A Long Way Down (18 page)

‘So you’re saying you wouldn’t have had him on.’ Once she’d started this line of questioning, Linda seemed kind of reluctant to let it drop.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’ she snorted. ‘I mean, it’s not David Letterman, your show, is it? It’s not like people are swarming all over you to get on it.’

‘We do all right.’

I couldn’t help feeling that she was missing the point of the story. An angel – possibly like an emissary from the Lord Himself, who knows? – had visited a tower-block in Archway to stop us all from killing ourselves, and she wanted to know why he hadn’t been booked on a talk show. I don’t know, man. You’d have thought that would be one of the questions nearer the end of the interview.

‘He’d have been the first person on that we’d ever heard of, anyway.’

‘You’d heard of him before, had you?’ said Martin. ‘This particular angel? The one who looked like Matt Damon?’

‘I’ve heard of
angels
,’ she said.

‘Well, I’m sure you’ve heard of
actresses
,’ said Martin. ‘We’ve had them on, too.’

‘Where are we going with this?’ I said. ‘You really wanna write a piece about why the Angel Matt wasn’t a guest on Martin’s show?’

‘Is that what you call him?’ she said. ‘The Angel Matt?’

‘Usually we just call him “The Angel”,’ said Jess. ‘But…’

‘Would you mind if Martin answered a couple of questions?’

‘You’ve asked him loads already,’ said Jess. ‘Maureen hasn’t said anything. JJ hasn’t said very much.’

‘Martin’s the one that most people will have heard of,’ said Linda. ‘Martin? Is that what you call him?’

‘Just “The Angel”,’ said Martin. He looked happier than this on the night he tried to kill himself.

‘Can I just check something?’ said Linda. ‘You did see him, Martin, didn’t you?’

Martin shifted in his seat. You could tell he was scouting around the inside of his head, just to make sure that there were no escape routes he’d overlooked.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Martin. ‘I saw him, all right. He was… He was awesome.’

And with that, he finally walked into the cage that Linda had opened for him. The public at large were now free to poke sticks at him and call him names, and he just had to sit there and take it, like an exhibit in a freak show.

But then, we were all freaks now. When friends and family and ex-lovers opened their newspapers the next morning, they could come to one of only two possible conclusions: 1) we’d all looped the loop, or 2) we were scam artists. OK, strictly speaking, there was a third conclusion – we were telling the truth. We saw an angel that looked like Matt Damon, who for reasons best known to himself told us to get down off the roof. But I got to say, I don’t know anyone who’d believe that. Maybe my great-aunt Ida, who lives in Alabama and handles snakes every Sunday morning in her church, but then, she’s nuts too.

And I don’t know, man, but to me it seemed a long way back from there. If you were gonna draw a map, you’d say that mortgages and relationships and jobs and all that stuff, all the things that constitute a regular life, were in like New Orleans, and by coming out with all this horseshit we’d just put ourselves somewhere north of Alaska. Who’s going to give a job to a guy who sees angels? And who’s going to give a job to a guy who says he sees angels because he might make a few bucks for himself? No, we were finished as serious people. We had sold our seriosity for twelve hundred and fifty of your English pounds, and as far as I could tell that money was going to have to last us for the rest of our lives, unless we saw
God, or Elvis, or Princess Di. And next time we’d have to see them for real, and take photos.

Just over two years ago, REM’s manager came to see Big Yellow, and asked whether we were interested in his company representing us, and we said we were happy with what we had. REM! Twenty-six months ago! We were sitting around in this fancy office, and this guy, he was trying to persuade
us
, you know? And now I was sitting around with people like Maureen and Jess, taking part in a pathetic attempt to squeeze a few bucks out of someone who was desperate to give it to us, so long as we were prepared to totally embarrass ourselves. One thing the last couple of years has taught me is that there’s nothing you can’t fuck up if you try hard enough.

My only consolation was that I didn’t have any friends and family here; no one knew who I was, except for a few fans of the band, maybe, and I like to think that they weren’t the type to read Linda’s paper. And some of the guys at the pizza place might see a copy lying around somewhere, but they’d have smelled the cash, and the desperation, and they could have cared less about the humiliation.

