Tin Man(16)

The champagne had been in the fridge for a year or two, bought on a whim to elevate his mood, but he hadn’t been able to face it because he never drank champagne alone, so it sat at the back of the fridge with a dark jar of pickled onions, which he had been afraid to open. He grabbed the bottle and walked out the back door. He squeezed through the hole in the bottom fence. He didn’t know why he did that, he could have gone round to the front and rung the bell like any other normal person. He’d become feral and reclusive.

He found Jamie in the kitchen, and Jamie cheered when he saw him and said something like, Look who’s here folks! This is Ellis, everyone – All right, Ellis? Hi, Ellis. Nice to meet you, mate etc. etc. The music was quite loud and Ellis had trouble understanding what people were saying to him. He smiled a lot and opened the champagne and moved back out to the garden with his new friends. He asked Jamie what the music was and he told him it was Radiohead, the song ‘High and Dry’. He rarely listened to music any more but he liked this music and thought he might even buy this music. Who is it again? he asked.

The champagne made him feel ridiculously bold (quickly drunk) and before he knew it, he had agreed to tell a joke and all these young eyes were on him. He thought for a moment.

He said, How do you make a snooker table laugh?

Pause.

Tickle its balls.

In the space after the punchline and before laughter, a brief silence ensued, in which he made plans to go home, watch television that kind of thing, but then laughter erupted, and amidst the laughter people repeated the punchline and he was saved from an early night. A spliff was put in his hand and a refill of bubbles in the other, and Jamie leant in close to his ear and told him he was really glad he was there. And Ellis said he was too. And Jamie said he’d won twenty quid in a bet. And Ellis said, What bet? And Jamie said, Nobody thought you’d come. You’re a mystery, mate.

The effect of the dope inched across his brain and he left the crowds in the garden and went back inside to find a quiet place to smoke in case he hallucinated. He was worried what might come out.

The front room was empty and blacked out, illuminated solely by a television screen that emitted blue from a vast blue ocean. He grabbed a cushion from the sofa, placed it on the floor by the television and lay down. He looked up. Dolphins were jumping over him. He smiled and inhaled a lungful of thick sweet smoke.

She came into the room then. The door opened and she stood in the doorway, a dark presence haloed by yellow hallway light. She closed the door and sealed them in, alone. He watched her move closer, too dark to see her face, but her face became clear as she leant over him and asked if she could join him. He could smell her skin and it could have been soap, or maybe the moisturiser she used, but it was a heavenly smell. He thought she was pretty. And much too young. She put a cushion down next to him and took a smoke. They swapped names, and he forgot hers straight away because he was nervous, and he told her all he knew about dolphins and their capacity for empathy, and she said, Uh huh, uh huh, and she leant across him and blew smoke in his mouth. Her hair fell over him and smelt of pine. He was aware of her aliveness, the brutal honesty of her desire.

She put her hand on his chest and he thought his heart would explode, and he felt embarrassed because he knew she could feel it.

You look scared, she said, and laughed.

Sea otters now swimming in his eyes.

She undid his shirt buttons and her fingers played on his chest and she ran a fingernail down the hairline to his stomach, and the feeling was sublime and caused him pain, and he stopped her then and said, Enough now. He kissed her hand. Enough, he said.

OK, she said, and buttoned up his shirt. But can I rest my hand here, is that OK?

That’s OK, he said, and he fell asleep with her hand on his chest and with tears spilling from the corners of his eyes.

It was morning. She had gone. He was lying alone on the floor of a strange room under a television with the lingering melancholy of a young woman’s sweet touch. The house was quiet. He crept over bodies. In the hallway, the faint sound of lovemaking and snores gathered, and a quiet telephone conversation muffled by a hand. Through dark rooms the occasional light of a computer screen, or a portable television on mute. In the garden, the dustbins were full of water and empty bottles. He crawled back under the fence, a tomcat retreating home. He went straight to the bathroom and rinsed his face and hands, and his blue eyes stood out in the bloodshot whites. He came back downstairs and made an espresso in an Italian coffee pot he and Annie had brought back from Venice. In the bottom cupboard, he found an unopened pack of coffee beans and had to search for the electric grinder because like so many other things it had been pushed to the back.

He drank the coffee out in the garden as the garden awoke. He suddenly realised the clocks had gone forward and it was officially spring and the birds were loud because the birds knew. He undid his shirt and goose bumps rose. He rubbed his hand across the plaster cast, across the phone number written large in thick black pen. Across the words: ‘Call me. You’re gorgeous. Love Becs’.

Three days later, it was his father’s birthday and he decided to make an effort. He’d bought him a new cap, a good cap, navy, and he’d bought it from Shepherd and Woodward on the High Street.

He gave him the present before the cake came out and his father said thank you and put the cap on immediately, and that’s how Ellis knew he liked it. He adjusted it a little, moved the peak from side to side until it rested heavily on his ears. He sat at the table all cap and teeth and ears and Carol said, Suits you, Len.