When We Were Young

by Richard Roper

  “Let’s all calm down, shall we,” she said.

  “No,” Mike snapped. “He can’t swear at me like that. He needs to learn.”

  But Mum stood her ground. I could see Mike’s fists were clenched hard.

  “Why don’t you go outside for a moment, get some air, and I’ll talk to Joel.” Mum sounded nervous. I hated hearing that in her voice.

  Reluctantly, Mike left through the back door.

  “Joel . . . ,” Mum said, but I shrugged her off and sprinted upstairs. I knew she was going to try to justify Mike’s behavior somehow, but I just didn’t understand why. I stood by my bed, breathing heavily, and then anger took hold and I swung at the wall, punching it over and over again until my hand went numb.

  Of course, Mike bought Mum some flowers and me a PlayStation. He said he’d been under lots of stress at work—that he wouldn’t lose his temper again. I left the PlayStation in its box. I knew it was only a matter of time before it happened again.

  Sure enough, by the time winter arrived that year, they were back to having shouting matches. I appalled myself at how much of a coward I was for hiding upstairs. Dad’s words about me being the man of the house taunted me. From that point on, home seemed to simmer with tension. The new rule was I had to be back for dinner every night, but I didn’t get why when meals were eaten in silence. Mike sat in his chair in the living room late into the evenings, watching old war films and smoking. I hated the smell of that stale smoke.

  One night at dinner, he threw a glass against the wall because he’d had a text telling him a month’s worth of work was canceled. When Mum cleaned it up, she cut her finger on the glass and he called her clumsy. I stood up, as did Mike, but Mum looked at me, desperation in her eyes, and I sat back down, pushing food around my plate and trying not to cry.

  All the guilt, all the shame, all the effort of trying to hide how upset I was, how part of me blamed Mum for letting Mike into our lives . . . I just wanted to escape it. The solution came from Tom, a kid in our class who, it turned out, ran a pretty successful weed operation. I managed to sell the idea to Theo that getting high would be a creative spark for our writing.

  “It worked for Lenny Bruce,” Theo mused.

  We went to our usual spot by the Thames Head stone, shivering as the lightest of snow fell. We listened to Lenny’s Berkeley Concert album, sharing headphones. By the time the tape ended, Theo’s eyes were half-closed, and he had such a ridiculous smile on his face that I started to giggle.

  “What?” he said. “What’s so funny?”

  I tried my best to explain, but the more quizzically he looked at me, the harder I laughed, and soon we were both helpless. Sitting in that field with my best friend, laughing so hard it hurt—it was exactly what I’d needed, and in that moment Mike and the horror show at home may as well have been on a different planet. So when Theo jumped up onto the headstone and started talking about us walking the Thames Path one day, I might have been ribbing him with all his talk of “wenches” and bringing his accordion, but in reality I found myself thinking that as long as I had Theo in my life, the person I knew who could help me escape when things were going wrong, then everything would probably be okay. I grabbed him around the shoulder and we walked off down the lane, swaying woozily, only untangling our arms when we got to his house.

  There we ordered pizza and I did my best not to seem too stoned in front of his parents. I’d never spent much time in the same room as his sister, Alice, but despite only being eleven, she was so sardonic and cutting to Theo that even if I hadn’t been high, I’d have been laughing like an idiot. She was drawing at the kitchen table, a brilliant caricature of Theo, captioned simply, and brilliantly: “Theodore D. Poosevelt.” I nearly lost my mind when she slipped it to me under the table. Theo saw what was happening and tried to grab it, but I passed it back to Alice and she sprinted away from Theo and began doing laps around the living room with her brother in hot pursuit. Theo’s mum, Angie, tried her best to contain them, but she was laughing still—even more so when Geoff, Theo’s dad, began playing the Benny Hill song on an imaginary trumpet.

