Part 1-3
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e back here, I said.I dont give a fuck, you know, she said. I jump, or we look for Chas. Same thing, to me.
And thats the whole thing, right there, because we believed her. Maybe other people on hts wouldnt have but the three of us, that night, we had no doubts. It wasnt that we thought she was really suicidal, either; it was just that it felt like she might do whatever she wao do, at any given moment, and if she wao jump off a building to see what it felt like, thery it. And once youd worked that out, then it was just a question of how much you cared.
But you dont need our help, I said. We dont know how to start looking for Chas. Youre the only one who find him.
Yeah, but I get weird on my own. fused. Thats sort of how I ended up here.
What do you think? said Martin to the rest of us.
Im not going anywhere, said Maureen. Im not leaving the roof, and I wont ge my mind.
Fine. We wouldnt ask you to.
Because theyll e looking for me.
Who will? The people in the respite home.
So what? said Jess. What are they going to do if they t find you? Theyll put Matty somewhere terrible.
This is the Matty whos a vegetable? Does he give a shit where he goes? Maureen looked at Martin helplessly.
Is it the money? said Martin. Is that why you have to be dead by the m? Jess snorted, but I could see why he had asked the question.
I only paid for one night, said Maureen.
Have you got the money for more than one night? Yes, of course. The suggestion that she might not seemed to make her a little pissed. Pissed off. Whatever.
So phohem up ahem hell be staying two.
Maureen looked at him helplessly again. Why? Because, said Jess. Anyway, theres fuck all to do up here, is there? Martin laughed, kind of.
Well, is there? said Jess.
Nothing I think of, said Martin. Apart from the obvious.
Oh, that, said Jess. Fet it. The moments gone. I tell. So weve got to find something else to do.
So even if youre right, and the moment has passed, I said, why do we have to do anything together? Why dont we go home and watch TV? Cos I get weird on my own. I told you.
Why should we care? We didnt know you half an ho. I dont give much of a fuck about how weird you get on your own.
So you dont feel like a bond kind of thing because of what weve been through.
Nope.
You will. I see us still being friends when were all old. There was a silehis was clearly not a vision shared by all.
MAUREEN I didnt like it that they were making me sound tight. It wasnt anything to do with money. I needed one night so I paid for one night. And then someone else would have to pay, but I wouldnt be around to know.
They didnt uand, I could tell. I mean, they could uand that I was unhappy. But they couldnt uand the logic of it. The way they looked at it was this: if I died, Matty would be put in a home somewhere.
So why didnt I just put him in a home and not die? What would the difference be? But that just goes to show that they didnt uand me, or Matty, or Father Anthony, or a the churo one I know thinks that way.
These people, though, Martin and JJ and Jess, theyre different from anyone I know. Theyre more like the people on television, the people iEnders and the other programmes where people know what to say straightaway. Im not saying theyre bad. Im saying theyre different. They wouldnt worry so much about Matty if he was their son. They dont have the same sense of duty. They dont have the church. Theyd just say, Whats the difference? and leave it at that, and maybe theyre right, but theyre not me, and I didnt know how to tell them that.
Theyre not me, but I wish I was them. Maybe not them, exactly, because theyre not so happy either. But I wish I was one of those people, the people who know what to say, the people who t see the difference.
Because it seems to me that you have more ce of being able to live a life you stand if youre like that.
So I didnt know what to say when Martin asked me if I really wao die. The obvious answer was, Yes, yes, of course I do, you fool, thats why Ive climbed all these stairs, thats why Ive been telling a boy - dear God, a man - who t hear me all about a New Years Eve party that Id made up. But theres another aoo, isnt there? And the other answer is, No, of course I dont, you fool. Please stop me. Please help me. Please make me into the kind of person who wants to live, the kind of person who has a bit missing, maybe. The kind of person who would be able to say, I am entitled to something more than this. Not much more; just something that would have been enough, instead of not quite enough. Because thats why I there - there wasnt quite enough to stop me.
Well? said Martin. Are you prepared to wait until tomorrow night? What will I tell the people in the home? Have you got the phone number? Its too late to call them.
Therell be somebody on duty. Give me the number. He pulled one of those tiny little mobile telephones out of his pocket and tur on. It started ringing, and he pressed a button and put the phoo his ear. He was listening to a message, I suppose.
Someone loves you, said Jess, but he ignored her.
