Tin Man(22)

Across the fence, ‘My Foolish Heart’ played for the second time that evening. Ellis poured out the wine and drank.

From the box, he brought out a large envelope that he emptied beside him. A mix of ephemera from a drawer, that’s what it looked like. Torn-off images from magazines, a crumpled black-and-white photograph of him and Michael caught off guard at a bar in France looking sun bronzed and nineteen and rightfully invincible. Another photo, this one of him and Annie on their wedding day, staring at clouds of confetti as if it was cherry blossom instead. An invitation to an art opening in Suffolk – Landscapes by Gerrard Douglas. A colour photograph of Mabel and Mrs Khan outside the shop, the day Mrs Khan came to work there. Testament to a rare friendship that spanned nearly thirty years. They are wearing brown aprons and their arms are around one another, and they are looking at the camera and smiling. Mabel’s white hair has been set by rollers as it always was, her cheeks coloured by the simple joy of living. She would never retire. What’s the point of that? she always used to say. And now postcards – Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Barbara Hepworth. A folded newspaper, an Oxford Times dated 1969. He was about to put it to one side when he realised it was the first article Michael had ever written. It was about Judy Garland.

The day she died, Ellis remembered, Michael played the Carnegie Hall album. He opened the shop door and turned the volume up high. It was his way of honouring her. People came in to listen and Mabel gave out medicinal sherry and something stronger for the regulars. Afterwards, Michael begged the Times to let him write something, to get away from making tea and making copy, and in the end he wore them down and they agreed he could write about Garland as long as there was Oxford interest too. And he found someone in Summertown who had been to the concert itself in ’61, and he based the article around that – local interest combined with global phenomena – the life-long fan who would now transfer her affection to the daughter. It was something, wasn’t it? Centre of the Universe, this shop, Michael used to say. Oh, we were. We were.

Another photograph, but this one of a man he didn’t know standing next to an easel. He is wearing shorts and his chest is covered in paint. He is smiling. On the easel is a portrait of Michael. On the back of the photograph the letter ‘G’.

A postcard of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. A memory of his mother or someone else? A phone number scrawled on the reverse. Cinema stubs – Cinema Paradiso, Stand by Me, Pretty in Pink – a ticket to Michael Clark, a ticket to the Tate/Turner Prize 1989.

From the bottom of the box, he took out a handful of books and instantly recognised them. They were his sketchbooks, the ones from childhood. And he couldn’t believe he was looking at them again because he often threw them out when the pages were full, because nothing felt good enough, or so he thought then. Only one person thought they were good enough and he’d fucking saved them. Michael had saved them. He’d gone to those bins and pulled them out and kept them across the years.

Here was his mother. A simple line drawing of her profile, no shading, just a line running from her hairline down her nose and throat. Pages of this exercise until he got it right. Her hands now, pages of hands. And a watercolour of her face pretending to sleep, the curl of a smile at her upper red lip.

Ellis picked up another book: Michael. How old was he? Fourteen? Fifteen, maybe. Jeans low and shirt off and barefoot. Fingers around his belt loops, brooding and serious. Make me look interesting, he used to say. Make me look like a poet.

Oh Jesus. Ellis sat back and closed his eyes. He listened to a conversation about olive oil coming from next door.

He drank wine and poured out more. When he was ready, he picked up another book. Inside, though, he found words not drawings, and the sight of Michael’s writing startled him. It wasn’t a diary, it looked more random than that – thoughts, ideas, doodles. November 1989, it began, the time they were apart.

He began to read. There was a momentary flutter of the page, maybe the breeze or a tremor from his hand. A young man’s voice travelled across the fence.

Ellis? he said. Ell?

But Ellis didn’t hear. ‘November 1989,’ he read. ‘I don’t know the day, the days have become irrelevant.’



Michael



November 1989


I don’t know the day, the days have become irrelevant. G’s sight has failed, and I’ve become his eyes. When he howls in the night I don’t let go of him. The virus has entered his brain. Yesterday, he laughed when he pissed against the bedroom door.

A doctor suggested I write to make sense of the world around me. There is no sense, I said, abruptly.

Witnessing the agony of others, he continued, the bewilderment of others. What do you think this has done to you?

I took my time with this absurd question.

I’m not so fun any more, I said.

He wasn’t really a doctor doctor but a psychiatrist who works with the dying. I’m not dying, it must be said. Not yet, anyway. I have a visualisation tape and the cheery American voice tells me my body is full of light and lurve and I believe it. I’m so full of light and love, in fact, I can hardly do my trousers up. There’s a line of fat around my belly that wasn’t there a few weeks ago, and my abs used to be harder, too, more defined. If I was describing myself, I’d say this body has seen better days.

I’m thirty-nine years old, nearly forty. Does this bother me? I say it quickly when people ask, so it probably does. I don’t smoke any more, nor do I take drugs (apart from the occasional co-codamol that I stockpiled after G went on to IV). I used to be good-looking – this isn’t vanity speaking, I was actually told that a lot – but I’m not sure I am any more. People do still look at me and I get the odd suggestion at times (sometimes very odd), so maybe I still have something. Men liked to fuck me and liked me to fuck them. I had my standards. I dropped them on occasion, but generally I’ve been consistent. I liked short-term lovers or my own company. I’ve had really good lovers – inventive, exciting – but I was never one myself. I was a 7 max. I was the fantasy that rarely delivered. The slight hint of melancholy as they zipped up their trousers. I think I was a bit selfish. Or lazy. A 7, max. That was me.