by Nick Hornby
When we get to the straightaway I feel so strong that I know I will go. I’m not sure I can make it but I know I can go far, farther than I’ve jumped before, and I know how long it will be that I will be floating cloudlike. I want this so much, the floating.
I run and see the squirrels and their mouths are already forming the words they will say if I don’t make it across. On the straightaway Franklin stops and yells to me that I should stop but it’s just a few more strides and I’ve never felt so strong so I jump yes jump. I float for a long time and see it all. I see my bed and the faces of my friends and it seems like they already know.
When I hit my head it was obvious. I hit my head and had a moment when I could still see – I saw Susan’s face, her eyes open huge, I saw some criss-crossing branches above me and then the current took me out and then I fell under the surface.
After I fell and was out of view the squirrels spoke.
‘He should not have jumped that jump.’
‘He sure did look silly when he hit his head and slid into the water.’
‘He was a fool.’
‘Everything he ever did was worthless.’
Franklin was angry and took five or six of them in his mouth, crushing them, tossing them one after the other. The other dogs watched; none of them knew if squirrel-killing made them happy or not.
After I died, so many things happened that I did not expect.
The first was that I was there, inside my body, for a long time. I was at the bottom of the river, stuck in a thicket of sticks and logs, for six days. I was dead, but was still there, and I could see out of my eyes. I could move around inside my body like it was a warm loose bag. I would sleep in the warm loose bag, turn around in it like it was a small home of skin and fur. I could look every so often through the bag’s eyes to see what was outside, in the river. I never saw much through the dirty water.
I had been thrown into the river, a different river, when I was young by a man because I would not fight. I was supposed to fight and he kicked me and slapped my head and tried to make me mean. I didn’t know why he was kicking me, slapping. I wanted him to be happy. I wanted the squirrels to jump and be happy as we dogs were. But they were different than we were, and the man who threw me to the river was also different. I thought we were all the same but as I was inside my dead body and looking into the murky river bottom I knew that some are wanting to run and some are afraid to run and maybe they are broken and angry for it.
I slept in my broken sack of a body at the bottom of the river, and wondered what would happen. It was dark inside, and musty, and the air was hard to draw. I sang to myself.
After the sixth day I woke up and it was bright. I knew I was back. I was no longer inside a loose sack but was now inhabiting a body like my own, from before; I was the same. I stood and was in a wide field of buttercups. I could smell their smell and walked through them, my eyes at the level of the yellow, a wide blur of a line of yellow. I was heavy-headed from the gorgeousness of the yellow all blurry. I loved breathing this way again, and seeing everything.
I should say that it’s very much the same here as there. There are more hills, and more waterfalls, and things are cleaner. I like it. Each day I walk for a long time, and I don’t have to walk back. I can walk and walk, and when I am tired and can sleep. When I wake up, I can keep walking and I never miss where I started and have no home.
I haven’t seen anyone yet. I don’t miss the cement like sandpaper on my feet, or the buildings with the sleeping men reaching. I sometimes miss the other dogs and the running. The one big surprise is that as it turns out, God is the sun. It makes sense, if you think about it. Why we didn’t see it sooner I cannot say. Every day the sun was right there burning, ours and other planets hovering around it, always apologizing, and we didn’t think it was God. Why would there be a god and also a sun? Of course God is the sun. Simple, good.
Everyone in the life before was cranky, I think, because they just wanted to know.
Luckybitch
HELEN FIELDING
The last thing I want anyone thinking is I fell over because I’m old. I’ll be able to move this arm in a minute, and then I’ll get the other one out from under me and press the panic button and some divine young man will turn up in a uniform and I’ll tell him I pressed the button by mistake and I’m simply looking for a contact lens! Sometimes I’m so uniquely resourceful and clever I actually feel quite overcome.
Christ, though, I could murder a Mai Tai. I was drunk! That’s right. I’ll tell them I was bloody well drunk and dropped my contact lens on the floor and I’m looking for it.
I’ve just had a frightful thought. I look like one of those ads in the Sunday supplements – ‘Mrs Hope knows help is coming’ – with some ghastly grey-haired old dear lying prone, with her tweed skirt riding up over a pair of elastic stockings.
