A Rock and a High Place

by Dan Mooney

  “Out the window, after supper, when they do the first nighttime round.”

  “They lock the windows,” Frank told him.

  “We ask someone to open it now. Some fresh air into the room. Then we stuff the catch. When they close it, it’ll close all the way, but if it doesn’t catch we just open it again and climb out.”

  “It’s pretty narrow.”

  “You calling me fat?”

  “I’ve a far greater vocabulary than that. If I was going to insult you, I’d use words like portly, or stocky, or thick.”

  He was back. His friend was back. Nearly three days of being shamed and bullied into being something they weren’t evaporated in a moment of shared excitement.

  “I’ll fit, don’t you worry.”

  “It’ll be getting dark by then—think we’ll have a problem making it through the trees?”

  “We’ll be fine. Have a little faith. You’re the one that’s supposed to be the optimist.”

  It was at that moment that they both realised Mighty Jim was still sitting right next to them. He was smiling patiently. Waiting to return to the endgame.

  Joel and Frank looked at one another.

  “You’ll keep our secret, won’t you, Jim?”

  Mighty Jim’s smile widened.

  Chapter Twenty

  The execution of their plan was nonchalant. Sitting in their shared bedroom as they read, they asked Nurse Karl, in passing, to open the window and let some air in. After he’d left the room, they stuffed the catch on the window with toilet paper.

  Frank busied himself in his wardrobe, selecting his attire for the evening, while Joel flipped through pages of a book, not really reading, too excited and nervous to take in the words. Suppertime crawled toward them, painfully slowly, and when it finally arrived they took to the common room eagerly, rushing in, trying to act casual and failing miserably.

  Inevitably, it was the eagle-eyed Una Clarke who spotted something. She had sat with them through supper, making idle conversation and casually observing them with sidelong glances. As they fell into their desserts, she caught them unawares.

  “I don’t know what it is you’re both up to, but I assume it’s going to get you both in trouble again?”

  Joel stopped dead with a spoonful of ice cream hovering inches from his lips. Frank simply raised a casual eyebrow before realising Joel had given the game away with his shocked reaction.

  “You have absolutely no sense of calm about you,” he muttered at Joel.

  Joel recognised that this was probably correct. He still hadn’t eaten the ice cream.

  “Same again? Vanishing act?” she asked.

  “It’s Frank’s birthday,” Joel told her lamely.

  “Oh, very nice,” she replied. “Happy birthday, my dear.”

  “Thank you.” Frank smiled broadly. “I take it you’re not going to dob us in?”

  “I take it you’ll both take care of each other wherever it is that you’re off to?”

  “Take care of each other,” Joel spluttered. She wasn’t his mother.

  “Yes, dear,” she told him, reaching out to wipe some melted ice cream from his chin. “I’ve grown quite fond of both of you, and I don’t want anything happening to you.”

  Joel blushed at her words. A smoother man than he might have had the courage or the wherewithal to tell her how fond of her he had become. Instead he ate another spoon of ice cream.

  “You seem remarkably composed about this,” Frank said.

  She remained quiet for a moment. Pushing her dessert around its bowl with her spoon. Joel watched her pick her words carefully, but when she delivered them she assiduously avoided making eye contact with him.

  “He’s a different man since you got here,” she told Frank. “He’s happier. More open. He’s more like the man that moved in here some years ago. A little more adventurous I’d say, more cavalier if you like, but it’s a nice change. I’ve worried about him. I’ve watched him become a shell of a thing. It’s nice to see him come out of himself. If you both get a scolding for it, what of it?”

  Joel allowed himself a smile. He wanted to reach out to her, take her by the hand and thank her. Instead he ate yet another spoon of his ice cream.

  “Want to help?” Frank asked.

  She returned his smile with a grin of her own.

