The Lion Tamer Who Lost

by Louise Beech

  It was a girl. We called her Molly. I never saw her. I said to you when Lola was born there’d been no girls in the family for years, but that wasn’t entirely true cos there was Molly. I suppose she didn’t want to come into this mess of a family. Can hardly blame her.

  We almost never had another baby cos Heidi didn’t know if she could go through it again, and even though I said we should talk about it she never wanted to. She’d sit in the room where the baby would have gone and rock in the chair and look like she’d died too. I started drinking more. I’ve always liked a drink, but it became more than just something I did with my mates.

  When Heidi got pregnant with you she didn’t dare get out of bed. She said she wanted a boy, but I wanted a little girl because it seemed such an impossible thing and I knew I’d be so glad I’d stop drinking.

  When you were born, your mum loved you so much. Sometimes I think you got some of the feminine qualities of that girl. Like they were left in your mother’s womb and you stole them from our daughter. I resented you so fucking much.

  God, it’s not that I blame you. I don’t. I’m just explaining why I was always so critical of you. Why I treated you worse than Mike. I’m not writing this for you to say oh that’s fine Dad and have it all good cos it isn’t. I’m saying it cos it’s true. I remember the time I tried to show you how to line up dominos and you were dead clumsy. And I lost it with you. I’ve never forgotten that. I’m sorry.

  I haven’t been drinking. I was going to, so I could write, but I want clarity. I feel like a drink now I admit. Can’t lie and say I won’t later.

  I don’t expect you to respond but it would be great if you’d drop by here when you’re back. Maybe if you do Mike will too. Don’t know how long letters take to get to places like Africa. People email now don’t they, but I can’t get on with that. I’d have rung you, but I don’t know the number of your lion place. Anyway, it’s better that it’s all written down and you can look at it again if you want to.

  I think of you when I stand at the sink you know.

  I’m going to stop before I start rambling and go and find a post box.

  Hope you come home.

  Love Dad

  Ben reads the letter twice. Then he folds it and puts it back in the envelope. Esther, snoozing quietly besides him, stirs a little.

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ says Ben. ‘We’ve still got ages.’

  ‘You read it?’ she asks, drowsily.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ admits Ben. ‘I still don’t know.’

  But he decides he can go and see his dad.

  35

  ENGLAND

  A Lifetime of Letters

  And he signed, Love Ben.

  Andrew Fitzgerald, The Lion Tamer Who Lost

  As Ben and Esther rush through Heathrow Airport to make it to their train and coach home, Ben is captivated by a stack of beautiful gold books outside an airport shop. He tries to pull free from Esther’s hand, so he can look more closely. She resists, holding more tightly and reminding him her train is leaving in twenty minutes. Ben stops anyway.

  He picks up one of the books. Exhausted after the nineteen-hour flight, he wonders if maybe he is imagining the title. The so-familiar words in looped shiny letters. The name he knows so well written at the top in a similar font. The final T is wrapped around the tail of a playful lion cub; in front a small boy sits cross-legged; behind them both, chess pieces float against a blue sky.

  Ben whispers the words aloud: ‘The Lion Tamer Who Lost by Andrew Fitzgerald.’

  ‘It’s pretty,’ says Esther. ‘But I have to go.’

  ‘I must buy it,’ says Ben.

  ‘Why? It’s a kids’ book.’ She pauses, then smiles. ‘Our little one won’t be able to read for a long time, you know.’

  ‘I…’ Ben turns over the cover. Touches the glossy yellow spine. Looks at the black-and-white picture of Andrew. It is the first time he has physically seen his face in so long, and it’s like a punch in the chest. He looks tired. Sad. ‘I know the writer.’

  ‘Really? Wow.’ Esther looks at the time on her phone. ‘Look, I can’t wait if I’m going to get my train. There’s a huge queue in there.’

  Ben looks but knows he has to buy it.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ he says. ‘This is by my … a really good friend.’