  When everything had finally calmed down, Angie tried to insist that I stay for ice cream, but I knew that with every second that passed without me forcing myself out into the dark and back home, the punishment waiting for me would only be getting worse. And so I thanked Theo’s parents for having me and told Alice to keep up the good work insulting her brother.

  Just as I was about to leave, Theo told me he needed to give me something. It was a parcel, wrapped up in seemingly never-ending layers of wrapping paper and parcel tape.

  “Early Christmas present,” he explained. “See you tomorrow.”

  My happiness at this unexpected gift was short-lived. I knew I was in trouble the moment I came through the front door at home.

  “We were supposed to be having dinner as a family,” Mum said, while Mike simmered behind her at the kitchen table, arms folded.

  “But we’re not a family,” I said. I pushed past her and made for the stairs, but Mike leaped up and grabbed me by the arm.

  “Your mum wants you to sit down.”

  I looked at Mum.

  “Mike,” she said. “It’s okay.”

  “No, it isn’t fucking okay,” Mike said quietly, still gripping my arm. There was a standoff.

  I could feel the blood throbbing in my ears as I realized Mike needed to vent his anger, and it was either me or Mum.

  “Mike,” Mum was pleading now, “there’s no need for this, just let him go now—I’m not cross, really. We can have dinner another night.”

  At last, I made up my mind. Mike wasn’t going to touch Mum tonight. But just as I tensed—to do what, I wasn’t sure—Mike let me go.

  “Think I’d waste my energy on you?” He grabbed his keys from the sideboard.

  “Oh, are you going out, love?” Mum asked.

  “Pub,” Mike grunted, slamming the door behind him.

  Mum put on her Everything’s fine voice and tried to ask me about school, but I shook my head and stomped up the stairs to my room. I lay on my bed and turned up my music, trying to drown out the sounds of carols coming from below. A brief, unlikely rap battle ensued, N.W.A. versus the King’s College Choir:

  “Straight outta Compton . . .”

  “. . . All is calm, all is bright . . .”

  As the urge to scrape my knuckles on the wall became irresistible, I realized I was still clutching the present Theo had given me. He’d wrapped it so tightly, I had to rip the corner with my teeth and prize the paper open. What I pulled out was a binder, the size of a paperback. It was everything we’d ever written together—scripts, sketches, half-thought-out ideas. He’d collated it all.

  I flipped the book to its cover. Underneath a drawing of Theo and me, Alice’s handiwork, were the words Theo and Joel: Quite the Little Double Act.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Theo

  By the time we arrived in Lechlade, the rain had completely cleared, and the final approach was toward the backdrop of a fiery pink sunset. Geese arrowed overhead in perfect formation, reflected in the clear, lazy river beside us. It didn’t feel right. It felt like it should still be raining.

  We’d barely exchanged a word since we left the battle reenactors. For a large stretch, the path narrowed so that we had to walk in single file, and Joel lagged behind. All the while, I struggled to reckon with our exchange back there. I wanted to believe Joel—that this “bucket list” really was just another project—but he had looked so horrified at my discovery, I couldn’t accept that that was all it was. The internal battle continued until we reached Lechlade’s high street, where Joel decided to revert to the cheery bonhomie of Mack the journalist.

  “Fancy some fish and chips?” he asked, rubbing his hands together.

  “Sure.”

  “Lovely stuff,” he replied
, whistling loudly. It all felt false, like an actor trying to carry on a high-energy farce despite just having broken his leg in his latest pratfall.

  As I stood at the back of the chip shop and watched Joel attempt cheery conversation with the reluctant man behind the counter, I thought back to when we’d parted at Kemble station, where I felt there was something he wasn’t quite telling me. And then there were those rumors about his drinking. I remembered a documentary I’d seen about alcoholics where one of their recovery steps was to make things up to people they’d wronged. Was that what the bucket list was all about?

  Joel laughed loudly at his own joke and turned around to me, pointing at the battered sausages and raising his eyebrows suggestively. I smiled back weakly, but I had to go outside. The heat and smell of the deep-fat fryer were making me queasy, but not as much as Joel’s performance.