  *

  Shortly after supper, as they lay in their beds pretending to wind down for the evening, Nurse Karl made his rounds, bringing angiotensin receptor blockers and cod liver oil and tea. He closed the windows as he did it, and it was all Joel could do not to stare at it. He accepted the medicine and the tea without qualm, earning a satisfied nod from the nurse. Just more evidence that he was being a good boy. Ten minutes or so later, they heard the faint chimes from inside Una’s room, a call for attention. They listened, almost holding their breath as Nurse Karl made his way into her room, and heard the low murmurs of Una begging a favour.

  Nurse Karl would be carrying books up to Mrs. Klein’s room for the next twenty minutes or so.

  Full to the brim with nervous excitement, the two men bounced from their beds and began to hurriedly dress themselves. As Frank put the finishing touches on his attire, including his new scarf, Joel walked to the window.

  Tentatively he pushed it.

  The window opened at his hand, letting in the evening air. Joel sucked in a great big breath of freedom and allowed himself a grin.

  “What on earth are you waiting for? I haven’t got all day,” Frank told him, as he approached the window. The rascal was well dressed for the occasion. His best suit, in navy, still a little old and worn-looking on his sloping shoulders, with a crisp white shirt and a pair of brown leather shoes. His birthday scarf was tied into an elaborate but loose knot at his neck. Joel was more soberly dressed, but still cut a dashing figure, he rather modestly thought.

  With a careful grip and a measured, quiet step, Joel hitched up his suit pants and carefully climbed out the window. The thrilling feeling of being out of bounds had him again, and the giggles that had afflicted him the two previous times threatened to overwhelm him, but mixed in with it all was a terrifying fear of getting caught, and just a tiny desire to be caught. If they didn’t make it off the property, the trouble was likely to be less.

  Frank stepped out behind him, carefully lowering his foot into the gravel. They made their way down the garden on the grass, to limit noise, but when they were approaching the tree line, lights blinded them.

  In front of them, pulling up to the gate, preparing to start his night shift, was the car owned by Nurse Liam. Without thinking the two men ducked as low as they might, and broke into a shambling half run. The twist in the road just before the gate was in their favour, and if luck was on their side, Nurse Liam would be digging through his rucksack for his magnetic pass, or pressing the buzzer or looking somewhere else.

  They shuffle-ran to the tree line, as quick as they could, Joel waiting to hear a beeping of the horn or a call out from behind to announce that they had been spotted in the fading evening light. He kept his eyes locked on the car and waited for the alarm to be sounded. Mid-stride he thought he saw the nurse look up at them, he was almost certain that he had, and he braced himself for the shout to stop. None came, and when they hit the tree line they were home and free.

  The two stopped behind the bole of a huge evergreen to catch their breath. Chuckling to himself, Frank sucked in deep breaths, while Joel, a little less out of breath but feeling the palpitations of terror still wracking him, craned for a look at the car as the gates swung open. As the car pulled up along the driveway, he saw Nurse Liam’s profile, carefully, almost obviously looking away from them. He had seen them, Joel was sure, but it couldn’t be, because the car pulled up the driveway and slid slowly into his staff parking spot.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Frank told him.

  The second significant obstacle of the night, obviously, was the wall. They reached the rock, carefully sheltered from sight i
n the trees, and climbed it easily, and found themselves again, overdressed and sitting on a wall too high for men their age.

  “It’s higher than I remember,” Joel told Frank.

  “No, you’re just older.”

  “By three days?” Joel asked.

  “Older is older. Let’s not quibble about numbers.”

  “Same again?” Joel asked.

  Frank nodded at him, still wearing his broad, ridiculous grin.

  And so the two men positioned themselves clumsily, with Frank’s feet scrabbling at the side wall of the garage, carefully trying to lower himself on to the coal bunker. When they were half the way down, a light came on. They froze.

  The source of the light was the conservatory in the back garden, the one that had been filled with toys. In the dimming evening light, with the inside light on, it was unlikely that the occupant would be able to see them, but the two froze anyway.

  If it was possible to double freeze they would have done that, when they spotted the room’s occupants. Inside the glass, picking up toys and chatting amiably to a small boy, was The Rhino.