So that just left Lizzie, and if she saw a picture of me looking insane, then so be it. You know why she dumped me? She dumped me because I wasn’t going to be a rock’n’roll star after all. Can you fucking believe that? No you can’t, because it’s beyond belief, and therefore unbelievable. ‘Shittiness, thy name is Woman.’ That was my thinking, at that point in time, you know, that it wouldn’t hurt her to see how she’d messed me up. In fact, if I could be temporarily invisible, then one of the first things I’d do, after robbing a bank and going into the women’s showers at the gym and all the usual stuff, is put the paper down in front of her and watch her read it.

See, I didn’t know anything about anything then. I thought I knew things, but I didn’t.

I didn’t think I’d ever be able to go back to the church again after the interview with Linda. I’d been thinking about it a bit, the day before; I missed it terribly, and I wondered whether God would
really mind if I just sat at the back and didn’t go to confession – sneaked out somehow before communion. But once I’d told Linda that I’d seen an angel, I knew that I’d have to keep away, that I wouldn’t be able to go back before I died. I didn’t know exactly what sin I’d committed, but I was sure that sins involving making up angels were mortal.

I still thought I was going to kill myself when the six weeks were up; what would have changed my mind? I was busier than I’d ever been, what with the press interviews and the meetings, and I suppose that took my mind off things. But all the running around just felt like last-minute activity, as if I had some things to get done before I went on holiday. That was who I was, then: a person who was going to kill herself soon, the moment I could get round to it.

I was going to say that I saw the first little glimmer of light that day, the day of the interview with Linda, but it wasn’t really like that. It was more as if I’d already chosen what I was going to watch on TV; and I was beginning to look forward to it, and then noticed that there was something else on that might be more interesting. I don’t know about you, but choice isn’t always what I want. You can end up flicking between one channel and another, and not watching either programme properly. I don’t know how people with the cable television cope.

What happened was that after the interview, I found myself talking to JJ. He was going back to his flat, and I was heading towards the bus stop, and we ended up walking along together. I’m not sure he wanted to, really, because we’ve hardly spoken since I slapped that man on New Year’s Eve, but it was one of those awkward situations where I was walking five paces behind him, so he stopped for me.

‘That was kind of hard, wasn’t it?’ he said, and I was surprised, because I thought I was the only one who’d found it difficult.

‘I hate lies,’ I said.

He looked at me and laughed, and then I remembered about his lie.

‘No offence,’ I said. ‘I lied too. I lied about the angel. And I lied
to Matty, as well. About going to a party on New Year’s Eve. And to the people in the respite home.’

‘God’ll forgive you for those, I think.’ We walked along a little bit more, and then he said, for no reason that I could tell, ‘What would it take to change your mind?’

‘About what?’

‘About… you know. Wanting To End It All.’

I didn’t know what to say.

‘If you could make a deal with God, kind of thing. He’s sitting there, the Big Guy, across the table from you. And he’s saying, OK, Maureen, we like you, but we really want you to stay put, on Earth. What can we do to persuade you? What can we offer you?’

‘God’s asking me personally?’

‘Yeah.’

‘If He was asking me personally, He wouldn’t have to offer me anything.’

‘Really?’

‘If God in His infinite wisdom wanted me to stay on Earth, then how could I ask for anything?’

JJ laughed. ‘OK, then. Not God.’

‘Who, then?’

‘A sort of… I don’t know. A sort of cosmic, you know, President. Or Prime Minister. Tony Blair. Someone who can get things done. You don’t have to do what Tony Blair says without asking for something in return.’

‘Can he cure Matty?’

‘Nope. He can only
arrange
things.’

‘I’d like a holiday.’

‘God. You’re a cheap date. You’d choose to live out the rest of your natural life for a week in Florida?’

‘I’d like to go abroad. I’ve never been.’

‘You’ve never been abroad?’

He said it as though I should be ashamed, and for a moment I was.

‘When was the last time you had a holiday?’

‘Just before Matty was born.’

‘And he’s how old?’

‘He’s nineteen.’

‘OK. Well, as your manager, I’m going to be asking the Big Guy for a holiday a year. Maybe two.’

‘You can’t do that!’ I really felt scandalized. I can see now I was taking it all too seriously, but it felt real to me, and it seemed like a holiday a year was too much.

