“You were having a nightmare,” I said, pretending to busy myself with my already unpacked bag.
“Mmm, sorry,” Joel grunted. Then he turned away onto his side. By the time I’d turned the light off and got into bed, he seemed to be sleeping soundly, but I spent the night wide awake, listening to the distant sounds of the Thames lapping on the riverbank, wondering what exactly his frightened words had meant.
“Oh yeah, I’m fine,” Joel said now, casually, stretching his arms out in front and cracking his knuckles. “Just still feeling the effects of that food poisoning, I guess. I probably look worse than I feel.”
He slung his bag onto his back and marched off ahead.
We made our way down a dusty track to the river, which glittered in the early morning sun. A boat chugged along, a springer spaniel on its bow, staring ahead like a noble captain. Joel continued his guidebook shtick as we walked, keen, it seemed, not to present me with a silence I could fill.
“We’ll see a few things of note today, then, Theo. The statue of Old Father Thames at St. John’s Lock, for instance, and the twelfth-century-built Old Radcot Bridge, which happens to be the oldest on the Thames.”
We were walking on something more recognizable as an actual path now, which meant we kept having to step aside for cyclists. After about an hour, Joel pointed out a Second World War pillbox, but that seemed to be the last thing of any interest on the stretch we were walking, which grew increasingly remote and wild.
“Shall we have a breather?” I said, wishing that I didn’t sound quite so much like a supportive substitute teacher.
We found a patch of beaten-down grass and watched the river go by. Joel kept absentmindedly scratching his legs and his arms as if he had mosquito bites, and he popped two more of his “hay fever” tablets. I was trying to summon the courage to ask him what was really going on when the trill of a bike bell announced that we weren’t alone.
The man looked like he was in his late fifties, completely bald, with eyebrows that began thin but thickened out at the sides of his eyes, as if they were trying to make a run for it.
“How do, boys?” he said. “Bob. Nice to meet you.”
“All right?” said Joel and I in unison.
“Fancy an ice cream?” the man asked.
“Ice cream?” Joel replied uncertainly.
It wasn’t clear where the man was going to produce said ice creams from. It was then that he turned his bike sideways and patted the pannier at the back. “B&B’s ice creams” was emblazoned across it in bright pink lettering. Not only was this the first ice-cream bike I’d ever seen, it was also a tandem.
“Well, then? Fancy it? I’ve got the lot. Raspberry ripple, vanilla cone, you name it.”
“Not for me, thanks,” I said. I glanced at Joel.
“Yeah, me too. Sorry.”
“Right,” the man muttered, looking crestfallen all of a sudden. Just as we were about to turn back to the river, he said, “It’s just, the wife’s left me. We were traveling around together, selling this stuff. I’d jacked the job in and everything. IT consultant, you know? We were supposed to be seeing the country. Doing a bit of the Thames Path. It was my brother-in-law’s idea. He’s into that sort of thing. Well, we’d got as far as Lechlade before she’d had enough. So I’m left here with this ice cream to flog.”
“Cold,” Joel said. Then, when the man looked at him sharply, “Your wife, I mean.”
“Betty,” he said, giving us a look that suggested we should know who she was just from that single name, like she was a Brazilian footballer. The poor bloke.
There followed a paralyzing silence where neither Joel nor I knew what to say. I broke first, excusing myself to “water the plants” behind the cover of a tree. But when I came back, wondering if I should maybe have invented some excuse so I could rescue Joel from the conversation he’d no doubt be trapped in, I found the two men laughing together as if they were old friends. I couldn’t help but feel a little vexed. It seemed my absence had been the key to this becoming a happy scene. I should have known Joel would easily charm the man. And I also should have known that this would make me disproportionately annoyed and jealous. But, most of all, as I watched the ice-cream man gleefully clutching a wedge of twenty-pound notes and wandering off down the path, I should have known that the moment Joel Thompson saw a novelty tandem ice-cream bike and learned that it was for sale, he would spend whatever was in his wallet in order to buy it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Joel
No,” Theo said. “Absolutely not.”
“Oh, mate, come on—look at it!” I showed the bike off to him like an assistant on a game show, running my hand along its light blue trunk.
“What are we supposed to do about this, though?” Theo tapped the ice-cream box mounted on the back of the bike.
“It’s fine, I’ve paid him for the ice cream as well as the bike. We can eat it. We don’t have to sell it or anything.”
“Oh no, that would be mad. We’re just going to ride a divorced ice-cream man’s tandem bike half the length of the country; that’s much more sensible.”
This was so much better. Grumpy Theo was my favorite Theo.
“Listen,” I said. “How about we try it out? If you don’t like it, we can sell it on.”
“Yeah, good luck getting full price,” Theo huffed. “You can ride it if you want. I’ll walk behind.”
“Okay, okay, fine.” I held my hands up, admitting defeat. Then I waited for Theo to turn his back. “Race you, then,” I said, grabbing the bike and wheeling it forward, just about managing to mount the front seat and keep the bike upright. I swerved off violently into the muddy lane, feet slipping off the pedals. Eventually I got going properly, momentum doing the work for me, giving my aching legs the respite I’d been craving.
