Falling Over (19 page)

But he still felt reluctant to actually do anything. After all, he’d first thought of escaping via the back garden hours ago – hopping over a low wall and running to an empty street was hardly a plan of genius –  but he hadn’t acted on it. Just like had been reluctant to call the police, his friends; even his family. Anything he did would be an admittance that this wasn’t just going to blow over, that despite the unrealistic and other-worldly aspect that it had, it was all real enough.

He opened the window in Ian’s room, and looked down at the people gathered outside his house. There was a pause in their chanting, they held up their arms to him – all Joel could see was a sea of clutching hands. The crowd cried out angrily, as if they had all just had the same thought. It was if they expected their cries to move him, their grasping hands to reach him, to draw him down into their embrace, to feel the full force of their anger. Joel leaned forward to get a better count of them. Maybe twenty five, thirty – it was impossible to be accurate. Something thrown slammed against the window pane, and Joel recoiled, but it was only an egg. Joel hastily shut the window again, for he didn’t want to prompt a barrage, and as he did so he felt a strange feeling of both relief and disappointment. He imagined falling from that window, arms folded, into that waiting crowd. It would certainly be a way to end it.

And that was why he really hadn’t called up his mates, or the police, or made a dash for it – because what if that didn’t end it? What if his final card was played but the game carried on? He felt an edge of fear at the thought, the more fearful because he sensed it could become uncontrollable, sensed that his actions and emotions could become as irrational and senseless as those of the people surrounding his home.

It was just gone half past two – it was summertime. Joel told himself there were hours of daylight yet. There was no need to do anything straight away (although the thought of them still there, shouting and edging towards his door come darkness was not one that he wanted to think).

Joel left Ian’s bedroom, walked along the landing towards his own room. There was the slam of something against the front window, and he turned automatically to look. Something about the view, and his nervous state, triggered a memory – Ian. Ian on the day he had left. Joel remembered the insults, the feeling that they had been teetering on the edge of irrational violence. And hadn’t that been another change in pressure; looking back now didn’t Ian’s actions seem like the harbinger of what was to come, hadn’t his personality then been a single-sized version of that of the crowd outside?

Joel decided that he
did
have to leave the house as soon as he could after all. Because there was no reason why Ian couldn’t return, and Ian still had a key.

~

He had entered the house, not bothering to clean off the dripping egg behind him, and shut the doors on the shouts of the kids outside.

“Ian?” he had called. “Is anyone there?” – like he was one of those people who deserve to get got in horror movies. He had been unnerved by the silence of the house after the clamour of the street, and although he knew Ian obviously wasn’t home it was hard not to tread quietly, to crane his neck at every imaginary sound.

Ian should be back from work by now, Joel thought some hours later. He didn’t know when he had last even seen him – but yes he did, it had been Sunday morning, Ian’s face hidden behind that tabloid with the CELEBRITY EXCLUSIVE! on the front cover. “Do you know your face is in the paper?”... that was pretty much the last he’d seen of him. It’s ridiculous, Joel thought, where the hell is he? His housemate’s disappearance just seemed one more stupid thing, after his sacking, after his mug-shot appearing in place of real news. The ambiguities seemed to be piling up. Joel felt that if he could just find out where Ian had gone, then it would at least take the edge off his other vague anxieties – prove right the voice that whispered that there was a reason for these things happening, just like there was for everything. Maybe, finding Ian would actually resolve some of the other mysteries too, like the neat and tidy ending of a well scripted film.

Besides, Joel thought, as he climbed the stairs towards Ian’s bedroom, maybe he
is
in there, ill or hurt and I can help. He knew this thought was fantasy but it carried him up to the closed door.

The door to Ian’s room was frosted glass, and Joel couldn’t see anything but the light-shape of the front window as he peered in. He knocked, stupidly, leaving a pause so that Ian could reply and straighten things out, leaving the pause longer and longer until it got ridiculous and Joel had to admit that no one was in there. He knocked again, then opened the door, feeling a sense of transgression. As he pushed it open the door was blocked by something – Joel pushed harder, felt something move back. It was a cardboard box, with all Ian’s CDs inside of it. It looked like it had been sealed shut with Sellotape, but it was coming unpeeled. The wardrobe door swung open as Joel entered, like a mouth hanging gaping and empty; the coat-hangers were bare and shirts and suits were thrown all over the bed. Is he going away? Joel thought – it looked more like he was moving out.

