Rachel Connolly
When We’re Older
I am in the pub, sitting at the bar, waiting for Jamie to arrive for the pizza and pints we do most Fridays now, and my phone just starts ringing on the counter in front of me. Not ringing as in making noise, I’m not middle aged, but ringing as in the screen has turned white. I lean forward to turn it over, ignore it. Nobody ever phones me about anything except my manager. And if it is my manager, it is 5:17 p.m. on a Friday. On Monday I’ll pretend I never saw the call.
No, actually, sometimes other people phone me. There was that woman from down South who talked me into pledging money for the abandoned pets and then I didn’t understand the money was every month. When I eventually worked up the courage to phone and cancel it was too stressful, they had too many arguments against it. I still pay for that. Or when my colleague Maureen called me in tears because she got the password for her laptop wrong so many times she locked herself out. Oh no. I’m sorry, I said. But I’m not I.T., I can’t help. She lost it. Later my manager said she just wanted someone to shout at, and for me to forget about it. I have tried to, but sometimes when I see her in the lunchroom with her sandwiches in tin foil and she says a breezy hello! I think to myself: I know who you really are. I still smile back though. Or there was that time I gave my personal details to that man pretending to be from Santander. He was so aggressive. I was frightened. I hate answering my phone.
I look at the screen. It says: Mr Campbell (PAULY’S DAD).
Pauly’s da, Christ. I don’t have to answer to know I will hate this call. Just looking at the name, I feel like the inside of my stomach has vanished and a strip of nothingness has appeared in its place. Pure nothingness. Outer space, dark matter, a black hole dragging the rest of me into its centre. My hands grip the bar counter. The pub is too hot and too dark but too bright at the same time. My eyes must be broken. They aren’t reading the light properly. I pick the phone up and pull my jacket on and head outside. I can’t answer it yet.
My legs surprise me by walking up the last stretch of the Ormeau Road to the Lagan. They walk right down to the river as if someone else is controlling them with a remote. I stand on the bridge and look at the water. For a second I think about going over to Pauly’s flat. But no, I can’t. The wind is in my hair. I’m dimly aware of it flapping around my face. If Pauly could see me now he would say I look gay. No, like a lesbian. When Pauly was insulting me he tended to call me a woman. Or more often a girl.
His dad did that too.
There was the time I came back to the flat and Pauly was lying, hungover, on the sofa, with his dad standing there, giving out to him about something.
What have you done to yourself, man? his dad said to me.
I’d just had my hair done. I was keeping it long in those days, and after my trim she’d set it with spray. She said it would smell like the beach. I remember it more like women’s perfume.
Then he started to shout. You look like you’re in Riverdance. That was often the way with Pauly and his da, from one sentence to the next they would suddenly stop speaking in a normal voice and start to shout and I could never exactly say why.
In that instant whatever Pauly had done became my fault. You’re as bad as him. His da carried on shouting at me, pointing.
Look at you. Hair like a girl, he said. Hair like you think you’re playing a guitar on TV. You’re not on TV, he shouted.
I didn’t say I was, I said.
That’s right you’re not, he shouted, pointing at me.
Shut up! Pauly was shouting. Dad, shut the fuck up. He can wear his hair how he likes.
Then, as I remember it, they went back to shouting at each other.
Another thing they would say to me, Pauly and his da, if they were angry, was that I was mental. That was a phrase Pauly used a lot. Not only for me. Mental illness loomed large for him in general, but only as it related to other people. He had a lot of theories, Pauly did. He was very proud he didn’t own a modern phone. Calls and texts, that’s it, he liked to say, pointing at his Nokia brick. He spoke often about the psychological issues he attributed to smart phones. I remember him talking about his da’s new son once. Pauly always called him that, the “new son”. At first I assumed he was a baby or a toddler, then I found out he was twelve. He had not been new for at least a decade, but Pauly had never gotten used to him. He never tired of describing the new son’s issues.
