* * *
That state of giddiness continued into winter and the end of term. It snowed from early December, and for the first time in my life, Christmas looked like the adverts on TV.
Joel and I were in my room one evening when I turned round to find him holding one of my notebooks full of sketches and ideas.
“ ‘Stegosaurus trying to enter Wimbledon,’ ” he read.
I tried to grab the notebook, but Joel held it away.
“Yeah, that’s just a stupid . . . thing, I . . . It’s from ages ago, actually.”
“It’s not stupid,” Joel mused. “But it’s not right.”
“What do you mean, ‘not right’?” I asked, bristling slightly.
“Well. A T. rex is funnier looking than a stegosaurus. Think of the racket in its little arms.”
After a moment’s pause, I had to concede that he was absolutely right.
That was the first time we ever wrote together—cross-legged on my bedroom floor, Joel’s tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth as we scribbled ideas and jokes in the same notebook. Individually, I don’t know if either of us would have been any good. But, together, everything just seemed to click. I remember distinctly the moment we finished that stupid dinosaur sketch, because it honestly felt like we were two scientists huddled over a microscope in a lab after just discovering a new element. Professor, you might want to come over here and take a look at this . . .
* * *
Sitting in the restaurant tonight, our meals long since forgotten, I watched Joel—concentrating hard as he jotted something down—and I felt a deep melancholy come over me. There had been times as we’d tramped along earlier, and writing together now, when it felt just like old days. But it wasn’t the same. It couldn’t be.
I caught our reflection in the window. It felt like I was having an out-of-body experience, as if our doubles were looking in at us from outside, watching as we wrote away and talked nonsense as if everything was completely fine. It seemed any moment one of us out there was going to turn to the other, point inside, and ask just how the hell we’d managed to let everything go so horribly, badly wrong.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Joel
Cricklade to Lechlade, 10.8 miles
(171.8 miles to Thames Barrier, London)
Oh, look, there’s some river in the river,” Theo said, pointing to the weak stream struggling along the riverbed, which had been all but dry on yesterday’s stretch.
Today we’d already been treated to a beautiful meadow just outside Kempsford, alive with bees and butterflies, though we’d been too distracted to acknowledge any of that, as we were on something of a roll with ideas for The Regulars. I was used to the fluorescent strip lights of cramped rooms, trying to manage other people’s egos when their ideas were rejected. Out here with Theo in the open air, everything seemed to flow so much more naturally. But the more headway we made with that, the more concerned I was that I hadn’t heard from Jane Green. With any normal person, I could have put this down to them being distracted by a family issue or something, but this was Jane Green—the woman who’d once called me from the back of a funeral to ask a question about catering on an upcoming shoot. (It’s quite hard to make a decision about tuna or ham when you can hear Great-Aunt Edith’s body being committed to the flames.)
Whimsical proclamations about the river aside, Theo had seemed a little more guarded that morning. It was almost like he was cross with himself for being too friendly with me yesterday. I remembered that when the cows were getting rowdy he seemed to have automatically moved behind me, looking for protection. It felt comforting to fall back into our old roles—familiar, I suppose. But at the same time I didn’t want Theo to feel like he was in my shadow. I’d much prefer him to take the lead, not be bound by what I wanted to do. I felt a bit like a father teaching his son to ride a bike, running behind and pretending he was still holding on.
We were passing by a willow tree, folded over into the water like someone trying to touch their toes, when Theo asked me if my legs were hurting. I had to bite my tongue. The swelling had barely retreated overnight, and walking had been painful from the get-go. But instead I said, “Bit stiff. You?”
“Put it this way: I feel like the cast of Stomp have crawled into my trousers and are using my thighs for practice.”
“Have you seen Stomp? I don’t think they practice.”
We walked on without speaking for a while. For so long, in fact, that when Theo said, “I have, actually,” it took me a moment to remember what we’d been talking about.
“Someone took me in London,” he said. “But we had a big fight in the interval, and I left.”
“You . . . stomped off?”
“Yeah,” Theo said. He was preoccupied enough by the memory not to cast judgment on my pun.
“So this was an ex?” I asked.
Theo grunted in the affirmative. Then, after a few moments of plodding along in a distinctly Eeyore-ish way, he sighed and said, “She was, sort of, you know . . . ‘the one.’ ”
Never had I seen air quotes being deployed so gloomily.
“We broke up a couple of years ago. It was a mutual . . . No, actually, it wasn’t—she dumped me.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I said. “This was pretty serious, then. Were you living together?”
“Yeah. North London. Highbury.”
“Hang on, really?”
“Yeah?”
“Wow.”
Theo frowned. “Why is that so hard to believe?”
“It’s not. I just had no idea we were living in the same place.”
“Oh, right. Well, London’s quite big, isn’t it, as cities go.”
I sidestepped the sarcasm.
“I thought you might know her actually,” Theo said. “She’s a casting director.”
“Oh yeah? What’s her name?”
