Nick Hornby - A Long Way Down

To be fair to him, though, Matty’s pretty quiet. He’s sort of so disabled that it’s OK, if you know what I mean. He just sits there. From my point of view, that’s probably better, although I can see that from his, it’s probably not much good. Except who knows whether he’s got a point of view? And if he hasn’t got one, then it’s got to be mine that counts, hasn’t it? He’s quite tall, and he’s in a wheelchair, and he’s got cushions and what have you stuffed up behind his neck to stop his head lolling about. He doesn’t look at you or anything, so you don’t get too freaked out. You forget he’s there after a while, so I coped better than I thought I would. Fucking hell, though. Poor old Maureen. I’ll tell you, you wouldn’t have persuaded me down from that roof. No way.

JJ was already there when we arrived, so when we walked in it was like a family reunion, except no one looked like each other, and no one pretended to be pleased to see each other. Maureen made us a cup of tea, and Martin and JJ asked her some polite questions about Matty. I just looked around a bit, because I didn’t want to listen. She really had tidied up, like she said she was going to. There was almost nothing in the place, apart from the telly and things to sit on. It was like she’d just moved in. In fact, I got the impression that she’d moved things out and taken things down, because you could just make out marks on the wall. But then Martin was going, What do you think, Jess?, so I had to stop looking around and start joining in. We had plans to make.

I didn’t want to go to Maureen’s place with Martin and Jess because I needed time to think. I’d done a couple interviews with music journalists in the past, but they were fans of the band, sweet guys who went away totally psyched if you gave them a demo CD and let them buy you a drink. But these people, people like the knock-on-the-door inspirational lady… Man, I didn’t know anything about them. All I knew was that they’d somehow found out my address in twenty-four hours, and if they could do that, then what couldn’t they do? It was like they had the names and addresses of every single person living in Britain, just in case one day any of them did anything that might be interesting.

Anyway, she made me totally paranoid. If she wanted to, she could find out about the band in five minutes. And then she’d get a hold of Eddie, and Lizzie, and then she’d find out that I wasn’t dying of anything—or if I was, I’d kept the news to myself. Plus, she’d find out that the disease I wasn’t dying of was non-existent.

In other words, I was freaked out enough to think I was in trouble. I took a bus up to Maureen’s, and on the way I decided I was going to come clean, tell them all about everything, and if they didn’t like it, fuck “em. But I didn’t want them reading about it in the papers.

It took us a while to get used to the sound of poor Matty’s breathing, which was loud and sounded as if it took a lot of effort. We were all thinking the same thing, I guess: we were all wondering whether we could have coped, if we were Maureen; we were all trying to figure out whether anything could have persuaded us to come back down off that roof.

“Jess,” said Martin. “You wanted us to meet. Why don’t you call us to order?”

“OK,” she said, and she cleared her throat. “We are gathered here today…”

Martin laughed.

“Fucking hell,” she said. “I’ve only done half a sentence. What’s funny about that?”

Martin shook his head.

“No, come on. If I’m so fucking funny, I want to know why.”

“It’s perhaps because it’s something more usually said in church.”

There was a long pause.

“Yeah. I knew that. That was the vibe I was after.”

“Why?” Martin asked.

“Maureen, you go to church, don’t you?” Jess said.

“I used to,” said Maureen.

“Yeah, see. I was trying to make Maureen feel comfortable.”

“Very thoughtful of you.”

“Why do you have to fuck up everything I do?”

“Gosh,” said Martin. “I can almost smell the incense.”

“Right, you can start it off then, you fucking…”

“That’s enough,” said Maureen. “In my house. In front of my son.”

Martin and I looked at each other, screwed up our faces, held our breaths, crossed our fingers, but it was no use. Jess was going to point out the obvious anyway.

“In front of your son? But he’s…”

“I haven’t got CCR,” I said. It was the only thing I could think of. I mean, obviously it needed saying, but I had intended to give myself a little more preparation time.

There was a silence. I was waiting for them to dump on me.

“Oh, JJ!” Jess said. “That’s fantastic!”

It took me a minute to realize that in the weird world of Jess, they had not only found a cure for CCR during the Christmas holidays, but delivered it to my front door in the Angel some time between New Year’s Eve and January 2nd.

“I’m not sure that’s quite what JJ is saying,” said Martin.

“No,” I said. “The thing is, I never had it.”

“No! Bastards.”

“Who?”

“The fuck-bloody doctors.” At Maureen’s house, “fuck-bloody” became Jess’s curse of choice. “You should sue them. Supposing you’d jumped? And they’d got it wrong?”

Motherfucker. Did it really have to be this hard?

“I’m not sure he’s quite saying that, either,” said Martin.

“No,” I said. “I’ll try and be as clear as possible: there ain’t no such thing as CCR, and even if there was, I’m not dying of it. I made it up, “cos… I don’t know. Partly “cos I wanted your sympathy, and partly because I didn’t think you’d understand what was really wrong with me. I’m sorry.”

“You tosser,” said Jess.

“That’s awful,” said Maureen.

“You arsehole,” said Jess.

Martin smiled. Telling people you have an incurable disease when you don’t is probably right up there with seducing a fifteen-year-old, so he was enjoying my embarrassment. Plus, he was maybe even entitled to a little moral superiority, because he’d done the decent thing when he got humiliated: he’d walked to the top of Toppers’ House and dangled his feet over the edge. OK, he didn’t go over, but, you know, he’d shown he was taking things seriously. Me, I’d thought about offing myself first and then disgraced myself afterwards. I’d become an even bigger asshole since New Year’s Eve, which was kind of depressing.

“So why did you say it?” Jess asked.

“Yes,” said Martin. “What were you attempting to simplify?”

“It just… I don’t know. Everything seemed so straightforward with you guys. Martin and the, you know. And Maureen and…” I nodded over to Matty.

“Wasn’t straightforward with me,” said Jess. “I was crapping on about Chas and explanations.”

“Yeah, but… No offense, but you were nutso. Didn’t really matter what you said.”

“So what was wrong with you?” Maureen asked.

“I don’t know. Depression, I suppose you’d call it.”

“Oh, we understand depression,” said Martin. “We’re all depressed.”

“Yeah, I know. But mine seemed too… too fucking vague. Sorry, Maureen.”

How do people, like, not curse? How is it possible? There are all these gaps in speech where you just have to put a “fuck”. I’ll tell you who the most admirable people in the world are: newscasters. If that was me, I’d be like, “And the motherfuckers flew the fucking plane right into the Twin Towers.” How could you not, if you’re a human being? Maybe they’re not so admirable. Maybe they’re robot zombies.

“Try us out,” said Martin. “We’re understanding people.”