He has autism or ADHD or something, Pauly said that time. One of the new young-people-mental-illnesses you get from being on TikTok all the time.
We were sitting in the flat, on the shiny black leather sofas, eating fish suppers he had picked up for us and watching a reality show he said he didn’t watch but would put on the TV every night. In our time together I learned that Pauly was very dishonest about the TV he watched, the music he listened to, and the books he read. He would always cite his preferences as totally different from what I observed them to be.
He’s fucked in the head, he continued. He has the mental problems you get from looking at your phone all day. I ignored him.
Sometimes when he talked like that I imagined myself answering, challenging him. So what if he is mental? I would say. What is the problem if he is? Why is that so bad? I think I myself may be neurodivergent. I did a test online and my score suggested this is probably true. I might even go to the doctor about that sometime. And I have a proper phone and I look at TikTok sometimes and I’m still a lot less mental than you are.
I never said it. When the topic came up, being mental, I found I could never remember the order my speech was supposed to go in. I would sit, trying not to be seen to react at all, and wait till Pauly got bored of that topic and went on to something else. I always hoped he would move on to something fun or funny. The thing was, Pauly made me laugh so much. The thing was, we ate our dinner together almost every night.
I look at the surface of the Lagan. I can’t see myself. Running water doesn’t work that well as a mirror; I’m too high up to be reflected. I know that. But I let myself imagine that I have disappeared and the only thing left of me is my clothes and shoes. My phone will ring again and a passerby will stop and find it in the empty pile of clothes and answer it. Then whoever it is will have to talk to Pauly’s dad instead of me.
Pauly knew his da was scary. We laughed about that. Pauly had a good impression he would do. He would put on a low voice and growl. But only after at least one beer, and more likely several. Pauly was his best after several beers, but before several turned into five or six. He could turn into something really nasty then. After I saw it a few times I learned to just go to bed before that stage and lock my door. There was no talking to him when he was like that.
That side wasn’t the whole Pauly, though, or even most of him. Most of our evenings together were nothing like that. When I moved into Pauly’s flat (well, his da’s flat), that was the first time I had anyone else to cook for. That made me so happy I was too nervous to enjoy it at first.
I was a pretty great cook by then, if I can say so myself. My evenings had mostly been free while I was studying maths at Queens. I knew people on the course would go for drinks sometimes because they would talk about it and be hungover together in lectures, but I couldn’t figure out how you were supposed to join in with that. I spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to ask someone, and then all of a sudden we were graduating. I had never spoken to most of my classmates. But I had tried a lot of different recipes, and I had made enough money playing online poker to pay off my student fees, so that was something.
After that, the housemates I met on SpareRoom before Pauly had all sorts of rules about not wanting to eat together, or really spend any time together at all. They would tell me they preferred to unwind with dinner, so they would rather we didn’t talk, and they would listen to music with their headphones on if I had to be in the kitchen at the same time. Or they would just leave the room with their plate. I remember once one of them wagged her finger at me as she backed out of the room, as if I would follow her otherwise. Pauly never had any rules like that.
The day I went to Stranmillis to view his flat, I was so worried about being late that I arrived half an hour early. House viewings are so stressful. I panicked about being so early and tried to go for coffee, but then in the coffee shop I panicked that getting a coffee would make me need the toilet during the viewing. By that stage I was at the till and starting to panic about being at the till and not ordering anything. My breathing was getting faster and faster. Hot chocolate! I half-shouted at the woman, trying to smile. I focused on getting my breathing back to normal as I sat with my drink, waiting until I could walk across the road to the flat.
At the viewing, as Pauly showed me around, I was focussing so much on breathing normally and asking normal questions that I can’t even remember how he greeted me.
When he showed me my room, with the purple carpet and black plastic wardrobe and bed, it looked, in its essence if not its particulars, like every other room I had ever viewed. Cold, disappointing, sad, empty. Full of furniture and design choices that seemed to have been selected because nobody could possibly like them.
Nice, yes, I said. What size is it?
