Tin Man(8)

He remembered the night of his accident, how he had been distracted by a light in Mabel’s old shop, and he turned back towards it and tried the door. It was locked, of course, with no sign that anyone had been about. He peered through the opaque swirls of dried Windolene into a ramshackle interior overflowing with junk. He found it hard to equate that cluttered space with the one of his boyhood. A faded green curtain used to hang at the back, separating commerce from home. To the right of the curtain, a table. On top of the table a cash register, a record player and two piles of records. The display at the front was made up of sacks of vegetables and crates of fruit. In the middle, opposite the door, an armchair that smelt of tangerines every time you sat in it. How was it possible the three of them had moved about this space with unequivocal ease?

It was Mabel who had asked him to join her the night Michael arrived in Oxford after his father’s death. A friendly face of similar age to her grandson. He remembered standing where he was standing now. Him and Mabel, the welcome party. Both nervous, both quiet. The streets silenced by snow.

For years after, Mabel used to say that Michael came with the snow because that was the only way she could remember the year he moved in with her. January ’63, it was, thought Ellis. We were twelve.

They watched Mr Khan’s minicab slow down and stop in front of the shop. He got out of his car and raised his hands skywards, and said, Oh, Mrs Wright! What a wonderful thing is snow!

And Mabel said, You’ll catch your death out here, Mr Khan. You’re not used to it. Now did you remember my grandson?

Oh, indeed! he said, and he raced round to the passenger door and opened it.

One prodigal grandson, he said, with two suitcases full of books.

Come in, come in, said Mabel, and the three of them huddled around a small electric heater that was losing the fight against the night’s sudden freeze. Mr Khan walked through with the suitcases and disappeared into the back, his footsteps heavy on the stairs and on the landings overhead. Mabel introduced the boys and they shook hands formally and said hello, before self-consciousness stifled them. Ellis noticed the cow-lick at the front of Michael’s cropped dark hair and the horizontal scar above his upper lip – the result of a fall against a table, he’d later learn – a feature that, in the wrong sort of light, could turn his smile into an unexpected sneer: an idiosyncrasy that would become more developed over the years.

Ellis went to the window. The clock ticked quietly behind him, light from the Italian café spilt yellow on to the white street in front. He heard Mabel say, I expect you’re hungry, and Michael said, No, not really, and he came and stood next to Ellis, instead. They looked at one another in the reflection of the glass and snow fell behind their eyes. They watched a nun make slow and careful progress towards the church of St Mary and St John next door. Mr Khan came back into the room and pointed.

Look! he said. Penguin! he said, and they laughed.

Later that night, in Michael’s room, Ellis said, Are they really full of books?

No, just the one, said Michael as he opened a suitcase.

I don’t read, said Ellis.

What’s that then? said Michael, pointing to the black book in Ellis’s hand.

My sketchbook. I take it everywhere.

Can I see?

Sure, and Ellis handed over his book.

Michael flicked through the pages, acknowledging images with a slow nod of his head. He suddenly stopped. Who’s that? he said, holding open a page at a woman’s face.

My mother.

Does she really look like that? asked Michael.

Yes.

She’s beautiful.

Is she?

Don’t you think so?

She’s my mother.

Mine left.

Why?

He shrugged. Just walked out.

D’you think she’ll come back?

I’m not sure she knows where I am any more, and he handed back the sketchbook. You can draw me if you want, he said.

OK, said Ellis. Now?

No. In a couple of days, he said. Make me look interesting. Make me look like a poet.

Ellis turned away from the window. A bus inched into view and he crossed the road and waved it down. He sat alone at the back and closed his eyes. He felt groggy all of a sudden. The disorientation of mixing memory and medication.

He rarely went to his father’s house when nobody was there, rarely went when only his father was there, truth be told. He did anything to avoid the wordless connection neither felt comfortable with. He got off the bus before he needed to and walked the rest of the way under a sky that was becoming overcast again. What was it about these roads that plunged him into a state of childlike anxiety?

The light had virtually disappeared by the time he reached the front door, and a feeling of foreboding had taken hold. He put the key in the lock. Inside, the sound of traffic retreated and the grey light darkened, and it could have been evening. He felt nervous and unsure, now it was just him alone with the years.

The house was warm, and that was all Carol had wanted to know, whether they’d left the heating on to counteract the imminent freeze. He could go now, and yet he didn’t. The perverse pull of the past drew him inside to the back room, virtually unaltered since the days of his youth.

The room smelt of dinner, still. A roast. They always had a roast the night before they went away because they never knew what the food would be like at the hotel. That was his father’s thinking for sure. He looked about. The table, the dresser – that dark slab of oppressive oak – the mirror, so little had changed. The armchairs might have been re-covered but tug away the maroon and navy Bute, and the melancholic imprint of the past was still there. He opened the curtains and looked out on to the garden. Faint patches of snow amidst the rockery. Crocus heads wistful and purple, and the Car Factory over there showing a fake dusk. He noticed the carpet had been changed but the overwhelming hue of brown hadn’t. Maybe Carol had put her foot down? Maybe she had said either it goes or I go. Maybe Carol was the kind of woman who could make those demands without repercussion. He stood in front of the wall opposite the door where his mother’s painting of the Sunflowers used to hang.