A Long Way Down (7 page)

Martin groaned; Maureen looked seasick.

A young African guy driving a shitty old Ford pulled up alongside us. He wound down the passenger window and leaned over.

‘Where you wanna go?’

‘Shoreditch.’

‘Thirty pounds.’

‘Fuck off,’ said Jess.

‘Shut up,’ said Martin, and got in the front seat. ‘My treat,’ he said.

The rest of us got in the back.

‘Happy New Year,’ said the driver.

None of us said anything.

‘Party?’ said the driver.

‘Do you know Acid-Head Pete at all?’ Martin asked him. ‘Well, we’re hoping to run into him. Should be jolly.’

‘“Jolly”,’ Jess snorted. ‘Why are you such a tosser?’ If you were going to joke around with Jess, and use words ironically, then you’d have to give her plenty of advance warning.

It was maybe four-thirty in the morning by now, but there were tons of people around, in cars and cabs and on foot. Everyone seemed to be in a group. Sometimes people waved to us; Jess always waved back.

‘How about you?’ Jess said to the driver. ‘You working all night? Or are you gonna go and have a few somewhere?’

‘Work
toute la nuit
,’ said the driver. ‘All the night.’

‘Bad luck,’ said Jess.

The driver laughed mirthlessly.

‘Yes. Bad luck.’

‘Does your missus mind?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Your missus.
La femme
. Does she care? About you working all night?’

‘No, she don’t care. Not now. Not in the place where is she.’

Anyone with an emotional antenna could have felt the mood in the cab turn real dark. Anyone with any life experience could have figured out that this was a man with a story, and that this story, whatever it was, was unlikely to get us into the party mood. Anyone with any sense would have stopped right there.

‘Oh,’ said Jess. ‘Bad woman, eh?’

I winced, and I’m sure the others did, too. Bigmouth strikes again.

‘Not bad. Dead.’ He said this flat, like he was just correcting her on a point of fact – as if in his line of work, ‘bad’ and ‘dead’ were two addresses that people got confused.

‘Oh.’

‘Yes. Bad men kill her. Kill her, kill her mother, kill her father.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes. In my country.’

‘Right.’

And right there was the place Jess chose to stop: exactly at the point where her silence would show her up. So we drove on, thinking our thoughts. And I would bet a million bucks that our thoughts all contained, somewhere in their tangle and swirl, a version of the same questions: Why hadn’t we seen him up there? Or had he been up and come down, like us? Would he sneer, if we told him our troubles? How come he turned out to be so fucking…
dogged
?

When we got to where we were going, Martin gave him a very large tip, and he was pleased and grateful, and called us his friends. We would have liked to be his friends, but he probably wouldn’t have cared for us much if he got to know us.

Maureen didn’t want to come in with us, but we led her through the door and up the stairs into a room that was the closest thing I’ve seen to a New York loft since I’ve been here. It would have cost a fortune in NYC, which means it would have cost a fortune plus another thirty per cent in London. It was still packed, even at four in the morning, and it was full of my least favorite people: fucking art students. I mean, Jess had already warned us, but it still came as a shock. All those woolly hats, and moustaches with parts of them missing, all those new tattoos and plastic shoes… I mean, I’m a liberal guy, and I didn’t want Bush to bomb Iraq, and I like a toke as much as the next guy, but these people still fill my heart with fear and loathing, mostly because I know they wouldn’t have liked my band. When we played a college town, and we walked out in front of a crowd like this, I knew we were going to have a hard time. They don’t like real music, these people. They don’t like the Ramones or the Temptations or the ’Mats; they like D J Bleepy and his stupid fucking bleeps. Or else they all pretend that they’re fucking gangstas, and listen to hip-hop about hos and guns.

So I was in a bad mood from the get-go. I was worried that I was going to get into a fight, and I’d even decided what that fight would
be about: I’d be defending either Martin or Maureen from the sneers of some motherfucker with a goatee, or some woman with a moustache. But it never happened. The weird thing was that Martin in his suit and his fake tan, and Maureen in her raincoat and sensible shoes, they somehow blended right in. They looked so straight that they looked, you know,
out there
. Martin and his TV hair could have been in Kraftwerk, and Maureen could have been like a real weird version of Mo Tucker from the Velvet Underground. Me, I was wearing a pair of faded black pants, a leather jacket and an old Gitanes T-shirt, and I felt like a fucking freak.