“Barbara. Barbara Nicholls. But she goes by Babs.”
“Ha, amazing, like Acorn Antiques!”
Theo smiled sadly. “That’s the one.”
I racked my brains, but other than her comedy namesake, her name didn’t ring a bell.
“So why did you . . .” I stopped. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me if it’s . . .”
“Why did we what?” Theo asked.
We looked at each other, and Theo gave the flicker of a smile. This, we silently agreed, was weird. Uncharted territory, in fact. Opening up about our feelings was something we had pretty much avoided at all costs when we were teenagers. Or at least I had. Some of this was down to Dad and his You’re the man of the house now lecturing before he left, and then Mike moved in, and he made Dad look thoroughly progressive.
I don’t expect my generation of men will be the last to feel incapable of expressing their feelings, either—at least, to other men. In truth, I’ve always found women easier to talk to, especially when meeting as strangers. When a group of men meet for the first time at a party, it’s always a race to get the first joke in, and then the evening becomes an exhausting exchange of ball-breaking and irony. This, in fact, is the architecture of nearly all male friendships, and to deviate from that feels entirely unnatural, like driving on the other side of the road or walking with only one shoe on.
The comfort of never really exposing frailties is how men can be friends for decades without ever really knowing each other. Because even when they crack—almost exclusively after alcohol has been consumed—and try to tell a male friend that they’re scared, or lonely, or depressed, it still has to come couched in sarcasm and self-deprecation, because otherwise it’s like jumping out of a plane without knowing if your parachute’s going to open. This is why I’m never that shocked when a hitherto boring, emotionless man makes an incredible speech at a wedding. You’ll get some middle-aged cousin who you’ve previously only heard talking about England’s goalkeeping issue
s, or roadworks on the A38, and you’re expecting more of the same as they tap their champagne glass with their knife, and the next thing you know they’re talking with the eloquence of a poet about how much they love their daughter, how proud they are—and it’s all because this is the only fifteen minutes of their lives where they’re allowed to show that kind of naked emotion without seven other middle-aged blokes telling them to shut up and have another drink while secretly wishing they were brave enough to say, Yeah, me too.
As Theo and I crossed a bridge over the reluctant trickle of water below, his half question still entirely unanswered, I felt particularly aware that time was limited for me to rectify how closed off I had always been with him. If we’d come into our twenties still being friends, I think we might have made progress—but instead it was like someone had pressed “pause,” and we were still essentially teenagers trapped in the bodies of two thirty-year-olds, proper stubble on our cheeks now but not a fraction more capable of opening up. But without the luxury of time, I realized I was going to have to start upping the ante.
“So why did you break up?” I asked, my voice awkwardly caught halfway between a reporter at a press conference and a precocious child.
“Well,” Theo said, after a pause long enough that I thought he might be about to scupper the conversation, “I suppose I got complacent. Sort of like I was on autopilot. I managed to fuck up a decent job in the pursuit of something that was never going to happen, and then I got so obsessed with that failure that I just sort of . . . gave up on everything, and that meant I took Babs completely for granted. I tried to win her back by . . . well, it all got a bit dramatic, but let’s just say I made things worse.”
Knowing Theo, this sounded suspiciously like he’d tried some sort of overblown romantic gesture and had got too carried away.
“Sorry to hear that,” I said. “How’ve you been . . . you know . . . dealing with it?”
That had come out completely wrong—like I was asking him about an embarrassing medical procedure or something. For fuck’s sake, why was this so hard?
“Well, you know . . . ,” Theo said, gesturing with his hands in a jolting circular motion, a robot juggler in need of its joints oiling. “I mean we’d been together since uni, so . . .”
“Jesus, really?” I said. “That’s—wow, I thought I’d been in a long-term rel—”
I stopped abruptly, but without looking at me Theo said, “It’s all right. I know you’ve been with Amber. It’s fine. I don’t care.”
Hearing Theo say Amber’s name took me by surprise—it made me feel like I’d just plunged into a freezing pool of water.
“How is it being together after all these years?” Theo asked.
We’d just turned a corner past a hedge and found ourselves in a field carpeted with yellow rapeseed. I was having some difficulty speaking. A lump had risen to my throat, and I knew if I tried to speak, my voice would be shaky. I was hit by the shock of how badly I wanted to tell Theo everything.
But Theo seemed to take my temporary muteness as reluctance to answer the question, because he said, “Maybe we should talk about something else,” before striding off into the field, parting the brilliant yellow like a knife through butter.
* * *
The route took us away from the river for a mile or so, and we got back to it to find it flowing in earnest, sparkling magnificently in the sunshine.
“I feel a bit cheated,” Theo said. “It’s like a magic trick or something—like someone’s turned the tap on.”
I was about to ask him whether he wanted to throw caution to the wind and see if we could go back off route and find the spot where the water began to flow properly, but the fatigue which had been tailing me all day seemed to pounce, and I asked as levelly as I could if we might stop for a break.