‘Trust me,’ said JJ. ‘I know the market. Cosmic Tony won’t blink an eye. Come on, what else?’

‘Oh, I couldn’t ask for anything else.’

‘Say he does give you two weeks’ holiday a year. Fifty weeks is a long time to wait for it, you know? And you’re not going to get another appointment with Cosmic Tony. You got one shot. Everything you want, you’ve got to ask for in one go.’

‘A job.’

‘You want a job?’

‘Yes. Of course.’

‘What kind of job?’

‘Anything. Working in a shop, maybe. Anything to get me out of the house.’

I used to work, before Matty was born. I had a job in an office stationer’s in Tufnell Park. I liked it; I liked all the different pens, and sizes of paper and envelopes. I liked my boss. I haven’t worked since.

‘OK. Come on, come on.’

‘Maybe a bit of a social life. The church has quizzes sometimes. Like pub quizzes, but not in the pub. I’d like to have a go at one of those.’

‘Yep, we can allow you a quiz.’

I tried to smile, because I knew JJ was joking a bit, but I was finding the conversation hard. I couldn’t really think of anything very much, and that annoyed me. And it made me feel afraid, in a strange sort of a way. It was like finding a door that you’d never seen before in your own house. Would you want to know what was behind it? Some people would, I’m sure, but I wouldn’t. I didn’t want to carry on talking about me.

‘What about you?’ I said to JJ. ‘What would you say to Cosmic Tony?’

‘Ha. I’m not sure, man.’ He calls everyone ‘man’, even if you’re not a man. You get used to it. ‘Maybe, I don’t know. Live the last fifteen years all over again or something. Finish high school. Forget about music. Become the kind of person who’s happy to settle for what he is, rather than what he wants to be, you know?’

‘But Cosmic Tony can’t arrange that.’

‘No. Exactly.’

‘So you’re worse off than me, really. Cosmic Tony can do things for me, but not for you.’

‘No, no, shit, I’m sorry, Maureen. I didn’t mean to imply that. You have a… You have a really hard life, and none of it’s your fault, and everything that’s happened to me is just ’cos of my own stupidity, and… There’s no comparison. Really. I’m sorry I ever mentioned it.’

But I wasn’t sorry. I liked thinking about Cosmic Tony much more than I liked thinking about God.

The headline in Linda’s paper – page one, accompanied by the picture of me flat on my face outside a nightclub – read ‘FOR HARPS – SEE SHARP’. The story did not, as Linda had promised it would, emphasize the beauty and mystery of our experience on the roof; rather, it chose to concentrate on another angle, namely, the sudden, gratifying and amusing lunacy of a former television personality. The journalist in me suspects that she got the story about right.

‘What does that mean?’ Jess asked me on the phone that morning.

‘It’s an old lager ad,’ I said. “ ‘HARP – STAYS SHARP”.’

‘What has lager got to do with anything?’

‘Nothing. But the name of the lager was Harp. And my name’s Sharp, you see.’

‘OK. Then what have harps got to do with anything?’

‘Angels are supposed to play them.’

‘Are they? Should we have said he was playing a harp? To make it more convincing?’

I told her that, in my opinion, the addition of a harp to the portrait of the Angel Matt Damon that we had painted was unlikely to have helped convince people of its authenticity.

‘And anyway, how come it’s all about you? We hardly get a fucking mention.’

I had many other phone calls that morning – from Theo, who said that there’s been a lot of interest in the story, and who thought I’d finally given him something he could work with, as long as I was comfortable talking to the public about what was obviously a private spiritual moment; from Penny, who wanted us to meet and talk; and from my daughters.

I hadn’t been allowed to speak to them for weeks, but Cindy’s maternal instinct had obviously told her that the day Daddy was in the papers talking about seeing messengers from God was a good day to reinstate contact.

‘Did you see an angel, Daddy?’

‘No.’

‘Mummy said you did.’

‘Well, I didn’t.’

‘Why did Mummy say you did?’

‘You’d better ask her.’

‘Mummy, why did you say Daddy saw an angel?’

I waited patiently while a brief conversation took place away from the receiver.

‘She says she didn’t say it. She says the newspaper says it.’

‘I told a fib, sweetie. To make some money.’