  Out of her uniform and in her casual clothes with her hair tied back in a loose ponytail, she smiled easily. Something the little one was saying tickled her in a way that brought a hearty laugh that even Joel and Frank could hear through the thick glass.

  Joel remembered the feeling of envy when he’d passed that little room with all its toys just three days before. The feeling that this must be a wonderful parent. He could hardly believe his eyes. She looked normal. And nice. Like someone you’d want to be friends with.

  In his shock he forgot about Frank, and it was only when his friend let out a strangled gasp that he realised he’d been holding him up by the scarf, practically choking him.

  “Sorry,” he whispered as he continued to lower the smaller man down.

  When Frank’s feet found purchase on the top of the bunker he rounded on Joel, still atop the wall. His strangled whisper could hardly be heard, but Joel was fairly sure it heavily featured the words bastard, idiot and asshole.

  He nodded his way through the tirade.

  “Get the ladder,” he whispered eventually, cutting Frank off just as he was describing Joel’s mother in unflattering terms.

  “We can’t. Not with them in there.”

  “Well, how do I get down?”

  “Here,” Frank said, doubling over.

  Joel nearly laughed out loud. He was going to have to lower himself down, and literally use Frank’s back as a stair.

  “Don’t fold up on me,” he told the smaller man.

  “Try to think unportly thoughts,” Frank shot back.

  Gingerly, hoping he wouldn’t laugh out loud, Joel lowered himself on to Frank’s back, and into The Rhino’s garden. His eyes darted from Frank’s hunched back to the conservatory building, obscured only slightly by the corner of the garage. Whatever the little one was doing, she seemed engrossed by it. His feet landed on the yielding back of his friend, and for just a moment, he thought Frank would crumple under his weight, but the smaller man held his ground, grunting only slightly in protest. Joel kept as much of the weight off him as possible, by trying to hold himself up with his arms.

  When they’d finally landed on solid ground, they stood in bewilderment. She hadn’t seen them, or heard them, and continued to play with the small child, still smiling broadly, still looking like a normal person.

  “Let’s go,” Frank whispered.

  The two of them sidled up the pathway at the side of the house, away from the conservatory, and eventually had to pass the kitchen window. The light was on inside, and a man pottered about putting away dishes. He looked normal, as well. Pleasant even. Was The Rhino married to this man? He looked happy, not like someone who was tortured every day by his decision to marry a despot. What life had she carved for herself that she could be happy here and so cold and aloof up in Hilltop?

  The shock had worn off Joel by the time they reached the bus stop, but the surreal nature of it all was still a lot to take. He mentioned this to Frank as he brushed his own shoe marks off the smaller man’s suit jacket.

  “Guess you never really know a person, do you?” Frank told him, still checking himself over for spots of dirt from the trees or the coal bunker, or Joel’s shoes.

  By the time the bus had arrived, Joel had let the moment slide behind him altogether and, instead, allowed the excitement to take over. It was fast approaching nighttime. It was getting to the point where he’d be out on the town on a Saturday night. He had barely gone out on the town on a Saturday night when he lived in his own home, and a part of him felt that there were some experiences he had to make up for. As the bus pulled away, leaving Hilltop behind, Joel forced himself to stop worrying, he forced himself to think positively, to look at the night ahead for what it was. A night out with his friend, for his birthday, with nothing to do but whatever they wanted.

  *

  Before the bus even pulled in Joel could feel the energy of a city centre on a Saturday night. It was raw thing, a flow of bodies, in high spirits, the night before them spread out and ready to be whatever they could make of it. Joel itched to be a part of it. Frank, being more worldly and urbane, was casual about it, and Joel tried to follow his friend’s lead, a look of calm nonchalance, but found himself agitated with the need to be going somewhere, doing something, as the rest of the city seemed to be.

  “Where to?” he asked eagerly.

  “I had a thought,” Frank told him.

  “Wouldn’t be the first.”

  “Might be a little maudlin, though.”

  “I’m planning on killing myself. It doesn’t get more maudlin.”

