Falling Over (18 page)

“Hurry up with that,” Joel said. “With that trash,” he added.

“Did you know your face is in the newspaper?” Ian said.

“What?” Joel couldn’t see the meaning of Ian’s joke. “Fuck off.”

“Look” – Ian refused to give him the paper, but showed him the offending page. The usual tabloid schlock, he saw, but off to one side of the ‘news’ (above an advert for an internet clairvoyant) was a thumb smudged photograph of Joel, close up and face on, like a passport photo or a mug-shot. The photo was a grainy black and white, and Joel couldn’t see where or how it had been taken. It was outlined with a black frame, and captioned with his name and age (except they were a year out). Nothing about the photo had any relation to the rest of the page; but there it was.

“That’s not me,” Joel said pointlessly. “Is this some kind of joke?” He wasn’t looking at Ian, but still staring at the newspaper page, waiting for something to click and make sense, like an optical illusion when you saw it the other way. He reached for the paper, wanting to take hold of it, to see if the mirage would fade at a closer distance, to be able to crumple the paper up with a laugh when he had seen the trick. But Ian moved it out of his reach.

“I’m
reading
that!”

“Ian, it’s got my fucking photo in!” Joel said.

“So what?
I’m
reading it.”

He must be in on it, Joel thought, taking a step back from his housemate. He couldn’t have said why he felt agitated and threatened by seeing his face in the paper – after all, how did an obvious mistake at the printers actually affect his life? It was either an accident or a joke – there was no ‘why’ to it, no reason to intellectualise about it and expect any reward. But his mind was agitated and couldn’t let it go – there must be some symbolism or causation he had missed. His hangover reminded him of its presence, and he winced and hung his head. Ian retreated back behind the paper, and Joel couldn’t help but be suspicious. He went to make himself a coffee, figuring caffeine would be good for his nerves. He felt dislocated in the kitchen, because his mind was still thinking of the paper in the front room. Before the kettle had even half boiled he stormed back into the lounge. It had
his
picture in for fuck’s sake!

“
Give
it to me,” he said, but Ian was gone. He’d taken the newspaper with him.

Joel stood still for a second; he felt like something was going to happen, but nothing was. The kettle shrieked and silenced itself behind him. He told himself that nothing of significance had occurred, that his day was unchanged. He told himself that going up to Ian’s room and demanding the paper would be childish and be admitting that it mattered. If this was a joke he was best off acting like he wasn’t bothered. He went to make himself a black coffee and sat and read his own newspaper again, cover to cover. Everything he read seemed logical and realistic and quotidian, even the disasters and the remorseless wars, and none of it went any way to explaining why he still felt so sick and why his nerves had begun to clench at the slightest sound outside.

~

Joel paused in the act of unlocking the front-door, wondering if what he was about to do was wise. They were only people and he’d done nothing wrong. But again, he thought of newspapers naming and shaming, of gypsies handed round the country, of real petrol shortages caused by front-page lies about queues, of paediatricians beaten up by idiots who’d only half-read their idiot stories – he imagined the people who did such things looked exactly like the gaggle outside his house (he was looking through the spy-hole in the door): slack jawed and almost eager to be losing their identity, their arms hanging loosely for lack of action.

You’re just being snobbish, he told himself, you don’t even know that your photo appearing in that paper is the cause of all this. But he didn’t see how it could be otherwise: they had printed his face two days in a row, and no doubt a third time today. What had they printed today – an explanation? As he looked out at the crowd he suspected the paper had printed something more prosaic – an address. They had done that for people on the child-crimes register, he remembered, until the police complained.

Joel straightened up from the spy-hole – he had to do
something
. The people outside were normal people and would listen to reason. He unlocked the door and flung it open; sunlight flooded in and he flinched like it was something unnatural, because he had been procrastinating in the ill-lit hall for so long. The people outside paused; words Joel had been unaware of died from their lips. Their eyes widened in unison; Joel tried to catch the gaze of a couple of them, but failed. He felt a curious lack of empathy, which he fought against. They didn’t move.