I heard Theo struggling to keep up behind me.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he panted. “Fine. Let me on.”
“I thought you didn’t want to,” I called over my shoulder.
“Joel, stop being a dick and slow down.”
“Right you are . . .”
I stopped to let him climb on to the seat behind me and off we went, unsteady at first but getting into a steady rhythm.
“This is ridiculous,” Theo said. After a moment, though, I heard him trying to pull the ice-cream box open. “There better be a fucking Strawberry Cornetto in here.”
After a bit more grumbling, I managed to persuade him to ride up front for a bit. This worked even better. Without him being able to see me, it meant I could keep my feet on the pedals but let him do most of the work, giving me valuable time to get my breath back. Twenty minutes later we were practically powering along, Theo’s hair blowing gloriously in the breeze.
“Fine, I admit it,” Theo said through a mouthful of ice cream. “This is pretty fucking great.”
And so we cycled on, hugging the curves of the river, with nothing but the odd duck for company, until some narrow boats began to pop up. I drank in the smell of the diesel and woodsmoke, waving cheerily to the boaters we passed. We approached a silver-haired couple reading newspapers up on deck, a bottle of champagne cooling in a bucket.
“Ahoy there,” the man called in perhaps the poshest voice I’d ever heard. “Might I purchase an ice cream from you fellows?”
We slowed a little and I pulled open the box.
“Have one on us,” I said, tossing them up a couple of double caramel.
The man caught them and saluted, and I returned the gesture.
“I feel like we’re in The Wind in the Willows,” Theo laughed.
“Poop poop! The open road, the dusty highway!” I called, and we picked up the pace again.
Now, this was the life. The sun was on my back; geese were skidding comically onto the water next to us. It was like the whole riverbank was cheering us on. I wa
nted more than anything to stay in this moment with my friend for as long as possible. Here, my every waking thought wasn’t about how sick I was, or how long I had left.
Here was freedom.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Theo
At Newbridge, we managed to luck our way into a room at the Rose Revived pub, a beautiful little place perched just off the river. According to Joel’s guidebook, Oliver Cromwell had supposedly supped an ale or two there, so I decided I’d do the same while the sun was still up. Joel told me he’d come out and join me shortly, but after an hour had passed without any sign of him, I went up to the room. I felt oddly trepidatious about what I might find when I opened the door, but Joel was just conked out on the bed, fast asleep.
I considered waking him, but he obviously needed the rest. Instead, I took pen and paper from my bag and headed back downstairs, where I bought a musty pint of ale from the bar and sat in an armchair by the unlit fire. I’d planned to get on with some writing, but I couldn’t concentrate tonight. I tried calling Alice, but there was no reply. After a couple more drinks, I found loneliness stealing over me. I knew the sensible thing was to go to bed, but my mind was still too clogged with unhelpful thoughts. By this point, the barman had begun delivering a fresh pint every time I was down to the dregs of the previous one. It was easier just to give in.
On a table by the fireplace, I spotted some complimentary postcards among the leaflets and maps. I plucked one from the basket and began to write.
My dear sister,
I write to you in uncertain spirits, despite making good progress on our voyage today. You would so love it here. Nature surrounds us in all her majesty. Why, only this morning I saw a moorhen defecating on a can of Red Bull. Such beauty!
I had been meaning to tell you something. I remembered recently about the picture you drew for me to cheer me up after the cricket pavilion bat drama. You really were, and are, very talented. And you’ve done a better job of looking out for me than I have for you. I’m sorry about that.
Anyway, I think that might be my yearly quota of sincere words used up, so it only remains for me to say this: do you reckon the postman is reading this, right now? I bet he is. I wonder if he knows about the last postman we had who read all our postcards. Such a shame that he “fell” like that. Terrible business.
Your loving, and admittedly quite drunk brother,
Theodore D. Poosevelt
The barman rang for last orders, and I decided to treat myself to one final pint and a Scotch to keep it company. The harsh tang of the latter on my tongue made me think of Edinburgh—pre-show drinks in the Dagda Bar; Dutch courage. Inevitably, my thoughts then turned to Babs. I wondered what she was doing right now. Whether she was still up . . .
I slid my phone out of my pocket—slowly, as if trying to hide from myself what I was doing—and started composing a text.
Hey. I’m sorry for that call the other day. Things have been a bit weird. I’m on a road trip of sorts. With Joel Thompson. I don’t know if you know him?
I deleted the last sentence. And then, imagining quite how terrifying Alice would be when I told her what I’d done, I deleted all of it. But it wasn’t enough to stop my mind wandering to those final few months—the terrible decisions I’d made. How I’d not seen the end coming, I’ll never know. By that point I was like a blind man stumbling toward a ravine.
* * *
After the debacle where I’d quit my proper job on the false promise of writing in the Sky TV comedy department, I had to come clean and tell Babs I was soon to be unemployed.
