Chapter 7

MARTIN

 

If she hadn't tried to kill me, I'd be dead, no question. But we've all got a preservation¹ instinct, haven't we? Even if we're trying to kill ourselves when it kicks in. All I know is that I felt this thump² on my back, and I turned round and grabbed the railings behind me, and I started yelling. I was drunk by then. I'd been taking nips out of the old hip-flask for a while, and I'd had a skinful before I came out, as well. (I know, I know, I shouldn't have driven. But I wasn't going to take the fucking stepladder on the bus.) So, yes, I probably did let rip with a bit of vocabulary. If I'd known it was Maureen, if I'd known what Maureen was like, then I would have toned it down a bit, probably, but I didn't; I think I might even have used the c- word, for which I've apologized. But you'd have to admit it was a unique situation.

I stood up and turned round carefully, because I didn't want to fall off until I chose to, and I started yelling at her, and she just stared.

'I know you,' she said.

'How?' I was being slow. People come up to me in restaurants and shops and theatres and garages and urinals all over Britain and say, 'I know you,' and they invariably mean precisely³ the opposite; they mean, 'I don't know you. But I've seen you on the telly.' And they want an autograph, or a chat about what Penny Chambers⁴ is really like, in real life. But that night, I just wasn't expecting it. It all seemed a bit beside the point, that side of life. 'From the television.'

'Oh, for Christ's sake. I was about to kill myself, but never mind, there's always time for an autograph. Have you got a pen? Or a bit of paper? And before you ask, she's a right bitch who will snort anything and fuck anybody. What are you doing up here anyway?' I was… I was going to jump too. I wanted to borrow your ladder.'

That's what everything comes down to: ladders. Well, not ladders literally⁵; the Middle East peace process doesn't come down to ladders, and nor do the money markets. But one thing I know from interviewing people on the show is that you can reduce the most enormous topics down to the tiniest parts, as if life were an Airfix model. I've heard a religious leader attribute his faith to a faulty catch on a garden shed (he got locked in for a night when he was a kid, and God guided him through the darkness); I've heard a hostage describe how he survived because one of his captors was fascinated by the London Zoo family discount card he kept in his wallet. You want to talk about big things, but it's the catches on the garden sheds and the London Zoo cards that give you the footholds; without them you wouldn't know where to start. Not if you're hosting Rise and Shine with Penny and Martin you don't, anyway. Maureen and I couldn't talk about why we were so unhappy that we wanted our brains to spill out onto the concrete like a McDonald's milk shake, so we talked about the ladder instead. 'Be my guest.'

'I'll wait until… Well, I'll wait.'

'So you're just going to stand there and watch?'

'No. Of course not. You'll be wanting to do it on your own, I'd imagine.'

'You'd imagine right.'

'I'll go over there.' She gestured to the other side of the roof.

'I'll give you a shout on the way down.' I laughed, but she didn't.

'Come on. That wasn't a bad gag. In the circumstances.'

'I suppose I'm not in the mood, Mr Sharp.'

I don't think she was trying to be funny, but what she said made me laugh even more. Maureen went to the other side of the roof, and sat down with her back against the far wall. I turned around and lowered myself back on to the ledge⁶. But I couldn't concentrate. The moment had gone. You're probably thinking, How much concentration does a man need to throw himself off the top of a high building? Well, you'd be surprised. Before Maureen arrived I'd been in the zone; I was in a place where it would have been easy to push myself off. I was entirely⁷ focused on all the reasons I was up there in the first place; I understood with a horrible clarity the impossibility of attempting to resume life down on the ground.

But the conversation with her had distracted me, pulled me back out into the world, into the cold and the wind and the noise of the thumping⁸ bass⁹ seven floors below. I couldn't get the mood back; it was as if one of the kids had woken up just as Cindy and I were starting to make love. I hadn't changed my mind, and I still knew that I'd have to do it some time. It's just that I knew I wasn't going to be able to do it in the next five minutes.

I shouted at Maureen.

