by Nick Hornby
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 she’s not sure because he’s a cat, so she takes a while to decide. And sometimes I read that, and sometimes I slept. I’ve 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. (I’ve 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 that’s mostly because I didn’t know anybody there. But after that everything seemed a little harder, because the people seemed so foreign, and I didn’t 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 didn’t 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 lad 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. I’m not thinking of things like war, famine, disease or violent crime – not that sort of trouble. I’m thinking more of things like annoying newspaper columns, tearful chat-show guests and so on. I can now see, however, that it’s hard to prevent introspection when one has nothing to do but sit around and think about oneself. You 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 didn’t 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. I’d done things, and because I’d done things, there was a possibility that I might do other things. They’d 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 I’d 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 can’t say that I was particularly inventive in my introspection; the conclusions I drew on the first day were that I’d made a pig’s ear of just about everything, and that I’d 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’s 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 91 per cent and I still failed the test! I was imprisoned a) due to entrapment, and b) because society’s 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 that’s got to be healthier, surely?
Jess found me on the third day. I was sitting in a café reading a two-day-old Daily Express and drinking café 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. Haven’t looked at the front page yet.’
‘Fun-nee. Can I sit with you?’
‘No.’
She sat down anyway.
‘What’s all this about, then?’
‘All what?’
‘This… big sulk.’
‘You think I’m sulking?’
‘What would you call it, then?’
‘I’m 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 didn’t like me saying you were my dad, did you? You’re old enough to be.’
‘I’m aware of that.’
‘Yeah. So get over it. Take a chill pill.’
‘I’m over it. I’ve taken one.’
‘Looks like it.’
‘Jess, I’m not sulking. You think I moved out of a hotel because you said I was your father?’
‘I would.’
‘Because you hate him? Or because you’d be ashamed of your daughter?’
‘Both.’
This is what happens with Jess. When she thinks you’re 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). I decided I wasn’t going to be taken in.
‘I’m 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.’
‘I’m bored.’
‘So go and find JJ or Maureen.’
‘They’re boring.’
‘And I’m not?’
‘Which celebrities have you met? Have you met Eminem?’
‘No.’
‘You have, but you won’t tell me.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s 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 don’t fancy me?’
‘No.’
‘Some men do.’
‘Have sex with them, then. Jess, I’m 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 don’t care about the long term. What about what my dad said about looking out for me? And I’d have thought you’d 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 she’d imagined, rather than the opposit
e.
‘What about the sex you were offering? How would that fit in with you replacing the daughters I’ve lost?’
‘This would be a different, you know, thing. Route. A different way to go.’
We passed a ghastly looking bar called ‘New York City’.
‘That where I got thrown out for fighting,’ said Jess proudly. ‘They’ll 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 she’d 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. I didn’t resent the 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 hadn’t talked about it. We’d played in Manchester the night before, to a very small crowd, and on the way down to London we’d 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 won’t make any difference for any longer than like five minutes. It’s weirder with a band, because you kind of know that you won’t 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. It was more than the four of us; it was a house, and we were the people in it, and we’d sold it, so it wasn’t ours any more. I’m 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 Jesse’s hand, and squeezed. And Jesse took Billy’s hand, just so that we’d 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 we’d taken things as far as we could, and there was nowhere for us to go. That’s why everyone breaks up, I guess, bands, friends, marriages, whatever. Parties, weddings, anything.
It’s 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 I’m 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. I was going to be OK. I was smart, and stable, and I had a girlfriend, even though I knew I’d 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 I’m 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 we’d done, and what we’d 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 King’s 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 didn’t speak to each other.’
‘You were hiding in a toilet most of the time,’ said Jess.
‘And why was that, do you think? Because we’re soul mates? Or because ours is not one of my most fulfilling relationships?’
‘Yeah, and what is your most fulfilling relationship?’
‘What’s yours?’
Jess thought for a moment, and then shrugged.
‘With you lot,’ she said.
There was a silence that was long enough for us to see the truth of Jess’s 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 it’s time to go our separate ways.’
‘What about Valentine’s Day?’
‘We can meet on Valentine’s Day, if you want. We said we’d do that.’
‘Up on the roof?’
‘Do you still think you might throw yourself off?’
‘I dunno. It changes day by day.’
‘I’d like to meet up,’ said Maureen.
‘I suppose Valentine’s 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 didn’t bother to respond. Just about everything Jess said could be bounced right back at 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. I heard the band had split. 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 Valentine’s 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 didn’t 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 travelling home afterwards.
‘Where else would I go?’
‘No, I just meant… Last time you weren’t 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 t
hem 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. I’ve come on a bit,’ she said. ‘In my head, I mean.’
‘That’s great.’
‘I’m still feeling the benefit of the holiday, I think.’
‘Right on.’
And then she didn’t 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?’
‘Maureen’s doing good,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you, Maureen?’
‘I am. I was saying to JJ, I think I’m 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 ça.’
‘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 somewhere other than here. In a pub, say.’
‘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, we’re 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.
