Tin Man

by Sarah Winman

  A postcard of van Gogh’s Sunflowers. A memory of his mother or someone else? A phone number scrawled on the reverse. Cinema stubs—Cinema Paradiso, Stand by Me, Pretty in Pink—a ticket to Michael Clark, a ticket to the Tate/Turner Prize 1989.

  From the bottom of the box, he took out a handful of books and instantly recognized them. They were his sketchbooks, the ones from childhood. And he couldn’t believe he was looking at them again because he often threw them out when the pages were full, because nothing felt good enough, or so he thought then. Only one person thought they were good enough and he’d fucking saved them. Michael had saved them. He’d gone to those bins and pulled them out and kept them across the years.

  Here was his mother. A simple line drawing of her profile, no shading, just a line running from her hairline down her nose and throat. Pages of this exercise until he got it right. Her hands now, pages of hands. And a watercolor of her face pretending to sleep, the curl of a smile at her upper red lip.

  Ellis picked up another book: Michael. How old was he? Fourteen? Fifteen, maybe. Jeans low and shirt off and barefoot. Fingers around his belt loops, brooding and serious. Make me look interesting, he used to say. Make me look like a poet.

  Oh Jesus. Ellis sat back and closed his eyes. He listened to a conversation about olive oil coming from next door. He drank wine and poured out more. When he was ready, he picked up another book. Inside, though, he found words not drawings, and the sight of Michael’s writing startled him. It wasn’t a diary, it looked more random than that—thoughts, ideas, doodles. November 1989, it began, the time they were apart.

  He began to read. There was a momentary flutter of the page, maybe the breeze or a tremor from his hand. A young man’s voice traveled across the fence.

  Ellis? he said. Ell?

  But Ellis didn’t hear. “November 1989,” he read. “I don’t know the day, the days have become irrelevant.”

  MICHAEL

  November 1989

  I don’t know the day, the days have become irrelevant. G’s sight has failed, and I’ve become his eyes. When he howls in the night I don’t let go of him. The virus has entered his brain. Yesterday, he laughed when he pissed against the bedroom door.

  * * *

  • • •

  A DOCTOR SUGGESTED I write to make sense of the world around me. There is no sense, I said, abruptly.

  Witnessing the agony of others, he continued, the bewilderment of others. What do you think this has done to you?

  I took my time with this absurd question. I’m not so fun anymore, I said.

  He wasn’t really a doctor doctor but a psychiatrist who works with the dying. I’m not dying, it must be said. Not yet, anyway. I have a visualization tape and the cheery American voice tells me my body is full of light and lurve and I believe it. I’m so full of light and love, in fact, I can hardly do my trousers up. There’s a line of fat around my belly that wasn’t there a few weeks ago, and my abs used to be harder, too, more defined. If I was describing myself, I’d say this body has seen better days.

  I’m thirty-nine years old, nearly forty. Does this bother me? I say it quickly when people ask, so it probably does. I don’t smoke anymore, nor do I take drugs (apart from the occasional co-codamol that I stockpiled after G went onto IV). I used to be good-looking—this isn’t vanity speaking, I was actually told that a lot—but I’m not sure I am anymore. People do still look at me and I get the odd suggestion at times (sometimes very odd), so maybe I still have something. Men liked to fuck me and liked me to fuck them. I had my standards. I dropped them on occasion, but generally I’ve been consistent. I liked short-term lovers or my own company. I’ve had really good lovers—inventive, exciting—but I was never one myself. I was a 7 max. I was the fantasy that rarely delivered. The slight hint of melancholy as they zipped up their trousers. I think I was a bit selfish. Or lazy. A 7, max. That was me.

  My penis looks wistful, but it may be the light. In fact, I’m sure it was bigger once. But I was skinny and skinny men always look as if their cocks are big. It’s all just proportion really, and I’ve seen enough to know. Anyway, it’s been bigger and that’s because I’m teetering on the abyss of impotence and that ache, that throbbing—whatever you want to call it—well, it’s gone. And that’s OK. I like reflexology now because it helps me sleep.

