Falling Over (17 page)

Public Interest Story

Outside, next morning, was a crowd.

Joel stood and watched them from the front bedroom, which afforded the best view. It was a
small
crowd, true, maybe a dozen people. But it was a crowd nonetheless – he could see that by the way they stood, not moving and close together, little bits of their personality rubbing off on each other. Their eyes glazed over with each other’s mentality. The quick twitch of his curtains set them murmuring, started a couple of them pacing around. Someone shouted something, seemingly for the sake of it, but Joel couldn’t make out the words. He let go of the curtain and sat down with his back to the wall, head below the window-line, arms around his knees. He looked at the dusty wooden floor of the bedroom, the bed stripped of bedclothes, the bare coat-hangers in the open wardrobe. There were still magazines and one shoe under the bed, which he hadn’t noticed before. Ian had packed so quickly that he had left some stuff behind, but Joel didn’t think his housemate would be coming back to get it. Joel licked his lip, where it had been cut. He heard another yell from outside.

That newspaper, he thought, this is all the fault of that fucking newspaper.

~

The two housemates had a newspaper each delivered every Sunday. Typically Joel and Ian would be sitting together, nursing hangover coffee, when the clattering, metallic sound battered at the doorway (the newspaper girl or boy was just a smudged shape behind frosted glass). Maybe it was the caffeine – maybe it was the hangover – but the sound of the paper being delivered always set Joel’s nerves on edge.

It was always the smaller, tabloid-sized paper – Ian’s paper – that was delivered first, with a brief clattering fanfare. Like something alive forcing its way in. Then Joel’s paper struggled through, a more difficult and segregated birth. The broadsheet wouldn’t fit through in one go and some of the sections – maybe Culture, maybe Escape – were pushed through separately. Even so, the main paper tended to rip, so that words of stories on page 3 and even 5 could be seen on page 1, hints of editorial decisions in an alternative universe.

Ian and Joel were not students, but still lived like they were. Joel didn’t really know how he had ended up living with Ian – he had lost touch with other friends with whom he had been far closer. Although they got on, it was because Joel never argued with Ian’s opinions, which he felt were frequently loud-mouthed and ill-informed. But then maybe Ian’s gypsy-bashing and homophobia were really Devil’s advocacy – Joel didn’t actually know him well enough to be sure. So he said nothing and stayed living with Ian. Besides, the house was near to the dead-end street where he worked, and the rent was cheap for a double room (for what good the double did him).

Ian would always get up with a groan to go and fetch the papers, leaving Joel a few moments hanging suspended, reflecting. He would never quite admit to himself that this reflection made him even more anxious; nervous even – although he had been drifting since university, he still felt he must have made some drastic and ill-founded detour to have ended up living how he was. Somehow, when he looked at his life, it didn’t seem quite
his
.

Ian would return with the papers, flinging the ungainly broadsheet at Joel in two parts. The headlines – the international tension, crisis recoveries, and exit plans – soothed him, gave his previous thoughts some perspective. The two lads would sit and read their papers, drinking their cooling coffee. Generally, Ian took as long to read his paper as Joel did his.

“I don’t know why you read that shit,” Joel would say at some point. When Ian finished with the tabloid Joel would pick it up between thumb and forefinger, like it was trash discarded. But still, he would always read it. It always seemed the same, and yet in the same heartbeat surreal, some dispatch from a country with which he had lost touch years ago. There were stories about celebrities he’d never heard of, agony-aunt columns whose advice seemed suicidal, constant froth about a soap opera royal family, editorials denouncing “mass immigration” from countries too small to be found on the map, tirades against “perverts and paedophiles” opposite the tits of an eighteen year old girl with a made up name. He felt strange reading it, like there was more meaning in the fuzzy print than he could decipher, like it was all set in a code that he should have learnt.

“Why do you always
read
it then, if it’s so shit?” Ian would say.

Joel couldn’t answer. Partly of course it was just sick fascination. He didn’t find the views expressed repellent so much as ludicrous – an elaborate mythology scratched and re-scratched below the tide-line. So partly he read the paper on the know-your-enemy principle. But partly... he was also
looking
for something. For what exactly he didn’t know – and indeed he was only half-conscious of the fact that he was looking for anything at all. But as he strived to make sense of the tabloid mindset, underneath there was the feeling that one day he would see
something
in there with a direct and vital relevance to his life.

