A Long Way Down (23 page)

We didn’t really think anything of Martin missing his breakfast, even though breakfast was included. I was getting used to the idea that once or twice a day, something would happen that I wouldn’t understand. I didn’t understand what Jess had been up to the night before, and I didn’t understand why there was a strange woman – a girl, really – sitting at our breakfast table. And now I didn’t understand where Martin had gone. But not understanding didn’t seem to matter very much. Sometimes, when you watch a cops and robbers film on the television, you don’t understand the beginning, but you know you’re not meant to. You watch anyway, though, because in the end someone will explain some of the things to you if you pay close attention. I was trying to think of life with Jess and JJ and Martin as a cops and robbers film; if I didn’t get everything, I told myself not to panic. I’d wait until someone gave me a clue. And anyway, I was beginning to see that it didn’t really matter even if you understood almost nothing. I hadn’t really understood why we had to say we’d seen an angel, or how that got us on to the television. But that was all forgotten about now, apparently, so why make a fuss? I must admit, I was worried about where everyone was going to sit at breakfast, but that wasn’t because I was confused. I just didn’t want Martin to think us rude.

After breakfast I tried to telephone the care home, but I couldn’t manage on my own. In the end I had to ask JJ to do it for me, and he explained that there were lots of extra numbers to dial, and some you had to leave out, and I don’t know what else. I wasn’t being cheeky, using the telephone, because the others told me I could call once a day whatever the expense; otherwise, they said, I wouldn’t relax properly.

And the telephone call… Well, it changed everything. Just those
two or three minutes. More happened to me in my head during the telephone call than during all that time up on the roof. And it wasn’t as if there was any bad news, or any news at all. Matty was fine. How could he not be? He needed care, and he was getting care, and there wasn’t much else they could tell me, was there? I tried to make the conversation last longer, and, fair play to him, the nurse tried to help me make it last longer, God love him. But neither of us could think of anything to say. Matty doesn’t do anything in the course of a day, and he hadn’t done anything on that particular day. He’d been out in his wheelchair, and we talked about that, but mostly we were talking about the weather, and the garden.

And I thanked him and put the phone down and thought for a moment, and tried not to feel sorry for myself. Love and concern and the rest of it, the things that only a mother can provide… For the first time in his life I could finally see that those things were no use to him anyway. The point of me was exactly the same as the point of the people in the care home. I was probably still better at it than they were, because of the practice I’d had. But I could have taught them all they’d need to know in a couple of weeks.

What that meant was that when I died, Matty would be fine. And what that meant was the thing I’d been most afraid of, ever since he was born, wasn’t frightening in the least. And I didn’t know whether I wanted to kill myself more or less, knowing that. I didn’t know whether my whole life had been a waste of time or not.

I went downstairs, and I saw Jess in the lobby.

‘Martin’s checked out of the hotel,’ she said.

And I smiled at her politely, but I didn’t stop, and I kept walking. I didn’t care that Martin had checked out of the hotel. If I hadn’t made the telephone call I would have cared, because he was in charge of our money. But if he’d gone off with the money, it wouldn’t matter much, would it? I’d stay there, or not, and I’d eat, or not, and I’d drink, or not, and go home, or not, and what I did or didn’t do wouldn’t matter to anyone at all. And I walked for most of the day. Do people get sad on holiday sometimes? I can imagine they do, having all that time to think.

For the rest of the week, I tried to keep out of everybody’s way. Martin was gone anyway, and JJ didn’t seem to mind. Jess didn’t like it much, and once or twice she tried to make me eat with her, or sit on the beach with her. But I just smiled and said, No thank you. I didn’t say, But you’re always so rude to me! Why do you want to talk to me now?

I borrowed a book from the little bookcase in reception, a silly one with a bright pink cover called
Paws for Beth
about a single girl whose cat turns into a handsome young fella. And the young fella wants to marry her, but she’s not sure because he’s a cat, so she takes a while to decide. And sometimes I read that, and sometimes I slept. I’ve always been fine on my own.