  ‘Shall we say goodbye here then,’ she suggests.

  Her hair is plaited, as she has often worn it on hot days with the lions. Her mascara is smudged. Travellers push roughly past with suitcases. Ben feels a surge of affection and touches her cheek. They have seen each other almost every day for six months. Now they will part to each go home – her to Newcastle, him to Hull – and then decide where they will live as a couple.

  ‘Give me a hug,’ she says, her voice breaking.

  She is tiny in his arms. Ben kisses her forehead.

  ‘I’m going to miss you,’ she says.

  ‘It’s only two weeks,’ says Ben. ‘I’ll buy a new phone today and text you.’

  He can tell she doesn’t want to go and feels bad that he is more eager to look at The Lion Tamer Who Lost. So, he decides to say he loves her. To make her feel special. But the words catch in his mouth. He can’t do it.

  They simply part with another hug.

  And he buys the book.

  In seat seventeen of a National Express coach Ben carefully opens the first page. He wonders when it happened, how it happened. Did Andrew win that competition he entered him in before they broke up? Maybe a publisher simply read and loved it. He isn’t surprised. How happy Andrew must be. And he must be okay if this has happened.

  On the first page it simply says, For Ben.

  He puts the page to his chest, overwhelmed. Then he opens it where Book Ben first sees lions under his bed. Then to where he gets them to lie down next to him. Then to where they leave him. He opens a random page and reads the words aloud, but softly.

  ‘Ben liked his wheelchair when it meant he could avoid dancing. At the Christmas school party, he watched the others sway and stamp and stumble. Nancy, however, danced like a ghost, flickeringly, swishingly, beautifully. This was perhaps the only time Ben wished his feet could move too.’

  Ben remembers when Andrew danced on his feet.

  It seems a lifetime ago.

  Impatient drivers honk horns, pulling him from the memory. Outside, black clouds trot across the sky like sheep looking for a funeral. The motorway traffic moves more lazily, each car nudged up against another. Two children in the seat behind squabble over who’s had the window seat longer; their mum says she’ll get the driver if they don’t behave, and the boy says, ‘If he comes back here we’ll crash and blow up.’ Ben smiles. He sounds just like Mike did as a kid. Mike voicing the worst in the back seat of the car, Mike pointing to abandoned wheels in laybys and foxes squashed flat on the road.

  Suddenly he misses him. Longs to see him.

  But he is nervous about seeing his dad. The letter helped. When someone opens up like that – especially a someone like Will – it is impossible not to feel some compassion. Ben feels sad about the sister he never had. Now that his dad has shared the truth about a long-ago daughter, should he tell him he has a long-ago son too? If he can see Andrew as a brother, is it time to let him have the family he always wished for?

  Ben turns back to the book. A wool-haired woman in seat nineteen puts down her knitting and leans across the aisle, says her name is Betsy, and that she has nine grandchildren.

  ‘What are you reading?’ she asks.

  Ben holds up the golden cover and she oohhs at the lion cub.

  ‘My Eleanor would love that,’ she says.

  Ben buys some dry cheese sandwiches from the coach assistant. He offers Betsy half.

  ‘So where are you going?’ she asks him, cheese stuck to her wrinkled cheek.

  ‘Home,’ he says, simply.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Her dentures clack toge
ther.

  ‘Zimbabwe,’ says Ben. ‘For six months.’

  ‘Heck, you must have missed your family.’

  Ben nods. ‘My brother mostly.’ He means Mike, then realises the word should be plural.

  ‘I’ve six brothers,’ says Betsy. ‘Eh, the fallings out we had – used to fight over who got the biggest bedroom and the most lemon meringue pie, and then when we grew up we chuntered on about who got more attention. But we always made up.’

  Ben wishes he and Andrew had such simple things to solve; lemon meringue pie could be cut more equally, and bigger bedrooms won with a coin toss.

  ‘Did you write to your brother?’ Betsy asks, knitting now.

