by Tim Connolly
“This toast couldn’t taste any better if it was served up on Selina Scott’s thighs!” Denny O’Rourke announced.
“You’re off your tits, Dad,” Ellis said.
“Ellis! You can’t say that!” Chrissie protested.
Denny nodded his agreement with a mouth full of toast.
“He’s right, dear girl, I think I am.”
Ellis had not slayed the dragon that night. No one had. The dragon slayed the town and the park. It slayed the wooded plateau leading to Ide Hill. It slayed millions. Oak, beech, yew, chestnut. Denny said that Jim Croucher up at Emmetts wept when he saw the devastation. On the television news, people in Jerusalem were praying for England’s trees.
“At least it was natural,” Denny said. “At least it wasn’t us.”
A month after the storm, the phone rang at midnight, waking Denny.
“Hello, Dad!” Ellis was in a call box.
“Are you all right?” Denny asked.
“Yup.”
“Sober?”
“Just about. Wasn’t earlier. But are you, more importantly?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?” A smile broke across Denny’s face, one of the many that no one would ever see.
“’Cos I need picking up.”
“Why so late and why the surprise visit, not that I mind either?”
“Well … long story really, but it would be particularly nice to see you. That OK?”
“Course it’s OK. You at the station?”
“Well … I’m at a station.”
“Which one?”
“Yeah, that would be my next question too. Battle station, near Hastings.”
“That’s an hour away!”
“This is true.”
“Why are you there?”
“Because I met this girl in a bar and we went out and I said I’d see her home and first of all I presumed she lived in London and even when I found out she didn’t I still thought she was going to invite me in for the night but when we got to her door she said ‘Thanks, see you’ and shut the door and by the time I’d walked back to the station the last train had gone.”
“You saw her home from London to Battle?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I think you know why.”
“And she didn’t invite you in?”
“Like I said.”
“And she shut the door on you?”
“Your hearing’s not impaired by the chemo, then.”
“She didn’t even invite you in for a coffee?”
“Not even a Jimmy Riddle.”
“You caught the train with her for an hour and a half and walked her home and she shut the door on you?”
“After saying goodnight, yes.”
Denny roared with laughter and called his son an idiot. Driving through the darkness, he felt propelled forward by the happiness of being a father, and grateful to be included in his son’s nonsense. Next morning, he cooked a fried breakfast and wanted to know more.
“So how does it work in this day and age, Ellis? Meeting a girl, getting to know her, courting her.”
“It doesn’t work,” Ellis said.
Denny broke open his fried egg and spread the yolk across his toast. He dipped his mushrooms in a pool of melted butter and ate them one by one.
“Your mother’s laugh reduced me to jelly. She made me feel wonderful. I know things are different today and there’s no harm in … whatever the correct term is …”
“Putting it about a bit?” Ellis offered.
“Beautifully put. But I don’t think the journey all the way to Battle is worth it unless it’s for someone who makes you feel …”
Denny shook his head, unable to find the words. He smiled at his son, with a look of openness and pleasure that Ellis was unfamiliar with.
“… someone who makes you feel like jelly inside. You’ll meet someone special. And when you do, put her first in all things and love her unconditionally.”
Denny set about his bacon. Ellis watched his father and wondered where the hint of exuberance had sprung from.
“It was fun last night,” Ellis said.
Denny nodded. “Not the fun you were hoping for.”
“Better,” Ellis said.
They ate then in silence. Ellis cleared the plates away. Denny made fresh tea and set the pot down on the table.
“One can afford to just go with the flow a bit and not worry about everything,” Ellis said, using the term “one” for the first and, he suspected, last time in his life.
“One can,” Denny said, stirring the pot.
Then, Ellis said, “When I think of my mum … when I think of being born … there’s just this empty space. I don’t know how to be close to a woman. I don’t mean physically close, I mean really close. I don’t want some other woman to show me love until my mum has. But she isn’t ever going to do that.”
“But she did,” Denny said.
Ellis continued. “At five o’clock on a winter’s morning, in the darkness, Chloe Purcell feels the way I imagine good love feels.”
Denny nodded his understanding. “You know,” he whispered, tapping his son’s hand with his finger, “you need to avoid sleeping with other men’s wives in the future.”
They both breathed a faint laugh and Ellis felt a familiar sense of bewilderment come upon him, a bewilderment particular to the memory of Chloe.
“Dad, I’m not trying to make excuses, but …”
“What? It’s all right, you can say it.”
“She kind of … seduced me.”
Denny grinned. “You poor thing. How terrifying. How lovely.”
And he loved the reluctance in his son to say anything that might sound ungallant.
“Ellis,” Denny said. “Your mother loved you. She went away because she felt the world was happening without her.”
“I can understand that feeling,” Ellis said.
“I know you can and that’s why I get scared by you.”
Then there was silence and Ellis thought of the bundle of letters in his dad’s locked drawer. This was the moment to ask if he could read them.
“Dad …?” he ventured, but saw that Denny was far away.