I had the address and phone number written down on my little note. I fished it out of my pocket, but I couldnt read it in the dark.
Give it here, said Martin.
Well, I was embarrassed. It was my little note, my letter, and I didnt want anyone reading it while I was watg them, but I didnt know how to say that, and before I k, Martin had reached over and snatched it from me.
Oh, Christ, he said when he saw it. I could feel myself blushing. Is this your suicide note? Cool. Read it out, said Jess. Mine are crap, but I bet hers is worse.
Yours are crap? said JJ. Meaning, there are like, what, hundreds of them? Im always writing them, said Jess. She seemed quite cheerful about it.
The two boys looked at her, but they didnt say anything. You could see what they were thinking, though.
What? said Jess.
I imagihat most of us have just written the one, said Martin.
I keep ging my mind, Jess said. Nothing wrong with that. Its a big decision.
One of the biggest, Martin said. Certainly iop ten. He was one of those people who sometimes seemed to be joking when he wasnt, or not joking when he was.
Anyway. No I wont be reading this o. He was squinting at it to read the number, and theapped the number out. And a few seds later it was all done. He apologized fing so late, and then told them something had e up and Matty would be staying for another day, and that was it. The way he said it, it was like he khey werent going to be asking any more questions. If Id phoned I would have e up with this great long explanation for why I honing at four in the m, something Id have had to have thought up months ago, and then they would have seen through me and Id have fessed and ended up going to get Matty out a few hours earlier rather than a day later.
So, said JJ. Maureens OK. That just leaves you, Martin. You wanna j<s></s>oin in? Well, where is this Chas? Martin said.
I dunno, said Jess. Some party somewhere. Is that what it depends on?
Where he is? Yes. Id rather f—ing kill myself than try a a cab to go somewhere in South London at four in the m, said Martin.
He doesnt know anyone in South London, Jess said.
Good, said Martin. And when he said that, you could tell that, instead of killing ourselves, we were all going to e down from the roof and look for Jesss boyfriend, or whatever he was. It wasnt much of a plan, really. But it was the only plan we had, so all we could do was try and make it work.
Give me your mobile and Ill make some calls, said Jess.
So Martin gave her the phone, and she went to the other side of the roof where no one could hear her, and we waited to be told where we were going.
<strong>MARTIN</strong>
I know what youre thinking, all you clever-clever people who read the Guardian and shop in Waterstones and would no more think of watg breakfast television than you would of buying your children cigarettes.
Youre thinking, Oh, this guy wasnt serious. He wanted a tabloid photographer to capture his quote unquote cry for help so that he could sign a My Suicide Hell exclusive for the Sun. SHARP TAKES THE SLEAZY WAY OUT. And I uand why you might be thinking that, my friends. I climb a stairwell, have a couple of nips of Scotch from a hip-flask while dangling my feet over the edge, and then when some dippy girl asks me to help find her ex-boyfriend at some party, I shrug and wander off with her. And how suicidal is that?
First of all, Ill have you know that I scored very highly on Aaron T.
Becks Suicide I Scale. Ill bet you didnt even know there was such a scale, did you? Well, there is, and I re I got something like twenty-o of thirty points, which I retty pleased with, as you imagine.
Yes, suicide had been plated for more than three hours prior to the attempt. Yes, I was certain of death even if I received medical attention: its fifteen storeys high, Toppers House, and they re that anything over ten will do it for you pretty well every time. Yes, there was active preparation for the attempt: ladder, wire-cutters and so on. He shoots, he scores.
The only questions where I might not have received maximum points are the first two, which deal with what Aaron T. Beck calls isolation and timing. No one near by in visual or vocal tact gets you top marks, as does Intervention highly unlikely. You might argue that as we chose the most popular suicide spot in North London on one of the most popular suicide nights of the year, intervention was almost iable; I would ter by saying that we were just being dim. Dim rotesquely self-absorbed, take your pick.
A, of course, if it hadnt been for the teeming throng up there, I wouldnt be around today, so maybe old Beck is bang on the money. We may not have been ting on ao rescue us, but once we started bumping into each other, there was certainly a collective desire - a desire born more than anything out of embarrassment - to shelve the whole idea, at least for the night. Not one of us desded those stairs having e to the clusion that life was a beautiful and precious thing; if anything, we were slightly more miserable on the way down than on the , because the only solution we had found for our various predits was not available to us, at least for the moment. And there had been a sort of weird nervous excitement up on the roof; for a couple of hours we had been living in a sort of indepe state, where street-level laws no longer applied.