The wastepaper bin was overflowing – not knowing why, Joel moved over. Bare floorboards betrayed him to the empty house. He picked the contents out of the litter bin – the surprise he felt was automatic, conditioned behaviour. Deep down he wasn’t surprised by what he had picked up: newspaper, tabloid. Each double page had been separated and screwed up into a ball; Joel unfolded them all, seeing how the stories from the front of the paper segued into those from the back. Anyone would think that there was an election on by the attacks at “woolly liberals”; anyone would think there was a war on by the paranoid insistence to close the borders. All spilling into gurning celebrity endorsements, and feel-good sporting jingoism. Joel found the page with his face on, and unfolded and smoothed it out as best he could. Someone had viciously and comprehensively scribbled his eyes and mouth out with black pen.

He heard a noise downstairs, and he would have had chance to get away but he had been deep in thought, and the sound of the door chimed with his thoughts because despite the time of day it sounded like a newspaper being delivered – an addendum maybe, a recall and retraction. So he stood up slowly, didn’t think to disguise his footsteps as he walked across the wooden floor of Ian’s bedroom. He practically crashed into his housemate in the doorway, almost chest to chest. He had probably never been so physically close to Ian; certainly he had never realised how tall he was before.

“What the
fuck
,” Ian said, “are you doing in my bedroom?” Looking back, Joel realised Ian had been angry already, somehow, there had been no escalation of the argument because it was like they had been pitched forward ten minutes into the crux of it; as if Joel had missed the intervening sections, the exposition.

“Look, Ian, I was just...” Joel said, but his words lacked strength and he had no ready explanation to hand. Ian was like some violent force gathering in the doorway. “What the fuck...” he started to repeat, but stopped and shoved Joel instead. Joel was off balance and almost fell over the box of CDs behind him. He had been ready for an argument, not a fight, and he felt sick with sudden fear. But there was no sense that this was unexpected, not in the sense that it didn’t follow naturally from what had happened before. It made no sense but he thought of a triangle inevitably gathering to a point. Joel regained his balance, backed away, hands raised.

“Now
look!
” he said. “I heard... a, a noise. I came in to see what... it must have been a draught...” Ian shoved him again. Joel did fall this time, striking his head against the bed with such force he couldn't hear properly. Ian was shouting, advancing. Joel scrambled to his feet, aware that there was not much further space he could back into. Was his head really ringing? He could hear the
noise
of Ian’s shouting, just not the actual words. He shook his head, and the sounds came slightly back into focus. But Ian had reverted to asking him what the fuck he thought he was doing in his room.

“This is ridiculous!” Joel shouted, suddenly angry at this further stupidity, this further mess that he didn’t need. “I’m sorry if I came into your room, alright, but this is...” His thoughts changed tack: “Why are you
packing?
Are you moving out?”

Ian hit him, swearing something as he did so.

Joel fell over again, hands clutched to his face where he had been punched – his split lip dribbled blood over his chin. He landed in among the sheets of newspaper that he had flattened out, as if ready-placed to absorb his bleeding.

“I ought to make you eat that fuckin’ newspaper!” Ian shouted. “I ought to make you choke on it!” There seemed to be some sense in his words that this would have been a
fitting
punishment, as if it would have satisfied some crude and demotic symbolism. But at that point Joel was more worried that Ian would make his threats true than clarifying what they meant. He could imagine the taste of ink, the taste of the balls of newspaper that Ian had rolled up again being fed one after another down his throat, ticklish and denying him breath. Imagined too Ian hitting him again and again, as if to scribble out his features just as he’d scribbled them out on the page.

