The Lion Tamer Who Lost

by Louise Beech

  ‘You’re not weird, just interesting. Are you flattered?’ Jodie puckered her over-red lips.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Me still talking to you.’

  Ben finished his beer and shrugged. Uncle John and Aunt Helen went to dance. Mike came over with a whisky chaser for Ben, and gin for Jodie.

  ‘Not spirits,’ said Ben. ‘I’ll pass out.’

  ‘Ah, it’s a wedding.’ Mike took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. ‘Off for a ciggie.’

  ‘We should get pissed,’ said Jodie. She put his hand on her knee.

  Ben needed air but there wasn’t any. The room was spinning. Its centre was a circus ring, colourful, blurred, hot. The dancers were clowns with oversized feet and gaudy costumes.

  ‘I don’t feel so good.’ Ben stood, dizzy. ‘Give me a minute.’

  He approached the doors to the car park, where smokers huddled against the chill. Mike’s rich laugh warmed the cold. His tie had come undone; he was reminiscing with his pals about rebuilding a mosque with the Afghan army so children could learn to read instead of sitting outside.

  ‘Remember the kid with the pack of cards covered in women’s tits,’ said Mike. ‘What was his name? Played a sharp game.’

  Like a backing track, laughter emanated from the nearby women’s toilets: Kimberley.

  ‘Hey bro,’ said Mike as Ben appeared.

  ‘Hey, yourself.’

  ‘You okay?’ Mike frowned.

  ‘Just needed to get away.’ Ben motioned to the toilets. ‘Kim sounds happy.’

  Mike inhaled on his cigarette and nodded. ‘Just glad to make her happy. Where’s Lola?’

  ‘With Dad, so I’d not leave her long.’

  Mike shook his head. ‘Is he still getting pissed all the time?’

  Ben couldn’t say that it was guilt that probably made him drink half a bottle of vodka to sleep.

  ‘So, you’ve left university,’ said Mike.

  Ben couldn’t take his eyes from Mike’s mouth, how his lips moved in such a similar way to Andrew’s. Andrew would appear now every time Ben saw Mike, every time his dad cocked his head a certain way. Strange how things can be there all along but until you know you don’t see them.

  ‘I’m going to Zimbabwe,’ he said.

  ‘You should. Get out of the house. Why do you think I went away so young?’ Mike let the smoke filter slowly from his mouth. ‘What a shame Mum’s not here, eh? She always cried at a good wedding. Remember when Dad put Bacardi in her fruit juice and she did the can-can with her sisters and they fell on the buffet table?’

  Mike stubbed out the tab end with his foot and they headed inside.

  At the women’s toilets, he paused.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, putting his ear to the door.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ asked Ben.

  But he knew – Mike got into trouble so many times as a kid for listening to things he would then share with Ben. He would ascertain their dad’s mood, then say, ‘Dad’s gonna be drinking today, we can miss school’ and they were free to roam the field behind the house.

  ‘You know how dirty women talk when we’re not around,’ he grinned. ‘Told you – Becky just said she might do that Sam from number fourteen. Wonder what plans Kim has for me tonight.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear.’ Ben wished his brother would give up the childhood game.

  Mike pulled him to the door. ‘Just listen to Becky – she slept with half the local footie team in one night.’

  The function-room doors opened, and music briefly filled the lobby. When it closed again they could hear Kimberley and Becky talking, voices lower, serious.

  ‘They’re whispering,’ said Mike. ‘This could get juicy.’

  Ben’s chest tightened. ‘We shouldn’t be listening.’

  ‘Shhhh.’

  Kimberley was crying now.

  Ben tasted ham and pickle sandwich, and beer. He opened his mouth to protest but Mike put a hand over it. Beyond the door Becky said Kimberley should forget what had happened and enjoy her day. That stupid mistakes were just that. The function-room doors swung open and song words – In the corner of my mind I celebrated glory but that was not to be – filled the lobby.

  ‘Close it!’ hissed Mike at the drunken woman staggering through.

  ‘Mike probably has a few secrets of his own anyway, being a man,’ said Becky.

  ‘But it was his dad,’ said Kimberley. ‘I’ll never forgive myself.’