“Can’t you get your old job back?” she asked. I had neglected to mention that I had resigned from that position with the “corporate pigs” in such a god-awful way that I had firmly burned my bridges. I mumbled something about a restructure making that impossible instead.
“Well, listen, I’m sure you’ll find something else soon,” Babs reassured me. I was lying with my head on her lap while she tangled and untangled my hair. We were doing our Sunday evening tradition where we lit candles, drank wine and listened to an album from start to finish on Babs’s record player—a beautiful vintage contraption passed down by her dad. Our tiny rented flat was full of gorgeous items like that—all of them belonging to Babs, most of which she acquired on expeditions to Spitalfields Market. It made me feel very grown-up to be the sort of person who—instead of a coffee table—put their mugs on a crate that looked like it had last been used to drop supplies into Vietnam.
“About finding another job . . . ,” I said, dipping my toe in the water.
“You’re thinking of not getting another one? Are you going to till the land or something? Think we’d have to ask the landlord about that, and he doesn’t let us put up posters.”
“Even though we do.”
“True, true.”
“No, the thing is, I think I want to try and write. See where I can get with it.”
“What, so just speculatively?”
“Yeah.”
Babs continued to play with my hair, but she didn’t say anything.
“Do you think that’s a terrible idea?”
“I’m not saying that.”
“But you’re not not saying that?”
This time Babs took her hands from my head.
“Look, I’m not going to tell you what to do. If you want to write, then fine. Great. I’m not going to give you permission, though. You’ve got to decide for yourself, you being twenty-seven and everything . . .”
“Ouch,” I said. “Twenty-seven. That sounds like such a real age. I should have achieved something by now.”
“You took the bins out earlier.”
“I did. I was very gallant given what was in them. I was thinking something more creative, though. How else am I going to die of an overdose and still make the papers—another twenty-seven club tragedy.”
“Another what?”
“The twenty-seven club—you know: all those people who died at that age.”
“Oh yeah. Who was it again? Janis Joplin.”
“Hendrix . . .”
“Ken Cobain.”
“I’m sorry . . . Ken Cobain?”
“Yeah. The Nirvana singer.”
I turned to look at Babs.
“Oh,” she said, closing her eyes. “I’ve done that thing where I’ve got someone’s name wrong, haven’t I?” And for the next twenty minutes I teased her about Ken Cobain sounding like an avuncular carpenter and Babs retaliated by taking my feet prisoner and tickling them until I submitted.
If only I’d been able to freeze-frame that moment and go back to it. This is it! I’d say, shaking myself by the shoulders. It doesn’t get better than this! Maybe then I’d have just got another proper job and tried a bit of writing on the side—without it obsessing me so much.
But then I read on a comedy website that Joel had been given his own prime-time sitcom that just happened to star his “long-term girlfriend,” Amber Crossley. And my fragile little ego couldn’t take it. It should be me, I’d think, in my darker moments. Well, I was going to show him.
At first, I made sure that I hid this obsession from Babs. I made a point of being selfless and romantic—cooking dinner every night so there’d be something when she got home from a long day at the office; leaving silly notes in her bag most days, something to make her laugh; getting up early on the weekends and buying coffee and the Saturday supplements. But as the months passed and the script knockbacks came, a slow drip-feed of rejection, my mood soured. I spent more time in the day lying on the sofa, hate-watching Joel’s show, than trying to come up with my own. I’d scramble madly to get in an upright position when Babs got home from work. She’d open the curtains and I’d pretend to claw at the sunlight like a vampire. She laughed the first time I did it. She didn’t by the fifth.
She caught me asleep with a beer in
my hand when she came home from work one lunchtime to pick up something she’d forgotten, and we had the first of many fights about what I was actually doing with my days. Babs told me I needed to start finding a way to help her with the rent. I told her, ludicrously, that she was stifling my creativity by making me think about money. She told me to stop putting notes in her bag—they were getting annoying.
There should have been a piercingly loud alarm going off in my head. But I was too deep into my obsession with Joel and his preposterous good luck. The final straw came when his show won a prestigious industry award. I was supposed to go to some media do Babs’s company was putting on that night. By the time I met her in the soulless, aggressively lit bar, I was struggling not to slur my words, having put away a few pints in the shitty pub across the road beforehand, just to take the edge off. The rest of the night was a blur. I remember stumbling and spilling a drink—some furtive sideways glances as I told what I thought was a winning anecdote, but which inexplicably wasn’t getting the right reaction. When I woke up the next morning feeling like my tongue had been sandpapered in the night, Babs was sitting on the end of the bed. That was never a good sign.
“Morning,” I croaked.
Babs looked at me, waiting.
“Sorry?” I tried.
“Yeah, genuine sorrys don’t tend to come with a question mark at the end. Thank you so much for ruining a really important night for me.”
“Shit, did I?” I said, sitting up, the room spinning horribly. “I really am sorry. I’m an idiot.”
I reached for Babs’s hand, but she stood up and folded her arms.
“I am so fucking fed up of that excuse, Theo. I honestly don’t know if I can . . . I’m going out. I’ll see you later.”
When We Were Young Page 13
