The Harder They Fall (37 page)

“This is a quick fix, to get you through tonight,” Josh explained, “but it’s not dealing with why you’re feeling this way, so don’t expect it to last. However, it will help you to stay on top of your anger, until you can address the situation. All right?” Andy nodded his consent.

“OK,” Josh continued in a quiet, yet assertive tone. “Firstly, I want to you focus on your breathing. Do you remember how we did this in the hypnotherapy session? It’s exactly the same. You’re going to count slowly to six, taking a deep breath in, and then the same to exhale. Good, and again. Concentrate on your abdomen, imagining that you’re filling it with air, then push it out with those same muscles.”

Josh stayed quiet for a moment, to allow Andy’s breathing to fall into a slow, steady rhythm.

“That’s great, Andy. Now, maintain that pattern for me as best you can, but I want you to think about how you’re feeling, physically, not mentally.

“I can feel my pulse in my neck throbbing against my collar. And in my temples.”

“Do you know why that happens?”

“Yeah. It’s a stress response. Fight or flight, or something.”

“Spot on. Your body’s running in survival mode. What else do you feel?”

“I’m sweating like a pig in a sausage factory,” he joked self-consciously. “And my shoulders are aching. I should try and relax them, presumably?”

“That’s right, but try tensing them even more first, as you’ll be able to feel the sensation better. And then release that tension as you breathe out. Let’s do that once more with your shoulders, and then we’re going to carry on down your back, and then the rest of your body.”

Josh talked Andy through each stage, occasionally reminding him to breathe deeply, but as they progressed the need to do so became less and less.

“What does it feel like now?” Josh asked finally.

“Better,” Andy said, “as in I’m still angry, but I’ve got it under control.”

“It’s not helping that you’ve had such a rough couple of weeks. You look exhausted. I’m sure Ellie would be fine with you just popping in.”

“You really are very good at your job, aren’t you?” Andy said, attempting a smile.

“I don’t do so bad at times,” Josh replied bashfully. “If you were physically able to escape from the situation you’d have naturally come down anyway. Your nervous system does that automatically.”

Andy nodded in understanding. “Thanks for giving it a helping hand. I’m ready to go inside now.”

They walked back across the road, to where Dan and George were still standing, their expressions both of obvious and utter amazement. Dan fell in step next to Andy and they walked in together; Josh and George hung back, until they had cleared the doorway, not wanting to steal their thunder.

“You are just incredible,” George gushed.

“Ah, it was nothing,” Josh dismissed.

“Whatever you say, Joshua, whatever you say.”

They started to walk back towards the building.

“Will you teach me how to do that?”

“Sure. I think it’s in week seven, or thereabouts, in the ‘Anger Management for Amateurs’ topic. See page sixty-seven of your module guide.”

Sunday morning: George awoke a little after six and scowled at his clock, as if it were entirely responsible for the earliness of the hour. He’d had just two alcoholic drinks the previous night, one of those being the Champagne for the toast, which somebody (a member of the Irish branch of the Davenports, at a guess) drank on his behalf. Charged with the task of keeping a close eye on a certain Jeffries brother meant having his wits about him, particularly as the more Andy drank, the more likely it seemed he was going to act on his suppressed rage. Thankfully, it came to nothing; Jess was, by and large, ostracised by them all, and spent the night sitting at the bar and looking woeful.

So, all in all, it had been a sober evening, and hard-going at times, but what a beautiful day! Eleanor and James seemed happy and relaxed, and even Mrs. Davenport stopped fussing once the music started. The food was unbelievable, with so many things George had never tried before. Some dishes originated in Trinidad and Tobago, he assumed, with lots of fish, fruit and vegetables, and rich, hot sauces. There were also traditional Irish wedding foods, such as soda bread and salmon, as well as the finger buffet standards of cheeseboards and things on cocktail sticks. He recognised the sausages; as for the rest: ‘things on sticks’ pretty much covered it for now.

