Nick Hornby - A Long Way Down

What I’ve come to realize, over the years, is that we’re less protected from bad luck than you could possibly imagine. Because though it doesn’t seem fair, having intercourse only the once and ending up with a child who can’t walk or talk or even recognize me… Well, fairness doesn’t really have much to do with it, does it? You only have to have intercourse the once to produce a child, any child. There are no laws that say, You can only have a child like Matty if you’re married, or if you have lots of other children, or if you sleep with lots of different men. There are no laws like that, even though you and I might think there should be. And once you have a child like Matty, you can’t help but feel, That’s it! That’s all my bad luck, a whole lifetime’s worth, in one bundle. But I’m not sure luck works like that. Matty wouldn’t stop me from getting breast cancer, or from being mugged. You’d think he should, but he can’t. In a way, I’m glad I never had another child, a normal one. I’d have needed more guarantees from God than He could have provided.

And anyway, I’m Catholic, so I don’t believe in luck as much as I believe in punishment. We’re good at believing in punishment; we’re the best in the world. I sinned against the Church, and the price you pay for that is Matty. It might seem like a high price to pay, but then, these sins are supposed to mean something, aren’t they? So in one way it’s hardly surprising that this is what I got. For a long time I was even grateful, because it felt to me as though I were going to be able to redeem myself here on Earth, and there’d be no reckoning to be made afterwards. But now I’m not so sure. If the price you have to pay for a sin is so high that you end up wanting to kill yourself and committing an even worse sin, then Someone’s done his sums wrong. Someone’s overcharging.

I had never hit anyone before, not in the whole of my life, although I’d often wanted to. But that night was different. I was in limbo, somewhere between living and dying, and it felt as if it didn’t matter what I did until I went back to the top of Toppers’ House again. And that was the first time I realized that I was on a sort of holiday from myself. It made me want to slap him again, just because I could, but I didn’t. The once was enough: Chas fell over—more from the shock, I think, than from the force, because I’m not so strong—and then knelt on all fours covering his head with his hands.

I’m sorry,” Chas said.

“For what?” JJ asked him.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Whatever.”

“I had a boyfriend like you once,” I told him.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“It hurts. It’s a horrible thing to do, to have intercourse withsomeone and then disappear.”

“I can see that now.”

“Can you?”

“I think so.”

“You can’t see anything from down there,” said JJ. “Why don’tyou get up?”

“I don’t really want to be slapped again.”

“Is it fair to say that you’re not the bravest man in the world?” JJasked him.

“There are lots of different ways of showing courage,” said Chas. “If what you’re saying is that I don’t set much store by physical bravery… then yes, that’s fair. It’s overrated, I think.”

“Well, you know, Chas, I think that’s kinda brave of you, to show you’re so afraid of a small lady like Maureen. I respect your honesty, man. You won’t slap him again, will you, Maureen?”

I promised I wouldn’t, and Chas got to his feet. It was a strange feeling, watching a man do something because of me.

“Not much of a life, hiding underneath people’s grills, is it?” said JJ.

“No. But I don’t really see the alternatives.”

“Howsabout talking to Jess?”

“Oh, no. I’d rather live out here all the time. Seriously. I’m already thinking of relocating, you know,”

“What, to someone else’s back yard? Maybe somewhere with a bit of grass?”

“No,” Chas said. “To Manchester.”

“Listen,” JJ said. “I know she’s scary. That’s why you should talk to her now. With us around. We can, you know. Mediate. Wouldn’t you rather do that than move cities?”

“But what is there to say?”

“Maybe we could work something out. Together. Something that might get her off your back.”

“Like what?”

“I know for a fact she’d marry you if you asked her.”

“Ah, no, you see that’s just…”

“I was just kidding around, Chas. Lighten up, man.”

“These aren’t, like, lightening-up times. These are dark times.”

“Dark times indeed. What with Jess, and going to Manchester, and living under a grill and the Twin Towers and everything.”

“Yeah.”

JJ shook his head.

“OK. So what can you tell her that’s going to get you out of this f— mess?”

And JJ gave him some things to say, as if he were an actor and we were in a soap.

I’m not averse to having a go at DIY every now and again. I decorated the girls’ bedrooms myself, with stencils and everything. (And yes, there were TV cameras there, and the production company paid for every last drop of Day-Glo paint, but that doesn’t make it any less of an achievement.) Anyway, if you’re a fellow enthusiast then you’ll know that sometimes you come across holes that are too big for filler, especially in the bathroom. And when that happens, the sloppy way to do it is to bung the holes up with anything you can find—broken matches, bits of sponge, whatever is to hand. Well, that was Chas’s function that night: he was a bit of sponge that plugged a gap. The whole Jess and Chas thing was ludicrous, of course, a waste of time and energy, a banal little sideshow; but it absorbed us, got us down off the roof and even as I was listening to his preposterous speech I could see its value. I could also see that we were going to need a lot more bits of sponge over the coming weeks and months. Maybe that’s what we all need, whether we’re suicidal or not. Maybe life is just too big a gap to be plugged by filler, so we need anything we can get our hands on—sanders and planers, fifteen-year-olds, whatever -to fill it up.

“Hi, Jess,” said Chas when he was shoved out of the party and on to the street. He was trying to sound cheery and friendly and casual, as if he’d been hoping to bump into Jess at some point during the evening, but his general lack of volition undid him; cheeriness is hard to convey when you are too scared to make eye contact. He reminded me of a petty gangster caught thieving from the local godfather in a movie, out of his depth and desperately trying to suck up in order to save his skin.

“Why wouldn’t you talk to me?”

“Yeah. Right. I knew you’d want to know that. And I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about it very hard, actually, because, you know, it’s… I’m not happy about it. It’s weak. It’s a weakness in me.”

“Don’t overdo it, man,” said JJ. There seemed no attempt on anyone’s part to pretend that this was going to bear any resemblance to a real conversation.

“No. Right. So. First of all I should say sorry, and it won’t happen again. And second of all: I find you very attractive, and stimulating company, and…”

This time JJ just coughed ostentatiously.

”… And, well. It’s not me, it’s you.” He winced. “Sorry. Sorry. It’s not you, it’s me.”

At that point, just as he was trying to remember his lines, he caught my eye.

“Hey. You look like that wanker off the telly. Martin Thing.”

“It is him,” said Jess.

“How the fuck do you know him?”

“It’s a long story,” I said.