Tin Man

by Sarah Winman

  It’s life, said his mother.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY, snow had fallen hard and had settled well, and his mother drove them out to Brill with the toboggan. It was the first of many memories he had, of how Michael sought Dora’s attention in those early days, how he clung to her every word as if they were handholds up a cliff face. He said he had to sit in the front on account of car sickness, and he spent the entire journey complimenting Dora on her driving and her style, steering the conversation back to the Sunflowers and the South, back to color and light. Had he been able to change gears for her, Ellis firmly believed he would have.

  His mother got out of the car and buttoned up her coat. She said, Don’t forget to look around you when you get to the top. Take it all in as if you were going to paint it. You may never see snow like this again. See how it changes the landscape. See how it changes you.

  I will, said Michael, and he marched on ahead, full of purpose. Ellis looked at his mother and smiled.

  They dragged the toboggan through snowdrifts and up steep edges and flowing inclines to the windmill, and to the view of the ermine hills and farmland around. And they could see Dora in the distance. Wrapped in a red coat and thick scarf, she was leaning against the engine, warming herself, a plume of smoke curling from the corner of her red lips. Michael raised his arm. I don’t think she can see me, he said. She can see you, said Ellis, positioning the toboggan at the edge of the slope. Michael waved again. Eventually, Dora waved back. Come on, let’s go, said Ellis. One last look around, said Michael.

  Ellis sat at the front and gripped the rope hard, his feet resting on the runners. He felt Michael clamber on behind him. Felt his hands reach around his waist. Ready? he said. Ready, Michael said. And they nudged the toboggan forward until it pulled away over the side, and they were thrown back by gathering speed and unexpected troughs, hidden beneath the drifts. He could feel Michael tight around his waist, his scream in his ear, as they bounced down the hill, trees an indecipherable blur, racing past those coming up, and then all of a sudden, there was no traction, there was only air and flight, and them, and they were peeled away from one another, and from rope and wood, and they fell to earth, winded and dazed, tumbling in a flurry of snow and sky and laughter, and they only slowed when the land flattened out, when it brought them back together again and held them still.

  * * *

  • • •

  SHORTLY AFTER HIS fourteenth birthday, Ellis came home from school and saw his mother sitting quietly in front of her painting. The scene reminded him of being in church, watching the kneeling in front of devotional panels, prayers hoping to be heard. He didn’t disturb her, he remembered, because her demeanor and intensity frightened him. He went upstairs to his room and put the image behind him as best he could.

  In the days that followed, however, he couldn’t help but watch her. Shopping trips had her pausing for breath along streets she used to race down. Dinners once devoured with delight were picked at, refrigerated, later binned. And one Saturday when his father was at the boxing club and he was doing his homework upstairs, he heard the crash of plates and ran down to the kitchen. His mother was still on the floor when he got to her, and before he could brush up the broken china, she reached for his hand and said something strange, said, You’ll stay on at school till you’re eighteen, won’t you? And you’ll do your art? Ellis? Look at me. You’ll—

  —Yes, he said. Yes.

  That night in his room, he searched for signs of something wrong in his sketchbooks old and new. The drawings he’d made of his mother a year ago compared to the ones of now were proof on the page because he knew her face so well. Her eyes were sunken and the light they emitted was dusk not dawn. She was thinner too, sharp around her temples, her nose more pronounced. Really, though, it was about her touch and gaze, because when either fell on him, neither wanted to let him go.

  The next day, he got up early and went straight to Mabel’s. She was cleaning the front window and was surprised to see him so early and she said, Michael’s still in his room, and he said, I think Mum’s ill. She stopped what she was doing and drove him back home. Dora opened the door and Mabel said, He knows.

  His father went on nights, which surprised no one. He escaped his wife’s nighttime fears and left her in the care of her son. Mabel instructed him in basic cooking and housekeeping, and she concocted a menu for him that included leftovers and an ever-changing stew. After school, Michael came back with him and they built fires for Dora and kept her warm and entertained with stories.