  “No, it does not.” Frank laughed his agreement. “I’d like to go see the Royale.”

  Something arty and cultured no doubt, but since Joel and his potato-like soul had limited experience of such things, he had no idea what exactly it was. His face betrayed his confusion.

  “It was my favourite theatre,” Frank told him.

  “Was?”

  “They shut it in the late nineties. I was devastated. Probably for the best in the long run, the place was falling down.”

  Joel could see the nostalgia showing in Frank’s eyes and recognised its intense familiarity. He’d been basking in it lately. The memories of better times.

  “Let’s go, then,” he said.

  The two dapper gents made their way through the bustling city, away from the main hub of activity, the crowds thinning out as they moved from the trendy, newest parts of the town into the older neighbourhoods. Joel remembered a time when these streets hummed, and the evidence of their one-time popularity showed as he recalled what the buildings had once been. A bowling alley now an industrial laundromat, a large residential block where he could remember an old movie house. He’d gone there with Lucey more than once. During their courting, and later in life when Eva had become a young lady, keen to be anywhere but in her parents’ company.

  Smack in the middle of the street sat the old Royale. It’s rounded front entrance still standing. It had been there so long Joel had stopped paying attention to it. Theatre had never been his thing, and so he’d never bothered to pay it any mind, but now as he stood before it he noted its old elegance, even in its dilapidated state. The building seemed to hold a memory of former glory that couldn’t be ignored even with its boarded up windows and graffitied front walls. A large “Sale Agreed” sign stood out from the façade.

  “It’s quite lovely-looking, isn’t it?” he remarked to Frank.

  “Is that a little soul I see sparking in Joel Monroe?” Frank asked.

  “I’m not completely dead inside,” he retorted.

  “No, my friend, quite the opposite, I think.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind.”

  “How do we get in?” Joel asked, noting the fencing around the main entranceway that blocked them.

  “Round the side, there’s a back door.
No one ever bothered to lock it. Rats don’t pay much notice to locked doors.”

  “There’s rats?”

  “You afraid of a few rats?”

  “Not overly fond of them, no.”

  “You’re a funny man, Joel. Apparently not afraid to die, but damned if you’ll share an old theatre with some rodents.”

  “I suppose they can’t be any worse than you,” he said without breaking a smile.

  Frank grinned for the both of them.

  “Shall we, then”?

  As Joel and Frank carefully picked their way down the narrow side alleyway, it struck Joel that he’d very quickly developed a real knack for sneaking around. Afraid of his shadow when they’d left Hilltop in a cab some weeks beforehand, here he was sneaking his way down rat-filled side streets after a breakout from one institution so he could break into another.

  “You been in since?” he asked.

  “I come here every now and then. She was good to me in her day.”

  He sounded melancholic. So unlike Frank that it gave Joel pause.

  “Don’t go stealing my bit,” he told his friend.

  “What’s that now?”

  “I’m supposed to be the sad, pathetic one. You’re supposed to be the funny one. We can’t both be sad. That’d be too much.”

  He heard a light chuckle from up in front. It was too dark to make out Frank’s face in the little run, but he hoped there was warmth there.

  At the back there was a little clearing and some steps leading up to a door. The area was strewn with trash, empty bottles and cans here and there.

  “I suppose some misfortunate homeless person has been in and out, but once upon a time I came to this door for smokes. I’d smoke a cigarette in between scenes. The other actors used to hate it. You know, in case I missed my cue or something, but I never did.”

  Sure enough, the door opened, creaking slightly as Frank stepped up to it and into the theatre. They were in what Joel assumed was backstage, the old exposed brick of the back wall now covered in graffiti. High above them the fittings for hanging the long black curtains he knew were part and parcel of a set. A tall partition separated them from the stage, and as they stepped around it the streetlights outside the windows, high up on either side of the theatre, illuminated them just enough for Joel to make out the ruined remains of the stage and the battered, cloth upholstered seats that had once been the Royale Theatre.