Even though our problems had driven us up there, it was as if they had somehow, like Daleks, been uo climb the stairs. And now we had to go back down and face them again. But it didnt feel like we had any choice. Even though we had nothing in on beyond that ohing, the ohing was enough to make us feel that there wasnt anything else - not money, or class, or education, e, or cultural is - that was worth a damn; wed formed a nation, suddenly, in that couple of hours, and for the time being we wanted only to be with our new patriots. I had hardly exged a word with Maureen, and I didnt even know her surname; but she uood more about me than my wife had done in the last five years of our marriage. Maureehat I was unhappy, because of where shed met me, and that meant she khe most important thing about me; dy alrofessed herself baffled by everything I did or said.
It would have bee if Id fallen in love with Maureen, wouldnt it? I evehe neer headline: SHARP TURNED! And then thered be some story about how Old Sleazebag had seen the error of his ways and decided to settle down with niely older woman, rather than chase around after schoolgirls and C-list actresses with breast enlargements.
Yeah, right. Dream on.
JJWhile Jess called everyone she ko find out where this guy Chas was at, I was leaning on the wall, looking through the wire at the city, and trying to figure out what Id listen to at that exaent, if I owned an iPod or a Dis. The first thing that came to mind was Jonathan Ris Abominable Snowman in the Market, maybe because it was sweet and silly, and reminded me of a time in life when I could afford to be that way. And then I started humming the Cures Iween Days, which made a little more se wasnt today and it wasnt tomorrow, and it wasnt last year and it was year, and anyway the whole roof thing was an iween kind of a limbo, seeing as we had made up our minds where our immortal souls were headed.
Jess spent ten mialking to sources close to Chas and came back with a best guess that he was at a party in Shoreditch. We walked down fifteen flights of stairs, through the thud of dub and the stink of piss, and then emerged ba to the street, where we stood shivering in the cold while waiting for a black cab to show. Nobody said much, besides Jess, who talked enough for all of us. She told us whose party it was, and who would probably be there.
It will be all Tessa and that lot.
Ah, said Martin. That lot.
And Alfie and Tabitha and the posse who go down O on Saturdays. And Acid-Head Pete and the rest of the whole graphic design crew.
Martin groaned; Maureen looked seasick.
A young Afri guy driving a shitty old Ford pulled up alongside us.
He wound down the passenger window and leaned over.
Where you wanna go? Shoreditch.
Thirty pounds.
Fuck off, said Jess.
Shut up, said Martin, and got in the fro. My treat, he said.
The rest of us got in the back.
Happy New Year, said the driver.
None of us said anything.
Party? said the driver.
Do you know Acid-Head Pete at all? Martin asked him. Well, were hoping to run into him. Should be jolly.
"Jolly", Jess snorted. Why are you such a tosser? If you were going to joke around with Jess, and use words ironically, then youd have to give her plenty of advance warning.
It was maybe four-thirty in the m by now, but there were tons of people around, in cars and cabs and on foot. Everyone seemed to be in a group. Sometimes people waved to us; Jess always waved back.
How about you? Jess said to the driver. You w all night? Or are you gonna go and have a few somewhere? Work toute la nuit, said the driver. All the night.
Bad luck, said Jess.
The driver laughed mirthlessly.
Yes. Bad luck.
Does your missus mind? Sorry? Your missus. La femme. Does she care? About you w all night? No, she dont care. Not now. Not in the place where is she.
Ah aional antenna could have felt the mood in the cab turn real dark. Ah any life experience could have figured out that this was a man with a story, and that this story, whatever it was, was uo get us into the party mood. Ah any sense would have stopped right there.
Oh, said Jess. Bad woman, eh? I winced, and Im sure the others did, too. Bigmouth strikes again.
Not bad. Dead. He said this flat, like he was just correg her on a point of fact - as if in his line of work, bad and dead were two addresses that people got fused.
Oh.
Yes. Bad men kill her. Kill her, kill her mother, kill her father.
Oh.
Yes. In my try.
Right.
