Chapter 12 Part 2-7

Anna will be wondering what happened to me. We could move to another table, I said, but I knew it was over, destroyed by a malevolent force beyond my control. See you later, said Jess cheerily. And that was the last time I saw Kathy. If I were her, Id still be reconstructing the dialogue in my head, writing it down and getting friends to act it out, looking for any kind of clue that would help me make sense of that breakfast. You never know with Jess whether shes being sharp or lucky. When you shoot your mouth off as fast and as frequently as she does, you are bound to hit something sometimes. But for whatever reason, she was right: Kathy wouldnt have happened without music. She was supposed to be a little pick-me-up, my first since the band broke up - my first ever as a non-practicing musician, because I was already in a band when I lost my virginity, and I've been in a band ever since. So after she left, I started to worry about how this was ever going to work, and like whether Id be in some fucking old folks home in forty years telling some little old lady with no teeth that REMs manager had wanted to represent my band. When was I ever going to be a person - someone with maybe a job, and a personality that people could respond to? Its no fucking use, giving something up if theres nothing to take its place. Say Id just kept talking about the books we were both reading, and wed never mentioned music… Would we still have gone to bed? I couldn't see it. It seemed to me that without my old life, I had no life at all. My morale-booster ended up making me feel totally fucking crushed and desperate.

We didnt 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 wouldnt understand. I didnt understand what Jess had been up to the night before, and I didnt understand why there was a strange woman - a girl, really - sitting at our breakfast table. And now I didnt understand where Martin had gone. But not understanding didnt seem to matter very much. cops and robbers film on the television, you dont understand the beginning, but you know youre 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. to think of life with Jess and JJ and Martin as a cops and robbers film; if I didnt get everything, I told myself not to panic. Id wait until someone gave me a clue. And anyway, I was beginning to see that it didnt really matter even if you understand a lmost nothing. I hadnt really understood why we had to say wed 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 dont 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 didn't do anything in the course of a day, and he hadn't done anything on that particular day. Hed 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 had. But I could have taught them all theyd 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 Id been most afraid of, ever since he was born, wasn't frightening in the least. And I didnt know whether I wanted to kill myself more or less, knowing that. I didnt know whether my whole life had been a waste of time or not. I went downstairs, and I saw Jess in the lobby. Martins checked out of the hotel, she said. And I smiled at her politely, but I didnt stop, and I kept walking. I didnt care that Martin had checked out of the hotel. If I hadnt made the telephone call I would have cared, because he was in charge of our money.

But if hed gone off with the money, it wouldn't matter much, would it? Id stay there, or not, and Id eat, or not, and Id drink, or not, and go home, or not, and what I did or didnt do wouldnt 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 everybodys way. Martin was gone anyway, and JJ didnt seem to mind. Jess didnt 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 didnt say, But you are 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 shes not sure because hes a cat, so she takes a while to decide. And sometimes I read that, and sometimes I slept. Ive 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. (Ive 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 thats mostly because I didnt know anybody there. But after that everything seemed a little harder, because the people seemed so foreign, and I didnt 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 didnt 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 lady in a wheelchair. It was one of the reasons churches were invented, probably.

