Chapter 28

JJ

 

I was beginning to regret the whole CCR scam, so I wasn't sorry when Maureen puked her whisky and Coke all over Martin's ash-blond wooden floor. I'd been experiencing an impulse to own up, and owning up would have got my year off to a pretty bad start. That's on top of the bad start it had already got off to, what with thinking of jumping off a high building, and lying about having CCR in the first place. Anyway, I was glad that suddenly we all crowded round Maureen and patting her on the back and offering her glasses of water, because the owning-up moment passed.

The truth was that I didn't feel like a dying man; I felt like a man who every now and again wanted to die, and there's a difference. A man who wants to die feels angry and full of life and desperate and bored and exhausted¹, all at the same time; he wants to fight everyone, and he wants to curl up in a ball and hide in a cupboard somewhere. He wants to say sorry to everyone, and he wants everyone to know just how badly they've all let him down. I can't believe that dying people feel that way, unless dying is worse than I'd thought. (And why shouldn't it be? Every other fucking thing is worse than I thought, so why should dying be any different?)

'I'd like one of my Polo mints,' she said. 'I've got one in my handbag.'

'Where's your handbag?'

She didn't say anything for a little while, and then she groaned² softly.

'If you're going to be sick again, would you do me a favour and crawl the last couple of yards to the bog³?' Martin said.

'It's not that,' said Maureen. 'It's my handbag. It's on the roof. In the corner, right by the hole Martin made in the fence. It's only got my keys and the Polos and a couple of pound coins in it.'

'We can find you a mint, if that's what you're worried about.'

'I've got some chewing gum,' said Jess.

'I'm not much of a one for chewing gum,' said Maureen. 'Anyway, I've got a bridge that's a bit loose. And I didn't bother getting it fixed⁴ because...'

She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to. I think we all had a few things we hadn't got around to fixing, for obvious reasons.

'So we'll find you a mint,' said Martin. 'Or you can clean your teeth if you want. You can use Penny's toothbrush.'

'Thank you.'

She got to her feet and then sat down again on the floor.

'What am I going to do? About the bag?'

It was a question for all of us, but Martin and I looked at Jess for the answer. Or rather, we knew the answer, but the answer would have to come in the form of another question, and we had both learned, over the course of the night, that Jess would be the one who was tactless enough to ask it.

'The thing is,' said Jess, right on cue, 'do you need it?'

'Oh,' said Maureen, as the bag implications started to penetrate⁵.

'Do you see what I mean?'

'Yes. Yes, I do.'

'If you don't know whether you're gonna need it, just say so. 'Cos, you know. It's a big question, and we wouldn't want to rush you. But if you know for sure you won't be needing it, then probably best say so now. That'd save us all a trip, see.'

'I wouldn't ask you to come with me.'

'We'd want to,' said Jess. 'Wouldn't we?'

'And if you know you don't want your keys, you can stay here for the day,' said Martin.

'Don't worry about them.'

'I see,' Maureen said. 'Right. I hadn't really… I thought, I don't know. I was going to put off thinking about it for a few hours.'

'OK,' Martin said. 'Fair enough. So let's go back.'

'Do you mind?'

'Not at all. It would be silly to kill yourself just because you didn't have your handbag.'

When we got to Toppers' House, I realized that I'd left Ivan's moped there the night before. It wasn't there any more, and I felt bad, because he's not such a bad guy, Ivan, and it's not like he's some fucking Rolls-Royce-drivin', cigar-smokin' capitalist. He's too poor. In fact, he drives one of his own mopeds around. Anyway, now I can never face him again, although one of the beauties of a minimum-wage, cash-in-hand job is that you can clean windshields at traffic lights and make pretty much the same money.

'I left my car here, too,' said Martin.

'And that's gone as well?'

'The door was unlocked and the keys were in the ignition. It was supposed to be an act of charity. There won't be any more of those.'

The bag was where Maureen had left it, though, right in the corner of the roof. It wasn't until we got up there that we could see we'd made it through to dawn, just about. It was a proper dawn, too, with a sun and a blue sky. We walked around the roof to see what we could see, and the others gave me an American-in-London sightseeing tour: St Paul's, the Ferris wheel down by the river, Jess's house.

'It's not scary any more,' said Martin.