And right there was the place Jess chose to stop: exactly at the point where her silence would show her up. So we drove on, thinking our thoughts. And I would bet a million bucks that our thoughts all tained, somewhere iangle and swirl, a version of the same questions: Why hadnt we seen him up there? Or had he been up and e down, like us?
Would he sneer, if we told him our troubles? How e he turned out to be so fug… dogged?
Whe to where we were going, Martin gave him a very large tip, and he leased and grateful, and called us his friends. We would have liked to be his friends, but he probably wouldnt have cared for us much if he got to know us.
Maureen didnt want to e in with us, but we led her through the door and up the stairs into a room that was the closest thing Ive seen to a New York loft since Ive been here. It would have cost a fortune in NYC, which means it would have cost a fortune plus ahirty per t in London. It was still packed, even at four in the m, and it was full of my least favorite people: fug art students. I mean, Jess had already warned us, but it still came as a shock. All those woolly hats, and moustaches with parts of them missing, all those attoos and plastic shoes… I mean, Im a liberal guy, and I didnt want Bush to bomb Iraq, and I like a toke as much as the guy, but these people still fill my heart with fear and loathing, mostly because I know they wouldnt have liked my band. When we played a college town, and we walked out in front of a crowd like this, I kneere going to have a hard time. They dont like real music, these people. They dont like the Ramones or the Temptations or the Mats; they like D J Bleepy and his stupid fug bleeps. Or else they all pretend that theyre fug gangstas, and listen to hip-hop about hos and guns.
So I was in a bad mood from the get-go. I was worried that I was going to get into a fight, and Id even decided what that fight would be about: Id be defendiher Martin or Maureen from the sneers of some motherfucker with a goatee, or some woman with a moustache. But it never happehe weird thing was that Martin in his suit and his fake tan, and Maureen in her raincoat and sensible shoes, they somehow blended right in. They looked sht that they looked, you know, out there.
Martin and his TV hair could have been in Kraftwerk, and Maureen could have been like a real weird version of Mo Tucker from the Velvet Underground. Me, I was wearing a pair of faded black pants, a leather jacket and an old Gita-shirt, and I felt like a fug freak.
There was only one ihat made me think I might have to break someones nose. Martin was standing there drinking wiraight out of a bottle, and these two guys started staring at him.
Martin Sharp! You know, off of breakfast telly! I winced. I have never really hung out with a celebrity, and it hadnt occurred to me that walking into a party with Martins face is like walking into a party naked: even arts students tend to take notice. But this was more plicated than straightforward reition.
Oh, yeah! Good call! his buddy said.
Oi, Sharpy! Martin smiled at them pleasantly.
People must say that to you all the time, one of them said.
What? You know. Oi, Sharpy and all that.
Well, yes, said Martin. They do.
Bad luck, though. Of all the people on TV, you end up looking like that t.
Martin gave them a cheerful, what--you-d and turned bae.
You OK? Thats life, he said, and looked at me. Hed somehow mao give an old cliew depth.
Maureen, meanwhile, lainly petrified. She jumped every time anyone laughed, or swore, or broke something; she stared at the party-goers as if she were looking at Diane Arbus photos projected fifty feet wide on an Imax s.
You want a drink? Wheres Jess? Looking for Chas.
And then we go? Sure.
Good. Im not enjoying myself here.
Me her.
Where do you think well go ? I dont know.
But well all go together, do you think? I guess. Thats the deal, right? Until we find this guy.
I hope we dont find him, said Maureen. Not for a while. Id like a sherry, please, if you find one.
You know what? Im not sure theres going to be too much sherry around. These guys dont look like sherry-drio me.
White wine? Would they have that? I found a couple paper cups, and a bottle with somethi in it.
Cheers.
Cheers.
Every New Years the same, huh? How do you mean? You know. Warm white wine, a bad party full of jerks. And this year Id promised myself things would be different.
Where were you this time last year? I was at a party at home. With Lizzie, my ex.
was OK, yeah. You? I was at home. With Matty.
Right. And did you think, a year ago...
Yes, she said quickly. Oh, yes.
Right. And I didnt really know how to follow up, so we sipped our drinks and watched the jerks.
