Nick Hornby - A Long Way Down

Everyone laughed, looked at Cindy, and then stopped laughing when they realized that laughing would have consequences.

“And Maureen’s got her son Matty there, and the two guys from the care home. So here’s my idea. We spend some time talking to our people, have a little catch-up. And then we swap round, and go and talk to some other person’s people. So it’s a cross between the American thing and a school parents’ evening, ’cos the friends and family sort of sit in a corner, waiting for people to visit them.”

“Why?” I said. “What for?”

“I don’t know. Whatever. Just for a laugh. And we’ll learn things, won’t we? About each other? And about ourselves?”

There she went again, with her happy endings. It was true that I had learned things about the others, but I had learned absolutely nothing that wasn’t factual. So I could tell Ed the name of the band that he used to play in, and I could tell the Crichtons the name of their missing daughter; it seemed to me unlikely that they would find this in any way useful or even comforting, however.

And anyway, what does or can one ever learn, apart from times tables, and the name of the Spanish prime minister? I hope that I’ve learned not to sleep with fifteen-year-olds, but I learned that a long time ago—decades before I actually slept with a fifteen-year-old. The problem there was simply that she told me she was sixteen. So, have I learned not to sleep with sixteen-year-olds, or attractive young women? No. And yet just about everyone I’ve ever interviewed has told me that by doing something or other—recovering from cancer, climbing a mountain, playing the part of a serial killer in a movie—they have learned something about themselves. And I always nod and smile thoughtfully, when really I want to pin them down. “What did you learn from the cancer, actually? That you don’t like being sick? That you don’t want to die? That wigs make your scalp itch? Come on, be specific” I suspect it’s something they tell themselves in order to turn the experience into something that might appear valuable, rather than a complete and utter waste of time.

In the last few months, I have been to prison, lost every last molecule of self-respect, become estranged from my children and thought very seriously about killing myself. I mean, that little lot has got to be the psychological equivalent of cancer, right? And it’s certainly a bigger deal than acting in a bloody film. So how come I’ve learned absolutely bugger all? What was I supposed to learn? True, I have discovered that I was quite attached to my self-esteem, and regret its passing. Also, I’ve found out that prison and poverty aren’t really me . But, you know, I could have had a wild stab in the dark about both of those things beforehand. Call me literal-minded, but I suspect people might learn more about themselves if they didn’t get cancer. They’d have more time, and a lot more energy.

“So,” Jess went on. “Who’s going to go where?”

At that moment, several French teenage punks appeared in our midst, carrying coffee mugs. They headed for an empty table next to Matty’s wheelchair.

“Oi,” said Jess. “Where do you think you’re going? Upstairs, all of you.”

They stared at her.

“Come on, we haven’t got all day. Hup hup hup. Schnell. Plus vitement .” She shooed them towards the stairs, and away they went, uncomplainingly; Jess was just another incomprehensible and aggressive native of an incomprehensible and aggressive country. I sat down at my ex-wife’s table, and waved towards Penny again. It was a sort of all-purpose crowded-party gesture, some kind of cross between “I’m just getting a drink” and “I’ll give you a ring”, with maybe a little bit of “Can we have the bill, please?” thrown in. Penny nodded, as if she understood. And then, equally inappropriately, I rubbed my hands together, as if I were relishing the prospect of all the delicious and nutritious self-knowledge I was about to tuck into.

I didn’t think there was going to be very much for me to say. I mean, there wasn’t really anything I could say to Matty. But I didn’t think I’d find anything to say to the two lads from the respite home, either. I asked them if they wanted a cup of tea, but they didn’t; and then I asked whether it had been hard getting Matty down the stairs, and they said it wasn’t, with the two of them there. And I said I couldn’t have got him down there if there were ten of me, and they laughed, and then we stood there looking at each other. And then the short one, the one who came from Australia and was shaped like the toy robot that Matty used to have, with a square head and a square body, asked what the little gathering was all about. It hadn’t occurred to me that they wouldn’t know.

“I’ve been trying to work it out, but I’m clueless.”

“Yes,” I said. “Well. It must be very confusing.”

“So come on, then. Put us out of our misery. Steve here reckons you’ve all got money troubles.”

“Some of us have. I haven’t.”

I’ve never had to worry about money, really. I get my carer’s allowance, and I live in my mother’s house, and she left me a little bit anyway. And if you never go anywhere or do anything, life is cheap.

“But you’ve got troubles,” said the square one.

“Yes, we’ve got troubles,” I said. “But they’re all different troubles.”

“Yeah, well I know he’s got troubles,” said the other one, Stephen. “The guy off of the TV.”

“Yes, he’s got troubles,” I said.

“So how do you know him? I can’t imagine you go to the same nightclubs.”

And I ended up telling them everything. I didn’t mean to. It just sort of came out. And once I’d started, it didn’t seem to matter much what I’d told them. And then, when I got to the end of the story, I realized I shouldn’t have said anything, even though they were nice about it, and said how sorry they were, and that kind of thing.

“You won’t tell them back at the centre, will you?” I said.

“Why would we tell them?”

“Because if they found out that I’d been planning to leave Matty with them for ever, they might refuse to take him again. They might think that whenever I called for you to take him, I was thinking of jumping off a roof somewhere.”

So we made a deal. They gave me the name of another centre in the area, a private one that they said was nicer than theirs, and I promised that if I was going to do away with myself, I’d call that one.

“It’s not that we don’t want to know,” said the square one, Sean. “And it’s not that we don’t want our centre to be stuck with Matty. It’s just that we don’t want to feel that every time you call us up, you’re in trouble.”

I don’t know why, but this made me feel happy. Two men I didn’t really know had told me not to call them if I was feeling suicidal, and I felt like hugging them. I didn’t want people feeling sorry for me, you see. I wanted them to help, even if helping meant saying that they wouldn’t help, if that doesn’t sound too Irish. And the funny thing was that this was what Jess was after when she arranged the get-together. And she didn’t expect me to get anywhere, and she’d only asked the two young fellas along because Matty couldn’t have got here without them, and in five minutes they’d made me feel better about something.

Stephen and Sean and I watched the others for a few moments, to see how they were getting on. JJ was doing the best, because he and his friends hadn’t really started fighting yet. Martin and his ex-wife were watching in silence as their daughters drew a picture, and Jess and her parents were shouting. Which might have been a good sign, if they were shouting about the right things, but every now and again you could hear Jess yelling the loudest about something or other, and it never seemed to be anything that would help. For example, “I never touched any stupid bloody earrings.” Everyone in the room heard that, and Martin and JJ and I looked at each other. None of us knew the situation with these earrings, so we didn’t want to judge, but it was hard to imagine that earrings were the root of Jess’s problem.