A Long Way Down (20 page)

And because of who we were and what had happened to us, we wanted to talk about personal things, so it was embarrassing him standing there.

Martin was like, Let’s drink up and go, and he stood up. But Captain Coffee went, What’s the matter now? So I said, The thing is, we need to have a private conversation, and he said he understood completely, and he’d go outside until we’d finished. And I said, But really, everything we say is private, for reasons I can’t go into. And he said it didn’t matter, he’d still wait outside unless anyone else came. And that’s what he did, and that’s why we ended up going to Starbucks for our coffee meetings. It was hard to concentrate on how miserable we were, with this berk in an army uniform leaning against the window outside checking that we weren’t stealing his biscuits, or biscotties as he called them. People go on about places like Starbucks being unpersonal and all that, but what if that’s what you want? I’d be lost, if JJ and people like that got their way, and there was nothing unpersonal in the world. I like to know that there are big places without windows where no one gives a shit. You need confidence to go into small places with regular customers, small bookshops and small music shops and small restaurants and cafés. I’m happiest in the Virgin Megastore and Borders and Starbucks and Pizza Express, where no one gives a shit, and no one knows who you are. My mum and dad are always going on about how soulless those places are, and I’m like, Der. That’s the point.

The book group thing was JJ’s idea. He said people do it a lot in America, read books and talk about them; Martin reckoned it was becoming fashionable here, too, but I’d never heard of it, so it can’t be that fashionable, or I’d have read about it in
Dazed and Confused
. The point of it was to talk about Something Else, sort of thing, and not get into rows about who was a berk and who was a prat, which was how the afternoons in Starbucks usually ended up. And what
we decided was, we were going to read books by people who’d killed themselves. They were, like, our people, and so we thought we ought to find out what was going on in their heads. Martin said he thought we might learn more from people who hadn’t killed themselves – we should be reading up on what was so great about staying alive, not what was so great about topping yourself. But it turned out there were like a billion writers who hadn’t killed themselves, and three or four who had, so we took the easy option, and went for the smaller pile. We voted on using funds from our media appearances to buy ourselves the books.

Anyway, it turned out not to be the easy option at all. Fucking hell! You should try and read the stuff by people who’ve killed themselves! We started with Virginia Woolf, and I only read like two pages of this book about a lighthouse, but I read enough to know why she killed herself: she killed herself because she couldn’t make herself understood. You only have to read one sentence to see that. I sort of identify with her a bit, because I suffer from that sometimes, but her mistake was to go public with it. I mean, it was lucky in a way, because she left a sort of souvenir behind so that people like us could learn from her difficulties and that, but it was bad luck for her. And she had some bad luck, too, if you think about it, because in the olden days anyone could get a book published because there wasn’t so much competition. So you could march into a publishers’ office and go, you know, I want this published, and they’d go, Oh, OK then. Whereas now they’d go, No, dear, go away, no one will understand you. Try pilates or salsa dancing instead.

JJ was the only one who thought it was brilliant, so I had a go at him, and he had a go back because I didn’t like it. He was all, Is it because your daddy reads books? Is that why you come on like such a dork? Which was an easy one to answer, because Daddy doesn’t read books, bad luck, and I told him so. And then I said, Is it because you didn’t go to school? Is that why you think all books are great even when they’re shit? Because some people are like that, aren’t they? You’re not allowed to say anything about books because they’re books, and books are, you know, God. Anyway,
he didn’t like that much, which means I got him right where it hurts. He said that he could see that what was going to happen to our reading group was that I would wreck it, and how had he been so stupid as to expect anything else? And I was like, I’m not going to wreck anything. If a book’s shit, I’ll say so. And he went, Yeah, but you’re gonna say they’re all shit, aren’t you, because you’re so fucking contrary, sorry Maureen. And I said, Yeah, and you’re gonna say they’re all great, because you’re such a creep. And he said, They are all great, and he went through all these people we were supposed to be talking about in the club – Sylvia Plath, Primo Levi, Hemingway. So I said, Well what’s the point of doing the reading club if you know in advance they’re all great? What’s fun about that? And he said, It’s not
Pop Idol
, man. You don’t vote for the best one. They’re all good, and we accept that, and we talk about their ideas. And I was like, well if she’s anything to go by, I don’t accept they’re all great. In fact I now accept the opposite. And JJ got really worked up about that, and there was some unpleasantness then, and Martin stepped in and we decided not to do any more books for a while, in other words ever. That was when we decided to have a go at musical suicide instead. Maureen had never heard of Kurt Cobain, can you believe it?