<strong>MAUREEN </strong>
It t be hygienic, living in a place without rooms. Even people who live is usually have access to a proper bathroom, with doors and walls and a window. This place, the place where the party was being held, didnt even have that. It was like a railway station toilet, except there wasnt even a separate gents. There was just a little wall separating the bath and toilet from the rest of it, so even though I o go, I couldnt; anyone might have walked around the wall and seen what I was doing. And I doo spell out how uhy it all was. Mother used to say that a bad smell is just a germ gas; well, whoever owhis flat must have had germs everywhere. Not that anyone could use the toilet anyway. When I went to find it, someone was kneeling on the floor and sniffing the lid. I have no idea why anyone would want to smell the lid of a toilet (while someone else watched! you imagine!). But I suppose people are perverted in all sorts of different ways. It was sort of what I expected when I walked into that party and heard the noise and saw what kind of people they were; if someone had asked me what I thought people like that would do in a toilet, I might have said that theyd sniff the lid.
When I came back, Jess wa<dfn></dfn>s standing there in tears, and the rest of the party had cleared a little space around us. Some boy had told her that Chas had been and gone, and hed goh somebody he met at the party, some girl. Jess wanted us all to go round to this girls house, and JJ was trying to persuade her that it wasnt a good idea.
Its OK, Jess said. I know her. Theres probably been some sort of misuanding. She probably just didnt know about me and Chas.
What if she did know? said JJ.
Well, said Jess. In that case I could go, could I? What does that mean? I wouldnt kill her. Im not that mad. But I would have to hurt her.
Maybe cut her <mark></mark>a little.
When Frank broke off agement I didnt think Id ever get over it.
I felt almost as sorry for him as I did for myself, because I didnt make it easy for him. We were in the Ambler Arms, except its not called that any more, over in the er by the fruit mae, and the landlord came over to our table and asked Frank to take me home, because nobody wao put any money in the mae while I was there howling and bawling my eyes out, and they used to make a fair bit of money from the fruit mae on quiet nights.
I nearly did away with my<samp>..</samp>self then - I certainly sidered it. But I thought I could ride it out, I thought things might get better. Imagihe trouble I could have saved if I had done! I would have killed the both of us, me and Matty, but of course I didnt know that then.
I didnt take any notice of the silly things Jess said about cutting people.
I came up with a lot of utter nonsense when Frank and I broke up; I told people that Frank had been forced to move away, that he was si the head, that he was a drunk and hed hit me. None of it was true. Frank was a sweet man whose crime was that he didnt love me quite enough, and because this wasnt much of a crime I had to make up some bigger ones.
Were you engaged? I asked Jess, and then wished I hadnt.
Engaged? Jess said. Engaged? What is this? Pride and f—ing Prejudice? "Oooh, Mr Arsey Darcy. May I plight my truth?" "Oh yes, Miss Snooty Knobhead, Id be charmed Im sure." She said this last part in a silly voice, but you could probably have guessed that.
People do still get engaged, Martin said. Its not a stupid question.
Which people get engaged? I did, I said. But I said it too quietly, because I was scared of her, and so she made me say it again.
You did? Really? OK, but what living people get engaged? Im not ied in people out of the Ark. Im not ied in people with, with like shoes and raincoats and whatever. I wao ask what she thought we should wear instead of shoes, but I was learning my lesson.
Anyway, who the f— did you get eo? I didnt want any of this. It didnt seem fair that this is what happened when you tried to help.
Did you shag him? Ill bet you did. How did he like it? Doggy style? So he didnt have to look at you? And then Martin grabbed her and dragged her into the street.
JESS When Martin pulled me outside, I did that thing where you decide to bee a different person. Its something I could do whenever I felt like it.
Doesnt everybody, when they feel themselves getting out of trol? You know: you say to yourself, OK, Im a booky person, so then you go a some books from the library and carry them around for a while. Or, OK, Im a druggy person, and smoke a lot of weed. Whatever. And it makes you feel different. If you borrow someone elses clothes or their is or their words, what they say, then it give you a bit of a rest from yourself, I find.
It was time to feel different. I dont know why I said that stuff to Maureen; I dont know why I say half the things I say. I knew Id overstepped the mark, but I couldnt stop myself. I get angry, and when it starts its like being sick. I puke and puke over someone and I t stop until Im empty. Im glad Martin pulled me outside. I opping. I opping a lot. So I told myself that from that point on I was going to be more a person out of the olden days kind of thing. I swore not to swear, ha ha, or to spit; I swore not to ask harmless old ladies who are clearly more or less virgins whether they shagged doggy style.