  ‘I sent a postcard,’ says Ben.

  He realises now how thoughtless he was not to have written to Mike. But then they never exchanged letters while he was England, so why would they now?

  ‘Letters get all your thoughts down without interruption,’ says Betsy, knitting needles dancing. ‘You don’t have to be on holiday.’

  Ben has a lifetime of letters in his head.

  Betsy eventually falls asleep and he reads another excerpt from the book.

  ‘Ben joined the after-school chess club and hated the new rules and that Nancy would no longer play their made-up game. She won the end-of-term tournament because her king defended her queen and covered all Ben’s escape squares. If they had played at home, he was sure she’d have surrendered.’

  Ben remembers Andrew and him playing Cheaty Chess. There are so many other curious similarities in the book; so many words that he knows their relationship inspired. He finds a pen in his rucksack. With no paper, Ben writes on the blank pages at the end of the book.

  Dear Andrew,

  I’m on a coach. I just got back from Zimbabwe. I don’t know where to start. What to write. Your book is beautiful. It was the first thing I saw when I got back to England. I’ve read most of it now. I see so much of us in it and all that was going on when you were writing it. The words seem more real somehow inside it than they were on your screen. You must be so happy.

  I thought of you all the time when I was away. I thought of your questions. Remember, during chemo? You asked me to tell you a happy memory of me and my dad. We didn’t know you were asking about your own father, did we? I was giving you your our family history. I should call him our dad now, shouldn’t I? I was so angry at him then about the Kimberley thing and I refused to find good memories for you. I picked the dancing on his feet thing because it was all I could think of.

  But there’s another thing I remember.

  How are your blood readings? I think of them when I’m reading the time. Are you well now? I’m guessing you are because the book is out and inside the cover it says you live in Beverley. You look so sad in the picture though.

  Ben looks up, pen poised. Rain spots the window as though it’s a dot-to-dot puzzle asking to become something; as a child, he always counted the bumps in his woodchip wallpaper, seeing patterns, forming shapes. Andrew does the same with words. They are as alike as they were different when together.

  The rain increases, drowning the dots.

  I’m still mad at my dad. That might never go. But he’s told me some stuff that makes me see him a little differently. I refused to find good memories for you that day. I wanted to deny there were any. But I can’t. Just as I can’t deny us and what we are. You were right to end it. I totally understand how that must have been for you.

  I want us to be what we are.

  Andrew, I met someone. A girl. I know you’ll think I’m lying to myself. I know that I am too. But I won’t ever love another man. And I do love her. It might not be how we loved. Nothing ever will be. But she’s kind and she’s fun. And she’s going to have our child.

  Yes, I’m going to be a dad. That’s why we’re home.

  ‘Do you want a mint éclair, lovey?’ asks Betsy, leaning across the aisle with a green crinkly packet.

  Whatever she is knitting is taking shape.

  He unwraps the sweet. The taste takes him back to school trips and long car journeys to the coast, squashed up against tents and bags in the back with Mike. He wonders whether Andrew’s childhood holidays were squashed and doubts it. He never talked about them. The best holidays were the squashed ones. Tents that wouldn’t stay up, shared sleeping bags that made hellishly loud rustles as you turned over, breakfast a battleground of who got the few rashers of bacon first.

  I’ve thought a lot about telling Dad the truth about us. Telling him he’s got another son. He lost a baby girl before I was born. He sent me a letter while I was away and told me. Really, he lost two kids, didn’t he?

  Andrew, I can be your brother.

  I can. I’m with Esther now. I understand why you had to let me go. How important having a family is to you. If I’m your brother, then you’ll have a dad. You’ll be able to get to know him, and Mike. No one need ever know what we once were, only that we were friends and that this curious coincidence has happened. They don’t even have to know about the wish.

  The hiss of doors opening interrupts him; the coach has arrived in Leeds and it’s the end of Betsy’s journey. She gathers her wool and needles and bags, and gives Ben a thumbs-up. A guy with headphones pounding some bassline gets on and takes that seat. The coach pulls out of the station. The rain stops. The window dries, ready for a new puzzle.