“You know, Ellis … allowing grief and fear to blight your heart is an awful waste. I’ve been guilty of it. You must never be. And you must never allow me to obstruct you. You must ignore me if I do. Life goes so fast.”
He touched his son’s hand again and left the table.
18
Ellis met her in the Warrington Arms, a large pub on a roundabout in West London. The pool table was winner-stays-on and Ellis was on a roll when Tammy came up against him. She was short and athletic and had freckly skin and long blond hair. After he had let her beat him and her friend Sinead had accused him of being a “patronising misogynist” for not trying properly, Tammy declined to play on and Ellis followed her to the bar. He asked her why she had such healthy-looking skin and she laughed and told him that she was brought up in Kenya and that lots of people raised in Africa had that look.
“I’ll look like shit when I’m older, though,” she said.
“I doubt it,” Ellis said.
“I will. I’ll wrinkle.”
“You’ll make wrinkles look good.”
“Smooth.”
”No, I wasn’t trying to be. I’m not.”
“I like your nose. Did you break it?”
“Twice so far.”
She said she’d buy him a pint. She leant against the bar as she waited to be served, and Ellis took the opportunity to look at her breasts. They looked soft and large and they commanded his attention for a moment too long.
“They’re bigger than they used to be,” she said.
Ellis looked blank.
“My tits,” she explained. “I’ve had a growth spurt.”
“I’m sensing a domino effect,” he said.
She looked him in the eye.
“I’m sorry I offended your friend. I
s she a lesbian?”
“Not all women who use the word ‘misogynist’ are dykes. Ignore Sinead, she’s in a shit mood. I think it’s nice you let me beat you.”
“I only did it because I’m old-fashioned and I’m crap with women.”
She smiled curiously at him and he felt all at sea.
“Had I been trying, of course,” he added, “I’d have whipped your arse. Best you understand that rather than get an unreasonably high opinion of your abilities.”
She laughed under her breath again. “Anything else you want to get off your chest?”
“Plenty. I’d ask you for your number if it weren’t for the fact that you’re absolutely definitely bound to have a boyfriend already and your non-lesbian friend will probably have a go at me for hitting on you.”
“You’ll have to stand up to her then. I do have a boyfriend. 01 374 9804. He’s in Dubai.”
“Is he bigger than me?” Ellis asked, gesturing to the barman for a pen.
She smiled and gave nothing else away. Ellis wrote the number down on his hand. She held his hand to check the number was right. Then she took the pen from him, unbuttoned his shirt and wrote her name across his heart.
They tended to meet twice a week, but in a haphazard way which didn’t involve planning ahead. They didn’t talk much and they rarely went out other than to the pub they had met in. They would play pool competitively and feign disgust at the other’s tactics, accuse the other of gamesmanship and settle disputes with arm wrestles. They sat in Tammy’s favourite corner and watched the behaviour of others. They lay on the sofa at Ellis’s flat watching videos and MTV. They made love. They laughed a great deal. He took out-of-focus photographs of her at the window of the flat with views of the Westway beneath and dreams of becoming the next Anton Corbyn. They bathed together, staring at Ellis’s map of the world on the bathroom wall. They didn’t talk about the past or the future. He missed her when she was not there. He wished she was watching over him in certain moments. He scribbled down sums on bits of paper to work out how many hours or minutes it was before he would lie with her again.
London was a different city now Ellis had cash in his pocket. Jed and his new girlfriend, Emma, rented a flat in Dalston and Ellis saw them often, as well as Milek and Carla. He preferred to go out every evening. If no one was around he’d go to the cinema alone. Going to the cinema, he came to believe, was something that should absolutely, definitely, without doubt, be done alone. The exceptions were horror films and comedies, both of which could be group activities. He watched blockbusters on the big screen at the Odeon Marble Arch but his favourite cinema was the Curzon Mayfair, where he could take a cup of tea to his seat. The deep, soft, slanted seats of the Curzon cradled him through Wings of Desire, The Big Blue, Midnight Run – twice in one weekend – Angel Heart and The Sacrifice. And at Christmas, he wandered into a repertory cinema in West London and saw a film called Days of Heaven and left the cinema dazed by sadness and longing. He remained haunted by the film well into the New Year and bought a vintage poster of it from a shop in Soho and had it framed and gave it to Tammy.
“Promise me you’ll watch this film the next time it’s shown anywhere, whenever it is, whether or not your boyfriend is in town.”
“I promise.”
“If you see this film you’ll know everything I think and feel about everything.”
“If you told me then I’d know.”
Once, when Ellis was at the off-licence, Tammy answered the phone in the flat and spoke to Denny. Ellis heard her laughter from the stairwell and the sound of her hanging up as he opened the door.
“You just missed your dad,” she told him. “I told him I had you out doing my shopping.”
“What did he say?”
“What’s my secret. Then he told me I’d better not say.”
“Did he ask who you were?”
“No. No questions. Like father, like son.”
She sat on the bathroom floor and read her book as Ellis bathed and after a few pages she put her book down and said, “Why is your dad’s breathing so heavy? Has he got emphysema or something?”