“Hi,” Joel said, wanting to sound normal; the words chocked in his throat and sounded weak. “Hello,” he repeated. Someone shouted something at him, coarse and angry. Someone took a step towards him, as if to start a rush, but no momentum built up behind, and the man looked around at his fellows, confused and off balance. He was a young man, Joel’s age, dressed in such a way that under different circumstances Joel would have assumed that their tastes were similar. The man swore at him, but the feeling that in a different world his words would have been friendly didn’t leave Joel. The guy was
Ian’s
age too, he thought. “Look,
what’s going on?
” Joel said, his voice raised, speaking directly to the young man who had taken a step forward. The inane thought that they both had the same trainers clouded Joel’s mind, and he shook his head. “What is going on?” he repeated.

The young man looked back at the the crowd, and then raised his fist at Joel and started shouting. It was no chant, and any rhythm was a by-product of his anger. His face was twisted and transformed, and Joel wasn’t sure if his feeling of dislocation was because what he was seeing was unrealistic, or because what he had been expecting had been. His head swam as if processing two different sets of sensory impressions together – the words of the boy in the crowd recombined in forms he couldn’t understand, a Doppler-effect between them.

“
Please
just tell me why...” Joel started to say in exasperation. The young man’s face twisted in anger at his appeal, and he took another step towards him; this time a few of the others did too. They only need to get slightly more worked up, Joel thought, and they’ll rush me. He half wished they would – then he could sue their asses off. But the feeling of potential violence unnerved him, and instead he shut the door. The last thing he saw was some of the crowd bending down, as if to pick up stones.

~

The kids had been shouting and swearing at everyone; it wasn’t just him. Joel kept his head down as he walked. Monday – and he wasn’t at work.

He had called the agency that morning but they had said there was no work, not with the downturn. It was the first time the employment agency had failed to find him an assignment – maybe he should sign up with another? But Joel felt a sense of fatalism, of lethargy – not that nothing mattered, but that what did matter wasn’t here. Something had yet to begin. It was a stupid feeling, undeniable.

“Fuckin’ layabout!” one of the kids called again, triggering giggles and expletives from his friends. “Fuckin’ student!” – but, Joel realised, that last insult had come from a different angle, been in a deeper register. He looked up and saw workmen leering from some scaffolding, swearing and doing mincing impressions of him. Joel wanted to give them the finger, but didn’t dare. He just carried on walking. He wasn’t going anywhere, but he hadn’t wanted to stay inside. He had been brooding in there, and he had thought that leaving the house would break the chain between what had happened yesterday and his current state of mind. But every time he tried to think of something else his errant thoughts found a way back home –
his picture had been in the newspaper and he didn’t know why
.

Where had Ian gone yesterday? After he had disappeared with the paper Joel had stayed in all day but not seen him again. The waiting had stopped him doing anything, and been pointless for he hadn’t known what he would say to Ian if he did see him; hadn’t known why he wanted him to return. He had read his own paper a third time, and maybe it had been his mood but this time it seemed dumbed-down and tabloidesque: the way they crowed about the resignation of a Minister that they claimed to have predicted the day before; the self-fulfilling prophecy of the Fashion section, predicting next season’s trends. When Joel had forced himself to bed, Ian hadn’t been back; before Joel had risen Ian had presumably already left for work.

But you’re being stupid, Joel thought. Ian’s wasn’t the only copy of that newspaper in the world. There were at least three newsagents within walking distance. He sped up, leaving the taunting kids behind, pleased that his walk now had some purpose. Maybe he would find that the other copies of yesterday’s paper were normal, and that the whole thing had been a joke. He imagined some standard story of jingoism or whipped up paranoia in place of his mug-shot.

