Tin Man

by Sarah Winman

  That afternoon, back at the mas, I stood in the middle of my field of sunflowers and faced the sun as they faced the sun. I don’t know how long I stayed like that, but when I opened my eyes I saw a young woman watching me from the edge of the field. I recognized her. She and her boyfriend had started working in the restaurant a couple of weeks before. We walked toward each other.

  Hello, she said in English with a curl of French at the edge, and she introduced herself. Marion. And that over there is Guillaume. My boyfriend.

  Ah, I said. The guitar player.

  Here, she said, I’ve been to the market. A peach in her tanned, outstretched hand.

  Thank you, I said.

  People here call you Monsieur Triste. Mister Sad. Did you know that?

  I smiled. No, I said. I thought they just called me l’Anglais.

  Yes, that too, she said, and we walked back slowly together toward the white stone sheds.

  You looked very peaceful out there, she said.

  I was.

  What were you doing? she asked.

  Thinking about my friend, I said. She had a painting of the Sunflowers on her wall, and sometimes, quite suddenly, she’d stop in front of it. Like this. Stare at it. As if she was looking for something. An answer. Something.

  What d’you think she was looking for? she said.

  I’m not sure, I said, and we walked on.

  Acceptance, I said.

  How d’you know?

  I just do, I said.

  Come and join us tonight, she said. Do your writing. You don’t have to speak, Monsieur Triste. But you do have to eat. Sardines at eight.

  They cooked outside on a small camping stove. At five to eight, the smell of grilled fish knocked at my door. I opened wine for them, and washed fruit and tomatoes at the tap outside. I sat with them but I didn’t write. I preferred to watch the interplay of their kindness, the uncomplicated looks from one to the other. I listened to them sing and strum guitar. I felt the gratitude of a stray dog brought into a family.

  When I left she gave me a lilac for my room. The scent is strong.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE SUMMER is coming to an end. Some rooms stay empty and the restaurant has reduced its menu, and opens only three days a week. People have moved on and my working days are short. I’ve something that I want to do—to experience—before I leave. Everyone tells me that I must.

  I take a taxi out through Mausanne and the Alpilles and the vineyards of Les Baux-de-Provence to the bistro in Paradou. In fading light, I sit outside and drink pastis and smoke a Gitanes and watch people as I always do.

  I go in to eat just before eight and take a seat at a table of six. Escargots are placed in front of us, the aroma of garlic rising thickly like mist off a lake. It takes time for us all to look up from our plates, and to acknowledge we are in this experience, together. Wine helps. I pour out Cote du Rhône into my neighbors’ glasses. We smile. We make comments about the food in French and English and Spanish, because we’re a mix at our table.

  Chicken coming now. Salty crunchy skin and tagliatelle with a morel sauce. I don’t like dessert but I do like cheese. A wheel comes toward me with every stink of fermentation on it. How long you staying here? I’m asked. Not long, I say, and I surprise myself. I’m going home, I say.

  In the taxi back to the mas, I feel well fed and well drunk. I look out onto the rugged black landscape, the gold of Les Baux shimmering to my left. I ask the taxi driver to stop and he pulls over to the side of the road. I roll down the window and breathe in the garrigue. I think about home. But, mostly, I think about them. These are my last thoughts, the ones I remember, before I fall asleep.

  * * *

  • • •

  I LEAVE with the last rays of warmth, as October light creeps in and begins to flatten out the days. Marion and Guillaume wave me off in front of the sheds. I feel them watching me as I walk away. At the gate, I turn back for one last look, one last wave. The clouds pull away and the sun bids me farewell.

  On the train, I doze, wake, doze, and I paint the Provençal landscape in my mind for Dora, one last time. The green complementing the deep blue of the sky, the air fizzing with energy. White stone sheds interrupt the scene, and there beyond the sheds, a glimpse of yellow, shouting. And in the foreground, the quiet shape of two lovers. Always two lovers. Shadowed in memory.