MARTIN 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. Im not thinking of things like war, famine, disease or violent crime - not that sort of trouble. Im thinking more of things like annoying newspaper columns, tearful chat-show guests and so on. I can now see, however, that its hard to prevent introspection when one has nothing to do but sit around and think about oneself. 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 didnt 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. Id done things, and because Id done things, there was a possibility that I might do other things. Theyd 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 Id 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 cant say that I was particularly inventive in my introspection; the conclusions I drew on the first day were that Id made a pigs ear of just about everything, and that Id 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 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 per cent and I still failed the test! I was imprisoned a) due to entrapment , and b) because societys 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 thats got to be healthier, surely? Jess found me on the third day. I was sitting in a cafe reading a two-day-old Daily Express and drinking cafe 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. Havent looked at the front page yet. Fun-nee. Can I sit with you? No. She sat down anyway. Whats all this about, then? All what? This... big sulk. You think Im sulking? What would you call it, then? Im 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 didnt like me saying you were my dad, did you? Youre old enough to be. Im aware of that. Yeah. So get over it. Take a chill pill. Im over it. Ive taken one. Looks like it. Jess, Im not sulking. You think I moved out of a hotel because you said I was your father? Because you hate him? Or because youd be ashamed of your daughter? Both. This is what happens with Jess. When she thinks youre 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). going to be taken in. Im 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. Im bored. So go and find JJ or Maureen. Theyre boring. And Im not? Which celebrities have you met? Have you met Eminem? No. You have, but you won't tell me. Oh, for Christs 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 dont fancy me? No, Some men do. Have sex with them, then. Jess, Im 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 dont care about the long term. What about what my dad said about looking out for me? And I have thought youd 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 shed imagined, rather than the opposite. What about the sex you were offering? How would that fit in with you replacing the daughters Ive lost? This would be a different, you know, thing. We passed a ghastly looking bar called New York City. Thats where I got thrown out for fighting, said Jess proudly. Theyll 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 shed 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. time. It was that sort of holiday. JJ 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 hadnt talked about it. Wed played in Manchester the night before, to a very small crowd, and on the way down to London wed 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 wont make any difference for any longer than like five minutes. Its weirder with a band, because you kind of know that you wont 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. the four of us; it was a house, and we were the people in it, and wed sold it, so it wasn't ours any more. Im 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 Jesses hand, and squeezed. And Jesse took Billys hand, just so that wed 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. I had only known my holiday companions for a few weeks, but there was the same kind of sick feeling on the way from the hotel to the airport. There was a break-up coming, you could smell it, and no one was saying anything. And it was for the same reason, which was that wed taken things as far as we could, and there was nowhere for us to go. why everyone breaks up, I guess, bands, friends, marriages, whatever. Parties, weddings, anything. Its funny, but when the band split, one of the reasons I felt sick was because I was worried about the other guys. What the fuck were they going to do, you know? None of us were over-qualified. Billy wasn't real big on reading and writing, if you hear what Im saying, and Eddie was too, like, pugilistic to hold down a job for long, and Jesse liked his spliff… The one person I had no real concerns about was me. be OK. I was smart, and stable, and I had a girlfriend, even though I knew I miss making music every fucking day of my life, I could still be something and someone without it. So what happens? A few weeks later, Billy and Jesse get a gig with a band back home whose rhythm section had walked out on them, Eddie goes to work for his dad, and Im delivering pizzas and nearly jumping off a fucking roof. So this time around, I was determined not to fret about my fellow band members. They'd be OK, I told myself. It didn't look that way, maybe, but they'd survived so far, just about, and it wasn't my problem anyway. In the taxi to the airport we talked some about what wed done, and what wed read, and the first thing we were going to do when we got home, and shit like that, and on the plane we all dozed, because it was an early flight. And then we got the tube from Heathrow to Kings Cross, and took a bus from there. It was on the bus that we started to recognize that maybe we wouldn't be hanging out so much. Why not? said Jess. Because we have nothing in common, said Martin. The holiday proved that. I thought it went OK. Martin snorted. We didnt speak to each other. You were hiding in a toilet most of the time, said Jess. And why was that, do you think? Because were