I can’t remember, said Pauly. It’s on the listing. But sure can you not see?
You’re inside the room?
Yes, true, I replied, smiling, being normal. I am.
Pauly laughed. He showed me the rest of the flat, even his own room. It was basically the same as mine with wood furniture. There was a large mirror on the wall beside his bed.
I like your furniture, I said. It’s good to have a big mirror. But can’t you see yourself in the mirror when you’re in bed?
He looked at me. Yes. He laughed. You’re a funny one, aren’t you.
We had a cup of tea in the kitchen. He offered me a beer, too. He seemed so warm. Not like the kind of person who leaves the kitchen with their plate full of dinner. He said I was a funny one a few times in that conversation, too. The next day he called to offer the room. I was too nervous that he would tell me I didn’t get it to answer, but I punched the air when I listened to his voicemail that evening.
We ate together most nights. I would leave work at 5 and stop at Tesco or the Asian supermarket on the way home. Thai food was my speciality at that time, and I made a lot of shrimp pad thai. Pauly was working as a personal trainer so he tended to be at work later. He said he had left his job in sales because of cre- ative differences. This suits me much better. I’m my own boss, aren’t I? he would say. Suits me down to the ground.
He would have a few beers, and I would join him with that on Fridays. He told me stories from his day, about his mental clients, and he asked me about mine too. He said I was funny all the time. Not just a funny one, he stopped saying that. But actually funny. Nobody had ever told me that before. We went to pubs sometimes to play pool. I had always wanted to try but didn’t know how to go into a pub. I never told him that. Once he took me it was obvious. You just walk in the door.
Once he helped me with my Tinder. He took a selfie of us together for me to use in my pictures. Can’t just be pictures of you on your own mate, he said. Makes you look like a freak. I still didn’t get any matches, except for one woman who matched and then messaged to ask if I could give her the number for my friend in the picture with me.
It was fair enough. Pauly was very good looking. I could see that even as a man. He had light blue eyes and a tan. He would go on the sun beds occasionally, but not so much that it looked like he did that. Just so much that it always looked like he had come back, not so long ago, from somewhere beautiful and exotic. Beyond just the way he looked, though, he was attractive because of the way he was in the world. Because he was warm. And because things that happen to me, like in the salon when the lady made my hair crispy and smell like a woman, would never happen to him.
He had a lot of girls over. They would have sex loudly, or they would sit in the living room area of the kitchen and giggle while I made us all dinner. Actually
I suppose I don’t know if it was that loud. I haven’t exactly heard many other people have real-life sex in the room right beside me. But it felt loud to me at the time.
He tended to see the same girl a few times and he would tell each one stories about the way things would be between them. I would hear him on the sofa as I sliced onions, whispering about holidays and restaurants. I can see big things for us babe, he would say. Or his catchphrase: Baby, when we’re older. Baby, when we’re older, we’ll do this. Baby we’ll do that. He would reference opportunities and connections I never heard him mention otherwise. Baby we’ll go to Bodrum, my mate’s dad has a timeshare. There’s a restaurant in Bangor a friend of mine owns, we’ll go and have champagne.
Then they would do something small, laugh the wrong way or ask to watch a different film than the one he wanted to put on, and he would stop seeing them or answering their calls and start talking all the time about the small thing they had done. Can’t be having that, he would say. Absolutely wouldn’t catch me watching Legally Blonde on a Sunday. Nope.
Aoife was the only one who broke that pattern, and then the pattern they had wasn’t much better. They would scream and break things in the flat. I could never tell if she was attractive or not. I was much too frightened of her. She had very long, glossy fingernails and a tan that looked a lot less natural than Pauly’s. She was on the scene for almost nine months, although she wasn’t the only one on the scene during that time.
I remember the last time I saw her. I came back from work and she was sitting on the sofa, looking at her phone. I asked who let her in and she ignored me. What do you think of this? She showed me her phone screen. She was looking at a handbag on eBay. It said in the description it needed a certificate if you left the country with it.