Ugh. Grey hair. Why would any woman let herself go like that? It’s like wearing a sign on your head saying ‘Old lady’! Obviously everyone thinks I’m a natural blonde and quite frankly it was a godsend when I went grey – not that I am grey, obviously – but hypothetically speaking, should I not have been a natural blonde and should I then have had the misfortune to turn prematurely grey it would have been a godsend, because then you don’t have to bleach and if you run ivory highlights through you can leave the roots for six to eight weeks and nobody notices a thing.
The panic button was not actually installed for this sort of carry on, of course. It was Lisa who made me fit it. It’s not in case I fall over and wet myself. Hmm. But now I come to mention it … well, at least I’m in the bathroom and it’s a tiled floor. But, as I told Lisa when she insisted, ‘I’ll only have a button if it’s strictly for intruders.’ I mean – imagine! A man could burst in here and do anything he wanted with me! Anything! I’d be helpless. A fragile, helpless creature in the power of a ruthless brute, hell-bent on getting what he wanted and only wanting ONE GODDAM THING.
Mark used to call me the Hampshire Grace Kelly. She gave the best blow job in Hollywood. The bed was my stage, darlings. And if one has to take repeated bows … then one simply does! But one doesn’t have to swallow.
That’s what I say to Lisa when she goes on about boundaries this and boundaries that: ‘I know, darling, one doesn’t need a self-help book to have boundaries – I never swallowed!’ I don’t know what happened to the poor girl’s sense of humour. You’d think with a combination of my genes and Jean-Paul’s she would have been able to raise a smile.
Christ, this is boring. What I don’t understand is how I ended up down here in the first place. It’s still light so it can’t have been that long – unless it was dark when I fell. At least I’m wearing Escada, but you see that must mean I was going somewhere, so surely whoever I was meeting would have thought to drop by. Unless it was to shop? If I could get one of my hands up I could see what colour lipstick I’ve got, but you see one of my bloody arms is underneath me and for some reason the other one won’t move. My mouth feels so strange … I … oh … I’m so thirsty … maybe I’ll sleep.
It’s dark. What’s happening? I’m going to die … die … DIEEEEE. I’ve been here for ever. I’m dying. Dying. Aaaargh!
Now come along, you delirious fool. There’s absolutely no point in being histrionic if there’s no one around to buy one a trinket. I must have been asleep or something. There are worse places to sleep. I remember Claude and I sleeping on the railway station platform at Arles and being pissed on by a filthy French guard. We made love under a coat! Imagine! It was jolly good, actually. Bit cold on the derrière. In fact, the whole scene was bizarrely similar to this one, give or take Claude and his persistent erection. It was so heavenly that year. I remember sitting in the square in Saint-Paul-de-Vence with chèvre and a bottle of San Remy, and Claude accusing me of sleeping with Matisse on the construction site for his chapel.
‘Don’t be absurd,’ I said. ‘It’s a consecrated site, and besides, I’d have got all painty.’
Actually, it was in a room at the Colombe d’Or and I knew it was naughty.
I do worry about Lisa, inasmuch as one ever actually worries about anything. I always consider worrying as utterly pointless as feeling guilt or expecting gratitude for one’s largesse. I remember Ernest remarking to me when he’d taken a bunch of ghastly people to a bullfight that gratitude actually doesn’t exist: only the expectation of gratitude. Oh dear, I do wish I hadn’t fallen on my front. This is awfully hard on the neck, really, and so ungainly! Maybe a doctor will come. I do so adore doctors. What was that boy called when I was first expecting Lisa? Dr someone or other. Those hands! Now that was one instance when I did hold myself back. I mean, my unborn child! The Hippocratic oath! Frankly, I always regretted it.
