Free (2008) Mister Roberts by Alexei Sayle Page B

haven’t been in the middle of this like I
have. You weren’t there when Mister Roberts messed up Sergei. I bet if you’d
seen the power of that man you’d feel differently And another thing, Sergei
got a shot off and his gun was pointing directly at Mister Roberts, but the man
didn’t react in any way.
    ‘Well,
the bullet must have gone somewhere else.’
    ‘Darling,
I’ve looked all over Noche Azul but I haven’t found the hole if it did.’
    ‘Oh, is
that why you were crawling around the bar on your hands and knees last night?’
    ‘No,
that was just drunkenness, drunkenness and despair, you know, the usual.’
    ‘So are
you saying bullets can’t harm Mister Roberts, that he’s immortal or a zombie or
something?’
    ‘I
don’t know what I’m saying apart from the fact that him and her together is a
dangerous combination.’
    After a
few more minutes of contemplative basking Laurence said to Nige, ‘You know,
I’ve always been suspicious of people who act as if they know exactly and in
minute detail what was going through the mind of their childhood selves. As if
the person they were at the age of ten or whatever is on the other end of the
phone or easily reachable by email, like they could just call them up and say,
“Hi, Childhood Self, now just remind me why were we so desperate to take our
pet snake along to our first day of secondary school?”
    ‘For
me, young Laurence disappeared when he was about twenty, leaving no forwarding
address. After that age I can more or less dimly figure out why I did what I
did but before then I haven’t the faintest idea what was going through my head.
I can only guess at why my favourite books at the age of eight were the novels
of Graham Greene or the reason why I was a supporter of Cardiff City football
club even though I’d never been to Wales or why I wanted a javelin and a
rolling pin for my ninth birthday That’s not to say that I didn’t go through
inner turmoil, after all something must have formed my personality It’s just
that the emotional memory of my formative years is a complete blank, as if the
computer file has been wiped by a wild power surge on some forgotten, stormy
night.’
    Nige
said, ‘I think that might just be you. I can remember lots about my childhood,
too much really, the number of my Aha fan-club membership and an entire episode
of the Bionic Man. It’s yesterday and today I struggle with.’
    ‘I was
just thinking about young Stanley I’m fond of that boy, but since I fell out
with Donna she won’t let me have anything to do with him; I can’t say I was the
best man to have in his life but I’ve got to be better than that Mister
Roberts.’
    ‘You
were the closest thing to a mother that he ever had.’
    ‘You
know, I say I remember nothing of my childhood, but funnily enough one thing
which is quite vivid is that point when you start to see all adults, especially
your parents, not as the godlike figures they were to you when you were an
infant but as real, fallible people. For me it happened when I was on the bus
to school and the conductor forgot to take my fare. Up until that point I
thought grown-ups knew everything, that there was a daily newsletter or
something that said “little Laurence is going to try and not pay his fare
today”. Once I realised they didn’t know any more than me it made the world
seem a lot more dangerous, but I suppose you also knew that if you had the
nerve then you could probably get away with anything. In a way I blame that
bus conductor for me taking opium, becoming gay and not being able to visit
Switzerland for the next twenty years.’
    Nige
said, ‘I suppose it’s a necessary evolutionary stage isn’t it? Finding out that
adults aren’t omnipotent, the first phase of detaching from Mum or Dad and
becoming an independent person.
    ‘Yeah —
and I guess most people end up still more or less on speaking terms with their
parents. But when you have the kind of claustrophobic