The Edge Read online

  The Edge

  The Edge

  JAMIE COLLINSON

  For my family

  ‘It was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region.’

  Edith Wharton

  PART ONE

  1

  At 6.15 p.m. on Tuesday 9 May, Adam Fairhead was out on the Los Angeles river, looking for a nice bird. Back in London, he could’ve made a joke about that, but no one here would get it.

  The sun was dipping behind the ridges of Griffith Park, its light fractured by the tall hedge to his right and dancing in soft little shards on the concrete bike path. On the other side of this green barrier – the base of which was littered with the detritus of the river’s derelict residents – was the I-5 freeway. Its hum was incessant, but it didn’t bother Adam. The scene to his left had a raw sort of beauty, and it was there that his eyes were constantly drawn.

  Bliss, he thought, breathing in the aquatically tinged air. Work was definitively over for the day. It was the middle of the night in the UK, and past nine on America’s East Coast. He hadn’t received an email in over an hour. And this, his favourite walk, allowed him the sense of having taken some exercise – thus earning him a drink – as well as the opportunity to see something wild and beautiful. After a day spent grimacing his way through meetings – with marketing teams, managers, artists and staff – it was just what he needed.

  So far, he hadn’t seen much of interest. In the wide, shallow flats beneath the Los Feliz Boulevard bridge, there’d been the usual array of black-necked stilts – towering on their improbable, skinny red legs – and a scraggy old great blue heron, frozen, Zen-like, with its dagger bill pointed straight down at the water, ready to stab a passing, unlucky fish.

  But these were everyday birds, the regular features of his visits to the river. He was hoping for something more interesting – the furtive green heron he’d seen a week or so back, perhaps. The plover-like bird he’d been unable to identify. Maybe the chattering, frantic belted kingfisher he’d seen the previous evening.

  So far, no luck. His recent passion for birding had revealed to Adam, however, that despite lifelong evidence to the contrary, he was actually capable of patience. Birding trips were enjoyable whether they produced much or not. Looking was distracting. The walk wasn’t spoiled by thinking about the past, or his mind eating itself over some problem at the office. Birding was quite clearly good for the soul.

  Not that he was quite ready to come out, regarding this strange new pastime of his. Not in any professional setting, anyway. Not even to Angelina. She wouldn’t understand.

  Sofia would have understood. She would have encouraged him, in fact, and probably thought it all quite cool. But he hadn’t realized how cool she was, and as a result she was long since gone.

  He glanced up at the San Gabriel mountains, a looming wall of jagged green, marbled in off-white, blocking off the skyline to the north. Silent and a little forbidding, like sentinels, checking the city’s careless sprawl from seeping any further.

  At the weekend, he could be back up there. Take another long, solitary trek in the alpine wilderness, quite literally away from it all. The thought gave him an electric thrill. For a hiker, it was a little like having a huge chunk of the Scottish Highlands directly outside London.

  His eyes snagged on the highest visible point – Strawberry Peak, a deceptive name if ever there was one. Seeing it doused the thrill a little bit, because he’d recently chickened out of climbing it. ‘The Mountaineers’ Path’ had been too much for him. Standing on its narrow ridge, he’d been overcome by fear. Now, it lingered in his mind, bothering him like an itch he couldn’t scratch.

  Still, hiking and birding were officially Good Things; healthy new habits that had blossomed with his move to LA. Now, it was simply a case of shedding all the bad ones he’d brought along with him. As it was, he sometimes felt like a half-emerged butterfly, trying to tear himself free of his caterpillar past.

  He lowered his eyes back to the river. A homeless man wearing wraparound sunglasses was doing press-ups against a buttress below him. He was topless, his jeans smeared with dirt. His upper body was, Adam had to admit, quite impressive. The late sun shone on his coffee-coloured skin, the muscles big enough to cast shadows on his flesh.

  A hundred feet lower down still, beyond the sloping concrete bank of the river, a very fat, bald man was lying in a shallow, sunny spot of green water, bathing happily.