You see, one never wants to be overly maternal – hasn’t one done enough by giving birth? It was like passing a grapefruit. No, I’ve merely tried to give her a sense of joy and life and refrain from bossing her about. After the nightmare I had with my own bloody mother, I always said I’ll never be the sort who gives advice when it isn’t asked for. Or worse, who gives advice whilst pretending not to. So why the bloody hell does she do it to me? Boss, boss, boss. It’s the oddest thing – she couldn’t have had more fun when she was small, bobbing about in the back of the car, racing round and round the Cap from one terrasse to another, when half the girls in her school had never even been on the continent. But does she have fun? No. She works, she works, she works. I’ve never smelt a whiff of perfume on the girl. And the whole delightful frisson of sex and flirtation and the illicit affair seems to have disappeared in a fug of angsting about the whys and wherefores and respect and independence and blah blah blah. I mean, of course, I realize I should never have flirted with that banker fellow she brought round here, but really, it was the slightest thing – I was merely sounding him out to check his responses. How was I to know he was going to start calling me?! Daphne and I used to have a little code: YELS. Young enough to be legal son. But I bet Daphne wishes she had lived long enough to wrestle with a YELG – Oh goodness, I wish I could call Daphne. Darling! Young enough to be legal grandson – is that too young? Is it? You don’t think so? Oh, whizzo! Must dashloveyoubyeeeee!
I could murder a bit of ham. People survive for days in the desert. It’s the water that kills you. Oh Christ, I hope I’m not going to be some sort of ghastly stroke victim with a lopsided mouth … Maybe Collagen could sort it out … and incontinence pads … Baaah!! Now I’m not going to think about that. There’s nothing to be gained. I shall tell them I was drunk and stick to it. Drunk drunk drunkety drunk.
Oh, the fun I’ve had when I’ve been drunk. Now, you see, Lisa never seems to drink a thing except cups of hot steam. I can’t understand why she makes such a meal over men. She seems to expect them to behave like – like women. She’s always trying to get them to ‘talk about relationships’. She goes, ‘I called him and I said, “We’re going to have a serious talk … I need to talk about how it’s going.” ’ What are the poor things going to say? They simply don’t have the vocabulary.
I don’t think I heard her father say one word about his feelings ever – unless he was drunk, and then I’d just pat him on the arm and put him to bed. Oh, I tell a lie. When he died – it was the drink, of course, his liver was completely shot. Not that he was an alcoholic – he was French. When he died, he said, he held my hand, he said, ‘Lucky,’ he said, ‘you were formidable, formidable!’ He said it the French way and then the English way. And then he died.
Oh, my Christ alive. I’m not going to have any last words. I’m going to die here – alone! – on this cold floor in an ungainly position like an incontinent geriatric. Alone! And dead and not looking pretty. Aye. Help me. HEEEELP!
Look. I’m not going to die here and that’s that. It’s simply not the way for one to go. I should be strangled in a sports car with a long silk scarf. Or beheaded in a coupé. Of course, Jayne Mansfield wasn’t actually beheaded. It was a wig. Her wig was on the dashboard and the reporters thought it was her head. Silly boys.
And the last Lisa had before the banker – what was his name? Frankly, he was wet as a drip. What was his name? Lisa’s boyfriend? Peter or something. Steve. Ken. Frankly, I’d rather sleep with a North Sea halibut. But I do want her to be happy. I really do. She seems to think she has to carry the burden of the whole world and its woes on her shoulders. I say to her, what is one here for if not to be happy? I don’t mean that one doesn’t care about others … the poor! And then she goes on about principles and the meaning of life. It just makes me want to drag her into Fenwicks to shut her up. The thing is, she never understands quite how profound I actually am. Making oneself happy doesn’t make one selfish. Well, except it does. One just takes care of oneself and assumes everyone else is taking care of themselves, and then if someone actually can’t help themselves one helps them to do so, but goodness me all these causes and principles and angsting and ugh. What was that banker chap’s name? James or Jeremy. Something terribly Anglais. Do you know, the other day I actually found myself trying to remember who it was whose name I had forgotten. James, I think it was. He was really quite an attractive boy. Do you know who he reminded me of? Sinatra. Now that was something I never told any of them except Daphne. He was really quite rough with one, though. No finesse. And having seen him so … close to, I’ve been completely convinced ever since I saw her that Mia Farrow was Frank’s daughter. Think about it. They are virtually identical. Of course Lisa says its nonsense and people always date people who look like them but why else would they have got divorced so quickly?