“No, no! Nothing like that. He just has to take these tablets at the moment and they make him a little weak so colds and things like that just hang around him a bit.”
Ellis took a breath and submerged himself. She waited for him to resurface, then said, “A little weak? Sounded like he can’t breathe.”
“No. The big picture is good. A-OK. This is just a normal thing in the stage, like anyone else.”
“Sometimes,” she said, “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
“That’s why we don’t talk much,” Ellis said.
“Do you mind me asking?” she said.
“Not at all. But there’s no problem. There’s nothing to tell, that’s why I’m not telling you much.”
Their conversations were usually in whispers, with their heads almost touching. Lying together. Pillow, sofa, carpet, grass. They didn’t use sentences, nor express their wishes or fears. They would, instead, gently push towards each other images of a love affair they dare not attach their own names to. Places two lovers might go. Things two lovers might do. Moments two lovers might share. But Ellis didn’t risk asking for these things to really happen, he did not venture to lay claim to her love, for fear that her answer would be no or that she would simply disappear. He was naive enough, inexperienced enough, to believe that the affection and intensity that she showed for him could possibly be manifestations of a casual fling and that she could be repeating it all, or even usurping it, with her boyfriend. There was something perfect, almost sacred, to Ellis about the expectation of love, the hope for it during the long times they were apart, that outshone love itself. He thought sometimes of the Tudor ship that was lifted from the bottom of the sea. It was live on the television, one rainy morning when Ellis was young. As soon as the ship was out of the water, they had to keep hosing it down so that the air didn’t kill it. He and Tammy belonged at the bottom of the sea together, where no one could see them and no one could stop them and the air couldn’t harm them.
She’s not a butterfly-lady, she’s a mermaid.
The place still smelled of Fry’s Peppermint Cream. He was sure of it. In the waiting area, patients stole glances at each other and guessed what stage of the mock battle they had reached. Denny sat forward on his chair with his hands wedged beneath his legs. He breathed diligently. Beside him, Ellis slipped deep, deep into daydreaming of a small rented flat with Tammy. It had slanting ceilings and a narrow balcony high above the streets. Their bed was tucked into a corner and there were candles in a small recess in the wall above the pillows. Opposite the bed was a window that framed the sky and Tammy’s sleeping body was drenched in sunlight. In one corner was a pile of books Tammy had read or was soon to read and in another were Ellis’s photographs. Photographs of places they had been to together. Beautiful photographs, the work of master craftsman, Ellis O’Rourke.
Denny brushed against Ellis as he got up and walked towards the open door, in which stood the consultant, with a closely guarded smile for his two o’clock. Ellis watched the door close and turned his attention to a rack of pamphlets. He read eight of them in detail and by the time his dad reappeared he had a worrisome ache in his testicles and a large tumour pressing against the wall of his brain.
“I have to get a prescription,” Denny said, heading off slowly down the corridor, grateful to be accompanied by a son who would not plague him immediately for information. He felt guilty thinking it but he knew things would not be the same if Chrissie were here. It would be more traumatic.
They sat on a bench at the entrance to the children’s cancer ward and waited for the prescription. Hairless children appeared at the far end of the corridor, chasing in all directions like a swirl of leaves. Amid the shrieks of laughter, Denny and Ellis O’Rourke caught each other’s eye.
“We should have no complaints,” Denny said.
“No
,” Ellis agreed.
Denny took the chain from round his neck and handed it to his son.
“I want you to have this,” he said. “It was your mother’s.”
Ellis ran his thumb across a worn-down St Christopher and put the chain round his neck. A nurse swept through the corridor, sending the children scattering, and suddenly they were all gone.
They went to the hospital café so that Denny could take his new pills with a cup of tea and something to eat. On a table nearby, two elderly ladies were selling Christmas cards in June.
“It’s not very good news,” Denny said calmly.
Ellis nodded and smiled weakly.
“I’ll talk to you both together though.”
Ellis nodded again. This is what it’s like to feel empty, he told himself.
Chrissie had evolved into a person who was always late and always angry and surprised about being late, as if it was always the first time. As Ellis and Denny drove out of the car park, she drove in at speed, agitated.
Denny muttered, “I just want to get home.”
Ellis went across to Chrissie’s car. “Follow us home, OK?”
“What’s happened?”
“He hasn’t said a single thing, I promise.”
She nodded and smiled.
“Drive slowly,” Ellis told her, as she tended not to.
“Six months to a year,” Denny O’Rourke said. “A year at the very most.”
From his daughter and son came gentle nods of comprehension and faint, brave smiles.
“The consultant did say that if my breathing improved and I grew stronger, then there is a final option of intensive treatment. A last throw of the dice. It would change me radically and it would probably not work.”
Ellis heard this with a degree of vindication. As he had suspected from the outset, all they had to do was to keep him breathing until an idea came along. They had a year to come up with something and that was time enough.
“I’ve already told him that I’m not going to have any more treatment,” Denny said.