Everyone laughed, looked at Cindy, and then stopped laughing when they realized that laughing would have consequences.
‘And Maureen’s got her son Matty there, and the two guys from the care home. So here’s my idea. We spend some time talking to our people, have a little catch-up. And then we swap round, and go and talk to some other person’s people. So it’s a cross between the American thing and a school parents’ evening, ’cos the friends and family sort of sit in a corner, waiting for people to visit them.’
‘Why?’ I said. ‘What for?’
‘I don’t know. Whatever. Just for a laugh. And we’ll learn things, won’t we? About each other? And about ourselves?’
There she went again, with her happy endings. It was true that I had learned things about the others, but I had learned absolutely nothing that wasn’t factual. So I could tell Ed the name of the band that he used to play in, and I could tell the Crichtons the name of their missing daughter; it seemed to me unlikely that they would find this in any way useful or even comforting, however.
And anyway, what does or can one ever learn, apart from times tables, and the name of the Spanish prime minister? I hope that I’ve learned not to sleep with fifteen-year-olds, but I learned that a long time ago – decades before I actually slept with a fifteen-year-old. The problem there was simply that she told me she was sixteen. So, have I learned not to sleep with sixteen-year-olds, or attractive young women? No. And yet just about everyone I’ve ever interviewed has told me that by doing something or other – recovering from cancer, climbing a mountain, playing the part of a serial killer in a movie – they have learned something about themselves. And I always nod and smile thoughtfully, when really I want to pin them down. ‘What did you learn from the cancer, actually? That you don’t like being sick? That you don’t want to die? That wigs make your scalp itch? Come on, be specific.’ I suspect it’s something they tell themselves in order to turn the experience into something that might appear valuable, rather than a complete and utter waste of time.
In the last few months, I have been to prison, lost every last molecule of self-respect, become estranged from my children and thought very seriously about killing myself. I mean, that little lot has got to be the psychological equivalent of cancer, right? And it’s certainly a bigger deal than acting in a bloody film. So how come I’ve learned absolutely bugger all? What was I supposed to learn? True, I have discovered that I was quite attached to my self-esteem, and regret its passing. Also, I’ve found out that prison and poverty aren’t really me. But, you know, I could have had a wild stab in the dark about both of those things beforehand. Call me literal-minded, but I suspect people might learn more about themselves if they didn’t get cancer. They’d have more time, and a lot more energy.
‘So,’ Jess went on. ‘Who’s going to go where?’
At that moment, several French teenage punks appeared in our midst, carrying coffee mugs. They headed for an empty table next to Matty’s wheelchair.
‘Oi,’ said Jess. ‘Where do you think you’re going? Upstairs, all of you.’
They stared at her.
‘Come on, we haven’t got all day. Hup hup hup. Schnell. Plus vitement.’ She shooed them towards the stairs, and away they went, uncomplainingly; Jess was just another incomprehensible and aggressive native of an incomprehensible and aggressive country. I sat down at my ex-wife’s table, and waved towards Penny again. It was a sort of all-purpose crowded-party gesture, some kind of cross between ‘I’m just getting a drink’ and ‘I’ll give you a ring’, with maybe a little bit of ‘Can we have the bill, please?’ thrown in. Penny nodded, as if she understood. And then, equally inappropriately, I rubbed my hands together, as if I were relishing the prospect of all the delicious and nutritious self-knowledge I was about to tuck into.
MAUREEN
I didn’t think there was going to be very much for me to say. I mean, there wasn’t really anything I could say to Matty. But I didn’t think I’d find anything to say to the two lads from the respite home, either. I asked them if they wanted a cup of tea, but they didn’t; and then I asked whether it had been hard getting Matty down the stairs, and they said it wasn’t, with the two of them there. And I said I couldn’t have got him down there if there were ten of me, and they laughed, and then we stood there looking at each other. And then the short one, the one who came from Australia and was shaped like the toy robot that Matty used to have, with a square head and a square body, asked what the little gathering was all about. It hadn’t occurred to me that they wouldn’t know.
‘I’ve been trying to work it out, but I’m clueless.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well. It must be very confusing.’
‘So come on, then. Put us out of our misery. Steve here reckons you’ve all got money troubles.’
‘Some of us have. I haven’t.’
I’ve never had to worry about money, really. I get my carer’s allowance, and I live in my mother’s house, and she left me a little bit anyway. And if you never go anywhere or do anything, life is cheap.
‘But you’ve got troubles,’ said the square one.
‘Yes, we’ve got troubles,’ I said. ‘But they’re all different troubles.’
‘Yeah, well I know he’s got troubles,’ said the other one, Stephen. ‘The guy off of the TV.’
‘Yes, he’s got troubles,’ I said.
‘So how do you know him? I can’t imagine you go to the same nightclubs.’
And I ended up telling them everything. I didn’t mean to. It just sort of came out. And once I’d started, it didn’t seem to matter much what I’d told them. And then, when I got to the end of the story, I realized I shouldn’t have said anything, even though they were nice about it, and said how sorry they were, and that kind of thing.
‘You won’t tell them back at the centre, will you?’ I said.
