Join Me

by Danny Wallace

  And then I fell asleep.

  * * *

  Hanne had left her mobile on this time. Well, of course she had. She’d been waiting for me to reply to her text message, and tell her that no, of course I wasn’t in Norway, I was in London, and that me being in her country would be a ludicrous idea. She’d been hoping to receive a text message saying OF COURSE I AM JOKING YOU MENTALIST, when, in fact, she’d just received one saying AM ON THE BUS. WILL BE IN FAGERNES IN TWENTY MINUTES.

  And, twenty minutes later – three hours after I’d set off from Oslo – that’s exactly where I was.

  I stepped off the bus with six or seven other people, and on to the icy concrete below. It was cold. Incredibly cold. So cold that Hanne was wearing just about every item of clothing I’d ever seen her wear, including some I’m glad I never did. Snowtrousers, huge boots, ftirry hat, oversize gloves, odd blue scarf obscuring her face. She had the family dog, Emily, a massive black poodle, with her. And Emily – to be honest – is how I recognised her.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ I said, giving her a hug.

  Hanne, not Emily. I haven’t missed her since she peed on my shoes last New Year’s Eve. Emily, not Hanne.

  ‘Hi,’ said Hanne. ‘Jesus . . . what are you wearing?’

  ‘A T-shirt,’ I said. ‘And a jacket.’

  ‘So typically British!’ said Hanne. ‘It’s minus eleven here! Why aren’t you wearing anything warmer?’

  ‘I didn’t think there was a minus eleven.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Hanne, taking me by the hand. ‘Let’s get inside . . .’

  We walked, with Emily, to the Fagernes Tavern, facing a frozen fjord. In the distance, one man was walking steadily across it with two bags of shopping in his hands. I bravely took my jacket off and Hanne removed 2 or 3 layers of waterproofing, and we sat in the bar and ordered hot chocolate.

  And before she could say anything, I apologised. Profusely. And I explained. Desperately. I held her hand as I talked, and though I knew it all sounded odd, I also knew Hanne was taking it all in.

  And Hanne had a lot to say. She scolded me for being a bad boyfriend. For not acting the way I should have. For all the missed evenings, and parties, and for all the excuses she’d had to make on my behalf.

  And so I made promises. Promises I knew I would have to keep. Promises I wanted to keep. I promised to pay more attention to her, and spend more time with her, and be just like I was again. I told her I loved her, that I’d got carried away, that I’d tone it down. And she nodded, and stayed silent, and squeezed my hand once or twice, and nodded some more.

  ‘This is all so stupid, Danny,’ she said, at one point. ‘Why didn’t you just tell me what you were doing?’

  ‘I thought you’d make me stop,’ I said. ‘And I’m so close to the end, now—’

  ‘Of course I would have made you stop,’ she said. ‘Anyone would! It’s ridiculous. Making people join you for no reason, and then having to come up with a reason. It’s another stupid boy-project, that’s all. I warned you what would happen if you did this again! Why couldn’t you have just stopped it?’

  ‘I didn’t have the heart. And I was enjoying myself. And these people were relying on me. They wanted to do good . . . they just never had enough of an excuse before.’

  ‘They shouldn’t have needed an excuse,’ said Hanne sternly.

  ‘But we all do sometimes. It’s easier to do something good if you feel it’s for a reason. Rightly or wrongly, that’s the case.’

  ‘They were just showing off, these people. They thought, “What’s the point in doing anything good for anyone if there’s no one there to see it?” Did they think you were God? Did they think that as long as they knew someone was watching them that made them better people?’

  ‘No! The bottom line is, they’ve done a lot of good, my joinees. Just in little ways, maybe. But little ways can be important. I only need 138 more, Hanne, and then I’ll stop, I promise. I’ll have done it for Gallus. We’ve improved some people’s lives through this . . . it’s made a difference, somehow . . .’

  Hanne squeezed my hand.

  ‘Danny,’ she said. ‘You sound like a bloody nutter.’

  The words hung in the air.

  Did I really? Did I really sound like a bloody nutter? I don’t know. I didn’t think so. But maybe I did.