  The river was, Adam reflected, a very strange place indeed. Not a river at all in fact, but rather a concrete drainage channel, designed to ensure that excess water from the mountains could be directed safely through the city. Not that there’d been much excess water in Los Angeles in the four years Adam had lived there.

  If you looked at the centre of the channel, perhaps blocking out the dirty white banks with your hands, the scene was genuinely bucolic. A wide stripe of rampant, sprouting green vegetation ran along the river’s middle, for as far as the eye could see. Smooth plains of blue-green water slipped either side of it, bringing to mind – an English one, at least – lazy notions of messing about on a river.

  There was a narrower sub-channel within the flora, and Adam had often imagined slowly canoeing along this, high walls of green blocking off the harsh urbanity either side of him. It would be like floating through a jungle, he thought.

  From where he stood now, on the bank beside the freeway, the smell of the water was strong in his nostrils. He always caught this smell before his first sight of the river itself, lingering over the concrete of Los Feliz Boulevard as he approached his walk. A slightly dank, green smell of underwater vegetation. Not unpleasant, and shockingly wild, in the midst of the city.

  The water couldn’t be too dirty, he knew, because it sustained fish and the birds that hunted them. Also, the fat, bald man had been bathing in it every night of the summer – often with friends – and it didn’t seem to have done him any harm.

  In fact, the river appeared to sustain homeless people – of whom Los Angeles had a great, disturbing many – as well as it did birds. Whether it was the relative beauty of the place, the water to bathe in, or simply the opportunity to make a home somewhere secluded, Adam didn’t know.

  He was passing one of the smaller camps even now. An ancient shopping trolley had been parked up at a crazy angle beside the bike path. Beneath it was a pair of battered old shoes. A short incline led to a spot where the hedge had thickened into a broad band of foliage, providing a barrier to the worst of the I-5’s sound and stink. Here, several filthy, well-worn tents had been pitched. One of them, larger than the others, was made of pieces of stained tarpaulin roped over trees. What looked like a small garbage dump was piled into a gap between it and the fence. Adam resisted the temptation to stare at the settlement. He didn’t want to be impolite.

  He walked the river as many evenings as he could, whenever he was freed from the tyranny of working dinners, working drinks or working gigs. One of the things he’d come to learn from doing so was that the river’s homeless were, as yet at least, unfailingly polite. They smiled, nodded and said hello. They bathed, biked or worked out. The sadder ones made urgent, distraught walks along the bike path, alarmingly overdressed for the hot weather. Not one of them had ever asked Adam for money.

  Yet another of LA’s many eccentricities, he thought.

  A cyclist hurtled past him, a broad, sweating man clad in skintight Lycra bearing dozens of unfamiliar logos. Strange, this logo-wearing, Adam thought. What distinguished amateur cycling from, say, amateur tennis, when it came to logos? Why bother advertising a load of brands when you weren’t being paid to do so?

  At the edge of the water, their upper bodies lit orange by the last band of sun, a pair of men were f
ishing in silence. Adam paused to look at a row of cormorants, perched on a power line, apparently basking in the day’s late warmth. He’d almost reached the dilapidated Sunnynook footbridge when he heard a woman’s voice.

  ‘Hey!’ it said, shouting. ‘You.’

  Adam turned around, and saw a tall, slim woman crossing the footbridge with her bike. She was dressed in a blue jacket and skintight, brightly patterned workout pants, a bike helmet and purposeful-looking sunglasses.

  ‘Me?’ Adam said.

  ‘Yes.’ She’d almost reached him and was walking quickly, her expression urgent. Adam felt his pulse quicken a little.

  ‘Are you birding?’ she said as she came to a stop.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, glancing at his binoculars. He wondered if he’d somehow broken some strange local bylaw forbidding it.

  The woman removed her sunglasses. She had quite bright blue eyes, which shone a little with excitement. Adam was taken aback by her prettiness.

  ‘There’s an osprey,’ she said. ‘There.’