  I buy a coffee at the buffet car and a cheese baguette and use most of the change in my pocket to pay for it. I spend time counting out the smaller coins and there are disgruntled murmurs from behind me. They think I don’t understand but I do. I thank them in perfect French for their lack of patience and courtesy.

  The coffee wakes me up. From then on, I barely take my eyes away from the window. In the reflection, I watch a group of young people sprawling across the seats. I watch two young men sitting opposite one another. Their legs are stretched out and occasionally they brush. A nudge with a foot on the other’s thigh. They are boys in the bodies of men, but still boys, still gauche, still unsure. I catch glimpses of my young self in the reflection, as the landscape changes from warmth to cool, from wild to manicured, with gray clouds gathering low around the high-most hills.

  I look at these young men, not in envy but in wonder. It is for them now, the beauty of discovery, that endless moonscape of life unfolding.

  November 1990

  London is gray.

  I haven’t written for a while because I’ve been busy.

  I’ve spent the days clearing out my flat until all I’m left with is an armchair and a radio, a small side table—that’s all I need. I’ve a doctor’s appointment later today and on the way down I’ll call into the estate agent and see about putting the flat on the market or renting it out. I’m making my life simple. My thinking is clear and simple.

  I go for a run every afternoon, avoiding the busy hours of lunch or the end of the day when the city is on the move and obstructing the pavements. Along the river is my preferred route, a loop from Southwark Bridge to Hungerford, along to St. Paul’s, a struggle up Ludgate Hill, cutting through to Old Bailey and through to Barts. I stop at Barts. Sit on a bench outside and think about G. Taxi drivers sometimes join me and drink a takeaway coffee from the café opposite. They ask me where I’ve run from and I tell them. They say, I used to be fit, but I’ve let myself go. I say, You’re never too old to start. Some tell me about a relative who died in Barts. If they look kind I tell them about G.

  I speak to G’s parents, the first time ever. I wanted to make sure they’d received the crate of things I sent to them. They are civil. They thank me but I’m not after thanks. I’m tying up loose ends, that’s all. They say they may sell his canvases and easels, I say they should do what’s best for them. They say they want to remember him as he was. I say that’s a good thing. They ask me how I am. I say, OK. It’s a short phone call, but one of truce.

  At three a.m., I awake suddenly. And I’m a child standing at the door to Mabel’s bedroom. I remember it as the first night I arrived in Oxford and in the darkness my composure had given way to fear.

  What should I call you? I said to her.

  What’s that?

  What should I call—

  Is that what’s bothering you, Michael?

  I don’t really know you, you see—

  Mabel. You know my name is Mabel. You don’t have to call me anything else but that, if you don’t want to.

  She said, We’re like a couple of dogs, you and me. And we’ll have to sniff around each other until we’re sure of each other. But I love you. And that’s a good start. And I’m very glad you’re here.

  I walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain. Looked out over the churchyard.

  Can you see anything? she asked.

  No, not really, I said. It’s dark. Just trees and snow.

  N
o ghosts tonight? she said.

  Are there usually any? I said.

  Would that be a comfort?

  I think it might, I said. And I was about to turn away when she said, You can get in here, with me, if you want. If you’re cold. If the suggestion isn’t too silly for a twelve-year-old boy.

  And she pulled back the covers, said, You can stay that side and I’ll stay over here. And we won’t touch. We’ll just be company for one another, and company at any age is good.

  Oxford

  I’ve taken a room a short stroll down from Folly Bridge. It’s a fairly large room and I’ve got my own bathroom. It’s more luxurious than I expected, and my landlady, Mrs. Green, isn’t nosy or eager to get rid of me during the day. She likes crosswords and reads out clues to me, she likes me being around.

  Some days, I see little of the outside world. I sit looking out of the window, peaceful, at ease, this familiar city walking by. I’ve a cold I can’t shift, but I’m not worried. When I’ve felt weak I’ve rested.

  I’ve not seen Annie or Ellis yet. Fate hasn’t intervened but I suspect Fate is waiting for me. I feel ashamed by my years of silence, but I can’t imagine this next chapter and I don’t know how to start it. I’ll wait a little longer. I need to be strong to face them.

