By the way he held on to her, Tammy knew that something was on Ellis’s mind. When he buried his head against her chest, she stroked his hair. When she asked him if he were all right, she felt him nod. When she peppered his head with little kisses, he kissed her back and they made love unnecessarily, because she thought it was what he wanted to do and he didn’t know how to say that it wasn’t, without having to explain why.
The following Saturday, Ellis found his dad at the bottom of the garden, feeding papers on to a bonfire.
“You seem better today,” Ellis ventured.
“Abusing the nebuliser with abandon,” Denny said. “And clearing the decks. Making everything shipshape.”
They watched the fire with the reverence that flames inspire and Ellis recalled the muted buzz of the football reports on a portable radio as his dad worked in the garden at the cottage on Saturday afternoons.
“What was that guy on LBC called?” he asked.
“Steve Tongue … sounded like he was broadcasting from the moon.”
“Adverts for the Houndsditch Warehouse and Dickie Dirts jeans …”
“Chrissie forced me to drive her up to Camberwell to go to Dickie Dirts!”
A church clock chimed somewhere above the sprawl of rabbit hutch houses and Ellis sensed that his father would have liked an extra hour or two to himself this evening.
“I suppose we’ll start going to church now,” he said in a tone of voice which might have meant it and might not.
“I did, months ago. With Reardon,” Denny said.
“Fat lot of good it’s done you,” Ellis said.
Denny flashed his son a smile. He welcomed that sort of chat. He wanted that rather than the other sort.
“I’m on a mission. Want to sort all this stuff out whilst I’m in the mood.”
Denny marched back to the house. Ellis stayed and felt the warmth of the fire on his face and the cool evening air on the back of his neck. He watched the flames and his eyes were drawn to a familiar bundle of letters sitting on a book-shaped mattress of white ash. An image came to him, of the blue canvas-bound diary Denny had kept as a young merchant seaman. It seemed that the diary, which had for many years cradled the letters written by Ellis’s mother, was now an ashen altar on which the letters were about to burn. The chevroned envelopes lay unchanged for a few moments more. Then an Indian stamp curled in the heat, the handwriting began to melt and a white flame licked around the bundle from underneath. The letters ignited. Ellis grabbed a pitchfork and dug them out of the fire, tossing them on to the grass. He picked them up and scurried across the garden, tossing the hot bundle from hand to hand –
“Fuckfuckfuck …”
– and dropped them out of sight, behind the shed. He looked at his hands. They were red from the heat. A slow, incurable sting released itself across his palms, which he wedged under his armpits. At his feet, the bundle of letters reignited. Cursing himself, he took the pitchfork, speared the burning letters and returned them to the fire, pushing them into the centre of the glow. He shook the pitchfork free and a small shower of embers broke from the envelopes and floated into the air. One danced above his head and descended slowly, charmingly, towards him. Ellis cocked his head obligingly to one side so that the ember fell against his neck and burnt him there.
Ellis found his dad writing at the kitchen table.
“What’s that on your neck?” Denny asked.
“A little burn.”
“Looks nasty.”
“I like it.”
“Strange boy,” Denny muttered, and smiled at his son.
“What you writing?”
“A letter.”
“Who to?”
“No one.”
“No one?”
“Pour me a drink, make yourself useful,” Denny purred.
“No one writes to no one. Who’s it to?”
“It’s to you.”
“Me?”
Denny put his pen down and feigned annoyance. “Yes, you. Now stop disturbing me.”
“What’s it about?”
Denny ignored him. Ellis laughed nervously.
“Why don’t you just tell me? I’m right here.”
“Don’t want to.”
“Just tell me!”
Denny snapped. “I don’t want to tell you, Ellis!” He lowered his voice, without sweetening its tone. “I don’t want to tell you. I want to write it and I don’t want to give it to you now. It’s not all about you, Ellis, you losing your father. I’m losing my life. I know you’re scared of being without me but I’m terrified of going, so sometimes you’ve got to just bloody well leave me alone. I need to prepare and don’t tell me I’m not going to die, Ellis, it’s not appropriate any more!”
The room fell silent. Neither of them moved.