  A thought struck me. It had been there for a while – certainly since I’d arrived in Norway – but it suddenly made more sense.

  Normality seemed really attractive right now. Maybe it really was time to go back to real life.

  I stared at my hot chocolate.

  ‘Danny,’ said Hanne, and I knew what was coming next. ‘If you and me are going to get back together, then you have to make some serious decisions.’

  She was right.

  I really would.

  * * *

  It was snowing outside and Hanne had decided to take Emily back to the house. We had more to talk about, though, and I didn’t really feel up to saying hello to her family, so it was agreed that I’d wait for her at the Tavern and she’d return as soon as she could. She left me a jumper she’d been wearing under one of her other layers, and I studied it. It was hideous, green, and far, far too big. It had the word ELKS written across the top, and a picture of a slightly distracted-looking elk underneath it. It was the kind of jumper that would never have made it past even the early planning stages, were this not a country that manages to pull off temperatures that by rights should not exist, or at least be made illegal.

  So I put it on, ordered another hot chocolate, and considered what Hanne was proposing.

  A total and utter ban on any form of spontaneity.

  Well, that was how I chose to word it.

  She’d chosen her words more carefully. ‘Stop acting like a fucking nutjob.’

  Believe me, I saw Hanne’s point. But how did she think I could just stop doing the things I enjoy doing? Yes, I might be a better boyfriend if I did . . . but how would it affect me as a person? What would this ban on spontaneity do to me?

  I enjoyed the freedom of my life. The rules I chose to obey were governed by basic morality, but apart from that, my rules were my own. That’s how Join Me started. That’s how all this took place. And yes, that’s what led me here, to face up to what I might very well lose . . . but it’s like Joinee Saunders had shown me . . . because of him, I’d set myself another rule in life: that I’d be happy to travel and meet those who have joined me. Without that way of thinking, I probably never would have got out of bed in the mornings. I wouldn’t have met the people I’d met. Seen the places I’d seen. Done the things I’d done. And now I was being asked – told? – to give all that up.

  I thought about how to break the news to my joinees. They’d known something was up, anyway. I’d not been around while this whole Hanne thing was going on. I wasn’t answering my emails as much. Never looking at the website. Never paying attention to my duties as Leader. I’d been too preoccupied with thinking about my girlfriend, about what I might lose. Perhaps I could just do what I’d very rarely done thus far, and come clean. I could just tell them about the mess I’d found myself in. About how this grand collective of freelance philanthropists had come together not through any great need to do good, but because I needed a bloody reason for having got them all together in the first place. I was no do-gooder. My heart wasn’t pure. I’d acted under desperation and pressure and the attraction of power.

  I knew that that would be all I’d have to do to break their little hearts, and have them leave me. They’d wander off, in their own directions, disappointed and angry at the Leader they’d once held in some esteem.

  And what about Gallus? What would he think of it all? Well, he wouldn’t be able to talk. He’d given up after one week and three joinees. He’s the last person who could judge my behaviour. He’d probably even approve of my disbanding the collective. After all, his spontaneity had been crushed, and he was happy enough.

  But what would Ga
llus have achieved if he hadn’t given up? Did he want to give up his idea, and then his shop, and become a farmer? Maybe. Did he want to spend his whole life in the same place, with the same 1000 people, doing the same everyday things, every single day? Again – maybe.

  But what if he hadn’t?

  What if that one moment when fate or disappointment or his bossy old wife had finally killed his ambitions had never happened? What if Gallus’ ‘stupid boy-project’ had grown? Worked? Spread? How would his life have been, if he’d made another choice? Who would he have become? What could he have achieved? Would we, those few months ago, have erected a statue at his funeral rather than a simple gravestone? Who can say?

  Hanne would be on her way back now, and I had to make my decision. Could I really promise that nothing like this would ever happen again?

  I couldn’t.

  So when she arrived, I breathed deeply, told her, and prayed that she’d been bluffing.

  She hadn’t.