  Michael said, Listen to this, Dora—Mrs. Copsey stormed into the shop yesterday and said (and he imitated her), What in God’s name is that next to the cauliflower, Mrs. Wright? It’s okra, said Mabel. Mrs. Khan asked me to get some. But they have their own shops down past the Co-op, said Mrs. Copsey. But Mrs. Khan likes to shop with me, said Mabel. That may be so, said Mrs. Copsey. But put out rubbish, Mrs. Wright, and you’ll attract flies.

  She didn’t! said his mother.

  She did, said Michael. And then she said—These people just don’t know how to be English, Mrs. Wright. But they’re not English, said Mabel, and you said the same about the Welsh twenty years ago. Good day to you, Mrs. Copsey. Careful of the flies!

  And Michael reached for Dora’s hand and they laughed and Ellis remembered how grateful he was that Michael’s care was instinctive and natural because he could never be that way with her. He was constantly on the lookout for the last good-bye.

  Her illness advanced rapidly, and between pillows of morphine, brief moments of consciousness would arise where the two of them would always be waiting for her with an idea—

  I was thinking about color and light, said Michael. And I was thinking maybe that’s all we are, Dora. Color and light.

  Or with a distraction—

  Look, Dora. Ellis has drawn me, and Michael held up the sketchbook. Dora reached over and held her son’s hand and told him how clever he was to draw so well. Never stop, will you? she said. Promise me.

  I promise.

  Make him promise, Michael.

  I will, Dora.

  Two months after Ellis had first suspected something, his mother went into hospital. As she left the house, she said, I’ll see you later, Ell. Don’t forget to wash and don’t forget to eat.

  It was the last time he saw her.

  The emptiness of the house overwhelmed him and he couldn’t free himself from the sudden panic that ambushed him when the curtains were drawn. Some days he smelled perfume, too, that wasn’t his mother’s and it made him sick. In the end, he packed a bag and went to stay at Mabel’s. He was never sure if his father had noticed he was gone.

  Working in the shop at weekends was a good distraction, and brought back his appetite for food. But it was the routine of being cared for again that was the silent wonder. He stood taller. That’s what people noticed.

  He and Michael were in the shop the day Mabel returned from the ward and told them Dora had died. Michael ran up to his room, and Ellis wanted to follow him but his legs wouldn’t move, a sudden moment of paralysis that marked the end of childhood.

  Ellis? said Mabel.

  He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t cry. Staring at the floor, struggling to remember the color of his mother’s eyes, just something to hold on to, but he couldn’t. Only later would Michael tell him they were green.

  Funeral day, and they stood in silence at the dining table making sandwiches. He buttered, Mabel filled, Michael cut. The only sound in the room came from his father, who was polishing his leather work boots. The angry scratch of bristles being worked across the toe. The sound of spit, sharp and incessant against a clock counting down. A hearse pulling up outside.

  In Rose Hill chapel, Ellis sat at the front next to his father. The organ sounded much too loud and his mother’s coffin looked much too small. He smell
ed the same perfume he noticed on occasion at home, and when he turned round, sitting behind him was a woman with peroxide-blonde hair and a kind smile, and she leaned forward and whispered, Don’t forget, Ellis, your dad needs you: a declaration as shocking to him as his mother’s death. He stood up, an action so instinctive it caught him by surprise. And years later, he came to believe that the courage it took for him to walk out of church that afternoon, amidst the whispers and stares, used up his life’s quota.

  He hitched a ride down to the river and the man in the car said, Cheer up, mate! You look like you’ve been to a funeral. And Ellis said he had, said it was his mum’s, and the man said Christ, and said nothing after that. Took him to the gates at Iffley Lock and handed him a fiver when he got out. Ellis asked what the money was for and the man said he didn’t know. Just take it, he said.