Then Ellis said, “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry I shouted.”
“You were right to shout … you could have shouted more often.”
Denny lifted a black metal box, the size of a shoebox, off the floor and placed it on his lap. He had kept bills and chequebooks and papers in there all his adult life but this evening, with the bonfire done, it was empty. He clicked his fingers, reminded of something, and started to rifle through the mess around him.
“Where the hell did I put that note?” he muttered.
“What note?”
“Note for you. She made me promise I’d write it down and put it by your bed.”
“Who did?”
“Tammy.”
“What’s the message?”
“To call her.”
“I think I can remember that without the note.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean you’ll do it. She always sounds so lovely, that girl. Why don’t you like her?”
“I like her too much.”
“Well, you’re an idiot then. Just call her.”
“That’s your expert advice, is it?”
“You can’t like someone too much. More to the point, a young man as hideously unattractive and talentless as you is in no position to turn down a Tammy.”
Ellis smiled. “Tell me then, smartarse, did she mention her long-term boyfriend?”
“Oh.”
“Oh, indeed.”
Denny gave up searching for the note and despaired. “That’s ridiculous! I only wrote it ten minutes ago. I promised her I’d put it by your bed.”
“Well, what exactly does the note say?”
“Call Tammy.”
“Those two words?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ve got that. Really.”
Denny sat back on his chair and took a few deep breaths, none of which seemed to adequately fill his lungs.
“Do you want your nebuliser?”
“Yes please … No, bugger it! Pour us both a little Scotch instead, dear boy, and pull up a chair whilst I fill this with junk.”
When Ellis returned and placed a glass beside his father, Denny was filling the metal box with objects from the mess around him: his certificate of discharge from the merchant navy, a small bundle of old family photographs, a prayer card from his wife’s funeral, an envelope with leaves from the garden of Gethsemane which his grandfather picked in the 1870s, a ticket stub from the 1950 FA Cup Final, a leather bookmark from Runnymede, his cufflinks, a pocket guide to butterflies.
Ellis watched the objects enter the box and felt he understood some sense of a criteria for their selection. They were all things he and Chrissie had played with and looked at as children or things they had been curious about.
Denny stopped. He looked hard at Ellis.
“I always knew I was going to have you,” he said. “I knew it when I was as young as you are now. And the weight of that has made it impossible for someone as plain as me to ever say what I feel and I’ve probably never allowed you enough room to breathe for the same reason. And I apologise. But it’s been impossible, always impossible, to put into words how deeply I love you, Ellis.”
Ellis felt his mouth caving in. He stood as if he’d been shot. And when he did manage to move, it was not towards his father, as he intended, but out of the room. He sat upstairs in a daze and only stirred much later when the burn on his neck began to sting. He went to the bathroom and rubbed cream on to the burn and imagined it was Tammy rubbing the cream in. She talked in hushed tones to him, her lips close to his ear. She told him that everything was going to be all right.
He was still thinking about Tammy when the phone rang late into the evening. He was thinking about telling her that he wanted to be with her all the time and not to share her. He was thinking that he would ask her if she wanted that too, even though her answer might be that she didn’t. He was thinking that he would like to tell her about his dad. He wrote down what he was going to tell her so that he could say it all as he meant to. He was putting the lid back on his pen and was about to lift himself off the bed and go to the phone and dial her number when the phone rang and his dad picked it up and, not long after that, Ellis was standing at the foot of a huge silver grain store in the plains of Iowa, watching the reflection of sunset in shimmering curves of steel and promising himself that as long as he remained in this alien, beautiful, wind-blown place, his dad would not be dying back home.
“That was Milek, in a hurry. If you’re interested in a job in America you’re to ring this number tonight.”
Denny held a scrap of paper out to him and when Ellis hesitated he pressed the paper into Ellis’s stomach.
“If you were to set back your career because of me, I’d be furious.”
When Ellis came off the phone, Denny was waiting in the dining room, with the door to the garden open.
“Tell me,” he said.
“It’s a guy called Gerd. He’s represented by the same agency as Milek. He takes photographs of small-town America. He’s doing a book. He needs an assistant for a
six-week
trip. I’d have to fly to Boston day after tomorrow and meet him there.”