Why does it need that? I said. The certificate.
Never mind the certificate, she said. What do you think of the way it looks?
I didn’t answer her.
The certificate is because it’s snakeskin. A rare snake, she said. Now, what do you think of it?
Oh right, I said. I touched a snake once. At the circus. It felt like mud in a plastic bag.
Yes, well, the bag won’t feel like that, she said. That was its muscles you were feeling. The bag is just skin. They’ve hollowed it out.
I don’t really know anything about the way things should look, I said.
She looked at me and put her phone down. Paul was right about you. You are funny, she said. That’s about the only thing he ever was right about. She looked away, out the living room window. Do you know what it is? He loved me when I was in the distance, but I made the mistake of letting him get close to me. And the closer he got to me the more he hated me. And do you know why that is? Because he hates himself.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I was jealous she could plan to say something like that and just say it, all in the right order. But maybe she could say it because she was talking to me. Maybe she would have struggled to say her speech to him as much as I did. I was grateful when she got up and left. Later it turned out she had torn his room apart before I got back. She snapped his laptop in two and put a chair through his window. Took cash from his drawers, too. I never told Pauly I had seen her on the sofa, looking at the snakeskin bag. I couldn’t work out how to admit that without sounding like I could have stopped her, or even like I knew what she was doing. I really had no idea.
The last day I saw him was a few months later. We hadn’t eaten together in more than two weeks. He had got harder and harder to live with. More drinking. More nasty-piece-of-work Paul. He talked about Aoife all the time. Fucking spiteful bitch, he would say. But I heard him leave voicemails where he said the opposite, I guess to her. I knew better than to ask any questions.
At first I still cooked and set a plate out for him because he wouldn’t even tell me he wasn’t coming home. As if we had never had a routine together at all. I left his plate out as a way of telling him I had cooked for him, that at least one of us hadn’t forgotten our routine. Then one night he came back and tried to eat his pad Thai and came banging on my door because it was cold.
Cold fucking noodles? he said, when I opened the door. He stank of beer. You trying to poison me? You think I want food left out for God knows how long?
It was warm earlier, I said.
Think you’re my wife, do you? You fucking spastic. He was barely making any sense. Think you’re my wife and I can’t have any other girls around? Is that what you think?
I locked my door and he banged on it for a little while and then stopped. The next day at work I got a text from him: Fish and chips tonight mate?
I’ll treat.
I typed: Fuck you. Deleted it and typed: Sure.
I came back from work and we ate together. He didn’t mention the previous night. He asked me a lot of questions about work. He was very warm. But he did not apologise. I never cooked for him again.
The final straw, two weeks later, was the day he stole my keys because he’d lost his own. One of the days, actually; he had started doing that a fair bit. My flat, isn’t it? he’d say. How can they be your keys when they’re for my flat? I knew that didn’t make sense but I could never think of how to argue why it didn’t in the moment. Then that one time I stole them back. He was ballistic. Phoning me and phoning me. Sending furious messages.
I ignored him. I was playing pool at a bar in town. I was playing every Saturday at that time, going down by myself, getting pretty good. I looked down at my phone and a message from him appeared on the screen. Come outside now. In carpark.
I went outside and there he was. In the back of a taxi shouting. The taxi was being driven round and round the car park in circles. The back window was open and he was leaning out of it. Occasionally the tires screeched.
How did you know I was here? I said.
You’re not in work mate, he shouted, tapping his head. It was going to be here or the other place you play pool. Hardly fucking rocket science is it? Give me the keys.
They’re mine, I said.
Mental illness, he shouted. That’s what you’ve got. Mental. He tapped his head for emphasis. Illness.
How is it me? I shouted back. How am I the mental one?
He tapped his head. Pull in mate, he shouted. The car screeched to a stop.
Well, what would you call this? I tried to shout but my voice collapsed in the middle of my sentence. The way you’re acting now? Driving around in the car like this?
