Tin Man(15)

We have to stop this, said Annie one night. Go and find him.

No, he said. Fuck him.

And that was that. A six-year standoff of wasted time.

His absence unbalanced them both in a way neither could have predicted. Without Michael’s energy and view of the world they became the settled married couple both had feared becoming. They made little demand of one another and conversation gave way to silence, albeit comfortable and familiar. Ellis withdrew, he knew he did. His hurt turned to anger, there when he woke up and before he slept. Life was not as fun without Michael. Life was not as colourful without him. Life was not life without him. If only Ellis could have told him that then maybe he would have returned.

Five years they existed in this unfamiliar interlude, until teenagers – bizarrely – prodded Ellis back to life. He was in a café watching a group of them at a nearby table. They were loud and comfortably draped across one another and he enjoyed their gauche attempts at cool, at their more charming traits of silliness. But it was their curiosity and attentiveness that left an impression on him, the natural interplay of their delight. And he wrote down on a scrap of paper what he observed about them, the qualities, the playfulness too, things he thought he’d relinquished in his relationship. He felt so grateful to them afterwards that he went to the counter and quietly paid for them to have another round of coffee and cake.

Outside, as he passed the window, he saw their confusion and laughter as a laden tray was placed in front of them.

He went straight away to a travel agency and got out the scrap of paper and asked for suggestions of a trip within three hours’ flight of London. Included in this trip, however, had to be – and he read out loud – Delight. Wonder. Curiosity. Culture. Romance. Seduction.

That’s easy, said the travel agent.

And a month later, they were in Venice.

The sudden impulse had them holding hands again across tables and leaping on to vaporetti that had already pulled away. And they holed up in a small hotel and breathed in the lagoon’s old breath, and in the quiet corner of an osteria or sprawled across a bed with the thump of orgasm ripe in their throats, they found one another again.

One morning, they woke up to the flood siren and it was an eerie sound in the early hour. They got up and went outside. A skein of mist hung over the lagoon, the rising sun fiery and red and beautiful. The duckboards were out and they walked around dazed and took breakfast at the Rialto market, just a bun, but then they dared one another to have a glass of wine instead of an espresso, and it was perfect. And they walked. Siphoning information from passing tourist groups, resting against bridges in full sun, finding brief respite against the cold air, the soft slap of waves the city’s musical pulse.

Spaghetti vongole was lunch, a dish that was a favourite, and they drank more wine and Ellis read out notes from a well-thumbed copy of Venice for Pleasure. Let’s go back to the hotel, said Annie smiling. In a bit, said Ellis. But there’s a place we have to go to first, and he paid the bill and took her hand and they shared a slow amble towards San Rocco and into Tintoretto’s beating heart.

In the Scuola Grande, they stood in awe as the Bible took shape and form above them and beside them. The beauty, the anguish of humanity startled them and silenced them. On the upper floor, Annie sat down on a chair and cried.

What is it? asked Ellis.

Everything, she said. This and having wine for breakfast and you and me and it’s just everything. It’s us. Knowing that we’re OK and we can be silly too. He taught us silly, didn’t he?

Ellis smiled. He did.

And I love you and we don’t have to settle, do we?

We don’t, he said.

And I do think of him still, you know, because I just want to know we’re still important to him. I’m being selfish, I know. And Ellis said, I think about him too. And she kissed him and said, I know you do. We just love him, don’t we?

They went back to the hotel and slept in Venetian dusk. They woke in the same position and opened their eyes to the sound of glasses clinking in the bar below. They went downstairs and sat at a table by the window. The cold sulked along the calli and gondoliers sang for tourists. A fire was lit in the hearth behind them and they held hands across the table and talked non-stop about unimportant things, and they laughed well together and they were the last to leave the bar. They undressed but didn’t wash. They turned off the light and slept with their arms around one another. They said goodbye to a city reflected in a billion corrugations of water.

Three weeks later, Michael did come back to them as if he’d heard their lament across the sea. He walked in the same way he had walked out, with little explanation and that daft grin across his face. And, for a while, they became them again.

Music from next door started early and it was loud. Ellis looked out on to their garden and saw three dustbins being filled with ice. It was bound to be an all-nighter, he thought, and he felt nervous. Christ, what the hell was he doing? Jamie had invited him earlier, tagged on to the end of an apology. Said something like, we’re having a party tonight, Ellis. Sorry in advance for the noise. You’re welcome to come if you want.

He stared at his limited array of clothes. Keep it simple, Annie would have said. Jeans, old Converse, light blue shirt. Socks or no socks? He looked at his ankles. Socks, he decided. He stepped back from the mirror, and ran his fingers through his hair. He hoped they’d be no dancing because then he’d have to leave.