Tin Man(11)

Two months after Ellis had first suspected something, his mother went into hospital. As she left the house, she said, I’ll see you later, Ell. Don’t forget to wash and don’t forget to eat.

It was the last time he saw her.

The emptiness of the house overwhelmed him and he couldn’t free himself from the sudden panic that ambushed him when the curtains were drawn. Some days he smelt perfume, too, that wasn’t his mother’s and it made him sick. In the end, he packed a bag and went to stay at Mabel’s. He was never sure if his father had noticed he was gone.

Working in the shop at weekends was a good distraction, and brought back his appetite for food. But it was the routine of being cared for again that was the silent wonder. He stood taller. That’s what people noticed.

He and Michael were in the shop the day Mabel returned from the ward and told them Dora had died. Michael ran up to his room, and Ellis wanted to follow him but his legs wouldn’t move, a sudden moment of paralysis that marked the end of childhood.

Ellis? said Mabel.

He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t cry. Staring at the floor, struggling to remember the colour of his mother’s eyes, just something to hold on to, but he couldn’t. Only later, would Michael tell him they were green.

Funeral day, and they stood in silence at the dining table making sandwiches. He buttered, Mabel filled, Michael cut. The only sound in the room came from his father who was polishing his leather workboots. The angry scratch of bristles being worked across the toe. The sound of spit, sharp and incessant against a clock counting down. A hearse pulling up outside.

In Rose Hill chapel, Ellis sat at the front next to his father. The organ sounded much too loud and his mother’s coffin looked much too small. He smelt the same perfume he noticed on occasion at home, and when he turned round, sitting behind him was a woman with peroxide-blonde hair and a kind smile, and she leant forward and whispered, Don’t forget, Ellis, your dad needs you: a declaration as shocking to him as his mother’s death. He stood up, an action so instinctive it caught him by surprise. And years later, he came to believe that the courage it took for him to walk out of church that afternoon, amidst the whispers and stares, used up his life’s quota.

He hitched a ride down to the river and the man in the car said, Cheer up, mate! You look like you’ve been to a funeral. And Ellis said he had, said it was his mum’s, and the man said Christ, and said nothing after that. Took him to the gates at Iffley Lock and handed him a fiver when he got out. Ellis asked what the money was for and the man said he didn’t know. Just take it, he said.

He crossed the lock and walked the towpath to Long Bridges bathing place, his and Michael’s favourite hangout. The trees had passed through autumn and it should have been cold but an unseasonal warm breeze followed him under Donnington Bridge, gathering up geese, launching them into flight.

At the bathing place he found himself alone. He sat down next to the steps. The call of ducks, the sound of a train, oars slapping against the water: life in continuum. He wondered when the sun would shine hot again, and an hour later, Michael shouted to him from the bridge and ran towards him. When Michael was near, Ellis said, What are we going to do without her?

And Michael said, We carry on and we don’t give up. And he knelt down and kissed him. It was their first kiss. Something good in a day of bad.

They sat there quietly, not talking about death, or the kiss, or how life was going to change. They watched the shifting colours of the sun and the deep shadows eavesdropped on their grief, and the vivid descant of birdsong slowly muted to unimaginable silence.

He never knew what made him look up, but when he did his father was watching them from the bridge. He didn’t know how long he had been there but a knot of tension bedded down in his gut. He knew his father hadn’t seen them kiss but the proximity of their bodies couldn’t be mistaken. Knee against knee, arm against arm, the clasp of hands out of sight, or so he thought. His father stayed where he was and shouted, Come on, let’s go! And when they got to him, he didn’t look at them but turned and started walking away.

His father drove badly, slipping gears, braking sharply, a wonder he never killed anyone. He dropped Michael at the shop and when Ellis was about to get out too, his father said, Not tonight, you’re not. You stay here.

The car journey home was oppressive and made in silence. The pain in his stomach grew and he felt so adrift in the care of this man. This man who didn’t really know him, this man who had just stalled in the middle of a junction, who was slumped over the steering wheel as horns blared, who kept saying, Fuck fuck, over and over. Ellis opened the car door and walked away.

He walked aimlessly till night fell. He bought chips and ate them on the street, sitting with his back against a wall, his mum would have been so ashamed. He only returned home when he was convinced his father would have passed out on a bed or floor upstairs.

The lights were out when he entered the hallway. Quietly, he placed his foot on the first stair when a voice startled him and drew him back into the darkness of the front room.

In here, said his father, switching on the standard lamp at his side. He stood up from the sofa and the plastic sheeting crackled with static. In his hand, one of Ellis’s sketchbooks.

You’re getting soft, he said, flicking through the pages. Look how soft you’ve got, and he threw the book across the floor. It opened at a drawing of Michael.

He said, Let me tell you something. What you want to do and what you’re going to do are two very different things. You’re leaving school year after next.