  She emerged from the toilets, Becky behind. Seeing Mike, she stopped and the colour they had so insisted on – that stained every flower and dress – drained from her face. Ben wanted to rejoin the festivities, but his feet were cemented to the ground. The doors swung open again and song words – My heart is numb, has no feeling – escaped.

  ‘What was my dad?’ Mike’s voice was low.

  Kimberley began to cry without covering her face. Becky made excuses and returned to the party.

  ‘Tell me what it’s best I don’t know.’

  Kimberley ran outside, sobbing.

  ‘Mike.’ Ben’s feet moved now, and he put a hand on his brother’s back. ‘Why don’t you talk later? I bet it’s nothing.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  Mike marched outside.

  Ben made it to a sink just in time to throw up. He went back to the party. Jodie spotted him at the bar and joined him. Will was flirting with a girl squeezed into a satin frock. An abrupt end to the music drew Ben’s eyes to the stage, to Mike. He provoked cries of: Speech, speech, speech. Instead Mike asked Will to come forward. Thrilled, their dad stepped into the spotlight, grinning at those who patted his back.

  ‘Friends, this is my dad.’ Mike’s tone was even. ‘I’d like to thank him for this special day.’ Some cheers. ‘And I’d like to thank him for fucking my new wife during my absence.’

  Silence. Then a chair scraping.

  ‘Yes, folks, while I saw mates lose limbs and some their lives he was sleeping with my fiancé. Thanks for everything, Dad.’

  Lola made a gah sound. Mike gave the mic back to the stunned singer. The drummer dropped his sticks with a clatter as Mike hit their dad in the face.

  Will fell to his knees and was helped up by the priest.

  ‘I just wanted to fix the snowglobe,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Mike’s face glowed with exertion. ‘It’s not broken. What are you rambling about, you fucking drunk?’

  Will looked at Ben by the bar.

  ‘You told him,’ he said. ‘Today of all days.’

  Halfway to the doors, Mike stopped. Frowned. Looked towards his brother, eyes pale. ‘You knew?’

  Ben had no voice.

  ‘You knew?’ Mike appeared not to understand. ‘You let me get married?’

  Ben attempted a sentence, gulped and tried again. ‘I thought I was … I…’

  Mike approached him and raised a hand. Ben closed his eyes to the unavoidable. It didn’t happen. When he opened them, Mike had gone. Will wailed in a chair and was fussed by relatives.

  He called out, ‘What should I do?’

  ‘Go back in time and don’t do what you did,’ yelled Ben.

  Jodie handed him a whisky and he downed it.

  He bought another. And another.

  Then she invited him outside.

  It was dark.

  The Piglet air freshener in Jodie’s car dangled like a bad luck charm.

  How the hell was he here?

  ‘Let’s kiss,’ she said.

  Headlights from a passing vehicle illuminated her face.

  Warm mouths open, warm tongues touching.

  ‘Say no to me,’ he mumbled.

  ‘But I want to, Ben.’

  Jodie’s arms were above her head; Ben’s teeth buried in her neck.

  ‘Ben, stop, you’re being dead rough now!’

  An open door then, cold air. Jodie was cursing.

  As the fog lifted he saw Jodie bathed in lamplight, smoking a cigarette, telling him he was presu
mptuous.

  Piglet was immobile.

  Ben was saying sorry.

  He staggered home.

  In the house of mismatched objects, of forks with no similar knife, unpaired plates and solitary saucers, Ben saw himself, his brother and his father as merely existing without their partners. They woke at varying times of the day, ate without appetite in bedrooms, passed one another on the stairs as though they were ghosts.

  Mike needed space from Kimberley before returning to Afghanistan at the end of November. Ben had no choice but to reside there until he received a response to his Liberty Lion application.

  At night, he would wake to a branch tapping on the window; just like Andrew’s foot tap-tap-tapping. He would cover his head to block out the noise. He had tried ringing Andrew. He never answered, so Ben left messages. Message after message, asking why. Asking him to call back and talk to him. Just once.

  But he never did.

  At first Mike, wouldn’t speak to anyone. After blacking his eye at the party, he had given six words to their dad – Stay the fuck away from me. And Will did; he shuffled off to the shed with a cigarette when his eldest son entered the kitchen, or upstairs for a nap when he came into the lounge.

