{"id":282,"date":"2015-02-23T14:23:11","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T14:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lizjensen.com\/?p=282"},"modified":"2015-03-12T13:38:40","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T13:38:40","slug":"how-did-she-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/articles\/how-did-she-fall\/","title":{"rendered":"How did she Fall?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liz Jensen writes<\/em>: The inspiration for Louis Drax came from my own grandmother\u2019s death in Switzerland in the 1930s. Her body was found at the bottom of a cliff, three days after her eldest son had vanished from the face of the earth. The mystery of how my grandmother died, and what happened to her lost son, was never solved. It cast a shadow across the whole family, and when I first heard it as a child, it haunted me.<\/p>\n

But I didn\u2019t want to write that story. Instead, I wanted to explore the emotions it evoked. I wanted to write something from the point of view of a young boy because I love the way my own boys talk, and I wanted to capture that playground idiolect. I don\u2019t think that when I started writing the novel, it was going to turn out so dark. But it ended up as a ghost story. If it has an unsettling effect on people, I\u2019m glad. It\u2019s meant to. It was sometimes harrowing to write, because it took me to places I didn\u2019t really want to go. But that\u2019s part of what writing is about. It\u2019s the risk and it\u2019s the adventure. And reading is the same.<\/p>\n

How Did She Fall?<\/h1>\n

by Liz Jensen<\/h2>\n

When I was a child, the word Orphan always had a capital O. It was a terrible word, like the beginning of a horror story. Or the end of one.<\/p>\n

How my mother came to be an orphan was the first true story I ever remember hearing. I was six. I was in bed, and my mother had just kissed me goodnight. I don\u2019t know why I suddenly chose that moment to ask her how her parents died. But I did.<\/p>\n

She told me that her father died of heart failure, when she was nine. He was a Moroccan merchant, and the family was living in Tangier at the time: after his death, my British grandmother Gertrude and her four children returned to London.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘So how did your mother die?\u2019 I had seen photos of her draped in shawls. She was dark, Jewish, aristocratic-looking: like my Moroccan grandfather, she seemed to come not just from another era, but from another stratsophere to the dreary one we inhabited, with its village chip shop and its clanging Middle England bells.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘She jumped off a cliff in Switzerland,\u2019 said my mother. \u2019When I was ten. On our summer holiday.\u2019 It was dark, so\u00a0 couldn\u2019t see her face as she said it. But I remember the sharp twang of surprise I felt, and the long patch of silence.<\/p>\n

‘Why?\u2019 I asked eventually.<\/p>\n

‘She\u2019d been looking for my older brother Leslie. He was nineteen. They\u2019d had a row and he stormed off and he didn\u2019t come back. They sent out search parties for him, but they couldn\u2019t find him. After three days she went out looking on her own.\u00a0 And the next day they found her body. She\u2019d committed suicide.\u2019<\/p>\n

To commit suicide: not just a new verb, but a new concept for a six-year-old. To kill yourself on purpose. On holiday.<\/p>\n

‘And what happened when Leslie came back?\u2019<\/p>\n

‘He didn\u2019t. No-one knows what happened to him. He was just \u2014 gone.\u2019<\/p>\n

A nineteen-year-old, lost for ever in the mountains? A desperate mother, found dead at the bottom of a cliff? The story was so shocking, so odd, that it didn\u2019t sink in all at once. I tried to imagine Switzerland, a vertiginous landscape of cliffs that lured you to the brink, and mountains that swallowed young men alive. It belonged to a story-book. A bad Gothic story-book, where the illustrations were all skewed and the stories were the wrong shape and didn\u2019t have proper endings.<\/p>\n

The unfinished, unfinishable nature of the tragedy \u2014 two members of a family lost within the space of four days – cast a shadow over my mother\u2019s life, and that of her remaining brothers. My mother\u2019s belief that her mother had killed herself dragged her down, as did the mysterious loss of Leslie. In a secondary way, it haunted me, too \u2014 but it was only after I had children myself that I began to question my mother\u2019s interpretation of the events that took place on the Frohnalpstock, a 6,000-ft peak near Brunnen in the summer of 1937\u2014 and to realise that the suicide theory was hers alone. After all, what mother would give up the hunt for her missing son, and chuck herself off a 200-foot precipice? The psychology didn\u2019t add up.<\/p>\n

