The Spider Truces Part 33

"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, b.u.g.g.e.r 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 gla.s.s 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 b.u.t.terflies.

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 sc.r.a.p 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 a.s.sistant 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 f.u.c.k 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 d.i.c.k! 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 t.i.ts."

"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.

19.

Gerd was the only man Ellis had met who could eat pizza, smoke a cigarette, watch television and read a Graham Greene novel in his second language at the same time. He was waiting for Ellis at a coffee bar in Boston airport, an ashen-faced forty year old with potholed skin and a lost, thin-lipped smile. Ellis would learn that Gerd rarely laughed, although occasionally he smiled a narrow slit of a smile. Many things fascinated Gerd but few things amused him.

"The diner we were going to shoot in Famingham is off," Gerd said, shaking Ellis's hand, stubbing out his cigarette and standing up, all in one languid movement. He spoke with no expression, his chin raised and his eyes peering down his nose through a pair of non-existent half-gla.s.ses.

"Right." Ellis smiled eagerly.

"Let's go."

Gerd wandered away, carrying a silver metal suitcase in one hand and a carton of cigarettes in the other. Ellis followed on his heels.

"I'm Ellis," he said.

"OK," Gerd said.

Gerd placed his silver flight case in the trunk of the hire car, next to his camera case. He opened it to dig out a fresh cigarette lighter and Ellis saw that it contained a pair of jeans, a grey V-neck sweater and a white T-shirt, all identical to the ones Gerd was already wearing. There were two pairs of socks, no underwear, a toilet bag and a dozen cheap plastic lighters. Gerd had no coat, only the Mod-like charcoal jacket he wore every day.

They drove out of Boston on a series of looping highways.

"I have no interest in food, Ellis. Sometimes the thought of putting more matter into my mouth makes me temporarily depressed. So you are going to have to say when you want to stop and eat otherwise you could starve for being polite."

"Right." Ellis smiled. "Me, I love food."

"You're heading for small-town America so you might change your mind about that," Gerd said, lighting another cigarette. "They serve coffee in this country, so I'm happy."

You look happy, Ellis thought.

In Buffalo, Ellis had a motel room wedged between the sound of the elevator and the noise of the ice machines. He found a present from his dad tucked amongst his clothes. It was a brown leather travelling pouch and in it was Denny's fountain pen with a small tag tied to it on which Denny had written Postcards please. Into the pouch Ellis put his own camera, a notepad, the postcard he had written for Tammy and the photograph of him and his dad standing in the snow, taken by Mafi.

They went to a timber-clad bar beneath an ancient tulip tree. The roots of the tree were breaking up the surface of the Lake Erie highway and the deep crevices in the bark hinted at a less modern, more robust America. Ellis met an elderly man named Moses Mahler who told him that he had lived at number 121 Lackawanna Street all his life, and still slept in the room he was born in. Ellis asked him about his life and Moses told him and Ellis bought Moses a drink and, later on, Moses bought Ellis a drink back.

"Don't you think that's amazing, Gerd, to live in the same house for seventy-five years? Why don't you do a book photographing people who have lived the same place all their lives?" Ellis suggested, as they drove back to the motel.

"Why don't you?" Gerd said.

"'Cos I'm the a.s.sistant, not the photographer."

Gerd emitted a despairing breath, an expression Ellis came to learn signalled mild amus.e.m.e.nt, mild reproach or both.

"Ellis, yesterday I spent three hours deciding not to photograph a barber's shop sign. Today, I spent eight hours photographing a juke box. I think you'll find time to fit in your own photographs here and there, don't you?"