And the day before we flew home I went to Mass, for the first time in a month or so. There was a lovely old church in the town – much nicer than ours at home, which is modern and square. (I’ve often wondered whether God would even have found ours, but I suppose He must have done by now.) It was easier than I thought it would be to walk in and sit down, but that’s mostly because I didn’t know anybody there. But after that everything seemed a little harder, because the people seemed so foreign, and I didn’t know where we were very often because of the language.

I got used to it, though. It was like walking into a dark room – and it was dark in there, much darker than ours. After a little while, I started to be able to see things, and what I could see were people from home. Not the actual people, of course, but the Tenerife versions. There was a woman like Bridgid, who knew everyone and kept looking down the pews and smiling and nodding. And there was a fella who was a little unsteady on his feet, even at that time of day, and that was Pat.

And then I saw me. She was my age, on her own, and she had a grown-up son in a wheelchair who didn’t know what day it was, and for a little while I stared at them, and the woman caught me staring and she obviously thought I was being rude. But it seemed so strange, such a coincidence, until I thought about it. And what I thought was, you could probably go into any church anywhere in the world and see a middle-aged woman, no husband in sight,
pushing a young lad in a wheelchair. It was one of the reasons churches were invented, probably.

I have never been a particularly introspective man, and I say this unapologetically. One could argue that most of the trouble in the world is caused by introspection. I’m not thinking of things like war, famine, disease or violent crime – not that sort of trouble. I’m thinking more of things like annoying newspaper columns, tearful chat-show guests and so on. I can now see, however, that it’s hard to prevent introspection when one has nothing to do but sit around and think about oneself. You could try thinking about other people, I suppose, but the other people I tried to think about tended to be people I knew, and thinking about people I knew just brought me right back to where I didn’t want to be.

So in some ways it was a mistake, checking out of the hotel and going off on my own, because even though Jess irritated the hell out of me, and Maureen depressed me, they occupied a part of me that should never be left untenanted and unfurnished. It wasn’t just that, either: they also made me feel relatively accomplished. I’d done things, and because I’d done things, there was a possibility that I might do other things. They’d done nothing at all, and it was not difficult to imagine that they would continue to do nothing at all, and they made me look and feel like a world leader who runs a multinational company in the evenings and a scout troop at weekends.

I moved into a room that was more or less identical to the one I’d been staying in, except I treated myself to a sea view and a balcony. And I sat on the balcony for two solid days, staring at the sea view and being introspective. I can’t say that I was particularly inventive in my introspection; the conclusions I drew on the first day were that I’d made a pig’s ear of just about everything, and that I’d be better off dead, and if I died no one would miss me or feel bad about my death. And then I got drunk.

The second day was only very slightly more constructive; having
reached the conclusion the previous evening that no one would miss me if I died, I realized belatedly that most of my woes were someone else’s fault: I was estranged from my children because of Cindy, and Cindy was also responsible for the end of my marriage. I made one mistake! OK, nine mistakes. Nine mistakes out of say a hundred opportunities! I got 91 per cent and I still failed the test! I was imprisoned a) due to entrapment, and b) because society’s attitudes to teenage sexuality are outmoded. I lost my job because of the hypocrisy and disloyalty of my bosses. So at the end of the second day, I wanted to kill other people, rather than kill myself, and that’s got to be healthier, surely?

Jess found me on the third day. I was sitting in a café reading a two-day-old
Daily Express
and drinking café con leche, and she sat down opposite me.

‘Anything about us in there?’ she said.

‘I expect so,’ I said. ‘But I’ve only read the sport and the horoscopes so far. Haven’t looked at the front page yet.’

‘Fun-nee. Can I sit with you?’

‘No.’

She sat down anyway.

‘What’s all this about, then?’

‘All what?’

‘This… big sulk.’

‘You think I’m sulking?’

‘What would you call it, then?’

‘I’m sick to death of you.’

‘What have we done?’

‘Not you plural. You singular.
Toi
, not
vous
.’

‘Because of the other night?’

‘Yes, because of the other night.’

‘You just didn’t like me saying you were my dad, did you? You’re old enough to be.’

‘I’m aware of that.’

‘Yeah. So get over it. Take a chill pill.’

‘I’m over it. I’ve taken one.’

‘Looks like it.’

‘Jess, I’m not sulking. You think I moved out of a hotel because you said I was your father?’

