On 'Bad' Endings
This is a little bit about GO3 and a little bit about my relationship with stories, and particularly endings. It's also proper wanky, as is my right as a wanker, and it adds virtually nothing to any discussion, be warned.
My favourite novel has a 'bad' ending. 'Bad', because the peace the characters find is not the peace I wanted for them. They are beholden to the obscure whims of an unknowable, inescapable God who I can't bring myself to believe is compassionate. Their God lets them wander to the ends of the world and then, with a twitch upon the thread, pulls them back (a bit like an ethereal toddler leash). Perhaps, if you're religious, it might be comforting. Perhaps some readers are comforted (I don't think the author intended to comfort anyone in his life, ever).
On each reread, I want the words on the page to suddenly shift and change, and for my beloved characters to have their happy ending. I want them to dwell forever in Arcadia; I want them to stay in the garden. I want them to barricade the low door in the wall against their meddling destinies, and I want them to drink champagne and eat plover's eggs and lie in the sun.
But, of course, the story ends the same way it always does.
So, I close the book, and go about my day (/week) feeling like my insides have been hollowed out with a melon scoop, sometimes trying (in vain) to pinpoint the exact moment when these characters might have reclaimed their lives and escaped the unseen hand of fate. What if, at the end of the first chapter, I could sneak them a pair of sharp scissors to cut the invisible thread? A sort of literary legerdemain while the tyrant had the sun in His eyes. No-one would have to know.
(Except I’d know.)
Anyway, it doesn’t matter - if the characters had made their audacious escape early on, I wouldn’t feel the need to emotionally eviscerate myself on a yearly basis. I wouldn't have memorised each line that hints at the fragile possibility of happiness. I wouldn't look at the sky on a cloudless day in June and have intrusive un-agnostic thoughts, and I wouldn’t drag myself out of bed at 3am to find the right page and confirm that a half-remembered sentence hadn't sneakily revised itself.
The 'bad' endings work their way in, like a sliver of glass trapped beneath a fingernail years ago which, every now and then, reappears, surging up beneath the skin and looking for a way out. 'Bad' endings flare up in the depths of winter when the sun will never come out again, and in summer when there's nothing but dry, brown grass and unending days. Sometimes I forget how to have feelings, and that’s when the ‘bad’ endings help the most. I can prod at them and push them a little deeper and wake up that old pain.
Where does GO3 fit in? I guess because I have a new glass splinter to add to my collection. I haven't felt this way about a story in a long time. Perhaps it is more special because it holds a mirror to the other 'bad' endings that haunt me. It’s still grief wrapped around hope and choice swaddled by fate, and I’ll probably lie awake and wonder where in the story I could pass Aziraphale or Crowley the scissors without anyone catching on (all the while knowing I don’t really want to, and, besides - it turns out they had the scissors all along).
My worst fear was that I would be indifferent, but I’m whatever the opposite of indifferent is, which is maybe just different. There were probably other endings that would have satisfied me, and I could have smiled and nodded and walked away.
But, instead, it had a ‘bad’ ending, and all I can say to that is ‘thank God’.