  Today, the rains have made the river fat and the towpath muddy. On the opposite bank, a rowing crew is walking back to their boathouse. The wind is keen and is blowing cold, and cloud shadows whip across the Thames. I’m not prepared for this weather. My lack of self-care shocks me at times.

  Long Bridges bathing place is up ahead and I’m drawn to it instinctively by the skip of my heart. Been years since I was here and its bleak desertion makes it hard for me to visualize the place as it was, because its gilded memory is one of sunshine and laughter and summer ease. The concrete sides of the swimming areas are still visible, the steps too, disappearing now into the churning brown river water. They’ve taken away the diving boards, but the changing rooms are still there, boarded up against trespassers. I can almost see myself as a boy.

  There was another place I used to go to swim in my twenties where men could sunbathe nude. It was on the River Cherwell and I preferred to go there alone.

  Throughout the long winter months, I remained celibate. Focusing on work and working late, and finding my release in grubby magazines I’d get in the post. But from spring onward, I was on perpetual lookout for the first warm days when the river bank would come alive with bodies, young and old.

  I’d undress by my towel—slowly, of course—surrounded by students and grizzly dons, and I’d tease them all. I’d swim out to the middle of the river and turn on my back and float, till I knew all eyes were on me. Only then would I come back in, clamber out and dry off in the sun.

  I used to be a mystery there. Four summers later, though, had any of those men got together and talked, there would’ve been little mystery left. I’d been handed around and scrutinized like a well-polished piece of agate. If I felt someone’s gaze on me, I’d stare back at them, my confidence crude and shameless. I played with them. A dare was what it was. Your move now, I seemed to be saying. And if they got dressed whilst looking at me, I’d give them a few minutes before I’d follow. I’ve walked across the quads of Lincoln, Christ’s, Brasenose, pretending to borrow books, pretending to study. I looked young then, and my young was audacious. I lay back in those tiny dusty rooms and let the summer dusk unbutton me.

  A Rhodes Scholar once. Brooks Brothers shirt and pressed khakis, a man with the premature weight of middle age and a thick, cut cock. His room was like every other room I’d visited. Smelled musty of sleep and spunk and books. We’d hardly got through the door when he handed me a schooner of sherry, hoping, I imagine, to bring a touch of finesse to what we were about to do. On would go the classical music—it came in trends—Shostakovich one day, Beethoven the next, but always the volume up loud. After sherry, he’d encourage me to shower, and when I returned to his room, I was always relieved to see him facedown on the bed, knowing the beast between his legs was coming nowhere near me. And we fucked to the rhythm of strings and timpani under a photograph of a young blonde girlfriend, none the wiser.

  He only liked to be fucked, and it was painful for him no matter how tender I’d be, but he never wanted me to stop. I came to realize the pain was necessary for him. It stopped the loving. It stopped the act being unfaithful.

  By the end of that summer, I had a serious addiction to fortified wine and a loathing for classical music. London was Donna Summer and vodka. There could be no going back.

  I have such fondness for men like him, though. They were my mentors. They showed me how to compartmentalize my life, how to keep things separate, how to pass. And even though they’ve been, at times, the punch line to my stories or pathetic gossip shared across a pillow, I’m so grateful to them. It was still a world of shyness and fear, and those shared moments were everything: my loneliness masquerading as sexual desire. But it was my humanness that led me to seek, that’s all. Led us all to seek. A simple need to belong somewhere.

  I walk on. The winds are subsiding. I sit on a bench and watch the rowers train. A child gives me some bread to feed the ducks with and I do so with delight. The child’s mother asks if I’m OK. My cough is rasping. I tell her I’m getting better actually, and thank her for the cough sweet. I retie my scarf and walk on.

  In those days of my twenties and early thirties, I remember how friendships came and went. I was too critical—a disagreement over a film or politics gave me permission to retreat. Nobody matched Ellis and Annie, and so I convinced myself I needed nobody but them. I was a sailboat at heed to the breeze, circling buoys before heading out to the uncomplicated silence of a calm bay.