  ‘Then I suppose it’s over,’ she said, and we hugged. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  I felt as if I’d been hollowed out, and hugged her again, hard.

  * * *

  Sitting in the cold at that bus stop in Fagernes, waiting for the late bus back to Oslo, I had plenty of time to think about what I’d done. What Hanne had done. In my mind, I suppose I must have looked like a brave romantic hero, sitting in the snow, catching a bus to an unknown destiny. In reality, I was wearing a big green ELKS jumper and I looked like a knob.

  And the thing is, you’re probably now thinking that it’ll be okay; that Hanne and me will get back together. Maybe you’re even hoping it. And if this was a made-up story, I’m sure we would. I’m sure that just as the bus was leaving she’d turn up with tears streaming down her face, and I’d jump off the bus and kiss her, and we’d go back to hers and drink mulled wine and laugh. Or maybe she’d already be on the bus, and I’d sit down next to someone in a hat, and they’d take it off, and it’d be Hanne, all packed and ready to come back to London with me and start again.

  But as I sat there, cramped and pushed up against the window by the fat lad next to me, I started to realise something. No one was going to stop the bus as we pulled out of the station. No one was going to show up out of the blue and take me away.

  Because this, I am sad to report, is a very true story indeed, and sometimes, much to my regret, life just doesn’t work like it does in those other books.

  It was a very long journey back to Oslo indeed.

  CHAPTER 25

  10. Then Daniel consorted with Paal, son of Peder, a soothsayer and a mighty man of wealth.

  OSLO WAS DARK and frosty and I wasn’t exactly in the sunniest of moods, either.

  I didn’t really know what to do with myself, to be honest. I suppose I’d been hoping to stay over in Fagernes, once Hanne had seen the light and accepted the ways of Join Me into her life. But that hadn’t gone quite to plan.

  Now it was coming up to 11pm, and I was standing at Oslo bus station, a lost and defeated man with nowhere to go and nothing to do. My flight back to London was the following evening.

  But I have friends in Oslo, and so I decided to phone one of them. Erik would doubtless provide me with food and shelter me from the elements. And it would be good to see a friendly face. One that’d cheer me up.

  So I called him, surprised the life out of him, and we agreed to meet at the Scotsman pub on Karl Johans gate. Mainly because it was the one place I could be sure of not mispronouncing.

  I sat at the front of the pub. There were six tables, five of which had just one old man sitting at it, drinking pints of Ringnes in silent contemplation. I put my coat and bag down at the one spare table, and ordered myself a pint of Guinness. I really didn’t look out of place here. Each of these old men had probably been sitting at these tables since their mid-twenties and they’d lost their girlfriends. There was a quiet understanding between us. It calmed me. But I had forgotten quite how expensive Norway is; a fact which was rammed home when I had to part with £6.60 for my pint.

  £6.60! Kick a man when he’s down, why don’t you?

  ‘Danny, hello!’ said a cheerful voice to my right. It was Erik. It had started to snow outside again. Either that, or Erik has a hell of a dandruff problem for a man who shaves his head every morning.

  ‘Hi, Erik,’ I said, hugging him. ‘I’ve had a bit of a dodgy day . . .’

  And I told him all about it.

  * * *

  Erik took me back to his flat in the East End of Oslo. It used to be an old frame-maker’s shop, and the beige antique sign still hangs above the windows outside. He looked after me that night. He cooked a dinner of elk meat and fresh vegetables, made me milky tea, and played soothing music. By which I mean he put a nice CD on, not that he got a harp out. Everything was designed to cheer me up, and it was almost working. But Erik had some questions about Join Me.

  ‘So . . . these people . . . you asked them to join you and now you feel you have to look after them?’

  ‘Not look after them. Just . . . keep an eye on them. You know. An overview. Someone has to keep running this thing, otherwise it may just fall apart.’

  ‘What if it doesn’t? Maybe people will keep doing their good deeds every Friday, and will do it for the rest of their lives.’

  ‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘I wish Hanne could see what’s been happening though. I wish she could see what they’ve been up to.’

  ‘I can see why she thought all this was a bit odd. Especially if she feels you were ignoring her, too.’