'Oi! Do you want to swap¹⁰ places? See how you get on?' And I laughed again. I was, I felt, on a comedy roll, drunk enough - and, I suppose, deranged¹¹ enough - to feel that just about anything I said would be hilarious¹².

Maureen came out of the shadows and approached the breach¹³ in the wire fence cautiously.

'I want to be on my own, too,' she said.

'You will be. You've got twenty minutes. Then I want my spot back.'

'How are you going to get back over this side?' I hadn't thought of that. The stepladder really only worked one way: there wasn't enough room on my side of the railings to open it out.

'You'll have to hold it.' 'What do you mean?'

'You hand it over the top to me. I'll put it flush against the railings. You hold it steady from that side.'

'I'd never be able to keep it in place. You're too heavy.'

And she was too light. She was small, but she carried no weight at all; I wondered whether she wanted to kill herself because she didn't want to die a long and painful death from some disease or other.

So you'll have to put up with me being here.'

I wasn't sure that I wanted to climb over to the other side anyway. The railings marked out a boundary now: you could get to the stairs from the roof, and the street from the stairs, and from the street you could get to Cindy, and the kids, and Danielle, and her dad, and everything else that had blown me up here as if I were a crisp packet in a gale¹⁴. The ledge felt safe. There was no humiliation¹⁵ and shame there - beyond the humiliation and shame you'd expect to feel if you were sitting on a ledge, on your own, on New Year's Eve.

'Why can't you shuffle¹⁶ round to the other side of the roof?'

'Why can't you? It's my ladder.'

'You're not much of a gentleman.'

'No, I'm fucking not. That's one of the reasons I'm up here, in fact. Don't you read the papers?'

'I look at the local one sometimes.'

'So what do you know about me?'

'You used to be on the TV.'

'That's it?'

'I think so.' She thought for a moment. 'Were you married to someone in Abba?'

'No.'

'Or another singer?'

'No.'

'Oh. And you like mushrooms, I know that.'

'Mushrooms?'

'You said. I remember. There was one of those chef fellas in the studio, and he gave you something to taste, and you said, "Mmmm, I love mushrooms. I could eat them all day." Was that you?'

'It might have been. But that's all you can dredge up?'

'Yes.'

'So why do you think I want to kill myself?'

'I've no idea.'

'You're pissing me around.'

'Would you mind watching your language? I find it offensive.'

'I'm sorry.'

But I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe I'd found someone who didn't know. Before I went to prison, I used to wake up in the morning and the tabloid¹⁷ scum were waiting outside the front door. I had crisis meetings with agents and managers and TV executives. It seemed impossible that there was anyone in Britain uninterested in what I had done, mostly because I lived in a world where it was the only thing that seemed to matter. Maybe Maureen lived on the roof, I thought. It would be easy to lose touch up there.

'What about your belt?' She nodded at my waist. As far as Maureen was concerned, these were her last few moments on earth. She didn't want to spend them talking about my passion for mushrooms (a passion which, I fear, may have been manufactured for the camera anyway). She wanted to get on with things.

'What about it?'

'Take your belt off and put it round the ladder. Buckle¹⁸ it your side of the railings.'

I saw what she meant, and saw that it would work, and for the next couple of minutes we worked in a companionable silence; she passed the ladder over the fence, and I took my belt off, passed it around both ladder and railings, pulled it tight, buckled¹⁹ it up, gave it a shake to check it would hold. I really didn't want to die falling backwards²⁰. I climbed back over, we unbuckled the belt, placed the ladder in its original position.

And I was just about to let Maureen jump in peace when this fucking lunatic came roaring at us.