  Whenever Ben entered the room Will loitered like a bad schoolboy, humble and pathetic, clothes scruffy as though he had slept in them for a week. Despite everything, Ben couldn’t ignore him entirely. He just couldn’t. Pity mixed with repulsion and rage. It was exhausting.

  Six days after the wedding, Ben found Mike by the kitchen sink, head in his hands. The picture of their mum had been moved there; plates were piled up in the sink; the ashtray overflowed.

  Mike asked, ‘What am I supposed to do?’

  They were his first words.

  Ben couldn’t answer. What did you do when circumstances outside your control changed everything? He had mauled Jodie in an encounter he could hardly recall. He had gone next door to apologise, mortified he’d upset her. Mrs Cartwright warned him to stay away or her husband would kill him. Ben had never hurt anyone before.

  Who was he now?

  ‘What should I do?’ Mike repeated.

  Ben leaned against the adjacent cabinet. ‘I think that if Kim’s sorry, you should forgive her. Not him, but her. The closeness she had to Dad was fatherly. She was lonely and he took advantage. She’s not a bad person, is she?’

  Mike shook his head and took out a cigarette and lit it. ‘It must have occurred to you that Lola might not be mine?’

  Ben couldn’t lie. ‘It’s a slim chance, surely?’

  Mike admitted to Ben that he too would have struggled with whether to reveal the affair if it were the other way around. ‘You were trying to do what you thought right. But him – how can I look at him again?’

  Ben didn’t say that he too found it agonising.

  He realised suddenly that it didn’t matter now who knew he was gay. He could tell Mike. So what if Will found out? So what if he had disowned Uncle Jerry? So what if he disowned Ben? He was leaving anyway. So why didn’t he just say it? Those three words.

  ‘I thought about taking a paternity test.’ Mike blew smoke rings. ‘If Lola is mine I can get past what she’s done. But what if she isn’t?’

  ‘Don’t take the test.’ Ben spoke more urgently than he intended.

  Never underrate not knowing, he thought.

  ‘Maybe.’ Mike stubbed out the cigarette and dropped it into the sink as Will had done time after time. ‘She has my blood and that’s what counts, yeah?’

  Ben shrugged.

  ‘Doesn’t mean it’ll be easy, though. I doubt we can come here for Sunday dinner and be a normal family.’

  In the end Mike moved back into the flat with Kimberley and Lola for the rest of his leave, beginning on the sofa, and finally returning to their bed. Mike had to make his choices quicker than most; time was a luxury not for him. With only days left on leave he had to accept Kim or wait another three months. When he flew back to the war zone, she stayed away from the Roberts house. Ben visited her and the baby but didn’t tell Will.

  Will cried at night. Ben heard him. Even a pillow over his head didn’t block out the moans.

  Escape came. A last-minute place on the Liberty Lion Project came up; someone had dropped out due to a family death. Ben showed his dad the letter.

  ‘You go next week,’ said Will, his hand shaking.

  ‘Another placement might not come for months.’

  Will scratched his neck. ‘You’ll not be here for Christmas?’

  ‘What does that have to do with it?’ Ben’s mouth tasted of a mixture of pity and revulsion. ‘I’m just telling you.’

  He left his father mopping up spilt orange juice with a stained tea towel.

  Ben tried to prepare. He had given up calling Andrew. Was tired of leaving messages. He had heard nothing. He still believed they could ignore the result, go somewhere no one knew them, even if it meant being merely friends. Ben felt ashamed of the desire that still fired when he thought of Andrew. But he couldn’t stop wanting him, despite what they were. The conflict was deafening.

  So he had to go to Zimbabwe alone.

  On his final night in England, Ben stood outside Andrew’s flat at midnight. All the lights were out. Was he home? Did he sleep? Did he wake over and over, wishing they had never taken the test? Did he wrestle with longing that both tugged at his heart and choked him?

  Ben still had a key but wouldn’t dream of intruding without an invite. The moon slipped behind a cloud, darkening the street. He threw his mobile phone in the gutter. If he was going to Zimbabwe, he was going completely. Turning his back on England. Turning his back on Andrew. On who he was.