Then there was the cake; Wotto really had pulled out all the stops for this. It consisted of two tiers, with small, pale lemon-yellow rose buds in various stages of opening, that started from the base layer and climbed the side, then up to the top tier, with no obvious means of the two being joined together, other than via the delicate stems of the climbing roses, and he would know; the only time Andy got close to approaching Jess was when George was trying to figure out how the top cake hadn’t come crashing down onto the bottom one, although in his defence, he wasn’t the only one who was supposed to be ‘on watch’, but at that stage Josh had gone to talk to Eleanor.

Fifteen minutes had passed in this state of reminiscing, and the bed was really very cosy, so he decided to give it a little longer before he gave up on sleep entirely. It turned out to be a good choice, as the next time he awoke it was almost eight o’clock, and he could probably have slept even longer still, but for one reason.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Josh cursed, as he stumbled at the top of the stairs and lifted his foot. “Ouch!” He pulled the drawing pin out of his heel and rubbed at the injured spot. “The one bloody day I don’t put any shoes on. Typical.” He hobbled back to his room, slid his feet into a pair of loafers, and tried again, this time succeeding in getting all the way downstairs without further injury or lewd language. He filled the coffee filter with the last of the ground coffee, made a note on the magnetic shopping list, and had a good stretch. Not a bad night’s sleep, all things considered; he’d drifted off as soon as he’d got into bed, awoken with cramp at two, was asleep again by three, and then straight through until eight. Based on his previous bouts of insomnia, this was an outstanding achievement, and he mentally congratulated himself on finally cracking the best approach to falling back to sleep, which had always been his problem. The solution? To replay George’s words: he knew the truth and he still loved him. It was as simple as that.

George tried once more to turn over and go back to sleep, but the aroma of fresh coffee had floated up the stairs and under his door. He wasn’t a big fan of coffee; however, when freshly brewed it smelled divine, and was enough to bring his pseudo lie-in to an end. Reluctantly, he got out of bed, pulled his dressing gown from the hook on the door and left the room, all without opening his eyes.

“Jesus!” he shouted at the top of the stairs and lifted his foot. “Where the hell did that come from?” He braced himself and pulled the red-topped pin free from his big toe, then hobbled the rest of the way down.

“Morning,” Josh greeted him.

“Good morning. I just stood on a drawing pin.”

“You too? They must’ve fallen out of your pocket yesterday.”

“Or we brought them home on our shoes last night?”

“That’s a good point. Oh dear. I know I’m up too early when I open my mouth and terrible puns fall out of it. Coffee?”

“Yeah, thanks.” George seemed a little distracted, but then he hadn’t long woken up, Josh reasoned, and didn’t question it further. He poured two coffees and they took them through to the lounge so they could sit and talk about the wedding and the reception, revisiting Andy’s rage and Josh’s ‘taming of the beast’, agreeing that aside from this relatively minor interruption, it was definitely the best wedding they’d ever attended. Better still, they hadn’t had to choose a wedding present, because Eleanor had gone along with James’s wishes that they all donate whatever they would have spent on a gift to a charity of their choosing. George had already made his donation to a local horse and donkey sanctuary, although Josh was still trying to decide on a suitably worthy cause, which wasn’t anything to do with him seeing some as less deserving than others. Rather, he had yet to find one that inspired him to give his money over.

“I’d best get dressed,” George said, swirling the last inch or so of coffee around in the bottom of his cup. “I need to go and see my mum today, seeing as I’m not going to be about until after next weekend. I forgot to tell her, otherwise I wouldn’t bother.”

“Why don’t you give her a ring instead?”

“No phone.”

“Not even a ‘pay-as-you-go’?”

“Nope. She’s the only person I know who still uses the phone box when she needs to make calls.”

“Wow. I’m really shocked by that.”

“I did offer to buy her one,” George said, fighting a smile at the memory of it. “But she said ‘no thanks’.”

