The Lion Tamer Who Lost

by Louise Beech

  Snarl.

  ‘Go ahead then.’

  Snarl.

  ‘Goodnight.’

  As though understanding him, Lucy settles. Lies down. Glares.

  ‘I can’t be arsed with a staring contest. You win.’

  Ben closes his eyes. After a bit, he half opens one and spies. Her gold eyes have dimmed. The lids grow heavy. Then she opens them, fights it. Perhaps he is cruel to disturb her like this? But if it means they bond, that means she will be able to join the other lions. If they don’t … Well, he won’t think about that.

  Eventually her eyes close.

  ‘That’s right,’ he says softly. ‘You sleep, girl.’

  Throughout the hot, fidgety night Ben tells her each time she wakes that he’s staying, and Lucy snarls and attempts to swipe him with her left paw. Nearby, baby cubs cry out for milk and love and attention. Doors open and close on the corridor.

  Before it is light, Ben reminds Lucy he’ll be back again with the dark, whether she likes it or not. This time her snarl builds to a savage roar that has Ben up against the door. Has he made things worse?

  Was there any point in returning that night?

  Ben rolls up his blanket and walks back to his hut, newly amazed by the flames of dawn burning the horizon. They should make him feel hopeful. But suddenly he has to stop and get his breath. Suddenly he can barely stand up. He falls onto a bench by the enclosure fence. Inside, in the far corner, a pride of lions is slowly waking – yawning and stretching. Ben puts his head in his hands.

  ‘Are you okay?’ It’s Esther.

  Embarrassed, he nods, composes himself. ‘Yes, sorry. Long night.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Oh. I spent it with Lucy.’

  ‘You did?’

  She sits next to him. Neither of them speaks for a while. Ben doesn’t have to. Esther is very easy to be around.

  ‘What happened?’ she asks after a bit.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep. I’m so exaspalated that Lucy doesn’t seem to be accepting me.’

  ‘Exaspalated?’

  Ben sighs. ‘You know what I mean. Anyway, I thought perhaps it would help if I slept next to her. You know, to be more intimate somehow. Build that trust.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She just growled even more when I left just now. I reckon if she hadn’t been on a chain she’d have ripped my throat out.’’

  ‘It was only one night,’ says Esther.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Don’t give up with her.’

  ‘I might ask Stig to take over,’ sighs Ben.

  ‘No. Don’t be so hasty.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Stig hasn’t got time to do it one on one like you. He must have asked you because he thought you could do it?’

  ‘It’s because we were there when they got rescued, that’s all. I’ll go and talk to him.’ Ben glances at Esther. ‘Don’t look at me like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘All judgemental. Cos you think I’m giving in.’

  ‘You have no idea what I’m thinking.’ She looks straight ahead.

  They sit in silence again.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me…?’

  ‘What?’ asks Ben.

  ‘Why you’re really here.’

  Volunteers are now emerging from their huts. The gentle dawn warmth builds to its sticky heat.

  ‘I…’ he starts. But he can’t finish.

  ‘Wanna get breakfast?’ She shoves him gently.

  ‘Go on then. Because I just love that shitty gritty muesli and mud coffee.’

  They head for the communal lodge. Ben looks back at the sky. The flames have died. Like a sea, it stretches for miles, all the way home, clear blue now.

  After breakfast he returns to his hut and lies in his hammock just for a moment, just to rest his eyes.

  He sleeps. He dreams. He dreams of the good days. He dreams of the moment he first saw Andrew. Of a library. Of a tapping foot. Of an essay he never finished.

  Of feeling somehow right.

  5

  ENGLAND

  Somehow Right

  Ben’s mum assured him that there are no wrong words, only the ones we really, actually, truly meant to say.

  Andrew Fitzgerald, The Lion Tamer Who Lost

  Andrew’s reflection was the first part of him that Ben saw.

