Tin Man(42)

What are you doing? I ask.

It’s for Mrs Khan, he says. She likes to put it on her rhubarb.

Really? I say. We have custard on ours.

Oh, you funny fun strange boy, he says and pulls up outside this shop. My new life waiting to happen. Mabel is there and she’s old, but she’s not really, looking back. And I’m lonely and scared, until I see Ellis behind her. The cavalry. And I remember thinking, You’re going to be my friend. My best friend.

I remember the car door opened and Mr Khan said, One prodigal grandson with two suitcases full of books. And I stepped out into the snow. Later, Ellis asked me, Are they really full of books?

Of course he did, Annie laughs. What did you say?

I said, Just the one.

That was the night I had my first glance of Dora. She’d come to pick up Ellis and I was looking down from my bedroom window and caught them as they left the shop. I knocked. She paused by the car and looked up. Bright red lipstick in a white night. She smiled and waved at me with both arms.

We wait for the traffic to slow and we run across the road.

Are you ready? asks Annie.

No, not really, I say.

Come on, she says, and we walk hand in hand up Southfield.

The day is surprisingly mild and I’m happy for once. Overwhelmingly so. We stop at the corner of Hill Top Road unseen, and she pulls away from me.

Where are you going? I say.

Give you both time.

Annie?

She doesn’t turn. She raises her arm and keeps walking away. I’m alone. Me and the years. My sight drawn to the figure working in front of the garage.

How little he’s changed, I think. His sleeves are rolled up, the same tousled hair, same frown wrestling with a dilemma, be it a kitchen shelf, be it love. A radio for company. He places a plank of wood on the work bench. He lifts his hand to the pencil behind his ear and measures – once, twice – before beginning to cut. The sound of a mitre saw whining in the air. Sawdust floating. And then silence.

I start to walk across the road, and my footsteps are loud. He looks up now. He’s squinting. He’s shielding his eyes with his hand, autumn sunlight glinting off windscreens. He grins. He puts down the plank of wood and slowly, comes towards me. We meet in the middle.

I’ve missed you, he says.

In my chest, the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth.



Ellis



June 1996, France


He stands, sketching, at the window of his quiet first-floor room. His limbs are an even shade of brown and he has the start of a beard growing. The deep furrows across his forehead have softened, and his hair is longer than it usually is. He’s been here six days already, and every day he wonders what took him so long. He wears flip flops and second-hand khaki shorts, and a pale blue T-shirt that once came from New York. The collar is frayed.

The window is open and the sounds are of cicadas, swallows and occasional footsteps on the path below. Across the grounds at the back of the mas, the air is corrugated by the blistering heat. The colour of the sky brings back memories that are no longer painful.

He looks at his watch. It’s time. He puts down his sketchbook and leaves the room.

The courtyard is deserted. The tables have been cleared of breakfast, and water from a small fountain dribbles noisily into a granite trough. He sits down in the shade of an olive tree and waits.

He hears car tyres on gravel, a door slam. A smallish man with grey hair – sixty maybe? – comes towards him smiling, hand outstretched.

Monsieur Judd, he says. I’m sorry I’m late . . .

Ellis stands up and shakes his hand. Monsieur Crillon? Thank you for meeting me.

No, no, please, he says. I’m so sorry about your friend. Of course, I remember Monsieur Triste. He arrived my first summer here. Come.

Ellis follows him into the cool of his office. Monsieur Crillon opens a drawer and says, The sheds are not homes now, but you know, eh?

Yes, of course. I realise, says Ellis.

Monsieur Crillon looks up from the desk. Here, he says. Keys. This is for the main gate. The others – you must try.

Ellis crosses the gardens towards the dark monoliths of cypresses. The key turns easily in the wooden gate, and he makes his way through the scrubby grass, as Michael once did, towards the five stone sheds and field of sunflowers that lie behind. And he thinks about Michael’s loneliness, and he thinks about his own. And he thinks his own might be manageable now.

The sign ‘Mistral’ is barely visible on the left-hand shed and he tries three keys before one turns. He pushes hard against the door. An oblique ray of sunlight cuts through the dust and gloom. A lizard scatters across the floor.

You got here then. I knew you’d come.

Nineteen. In his favourite striped Breton top, holding water and peaches. Look out there, Ell.

Ellis goes to the shutters. He pulls them open and the frame fills with sunflowers, a yellow world of beauty stretching as far as the eye can see. He lights a cigarette and leans against the ledge. Swallows soar with heat on their wings.

Did you know you were ill, he thinks. When did you know?

The song of cicadas unrelenting, always there.

I never would have left your side.

He walks out to the middle of the golden field and faces the sun, and he thinks, We did have time. We had so much more than many do.

And he feels all right. And he knows he’ll be all right. And that is enough.