“Have you got any copies of yesterday’s papers left?” he asked the teenager behind the counter at the nearest newsagent. The boy looked at him like he was an idiot, shook his head at him like he was deaf. Embarrassed, Joel bought a copy of that day’s paper instead, aware that the lad was still staring at him. He tried to look normal. He didn’t want the paper – he stood outside and flicked through the pages, ready to dump it into the bin as soon as he had checked its contents. The stories and photographs jerked from page to page like a faulty flick-book. It was enough to establish that the world and the paper’s view of it hadn’t changed: celebrity scandals that kept them celebrities, feel-good charity and knee-jerk editorials, stories of foreign disasters in which one British person had grazed their knee. Earthbound astrologers and money-off coupons. His face.

Joel almost dropped the paper. He stared at his own face staring back. It was a different shot, at a different angle, taken outside for there was a green blur for a backdrop (he had warranted colour this time). Again there was no context, no connection with the news stories on the page. But there was a longer caption this time: again Joel’s name and age, but it also said CURRENTLY UNEMPLOYED.

“What the fuck?” Joel said out-loud; an old lady glared at him, her small dog yapped and glared at him too. She was still twittering and muttering to herself as she tied her dog to a lamppost and went into the newsagent. He glared back at the dog, disliking the way it had absorbed its owner’s pre-war conservatism. The pet strained on its leash and looked as if it wanted to attack him, yapping its self-importance to the street. Joel didn’t turn away but stood watching the little beast. Eventually its owner came back out the shop – is she still muttering about me? Joel thought.

She had a newspaper tucked under one arm – the same one he’d just bought.

Joel went back into the shop, not putting his new paranoia under scrutiny. He bought every copy of the newspaper that had printed his photo. Again, the boy behind the counter looked at him like he was crazy; Joel could barely carry them all up to the till. “I’m collecting the coupons,” he said to the boy’s look of tensed incredulity.

Later, at the recycling centre, he checked each copy before he threw it into the paper-bank. Not only for an absence of his face with real news in its place (although that would have been welcome) but, if his face had to be there then he was looking for an
explanation
. A paragraph misplaced from earlier editions, a sentence maybe, that would tell why he was considered newsworthy. He felt like even a comma in the right place would lead to clarification. But the papers were identical, and by the time he’d checked them all his hands were black with print.

CURRENTLY UNEMPLOYED
he thought – how had they known? The agency had only told him they had no work this morning, otherwise he would have been in some office or warehouse as normal. But, Joel supposed that was the least of the mystery. He headed back home, weary, sweaty, his face smudged with ink where he had wiped away his perspiration. The builders took another break to do impressions of him; kids shouted and swore in his face then ran away giggling. He could no longer pretend that it wasn’t directed towards him personally.

When he reached his front door it was dripping with smashed eggs – Halloween come early. Those fucking kids, he thought as he looked at the mess, shell and slime like some form of obscure and threatening graffiti; meaning warped as it slid downwards.

~

Ian’s bedroom window faced the street, where the crowd gathered; Joel’s room was at the back of the house, with a view of the small garden, more gravel than grass, surrounded by low, stone walls. Over the other side he could see other people’s back gardens, and the alleys that led down the side of their houses to the front of their streets. Even from his back room, Joel could hear the crowd. It was still a small mob, the last he had looked, unsure of itself or its geography, and they had no presence on any other road.

Outside into the garden, Joel thought, over the wall and a quick sprint and he could escape and go – where? And to what purpose?

To find today’s newspaper was one reason, he thought, to find out what those bastards have written about me today. For surely, whatever text accompanied his picture on this third day must be more substantial than merely his name and a misquoted age? Surely, to draw this crowd there must have been
allegations
, something factual that he could refute. Those people round the front of his house had to be there for a reason. It wasn’t enough to think that the mere appearance of his face in the press could have caused this display of ill-feeling. No, it had to be that they thought he’d done something which they wouldn’t; that he had something that they wanted.

He went to the other side of the house, to Ian’s old room. The noise of the crowd was louder – the neighbours must be disturbed by it, Joel thought, why hadn’t they complained? Why was this being allowed to continue?

All these questions are getting you nowhere, he thought.