‘Why would we tell them?’
‘Because if they found out that I’d been planning to leave Matty with them for ever, they might refuse to take him again. They might think that whenever I called for you to take him, I was thinking of jumping off a roof somewhere.’
So we made a deal. They gave me the name of another centre in the area, a private one that they said was nicer than theirs, and I promised that if I was going to do away with myself, I’d call that one.
‘It’s not that we don’t want to know,’ said the square one, Sean. ‘And it’s not that we don’t want our centre to be stuck with Matty. It’s just that we don’t want to feel that every time you call us up, you’re in trouble.’
I don’t know why, but this made me feel happy. Two men I didn’t really know had told me not to call them if I was feeling suicidal, and I felt like hugging them. I didn’t want people feeling sorry for me, you see. I wanted them to help, even if helping meant saying that they wouldn’t help, if that doesn’t sound too Irish. And the funny thing was that this was what Jess was after when she arranged the get-together. And she didn’t expect me to get anywhere, and she’d only asked the two young fellas along because Matty couldn’t have got here without them, and in five minutes they’d made me feel better about something.
Stephen and Sean and I watched the others for a few moments, to see how they were getting on. JJ was doing the best, because he and his friends hadn’t really started fighting yet. Martin and his ex-wife were watching in silence as their daughters drew a picture, and Jess and her parents were shouting. Which might have been a good sign, if they were shouting about the right things, but every now and again you could hear Jess yelling the loudest about something or other, and it never seemed to be anything that would help. For example, ‘I never touched any stupid bloody earrings.’ Everyone in the room heard that, and Martin and JJ and I looked at each other. None of us knew the situation with these earrings, so we didn’t want to judge, but it was hard to imagine that earrings were the root of Jess’s problem.
I felt sorry for Penny, who was still sitting on her own, so I asked her if she wanted
to come to my corner.
‘I’m sure you’ve got plenty to talk about over there,’ she said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘We’re done, really.’
‘Well, you’ve got the best-looking chap in the place,’ she said. She was talking about Stephen, the tall nurse, and when I looked at him from the other side of the room, I could see what she meant. He was blond, with long, thick hair and bright blue eyes, and he had a smile that warmed the room. It was sad that I hadn’t noticed, but I don’t really think about things like that any more.
‘So come on over and talk to him. He’d be pleased to meet you,’ I said. I didn’t know for sure that he would be, but if you’ve got nothing to do but stand beside a boy in a wheelchair, then I’d have thought you’d be happy enough to meet a pretty woman who appears on the television. And I can’t take much credit for it, because I didn’t really do anything, apart from say what I said; but it was funny that so much happened because Penny walked across a coffee-bar to talk to Stephen.
JESS
Everyone seemed to be having an OK time except for me. I had a shit time. And that wasn’t fair, because I’d spent ages organizing that intervention parents’ evening thing. I’d gone on the internet and got hold of the email address of the bloke who used to manage JJ’s band. And he gave me Ed’s phone number, and I stayed up until like three in the morning so I could ring him when he got home from work. And when I told him how messed up JJ was, he said he’d come over, and then he phoned Lizzie and told her, and she was up for it too. And there was all sorts with Cindy and her kids, and it was like a fucking full-time job for a week, and what did I get out of it? Fuck all. Why did I think that talking to my fucking father and my fucking mother would be any fucking use at all? I talk to them every fucking day, and nothing ever changes. So what did I think would make a difference? Having Matty and Penny and all them around? Being in Starbucks? I suppose I’d hoped that they might listen, especially when I’d announced that we’d all got together because we needed their help; but when Mum brought up that thing about the earrings, I knew I might as well have dragged someone in off of the street and asked them to adopt me or whatever.
We’re never going to forget about the earrings. We’ll be talking about them on her deathbed. They’re almost like her way of swearing. When I’m angry with her, I say fuck a lot, and when she’s angry with me she says earrings a lot. They weren’t her earrings anyway; they were Jen’s, and like I told her, I never touched them. She has this thing that all through those horrible first few weeks, when all we did was sit by the phone and wait for the police to tell us they’d found her body, the earrings were on Jen’s bedside table. Mum reckons she went and sat on the bed every night, and that she has like this photographic memory of the things she saw every night, and she can still see the earrings now, next to an empty coffee cup and some paperback or other. And then, when we started to sort of drift back to work and school and a normal life, or as close to a normal life as we’ve ever had since, the earrings disappeared. So of course I must have taken them, because I’m always thieving. And I am, I admit it. But what I thieve mostly is money, off of them. Those earrings were Jen’s, not theirs, and anyway she bought them at Camden Market for like five quid.