soul mates? Or because ours is not one of my most fulfilling relationships? Yeah, and what is your most fulfilling relationship? Whats yours? Jess thought for a moment, and then shrugged. With you a lot, she said. There was a silence that was long enough for us to see the truth of Jesss observation as it applied to her. And luckily for us, Martin spoke up just as we were starting to see how it might possibly apply to us too. Yes. Well. It shouldn't be, shouldn't it? Are you giving me the push? If you want to put it like that. Jess, we got through the holiday. And now its time to go our separate ways. What about Valentines Day? We can meet on Valentines Day, if you want. We said wed do that. Up on the roof? Do you still think you might throw yourself off? I dunno. It changes day by day. Id like to meet up, said Maureen. I suppose Valentines must be a pretty important day for you, Maureen, said Jess. She said it as if she were making conversation, but Maureen recognized the disguised nastiness and didnt bother to respond. Just about everything Jess said could be bounced at right back her, but none of us had the energy any more. We looked out the window at the traffic in the rain, and at Angel I said goodbye and got off. As I watched the bus drive away, I could see Maureen offer the others, even Jess, her packet of Polo mints, and the gesture seemed kind of heartbreaking. For the next week I did nothing, pretty much. I read a lot, and wandered around Islington to see if there was any sign of a bad job for me. One night I blew ten pounds on a ticket for a band called Fat Chance, who were playing in the Union Chapel. They started up around the same time as us, and now they had a decent deal, and there was a buzz about them, but they were lame, in my opinion. They stood there and played their songs , and people clapped, and there was an encore, and then we left, and I wouldn't say any of us was richer for the experience. I was recognized on the way out, by a guy who must have been in his forties. All right, JJ? he said. Do I know you? I saw you at the Hope and Anchor last year. You living here? Yeah, for now. What you doing? You gone solo? Yeah, that's right. Cool We met at eight in the evening on Valentines Day, and everyone was on time. Jess wanted to meet later, like at midnight or something, for full tragic effect, but no one else thought it was such a good idea, and Maureen didnt want to travel home so late. I ran into her on the stairs on the way up, and told her I was glad to hear she was thinking about traveling home afterwards. Where else would I go? No, I just meant... Last time you werent gonna go home, you know? Not, like, on the bus, anyway. On the bus? Last time, you were going to get off the roof the quick way. I walked my fingers through the air and then plunged them downwards, as if they were jumping off the roof. But tonight, it sounds as though you'll be taking the long way down. Oh. Yes. Well. Ive come on a bit, she said. In my head, I mean. Thats great. Im still feeling the benefit of the holiday, I think. Right on. And then she didnt want to talk any more, because it was a long way up, and she was short of breath. Martin and Jess arrived a couple of minutes later, and we said hello, and then we all stood there. What was the point of this, actually? said Martin. We were going to meet up and see how we were all feeling and all that, said Jess. Ah. We shuffled our feet. And how are we all feeling? Maureens doing good, I said. Arent you, Maureen? I am. I was saying to JJ, I think Im still feeling the benefit of the holiday. Which holiday? The holiday we just had? He looked at her and then shook his head, with a mixture of amazement and admiration. How about you, Mart? I said. How you doing? But I could kind of tell what the answer to that question was going to be. Oh, you know. Comme ci comme ca, Tosser, said Jess. We shuffled our feet some more. I read something I thought might interest you all, Martin said. Yeah? I was wondering… Maybe it would be good to talk about it Sounds good to me, I said. I mean, maybe we should celebrate anyway, you know? Celebrate? said Martin, like I was nuts. Yeah. I mean, were alive, and, and… The list kind of ran out after that. But being alive seemed worth the price of a round of drinks. Being alive seemed worth celebrating. Unless, of course, it wasn't what you wanted , in which case... Oh, fuck it. I wanted a drink anyway. If we couldn't think of anything else, then me wanting a drink was worth celebrating. An ordinary human desire had emerged through the fog of depression and indecision. Maureen? Yes, I don't mind. It doesn't look to me like anyones going to jump, I said. Not tonight. Is that right? Jess? She wasn't listening. Fuck me, she said. Jesus Christ. She was staring at the corner of the roof, the spot where Martin had snipped the wire on New Years Eve. There was a guy sitting there, exactly where Martin had sat, and he was watching us. me, and he looked real frightened. Hey, man, I said quietly. Hey. Just stay there. I started to walk slowly over to him. Please dont come any closer, he said. He was panicky, near tears, dragging furiously on a smoke. Weve all been there, I said. Come on back over and you can join our gang. This is our reunion. I tried another couple of steps. Yeah, said Jess. Look at us. Were OK. You think youre never going to get through the evening, but you do. I don't want to, said the guy. Tell us what the problem is, I said. I walked a little closer. I mean, were all fucking experts in the field. Maureen here...   But I never got any further. He flipped the cigarette over the edge, and then with a little moan he pushed himself off. And there was silence, and then there was the noise of his body hitting the concrete all those floors below. And those two noises, the moan and the thud, Ive heard every single day since, and I still dont know which is scarier.