Joel looked up, but thankfully Ian was still where he had been. His housemate looked behind him, as if there was someone there, but naturally there wasn’t. His temper didn’t seem to diminish but became more uncertain somehow, less sure of itself. He wasn’t as big as he had seemed – Joel watched as Ian went back to the doorway, held the door open for him.

“Get out,” he said, his mouth tight with distaste as he looked down at Joel sprawled on the floor.

“But,” Joel said, “Ian, why are you...?”

“Get out! Get out you fuckin’ freak!” – fearing another outbreak of violence, worse this time, more fearsome and irredeemable, Joel scuttled to his own bedroom, shut the door behind. He stood there, still and tensed, ear against the frosted glass of his own door. He heard the muffled sound of Ian carrying his things downstairs, struggling with the boxes and suitcases on the stairs. Joel was scared that Ian would come for him again, but half wanted him to as well. He found that he was shaking with an anger whose strength surprised him, a kind of anger he had felt rational, well-rounded people didn’t feel. He half-wished that Ian would try to come into his room so that he could stand up and demand to know what the hell was going on; and to punch the fucker if he was accused of being a whiny liberal again. But he still shrank every time it sounded like footsteps were heading his way.

Eventually he heard the front-door open and shut; no sound of keys being pushed through the letterbox though. Maybe Ian wasn’t really moving out for good? Not that he cared – let the fucker go, Joel thought, he could manage the rent on his own. Quite how, without a job, was a thought that could wait for a cooler and more rational day. Cautiously, he went downstairs and found everything alcoholic that might help him sleep. Then he crept back up to his room and tried to calm his nerves. He tried to text some friends three times, but gave up – he couldn’t express how he felt in abbreviations and text-speak. And besides, what if his mates replied with scorn, and it was his expectation of anything otherwise that was unworldly, naïve? Ian’s seen that paper, he thought, they’ve all seen the paper. He didn’t know why that thought felt important, because it was just a picture, a mistake of a picture at that. But he didn’t call them.

Instead he got drunk on his own, and watched zombie films, and couldn’t sleep.

Outside, next morning, was a crowd.

~

Joel took a final look at the people outside his house – in full view in the top window his appearance caused a ripple of movement, a braying and confused sound that could have been words. But little more than that – unless I actually throw myself to the wolves I’m quite safe, Joel thought. They’re quite witless at the moment. But that could all change if Ian returned, he could be the catalyst they needed. Joel had made up his mind to leave the house. But he had wanted to take one last look at the crowd to try and determine the common denominator in all those upturned and slack-jawed faces – what made
these
people want to come and rant outside his house? But there was no similarity that he could distinguish – the clouds made the light bad and smudged people’s features; to Joel they looked non-descript, men and women so generic he could picture them in any job, being in any alignment or relationship.

Mentally shrugging, trying to shake off his failure (and he knew it was a failure) Joel turned and walked out of Ian’s room. He went across the landing and into his own room, and over to the wardrobe, trying to find clothes with which to disguise himself from people who had only ever seen photographs of his face.

~

The escape from his own house went much as he’d pictured. He went out into the back garden, glad it was sealed off and invisible to the street – was it his imagination or did they sound more restless and volatile out front, more violent even? Then a scramble over his back wall and into the garden beyond. I am a criminal now, Joel thought vaguely; trespass. The garden he was in was an unkempt patch of grass, upon which a group of electrical goods were leaking old oil. The sound of the mob already seemed fainter, impotent, less pressing on the ear than the territorial call of a house sparrow eyeing him watchfully. Joel lurched into an unhurried jog round the side of the dull brick house, and out into the main road.

Immediately he saw two people running, past him, round the corner which Joel had cut by his vault over the wall. They ignored him in their single-minded race towards his house. The look on their faces made Joel’s new confidence quaver – he hadn’t realised how close to violence these people were. He walked in the opposite direction as quickly as he could. What could these people possibly be accusing him of? Yet he felt no anger, but an obscure guilt, as he remembered the petty wrongs of his life: the girls lied to, the friends let slip, the usual moments of apathy, snobbery, or dogmatism. What was in that fucking newspaper? his thoughts repeated without their previous incredulity. Where had they begun?