I don’t know this for sure, and I’m not being all self-pitiful or whatever. But parents must have favourite kids, right? How could they not? How could like Mr and Mrs Minogue not prefer Kylie to the other one? Jen never thieved off of them; she read books all the time, did well at school, talked to Dad about shuffling and all those political things, never puked on the floor in front of the Treasure Minister or whatever. Take the puking, just for instance. It was a bad falafel, right? I’d bunked off of school, and we’d had maybe two spliffs and a couple of Breezers, so it wasn’t what you’d call a mental afternoon. I really hadn’t been giving it large. And then I ate this falafel just before I went home. Well, I could feel the falafel coming up again as I was turning the key in the front door, so I knew that was what had made me sick. And I had no chance of getting to the toilet, right? And Dad was in the kitchen with the Treasure bloke, and I tried to make the sink, and I didn’t. Falafel and Breezers everywhere. Would I have thrown up without the falafel? No. Did he believe it was anything to do with the falafel? No. Would they have believed Jen? Yes, just because she didn’t drink or smoke blow. I don’t know. This is what happens – falafels and earrings. Everyone knows how to talk, and no one knows what to say.
After we’d gone over the earring thing again, my mum goes, What do you want? So I was like, Don’t you listen to anything, and she went, Which bit was I supposed to be listening to? And I was like, In my speech or whatever I said we needed your help, and she goes, Well, what does that mean? What are we supposed to do that we don’t do?
And I didn’t know. They feed me and clothe me and give me booze money and educate me and all that. When I talk they listen. I just thought that if I told them they had to help me, they’d help me. I never realized there was nothing I could say, and nothing they could say, and nothing they could do.
So that moment, when Mum asked me how they could help, it was sort of like the moment the guy jumped off the roof. I mean, it wasn’t as horrible or as scary and no one died and we were indoors et cetera. But you know how you keep things tucked up in the back of your head in a sort of rainy day box? For example, you think, one day, if I can’t handle it any more, then I’ll top myself. One day, if I’m really fucking up badly, then I’ll just give up and ask Mum and Dad to bail me out. Anyway, the mental rainy day box was empty now, and the joke was that there had never been anything in it all the time.
So, I did what I normally do in these situations. I told my mum to fuck off and I told my dad to fuck off and then I left, even though I was supposed to be talking to someone else’s friends and family afterwards. And then when I got up to the top of the stairs, I felt stupid, but it was too late to go back down again, so I just walked straight out the door and down Upper Street and into the Angel underground and I got on the first train that came. No one chased after me.
JJ
The minute I saw Ed and Lizzie down in that basement, I felt this uncontrollable little flicker of hope. Like, this is it! They’ve come to rescue me! The rest of the band are setting up for a gig tonight, and then afterwards Lizzie and I are going back to this cute apartment that she’s rented for the two of us! That’s what she’s been doing all this time! Apartment hunting and decorating! And… Who’s that old guy talking to Jess? Could he be a record-company executive? Has Ed fixed us up with a new deal? No, he hasn’t. The old guy is Jess’s dad, and later I found out that Lizzie had a new boyfriend, someone with a house in Hampstead and his own graphic design company.
I snapped out of it pretty quick. There was no excitement in their faces, or their voices, so I knew that they didn’t have any news for me, any grand announcement about my future. I could see love there, and concern, and it made me feel a little teary, to tell you the truth; I hugged them for a long time so that they couldn’t see me being a wuss. But they’d come to a Starbucks basement because they’d been told to come to a Starbucks basement, and neither of them had any idea why.
‘What’s up, man?’ said Ed. ‘I heard you weren’t doing so good.’
‘Yeah, well,’ I said. ‘Something will turn up.’ I wanted to say something about that Micawber dude in Dickens, but I didn’t want Ed to get on my case even before we’d talked.
‘Nothing’s gonna turn up here,’ he said. ‘You gotta come home.’
I didn’t want to have to go into the whole ninety-day thing, so I changed the subject.
‘Look at you,’ I said. He was wearing like a suede jacket, which looked like it had cost a lot of money, and a pair of white corduroys, and though his hair was still long, it looked kind of healthy and glossy. He looked like one of those assholes that date the girls in Sex and the City.
‘I never really wanted to look like I used to look. I looked like that because I was broke. And we
never stayed anywhere with a decent shower.’
Lizzie smiled politely. It was hard, with the two of them there – like your first and your second wives coming to see you in the hospital.
‘I never pegged you for a quitter,’ Ed said.
‘Hey, be careful what you say. This is the Quitters’ Club HQ.’
‘Yeah. But from what I hear, the rest of them had good reasons. What have you got? You got nothing, man.’
‘Yup. That’s pretty much how it feels.’
‘That wasn’t what I meant.’
‘Anyone want a coffee?’ said Lizzie.
I didn’t want her to go.
‘I’ll come with you,’ I said.
‘We’ll all go,’ said Ed. So we all went, and Lizzie and I kept not talking, and Ed kept talking, and it felt like the last couple years of my life, condensed into a line for a latte.
‘For people like us, rock’n’roll is like college,’ said Ed after we’d ordered. ‘We’re working-class guys. We don’t get to fuck around like frat boys unless we join a band. We get a few years then the band starts to suck, and the road starts to suck, and having no money really starts to suck. So you get a job. That’s life, man.’
‘So, the point when everything starts to suck… That’s like our college degree. Our graduation.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So when’s it all going to start sucking for Dylan? Or Springsteen?’
‘Probably when they’re staying in a motel that doesn’t allow them to use hot water until six p.m.’