  Ben had gone to pay off a library debt, and to start an essay that he wouldn’t look at again for ten weeks – he was heading home from university for summer the next day. The library was full. But a computer in the far corner was free. As Ben took a seat in front of it, he saw gold hair in the mini squares of a mosaic mirror on the wall, like a pixelated photograph. The owner of the hair was hidden behind the computer screen opposite.

  Ben opened the notes for his ‘How Not To Lie with Statistics’ essay and read them through. None of it made sense. The man opposite typed slowly and banged his foot against the chair leg: tap, tap, tap. Irritated, Ben peered around his own screen to glare at him, without success. All he was able to see of him was his reflected, pixelated hair in the mirror on the wall above them.

  Tap, tap, tap. The rhythmic beat drove Ben mad. He banged his flat palms on the keyboard. The man peered around his screen, now, frowning. Ben caught his breath.

  Somehow right.

  These words came to him.

  Somehow right.

  Perhaps Ben had seen him before on the university campus; perhaps familiarity fired the odd feeling of knowing him. He had to be a mature student by the looks of him – unshaven, blond, pretty, but as though it had all happened by accident. His loveliness was at odds with a faded black shirt.

  The man frowned, returned to his screen, and read his work slowly and softly aloud. It stirred something jittery in Ben’s stomach. His dad had always mocked when he read aloud as a kid. He used to poke Ben’s shoulder blades and say that only babies couldn’t read in their heads.

  Ben tried again to concentrate on statistics.

  But the foot tapping continued to annoy him.

  ‘That’s aggregating,’ he snapped.

  The slow-reading man looked around his screen again, continued his involuntary foot dance, and said, ‘Talking to me?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ben paused, sensing he’d said the wrong word again. ‘I said that’s fucking aggregating.’

  The slow-reading man looked back at his screen. ‘I think you mean aggravating. If I were aggregating you I’d be collecting you.’

  Ben hated being corrected; his dad did it constantly: Ben, how can a lad with half a brain think there’s an l in chimney? It’s not chimley! Even your bloody mother wouldn’t have thought that! And it’s scapegoat not scrapegoat!

  ‘I said aggravating,’ Ben insisted. ‘You heard wrong.’

  ‘What, twice?’

  The man continued reading softly aloud.

  Ben couldn’t think of anything to say.

  He was sick of his dad’s insistence that he wasn’t applying himself to the degree. He looked around. At the next table four women read a fashion website and discussed whether handbags were bigger now than they had been ten years ago. None of them had looked at him when he came in. Ben wasn’t interested in them, but it hurt. No one ever looked at him when he walked into a room.

  But the slow-reading man opposite looked somehow right. Ben wasn’t sure what it meant or why it had come to him.

  Before he could think, he said, ‘Do you want a coffee?’

  The man raised his sandy eyebrows. ‘I’m busy.’

  ‘I mean from the machine in the hall.’

  ‘Okay, thanks.’

  Ben fetched two drinks and placed one next to the slow-reading man, who thanked him, barely glancing up.

  Sipping his coffee, Ben asked, ‘So what’re you writing?’ Something about this man made him feel bold.

  The man sighed but then seemed to rethink: ‘I’m writing about legs.’

  ‘Legs?’

  He smiled a sort of half-
up, half-down smile and his face changed.

  Somehow right, Ben thought again.

  ‘How they work,’ he said. ‘And how they don’t work.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For a book.’ He paused. ‘It’s a children’s story so you’d be able to read it.’ Ben knew he was mocking the fact that he looked so young. This man looked late thirties.

  ‘You’re doing a creative-writing degree?’

  ‘I’m not a student, I’m a writer,’ said the slow-reading man, ‘I like this place. I also have a job in another library, but when I try to work there I can’t concentrate.’

  ‘But kid’s stuff?’ Ben realised too late that his tone was scornful.

  The man looked back at his screen, making it clear the conversation was over. His foot resumed its rhythm. Ben’s coffee tasted of rejection. He always got it wrong. This was how it went when he tried to flirt with girls in front of his best mate, Brandon; they would laugh at Ben’s clumsy words, and look him up and down, clearly disappointed; so then he would be cocky and they would ignore him. Then they just talked to Brandon who knew how to keep smiles in place.