  When Joel came out, he thrust a bag of chips into my arms and started talking at a hundred miles an hour about an idea he’d had for the next episode of the show. He didn’t pause for breath until we’d checked into our crummy B&B, where we were shown to our room by a woman whose opening gambit to us was “Are you from the hygiene board?”

  “We are not, my good lady, so no need to worry,” Joel purred.

  The woman eyed him suspiciously, as if Joel were a gentleman thief who coveted her jewels. She led us to our room while Joel waffled on.

  “Let’s have a writing session now,” he said, shoveling chips into his mouth once the woman was gone. He was trying to force energy into his voice, but he looked so tired—particularly now he’d lain down on the bed.

  “Maybe a bit later,” I said. “Or first thing?” I couldn’t bring myself to make him stay up any longer. Writing suddenly didn’t seem important.

  “Sure,” Joel said, tossing a chip into the air and catching it in his mouth. “Whatever you fancy.”

  He put the TV on and flicked to a mindless action film, one with more explosions than dialogue.

  I ate a few chips, but I wasn’t very hungry. I went to wash my hands in the bathroom. I looked at my reflection. If this was the face Joel was seeing—flooded with concern and awkwardness—no wonder he was trying so hard with his Everything’s fine act.

  By the time I stepped out again, Joel was asleep and snoring. I took the bag of chips off his chest and turned the volume down on the film, watching him for a moment until he stirred. I slipped out of the room. There was a chair at the end of the corridor, next to a window that looked out on the river, just visible in the gloom. I wondered whether Alice was still up. I decided to chance it.

  “Well, if it isn’t Paul Theroux,” she said as she picked up. “Well, you know, if Paul Theroux had looked like an unmade bed crossed with a mop.”

  I instantly felt better.

  “How’s things?” I asked.

  “Yeah, all right. Bit of drama on the basketball court. Got whacked in the head by some oaf.”

  “Shit, really? You okay?” I felt a stab of guilt at not being there to look after her.

  “I’ll live. I was worried for a little bit that I might end up like James Cracknell, that rower. He got hit in exactly the same place on one of those mad charity voyages he did and he got that thing where you lose your sense of taste and smell.”

  “Ambrosia.”

  Alice sighed. “No, Theo, that’s custard. Anosmia is the condition.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway, more importantly, how the hell are you? How goes the grand trip?”

  I didn’t exactly know where to start. “Well, it was all going quite well. But then something weird happened today.”

  “Go on . . .”

  “I think . . . I think there’s a chance that Joel might be an alcoholic.”

  “God, really?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I’d read a few rumors in that vein flying around, but it was more just about him partying all the time, you know? But then today I found this bit of paper he’d dropped, and it had something about a ‘bucket list’ written on it.”

  “Jesus, really?”

  “Yeah. He told me it was just some TV project he was working on. Didn’t want me to think he hadn’t got his eye on the ball.”

  “And you don’t believe him?”

  I pictured Joel, the defiant look on his face in the field.

  “I honestly don’t know,” I said. “The thing is, this is what he does.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I checked back over my shoulder, just to make sure the door to the bedroom was still closed.

  “Back when we were kids, there was definitely something going on with him that he never told me about. I asked him about it once, but . . .” I trailed off. The problem was, I knew this was just a story I’d told myself over the years to make myself feel better. It was the “once” part that I was ashamed of.

  * * *

  I can’t remember the exact moment I felt Joel pulling away from me, but once I noticed it, I was convinced it was my fault. Now we were fifteen, my lack of social cachet had become problematic, and he was obviously looking for a way out. The way I clung to him like a limpet was only holding him back.

  I started looking for signs he was bored or annoyed when we were together. As soon as I detected the slightest restlessness, I rattled off suggestions for what else we could do, though the options were limited.

  “Wanna go to the golf course for a smoke?”

  “Nah.”