  She pointed towards a tree, beneath the power line on which the cormorants were perching. Adam raised his binoculars.

  ‘I can’t see it…’ he said, lowering them again. His pulse was thudding now. ‘That tree?’ He pointed.

  ‘Hold on,’ she said. She placed the bike against the railing, and leaned in towards Adam, looking along his line of sight. She smelled good, he noticed. A light spiciness of hair shampoo, and what he thought might be her own, actual smell, which was equally pleasant. His skin tingled a little where her jacket was touching him.

  ‘No, sorry,’ she said. ‘There. The one to the left.’

  He looked again. Sure enough, a flash of white caught his eye. When he levelled the binoculars, they settled on a perching osprey. A star bird, he thought, a wave of excitement rushing through him. A large, slightly shaggy-looking raptor, with light brown outer parts, a lethal bill and huge yellow eyes. Its head was tucked down against its bright white breast as it stared at the water, looking for prey. Adam realized he’d been holding his breath, and now he gasped.

  The woman giggled. ‘Isn’t that great? I thought you’d want to see it. Sorry if I freaked you out.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘It’s amazing. That’s made my night.’

  He raised the binoculars again. ‘You have to go an awful long way to see one of those, where I’m from,’ he said.

  ‘You’re British?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’ He was pleased she hadn’t said Australian, which was what most Angelenos accused him of being.

  ‘But they must be there, surely?’ she said. ‘The European bird is the same species, I think.’

  Adam felt a flutter of novice’s fear.

  ‘Pretty much wiped them out,’ he said. ‘There’s a few in Scotland and up in north-west England.’

  He glanced at the woman, who’d screwed up her face. ‘Why would they do that?’ she asked.

  ‘Egg collecting, pesticides. Jealousy over trout. That sort of thing.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ she said, frowning as she picked up her bike again.

  ‘Here,’ he said quickly. ‘Take a look.’

  ‘Oh…’ She reached towards him, but hesitated.

  ‘I don’t have pink-eye,’ Adam told her, grinning. Many Americans, he knew, had an irrational fear of conjunctivitis.

  She gave a quick, sudden laugh, and made a gimme gesture with a bike-gloved hand.

  He lifted the binoculars’ straps over his head and handed them to her. As she raised them to her eyes, Adam guiltily allowed his own to run down over her body. He was fairly sure this habit had intensified unhealthily in LA, where the temptations of bared flesh were year-round, and workout pants rife.

  ‘Beautiful,’ the woman said, handing back his binoculars and smiling. ‘It’s great that the river can sustain one. Didn’t use to be that way.’

  Suddenly she had her bike’s handlebars in her hands, and was wheeling it away from him.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Very much.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she replied, swinging a shapely leg over her saddle and showing him a perfect, workout-panted behind. ‘I didn’t want you to miss it.’

  Adam watched her cycle off. A shameful notion of looking at her through the binoculars surfaced in his mind, and he banished it. Sometimes he worried he was becoming a creep. All this time spent in self-induced solitude. Maybe it wasn’t good for him. Perhaps he was too old to be on his own. Back home, every one of his circle of friends in London had settled down, most of them having children now too. He’d had his own chance, of course, and he’d comprehensively blown it.

  But that was then, and this was now.

  As he peered at the osprey again, taking in the vicious hook of its bill, and the sharp talons that held it steady as a rock on its narrow branch, he thought of Angelina. Could he settle down with her, he wondered? He pictured the wedding. It would take place in some mansion in the hills, where they usually did launch parties or photo shoots. Angelina would probably use the vows as an opportunity to showcase one of her poems. He might end up one of those people who got married in sunglasses.

  No, he thought, sternly. He’d let worry creep in, and that was not to be encouraged. For one thing, it was a sure way to ruin the birding.

  As though in agreement, the osprey launched itself lightly from its perch and scythed down to the water in a silent, graceful arc. Just before it hit the surface, it folded itself into a broad arrow, talons reaching forward almost to its head. A split second later it rose once more, wings beating upwards in a shower of silver droplets, the gleaming crescent of a large fish caught firmly in its triumphant grip.