Gerd photographed the neon lights of a bowling alley in Cleveland, a street lamp in Akron and a rusting 1940s petrol pump in Coshocton. The drive from Columbus to Cincinnati was dull but Gerd scrutinised the faceless Ohio road for something of interest. Ellis watched the road signs with naive fascination. He saw turnings for towns called London and Lebanon and Portsmouth, and was surprised by all of them. He took out his pen and paper with the intention of writing a list of what he saw but found himself putting them in a letter to Tammy instead. He was hungry and felt hot in the gla.s.s-sharpened sunlight. In the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Gerd leaning forward to light his cigarette and he saw his dad doing the same thing a thousand times before. He pictured Denny's profile at the wheel. He remembered when his own feet didn't reach the floor. He heard Radio 3 playing on the car radio and the faint whistling sound his dad made when he was happy or thoughtful. He abandoned his letter to Tammy. There were too many things to write. He didn't know where to start.

In an effort to put thoughts of home behind him, Ellis decided to like Cincinnati the moment they arrived, to preoccupy himself with liking it. He liked the circular concrete of the Riverfront Stadium, home to the Cincinnati Reds. He liked the River Ohio cutting between the city and Kentucky, and he liked the steel bridges spanning the river like a jaded Meccano wonderland. He liked the rust-red roller shutters on the p.a.w.nbroker shops in the blazing sunshine. He liked the swagger of the people at the run-down end of Elizabeth Street, he liked the way the sunlight glistened on the downtown office blocks and the elevated walkways and he loved the warm breeze rising up off the river and sweeping through the streets.

They watched the Cincinnati Reds play the Florida Marlins and when the game halted at the seventh innings, Ellis climbed to the back of the stadium and surveyed the suburbs at dusk, the reflections of a pearl-pink sky embossed on every bridge and window. The city grew dark and became a sparkle of lights. Ellis watched the brooding, unlit goods trains drag themselves out of the metropolis. He saw car headlights appear and disappear amongst the forested hills. He imagined the lives going on beneath him. Millions of lives. People who had never seen England and never would. People whose every thought and action and influence was entirely unconnected to his own. He asked himself, What does it mean to travel? What am I meant to learn from this? How should the world change me? Could I change it? He shut his eyes and wondered if everything laid out before him would cease the moment he left the city and only resume if he returned. In a country this size, he reminded himself, towns and cities he had never heard of were in existence every day. In them were millions of people, each one as wrapped up in their own life as he was in his. When did we become so many? When did we build all this? How did it all ever get so big? He pressed his hands against his head and felt a surge of panic rear up in him. Before he could identify the panic, there was a tap on his shoulder. It was Gerd, wearing the expression of profound disinterest that only sport could bring to him. Behind him, thousands of people were leaving the stadium. They joined the exodus. Not until they were outside did Ellis realise that he had left the leather pouch under his seat. He ran against the crowd but the bag had gone.

There was a Hoover at one end of the motel corridor and it caught Gerd's eye as he and Ellis walked to breakfast. The corridor was bathed in meagre, deep green light which seemed to make the interminably long and narrow pa.s.sageway darker not brighter. Carpet covered the floors and the lower half of the walls.

"Go on without me," Gerd muttered.

Ellis reported the stolen bag at the stadium office and to the Cincinnati PD.

"It's the photograph more than anything. I haven't kept the negative, I'm a bit disorganised. I don't care about the rest, just the photograph, you see?"

They didn't see.

He watched the steam boats on the Kentucky side of the river and listened to the rumble of cars on steel bridges. The vast maze of rail lines converging on the city made it all seem like a toy and he realised that he had to forget about the bag and its contents and make the decision not to care.

You can make that decision, Ellis, he told himself. You can choose to make it matter or let it be of no importance. You can decide what sort of person you are going to be when it comes to dealing with these things.

He found Gerd motionless at his tripod in the motel corridor. The German was transfixed by the Hoover, as if it were about to perform a trick.

"You been here all day?" Ellis whispered.

Gerd laced a barely noticeable nod into his stillness. Ellis looked at the frame counter and then for evidence of how many films Gerd had been through.

"You've taken three frames in eight hours?"

Gerd nodded again.