'You reckon?' said Jess. 'Have you looked over the edge? Fucking hell. It's a fuck sight better in the dark, if you ask me.'

'I didn't mean the drop,' said Martin. 'I meant London. It looks all right.'

'It looks beautiful,' said Maureen. 'I can't remember the last time I could see so much.'

'I didn't mean that either. I meant… I don't know. There were all those fireworks, and people walking around, and we were squeezed up here because there was nowhere else for us to go.'

'Yeah. Unless you'd been invited to a dinner party,' I said. 'Like you had.'

'I didn't know anyone there. I'd been invited out of pity. I didn't belong.'

'And you feel included now?'

'There's nothing down there to feel excluded from. It's just a big city again. Look. He's on his own. And she's on her own.'

'She's a fucking traffic warden,' said Jess.

'Yes, and she's on her own, and today she's got fewer friends than me even. But last night she was probably dancing on a table somewhere.'

'With other traffic wardens⁶, probably,' said Jess.

'And I wasn't with other TV presenters⁷.'

'Or perverts,' said Jess.

'No. Agreed. I was on my own.'

'Apart from the other people at the dinner party,' I said. 'But yeah. We hear where you're coming from. That's why New Year's Eve is such a popular night for suicides.'

'When's the next one?' Jess asked.

'December 31st,' said Martin.

'Yeah, yeah. Ha, ha. The next popular night?'

'That would be Valentine's Day,' said Martin.

'What's that? Six weeks?' said Jess. 'So let's give it another six weeks, then. What about that? We'll probably all feel terrible on Valentine's Day.'

We all stared thoughtfully at the view. Six weeks seemed all right. Six weeks didn't seem too long. Life could change in six weeks - unless you had a severely⁹ disabled child to care for. Or your career had gone up in fucking smoke. Or unless you were a national laughing stock.

'D'you know how you'll be feeling in six weeks?' Maureen asked me.

Oh, yes - and unless you had a terminal disease. Life wouldn't change much then, either. I shrugged¹⁰. How the fuck did I know how I'd be feeling? This disease was brand new. No one was able to predict its course - not even me, and I invented it.

'So are we going to meet again before the six weeks is up?'

'I'm sorry, but… When did we become "we"?' said Martin. 'Why do we even have to meet in six weeks? Why can't we just kill ourselves wherever and whenever we want?'

'No one's stopping you,' said Jess.

'Surely the whole purpose of this exercise is that someone is stopping me. We're all stopping each other.'

'Until the six weeks is up, yeah.'

'So when you said, "No one's stopping you," then you meant the opposite.'

'Listen,' said Jess. 'If you go home now and put your head in the gas oven, what am I going to do about it?'

'Exactly. So the purpose of the exercise is?'

'I'm asking, aren't I? Because if we're a gang, then we'll all try and live by the rules. And there's only one, anyway. Rule 1: We don't kill ourselves for six weeks. And if we're not a gang, then, you know. Whatever. So are we a gang, or not a gang?'

'Not a gang,' said Martin.

'Why aren't we?'

'No offence, but…' Martin clearly hoped these three words, and a wave of the hand in our general direction, would save him from having to explain himself. I wasn't going to let him off the hook, though.

I hadn't felt like I was in this gang either, until that moment. And now I belonged to the gang that Martin didn't like much, and I felt real committed to it.

'But what?' I said.

'Well. You're not, you know. My Kind Of People.' He said it like that, I swear. I heard the capitals as clearly as I heard the lower case.

'Fuck you,' I said. 'Like I usually hang out with assholes like you.'

'Well, there we are, then. We should all shake hands, thank one another for a most instructive evening and then go our separate ways.'

'And die,' said Jess.

'Possibly,' said Martin.

'And that's what you want?' I said.

'Well, it's not a long-held ambition, I grant you. But I'm not giving away any secrets when I say it's come to look more attractive recently. I'm conflicted, as you people say. Anyway, why do you care?' he said to Jess. 'I'd got the impression that you didn't care for anyone or anything. I thought that was your thing.'

Jess thought for a moment. 'You know those films where people fight up the top of the Empire State Building or up a mountain or whatever? And there's always that bit when the baddie slips off, and the hero tries to save him, but like the sleeve of his jacket tears off and he goes over and you hear him all the way down. Aaaaaaaagh. That's what I want to do.'