BAN THIS FILTH! he read. HOW CAN THIS MONSTER BE ALLOWED OUT AMOUNG OUR KIDS? LEFTY LUNACY. 34DD.

“It’s just trash,” he would say to Ian, flinging it back with a faint but tangible feeling of disappointment. Of relief.

“Go back to your liberal crap,” Ian would say. “There’s enough of it.”

~

There were more of them now – Joel watched from the bedroom as the newcomers were welcomed, absorbed into the crowd. They had come as a couple but they weren’t looking at each other now, but upwards at his house like everyone else. Their expressions slackened to match those around them. The crowd all swayed with the same internal rhythm; all of their eyes remained fixed on the still point of the window. Why are you here? Joel thought. This is ridiculous! There was some shouting, which died down. He couldn’t hear what they were shouting. The crowd moved – from above he could see the movement like ripples on flat water. He realised one person was pushing forwards, but he could barely see the man, just the wake either side of him as he moved people aside. When he reached the front of the crowd the man continued to run forward, a dark silhouette cutting across the lawn towards the front door. Joel heard the letterbox open and close, then the man ran back to where he had come from, creating new ripples in the crowd before those caused by his brief exit had even died away. Joel blinked in astonishment, and lost sight of the man. Then he ran downstairs, to the hall. When he saw what had been pushed through the letterbox it made some sense – maybe it would
all
start to make sense now.

Through the door had been pushed a rolled up tube of newspaper. Tabloid, Joel saw – it must be today’s edition, and it would carry some
explanation
. But halfway to it, Joel’s eager strides slowed; he could smell something. Kneeling to retrieve the paper it was unmistakable – shit. As he lifted the paper it sagged with weight, but didn’t break; Joel gagged at the smell. The bastards have put shit through my door! he thought, not so much angry as simply incredulous. What had driven them to such a thing?

The dustbins were in the back garden, which was fortunately self-contained, so he could enter it without the people at the front of his house realising. Joel gripped the newspaper between thumb and forefinger, head averted, and flung it into the bin. He could hear the sound of the crowd from round front; a chant almost started up but the rhythm was lost this time, defused. Why? Joel thought again. Looking in the bin he could see the crap stained stories, the crumpling of the newspaper putting the wrong words next to each other – Joel thought he could see his name, but it was an accident of the way the words fell. That was all. The newspaper was old, he realised he had read these stories, these football scores, before. Over a week ago, in that pub, and he hadn’t seen anything
then
. But maybe now... – he reached for the paper again...

What am I doing? he thought, why am I standing and reading a shit stained newspaper? Grimacing, he closed the bin and went back inside, where the crowd-sounds seemed quieter.

~

It had been the Saturday before. Whether the day’s events were connected to what happened seemed unlikely at best, a forced connection from a later viewpoint. But it had seemed like the day when the pressure had changed.

Joel was on the Saturday shift. When he’d taken the job they hadn’t mentioned anything about working weekends, but he was only a temp, and they could do what they wanted to him. He was fighting back yawns and a mild hangover when the boss called him into his office and told him he was fired.

“Wh.. what? But why?” Joel had said, too tired to be anything but perplexed.

“Listen, there isn’t, I don’t have to...” – his boss was a blustery, stuttering man, fat-lipped and heavily jawed. “I just have to call your agency, I don’t have to give you a reason.” The manager’s words were all said in a brave little rush, and he was shifting his weight from one desk-job buttock to another. Joel realised that the man looked genuinely anxious about something.

Joel walked slowly back to his desk, to collect his things. None of his ex-colleagues looked at him, they were intent on their PCs – suddenly and mysteriously industrious. Joel started to speak to a girl with whom he thought he’d struck up a polite friendship, but she ignored him. In fact that wasn’t quite true – she heard him and
tensed
at her PC – Joel could see the muscles tighten in her shoulders. But she carried on her impression of being a valued and eager employee.