  Was the slow-reading man indifferent too? Had Ben wrongly imagined the somehow right vibe? The thought of leaving without finding out for sure made his heart flip over. In his seat at the back of class he had secretly studied other lads, looked at thick necks, messy hair, broad backs, imagined what he might do with them. He wasn’t really sure what type of man he would go for … if he ever had the chance.

  But none of his classmates had made him brave like this.

  ‘I’m going back home to Hull tomorrow,’ Ben said.

  The man continued typing.

  ‘End of term,’ said Ben.

  In the mirror, the man typed right to left; in the real world left to right. His foot tap quickened. A black medical alert bracelet encircled his wrist. As he typed, a half-moon bruise peaking from beneath his sleeve was eclipsed, then revealed, eclipsed, then revealed.

  Nearby the women laughed.

  ‘Not looking forward to it.’ Ben was unable to shut up.

  The man’s foot missed a beat.

  ‘Can I aggregate you sometime,’ Ben said.

  The foot stilled.

  The slow-reading man said, ‘You don’t even know my name.’

  ‘Does it matter? Unless it’s Tarquin.’

  The left side of the man’s mouth smiled. ‘It’s not Tarquin.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Why does that matter?’ Ben plonked his paper cup on the table.

  ‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to talk to strangers?’

  ‘Tell me your name and you won’t be.’

  ‘I’m busy,’ said the man.

  ‘That’s a weird name.’

  ‘Ha.’

  ‘How long will you be busy for?’

  The man smiled fully; it was still half-up, half-down, as though he wasn’t quite sure yet. ‘For the foreseeable.’

  ‘Why, what’s happening then?’

  ‘I have to finish my book,’ he said.

  ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘I haven’t got a title yet.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘I’m not ready to share that.’

  ‘Aren’t strangers the best people to share stuff with?’

  The man paused, sighed. ‘Okay. So far, it’s about a young boy called Ben who lost the use of his legs in a car accident. While he’s recuperating this lion comes to visit him in the dark. He wishes for him, and he arrives. Well, um, that’s about it so far…’

  Ben was sure the man blushed.

  ‘I’m Ben, too,’ he said.

  ‘No?’

  ‘How weird is that?’ Ben didn’t say that he also loved lions.

  ‘I’m Andrew.’ Now Andrew held Ben’s gaze, long enough for him to notice gold flecks in his irises, stubby eyelashes, widened pupils.

  ‘I’m twenty-two,’ said Ben. ‘Is it your first book?’

  ‘Third. I’ve not had much success with my first two. One of them was used in a school though. You might have read it,’ he teased. ‘I have to get on with it anyway.’

  ‘Okay.’ Ben smiled. ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

  ‘I did.’ Andrew started typing again.

  ‘No, about me aggregating you. God, I’m embarrassed now.’

  ‘You said you’re going home tomorrow.’

  He had been listening. ‘I am. You live here in York?’

  ‘No, Beverley.’

  ‘I’m from Hull,’ said Ben. ‘We’re close.’

  Months later, when they first argued, Ben would insist that if it hadn’t been for his autacity (audacity, Andrew would correct) they might never have happened. That if he’d not taken a black felt-tip from his jean pocket and walked up to Andrew and opened the book next to him and written his phone number across the first page and held it out until it dried, Andrew could never have called him. Andrew would remind Ben that he hadn’t rung him because Andrew had accidentally added a surplus digit when transferring the number into his phone.

  But when Ben snapped the lid off his pen that day by the mirror in the library, they knew none of this. Andrew looked at the numbers as they dried – five nines, two threes and a jumble of others – and then at Ben’s face.

  ‘That’s a library book,’ he said.

  ‘Shit.’ Ben gathered his things, suddenly sweating. ‘Well, I guess if you want the number you can copy it.’

  And he left without looking back, tense with shame.

  6

  ZIMBABWE

  Cutting Chains

  Ben’s mum had always said that the sad stuff is balanced by the happy stuff. That a butterfly started out ugly.

