Tin Man(29)

I’ll go if you want me to, he said.

I smiled, I was so fucking happy to see him.

You’ve only just got here, you twat, I said. Now give us a hand with this, and he took the other end of the trestle table and moved it over to the wall. Pub? I said.

He grinned. And before I could say anything else he put his arms around me. And everything he couldn’t say in our room in France was said in that moment. I know, I said. I know. I’d already accepted I wasn’t the key to unlock him. She’d come later.

It took a while to acknowledge the repercussions of that time. How the numbness in my fingertips travelled to my heart and I never even knew it.

I had crushes, I had lovers, I had orgasms. My trilogy of desire, I liked to call it, but I’d no great love after him, not really. Love and sex became separated by a wide river and one the ferryman refused to cross. The psychiatrist liked that analogy. I watched him write it down. Chuckle, chuckle, his pen across the page.

So that was it, I say to Chris, when I get to the end of the story. Nine days and they never let me go.

And you never got back together afterwards? he says.

No. We had our time. Friends only.

He looks thoughtful. He looks sad.

D’you need to sleep? I say.

Maybe.

I’m going to go then. I stand up.

Can I keep this tonight? he says, holding up the photo.

I’m surprised by what he asks. If you want, I say.

I’ll give it back tomorrow. I will see you tomorrow, won’t I?

I put on my shoes. Yes, I say, but tomorrow’s a letter-writing day.

I get to the door and he calls my name. I turn.

He says, I wouldn’t have packed. I would’ve let the train go.

I nod.

The next day, a burst of winter sun has made everybody bold. Chris has persuaded me to take him outside in a wheelchair and I’ve piled on to him as many regulation blankets as possible and forced a thick woollen hat on to his head. Don’t be long, the young nurse Chloe says to me quietly. I won’t, I mouth to her.

We sit by the fountain as sunlight dances white across the ripples and he closes his eyes as he faces the brittle warmth and dictates the final words of his letter. It is a beautiful letter, and his parents will receive it the following day and their world will be shattered. He’s quiet because he knows this.

We could be anywhere, he says.

We could, I say.

Italy. Rome. What’s the fountain there?

The Trevi? I say.

Have you seen it?

Yes, I have.

What’s it like?

Underwhelming, I say.

He looks at me.

A bit fussy, I say.

You’re doing it to me again, he says.

I’m not. Seriously. It’s just an opinion. It’s not like here, I say.

Idiot, he says.

I grin.

D’you think throwing money into any fountain is lucky? he says.

I do, actually. I’m a fountain expert, I say, and I give him a coin from my pocket.

I wheel him close to the edge of the water. He blinks as spray catches his face. Minuscule rainbows darting like midges. The coin sinks. His mouth moves, a silent incantation of hope.

Take me out of here, he says.

Out of the chair? I say.

No. The gates, he says. Out of here.

I look at my watch. I look at him. I wheel him towards the entrance and stop at the border.

Do we dare? I say teasingly. Do we dare? a little nudge across the threshold.

We dare! he says, and I wheel him out into a city on the move.

Over there, he says, and I stop at a bench near the gates. I sit down next to him, sunshine on our faces. We could be anywhere, he says again. His pale arm fights free of the blankets and reaches for my hand. He closes his eyes. Rome, he says.

It’s three in the morning and I’m awake. I feel like I’m coming down with something. My mind whirrs and my pulse is all over the place. Sometimes my heart fails to beat, and I lie in an airless limbo. I’m scared. I don’t want to go through all this, I don’t want my body to fail. I only acknowledge this when I’m alone. I pick up the phone. Maybe I could call them but I don’t know what to say. Maybe Annie would answer and that would be easier.

Annie, it’s me, I’d say (in a slightly pathetic whisper).

Mikey? she’d say.

I’m sorry it’s late, I’d say (being respectful, polite).

Where are you?

London, I’d say.

Are you OK? she’d say.

Yeah, really good, I’d say (lying).

We miss you, she’d say.

I replace the phone quietly and stare at the ceiling. I try the conversation again.

Annie, it’s me, I’d say.

You sound awful, she’d say. Are you OK?

No. I start crying.

A stinking cold has kept me away from the hospital the last four days. Sneezing. Runny nose, irritated eyes. It disappears after four days, and I declare myself well. I’ve never been so grateful for a mere cold.

I decide not to go to the ward till later that afternoon and go instead to the West End to see a film that everyone has been talking about. I sit in the front row of an almost empty cinema where seventy-two frames of colour flicker across my face every second, and where a young man stands on a desk in the final moments and cries out in love, O Captain, my Captain!

And there I am, thirteen again, at Long Bridges bathing place, reciting a poem I thought I’d long forgotten. Word after word of Whitman’s poem tumbles out, as sunlight plays on the surface of the Thames.