  ‘But I wasn’t. Ignoring implies I did it on purpose. I didn’t. Not at all. I was just distracted. I still love her. I’d still do anything for her.’

  ‘But not give this up? Not ditch your joinees?’

  I sighed.

  ‘I can’t. I can’t ditch them. And it’s not just because of Join Me. It’s also because of what it represents. Hanne wanted me to promise that I’d never do anything like this again. But this is a good way to live. My whole reason for giving up my job was because I wanted more freedom . . . and she wanted me to give that freedom up. Forever. And besides, I’m almost finished. I can’t give up now.’

  Erik nodded. He understood.

  ‘Do you have any joinees in Norway?’

  ‘One,’ I said. ‘His name’s Per. A law student in place called Averøy, or somewhere. His personal motto is: ‘Everything goes, said the old lady, she was frying a frog in the toaster.’ Does that translate to you?’

  ‘No. He sounds a little psychotic,’ said Erik. ‘So you have just him in Norway? But you have them elsewhere?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m pretty big in Belgium.’

  ‘And Norway has just one?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. Erik wasn’t really being very quick with this whole grasping-I-only-had-one-Norwegian-joinee thing. ‘I was going to ask Hanne, but I doubt whether she’d appreciate it.’

  ‘Well, if you only have one . . . then tomorrow we should work on that,’ he said. ‘You have to use your remaining time in Norway positively. It seems only right, if you’ve made your decision. Maybe you can get the rest of your joinees tomorrow!’

  Erik’s idea stuck in my mind for the rest of the evening. I had thought I’d be going to bed that night a wrecked and desolate man. And while I was genuinely deeply sad, I was also optimistic. Maybe it was because the full effects of Hanne’s decision hadn’t hit me yet, but I was excited by what I could do the next day in Oslo. A whole day in Norway. A day to spread the word.

  I decided Erik was right: I had to get back into the spirit of Join Me. I had to finish what I’d started.

  And so I vowed I would, and then crashed out on his sofa.

  * * *

  It was 8am the next morning, and I was already on the phone.

  ‘Hello, is that Simen from the Aftenposten?’

  ‘Simen speaking.’

  ‘Hi, Simen . . . my name’s Danny Wallace . . . I don’t know if you remember me, but a couple of yea
rs ago you came to interview me and my old flatmate Dave, because we were travelling through Norway to meet one of his namesakes for a bet. And I had to make up with my girlfriend, too, who had left me at the time, because I was spending all my time travelling about meeting strangers.’

  ‘Yes! How are you? What are you up to these days?’

  ‘Oh, same old, same old.’

  ‘Did you make up with your girlfriend in the end?’

  ‘Yes. But we’ve split up again.’

  ‘Oh. Why?’

  ‘Much the same reasons as before. Listen, I’ve a story you might be interested in . . . I’m in Norway to spread the word of the Karma Army and try to get some Norwegians to join me . . .’

  I could hear Simen reaching for his notepad. He’s one of Norway’s top journalists, working for the biggest broadsheet in the land – the Aftenposten. We’d spent an afternoon together, as you may have gathered, the last time I was in Norway on a mission.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, Danny,’ said Simen, when I’d explained my plans for the day. ‘I like the story a lot. But space in the newspaper is tight this week, because of this and that, and . . .’

  I’d suspected that, despite the early hour, it might be a bit late in the day to get coverage. But I had a back-up plan. I’d brought something with me in my bag for Hanne’s little brother, but hadn’t had the chance to give it to him. Now I would cleverly utilise it for my own benefit.

  ‘Simen,’ I said. ‘I have a Join Me T-shirt.’

  I let the words sink in.

  ‘You have a Join Me T-shirt?’ he said, his interest in my story suddenly raised. ‘What does it say, this Join Me T-shirt you have?’

  ‘It says . . . Join Me.’

  Simen was thinking. The story had just been made infinitely more attractive.

  ‘Simen,’ I said, theatrically, nudging him closer to a decision. ‘Just imagine the pictures . . .’