At the end of the first song, Jess started putting her fingers down her throat and making faces.
“But he’s such a drip ,” she said. “He’s like, I dunno, a poet or something.” This was meant to be an insult: I was spending my days with someone who thought that poets were creatures you might find living in your lower intestine.
“I don’t mind it,” said Martin. “I wouldn’t walk out, if he was playing in a wine bar.”
“I would,” said Jess.
I wondered whether it would be possible to punch both of them out simultaneously, but rejected the idea on the grounds that it would all be over too quickly, and there wouldn’t be enough pain involved. I’d want to keep on pummeling them after they were down, which would mean doing them one at a time. It’s music rage, which is like road rage, only more righteous. When you get road rage, a tiny part of you knows you’re being a jerk, but when you get music rage, you’re carrying out the will of God, and God wants these people dead.
And then this weird thing happened, if you can call a deep response to Five Leaves Left weird.
“Have you not got ears?” Maureen said suddenly. “Can’t you hear how unhappy he is, and how beautiful his songs are?”
We looked at her, and then Jess looked at me.
“Ha ha,” said Jess. “You like something Maureen likes.” She sang this last part, like a little kid, nah-nah, nah-nah-nah.
“Don’t pretend to be more foolish than you are, Jess,” said Maureen. “Because you’re foolish enough as it is.” She was steamed. She had the music rage too. “Just listen to him for a moment, and stop blathering.”
And Jess could see that she meant it, and she shut up, and we listened to the whole rest of the album in silence, and if you looked at Maureen closely you could see her eyes were glistening a little.
“When did he die?”
“Nineteen seventy-four. He was twenty-six.”
“Twenty-six.” She was quiet for a moment, thoughtful, and I was really hoping that she was feeling sorry for him and his family. The alternative was that she was envying him for having spared himself all those unnecessary extra years. You want people to respond, but sometimes they can overdo it, you know?
“People don’t want to hear it, do they?” she said.
No one said anything, because we weren’t sure where she was at.
“This is how I feel, every day, and people don’t want to know that. They want to know that I’m feeling what Tom Jones makes you feel. Or that Australian girl who used to be in Neighbours . But I feel like this, and they won’t play what I feel on the radio, because people that are sad don’t fit in.”
We’d never heard Maureen talk like this, didn’t even know she could, and even Jess didn’t want to stop her.
“It’s funny, because people think it’s Matty that stops me fitting in. But Matty’s not so bad. Hard work, but… It’s the way Matty makes me feel that stops me fitting in. You get the weight of everything wrong. You have to guess all the time whether things are heavy or light, especially the things inside you, and you get it wrong, and it puts people off. I’m tired of it.”
And so suddenly Maureen was like my girl, because she got it, and because she felt the music rage too, and I wanted to say the right thing to her. “You need a holiday.”
I said it because I wanted to be sympathetic, but then I remembered Cosmic Tony, and I realized that now Cosmic Tony had the money.
“Hey. What about that? Why not?” I said. “Let’s all take Maureen on holiday somewhere.” Martin burst out laughing.
“Yeah, right,” said Jess. “What are we? Volunteers for like an old folks’ home or something?”
“Maureen’s not old,” I said. “How old are you, Maureen?”
“I’m fifty-one,” she said.
“OK, not an old folks’ home. A boring folks’ home.”
“And what makes you the most fascinating person on the planet?” Martin said.
“I don’t look like that, for a start. Anyways, I thought you were on my side?”
And almost unnoticed, amid all the laughter and the general scorn, Maureen had started to cry.
“I’m sorry, Maureen,” said Martin. “I wasn’t being ungallant. I just couldn’t imagine the four of us sitting around a swimming pool on our sun loungers.”
“No, no,” said Maureen. “I took no offense. Not much, anyway. And I know nobody wants to go on holiday with me, and that’s fine. I just got a bit weepy because JJ suggested it. It’s been a long… Nobody’s… I haven’t… It was just nice of him, that’s all.”
“Oh, fucking hell,” said Martin quietly. Now, “Oh, fucking hell” can mean a lot of different things, as you know, but there was no ambiguity here; we all understood. What Martin meant by “Oh, fucking hell” in this context, if I can explain an obscenity with an obscenity, is that he was fucked. Because what kind of asshole was going to say to Maureen, you know, “Yeah, well, it’s the thought that counts. Hope that’s enough for you.”
And like five days later we were on a plane to Tenerife.
Maureen
It was their decision, not mine. I didn’t feel that I had the right to decide, not really, even though a quarter of the money did belong to me. I was the one who’d suggested the holiday in the first place, to JJ, when we were talking about Cosmic Tony, so I didn’t think it was right that I should join in when they took a vote on it. I think what I did is, I abstained.
It wasn’t as if there was a big argument, though. Everyone was all for it. The only debate was about whether to go now or in the summer, because of the weather, but there was a general feeling that, what with one thing and another, it was better to go now, before Valentine’s Day. For a moment they thought we could afford the Caribbean, Barbados or somewhere, until Martin pointed out that the money we had would have to cover Matty’s time in the care centre as well.
“Let’s go without Maureen, then,” said Jess, and I was hurt, for a moment, until it turned out she was joking.
I can’t remember the last time I wept because I was happy. I’m not saying that because I want people to feel sorry for me; it’s just that it was a strange feeling. When JJ said he had an idea, and then explained what it was, I didn’t even allow myself to think for a moment that it would ever come to anything.
It was funny, but up to that point, we hadn’t really ever been nice to each other. You’d think that would have been a part of the story, considering how we’d met. You’d think this would be the story of four people who met because they were unhappy, and wanted to help each other. But it hadn’t been up until then, not at all, nothing like, unless you count me and Martin sitting on Jess’s head. And even that was being cruel to be kind, rather than kind plain and simple. Up until then it had been the story of four people who met because they were unhappy and then swore at each other. Three of them swore, anyway.
I was making little sobbing noises that embarrassed everyone, myself included.
“F— hell,” said Jess. “It’s only a week in the poxy Canary Isles. I’ve been there. It’s just beaches and clubs and that.”
I wanted to tell Jess that I hadn’t even seen an English beach since Matty left school; they used to take them to Brighton every year, and I went with them once or twice. I didn’t say anything, though. I may not know the weight of many things, but I could feel the weight of that one, so I kept it to myself. You know that things aren’t going well for you when you can’t even tell people the simplest fact about your life, just because they’ll presume you’re asking them to feel sorry for you. I suppose it’s why you feel so far away from everyone, in the end; anything you can think of to tell them just ends up making them feel terrible.
I want to describe every moment of the journey, because it seemed so exciting, but that would probably be a mistake, too. If you’re like everybody else then you’ll already know what an airport looks like, what it sounds and smells like, and if I tell you about it, then it would be just another way of saying that I haven’t seen the sea for ten years. I’d got a one-year passport from the post office, and even that caused too much excitement, because I saw one or two people from the church in the queue, and they know I’m not a big traveler. One of the people I saw was Bridgid, the woman who didn’t invite me to the New Year’s Eve party I didn’t go to; one day, I thought, I’ll tell her how she helped me to take my first trip abroad. I’d really have to know how much things weighed before I tried that, though.