Nick Hornby - A Long Way Down

“That wish wouldn’t really solve the problem, though, would it? I’d still be an arsehole. I’d still get caught for something else.”

“Well, why not just wish that you never got caught for anything ever? Why not wish that you… What’s that one with the cake?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Something about eating a cake?”

“Having it and eating it?”

Jess looked kind of doubtful. “Are you sure that’s it? How can you eat a cake without having it in the first place?”

“The idea,” said Martin, “is that you get it both ways. You eat the cake, but it somehow remains untouched. So «have» here means «keep».”

“That’s mental.”

“Indeed.”

“How could you do that?”

“You can’t. Hence the expression.”

“And what’s the point of the fucking cake? If you’re not going to eat it?”

“We’re kind of getting off the subject here,” I said. “The point is to wish for something that would make us happier. And I can see why Martin wants to be, you know, a different person.”

“I wish Jen would come back,” said Jess.

“Yeah, well. I can see that. What else?”

“Nothing. That’s it.”

Martin snorted. “You don’t wish you were less of an arsehole?”

“If Jen came back, I wouldn’t be.”

“Or less mad?”

“I’m not mad. Just, you know. Confused.”

There was a thoughtful silence. You could tell that not everyonearound the table was convinced.

“So you’re just gonna waste two wishes?” I said.

“No. I can use them up. Ummm… An everlasting supply of blow, maybe? And, I dunno… Oooh. I wouldn’t mind being able to play the piano, I suppose.”

Martin sighed. “Jesus Christ. That’s the only problem you’ve got? You can’t play the piano?”

“If I was less confused, I’d have the time to play the piano.”

We left it there.

“How “bout you, Maureen?”

“I told you before. When you said Cosmic Tony could onlyarrange things.”

“Tell everyone else.”

“I wish they could find a way to help Matty.”

“You can do better than that, can’t you?” said Jess.

We winced.

“How?”

“No, well, see, I was wondering what you’d say. “Cos you could have wished that he’d been born normal. And then you could have saved yourself all those years of clearing up shit.”

Maureen was quiet for a minute.

“Who would I be then?”

“Eh?”

“I don’t know who I’d be.”

“You’d still be Maureen, you stupid old trout.”

“That’s not what she means,” I said. “She means, like, we are what’s happened to us. So if you take away what’s happened to us, then, you know…”

“No, I don’t fucking know,” said Jess.

“If Jen hadn’t happened to you, and, and all the other things…”

“Like Chas and that?”

“Exactly. Events of that magnitude. Well, who would you be?”

“I’d be someone different.”

“Exactly.”

“That’d be fucking excellent.”

We stopped playing the wishing game then.

It was intended to be this enormous gesture, I think, a way of wrapping the whole thing up, as if the whole thing could or would ever be wrapped up. That’s the thing with the young these days, isn’t it? They watch too many happy endings. Everything has to be wrapped up, with a smile and a tear and a wave. Everyone has learned, found love, seen the error of their ways, discovered the joys of monogamy, or fatherhood, or filial duty, or life itself. In my day, people got shot at the end of films, after learning only that life is hollow, dismal, brutish and short.

It was about two or three weeks after the “I wish” conversation in Starbucks. Somehow Jess had managed to keep her trap shut—an impressive achievement for someone whose usual conversation technique is to describe everything as, or even before, it happens, using as many words as possible, like a radio sports commentator. Looking back on it, it is true that she had occasionally given the game away—or would have done, if any of us had known there was a game.

One afternoon, when Maureen said that she had to get back to see Matty, Jess stifled a giggle and observed enigmatically that she’d see him soon enough.

Maureen looked at her.

“I’ll be seeing him in twenty minutes if I’m lucky with the bus,” she said.

“Yeah, but after that,” said Jess.

“Soon enough but after that?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“I see him most minutes of every day,” said Maureen.

And we forgot all about it, just as we forgot all about so muchthat jess said.

Perhaps a week later, she started to show ahitherto concealedinterest in Lizzie, JJ’s ex-girlfriend.

“Where does Lizzie live?” she asked JJ.

“King’s Cross. And before you say anything, no, sheisn’t ahooker.”

“What is she, a hooker? Ha ha. Just messing around.”

“Yeah. Totally excellent joke.”

“So where is there to live in King’s Cross, then? If you’re not ahooker?”

JJ rolled his eyes. “I’m not telling you where she lives, Jess. You think I’m some kinda sucker?”

“I don’t want to talk to her. Stupid old slapper.”

“Why is she a slapper, precisely?” I asked her. “As far as we are aware, she has slept with only one man in her entire life.”

“What’s that word again? The prick one? Sorry, Maureen.”

” «Metaphorically»,” I said. When someone uses the phrase “the prick one”, and you know immediately that this is a synonym for the word “metaphorically”, you are entitled to wonder whether you know the speaker too well. You are even entitled to wonder whether you should know her at all.

“Exactly. She’s a metaphorical slapper. She dumped JJ and probably went out with someone else.”

“Yeah, I dunno,” said JJ. “I’m not sure that dumping me condemns a person to eternal celibacy.”

And thus we moved on, to a discussion about the appropriate punishment for our exes, whether death was too good for them and so on, and the Lizzie moment passed, like so many moments in those days, without us noticing. But it was in there, if we’d wanted to rootle around in the rubbish-strewn teenage bedroom of Jess’s mind.

On the big day itself, I had lunch with Theo—although of course while I was having lunch with Theo, I had no idea that it was going to be a big day. Having lunch with Theo was momentous enough. I hadn’t spoken to him face-to-face since I’d come out of prison.

He wanted to talk to me because he’d had, he said, a “substantial” offer from a reputable publisher for an autobiography.

“How much?”

“They’re not talking money yet.”

“May I ask, then, in what way it could be described as substantial?”

“Well. You know. It has substance.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s real, not imaginary.”

“And what does «real» mean, in real terms? Really?”

“You’re becoming very difficult, Martin. If you don’t mind me saying so. You’re not my easiest client at the best of times, what with one thing and another. And I’ve actually been working quite hard on this project.”

I was momentarily distracted by the realization that there was straw underneath my feet. We were eating in a restaurant called “Farm”, and everything we were eating came from a farm. Brilliant, eh? Meat! Potatoes! Green salad! What a concept! I suppose they needed the straw, without which their theme would have begun to look a little short on inspiration. I would like to report that the waitresses were all jolly and large and red-cheeked and wearing aprons, but of course they were surly, thin, pale and dressed in black.