I’m not driving boyo, am I? he shouted back. Not behind the wheel, am I?
No I’m not.
I tried the driver. I looked into his window. Why are you helping him? I shouted. I couldn’t see his face through the blacked-out window. Then he wound the window down.
Look, I’m only his Uber, mate, the driver shouted at me. Sure I just drive, don’t I? He paused. Look he tipped me, he added, in a quieter voice. He sounded resigned, even sorry. Or maybe I just wanted him to.
I took my keys out of my pocket and threw them on the ground. Keep them, I said.
I never went back to his flat again. I had to stay in an Airbnb for a little while until I found a new place on SpareRoom.
As I stand looking at the Lagan I imagine myself speaking to him today, two years later. I have friends now, I would say. Friends who don’t call me mental or a woman. We play pool. And every Friday I meet Jamie and we drink two or sometimes three pints and order two pizzas. He always gets just cheese. I get cheese and mushroom. Sometimes I think about trying BBQ chicken but I haven’t yet. It’s my life and I’m proud of it.
I can picture what he would say. Fair play mate. Glad to hear that.
I squeeze my eyes shut. I wish he had been bad all the time. I wish he had never told me I was funny.
My phone rings again and I answer it. What’s the point in avoiding it? I know what it will say.
Right, Pat, his dad says instantly. Pauly’s had an accident.
No hello, no how are you, nothing nice even on this call. But this is who Pauly’s dad is, and when I imagined this call I never imagined him saying hello to me, or asking me how I am. I have planned what to say. I knew this was coming. Pauly was dangerous to himself. I knew he was. And I always imagined, when I thought of him, which I tried not to because it made me nervous, that he would only get more and more dangerous. I realize I can’t imagine Pauly being old. This time I am able to say what I had planned.
He went peacefully, I hope? I say.
What? he says. Peacefully? What? No, he’s not dead.
I can hear him getting angry. He stops for a few seconds.
He’s alive, son, he says. After another pause he speaks in a different voice, a soft one I have never heard him use. Look, he’s in the hospital. He was lucky. He was passed out drinking. Drugs probably. An electric blanket went on fire. He has burns but he was lucky.
I stand there on the bridge in amazement. An electric blanket? There was me thinking I would have known exactly what this call would say.
What was he doing with an electric blanket? I ask.
What? Pauly’s dad says. I can hear anger again.
What was he doing with an electric blanket? I ask.
Fuck if I know. Staying warm? Why does anyone use a blanket? I can hear the anger rising. He pauses and returns with the new soft voice. Look son. It’s not relevant. He’s had a scare but he’s been lucky. He’s agreed to the Alcoholics Anonymous this time. And a counsellor.
He stops talking and I don’t say anything. I don’t want to accidentally make him use the angry voice again. And I don’t have a script planned for this.
Are you there son? his dad says.
Yes, I say. This is good news.
Yes it is, he says. He coughs. Look, son, you were a good friend to him.
I don’t know what to say to that. I want to say goodbye and hang up, and he can call me back when I have decided what to say. But I sort of feel if I hang up on Pauly’s dad he will find me here, at the bridge, and shout at me in person.
Thank you, I say.
He doesn’t have many good friends left. He coughs. Look, would you come and see him? Some day, if you’re free? He’ll be in bed recovering for a few weeks. I don’t know what to say. I have a picture in my head of me arriving in a room with Pauly in a bed covered in pink and bandages with his arms and legs all in different slings. Who’s the mental one now? I would say. It’s not a long speech. I bet I could say it. And he might laugh. He probably would laugh. I could tell him about my life now. I think he’d like to hear about that. Pauly was the first person I went to a pub with. He was the first person I cooked for.
Maybe, I say.
Right, he says. Brilliant. You’re a good man, son.
He reels off information about which hospital and where Pauly will be after in a manner that makes me think of someone firing a gun in a shooting range on TV. Then he hangs up. He doesn’t say goodbye, but he was always like that.