Far more likely, surely, that my grandmother simply slipped and fell? I wondered, too, about the nature of the row that had led to Leslie\u2019s disappearance. My mother can\u2019t remember what it was about. Or indeed whether there really was a row. `But he was always walking off,\u2019 she remembers.<\/p>\n

‘He was like that.\u2019<\/p>\n

It was assumed that it was into the mountains that Leslie walked. It was there, in any case, that they concentrated the search when he failed to return. This much is known: that police from nearby Morschach hunted for him with dogs for three days: that on the fourth day the weather turned bad and the search was temporarily called off: that my grandmother, distraught, insisted on going out looking for Leslie anyway. She took her eighteen-year-old son Michael with her, and they searched fruitlessly. After some time, she told him to go back to the hotel and wait for her there.
She would join him. But she never did: twelve hours after leaving the hotel, she was found with a broken neck.
A week later, police gave up the search for Leslie. His body \u2014 if there was one \u2014 was never found.<\/p>\n

After the tragedy, Michael studied medicine and then joined the army, while my mother and her younger brother David went to live with Gertrude\u2019s brother Fred and his wife Dorothy in Somerset. The couple, who were elderly and childless, firmly dissuaded them from mentioning their mother\u2019s death and Leslie\u2019s disappearance.The taboo lasted, and took hold, and it deepened my mother\u2019s conviction that her mother\u2019s death was suicide. `It was easier not to talk about it,\u2019 my mother remembers. `I connived in the indifference. It was just easier to forget.<\/p>\n

And then the war broke out and \u2014 well, everyone was suffering, weren\u2019t they?.\u2019<\/p>\n

If he were alive, Leslie would be in his late eighties now.\u00a0
Michael, the last person who might have held a clue to the mystery, went to his grave refusing ever to speak about what happened. `It was a total taboo,\u2019 remembers his youngest child, Sally. `We just knew we weren\u2019t allowed to ask Dad about his mother and Leslie, so we didn\u2019t.\u2019
After the war, Michael worked as a doctor; for years, he treated people with Hansen\u2019s disease \u2014 then known as leprosy \u2014 in Nigeria, where he was converted to Christianity by missionaries. He married and had eight children. Family lore held that he\u2019d had one set of children for himself, and another for his missing brother.
My mother never told a single schoolfriend about what had happened until she was fifteen, and met another girl who had also lost her mother. She went to university, had a career and in her late twenties met my Danish father \u2014 who had also been orphaned young.<\/p>\n

David\u2019s story was different. Aged seven at the time of the tragedy, he reacted as young boys sometimes do when their mothers die: he lost nearly all memory of her, and of his whole life before her death. But it hit him later. As an adult, he spent years in analysis trying to remember some of what had been erased. But he never succeeded.<\/p>\n

Some years ago David, wanting to recover at least a fragment of memory, went to Switzerland to look for clues. The Palace Hotel where the family had stayed had been pulled down. But he met an old man in the mountains who remembered\u00a0 that there had been a holiday tragedy on the Frohnalpstock back in the 1930s. But there were no revelations. How could there be, so many years on?
The novelist in me has many theories about what might have happened, some of them quite lurid. You can fall off a cliff, and you can jump \u2014 but you can also be pushed. Why was Leslie never seen again? Could he have met my grandmother in the mountains, had another row, and murdered her? Or driven her to such a state of despair that she….?<\/p>\n

Or perhaps \u2014 less melodramatically \u2014 Leslie never stormed off into the mountains in the first place. Or if he did, he didn\u2019t stay there. Maybe instead, he went to nearby Lausanne. And then, in a cafe a few days later, he read of his mother\u2019s death in the newspaper, blamed himself, and could never face the family again. To me, this seems the most likely theory.<\/p>\n

When I put this to my mother, she looks uneasy. `Maybe. Probably. I don\u2019t know.\u2019<\/p>\n