  He crossed the lock and walked the towpath to Long Bridges bathing place, his and Michael’s favorite hangout. The trees had passed through autumn and it should have been cold but an unseasonal warm breeze followed him under Donnington Bridge, gathering up geese, launching them into flight.

  At the bathing place he found himself alone. He sat down next to the steps. The call of ducks, the sound of a train, oars slapping against the water: life in continuum. He wondered when the sun would shine hot again, and an hour later, Michael shouted to him from the bridge and ran toward him. When Michael was near, Ellis said, What are we going to do without her?

  And Michael said, We carry on and we don’t give up. And he knelt down and kissed him. It was their first kiss. Something good in a day of bad.

  They sat there quietly, not talking about death, or the kiss, or how life was going to change. They watched the shifting colors of the sun and the deep shadows eavesdropped on their grief, and the vivid descant of birdsong slowly muted to unimaginable silence.

  He never knew what made him look up, but when he did his father was watching them from the bridge. He didn’t know how long he had been there but a knot of tension bedded down in his gut. He knew his father hadn’t seen them kiss but the proximity of their bodies couldn’t be mistaken. Knee against knee, arm against arm, the clasp of hands out of sight, or so he thought. His father stayed where he was and shouted, Come on, let’s go! And when they got to him, he didn’t look at them but turned and started walking away.

  His father drove badly, slipping gears, braking sharply, a wonder he never killed anyone. He dropped Michael at the shop and when Ellis was about to get out too, his father said, Not tonight, you’re not. You stay here.

  The car journey home was oppressive and made in silence. The pain in his stomach grew and he felt so adrift in the care of this man. This man who didn’t really know him, this man who had just stalled in the middle of a junction, who was slumped over the steering wheel as horns blared, who kept saying, Fuck fuck, over and over. Ellis opened the car door and walked away.

  He walked aimlessly till night fell. He bought chips and ate them on the street, sitting with his back against a wall, his mum would have been so ashamed. He only returned home when he was convinced his father would have passed out on a bed or floor upstairs.

  The lights were out when he entered the hallway. Quietly, he placed his foot on the first stair when a voice startled him and drew him back into the darkness of the front room.

  In here, said his father, switching on the standard lamp at his side. He stood up from the sofa and the plastic sheeting crackled with static. In his hand, one of Ellis’s sketchbooks.

  You’re getting soft, he said, flicking through the pages. Look how soft you’ve got, and he threw the book across the floor. It opened at a drawing of Michael.

  He said, Let me tell you something. What you want to do and what you’re going to do are two very different things. You’re leaving school year after next.

  I’m not, said Ellis.

  I’ve got you an apprenticeship at the Car Plant.

  Mum said—

  —She’s not here.

  Let me stay till I’m eighteen. Please.

  Get into guard.

  Eighteen. I’ll do anything after that.

  Get. Into. Guard. The. Way. I. Taught. You.

  Ellis raised his fists reluctantly. He watched his father pick up his work boots and put one on each hand, the hard leather soles facing out toward him.

  Right now, said his father. Punch.

  What?

  Punch my hands.

  No.

  Fucking punch them. Punch them.

  I said punch them.

  And Ellis punched.

  * * *

  • • •

  HE COULD BARELY hold the phone, let alone dial. But thirty minutes later, Mabel stood at the door, her nightdress glimpsed below her coat. He remembered how she walked into the house and told Leonard Judd to stay away from her and not to speak till she was good and ready. She went upstairs with Ellis and put a few of his clothes and schoolbooks into a bag. She led him out to the van and drove back to the shop.

  When she stopped at the lights she said, Bide your time, Ellis.

  Mum wanted me to do my art, he said.

  You don’t need a canvas to do that, she said. I knew a tinny, once, who worked on those cars as if he’d sculpted them himself. Make peace with it, my boy. Make your peace.

  They pulled up outside the shop. Faint light from the kitchen edged through the curtain at the back. Mabel said, While I’m here, you always have a home. You know that? This is your key. I’ll leave it on the hook in the kitchen. And when you’re ready, you take it.

