guessed they were students of some kind, only it was anyone’s guess why they were in costume. He only hoped they weren’t going to perform some mind-numbingly boring mime. His idea of a good time was most definitely not watching some Marcel Marceau clone pretending to walk into a nonexistent wind or feel their way along a make-believe wall while looking for an invisible door handle. It gave him the willies just thinking about it.

Down on the stage, just in front of the rock altar, a man of around 50 dressed in a white shirt, black trousers and a gold waistcoat stood wagging his finger at the audience. Sam realised he was counting them. Perhaps he got paid per head. ‘A bob a knob,’ as the English might say.

A moment later Sam wound up the telephone conversation, satisfied that in his New York office Joe would be replacing the receiver, satisfied that everything was running smoothly. In a little while the man would stub out his cigar and go tell the lady upstairs that everything was fine and why they managed to get themselves so het up and worried the Lord alone knew.

Sam thumbed the button on the mobile phone. He noticed Zita sitting with her phone resting on the clipboard on her knee. In a very low whisper he said, ‘I think the old guy in the fancy vest is about to speak. Best switch off your mobile.’

‘You’re right, sir,’ came another voice. ‘The old guy’s speaking in about a minute from now. So if you do have mobiles I’d be most grateful if you would switch them off until the show is over.’

Sam looked up, startled. The guy in the waistcoat smiled up at him from the bottom of the amphitheatre and said in a voice not much louder than a whisper, ‘The Romans knew a thing or two about acoustics, sir; this amphitheatre can carry the lowest whisper right to the very back.’ The moment the man started speaking the audience dropped silent, although one or two continued to take photographs. The click of the shutters and buzz of the motors advancing the film sounded absurdly loud.

The man in the gold waistcoat gave a sunny smile and cupped his hand to his ear. ‘You hear? Every sound is hugely amplified by the shape of the amphitheatre; after all, if you think about it, we’re sitting in something the shape of a speaker cone.’ He straightened and beamed at the audience. ‘Well, seeing as I have everyone’s attention, I may as well begin. Good afternoon. Welcome to Casterton’s Roman amphitheatre, known locally as the Watchett Hole for reasons no-one can adequately explain. My name is Jethro Campbell, but everyone calls me Jud. Now…’ He moved back towards the stone altar; as he did so, he drew from his shirt collar something Sam couldn’t see. ‘Now, when I’m giving one of my talks in a public hall or classroom, I usually cry out, “Can everyone hear me at the back?” to which I get a half-hearted chorus of “Yesss…” Here I like to do something different. Now can everyone hear this?’

He dropped an object – again something Sam could not see. A second later Sam clearly heard a tink sound.

‘There, ladies and gentlemen,’ continued the man. ‘You’ve just heard a pin drop. Not something you hear every day. And that demonstrates how well even the tiniest sound – the tiniest sound of a pin dropping – is not only carried, but amplified. Did everyone hear it?’

There was a buzz of voices from the audience. They were impressed. Again there was the over-loud click-whirr of cameras. The man dropped the pin again. And again Sam heard the tink as the sliver of steel hit the rock floor of the amphitheatre. Sam shot Zita a smile. The old guy was obviously playing to the audience, but he found himself enjoying it. He might actually bring up a camera crew, after all, to record a taped insert for the programme. These acoustics were something else.

Down on the stage, the man launched into his routine. No doubt he said the same thing two or three times a day to tourists who’d come from as far away as Alaska, Japan and New Zealand, but he was amiable enough playing the role of an eccentric Victorian professor.

‘This amphitheatre wasn’t actually built by the Romans, even though they’d dug out plenty of amphitheatres in the past, such structures being basically the Roman equivalent of television. No, this is a naturally occurring depression in the rock. The Romans merely added timber seating and stairs. What you’re sitting on now is, of course, a modern replacement. And this…’ He slapped the rock altar with the palm of his hand (the sound of palm meeting rock making a pistol-shot crack) ‘…is something of a mystery. It’s certainly not Roman. Later, you can come down here and see for yourselves that it’s actually part of the bedrock, which is incredibly tough. A form of granite, which only rarely occurs in Britain. In prehistoric times, or so we surmise, people, probably the Neolithic farmers who occupied the area some four thousand years ago, scooped out what appear to be six shallow bowls in the top of the slab.’ He ran his hand inside the hollows on the slab. ‘See? Probably no larger than breakfast bowls. You’d get a couple of Weetabix in each one and not much else.’

A ripple of laughter from the audience.

‘You’ll notice the effect if viewed from above is like a domino. The double three, to be precise. See, two diagonal lines of three? And there in the centre a deep slot has been cut. Again, the uses for this object are shrouded in mystery. But most historians agree there’s a ritual significance. That this was used for religious practices. And some have speculated that this is a sacrificial altar.’ Heads craned forward, suddenly interested. ‘See?’ Jud said, clearly enjoying himself enormously (while suddenly adopting a Vincent Price voice). ‘Can’t you imagine the sacrificial victim being dispatched just here as they lay stretched out on top of the stone altar? Then the internal organs – the heart, the kidneys, the liver, the lungs – would be carefully arranged in these stone bowls.’ He couldn’t resist a devilish laugh. ‘While the victim’s head would rest just here. So it could stare accusingly at the audience. Now, wouldn’t that make for a grisly sight?’ He laughed again. ‘Or then again, it was more likely the equivalent of the Christian harvest festival and the bowls would be filled with berries, apples, wheat, oats and probably a drop of the best local beer. The truth is, not many societies indulged in human sacrifice. Ancient cultures were far more humane than the makers of horror films imagine.’