‘But why were you so sure it was suicide?\u2019<\/p>\n

‘Well, I just assumed that\u2019s what had happened,\u2019 says my mother. `It made sense to me. She must have been very distraught. And no-one told me it wasn\u2019t suicide. No-one told me anything.\u2019<\/p>\n

No-one told anyone anything. It wasn\u2019t just the family, I think: it was the era in which they lived. They didn\u2019t have therapists. They had stiff upper lips. `But don\u2019t you agree now, looking at the facts, that it\u2019s much more likely that she just slipped and fell?\u2019<\/p>\n

‘I suppose so. I don\u2019t know.\u2019<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t look convinced.<\/p>\n

‘Losing Leslie was worse in a way, than losing my mother,\u2019 she says suddenly. `It set up a permanent uncertainty. I\u2019d be looking at men all the time, in the underground, or in the street, and thinking: supposing that\u2019s him?\u2019<\/p>\n

‘How long did you go on doing that for?\u2019<\/p>\n

She pauses for a moment, and then says:<\/p>\n

‘I suppose I never really stopped.\u2019
<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Liz Jensen writes: The inspiration for Louis Drax came from my own grandmother\u2019s death in Switzerland in the 1930s. Her body was found at the bottom of a cliff, three … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow did she Fall? - Liz Jensen<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/articles\/how-did-she-fall\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How did she Fall? - Liz Jensen\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Liz Jensen writes: The inspiration for Louis Drax came from my own grandmother\u2019s death in Switzerland in the 1930s. Her body was found at the bottom of a cliff, three … Continued\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/articles\/how-did-she-fall\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Liz Jensen\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-02-23T14:23:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-03-12T13:38:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Liz\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Liz\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/articles\/how-did-she-fall\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/articles\/how-did-she-fall\/\",\"name\":\"How did she Fall? - Liz Jensen\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2015-02-23T14:23:11+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-03-12T13:38:40+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/#\/schema\/person\/94952f0f78d9db1c41928cbf59932ca7\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/articles\/how-did-she-fall\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/articles\/how-did-she-fall\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/articles\/how-did-she-fall\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"How did she Fall?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/\",\"name\":\"Liz Jensen\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/#\/schema\/person\/94952f0f78d9db1c41928cbf59932ca7\",\"name\":\"Liz\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0fa1d192d2c4297c6fbd1f4d31b1298002fe07cb609ea9d007c625be3534bc40?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0fa1d192d2c4297c6fbd1f4d31b1298002fe07cb609ea9d007c625be3534bc40?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Liz\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/author\/liz\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How did she Fall? - Liz Jensen","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/articles\/how-did-she-fall\/","og_locale":"en_GB","og_type":"article","og_title":"How did she Fall? - Liz Jensen","og_description":"Liz Jensen writes: The inspiration for Louis Drax came from my own grandmother\u2019s death in Switzerland in the 1930s. Her body was found at the bottom of a cliff, three … Continued","og_url":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/articles\/how-did-she-fall\/","og_site_name":"Liz Jensen","article_published_time":"2015-02-23T14:23:11+00:00","article_modified_time":"2015-03-12T13:38:40+00:00","author":"Liz","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Liz","Estimated reading time":"9 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/articles\/how-did-she-fall\/","url":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/articles\/how-did-she-fall\/","name":"How did she Fall? - Liz Jensen","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/#website"},"datePublished":"2015-02-23T14:23:11+00:00","dateModified":"2015-03-12T13:38:40+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/#\/schema\/person\/94952f0f78d9db1c41928cbf59932ca7"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/articles\/how-did-she-fall\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/articles\/how-did-she-fall\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/articles\/how-did-she-fall\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"How did she Fall?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/","name":"Liz Jensen","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-GB"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/#\/schema\/person\/94952f0f78d9db1c41928cbf59932ca7","name":"Liz","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0fa1d192d2c4297c6fbd1f4d31b1298002fe07cb609ea9d007c625be3534bc40?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0fa1d192d2c4297c6fbd1f4d31b1298002fe07cb609ea9d007c625be3534bc40?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Liz"},"url":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/author\/liz\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":412,"href":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions\/412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lizjensen.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}