Excerpt of A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
(Page 3 of 6)
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So even though I could see straight away that he wasn't at this
party, I stayed for a while. Where else was I going to go? I was
feeling sorry for myself. How can you be eighteen and not have
anywhere to go on New Year's Eve, apart from some shit party in some
shit squat where you don't know anybody? Well, I managed it. I seem to
manage it every year. I make friends easily enough, but then I piss
them off, I know that much, even if I'm not sure why or how. And so
people and parties disappear.
I pissed Jen off, I'm sure of that. She disappeared, like everyone
else.
MARTIN
I'd spent the previous couple of months looking up suicide inquests
on the Internet, just out of curiosity. And nearly every single time,
the coroner says the same thing: "He took his own life while the
balance of his mind was disturbed." And then you read the story about
the poor bastard: his wife was sleeping with his best friend, he'd
lost his job, his daughter had been killed in a road accident some
months before.... Hello, Mr Coroner? Anyone at home? I'm sorry, but
there's no disturbed mental balance here, my friend. I'd say he got it
just right. Bad thing upon bad thing upon bad thing until you can't
take any more, and then it's off to the nearest multi-storey car park
in the family hatchback with a length of rubber tubing. Surely that's
fair enough? Surely the coroner's inquest should read, "He took his
own life after sober and careful contemplation of the fucking shambles
it had become"?
Not once did I read a newspaper report, which convinced me that the
deceased was off the old trolley. You know: "The Manchester United
forward, who was engaged to the current Miss Sweden, had recently
achieved a unique Double: he is the only man ever to have won the FA
Cup and an Oscar for Best Actor in the same year. The rights to his
first novel had just been bought for an undisclosed sum by Stephen
Spielberg. He was found hanging from a beam in his stables by a member
of his staff." Now, I've never seen a coroner's report like that, but
if there were cases in which happy, successful, talented people took
their own lives, one could safely come to the conclusion that the old
balance was indeed wonky. And I'm not saying that being engaged to
Miss Sweden, playing for Manchester United and winning Oscars
inoculates you against depression - I'm sure it doesn't. I'm just
saying that these things help. Look at the statistics. You're more
likely to top yourself if you've just gone through a divorce. Or if
you're anorexic. Or if you're unemployed. Or if you're a prostitute.
Or if you've fought in a war, or if you've been raped, or if you've
lost somebody..... There are lots and lots of factors that push people
over the edge; none of these factors are likely to make you feel
anything but fucking miserable.
Two years ago Martin Sharp would not have found himself sitting on
a tiny concrete ledge in the middle of the night, looking a hundred
feet down at a concrete walkway and wondering whether he'd hear the
noise that his bones made when they shattered into tiny pieces. But
two years ago Martin Sharp was a different person. I still had my job.
I still had a wife. I hadn't slept with a fifteen-year-old. I hadn't
been to prison. I hadn't had to talk to my young daughters about a
front-page tabloid newspaper article, an article headlined with the
word SLEAZEBAG! and illustrated with a picture of me lying on the
pavement outside a well-known London nightspot. (What would the
headline have been if I had gone over? "SLEAZY DOES IT!" perhaps. Or
maybe "SHARP END!") There was, it is fair to say, less reason for
ledge-sitting before all that happened. So don't tell me that the
balance of my mind was disturbed, because it really didn't feel that
way. (What does it mean, anyway, that stuff about "the balance of the
mind"? Is it strictly scientific? Does the mind really wobble up and
down in the head like some sort of fish-scale, according to how loopy
you are?) Wanting to kill myself was an appropriate and reasonable
response to a whole series of unfortunate events that had rendered
life unlivable. Oh, yes, I know the shrinks would say that they could
have helped, but that's half the trouble with this bloody country,
isn't it? No one's willing to face their responsibilities. It's always
someone else's fault. Boo-hoo-hoo. Well, I happen to be one of those
rare individuals who believe that what went on with Mummy and Daddy
had nothing to do with me screwing a fifteen-year-old. I happen to
believe that I would have slept with her regardless of whether I'd
been breast-fed or not, and it was time to face up to what I'd done.
And what I'd done is, I'd pissed my life away. Literally. Well, OK,
not literally literally. I hadn't, you know, turned my life into urine
and stored it in my bladder and so on and so forth. But I felt as if
I'd pissed my life away in the same way that you can piss money away.
I'd had a life, full of kids and wives and jobs and all the usual
stuff, and I'd somehow managed to mislay it. No, you see, that's not
right. I knew where my life was, just as you know where money goes
when you piss it away. I hadn't mislaid it at all. I'd spent it. I'd
spent my kids and my job and my wife on teenage girls and nightclubs:
these things all come at a price, and I'd happily paid it, and
suddenly my life wasn't there any more. What would I be leaving
behind? On New Year's Eve, it felt as though I'd be saying goodbye to
a dim form of consciousness and a semi-functioning digestive system -
all the indications of a life, certainly, but none of the content. I
didn't even feel sad, particularly. I just felt very stupid, and very
angry.
Copyright Nick Hornby 2005. All rights reserved. Reproduced by the permission of Putnam Publishing. No part of this book maybe reproduced without written permission from the publisher.