Well, fuck ’em all, Joel thought as he dragged on his coat. He was better off out of here anyway – the agency would find him another job on Monday. What did he care what these people thought of him? He left without another word, his pockets full of office stationary.

The street outside was crowded with shoppers, so many of them it was as if Joel had got his seasons all wrong and it was really Christmas. Joel felt comforted by the crowd though, the sheer normality of it reset his emotional temperature after the strange and alienating way he had been treated. It was a fake solidarity, not conceived of or shared by the women struggling with pushchairs draped with carrier bags, or by the gang of youths all gathered heads together around one mobile phone, or by the beggar temporarily not seeking charity but just looking angry and baffled by those walking past. But it was a solidarity Joel felt none the less.

I’d still like to know
why
, he thought.

Someone crashed into him – well, it happens in crowds, Joel thought (he had been looking down, avoiding trash). But then the man gave a sarcastic, aggressive apology, and Joel looked up and saw the man was standing there as if daring him to make something of it. Had he crashed into him deliberately; was he drunk? The man wasn’t large but there was something boorish in his looks – his little piglet eyes were glancing from side to side, as if seeking support from others before he did anything. Joel just walked away. The man hadn’t smelt of booze, but now the thought had been put in his head Joel wanted a drink himself. The crowd seemed to be all moving in the opposite direction to him as he headed towards the nearest pub, making as many moves sideways as forwards. He heard whispers, some giggles. The quiet and dismal pub felt a blessed relief as he entered – the barman gave him a surly look but that was normal here. He got a beer and some food that he couldn’t really afford. As he waited he picked up a newspaper to read. Same old shit, he saw, but he told himself that he couldn’t be bothered with any real news after the morning he’d had. By the time his food came he’d read it twice, found nothing.

~

Why don’t you call the police? Joel thought as he watched the people out front. They were committing trespass if nothing else; at least the ones at the front were, pushed over the boundary of the property by the ones at the back. And wasn’t there a law against unlawful gatherings now, hadn’t he read that? A story he should have read closely, but hadn’t, for he’d felt no premonition... But Joel knew he wouldn’t call the police – the idea was a sterile one in his mind, it didn’t lead to explanation or closure; just a temporary moving on of the crowd. They would be dispersed, but still looking back towards Joel’s house, still with that look in their eyes that Joel couldn’t quantify; gleaming and feverish eyes turned back, promising...

That’s it, he thought, looking down at them, it’s like a fever, there’s no cause, you can tell they’re normal people really. And it will soon pass, stop spreading. How many of them were there now? His eyes got tired counting, and he lost which face he had started from. All the bodies outside his house looked too similar for him to be able to differentiate successfully, or to be able to keep Ian’s cheap zombie DVDs from his mind. A chant started up – this time they got it going successfully. But Joel could hear no words, just gutturals to a
what-do-we-want-when-do-we-want-it
rhythm. It seemed to give them confidence, each gave their approval to each other’s actions, and hence to their own.

Would the police even move them on, Joel thought, or just join in?

The sun was at its height – tracing its descent with his eyes he couldn’t see the crowd leaving when it got dark. They would still be here, hours later, camouflaged and wolf-hungry in the dark, looking up at the light of the bedroom. Unless he did something. But what the hell was there to do?

Uncertain of his actions, Joel went downstairs, towards the front door.

~

The clatter of the previous Sunday’s papers being delivered had stirred Joel’s consciousness from its solipsistic hangover, like the sound held some promise of significance. Wearily, his eyes trudged across the familiar landscape of his broadsheet, the facts obscured to him by pages and pages of analysis, review, and ‘Comment’. His headache was vicious – after getting the sack he’d felt he deserved to get drunk and now he felt nervous with heavy-lidded paranoia. He read through half the sections of the paper that he normally read, and when he looked up Ian was still on the sports pages of his paper. Joel’s hangover was his excuse for wanting the tabloid, for he felt a child-like sense of self pity and irritation. Why didn’t Ian hurry up and finish reading? His housemate was holding the paper in such a way that Joel couldn’t see his face, just half a headline – CAUGHT ON CCTV! The rest was obscured.