  Thank you, Mabel.

  The clock in the kitchen said two seventeen. Mabel opened the fridge and wrapped the contents of an ice tray in a cloth. Hold this against your hands, she said, and Ellis took the wrap and followed her up the stairs.

  He said good night outside her room and continued up to the top bedroom. He opened the door and the room was dark and smelled of Michael. He could see the dark shape of his body sitting up in bed. He went over and lay next to him.

  He’s making me leave school, he said. I’m going to the factory. Just like he did. Just like they did bef—

  —Shh, said Michael, and he took the ice and held it against his hand. He’ll change his mind, he said. We’ll make him. Mabel will.

  You think? said Ellis.

  I think, said Michael.

  And when the house fell silent they shared a bed. They kissed, took off their tops. And Ellis couldn’t believe a body could feel so good when an hour before he was in despair.

  Three months, it took, before he felt able to go back to his father’s, and when he did, circumstances had changed. The peroxide blonde had moved in, and her perfume was familiar and strong, and she had a name and her name was Carol. She sat in his mum’s chair and the painting was off the wall. Welcome back, son, his father said.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE INTRUSIVE TICK of the clock brought Ellis back to the present. He stared at the blank wall. Pieces of a jigsaw, that’s all the past was now. He left a note propped up on the table hoping his dad and Carol had a good holiday. P.S., he wrote. Any idea where Mum’s painting might have gone?

  He closed the front door and a mizzle of rain met his face. Streetlights hovered in the damp gloom and he wondered, briefly, when the clocks were going forward. He knew his mood would lighten with the sky.

  * * *

  • • •

  ELLIS LEFT the fracture clinic with his arm replastered and another six weeks off work. The freedom this afforded him lifted his spirit and gave him a purpose that had long eluded him. He decided not to go home right away, but to continue into Headington to do a much-needed shop. He bought steak and fish and vegetables, ingredients he would try to use imaginatively, and he bought a bottle of wine (screwcap), and bread (sliced) from the baker. The flowers were an afterthought, the str
ong espresso, too, bought from the new café across the road. He got it to take away with a piece of banana bread that was still warm.

  The day stayed dull, but there was no threat of rain, so he continued to journey on foot, and by the time he reached the gates of Holy Trinity, the shopping bag felt heavy and the bruise around his leg made him slow. He sat on the bench and looked out over the churchyard. He had imagined the graves would look bleak, suffering the aftermath of snow, but it was March and already the daffodils were standing proud. He could see Annie’s grave over to the left, but he drank his coffee first and ate the cake, which had a surprising touch of cinnamon.

  The churchyard had been one of Annie’s favorite places to go and read. It was out of the way, but summer days she got on her bike and she made the effort. The air hazy with pollen, the sound of organ practice behind her, the occasional call of a pheasant in the field beyond. That was the reason they’d chosen to get married there.

  A wedding, more real than perfect. That’s how Michael liked to describe it, and he was right. Annie’s dress was unconventional. Knee-length, white cotton with navy embroidery, vintage French. Michael had taken her to London to buy it. He’d helped her with the makeup too. Colors that highlighted happiness over cheekbones. Annie had wanted him to walk her down the aisle but Ellis had already nabbed him for best man. I could do both, he said, enthusiastically. The wedding, so suddenly, all about him.

  In the end, Mabel performed the duty, a sweet twist on convention. You be good to her, she whispered to Ellis, as she handed the bride ceremoniously to him.

  As husband and wife, they came back down the aisle to Maria Callas singing “O mio babbino caro,” a much talked-about choice. Her voice followed them out of the church into intermittent sunshine and a small gathering of friends and family. It was beautiful, it was theater. It was Michael and Annie’s idea. Everything memorable came from them, he thought. In the stillness of air, confetti landed where it was thrown, and in the photographs that were to follow, heads and shoulders would be dusted in pink.