I do think. I know no one believes it, but I do. It’s just that my way of thinking is different from everyone else’s. Before I think, I have to get angry and maybe a bit violent, which I can see is sort of annoying for everyone else, but tough shit. Anyway, that night, in bed, I thought about JJ, and what he’d said about how I hated books because Daddy read them. And it’s true what I said, that he doesn’t, not really, although because of his job he has to pretend that he does.

Jen was a reader, though. She loved her books, but they scared me. They scared me when she was around, and they scare me even more now. What was in them? What did they say to her, when she was unhappy and listening only to them and to no one else – not her friends, not her sister, no one? I got out of bed and went into her room, which has been left exactly as it was on the day she left. (People are always doing that in films, and you think, Yeah, right,
like you don’t want a guest bedroom, or somewhere to put all your crap. But you try going in there and fucking everything up.) And there they all are:
The Secret History
,
Catch-22
,
To Kill a Mockingbird
,
The Catcher in the Rye
,
No Logo
,
The Bell Jar
(which is a coincidence, or maybe not, because that was one of the books JJ wanted us to read),
Crime and Punishment
,
1984
,
Good Places to Go When You Want To Disappear
… That was just a joke, that last one.

I don’t think I was ever going to be a big reader, because she was the brainy one, not me, but I’m sure I would have been better at it if she hadn’t put me off by disappearing. It wasn’t the first time I’d been in her room, and it wouldn’t be the last, I knew, and the books all sit there and look at me, and what I hate most is knowing that one of them might help me to understand. I don’t mean that I’ll find some sentence she’s underlined that will give me a clue about where she is, although I looked, a while ago. I flicked through, just in case she’d put like an exclamation mark by the word ‘Wales’, or a ring around ‘Texas’. I just mean that if I read everything she loved, and everything that took her attention in those last few months, then I’d get some picture of where her head was at. I don’t even know whether these books are serious or sad or scary. And you’d think I’d want to find out, wouldn’t you, considering as how much I loved her and everything. But I don’t. I can’t. I can’t because I’m too lazy, too stupid, and I can’t even make the effort because something stops me. They just sit there looking at me, day after day, and one day I know I’ll put them all in a big pile and burn them.

So, no, I’m not a big reader.

Our cultural program was all on my shoulders, because none of the others knew anything about anything. Maureen got books out of the library every couple weeks, but she didn’t read stuff we could talk about, if you know what I’m saying, unless we wanted to talk about whether the nurse should marry the bad rich guy or the good
poor guy. And Martin wasn’t a big fan of Literature. He said he read a lot of books in prison, but mostly biographies of people who had overcome great adversities, like Nelson Mandela and those guys. My guess is Nelson Mandela wouldn’t have thought of Martin Sharp as a soul brother. When you looked at their lives closely, you’d see that they’d wound up in jail for different reasons. And, believe me, you don’t want to know what Jess thought of books. You’d find it offensive.

She was right about me, though, kind of. How could she not be? I’ve spent my entire life with people who don’t read – my folks, my sister, most of the band, especially the rhythm section – and it makes you really defensive, after a while. How many times can you be called a fag before you snap? Not that I mind being called a fag blah blah blah, and some of my best friends blah blah, but to me, being a fag is about whether you like guys, not whether you like Don DeLillo – who is a guy, admittedly, but it’s his books I like, not his ass. Why does reading freak people out so much? Sure, I could be pretty anti-social when we were on the road, but if I was playing a Gameboy hour after hour, no one would be on my case. In my social circle, blowing up fucking space monsters is socially acceptable in a way that
American Pastoral
isn’t.

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 pummelling 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.