  ‘Yes!’ Adam found himself shouting.

  ‘Yeah bro!’ someone yelled back. Adam turned to see a bone-thin bum, riding past on a child’s bicycle, grinning and pumping his fist, careering off into the oncoming night.

  2

  On the way home, in a celebratory mood, he stopped off at his local Thai place. The women who worked there – unsmiling yet friendly – welcomed him in, fussing him into his usual seat and asking where he’d been during the week or so since his last visit. He ordered a huge meal of tom yum soup and a sizzling Weeping Tiger, washing it down with two very cold beers.

  The evening’s remaining hours were spent nestled away in his living room, blinds drawn, lamplight mellow on the varnished wooden floor. In his previous life in London, he’d seemed to be rarely at home. Lately though, his craving for the sanctuary and solitude of his apartment had almost become a concern. The temptations of drink and memory were a constant risk, but social life had started to make him feel anxious.

  Tonight though, he had a vivid new experience to ponder. The thrill of the bird and the memory of the woman who’d shown it to him hovered in his mind. He wrote up his impressions of the osprey and read a novel on the couch, limiting himself to two glasses of wine. Occasionally, a creak from the building’s wooden frame told him that his landlady was moving around next door. Otherwise, there was just the sound of endless traffic on the Hollywood freeway, or a Harley’s pop-and-snarl on Sunset Boulevard.

  Just as he was dragging himself off the couch to go to bed, his phone emitted the soft, sinister sound of an incoming video call. He picked it up off the coffee table, frowning at the picture of his mother on the screen. To ignore it would have been too awful. He swiped to accept.

  The more recent incarnation of his mother’s face appeared on the screen. Short grey hair, square jaw, downturned mouth. A hint of the same cheekbones he had. The eyes above them were closed, opening briefly every few seconds in an inverse blink. Behind her, a nurse moved across the neutral décor of the room she was in.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ Adam said.

  ‘Now then,’ she said. Her voice was very clear, at odds with the dopey frown of medicated pain.

  ‘How’re you doing?’ Adam asked. His heart was beating faster, and he felt anxiety clutch around it. Turning the p
hone to the side, he drained the dregs of his white wine.

  ‘Could be worse,’ she said. ‘You?’

  ‘Same,’ he said. ‘You just caught me. I was about to go to bed.’

  Her jaw moved in a gurn. ‘Late there, is it?’

  ‘10.30.’

  ‘Right. Thought it might be a good time to catch you. Early here.’ The eyelids opened, the eyes within struggling to focus, presumably on his own digitized image. A miniature version of this was at the top right of the screen, and he tried not to look at it.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.

  She grunted. ‘No change really.’

  ‘It’ll be tennis season soon, won’t it, the French Open? Are you looking forward to that?’

  His mother had been a lifelong tennis fan and competitive player. Adam remembered many a happy, hot summer afternoon, watching her from old, stackable plastic chairs with his father and sister. The heated-rubber smells of the all-weather courts and new balls; the old clubhouse with crates of small orange juice cartons he was allowed to raid. Happiness radiating from his mum if she’d played a good game, spreading to him from snatched hugs between sets.

  ‘I can’t watch it any more,’ she said. ‘Can’t concentrate. I’ve been knitting.’

  ‘Well, that’s good,’ Adam said. ‘What are you making?’

  ‘Dishcloths. Anything else takes too long to finish.’ Her eyes focused on him once again, and a thin smile stiffened her lips.

  ‘You know me,’ she said. ‘Get bored easily. More so now.’

  ‘Still don’t like to sit still, eh?’

  ‘No, I don’t. Do you want a dishcloth? I can make you one.’

  ‘Maybe when I see you,’ he said.

  But her attention, like the sweep of a lighthouse’s beam, had turned away.

  ‘Mum?’ he said after a moment.

  Her chin twitched upwards. ‘Have you spoken to your sister?’ she asked.