There was only one incident that made me think I might have to break someone’s nose. Martin was standing there drinking wine straight out of a bottle, and these two guys started staring at him.

‘Martin Sharp! You know, off of breakfast telly!’

I winced. I have never really hung out with a celebrity, and it hadn’t occurred to me that walking into a party with Martin’s face is like walking into a party naked: even arts students tend to take notice. But this was more complicated than straightforward recognition.

‘Oh, yeah! Good call!’ his buddy said.

‘Oi, Sharpy!’

Martin smiled at them pleasantly.

‘People must say that to you all the time,’ one of them said.

‘What?’

‘You know. Oi, Sharpy and all that.’

‘Well, yes,’ said Martin. ‘They do.’

‘Bad luck, though. Of all the people on TV, you end up looking like that cunt.’

Martin gave them a cheerful, what-can-you-do shrug and turned back to me.

‘You OK?’

‘That’s life,’ he said, and looked at me. He’d somehow managed to give an old cliché new depth.

Maureen, meanwhile, was plainly petrified. She jumped every
time anyone laughed, or swore, or broke something; she stared at the party-goers as if she were looking at Diane Arbus photos projected fifty feet wide on an Imax screen.

‘You want a drink?’

‘Where’s Jess?’

‘Looking for Chas.’

‘And then can we go?’

‘Sure.’

‘Good. I’m not enjoying myself here.’

‘Me neither.’

‘Where do you think we’ll go next?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But we’ll all go together, do you think?’

‘I guess. That’s the deal, right? Until we find this guy.’

‘I hope we don’t find him,’ said Maureen. ‘Not for a while. I’d like a sherry, please, if you can find one.’

‘You know what? I’m not sure there’s going to be too much sherry around. These guys don’t look like sherry-drinkers to me.’

‘White wine? Would they have that?’

I found a couple paper cups, and a bottle with something left in it.

‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’

‘Every New Year’s the same, huh?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You know. Warm white wine, a bad party full of jerks. And this year I’d promised myself things would be different.’

‘Where were you this time last year?’

‘I was at a party at home. With Lizzie, my ex.’

‘Nice?’

‘It was OK, yeah. You?’

‘I was at home. With Matty.’

‘Right. And did you think, a year ago…’

‘Yes,’ she said quickly. ‘Oh, yes.’

‘Right.’ And I didn’t really know how to follow up, so we sipped our drinks and watched the jerks.

It can’t be hygienic, living in a place without rooms. Even people who live in bedsits usually have access to a proper bathroom, with doors and walls and a window. This place, the place where the party was being held, didn’t even have that. It was like a railway station toilet, except there wasn’t even a separate gents’. There was just a little wall separating the bath and toilet from the rest of it, so even though I needed to go, I couldn’t; anyone might have walked around the wall and seen what I was doing. And I don’t need to spell out how unhealthy it all was. Mother used to say that a bad smell is just a germ gas; well, whoever owned this flat must have had germs everywhere. Not that anyone could use the toilet anyway. When I went to find it, someone was kneeling on the floor and sniffing the lid. I have no idea why anyone would want to smell the lid of a toilet (while someone else watched! Can you imagine!). But I suppose people are perverted in all sorts of different ways. It was sort of what I expected when I walked into that party and heard the noise and saw what kind of people they were; if someone had asked me what I thought people like that would do in a toilet, I might have said that they’d sniff the lid.

When I came back, Jess was standing there in tears, and the rest of the party had cleared a little space around us. Some boy had told her that Chas had been and gone, and he’d gone with somebody he met at the party, some girl. Jess wanted us all to go round to this girl’s house, and JJ was trying to persuade her that it wasn’t a good idea.

‘It’s OK,’ Jess said. ‘I know her. There’s probably been some sort of misunderstanding. She probably just didn’t know about me and Chas.’

‘What if she did know?’ said JJ.

‘Well,’ said Jess. ‘In that case I couldn’t let it go, could I?’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I wouldn’t kill her. I’m not that mad. But I would have to hurt her. Maybe cut her a little.’

