In the end, I went for trains on the curtains, and your man from Star Wars on the lampshade. And soon after that I started buying comics every now and again, just to see what a lad of his age might be reading and thinking about. And we watched the Saturday morning television together, so I learned a little bit about pop singers he might like, and sometimes about the TV programmes he’d be watching. I said before that one of the worst things was never moving on, and pretending to move on doesn’t change anything. But it helps. Without it, what is there left? And anyway, thinking about these things helped me to see Matty, in a strange sort of a way. I suppose it must be what they do when they think of a new character for EastEnders : they must say to themselves, well, what does this person like? What does he listen to, who are his friends, what football team does he support? That’s what I did—I made up a son. He supports Arsenal, he likes fishing, although he doesn’t have a rod yet. He likes pop music, but not the sort of pop music where people sing half-naked and use a lot of swear words. Very occasionally, people ask what he wants for his birthday or Christmas, and I tell them, and they know better than to act surprised. Most distant family members have never met him, and never asked to. All they know about him is just that he’s not all there, or there’s something not right with him. They don’t want to know any more, so they never say, Oh, he can fish? Or, in the case of my Uncle Michael, Oh, he can swim underwater and then look at his watch while he’s down there? They’re just grateful to be told what to do. Matty took over the whole flat, in the end. You know how kids do. Stuff everywhere.
“It doesn’t matter whether I know who they are or not,” I said. “They belong to Matty.”
“Oh, he’s a big fan of…”
“Just do as you’re told and put them back,” said Martin. “Put them back or get out. How much of a bitch do you really want to be?”
One day, I thought, I’ll learn to say that for myself.
Martin
Matty’s posters weren’t mentioned again that day. We were all curious, of course, but Jess had ensured that JJ and I couldn’t express this curiosity: Jess set things up so that you were either for her or against her, and in this matter, as in so many others, we were against her—which meant staying quiet on this issue. But because we resented being made to stay quiet, we became aggressive and noisy on any other issue we could bring to mind.
“You can’t stand your dad, can you?” I asked her.
“No, course not. He’s a tosser.”
“But you live with him?”
“So?”
“How can you stick it, man?” JJ asked her.
“Can’t afford to move out. Plus they’ve got a cleaner and cable and broadband and all that.”
“Ah, to be young and idealistic and principled!” I said. “Anti-globalization, pro-cleaner, eh?”
“Yeah, I’m really going to be lectured by you two jerks. Plus there’s the other thing. The Jen thing. They worry.”
Ah, yes. The Jen thing. JJ and I were momentarily chastened. Looked at in a certain light, the previous conversation could be summarized as follows: a man recently imprisoned for having sex with a minor, and another who had fabricated a fatal disease because to do so saved him some time, trouble and face had ridiculed a grieving teenager for wanting to be at home with her grieving parents. I made a note to put aside some time later so that I could synopsize it differently.
“We were sorry to hear about your sister,” said Maureen.
“Yeah, well, it didn’t happen yesterday, did it?”
“We were sorry anyway,” said JJ wearily. Conceding the moral high ground to Jess simply meant that she could piss all over everyone until she got thrown off again.
“Got used to it now.”
“Have you?” I asked.
“Sort of…”
“Must be a strange thing to have to get used to.”
“Bit.”
“Don’t you think about it all the time?” JJ asked her.
“Can’t we talk about what we’re supposed to be talking about?”
“Which is what, exactly?”
“About what we’re going to do. About the papers and all that.”
“Do we have to do anything?”
“I think so,” said JJ.
“They’ll forget about us soon, you know,” I said. “It’s only because fuck all happens, sorry, Maureen, at the beginning of the year.”
“What if we don’t want them to forget about us?” said Jess.
“Why the hell would we want them to remember?” I asked her.
“We could make some dosh. And it’d be something to do.”
“What would be something to do?”
“I dunno. I just… I get the feeling that we’re different. That people would like us, and be interested in us.”
“You’re mad.”
“Yeah. Exactly. That’s why they’d be interested in me. I could even play it up a bit, if you like.”
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” I said quickly, on behalf of the three of us, and indeed on behalf of the entire population of Britain. “You’re fine as you are.”
Jess smiled sweetly, surprised by the unsought compliment. “Thanks, Martin. So are you. And you—they’d want to know how you fucked up your life with the girl. And you, JJ, they’d want to know about pizzas and all that. And Maureen could tell everyone about how shit it is living with Matty. See, we’d be like superheroes, the X-Men or whatever. We’ve all got some secret superpower.”
“Yeah,” said JJ. “Right on. I have the superpower of delivering pizzas. And Maureen has the superpower of a disabled son.”
“Well, all right, superpower is the wrong word. But, you know. Some thing .”
“Ah, yes. «Thing». Le mot juste , as ever.”
Jess scowled, but was too besotted by her theme to hit me with the insult my knowledge of a foreign phrase demanded and deserved. “And we could say that we still haven’t decided whether we’re going to actually top ourselves—they’d like that.”
“And if we like actually sold the TV rights to Valentine’s Night… Maybe they could turn it into a Big Brother kinda thing. You could root for the person you wanted to go over,” said JJ.
Jess looked dubious. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “But you know about papers and that, Martin. We could make some money, couldn’t we?”
“Has it occurred to you that I’ve had enough trouble with the papers?”
“Oh, it’s always about you, isn’t it?” said Jess. “What about if there’s a few quid in it for us?”
“But what’s the story?” said JJ. “There’s no story. We went up, we came down, that’s it. People must do that all the time.”
“I’ve been thinking about this. How about if we saw something?” said Jess.
“Like what? What are we supposed to have seen?”
“OK. How about if we saw an angel?”
“An angel,” said JJ flatly.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t see an angel,” said Maureen. “When did you see an angel?”
“No one saw an angel,” I explained. “Jess is proposing that we invent a spiritual experience for financial gain.”
“That’s terrible,” said Maureen, if only because it was so clearly expected of her.