  “Could try and get served at the rugby club?”

  “Can’t be bothered.”

  “Blockbuster?”

  “See above.”

  “Ha, yeah. Well, just say if you’re bored or whatever.”

  “How could I possibly be bored, Theo? I mean, we could be in Rio, or New York, but we’re here, in Kemble. The city that gets eight hours’ sleep a night.”

  I laughed along, but I couldn’t help but take it personally. The problem was, I knew the more paranoid I got, the less fun I was to be around, but it was impossible for me not to panic at the prospect of losing him. This was Joel, the person who’d saved me from a life on the margins—the one person who’d taken a chance on me. I thought about him passing me the dry paper towels so I could wipe soap from my eyes, and the moment I’d been able to hold Darren’s gaze in the classroom, defiant, all because of Joel’s kindness. There was obviously something going on that he wasn’t telling me, and I had to find a way of fixing whatever was wrong. I decided that the next time I saw him seeming quiet for no reason, I was going to say something, no matter how unnatural it felt. As it turned out, I didn’t have to wait long.

  One lunch break I went to find Joel at our usual meeting spot, but he wasn’t there. Eventually I found him by the lockers, staring off into space, oblivious to the two girls who’d just sniggered at him as he stood there with a vacant expression on his face.

  “Hellooo,” I said, waving my hand in front of his face.

  He blinked a few times, as if I’d just materialized out of thin air.

  “Thought we were writing,” I said.

  “Oh, right, yeah,” Joel replied. “Sorry. Forgot.”

  “You just been . . . here?” I said, looking around the empty corridor.

  “Here and there, yeah.”

  Joel scratched at his chin and I started. His knuckles were bruised purple and the skin was scabbed over.

  “Fuck, what’s wrong with your hand?”

  “Nothing,” Joel said, quickly rolling his sleeve down. “Come on, let’s go.”

  We walked down the corridor without speaking. I kept trying to catch a glimpse of his hand, but his sleeve was firmly tugged down, and he was staring doggedly ahead, seemingly concentrating on the door at the far end of the corridor. We were just about to go into the empty classroom where we usually wrote, with Joel just ahead of me, when I blurted out: “Joel, are yo
u okay?”

  He paused by the door but didn’t look back. It was like the words I’d spoken had frozen him to the spot. He turned slowly to face me. His eyes were wet, his lips strangely twisted as he tried to stop them quivering.

  “Please don’t ever ask me that fucking question ever again,” he said at last, in a voice that was harsher, lower, than his usual one. Then he turned back and walked into the classroom.

  I stood outside for a few seconds, feeling shaken. I’d never seen Joel like that. It was frightening, how angry he was. But at the same time, behind all that front, he had a look in his eye that pleaded with me to ignore what he was saying, to keep going . . .

  When I found the courage to open the door, Joel had wiped his eyes, though the faint track marks of tears still stained his cheeks.

  “Right, then,” he said, suddenly businesslike. “Let’s get this fucker finished, shall we?”

  “I . . .” But I felt my shoulders drop. I knew I couldn’t do this. “Yeah,” I said, “let’s get it finished.” Then I turned and shut the door behind me.

  * * *

  I’d not thought of that moment for a very long time. It took me a second to realize Alice was calling my name.

  “Helloo-ohhhh. Theo, are you still there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here, sorry,” I said, but I still had one foot in the past. I should have been stronger. I should have pressed Joel further, no matter how impossible it felt. Then, even if he’d decided that our friendship was over, at least I would have done the right thing. Maybe I was being harsh on the fifteen-year-old me, but, still, wasn’t it true that if only I’d been a little braver, I could have prevented all the shit that came afterward?

  “Well, anyway,” Alice said, “you sound a bit preoccupied, so I think I’ll leave you to it, dear brother. I hope you two manage to sort things out, though.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

  I was about to say good-bye when Alice said, “I’m curious, though. What’s it actually been like up till now? Does it feel weird?”