While the man talked, Sam Baker once more let his attention wander.

To his left, the students in fancy dress – Laurel and Hardy, Dracula, and King Kong in her black-hair costume minus the gorilla head – were smoking roll-ups. They smiled a lot and Sam wondered if they’d crumbled a little cannabis resin into the tobacco first. Not that he had a problem with dope. Once he’d had a girlfriend who’d baked chocolate muffins laced with cannabis. They’d had some great nights on a couple of muffins alone; she’d some pretty laid-back sparrows on her bird table, too.

By now Jud Campbell’s history lesson had taken its audience into the 18^th Century when the locals had filled the amphitheatre with leaves, then planted liquorice in the leaf mulch, liquorice being a useful medicine in those days as well as a substitute for sugar in the form of liquorice paste. Or so the helpful Jud informed them.

Sam yawned, glanced at his watch. Ten past two. His stomach told him in no uncertain terms it was way past lunchtime. He found himself thinking about that deep-fried fish. His stomach rumbled. He looked round wondering if anyone had heard. The acoustics of this place were damn near supernaturally good. If you could hear a pin drop then a stomach rumbling would sound like a 21-gun salute. Suddenly he felt like the kid who broke wind in class. All eyes would turn on him as his face burned with embarrassment.

Luckily, at that moment Jud Campbell wound up his show and the genuine applause drowned any grumbling sounds Sam’s internal plumbing might have made.

As in any theatre, or cinema, the amphitheatre steps were immediately clogged with people making their escape back to their cars, the bus or the ice-cream van.

‘We’ll leave them to clear the aisles first,’ Sam said. ‘After all, we’re in no tearing hurry.’

Zita watched the crowds packing the aisle. ‘Okay. It’ll give me time to finish this schedule while I’ve got the chance.’ She pulled the pencil from her hair and began writing on her clipboard. As she did so she sang under her breath.

Beside him the students in fancy dress were talking in a very relaxed (some might say stoned) kind of way. The one dressed as Oliver Hardy giggled, gave the gorilla a playful slap with his bowler hat and said, ‘Hmm… hur! That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.’

Sam suddenly realised what Zita was singing under her breath as she neatly pencilled equipment codes onto the schedule.

‘Buffalo girls gonna come out tonight, gonna come out tonight…’ she sang in a whisper.

He looked at her, the hairs on the back of his neck starting to stand on end. His scalp prickled, too.

‘What made you sing that?’ he asked, suddenly feeling a strange shivering sensation running across his chest, then down his arms to his fingertips.

‘Mm?’ she asked, still running through her figures. ‘Sing what, Sam?’

Before he could say another word the lightning tore from the cloud.

The lightning came with a tremendous whump! of thunder, too. Sam froze. A wash of blue light cascaded into the amphitheatre; it was so intense it seemed to bypass his eyes and sear right through his skull to the visual centres of his brain.

His heart convulsed. Instantly he looked round the amphitheatre, his eyes wide, expecting to see charred bodies, splintered seating, heads on fire.

Instead people were looking up at the black cloud directly above. Someone opened an umbrella but there hadn’t been so much as a drop of rain.

‘Wow!’ The guy dressed as Dracula looked at the roll-up. ‘Was that lightning or was that something I just smoked?’

Oliver Hardy shot his only line. ‘That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.’

Sam swallowed. His mouth felt strangely dry. ‘You were right about the weather,’ he told Zita evenly. ‘We’ll get someone at the office to ring round the local farmers and have them on standby with their tractors.’

She shot him a concerned look. ‘Are you okay, Sam?’

‘Sure, don’t worry. I haven’t a phobia about lightning or anything. I just don’t want rain to bog down our OB trailers when we set up.’

‘Bloody English weather,’ she said with a smile and picked up her mobile phone. ‘I’ll get Liz right onto it.’

Most of the people had left the amphitheatre as Zita dialled. The four in fancy dress were the last to pick their way slowly over the bench seats: gorilla girl forgot the gorilla head and had to come back for it, still smiling that I-love-the-whole-wide-world smile that comes with pulling on a little dope.

Sam eased another mint from the pack. The cloud appeared to be beating a retreat. The sun returned to shine brilliantly on the amphitheatre. Jud Campbell was in the process of picking up his only stage prop: the pin, which he carefully stuck back into his collar. In the background a millionaire’s huge launch bobbed gently at the riverside moorings.

Sam looked back at Zita, the phone to her ear. She nodded at him. ‘It’s ringing. Liz shares the same office as me, so she should be – Oh.’ Her eyes shifted from his face as she concentrated on listening to the voice in the earpiece. ‘Oh, hello. Liz, I need you to… Wait a minute.’ She frowned, suddenly puzzled. ‘Who am I speaking to, please?’

Sam listened to the conversation, only hearing Zita’s half of it. ‘Hello, who is this, please?’ she repeated, sounding more angry than puzzled. ‘No. You misheard me. What’s your name? Oh, look, just let me speak with Liz Pearson… She’s out? Oh, no – no message. Never mind. Goodbye.’

Annoyed, she used one of the red-for-danger fingernails to stab the button that terminated the call.

‘I take it you got the school kid on the work-experience programme?’

‘No.’ Zita stared at the telephone in something that was a blend of wonder and disbelief. ‘You’re not going to believe this, Sam.’ She looked at him. ‘But, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear I’ve just had a conversation with myself.’