  So the other thing I remember about Dad…

  It’s another happy one like the dancing on his feet. We used to do newspaper sudoku puzzles together. I was maybe twelve and Mum hadn’t been dead that long. I know he asked me instead of Mike cos I was in the top maths group. Mike was grounded that day for stealing penny goodies from the corner shop. But I still felt proud that he needed me for that half-hour after our Sunday fry-up. He ordered this ridiculous pamphlet once from the bookstore about how to do brainteasers properly and I just told him that the point was to figure it out for yourself.

  Dad had this pencil he always used cos then he could rub out wrong answers. We did the easy sudokus at the start. The ones where they give you more numbers in each box. But they bored me. It was like cheating. Like when you picked wishes that had good odds. There were three levels of sudoku in the Sunday paper. Piss-easy, mid-level and hard. Dad liked that in the piss-easy ones he could just go along the lines to see if that row already had a two or a three or a five and eliminate that way.

  Anyway, that memory makes me smile. Maybe you can make such memories with him one day.

  The ink is beginning to fade and Ben scribbles on a napkin until it flows again. His fingers are stained black. The sign for Hull passes the window. Almost home.

  Ben finishes the letter.

  Andrew, I’m not who I was when I left England six months ago. I was selfish then and wanted you how I wanted you. I still love you. I always will. But it’s more important to me that you’re happy, and if that means being a brother to you, I can. Remember when we talked about being happy that time, just before we got the results. You said I’d be happy when I could really be myself. But I’m happy now. I am. Knowing I’ll be a dad. Knowing it’s the only way we can ever see each other.

  You said that last time at the bus stop that you hoped one day I’d forgive you. I do. There’s nothing to forgive.

  PART SIX

  ANDREW

  36

  No More Questions

  When Ben could finally walk a little stiffly, like a matchstick man, the lions left. He put snacks by the bed and wondered if he should pretend his twig legs still didn’t work.

  Andrew Fitzgerald, The Lion Tamer Who Lost

  In a hospital room, Andrew and Ben were joined again. They were attached to a machine that would pass Ben’s life-giving stem cells into Andrew. The white apheresis machine was no larger than a photocopier and sat between their beds. Andrew had looked up apheresis; it was Greek for to take away and meant the omission of letters at the start of a word. Like some of Ben’s mis-words.

  No omission of
letters could change the word they were now.

  Brothers.

  ‘How many times do we have to do this?’ Andrew had asked the doctor at the start of the treatment.

  ‘Three times this week,’ said Doctor Amdahl, ‘and three the next should do it.’

  Then he described again how Ben’s donated stem cells would enter his bloodstream and travel to the bone marrow, where they would hopefully produce new cells in a process known as engraftment. Andrew pictured Ben’s cells seeking his, merging, their almost-identical blood swimming together. Ben would always be inside him now.

  ‘We’ll monitor all of this by checking your blood counts on a frequent basis,’ Doctor Amdahl added.

  So for two weeks a sterile needle took blood from the vein in Ben’s left arm, passed it through the machine to remove the required white cells for Andrew, and then returned to Ben the remaining red ones. Each session took four hours.

  Andrew hadn’t seen Ben since he asked him to leave the flat. Their first eye contact was awkward, and they had to swap beds because they had picked the wrong ones. A nurse prepared the device and then left them alone.

  As soon as she had gone, Ben asked Andrew with soft desperation, ‘Don’t you love me anymore?’

  Andrew wanted to put a hand on his cheek. He wanted to tell him of course he did, didn’t he know he did, didn’t he know that his refusal to see him was because he did, that he was letting him go because he did. Andrew wanted to pretend they had never taken the test but knew if he pulled the needle out of his arm and touched Ben he would never leave him. He knew what they now were to one another would slide between them in bed, like the snake tempting Eve.