  Up ahead is the pub where they held their wedding reception. Taxis brought us down here from Holy Trinity, and we walked the towpath in slow procession. The bag I was carrying held towels and swimsuits and when we got to Long Bridges, I said, Fancy a dip? Annie said, You’re kidding, right? No, I said, and I unzipped the bag, and she squealed and the bride ran across the grass to swap a white dress for a tangerine costume. Trust you, said Ellis. Trust you to think of everything.

  And the three of us swam. Mr. and Mrs. Judd and me. And with hair still wet and dress slightly askew, we drank champagne in the pub garden and ate fish and chips, and the bride and groom cut a simple cake that Mabel had baked the day before. Everything was real, not perfect. And yet that’s what had made it so perfect. I said that in the speech. No jokes just memories, a bit soppy really, about how we met a week before Christmas. Advent Annie. How love is crucial to freedom.

  In the soft light of evening, as the small gathering became even smaller, Ellis came and found me along this stretch of river. I can still see him, so handsome in his suit, a sort of lopsided handsomeness with his scuffed brogues and red rose buttonhole. And we stood side by side, as light flared off the water, as rowers passed. We shared a cigarette, and in between us was a parched landscape strewn with the bones of abandoned plans only we once knew about. We heard our names shouted along the path. We turned and Annie was running barefoot toward us. Doesn’t she look beautiful, I said. I love her. He grinned. Me too. And she loves you. What a mélange we are, I said. It was a relief for us finally to laugh. Annie took the cigarette from my mouth and finished the remaining stub and said, Come to New York with us, Mikey. You’ve always wanted to go. Come on! There’s still time. Join us tomorrow. Or the next day. But come.

  I wanted to scream, Yes, to still be part of you, yes for nothing to change, yes. But I said, I can’t. You know I can’t. It’s your honeymoon. Now go. Get it started.

  We waved them off from the pub. Good luck, good luck, have a great time! And more confetti was thrown. Mabel’s hand pressed firm to my back, holding me up. It’s got cold, she said. Let’s go home and get you warm. The gesture almost broke me. We settled silently in the back of a taxi, no tal
k of the beautiful day or who wore what or who said what. I could see her looking at me. She slipped her hand into mine. Waiting for me to crack. That’s how I knew she knew. Had always known. As if she, too, had seen another version of our future orbiting around us. Before its fall to earth on that real and perfect day.

  It was Mabel who told me to take the job in London. Come see me at weekends, she said, and I did, without fail. Friday evening, she’d be waiting outside the shop, holding a list of all the things she wanted to talk to me about. And from the restaurant opposite, she’d have bought a bottle of Chianti Ruffino, which would be waiting on the kitchen table, opened. Breathing, she liked to say, as if it was a small animal. And sometimes Ell and Annie would be around that table, just like old times, laughter and tears, but with a twist of difference. The pronoun “we” instead of their names, and a newly acknowledged ache that sat in the core of my gut.

  Who were we, Ellis, me and Annie? I’ve tried to explain us many times but I’ve always failed. We were everything and then we broke. But I broke us. I know that. After Mabel’s death, I never came back.

  Dusk is falling. Too many cyclists on the towpath for me to relax. I’m cold and I want to go back to Mrs. Green and my room. The lights of Folly Bridge suddenly look beautiful and welcoming.

  * * *

  • • •

  I’VE SLEPT WELL and have woken up brave and ready. I need to see them now, I know I do. Mrs. Green is pleased that I’ve finished her full English breakfast for the first time this week. My cough has eased, just a slight clearing of the throat. From the hallway, I ring in and check my answer machine. No new messages from the estate agent, London is leaving me in peace. Mrs. Green is happy for me to stay with her for a few more days. As long as you want, Michael, she says, you’re no trouble at all. And her eyes dart to one of the regular guests, a salesman who’s just arrived down from Birmingham. She hands me an orange juice before I go out. Freshly squeezed, she tells me, proud of its pedigree.