Nick Hornby - A Long Way Down

It wasn’t as if there was a big argument, though. Everyone was all for it. The only debate was about whether to go now or in the summer, because of the weather, but there was a general feeling that, what with one thing and another, it was better to go now, before Valentine’s Day. For a moment they thought we could afford the Caribbean, Barbados or somewhere, until Martin pointed out that the money we had would have to cover Matty’s time in the care centre as well.

“Let’s go without Maureen, then,” said Jess, and I was hurt, for a moment, until it turned out she was joking.

I can’t remember the last time I wept because I was happy. I’m not saying that because I want people to feel sorry for me; it’s just that it was a strange feeling. When JJ said he had an idea, and then explained what it was, I didn’t even allow myself to think for a moment that it would ever come to anything.

It was funny, but up to that point, we hadn’t really ever been nice to each other. You’d think that would have been a part of the story, considering how we’d met. You’d think this would be the story of four people who met because they were unhappy, and wanted to help each other. But it hadn’t been up until then, not at all, nothing like, unless you count me and Martin sitting on Jess’s head. And even that was being cruel to be kind, rather than kind plain and simple. Up until then it had been the story of four people who met because they were unhappy andthen swore at each other. Three of them swore, anyway.

I was making little sobbing noises that embarrassed everyone, myself included.

“F— hell,” said Jess. “It’s only a week in the poxy Canary Isles. I’ve been there. It’s just beaches and clubs and that.”

I wanted to tell Jess that I hadn’t even seen an English beach since Matty left school; they used to take them to Brighton every year, and I went with them once or twice. I didn’t say anything, though. I may not know the weight of many things, but I could feel the weight of that one, so I kept it to myself. You know that things aren’t going well for you when you can’t even tell people the simplest fact about your life, just because they’ll presume you’re asking them to feel sorry for you. I suppose it’s why you feel so far away from everyone, in the end; anything you can think of to tell them just ends up making them feel terrible.

I want to describe every moment of the journey, because it seemed so exciting, but that would probably be a mistake, too. If you’re like everybody else then you’ll already know what an airport looks like, what it sounds and smells like, and if I tell you about it, then it would be just another way of saying that I haven’t seen the sea for ten years. I’d got a one-year passport from the post office, and even that caused too much excitement, because I saw one or two people from the church in the queue, and they know I’m not a big traveler. One of the people I saw was Bridgid, the woman who didn’t invite me to the New Year’s Eve party I didn’t go to; one day, I thought, I’ll tell her how she helped me to take my first trip abroad. I’d really have to know how much things weighed before I tried that, though.

You probably know that you sit in a row of three. They let me sit in the window seat, because they’d all been on planes before. Martin sat in the middle and JJ sat next to him on the aisle for the first few minutes. After a little while, Jess had to swap places with JJ, because she had an argument with the woman sitting next to her about the wee bag of nuts they give you, and there was some shouting and carrying on. Another thing you probably know is that there’s a terrible noise when you take off, and sometimes the plane shakes in the air. Well of course I didn’t know any of those things, and my stomach turned to water, and Martin had to hold my hand and talk to me.

And you probably also know that when you look out of an aeroplane window and see the world shrink like that, you can’t help but think about the whole of your life, from the beginning until where you are now, and everyone you’ve ever known. And you’ll know that thinking about those things makes you feel grateful to God for providing them, and angry with Him for not helping you to understand them better, and so you end up in a terrible muddle and needing to talk to a priest. I decided I wouldn’t sit in the window seat on the way back. I don’t know how these jet-set people who have to fly once or twice a year cope, I really don’t.

Not having Matty with me was like missing a leg. It felt that strange. But I also enjoyed the lightness of it, so it probably wasn’t at all like missing a leg, because I don’t suppose people who’ve had a leg taken off do enjoy the lightness of it very much. And I was going to say that it was much easier to move around without Matty, but it’s much harder to move around with only one leg, isn’t it? So maybe it would be more truthful to say that being on the plane without Matty was like being without a third leg, because a third leg would feel heavy, I expect, and it would get in the way, and you would be relieved if it was taken off. I missed him most when the plane was doing its shaking; I thought I was going to die, and I hadn’t said goodbye to him. I panicked, then.

We didn’t fall out on the first night. Everyone was happy then, even Jess. The hotel was nice, and clean, and we all had our own toilets and bathrooms, which I hadn’t been expecting. And when I opened the shutters, the light poured into the room like a torrent of water through a burst dam, and it nearly knocked me over. My knees buckled for a moment, and I had to lean against the wall. The sea was there too, but it wasn’t fierce and strong, like the light; it just sat quiet and blue, and made tiny little murmuring noises.

Some people can see this whenever they want to, I thought, but then I had to stop thinking that because it would have got in the way of the things I wanted to think about. It was a time to be feeling grateful, not to be coveting my neighbour’s wife, or his sea views.

We ate in a seafront restaurant not far from the hotel. I had a nice piece of fish, and the men ate squid and lobster, and Jess had a hamburger, and I drank two or three glasses of wine. I won’t tell you when I’d last eaten out in a restaurant, or had wine with a meal, because I’m learning not to do that. I didn’t even try to tell the others, because I could feel the weight for myself, and knew it was more than they would want to carry. Anyway, they knew by this time that it was donkey’s years since I’d done anything at all, apart from the things I do every day of my life. They took it for granted.

I would like to say this, though, and I don’t care how it sounds: it was the nicest meal I’ve ever had in my life, and perhaps the nicest evening I’ve ever had in my life. Is that so terrible, to be so positive about something?

The first evening wasn’t too bad, I suppose. I was recognized once or twice, and ended up wearing JJ’s baseball cap pulled down over my eyes, which depressed me. I am not a baseball-cap sort of a chap, and I abhor people who wear any sort of headgear during dinner. We ate so-so seafood in a tourist trap on the seafront, and the only reason I didn’t complain about just about everything was because of the look on Maureen’s face: she was transported by her microwaved plaice and her warm white wine, and it seemed churlish to spoil it.

Maureen had never been anywhere, and I’d had a holiday just a few months before. Penny and I went away for a few days after I’d come out of prison, to Majorca. We stayed in a private villa outside Deya, and I thought it was going to be the best few days of my life, because the worst three months were over. But of course it wasn’t like that at all; to describe prison as the worst three months of one’s life is like describing a horrible car crash as the worst ten seconds. It sounds logical, and neat; it sounds truthful. But it’s not, because the worst time is afterwards, when you wake up in hospital and learn that your wife is dead, or you’ve had your legs amputated, and that therefore the worst has just begun. I appreciate that this is a gloomy way of talking about a mini-break on a perfectly pleasant Mediterranean island, but it was on Majorca that I realized that the worst was nowhere near over, and might never be over. Prison was humiliating and terrifying, mind-numbing, savagely destructive of the soul in a way that the expression “soul-destroying” can no longer convey. Do you know what “quizzies” are? Neither did I, until my first night. “Quizzies” are when drugged-up psychos hurl questions at each other across the blocks, all of them centred around what the participants would like to see done to unpopular and /or celebrated newcomers. I was the subject of a quizzie on my first night; I won’t bother to list even the more imaginative suggestions, but suffice to say that I didn’t sleep very well that night, and that for the first time in my life I had intensely violent fantasies of revenge. I focused everything on the day of my release, and though that day brought with it an overwhelming relief, it didn’t last very long.