Marti spare at me, told me I was a bitch, and an idiot, and asked me what Maureen had ever doo me. And I just said, Yes, sir, and, No, sir, and, Very sorry, sir, and I looked at the pavement, not at him, just to show him I really was sorry. And then I curtsied, which I thought was a ouch. And he said, What the fucks this, now? Whats the yes sir no sir business? So I told him that I was going to stop being me, and that no one would ever see the old me again, and he didnt know what to say to that. I didnt want them to get sie. People do get sie, Ive noticed.
Chas got sie, for example. And I really hat not to happen any more, otherwise Ill be left with nobody. With Chas, I think everything was just too much; I came on to too quickly, a scared. Like that thing ie Modern? That was definitely a mistake. Because the vibe in there… OK, some of the stuff is all weird and intense and so on, but just because the stuff is all weird and intehat shouldnt have meant that I went all weird and intehat was inappropriate behaviour, as Jen would have said. I should have waited until wed got outside and finished looking at the pictures and installations before I went off on one. I think Jen got sie, too.
Also, the business in the ema, which looking ba it might have been the final straw. That was inappropriate behaviour, too. Or maybe the behaviour wasnt inappropriate, because we had to have that versation some time, but the place (the Holloway Odeon) wasnt right, and nor was the time (halfway through the film) or the volume (loud). One of the points Chas made that night was that I wasnt really mature enough to be a mother, and I see now that by yelling my head off about having a baby halfway through Moulin Rouge I sort of proved it for him.
So anyway. Marti mental at me for a while, and then he just seemed to shrink, as if he was a balloon and hed been punctured. Whats wrong, kind sir? I said, but he just shook his head, and I could uand enough from that. What I uood was that it was the middle of the night and he was standing outside a party full of people he didnt know, shouting at someone else he didnt know, a couple of hours after sitting on a roof thinking about killing himself. Oh yeah, and his wife and children hated him. In any other situation I would have said that hed suddenly lost the will to live. I went over and put my hand on his shoulder, and he looked at me as if I were a person rather than an irritation and we almost had a Moment of some description - not a romantic Ross-and-Rachel-type moment (as if), but a Moment of Shared Uanding. But then we were interrupted, and the Moment passed.
JJ I want to tell you about my old band - I guess because Id started to think about these guys as my new ohere were four of us, and we were called Big Yellow. We started out being called Big Pink, as a tribute to the Band album, but then everyohought we were a gay band, so we ged colors. Me and Eddie started the band in high school, and we wrote together, and we were like brothers, right up until the day that we werent like that any more. And Billy was the drummer, and Jesse was the bassist, and… shit, you could care less, right? All you o know is this: we had something that no one else ever had. Maybe some people used to have it, before my time - the Stohe Clash, the Who. But no one Ive ever seen had it. I wish youd e to one of our shows, because then youd know that Im not bullshitting you, but youll have to take my word for it: on ood nights we could suck people up and spit em out twenty miles away. I still like our albums, but it was the shows that people remember; some bands just go out and play their songs a little louder and faster, but we found a way of doing something else; we used to speed em up and slow em down, and we used to play covers of things we loved, and that we khe people who came to hear us would love too, and our shows came to mean something to people, in a way that shows dont any more. When Big Yellow played live, it was like some kind of Peal service; instead of applause and whistles and hoots, thered be tears ah-grinding and speaking in tongues. We saved souls. If you love roroll, all of it, from, I dont know, Elvis right through James Brown and up to the White Stripes, then youd have wao quit your job and e and live inside our amps until your ears fell off. Those shows were my reason for living, and I now know that this is not a figure of speech.
I wish I was deluding myself. Really. It would help. But we used to have these message boards up on our website, and Id read them every now and again, and I could tell that people felt the same way we did; and I looked at other peoples boards, too, and they didnt have the same kind of fans. I mean, everyone has fans who love what they do, otherwise they wouldnt be fans, right? But I could tell from reading the other boards that uys walked out of our shows feeling something special. We could feel it, and they could feel it. Its just that there werent enough of them, I guess.
Anyway.
Mauree faint after Jess cut loose on her, and who could blame her?