What she actually said was more along the lines of “You can stick your fuckin’ mobile phone up yer arse. What fuckin’ use am I gonna get out of it? And they give you cancer.” And then she lit another cigarette.

“Well I’m not doing anything today,” Josh said, intending it to be a subtle hint that he was available for transport, if George wanted it. He’d have just made the offer, but he didn’t feel it was right to do so; not yet. George missed the hint, and took his cup to the kitchen, then went straight upstairs. Josh finished his coffee and refilled the cup, taking this with him to his room, to wait for the bathroom to become free. His current reading material was temptingly close by, and he reached out and picked it up. It was Freud’s
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
: a volume that had always caused him more trouble than it was worth, for it was here that he could always find a particular passage, known off by heart, and capable of destroying everything he had read to the contrary since he first happened upon it at the age of nineteen:

What got him every time was the “instinctive aversion…to any intellectual consideration of sexual problems”, because he could intellectualise them perfectly well—in everybody else. As far as his own sexuality was concerned (or lack thereof), the only reason he kept returning to any attempt at its intellectual consideration was because of this damned passage of text. But then he wasn’t a hysteric, usually.

The bathroom door opened and Josh glanced up in time to see George walk past on the way to his own room. He backstepped and looked in.

“You OK?” he asked.

“Sort of. I don’t want to talk about it now. It’ll make me miserable and I don’t want to be miserable.”

“OK,” George said and stepped off once more, but again, backtracked. Josh’s question came out a split second before his own.

“Would you like a lift to see your mum?”

“Do you want to come and meet my mum?”

The effect was a stuttered delivery of the word ‘mum’, followed by a silence, as they both waited for the other to answer, and then they did it again.

“Yes, please.”

“I’d like that, thanks.”

George shook his head. “We really must stop doing that.” He continued on his way, this time making it to his room.

Josh opened one of the cupboards above his fitted wardrobes, shoved the book inside, and went for a shower, although out of sight was the easy part, for the words were etched into his brain. It was a long time before he emerged from the steamy bathroom, by which point George was dressed and waiting very impatiently in the lounge. Josh ran a brush through his hair, gave it a brief blow with the dryer and picked out a sweater and jeans at random, feeling under pressure due to the constant movement back and forth downstairs.

“What do you do in there?” George said, trying and failing to hide his irritation.

“I get lost in thought,” Josh said vaguely, because he still was. “Sorry.” He smiled guiltily.

“Never mind. Are you ready?”

“Err…” He patted his empty pockets and ran back upstairs for his phone, picking up his keys on the way down again. He’d snapped out of it and now noticed that George was very jumpy. The question should perhaps have been whether
he
was ready, but soon they were in the car and on their way, so there was little point to asking.

“Can we stop for breakfast somewhere?” George asked, fidgeting with his seatbelt. It always dug into his neck when he was worked up.

“Anywhere in particular?” Josh asked, calculating various routes that would take them past fast food restaurants, cafés or petrol stations.

“Somewhere that sells bacon toasties.”

“Right you are.” They turned left at the next junction and pulled up at a burger van; George was out of the car almost before it stopped. Josh turned off the engine and followed, arriving in time to be handed a slimy white roll with a droopy rasher of bacon stuffed slapdash in its centre.

“No bread, so no toast,” George explained, passing over a five pound note. The young lad behind the counter fished some coins out of the cash box and dropped them into George’s hand. “Thanks,” he said, wiping the grease on his jeans in disgust.

They walked back to the car, eating the bacon rolls in silence, but for the occasional crunch of stale bread. Josh didn’t like food being consumed in his car, which was always meticulously clean, a fact that was further exacerbating George’s anxiety. At some point soon—preferably before they arrived at the flats—he was going to have to warn Josh what to expect, for even if he had unknowingly been followed home one day, the place was far worse now than it had been back then, when there were two other blocks, flowerbeds, and maintenance people who kept on top of the litter and vandalism. In comparison to where Josh had grown up, it was a slum. There was no other word for it.