The Strong One
I was always going to be too late. If I’d had more warning, acted sooner, done things
differently, even then I would have been too late.
Of course, I didn’t know that at the time. At the time I convinced myself I still had a
chance. It was only afterwards, right after it happened, that I saw it had been inevitable. I was
always going to be too late because I was a coward.
I don’t remember when I first realised that Tom was different from me. We were just
brothers, Tom two years younger, and we accepted each other as we were. I suppose it
happened gradually as we grew and I found that we couldn’t do all the same things. It didn’t
matter; there was plenty that we could do so we adapted as children do. A withered arm
doesn’t stop you playing football, fishing, riding a bike and we did all of those things, always
together.
Tom was smaller than me, less confident, more serious. If I had been on my own I
would have been riding along the edge of the towpath, right by the water; I would have
waded out into the lake to the place where the bigger fish hid; I would have taken more risks.
But Tom was too nervous to follow and I didn’t want to leave him behind, so I held back.
My mother had asked me to keep an eye on Tom. Our father had left not long after
Tom was born and I knew she worried.
“You’re the strong one, Michael,” she said.
She hadn’t needed to say it. Tom was my little brother and I knew it was my job to
look out for him. Anyway, I loved him.
Starting school was always going to be tough. On normal days I stored up every
interesting thing that happened to tell him when I got home so that he didn’t feel left out and
at weekends it was just us again. It didn’t make up for having been so close and now being
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apart for most of each day. My mother explained to the teachers and they made an effort to
include Tom whenever they could, in the field trips we took or outings to nearby ruins. The
teachers spoke to the other children and apart from the obvious curiosity there was little
trouble. They only had to look in my eyes to know that it wouldn’t be tolerated.
When Tom started school we settled into a routine of meeting in the playground at
every break, like a piece of elastic that had been stretched but not broken and that snapped
back into shape as soon as it was released.
That was how it was with Tom and me and I didn’t think it would ever change. But
nothing stays the same, no matter how hard we try and especially when we don’t try at all.
We grow, we learn, we covet the new and exciting and if that means leaving behind the old
and familiar, if we believe that these are the things that are holding us back, then we let them
go. And so I let go of Tom.
When you are eight and your brother is six you don’t seem so different. You enjoy the same
things, play the same games, live the days that you have only for themselves. When you are
fourteen and your brother is twelve you have crossed a bridge into another world – a world of
needing to belong, of girls, of growing up. Your brother is still on the other side of the bridge
and doesn’t fit into your new plans.
There were three boys in my year at school who seemed to have it all sussed out. They
were the cool ones; the girls flirted with them, the boys envied them, and they didn’t care
either way. It was as though they didn’t need anyone, not even each other; they were strong,
whole, enough on their own, just being themselves.
One of them, Neil, had a leather jacket, scuffed and soft and looking like he had been
born wearing it and I yearned for one exactly the same. At weekends they hung out in the
town centre, smoking, drinking a bit, talking about which girls at school were most likely to
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do it and which ones already had. It was nothing, really, normal teenage stuff. To me it was
everything.
I had never felt the need for friends before – I had Tom. Now that wasn’t enough. I
was respected at school, my toughness and attitude from my early years carrying me through,
and I knew that if I was free of Tom, if I could just be me, then I could join that group, I
could be accepted by them. I didn’t see that my need to be one of the group already set me
apart from them.
I chose a day when Tom’s class was on a trip and at the end of lessons I approached
Neil. He was leaning against the gate to the playing fields, laughing at the giggling girls who
thrust out their chests and pouted as they passed on their way home.
“Hi, Neil,” I said.
“Michael.”
“What’s up?”
“Waiting for the others. Heading into town later.”
“Can I come?”
Neil laughed. “With Tom? I don’t think so.”
“No,” I said. “Just me. Tom’s not here.”
“Oh, right. I thought you were joined at the hip. Sure, if you want, come along. We’re
going to hang out.”
And it was as easy as that. I was going to hang out with Neil and his mates and I felt
as though my life had begun in that moment. In a way it had.
I found myself that night, sitting on a bench in the precinct, talking about bands and
girls and all the things that are so important at that age, with no responsibilities and no
expectations, simply the joy of being young and alive. I grew to fill the space that Tom had
taken up before and left no room for him to come back.