  He would go and free the lions, so he could bear being forever caged.

  34

  ZIMBABWE

  Will’s Letter

  Ben felt bad when he missed his father more than his mother. It wasn’t that he loved him more, but that he had not loved him as much as he should have when he was still alive and nagged about crumbs on the duvet and the light still being on past midnight.

  Andrew Fitzgerald, The Lion Tamer Who Lost

  As Ben and Esther board the flight home, he looks back. But there is nothing to see; they are miles from the reserve. Esther touches his arm, maybe sensing his concerns.

  ‘Stig said he’d text me if there was anything to tell us about Lucy,’ she says again as they take their seats, ‘and he hasn’t. I’ll check again when we stop in Johannesburg.’

  ‘I’ll get a new phone when we land,’ says Ben. ‘Jesus. Nineteen hours. Why such a long flight? And two bloody stops.’

  ‘Beggars can’t be choosers. Just be glad there was a cancellation.’

  After they have eaten their tepid airline meals, Esther asks Ben, ‘Are you just gonna surprise your dad then?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you haven’t called him.’

  ‘I don’t even know if I’ll go home,’ sighs Ben.

  ‘Where else will you go?’

  Ben thinks of Andrew’s flat. Of the soft butterfly on his desk where he wrote. Of the Wish Box. But he knows he can’t just turn up there. He will have to call him. See if he will talk to him now. What will he say? Ben has no idea.

  ‘Why don’t you read his letter?’ asks Esther. ‘No better time than now.’

  ‘His letter? Oh, my dad’s. Yeah. Maybe.’

  ‘Hours stretching ahead of you.’ Esther tries to get comfortable, closes her eyes. ‘Wake me if by some miracle they come around with chocolate. I’ve got such a craving. Can’t wait to buy some in England.’

  Ben asks the air hostess for a beer. Sipping it, he takes his dad’s letter from his inside pocket and reads it.

  To Ben,

  I haven’t written a letter since I wrote to the council about the wheelie bins. That was a one-off and anyway they never wrote back and the bin men still don’t take away the ones that aren’t pulled right to the kerb. The green one has been near our g
ate for two weeks and if we get rats I’ll box them and send them to the bloody council.

  I’m a man of speaking words not writing them, so this is hard. I talk out loud to you and Mike all the time like a soft sod. My life is dead empty with you gone but I know I’ve only got myself to blame for that. I’ve written to Mike too. Told him stuff I’m going to tell you. It isn’t to make excuses or to make you think such and such. Just to say.

  I should ask how your trip’s going. I hope you come home when you’re done. I hope Mike will come here too when he’s next home. Maybe we could do the place up and decorate cos it’s a shithole really. I admire you for going to Africa and doing something. I’ve not been much of a role model. I’m proud of you.

  Excuse me you’ll have to give me a moment.

  Maybe being away has given you a break from me. Me and your mum drove each other mad and she’d go back to Ireland and see her sisters and when she came back we’d be like newlyweds for a week. I should’ve been a better husband but by the time you learn stuff it’s too bloody late.

  What happened with me and Kimberley is not something I’m proud of. I was wrong to sleep with her. I’ve always loved women. Probably the understatement of the century. Kim has a quality I’ve always loved – sweetness. I’ve never been happy unless there was some woman. I’ve told Mike in his letter that she shouldn’t be blamed. I took advantage of her tears and I hope he’ll forgive her. She’s about the age that Molly would have been. Who’s Molly, I know you’re asking. I’ll tell you in a mo.

  I don’t think Lola’s mine. I think Mike can be sure she’s his. I can see you tutting like you do and asking how I know. I just do. I hurt girls. I’ll try and explain it. I can’t make girls that survive. Maybe those X and Y things are faulty in me and maybe it’s why I love them so much. I know it’s best I never had a daughter. I’d only have hurt her too, no doubt.

  When Mike was just two and before you came along your mum got pregnant. We never told Mike. I don’t know if we sensed something or it was just cos he was little, but we decided to wait until your mum was near the end. When she was six months she started bleeding and having pains while she was picking tomatoes in the greenhouse. At the hospital they left her in a room to miscarry and then cleaned her up and disposed of the little thing and said we could go home.