Nick Hornby - A Long Way Down

“Ah, yes. «Thing». Le mot juste , as ever.”

Jess scowled, but was too besotted by her theme to hit me with the insult my knowledge of a foreign phrase demanded and deserved. “And we could say that we still haven’t decided whether we’re going to actually top ourselves—they’d like that.”

“And if we like actually sold the TV rights to Valentine’s Night… Maybe they could turn it into a Big Brother kinda thing. You could root for the person you wanted to go over,” said JJ.

Jess looked dubious. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “But you know about papers and that, Martin. We could make some money, couldn’t we?”

“Has it occurred to you that I’ve had enough trouble with the papers?”

“Oh, it’s always about you, isn’t it?” said Jess. “What about if there’s a few quid in it for us?”

“But what’s the story?” said JJ. “There’s no story. We went up, we came down, that’s it. People must do that all the time.”

“I’ve been thinking about this. How about if we saw something?” said Jess.

“Like what? What are we supposed to have seen?”

“OK. How about if we saw an angel?”

“An angel,” said JJ flatly.

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t see an angel,” said Maureen. “When did you see an angel?”

“No one saw an angel,” I explained. “Jess is proposing that we invent a spiritual experience for financial gain.”

“That’s terrible,” said Maureen, if only because it was so clearly expected of her.

“It’s not really inventing , is it?” said Jess.

“No? In what sense did we actually see an angel?”

“What do you call it in poems?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You know, in poems. And in English Literature. Sometimes you say something is like something and sometimes you say something is something. You know, my love is like a fuck-bloody rose or whatever.”

“Similes and metaphors.”

“Yeah. Exactly. Shakespeare invented them, didn’the? That’s why he was a genius.”

“No.”

“Who was it, then?”

“Never mind.”

“So why was Shakespeare a genius? What did he do?”

“Another time.”

“OK. Anyway. So which is the one where you say something is something, like «You are a prick» even if you’re not actually a prick. As in a penis. Obviously.”

Maureen looked close to tears.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Jess,” I said.

“Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t know if we had the same swearing rules if it was only for discussion about grammar and that.”

“We do.”

“Right. Sorry, Maureen. OK, «You are a pig» when you’re not a pig.”

“Metaphor.”

“Exactly. We didn’t literally see an angel. But we sort of did metaphorically.”

“We sort of metaphorically saw an angel,” repeated JJ. He had the flat disbelief thing off pat now.

“Yeah. Yeah. I mean, something turned us back. Something saved our lives. Why not an angel?”

“Because there wasn’t one.”

“OK, we didn’t see one. But you could say that anything was an angel. Any girl, anyway. Me, or even Maureen.”

“Any girl could be an angel.” JJ again.

“Yeah. Because of angels. Girls.”

“Have you ever heard of the Angel Gabriel, for example?”

“No.”

“Well, he— he— was an angel.”

“Yeah?”

For some reason I suddenly lost patience.

“What is this nonsense? Can you hear yourself, Jess?”

“What have I said now?”

“We didn’t see an angel, literally or metaphorically. And, incidentally, seeing something metaphorically, whatever that means, is not the same as seeing something. With your eyes. Which, as I understand it, is what you’re proposing we say. That’s not embellishing. That’s talking bullshit, sorry, Maureen. To be honest, I’d keep this to yourself. I wouldn’t tell anyone about the angel. Not even the national press.”

“But say if we get on telly and get a chance to, you know, spread our message?”

We all stared at her.

“What the hell is our message?”

“Well. That’s sort of up to us, isn’t it?”

How was one supposed to argue with a mind like this? The three of us never managed to find a way, so we contented ourselves with ridicule and sarcasm, and the afternoon ended with an unspoken agreement that as three-quarters of us hadn’t really enjoyed our brief moment of media exposure, we would allow the current interest in our mental health to dwindle away to nothing. And then, a couple of hours after I got home, there was a phone call from Theo, asking me why I hadn’t told him that I’d seen an angel.

They weren’t happy. Martin was the worst: he went up the fucking wall. He called me at home and went off on one for about ten minutes. But I knew he was going to be all right about it, because Dad answered the phone, and Martin never said anything to him. If he’d said anything to Dad, then the story would have come apart. It needed the four of us to stick to our guns, and as long as we did that, we could say we’d seen whatever we wanted to have seen. The thing is, it was too good an idea to waste, wasn’t it? And they knew that, which is why I thought they’d come round to it in the end—which they did, sort of. And for me, it was our first big test as a group. They all had a straightforward choice to make: were they on my side or not? And to be honest, if they’d decided that they weren’t, I doubt whether I’d have had anything more to do with them. It would have said a lot about them as people, none of it good.

I admit I was a bit sneaky. First of all I asked JJ the name of the woman who’d come round to see him that morning, and he told me her name and the paper she worked for, which was a bonus. He thought I was just making conversation, but I thought it might come in handy at some stage. And then when I got home, I called the paper. I said I’d only speak to her, and when I told them my name they gave me her mobile number.

She was called Linda, and she was really friendly. I thought she might think it was all a bit weird, but she was very interested and encouraging, really. If she had a fault as a journalist, I’d say it was that she was too encouraging, if anything. Too believing and trusting. You’d expect a good journalist to be all, you know, How do I know you’re telling the truth, but I could have told her anything and she’d have written it down. She was slightly unprofessional, between you and me.

So she was all, What did this angel look like, Jess? She said Jess a lot, to show that we were friends.

I’d thought about this. The stupid thing to say would have been that he—I’d decided he was a he, because of Gabriel—looked like a church angel, with wings and all that. That would give off the wrong signals, I thought.

Not what you’d expect, I said. And Linda went, What, no wings or haloes, Jess? And she laughed—like, What kind of berk would say they’d seen an angel with wings and a halo? So I knew I’d made the right decision. I laughed as well, and I went, No, he looked all modern, and she was like, Really?

(I always do this, when I’m talking about what someone said. I’m always, like, So I was like, and, She went, and all like that. But when a conversation goes on a bit, it’s a drag, isn’t it? Like, went, like, went. So I’m going to do it like a play from now on, OK? I’m not so good on speech marks or whatever, but I can remember plays from reading them at school.)

ME: Yeah. He was dressed modern. He looked like he could have been in a band or something.

LINDA: A band? Which band?

ME: I don’t know. Radiohead or someone like that.