  Enough for today. The medication alarm has gone off and I need to check on him. I call him G because he never liked his name. He’s not my boyfriend anymore. He’s twenty-six and alone.

  * * *

  • • •

  IT’S LATE. I’ve made vegetable broth. G’s sleeping and his temperature is 99.5. He’s burning up but he’s got no sweats as yet. I’m not panicking because we’ve been here before. He’s all bone, a T-cell count of zero. What keeps him alive, God only knows, the memory of living, I suppose. Every victory over infection we’ve celebrated, only to be dumped by a wave of despair a week or so later, as the mercury rose again. I know if he goes into hospital he won’t come out, but we said our good-byes long ago. The morphine drips and I whisper sweet everythings to him. I watch the digital clock flick over. At 21:47 all is calm.

  Autumn knocks on the window. I pull back the sliding doors and let it in. Lights from the meat market flicker and car lights streak the gloom. Overhead the pulse of airplane wings replaces the stars. The flat is quiet. This is loneliness.

  I used to write for a living. Maybe that’s why I have an aversion to it now. I was a journalist. Started with local press, then freelance. Eventually, I turned to publishing and became an editor. Fiction mainly. I was suited to this because I was good at altering the story. Well, that’s what someone said to me once. At the time, I’m not so sure it was a compliment.

  I’ve stopped working for money. I have money. I’m not rich but I’ve enough for my needs. I get a carer’s allowance and buy things that bring pleasure—flowers, a decent-quality steak, that sort of thing. I make sure we eat well, or did, I should’ve said because G’s back on the liquid stuff. Ensure, it’s called—silly name. I mix it with ice cream, and used to get the good stuff. Organic with natural vanilla. I don’t do that now because he doesn’t keep it down.

  I can’t do deadlines when everyone is dying. I actually wrote that on my resignation letter. How grand was I? I thought it captured the mood of the day, a mix of the political, the desperate, the personal. Eventually, I put down the wineglass and redrafted. Said something simple like, Time to move on and maybe write? and my publishers understood without asking me more. I worked out my notice and slipped away with a box of books I’d helped to get onto the shelves. Not one was my story, though.

  G was an artist when we met. Five years ago now, not long after Mabel’s death. I was sheltering in the National Gallery one rainy afternoon when I noticed him in the crowd, his resemblance to Ellis staggering—kind eyes, that hair, beard waiting to break out—and I followed him for two hours across an eclectic journey of Titian, Vermeer and Cézanne, until we ended up in front of a painting that had come to embody an important part of my childhood. I stood behind him, and in my most sonorous voice, said: He painted it in Arles in 1888, you know. As an act of gratitude. Friendship. And hope.

  He laughed. You’re creepy, he said and walked on. He was right. I’m not a natural cruiser. Have been told that many times before.

  I followed him down to the bookshop and picked up books I had no intention of reading and looked at postcards I wasn’t going to buy. Come on, he said as he passed me at the door, and we went to a café just off St. Martin’s Lane, and after two double espressos and a slab of chocolate torte the embarrassing age gap between us diminished and I’d persuaded myself it was almost respectable. He asked me where I lived and I said, Soho, not far. Let’s go, he said. Really? I said. But I’m not having sex with you, he said. You’re not the first to say that, I said. I’ve got jet lag, he said. So we can have tea, I said.

  We di
dn’t have sex but we did have tea. He slept and I watched him. And then I slept and woke up alone. A postcard of van Gogh’s Sunflowers on my pillow, a phone number scrawled on the back. I called him that evening, left a message from Vincent on his answer machine, something about a lost ear. Four days later I was on a train.

  He lived in a barn out in Suffolk, rented it off a couple of queens who spent most of their days in France. Friday nights, he’d ride with another bike by his side and meet me at Woodbridge station and we’d cycle the short distance back to his studio barn, where I’d unpack my rucksack and lay out the spoils of our weekend on the rough oak floor—the wine, the food, a video maybe, and the latest manuscript I was working on.

