Nick Hornby - A Long Way Down

Eddie was the worst. It was like we were married, and picking up a book was my way of telling him that I had a headache every night. And like a marriage, the longer we were together, the worse it got; but now that I think about it, the longer we were together, the worse everything got. We knew we weren’t going to make it, as a band and maybe even as friends, and so we were both panicking. And me reading just made Eddie panic more, because I think he had some bullshit idea that reading was going to help me find some sort of new career. Yeah, like that’s what happens in life. “Hey, you like Updike? You must be a cool guy. Here’s a $100,000 job in our advertising agency.” We spent all those years talking about the stuff we had in common, and the last few months noticing all the ways we were different, and it broke both of our hearts.

And all that is a long-ass way of explaining why I freaked out at Jess. I’d left one band full of aggressive illiterates, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to join another one. When you’re unhappy, I guess everything in the world—reading, eating, sleeping—has something buried somewhere inside it that just makes you unhappier.

And for some reason, I thought music was going to be easier, which, considering I’m a musician, wasn’t real smart. I only have a lot invested in books, but I got my whole life invested in music. I thought I couldn’t go wrong with Nick Drake, especially in a room full of people who’ve got the blues. If you haven’t heard him… Man, it’s like he boiled down all the melancholy in the world, all the bruises and all the fucked-up dreams you’ve let go, and poured the essence into a little tiny bottle and corked it up. And when he starts to play and sing, he takes the cork out, and you can smell it. You’re pinned into your seat, as if it’s a wall of noise, but it’s not—it’s still, and quiet, and you don’t want to breathe in case you frighten it away. And we were listening to him over at Maureen’s, because we couldn’t play our own music at Starbucks, and at Maureen’s you’ve got the sound of Matty breathing, which was like this whole extra freaky instrument. So I was sitting there thinking, man, this is going to change these people’s lives for ever .

At the end of the first song, Jess started putting her fingers down her throat and making faces.

“But he’s such a drip ,” she said. “He’s like, I dunno, a poet or something.” This was meant to be an insult: I was spending my days with someone who thought that poets were creatures you might find living in your lower intestine.

“I don’t mind it,” said Martin. “I wouldn’t walk out, if he was playing in a wine bar.”

“I would,” said Jess.

I wondered whether it would be possible to punch both of them out simultaneously, but rejected the idea on the grounds that it would all be over too quickly, and there wouldn’t be enough pain involved. I’d want to keep on pummeling them after they were down, which would mean doing them one at a time. It’s music rage, which is like road rage, only more righteous. When you get road rage, a tiny part of you knows you’re being a jerk, but when you get music rage, you’re carrying out the will of God, and God wants these people dead.

And then this weird thing happened, if you can call a deep response to Five Leaves Left weird.

“Have you not got ears?” Maureen said suddenly. “Can’t you hear how unhappy he is, and how beautiful his songs are?”

We looked at her, and then Jess looked at me.

“Ha ha,” said Jess. “You like something Maureen likes.” She sang this last part, like a little kid, nah-nah, nah-nah-nah.

“Don’t pretend to be more foolish than you are, Jess,” said Maureen. “Because you’re foolish enough as it is.” She was steamed. She had the music rage too. “Just listen to him for a moment, and stop blathering.”

And Jess could see that she meant it, and she shut up, and we listened to the whole rest of the album in silence, and if you looked at Maureen closely you could see her eyes were glistening a little.

“When did he die?”

“Nineteen seventy-four. He was twenty-six.”

“Twenty-six.” She was quiet for a moment, thoughtful, and I was really hoping that she was feeling sorry for him and his family. The alternative was that she was envying him for having spared himself all those unnecessary extra years. You want people to respond, but sometimes they can overdo it, you know?

“People don’t want to hear it, do they?” she said.

No one said anything, because we weren’t sure where she was at.

“This is how I feel, every day, and people don’t want to know that. They want to know that I’m feeling what Tom Jones makes you feel. Or that Australian girl who used to be in Neighbours . But I feel like this, and they won’t play what I feel on the radio, because people that are sad don’t fit in.”

We’d never heard Maureen talk like this, didn’t even know she could, and even Jess didn’t want to stop her.

“It’s funny, because people think it’s Matty that stops me fitting in. But Matty’s not so bad. Hard work, but… It’s the way Matty makes me feel that stops me fitting in. You get the weight of everything wrong. You have to guess all the time whether things are heavy or light, especially the things inside you, and you get it wrong, and it puts people off. I’m tired of it.”

And so suddenly Maureen was like my girl, because she got it, and because she felt the music rage too, and I wanted to say the right thing to her. “You need a holiday.”

I said it because I wanted to be sympathetic, but then I remembered Cosmic Tony, and I realized that now Cosmic Tony had the money.

“Hey. What about that? Why not?” I said. “Let’s all take Maureen on holiday somewhere.” Martin burst out laughing.

“Yeah, right,” said Jess. “What are we? Volunteers for like an old folks’ home or something?”

“Maureen’s not old,” I said. “How old are you, Maureen?”

“I’m fifty-one,” she said.

“OK, not an old folks’ home. A boring folks’ home.”

“And what makes you the most fascinating person on the planet?” Martin said.

“I don’t look like that, for a start. Anyways, I thought you were on my side?”

And almost unnoticed, amid all the laughter and the general scorn, Maureen had started to cry.

“I’m sorry, Maureen,” said Martin. “I wasn’t being ungallant. I just couldn’t imagine the four of us sitting around a swimming pool on our sun loungers.”

“No, no,” said Maureen. “I took no offense. Not much, anyway. And I know nobody wants to go on holiday with me, and that’s fine. I just got a bit weepy because JJ suggested it. It’s been a long… Nobody’s… I haven’t… It was just nice of him, that’s all.”

“Oh, fucking hell,” said Martin quietly. Now, “Oh, fucking hell” can mean a lot of different things, as you know, but there was no ambiguity here; we all understood. What Martin meant by “Oh, fucking hell” in this context, if I can explain an obscenity with an obscenity, is that he was fucked. Because what kind of asshole was going to say to Maureen, you know, “Yeah, well, it’s the thought that counts. Hope that’s enough for you.”

And like five days later we were on a plane to Tenerife.

It was their decision, not mine. I didn’t feel that I had the right to decide, not really, even though a quarter of the money did belong to me. I was the one who’d suggested the holiday in the first place, to JJ, when we were talking about Cosmic Tony, so I didn’t think it was right that I should join in when they took a vote on it. I think what I did is, I abstained.