'You want to watch me plunge¹¹ to my doom¹².'

'I'd like to know that I've made the effort. I want to show people the torn sleeve.'

'I didn't know you were a fully⁸ trained Samaritan,' said Martin.

'I'm not. This is just my own personal philosophy.'

'I'd find it easier if we saw each other on a regular basis,' said Maureen quietly. 'All of us. No one really knows how I feel about anything, apart from you three. And Matty. I tell Matty.'

'Oh, for Christ's sake,' said Martin. He was using profanity because he knew then he was beaten: telling Maureen to go fuck herself required more moral courage than any of us possessed¹³.

'It's only six weeks,' said Jess. 'We'll throw you off the top ourselves on Valentine's, if it helps.'

Martin shook his head, but it was to indicate defeat rather than refusal.

'We'll all live to regret it,' he said.

'Good,' said Jess. 'So is everyone all right with that?'

I shrugged. It wasn't like I had a better plan.

'I'm not going on beyond six weeks,' said Maureen.

'No one will make you,' said Martin.

'As long as we know that from the start,' said Maureen.

'Noted,' said Martin.

'Excellent,' said Jess. 'So it's a deal.'

We shook hands, Maureen picked up her handbag, and we all went out for breakfast. We couldn't think of anything to say to each other, but we didn't seem to mind much.

1 exhausted   

adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的

参考例句：

• It was a long haul home and we arrived exhausted.搬运回家的这段路程特别长，到家时我们已筋疲力尽。
• Jenny was exhausted by the hustle of city life.珍妮被城市生活的忙乱弄得筋疲力尽。

2 groaned   

v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦

参考例句：

• He groaned in anguish. 他痛苦地呻吟。
• The cart groaned under the weight of the piano. 大车在钢琴的重压下嘎吱作响。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 bog   

n.沼泽；室...陷入泥淖

参考例句：

• We were able to pass him a rope before the bog sucked him under.我们终于得以在沼泽把他吞没前把绳子扔给他。
• The path goes across an area of bog.这条小路穿过一片沼泽。

4 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

5 penetrate   

v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解

参考例句：

• Western ideas penetrate slowly through the East.西方观念逐渐传入东方。
• The sunshine could not penetrate where the trees were thickest.阳光不能透入树木最浓密的地方。

6 wardens   

n.看守人( warden的名词复数 )；管理员；监察员；监察官

参考例句：

• Air raid wardens in tin hats self-importantly stalked the streets. 空袭民防队员戴着钢盔神气活现地走在街上昂首阔步。 来自辞典例句
• The game wardens tranquillized the rhinoceros with a drugged dart. 猎物保护区管理员用麻醉射器让犀牛静了下来。 来自辞典例句

7 presenters   

n.节目主持人，演播员( presenter的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Each week presenters would put the case for their favourite candidate. 每个星期主持人推出他们最喜欢的候选人。 来自互联网
• Karaoke was set up to allowed presenters to sing on the stage. 宴会设有歌唱舞台，可让出席者大演唱功。 来自互联网

8 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

9 severely   

adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地

参考例句：

• He was severely criticized and removed from his post.他受到了严厉的批评并且被撤了职。
• He is severely put down for his careless work.他因工作上的粗心大意而受到了严厉的批评。

10 shrugged   

vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• Sam shrugged and said nothing. 萨姆耸耸肩膀，什么也没说。
• She shrugged, feigning nonchalance. 她耸耸肩，装出一副无所谓的样子。 来自《简明英汉词典》

11 plunge   

v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲

参考例句：

• Test pool's water temperature before you plunge in.在你跳入之前你应该测试水温。
• That would plunge them in the broil of the two countries.那将会使他们陷入这两国的争斗之中。

12 doom   

n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定

参考例句：

• The report on our economic situation is full of doom and gloom.这份关于我们经济状况的报告充满了令人绝望和沮丧的调子。
• The dictator met his doom after ten years of rule.独裁者统治了十年终于完蛋了。

13 possessed   

adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的

参考例句：

• He flew out of the room like a man possessed.他像着了魔似地猛然冲出房门。
• He behaved like someone possessed.他行为举止像是魔怔了。