James … so like Frank, in a funny way. I suppose it was the suits. He didn’t have Frank’s swagger, of course. But you know there they were, he and Lisa coming round here straight from work with their briefcases and her all sort of busy and carrier bags from the supermarket sort of thing. She’s a very attractive girl but she doesn’t use it.
Well, of course the minute he saw the cocktail shaker and I put the music on and … oh, my shoes! He loved the shoes. I’ve had them for forty-five years and they never fail. It’s the way they elongate the foot, I think, and one’s leg looks so delicate. Afterwards she said, ‘Mother, why on earth did you have to put on those shoes? It’s an old people’s home.’ Now that was cruel. It really isn’t a home. It’s more like – well – a condominium, as Frank would say. They have them in Palm Springs. I fully intend to go there. Fully. Once I’m up from this floor. I’m going. I don’t care what she says. Actually, this James only called a couple of times and took me out once. And I used it as an opportunity to do some research. I always say if one’s seriously interested in a man, never ever let them maunder on about their girlfriend or their ex-girlfriend or prospective girlfriend. When he’s on a date with you, no one else should exist!
But I broke the rule because obviously with one’s daughter’s boyfriend one can’t really consider it a ‘date’. Now I wasn’t going to say anything ridiculous like ‘How’s it going with Lisa?’, so I merely mentioned her name en passant. So then immediately it was like opening some sort of floodgate and off he went: ‘Well, you see my last girlfriend’s still very keen and I think Lisa’s looking for commitment and …’
‘Stop right there!’ I said. ‘I haven’t come out to listen to you boasting and whingeing. Fetch me a martini.’
So, of course a mimosa martini led to a whisky sour, which led to dinner, but I left him at the door and – loyal to the last – immediately got on the phone to my daughter. I mean that one sentence was enough – ‘she’s looking for commitment’. Deary me! What did he think he was saying? ‘She wants to marry me’? It was absolutely insufferable assumptiveness, but more to the point, categoric proof that she was doing something dreadfully wrong. Of course, it was fine to give this James a slice of tongue pie. I mean I’m not his bloody mother, am I? And I’d no intention of dating him after that. Besides, he’s dating my daughter.
‘So how did it go with James?’ she said, icily. (You
see this is what she does to these men. I bet when James has seen this dreary ex-girlfriend she goes, ‘So how did it go with what’s her name?’ in that same martyrish accusing tone, when really she should be talking a bit racy and putting all thought of the other one clear out of his mind.)
‘Mother?’ she said. ‘How did it go?’
‘How did what go?’ I said. ‘What is it?’ You see I hate this it. It. It assumes.
‘The drink with James, Mother. Remember? Earlier this evening.’
I mean, really, when she talks like this, slowly and loudly as if I’m deaf or something, it really brings out the worst in me. ‘And who are you?’ I said in a sort of wavery dotty voice, as if I’d got Alzheimer’s all of a sudden.
‘It’s Lisa, Mum, remember? Lisa?’ Anyone would have thought I was Outer Mongolian and stone deaf. ‘It’s Lisa. Your daughter.’
‘Of course I know who you are, you bloody fool,’ I rasped, and then suddenly, I don’t know what happened, I suppose it was the drink: ‘I’ve just spent four hours with that puffed-up young chap of yours, and really, darling, if you don’t change your tack a bit he’ll be bailing out with a head the size of an inflatable dinghy!’ And then out it all popped – I was like a bottle of Crystal that’s been left in the freezer: ‘You’ve got the whole thing completely wrong, darling. It’s all very well saying you shouldn’t use your attractiveness to get what you want, but look at the amount of time you spend trying to get what you want using your bloody lawyer’s training and arguing the silly boy into the ground about commitment, when if you had the first clue how to play your cards right he’d be pursuing you round the Ritz bar with a Tiffany’s box because he simply can’t get enough of you. What about mystery? What about allure? What’s the point of marching the poor boy round Sainsbury’s in a filthy mood when you could be sliding your toe up his thigh in the Caprice while he slips his Gold Card to the garçon. You’re a woman, darling, not some sort of Chinese co-worker in a communist cooperative. You’re not supposed to be his equal, you’re supposed to be his empress.’