  His body was a landscape of angles and valleys, a line of dark hair from his navel exploding around his penis, a light dusting of fuzz across his chest and buttocks. He made me feel who I’d been all those years ago with Ellis—who am I kidding? He reminded me of Ellis and not just in looks but how intense he was, how hidden, and I became the boy I’d once been, living out the fantasy of a long-gone youth.

  I could watch for hours as he ground chunks of solid paint pigment and mixed it with oil before scooping it into open-bottomed tubes. He made me calm. Made me learn the names of paints, and I told him that Scarlet Lake and Rose Madder would be our drag queen names, should circumstance ever force us onto the stage.

  Summer light shone in. Pollen dust diffused the scene, the scent of flowers, smells of linseed and coffee, brushes standing in olive cans, wildflowers too. A paint-splattered bed in the corner and me making martinis naked, as G painted an abstract aberration of light across a field. It was everything Ellis and I had once planned. It was beautiful and, occasionally, it hurt. I told G that, and he laughed and the fantasy ended.

  Did I love him? Yes, although I hesitate to use the word, because it turned very parental after a while, and after a while I encouraged him to see other men. I think he was grateful, certainly the bohemian in his soul was. But I wasn’t being generous or open-minded. It was a friend I needed then, nothing more. Eventually, we became the two ends of a telephone line, same time every week. Yes? I’d say. What now? I’d say. What grubby adventure have you got up to this week?

  Eighteen months ago, the phone rang. Yes? I said. What now? I said. What—

  But there was silence.

  G?

  Silence. He began to cry.

  Talk to me, I said. Silence.

  I’ve got it, he said. It: the shorthand we all understood.

  I said I’d never leave his side.

  * * *

  • • •

  HE’S AWAKE NOW and he’s shouting and it’s three in the morning. What’s happened to us, G? I can’t cope anymore.

  I telephone Barts and they’ll have a bed ready for him, they say. I strap him into the chair and cover him with blankets and he shits two minutes after leaving the flat. The lift stinks and I know there’ll be another anonymous note put through the door. Outside, fresh air and no rain. I hurry down Long Lane past the hum of refrigerated lorries into the smoke and chat of the meat porters. I put my hand on G’s shoulder for reassurance. He’s quiet now and calm. I see our reflection in the restaurant window. We are a still life. Me and Old Man. Fuck.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE WARD IS KIND and they know us. We’re on first-name terms with the doctors and nurses, which is good but also bad because it shows how many times we’ve been here.

  The rooms are private with private bathrooms, thank God. There are no masks, no gloves, no rules, no visiting hours because this is a ward of palliative care. Temperatures are meticulously read, every two, four hours, to monitor the progression of infections, and days are measured out in the monotony of medication. Many contemplate suicide and refuse to eat. They’re not force-fed, but are allowed to drift off slowly to that sought-after end. Our dead are placed in body bags, as any blood-borne virus would be, and are whisked off pretty sharpish to the morgue, where a sympathetic funeral director comes by and looks on with unprejudiced care. Many of the nurses are male and many are gay. They’ve volunteered to work this ward specifically. I can’t imagine what they must be thinking, the young ones especially.

  I used to wonder how it would be if I left G here and never came back. Didn’t have to strip a soiled bed again, or flush out a chest port again, just left him here for good. Be done with it all, for good. I could never do it, though, could I? Once, in the throes of passion, I’d declared I’d do anything for him. So this now, this is my anything for him. How shy our bodies are now, G. How sad we are. He likes me to comb his hair because he remembers when he was still handsome. I do it. And I tell him he’s still handsome.

  I turn off his light and tell him I’ll see him tomorrow. I leave the telephone number of his parents for the ward to deal with because I’ve never been able to get through to them. Metaphorically speaking, that is. I go home and sleep for hours.

  * * *

  • • •

  TWO DAYS AGO, just along the corridor from G’s room, I met a young man. He heard me outside his room and called me in. I hesitated in the doorway, taken aback, momentarily, by the yellow autumn light that had fallen across his bed. He was full-blown with a sarcoma down the side of his nose and he was losing his hair from the chemo. He smiled.