1 preservation   

n.保护，维护，保存，保留，保持

参考例句：

• The police are responsible for the preservation of law and order.警察负责维持法律与秩序。
• The picture is in an excellent state of preservation.这幅画保存得极为完好。

2 thump   

v.重击，砰然地响；n.重击，重击声

参考例句：

• The thief hit him a thump on the head.贼在他的头上重击一下。
• The excitement made her heart thump.她兴奋得心怦怦地跳。

3 precisely   

adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地

参考例句：

• It's precisely that sort of slick sales-talk that I mistrust.我不相信的正是那种油腔滑调的推销宣传。
• The man adjusted very precisely.那个人调得很准。

4 chambers   

n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅

参考例句：

• The body will be removed into one of the cold storage chambers. 尸体将被移到一个冷冻间里。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Mr Chambers's readable book concentrates on the middle passage: the time Ransome spent in Russia. Chambers先生的这本值得一看的书重点在中间：Ransome在俄国的那几年。 来自互联网

5 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

6 ledge   

n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁

参考例句：

• They paid out the line to lower him to the ledge.他们放出绳子使他降到那块岩石的突出部分。
• Suddenly he struck his toe on a rocky ledge and fell.突然他的脚趾绊在一块突出的岩石上，摔倒了。

7 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

8 thumping   

adj.重大的，巨大的；重击的；尺码大的；极好的adv.极端地；非常地v.重击(thump的现在分词)；狠打；怦怦地跳；全力支持

参考例句：

• Her heart was thumping with emotion. 她激动得心怦怦直跳。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• He was thumping the keys of the piano. 他用力弹钢琴。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

9 bass   

n.男低音(歌手)；低音乐器；低音大提琴

参考例句：

• He answered my question in a surprisingly deep bass.他用一种低得出奇的声音回答我的问题。
• The bass was to give a concert in the park.那位男低音歌唱家将在公园中举行音乐会。

10 swap   

n.交换；vt.交换，用...作交易

参考例句：

• I will swap you my bicycle for your radio.我想拿我的自行车换你的收音机。
• This comic was a swap that I got from Nick.这本漫画书是我从尼克那里换来的。

11 deranged   

adj.疯狂的

参考例句：

• Traffic was stopped by a deranged man shouting at the sky.一名狂叫的疯子阻塞了交通。
• A deranged man shot and killed 14 people.一个精神失常的男子开枪打死了14人。

12 hilarious   

adj.充满笑声的，欢闹的；[反]depressed

参考例句：

• The party got quite hilarious after they brought more wine.在他们又拿来更多的酒之后，派对变得更加热闹起来。
• We stop laughing because the show was so hilarious.我们笑个不停，因为那个节目太搞笑了。

13 breach   

n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破

参考例句：

• We won't have any breach of discipline.我们不允许任何破坏纪律的现象。
• He was sued for breach of contract.他因不履行合同而被起诉。

14 gale   

n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等）

参考例句：

• We got our roof blown off in the gale last night.昨夜的大风把我们的房顶给掀掉了。
• According to the weather forecast,there will be a gale tomorrow.据气象台预报，明天有大风。

15 humiliation   

n.羞辱

参考例句：

• He suffered the humiliation of being forced to ask for his cards.他蒙受了被迫要求辞职的羞辱。
• He will wish to revenge his humiliation in last Season's Final.他会为在上个季度的决赛中所受的耻辱而报复的。

16 shuffle   

n.拖著脚走，洗纸牌；v.拖曳，慢吞吞地走

参考例句：

• I wish you'd remember to shuffle before you deal.我希望在你发牌前记得洗牌。
• Don't shuffle your feet along.别拖着脚步走。

17 tabloid   

adj.轰动性的，庸俗的；n.小报，文摘

参考例句：

• He launched into a verbal assault on tabloid journalism.他口头对小报新闻进行了抨击。
• He believes that the tabloid press has behaved disgracefully.他认为小报媒体的行为不太光彩。

18 buckle   

n.扣子，带扣；v.把...扣住，由于压力而弯曲

参考例句：

• The two ends buckle at the back.带子两端在背后扣起来。
• She found it hard to buckle down.她很难专心做一件事情。

19 buckled   

a. 有带扣的

参考例句：

• She buckled her belt. 她扣上了腰带。
• The accident buckled the wheel of my bicycle. 我自行车的轮子在事故中弄弯了。

20 backwards   

adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地

参考例句：

• He turned on the light and began to pace backwards and forwards.他打开电灯并开始走来走去。
• All the girls fell over backwards to get the party ready.姑娘们迫不及待地为聚会做准备。