  Andrew Fitzgerald, The Lion Tamer Who Lost

  On his fourteenth morning in Zimbabwe, standing on his decking, Ben feels even more alone. The fire in the sky doesn’t transfix him. He is hot and flustered before the temperature has even begun its steady climb. After more vivid dreams about Andrew, he can’t stop thinking about him. He glances at the beautiful flame lilies spouting intermittently near the other huts and wishes he might turn around, see Andrew emerging from his room, and ask him, ‘So what do you think of this place?’

  But it is only Simon who disturbs him.

  ‘Where’d you go last night?’ he asks, breaking wind with gusto. ‘Woke up for a piss and your hammock was empty.’

  ‘I was with Lucy.’

  ‘She your bird then?’

  ‘You know she’s my young cub.’

  Ben had been very close to not going for a second night. He went as far as knocking on Stig’s office door to see if he would take over, and then changed his mind and had to pretend he’d forgotten why he had gone there.

  He dreaded opening the door to Lucy’s deafening roar.

  But as Ben entered, she only softly growled her disapproval. When this was ignored, she settled. Her narrow eyes watched him prepare his straw bed and get into it. Sometimes he spoke to her; sometimes he just closed his eyes. When he was quiet she studied him. Ben wondered if the same indifference that piques the interest of house cats might work with these bigger ones. So he decided to ignore her altogether. She got on with her ablutions, watching him all the while. Ben smiled to himself. This was how he would do it. Didn’t he know more than anyone how much harder you try when no one looks your way?

  ‘Bet you’ve really been with some bird.’ Simon laughs heartily now.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You and that Esther seem close. Now she’s hot.’

  ‘Don’t talk about her like that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say no to a bit of that. Can’t see what she sees in you though.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  Simon jabs him in the side. ‘Only teasing, mate.’

  Ben doesn’t bother going for breakfast. He returns to Lucy. And after a morning with her, and a bottle that she easily takes, he has a quick nap and returns for t
he night. He can’t give up on her. Esther was right. He should see it through. And, after all, he knows how it feels to lose a mother at a young age.

  So he goes back.

  For the first few nights she snarls as he enters, taking even longer than usual to stop when he ignores her. She pulls so hard on her chains that Ben fears she will hang herself, but doesn’t dare try to stop her. It is torture to hear her in so much distress. Three times he leaves the room, thinking he won’t go back. He walks the perimeter of the enclosure in the dark, cursing, and shouting at the night.

  But he goes back.

  Eventually, each time he arrives – blanket under arm and chocolate in rucksack – she barely moves when he opens the door. She merely looks up with an I-suppose-you-can-come-in sweep of her eyes and goes back to whatever she was doing. Ben tries to hide his excitement, not wanting to scare her, not wanting to dare hope she is beginning to accept him. He doesn’t say a word.

  Christmas comes and goes while he is lying with Lucy. In this heat, he can’t quite believe it is the festive period anyway. Volunteers hang decorations and Stig puts a small green tree covered in lights by the main door. Snowy cards line the communal lodges. Esther excitedly shares goodies she receives from her family, doling out chocolates from a selection box and pulling crackers with anyone who wants.

  ‘I have a little something for you,’ she says, and gives Ben a small bottle of whisky, which he takes but knows he won’t drink. He remembers the last time he was drunk and doesn’t want to repeat that.

  ‘I don’t have anything for you,’ he admits, embarrassed.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she says.

  Since his rejection of her wine that night, and her insistence that she had only wanted to chat, Esther often studies him as though she can’t quite figure something out. It doesn’t make Ben anxious the way it previously has when women have appraised him. He doesn’t feel ugly under her gaze. But he does sense that she wants much more than he can give.

  Ben receives nothing from England, but then he hasn’t sent anything either, and his dad has never bothered with cards. Eating breakfast one morning, he glances over at the phone on the wall and wonders about ringing Andrew. Whispering Merry Christmas. But what would be the point? He would only ignore him like he did back in England. And Ben can’t take that again.