“What a wonderful opportunity,” Denny said.
They sat in uneasy silence. Ellis imagined the places he was on the brink of seeing. He savoured them and then he made balloons out of them and let them go.
“I’m not going to go,” he said resolutely.
“It’s only six weeks. We’ll still have plenty of time before I pop my clogs.”
“No,” Ellis said. “No.”
“Do all photographers have to have East European names?” Denny asked.
“It’s standard,” Ellis said.
They watched the line of walnut trees. Ellis confessed to himself how much he wanted to go. It would take little to persuade him.
“You’re bloody well going, Ellis,” his dad duly said.
After his son’s departure, Denny O’Rourke packed the atlas and travel books away in a cupboard under the stairs. He went to bed and pictured his wife waiting for him. He anticipated their reunion with the same enthusiasm he had once had for moving his children into the run-down cottage in the Kentish Weald.
“He has a whole year in which to improve,” Ellis reasoned. “He’s already looking stronger and better this week. That’s week one out of fifty-two. By the time I’m back he’ll be strong enough for the nuking and we can actually sort this out once and for all.”
“I can’t believe you’re going to Iowa,” Jed repeated.
“Not just Iowa, that’s just one of the places.”
Jed shot him a glazed expression. “Not the point I was making, Ellis. What does Tammy think?”
“About what?”
Jed’s face fell further. “About the chances of free elections in South Africa, what the fuck do you think I mean about?”
“I think you mean about either me going on this job or my dad’s health,” Ellis said.
“Or both?” Jed suggested.
Ellis took a long, exaggerated sip of his beer.
“Nice pint,” he muttered.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t told her you’re going away.”
“No,” Ellis said. “I won’t tell you.”
“Why haven’t you?”
“Because she might not be that interested. She might turn round and say, ‘You know, you don’t have to let me know what you’re doing, you’re not my boyfriend.’”
“Does she ever speak to you like that? Ever?”
“No. Never.”
“Well then.” Jed slumped back, unimpressed.
“OK, before you start lecturing me,” Ellis said, “a few things. Firstly, you’ve never met Tammy and that’s because we’re not going out together because, secondly, she is going out with someone else. Thirdly, no, yes, she doesn’t know I’m going away but I’ve written her a postcard.”
“A postcard! You dick! What on earth of?”
“What do you mean, what on earth of?”
“What’s it a postcard of?”
“It’s not of anything.”
“It must be of something. Torbay, Beefeaters, painted tits.”
“It’s a blank postcard. Like you get from an office supplies shop.”
Jed raised his hands in despair.
Ellis protested, “It leaves more room to write to the person. The address can be written where people like you would have some colour-enhanced photograph of
sombrero-clad
donkeys on Bournemouth beach! The blank postcard is the more communication-friendly choice compared with the picture postcard. And fourthly, she doesn’t really know my dad is ill. Not really ill. She’s not my girlfriend, she’s with someone else.”
“Nevertheless,” Jed reminded him, “you and she are lovers. And you are incapable of holding a conversation which doesn’t refer to her. So, are you not at worst curious and at best eager for her opinion and thoughts and guidance?”
“I’m eager for her to ditch her boyfriend and go out with me.”
“So why don’t you ask her to do just that?”
“Because I don’t want her to say no.”
“You’d rather not ask than hear her say no?”
“That’s right.”
Jed despaired. “I am going to say one more thing whether you like it or not. I think that you should say no to this job. I think your dad is dying. I think that one good bonfire with him has persuaded you he’ll get better. I hope I’m wrong but I don’t think I am.”
Ellis nodded obediently and smiled and looked away. When Jed returned from the bar, he had gone. He went to America the next day and took the postcard he had written to Tammy with him. He read it on the plane. It was the best set of words he had ever put together. He had told her he loved her. He had forsaken the coded imagery of their pillow-talk and written from his heart and laid himself bare. He had got every word right. But he had not posted it. He had got the words right because he knew he was never going to post it. Because the answer might be no. Because he might lose his grip and fall. Because he might drown.