Tin Man(20)

Let me show you to your room, he said, and he walked them to the larger tent. Inside were sleeping bags zipped together. May I suggest a swim in the lake tomorrow? he said. Weather permitting, of course.

They changed immediately into denim cut-offs and flip flops. The evening was cool, so jumpers hid T-shirts and Ellis built a fire in a ring of bricks. They all turned to look as the back door opened.

Ah, said Michael. Here comes the gypsy of the old fen, the Lighter of Lights.

What’s that? said Mabel, holding a bottle of champagne.

The deaf gypsy of the old fen, said Michael.

Go on with you, she said, and she opened the champagne which took a while, and Ellis handed around mugs stained with tea and they drank from these mugs and they toasted three times.

To you two! said Michael.

To us! said Annie.

For nothing to change, said Ellis.

And that was the night Michael ran across the road to the Italian restaurant and brought back plates of spaghetti vongole, which no one had ever tasted before. A bottle of red wine, too, Chianti Ruffino in a basket. This is fancy, said Mabel.

The next morning, he and Annie awoke to the sound of rain. They dozed and huddled close as the damp crept in. They heard the sound of the back door open, flip flops running across the grass.

Knock knock, said Michael. Coffee! And he tugged the zip down and his beaming face filled the space.

Look how handsome he is, said Annie.

It’s unbearable, said Ellis.

Budge up, said Michael, water dripping down his forehead. One cappuccino and two espressos, he said. The Italian pastries in his pocket, miraculously dry.

They settled down to a morning of Scrabble, speeding up the game with double points for dirty words, which Ellis won. Lunchtime, the gypsy of the old fen came out with sausage sandwiches, and afterwards the clouds broke up and the sun cast hazy rays towards the earth and the tents began to steam. Annie helped Mabel off with her shoes, and together they went for a paddle, and Mabel said, All this, and we’re still in Oxford.

I’m going to light the candles again tonight, said Ellis.

Do it, said Michael.

And when light fell, the constellations flickered, and Ellis sat in the pool with a wooden boat rocking by his foot. The boat capsized when Annie and Michael got into the water.

I don’t ever want to settle, said Ellis, looking from one to the other.

I won’t let you settle, said Annie.

And I won’t let you settle, and Michael handed him a mug of champagne.

Ellis drank. Where are we again? he said, looking around.

Greece, said Annie. An island called Skyros.

The fishing boats are coming in, said Michael. Look. You can see their lights coming to shore.

So what’s the plan for tomorrow? said Ellis.

More of the same, said Annie. Stay on the beach. Maybe a cycle around the island, later. We don’t want to overdo it, do we? We’ve got so much time.

It was May Day, and students still had flowers in their hair. Ellis’s cast was off and he cycled through town and down St Aldate’s to the river. The sun had come out for the first time that afternoon and the towpath was busy.

He turned off into Long Bridges where the river was still, where an occasional breeze rippled the surface when he wasn’t looking. He moved away from the bridge towards the concrete bank hidden by a thick hedge of brambles, and there he undressed. He was shy at first. He sat on the side with his feet in the water and his hands in his lap. A shout from a rowing cox the other side of the trees, and the thump of blades slicing the river was the sound of Oxford in spring. The fleeting glimmer of bikes speeding along the path to his left. He slipped into the cold water and his nakedness felt electrifying. Mud squeezed between his toes, and he half-expected to feel the familiar flicker of minnows around his ankles as he used to do. He swam in the wake of a mallard and felt the pleasure of the sun breathing hard on his arm. As he swam, a memory came to him. The last summer with his mother, it would have been. He could see her again, lying amongst the crowds on the opposite bank and she was laughing. She had just asked Michael what book he was reading and he held it up and said, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. He said they were doing the American Civil War at school and they had to present something to class about Abraham Lincoln. He had chosen to do a poem about Lincoln’s death. It wasn’t easy, he said. And the book had been banned, once, on account of its sexual content.

That’s what had set his mother off laughing. Sexual content? she said. Did Mrs Gordon at the library tell you that?

She’s a liberal educationist, he said.

Really? A Liberal in Cowley? And pigs might fly.

It’s a poem about grief, he said.

Grief? she repeated. And then she said, Are they ready for you, Michael?

For my recital?

No, she said. Are they ready for you? Is the world ready for you?

He smiled and said, I’m not sure, and he began to read the poem out loud to her, hitting the last word of every sentence, to make sure she heard the rhyme.

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring . . .

And Ellis remembered thinking he would never meet anyone like him again, and in that acknowledgement, he knew, was love. He could see his mother concentrating on Michael’s words, how enraptured she was. And when he stopped, she bent down and kissed him on the head and said, Thank you. Because everything she held on to and everything she believed in came together in that unexpected moment. The simple belief that men and boys were capable of beautiful things.