‘I would.’

‘Because you hate him? Or because you’d be ashamed of your daughter?’

‘Both.’

This is what happens with Jess. When she thinks you’re withdrawing, she pretends to be thoughtful (and by thoughtful, I mean ‘self-loathing’, which to me is the only possible outcome of any prolonged thought on her part). I decided I wasn’t going to be taken in.

‘I’m not going to be taken in. Get lost.’

‘What have I done now? Fucking hell.’

‘You’re pretending to be a remorseful human being.’

‘What does “remorseful” mean?’

‘It means you’re sorry.’

‘For what?’

‘Go away.’

‘For what?’

‘Jess, I want a holiday. Most of all, I want a holiday from you.’

‘So you want me to get pissed up and take drugs.’

‘Yes. I want that very much.’

‘Yeah, right. And if I do I’ll get a bollocking.’

‘Nope. No bollocking. Just go away.’

‘I’m bored.’

‘So go and find JJ or Maureen.’

‘They’re boring.’

‘And I’m not?’

‘Which celebrities have you met? Have you met Eminem?’

‘No.’

‘You have, but you won’t tell me.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’

I left some money on the table, got up and walked out. Jess followed me down the street. ‘What about a game of pool?’

‘No.’

‘Sex?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t fancy me?’

‘No.’

‘Some men do.’

‘Have sex with them, then. Jess, I’m sorry to say it, but I think our relationship is over.’

‘Not if I just follow you around all day it isn’t.’

‘And you think that would work in the long term?’

‘I don’t care about the long term. What about what my dad said about looking out for me? And I’d have thought you’d want to. I could replace the daughters you’ve lost. And that way you could find inner peace, see? There are loads of films like that.’

She offered this last observation matter-of-factly, as if it were somehow indicative of the truth of the scenario she’d imagined, rather than the opposite.

‘What about the sex you were offering? How would that fit in with you replacing the daughters I’ve lost?’

‘This would be a different, you know, thing. Route. A different way to go.’

We passed a ghastly looking bar called ‘New York City’.

‘That where I got thrown out for fighting,’ said Jess proudly. ‘They’ll kill me if I try to go in again.’

As if to illustrate the point, a grizzled-looking owner was standing in the doorway with a murderous look on his face.

‘I need a pee. Don’t go anywhere.’

I walked into New York City, found a lavatory somewhere in the Lower East Side, put the TV pages of the
Express
over the seat, sat down and bolted the door. For the next hour or two I could hear her yelling at me through the wall, but eventually the yelling stopped; I presumed she’d gone, but I stayed in there anyway, just in case. It was eleven in the morning when I bolted the door, and three in the afternoon when I came out. I didn’t resent the time. It was that sort of holiday.

The last band I was in broke up after a show at the Hope and Anchor in Islington, just a few blocks from where my apartment is now. We knew we were breaking up before we went on stage, but we hadn’t talked about it. We’d played in Manchester the night before, to a very small crowd, and on the way down to London we’d all been a little snappy, but mostly just morose and quiet. It felt exactly the same as when you break up with a woman you love – the sick feeling in the stomach, the knowledge that nothing you can say will make any fucking difference – or, if it does, it won’t make any difference for any longer than like five minutes. It’s weirder with a band, because you kind of know that you won’t lose touch with the people the way you lose touch with a girlfriend. I could have sat in a bar with all three of them the next night without arguing, but the band would still have ceased to exist. It was more than the four of us; it was a house, and we were the people in it, and we’d sold it, so it wasn’t ours any more. I’m talking metaphorically here, obviously, because no one would have given us a fucking dime for it.

Anyway, after the show at the Hope and Anchor – and the show had an unhappy intensity to it, like a desperate break-up fuck – we walked into this shitty little dressing room, and sat down in a line, and then Eddie said, ‘That feels like it.’ And he did this thing that was so unlike him, so not just like Eddie: he reached out either side, and took my hand and Jesse’s hand, and squeezed. And Jesse took Billy’s hand, just so that we’d all be joined for one last time, and Billy said, ‘Fuck you, queer boy,’ and stood up real quick, which kind of tells you all you need to know about drummers.