Jesus. I would have o sit down too if Jess ever cut loose on me, and Ive been around the block a few times. I took her outside on to a little roof terrace that looked like it never got the sun at any time of the day or year, but there iic table and a grill out there anyway. Those little grills are everywhere in England, right? To me theyve e to represent the triumph of hope over circumstance, seeing as all you do is peer at them out the window through the pissing rain. There were a couple of people sitting at the piic table, but when they saw that Maureen wasnt feeling too good they got up a baside, a down. I offered to get her a glass of water, but she didnt want anything, so we just sat there for a while. And theh heard like this hissing noise, ing from the shadows o the grill in the far er, aually we figured out that there was a guy back there. He was young, with long hair and a sorry-ass moustache, hunkered down in the dark, trying to attract our attention.
Excuse me, he whispered as loudly as he dared.
You wanna talk to us, you e here.
I t e into the light.
What would happen to you if you did? A nutter might try to kill me.
Theres only Maureen a here.
This nutters everywhere.
Like God, I said.
I walked over to the other side of the terrad crouched dowo him.
How I help you? You Ameri? Yes.
Oh. Howdy, pardner. If I tell you that this amused him, youll know all you o know about this guy. Listen, you check the party and see if the nutters gone? What does he look like? She. I know, I know, but shes really scary. A mate saw her first and told me to hide out here until shed gone. I went out with her onot like "once upon a time". Just once. But I stopped because shes off her head, and… This erfect.
Youre Chas, arent you? How did you know that? Im a friend of Jesss.
Oh, man, I wish you could have seen the look on his face. He scrambled to his feet and started looking for ways to escape over the back wall. At one point I thought he was going to try running up it, like a squirrel.
Shit, he said. Fuck. Im sorry. Shit. Will you help me climb over? No. I want you to e and talk to her. Shes had, shes had like a rough evening, and maybe a little chat would help calm her down.
Chas laughed. It was the hollow, desperate laugh of a man who khat, when it came to calming Jess down, several elephant tranquilizers would be much more useful than a little chat.
You know I havent had sex sihat night we went out, dont you? I didnt know that, Chas, no. How would I know? Where would I have read that? Ive been too scared. I t make that mistake again. I t have another woman shouting at me in the ema. I dont mind, you know, never having sex again. Its better that way. Im twenty-two. I mean, by the time youre sixty, you dont feel like it anyway, right? So were only talking forty years. Less. I live with that. Women are fug maniacs, man.
You dont want to think shit like that, man. Youve just had some bad luck.
I said this because I k was the right thing to say, not because my experieold me anything different. It wasnt true that women were fug maniacs, of course it wasnt - just the ohat I had slept with and Chas had slept with.
Listen. If you came outside and had a little chat, whats the worst that could happen? Shes tried to kill me twid she got me arrested once. Plus, Im banned from three pubs, two galleries and a ema. Plus, Ive had an official warning from...
OK, OK. So youre saying the worst that could happen is, you die a painful and violeh. And I say to you, my friend, that its better to die like a man than hide underh grills like a mouse.
Maureen had stood up and e to join us in our dark barbecue er.
Id try to kill you, if I were Jess, she said quietly - so quietly that it was hard to square the violence of the words with the timidity in the voice.
There you go. Youre in trouble wherever you look.
Who the fucks this now? Im Maureen, said Maureen. Why should you get away with it? Get away with what? I didnt do anything.
I thought you said you had sex with her, Maureen said. Or maybe you didnt say that in so many words. But you said you hadnt had sex since. So Im thinking that you slept with her.
Well, we had sex that once. But I didnt know she was a fug maniac then.
So once you find out that the pirl is fused and vulnerable, thats when you run away.
I had to run away. She was chasing me. With a knife, half the time.
And why was she chasing you? What is this? Why is it your business? I dont like to see people upset.
What about me? Im upset. My life is a shambles.
Now, see, Chas couldnt know, but that wasnt such a good line ument to use with any of our crowd, the Toppers House Four. We were, by definition, the Kings and Queens of Shambles.
Chas had given up on sex, whereas we were trying to decide whether to give up on fug life.
You have to talk to her. said Maureen.
Fuck off, said Chas. And then, womp! Maureen popped him as hard as she could.
I t tell you how many times Id watched Eddie pop someo a party or after a show. And hed probably say the same thing about me, although in my memory I was the Man of Peace, with only the occasional lapse into violence, and he was the Man of War, with only the occasional moment of calm and clarity. And OK, Maureen was like this little old lady, but watg her take a swing really brought it all bae.
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