I was grateful that Theo took the opportunity to find somewhere secluded to wee, as it gave me the opportunity to slump to the ground and massage my swollen legs.
I downed several gulps of water, then took out my phone to see if there was any news from Jane. I sat up, heart thumping, as my screen showed that she was actually typing a message right now.
Sorry for radio s. Nephew buggered my phone with marmite. Had to throw it out and get a new one. (The phone, not the nephew, though we’ll see on that score too.) Re Regulars—some nibbles, dear boy, but no clear bite yet. Will keep you p’d. P.S. Update on the cyberman’s helmet (as it were). Silly gold bastard left it on the 11:49 to Ebbsfleet JGx
It wasn’t exactly the news I was hoping for, but at least it wasn’t a straight no.
I hauled myself back to my feet as Theo returned, and feigned enthusiasm once again as we set off.
The next couple of miles took us past the sort of places that would sound a bit on the nose if you were a foreigner trying to mock the English: Hannington Wick, Downington, Little Faringdon. All the while, the Thames widened, and we hit something of a milestone when we came to Inglesham, whose stone roundhouse across the bank marks the spot where boats are able to enter the water.
To my relief, it was Theo this time who suggested we have a pit stop. We were bickering good-naturedly about whether it was possible to play a single game of Poohsticks from the start of the river all the way to the end, when, out of nowhere, I was overcome by nausea and had to scramble over to a tree, which I threw up behind. There was no way I could pull the wool over Theo’s eyes this time, so I decided to preempt it when I came back.
“God, I reckon I must have got food poisoning last night,” I said, sitting down next to Theo. “Bloody Jack and his terrible hygiene rating.”
I waited for Theo to respond, but he just dragged a stick he had picked up through the grass, then chucked it into the river.
“Maybe I should call and complain,” I added, annoyed that Theo wasn’t saying anything. I went to take a swig of water, but my bottle was empty.
Wordlessly, Theo offered me his.
“We can rest a bit longer if you want,” he said.
“I’m fine,” I replied.
“Give it another five? I don’t mind.”
“I’m fine, okay?” I snapped, immediately regretting it.
Theo held his hands up in apology.
The moment passed, but I couldn’t afford to make another mistake like that again. Even now, the atmosphere—which had been as good as I thought it would ever be between us—felt like it had soured.
But just then something happened which lifted my mood more than I thought possible. It was another text from Jane:
Hold the phone. Just ran into that funny little bald sod who’s now heading up the new commissioning team (quite literally—nearly knocked him flying, like a tiny baby bird). Pitched your idea straight to him. Seemed v v keen! Think we’re onto a winner. More soon, dear boy JGx
I got to my feet, nausea now completely gone. Maybe this was actually going to work. Theo and I would have a TV show together, and he’d never be any the wiser! A swan floated by imperiously. I felt like saluting it.
I looked down at Theo. He was eating a sandwich he’d bought from a riverside café earlier, sitting cross-legged, his hair rippling in the breeze. I felt a surge of affection for him. I had the urge to pinch his cheeks like an Italian grandmother. In the end, I just about managed to restrain myself. But I was eager to finish the last leg of today’s walk—to ride this wave of positivity and get some more ideas down together.
I cleared my throat and reached out a hand down to Theo.
“Shall we get going?”
After a moment’s hesitation, he took my hand, and I pulled him to his feet.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Theo
I couldn’t quite square the man who’d just thrown up behind a tree with the one who was marching along beside me, a spring in his step. Perhaps that was what the bumpy ride of withdrawal was like.
Lechlade’s halfpenny bri
dge had just come into view when Joel cocked his ear and said, “Can you hear that?”
We stopped to listen properly. Music and the odd voice were drifting over from somewhere. Crossing the path, Joel peered through a gap in a hedge and beckoned me over.
“Look,” he said, stepping aside so I could see. And what I could see was . . . the past. About fifteen men, dressed in chain mail and tunics, were milling around, chatting. A chicken was burning on a spit. Someone was gently playing a lute.
“What is . . . what is happening?” I asked Joel, but he seemed equally nonplussed.
As two of the men roared at each other and drew their swords, Joel and I ducked down so our laughter didn’t give us away.
“Well, there’s only one way to find out—come on,” Joel said, striding toward the stile that led into the field.
“Really?” I groaned.
“Come on, Theo,” Joel said. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
The men stopped talking as we approached. I swear I saw one put his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“Hi,” Joel said, flashing them a smile. “We just wondered what you lads were up to. We’re journalists, so I’m afraid curiosity got the better of us. I’m Mack and this is my photographer, Tarquin.”
The soldiers sniggered.
Tarquin. Of all the names he could have chosen.
“We’re rehearsing a battle enactment,” said the biggest of the men.
“You rehearse?” I asked.
The men laughed.
“What, just think we turn up on the day and march around a bit?” the big man said.
When We Were Young Page 9