When Frank broke off our engagement I didn’t think I’d ever get
over it. I felt almost as sorry for him as I did for myself, because I didn’t make it easy for him. We were in the Ambler Arms, except it’s not called that any more, over in the corner by the fruit machine, and the landlord came over to our table and asked Frank to take me home, because nobody wanted to put any money in the machine while I was there howling and bawling my eyes out, and they used to make a fair bit of money from the fruit machine on quiet nights.

I nearly did away with myself then – I certainly considered it. But I thought I could ride it out, I thought things might get better. Imagine the trouble I could have saved if I had done! I would have killed the both of us, me and Matty, but of course I didn’t know that then.

I didn’t take any notice of the silly things Jess said about cutting people. I came up with a lot of utter nonsense when Frank and I broke up; I told people that Frank had been forced to move away, that he was sick in the head, that he was a drunk and he’d hit me. None of it was true. Frank was a sweet man whose crime was that he didn’t love me quite enough, and because this wasn’t much of a crime I had to make up some bigger ones.

‘Were you engaged?’ I asked Jess, and then wished I hadn’t.

‘Engaged?’ Jess said. ‘Engaged? What is this? Pride and f—ing Prejudice? “Oooh, Mr Arsey Darcy. May I plight my truth?” “Oh yes, Miss Snooty Knobhead, I’d be charmed I’m sure.”’ She said this last part in a silly voice, but you could probably have guessed that.

‘People do still get engaged,’ Martin said. ‘It’s not a stupid question.’

‘Which people get engaged?’

‘I did,’ I said. But I said it too quietly, because I was scared of her, and so she made me say it again.

‘You did? Really? OK, but what living people get engaged? I’m not interested in people out of the Ark. I’m not interested in people with, with like shoes and raincoats and whatever.’ I wanted to ask what she thought we should wear instead of shoes, but I was learning my lesson.

‘Anyway, who the f— did you get engaged to?’

I didn’t want any of this. It didn’t seem fair that this is what happened when you tried to help.

‘Did you shag him? I’ll bet you did. How did he like it? Doggy style? So he didn’t have to look at you?’

And then Martin grabbed her and dragged her into the street.

When Martin pulled me outside, I did that thing where you decide to become a different person. It’s something I could do whenever I felt like it. Doesn’t everybody, when they feel themselves getting out of control? You know: you say to yourself, OK, I’m a booky person, so then you go and get some books from the library and carry them around for a while. Or, OK, I’m a druggy person, and smoke a lot of weed. Whatever. And it makes you feel different. If you borrow someone else’s clothes or their interests or their words, what they say, then it can give you a bit of a rest from yourself, I find.

It was time to feel different. I don’t know why I said that stuff to Maureen; I don’t know why I say half the things I say. I knew I’d overstepped the mark, but I couldn’t stop myself. I get angry, and when it starts it’s like being sick. I puke and puke over someone and I can’t stop until I’m empty. I’m glad Martin pulled me outside. I needed stopping. I need stopping a lot. So I told myself that from that point on I was going to be more a person out of the olden days kind of thing. I swore not to swear, ha ha, or to spit; I swore not to ask harmless old ladies who are clearly more or less virgins whether they shagged doggy style.

Martin went spare at me, told me I was a bitch, and an idiot, and asked me what Maureen had ever done to me. And I just said, Yes, sir, and, No, sir, and, Very sorry, sir, and I looked at the pavement, not at him, just to show him I really was sorry. And then I curtsied, which I thought was a nice touch. And he said, What the fuck’s this, now? What’s the yes sir no sir business? So I told him that I was going to stop being me, and that no one would ever see the old me again, and he didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t want
them to get sick of me. People do get sick of me, I’ve noticed. Chas got sick of me, for example. And I really need that not to happen any more, otherwise I’ll be left with nobody. With Chas, I think everything was just too much; I came on too strong too quickly, and he got scared. Like that thing in the Tate Modern? That was definitely a mistake. Because the vibe in there… OK, some of the stuff is all weird and intense and so on, but just because the stuff is all weird and intense, that shouldn’t have meant that I went all weird and intense. That was inappropriate behaviour, as Jen would have said. I should have waited until we’d got outside and finished looking at the pictures and installations before I went off on one.