"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 b.u.t.ter 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 s.h.i.t 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s. 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 t.i.ts," 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. Is she a lesbian?"
"Not all women who use the word "misogynist" are d.y.k.es. Ignore Sinead, she"s in a s.h.i.t mood. I think it"s nice you let me beat you."
"I only did it because I"m old-fashioned and I"m c.r.a.p 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 a.r.s.e. 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, unb.u.t.toned 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 compet.i.tively 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."