  He told me his name was Chris and that he was twenty-one years old and that his parents believed he was still backpacking around Asia. In the quiet space that followed that declaration, I picked up a chair and sat next to his bed. I asked him where his two friends were, the young man and woman I’d seen hovering by the door a couple of days before.

  Gone back to Bristol, he said. Is that where you’re from? I said. Yes, he said. I said I liked Bristol and he said he would’ve liked it better if he’d met me there. I laughed. I asked him if he was flirting with me and his eyes became bright. I’ll take that as a yes, I said.

  He asked me why I was here and I told him about G. The shortened version, of course. Everyone’s story is the same.

  He told me he’d been encouraged by a doctor to write a letter to his parents. He lifted his right hand and it was red and swollen and he asked me if I’d help him do it. I said I would. I asked if he wanted to start the letter right away, but he said no. Tomorrow would be fine.

  Tomorrow came and we got no further than “Dear Mum and Dad.”

  Today, though, we have made better progress and when the sadness overwhelms him, I put down the pen, and begin to rub his feet. Reflexology is the new sex, I say. He looks at me incredulously. Humor me, I say. His feet are cold and he smiles as I touch him. Does this mean we’re going steady? he says, and I say, Oh, yes, you’re all mine, and his smile leads to a not-so-distant boyhood, which completely disarms me.

  Hand me my wallet, he says, and I do what he asks. Open it, he says. There’s a passport photograph just inside. It’s not very good, he says.

  They never are, I say, as I take out the picture.

  Two years ago, he says. I was nineteen.

  I’ve seen that sort of change before and my face no longer registers shock. Clear skin, thick blond hair, downy chin. Glasses.

  You’re lovely, I say.

  Not really, he says. But my hair’ll grow back, and—

  Shall I get us some tea? I say, a sudden need to leave the room.

  I wasn’t promiscuous, he declares.

  I stop. Ambushed by his quiet defense against the disease, the bigots, the press, the Church.

  I think I know the person, he says. You do, don’t you? Looking back. That’s what someone told me. Do you believe that?

  I’m not sure what I believe, I say, sharply. No one deserves to go through this. That’s all I know. You’re lovely.

  I leave the room. I take my rage out on the kettle and cutlery drawer. The nurses can hear me make the tea, fucking London can hear me make th
e tea. Onto a plate, I pile biscuits that I don’t even feel like eating, and return to his room.

  How are you with food? I ask him.

  Not too good right now, he says.

  These are mine then, I say, and I sit down and place the chocolate bourbons on my lap.

  You’ll get fat, he says.

  I am fat, and I lift up my jumper. This wasn’t here yesterday, I say. This is trespassing.

  He laughs. Have you ever been in love? he asks.

  I look at him and roll my eyes and immediately wish I hadn’t.

  I haven’t, he says. I would’ve liked to.

  It’s overrated, I say, stuffing biscuits into my mouth. I eat through the silence, stuffing and eating, because I know I’ve done something wrong.

  Don’t do that to me, he says.

  Do what? I say.

  Make out things are nothing. Things that I’m not going to experience. That’s fucked up. Pity you if you thought it was overrated. I would’ve fucking reveled in it.

  I stand up, admonished, my feelings disengaged. A pathetic creature with biscuit crumbs stuck to his jumper.

  You can go now, he says, turning away from me. And close the door, will you?

  I do as he asks. I go to G’s room and need him to comfort me, but he’s asleep and dying. I’m fucked up. I leave.

  * * *

  • • •

  HOME. I’VE OPENED the windows and the cold London air streams in, and with it comes the incessant sound of sirens and traffic, sounds I’ve grown to love. Candles burn on tabletops and the scent of tuberose surrounds me. Sometimes in this perfumed haze, I forget hospitals. Just sometimes, with a glass in my hand, I walk past a flame and its goodness replenishes me. I don’t want to be defined by all this. We were all so much more than this once.

  I pour out the wine. I think about Chris and how I behaved with him. I try hard to be liked, I always have. I try hard to lessen people’s pain. I try hard because I can’t face my own.