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Of course, he didn’t know that and I didn’t know how to tell him.
I started avoiding him at break times and after school, and at weekends I left without
telling him where I was going. I hoped he would get the message, know that I was grown up
now and it was time for us to make our own lives. He didn’t.
He kept asking me what I was doing and why he hardly saw me and suggesting things
we could do together. I brushed him aside with excuses: I was busy, I had exams coming, I
had extra school projects to complete. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by letting him know
that there were other people now whose company I preferred. It wasn’t his fault that he was
in the way.
But he was always going to find out; it wasn’t difficult to see what was going on. He
spoke to me one evening when I got home, in the quiet, serious way that he had.
“I don’t think you should be with those guys,” he said.
“What guys?”
“Come on, Mike, I’m not stupid. Neil and the others. They’ll get you into trouble.”
I laughed.
“Trouble? Like what?”
“You know what.”
I did know. The police had been round at Neil’s more than once – shoplifting,
fighting, small stuff. I didn’t care. Risky was good.
Tom was still whining. “And they’re not smart like you. What about your exams?”
“Mind your own business,” I said.
“It is my business. You’re my brother. I miss you. And I have to watch out for you.”
And there it was, after all this time.
“You? Watch out for me? You’re just jealous.”
“I’m not. You’re not the same as them, you know you aren’t.”
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And I couldn’t bear it. I shoved him away.
“Piss off and leave me alone,” I said and left before I could see the sadness in his eyes
that I knew would be there.
If only he’d taken the hint. If only he’d allowed me to make my own mistakes as I
needed to. I should have known he wouldn’t do that, couldn’t.
He started following us around wherever we went. If we were in the park, he would be
leaning against a tree. If we were in the precinct he would be in a shop doorway. Neil started
calling him ‘the shadow’ and we laughed together at the silly kid and then Neil and the others
got tired of it.
I could see that I was being edged out. I had stopped being me and was again being
defined by my brother. It couldn’t go on or I would lose everything.
“Can’t you get rid of him?” Neil said one night. “He’s getting on my nerves.”
“I’ve told him. He doesn’t listen.”
“Well, tell him again.”
So I did and it made no difference.
“I’ll have a word,” Neil said.
And I said nothing.
Tom and I had always walked home from school together, down the towpath where
we had played as children. Now Tom did that on his own, going home to Mum, telling her
everything was all right, before coming out again to find out where I was and what I was
doing.
It was a Friday. I leaned against the playing field gate waiting for Neil and the others
and watched Tom leave for home. They never showed.
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I knew then, I knew right away that tonight they were going to ‘have a word’. I knew
that it would be more than that, and three against one. I thought of the years I had spent
looking out for Tom, and I thought of the new me that I wasn’t brave enough to give up.
I stood there thinking, leaning against the gate, pretending not to know. I left it just
long enough so that I could convince myself I hadn’t let it happen. Then I ran, as though there
was still time, as though I still had a chance to do the right thing.
I was too late and I was always going to be too late because I was a coward.
They were pulling him out of the canal when I got there. He was limp and pale and
small, and his face was cut and bruised.
I thought he was dead. I thought of his life flashing through his mind as he drowned
and what he would have seen. And then I realised what I would have seen if I had been
drowning: Tom, not climbing trees because I couldn’t climb, not playing cricket because I
couldn’t catch, not learning to swim because I couldn’t swim; Tom letting me think I was
looking out for him because I needed to believe it, when it had always been the other way
round; Tom standing up to Neil, protecting me, knowing he would be hurt and doing it
anyway. And I knew that Tom would never have been too late, no matter what, because Tom
was brave and not like me at all.
My mother’s words pounded through my head: “You’re the strong one, Michael,
you’re the strong one.”
She had wanted me to believe that. I had fought all my life to be the same as everyone
else, to be Michael, not ‘the boy with the withered arm’ and I had succeeded. The only person
I hadn’t convinced was myself. So she had been wrong.
The really strong one had been Tom all along.
Then I heard him cough.
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I tried to talk to him about it afterwards, to say that I was sorry. He wouldn’t let me. It was
one of those things, he said.
We started again, Tom and I, knowing more about each other than we had before, and
about ourselves. And I realised that it doesn’t make you weak to be glad that your brother has
got your back.
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