The Lion Tamer Who Lost

by Louise Beech

  Tara clasped her hands together on the desk’s polished surface. ‘Andrew, we love your writing style – this is why we decided to take a chance on you when the slot came free. I just worry that it’s too … bleak?’ She smiled, her eye corners creasing.

  Andrew shook his head. ‘It’s weird because I see it as hopeful. How Ben rises above everything that’s thrown at him.’

  Tara’s phone buzzed. She clicked it off and put it in the drawer.

  ‘I think you have a good point,’ she conceded. ‘Ben’s motivation is fired by his great loss.’ She nodded as though agreeing with herself. But Andrew sensed there would be future battles if he accepted Tara’s offer. ‘Perhaps your next story can be a little gentler – some stuff is just too dark for kids.’

  ‘Not all children are afraid of the dark,’ said Andrew as the sun moved behind the BT Tower, separating them with a long, sneaky shadow.

  The editor pulled her sleeve back over her charm bracelet and said, ‘I guess we’ll see.’

  When Andrew first saw the illustrator’s impression of Book Ben a few weeks later on a computer screen he faltered again. As a child, he had hated illustrations in books; what an artist interpreted from the prose was never what he envisioned while reading. Narnia’s lion, Aslan, he had seen as graceful and giant-clawed. So, when he opened the book and found a creature no larger than a donkey he had slammed the pages shut in annoyance.

  Now here was Book Ben, actualised.

  Andrew couldn’t deny the beauty of the image. Meryl had been an artist for thirty years and had brought Book Ben to life. Even in the black-and-white sketch his eyes glowed and his hands were refined, befitting someone with useless legs. Unruly kinks messed his hair. He actually looked like Ben. It reminded Andrew of his favourite Roald Dahl book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the pictures found there.

  ‘Since it’s for eight to twelve-year-olds, there will be around one picture per chapter,’ said Meryl, ‘and I’ll draw whichever scene most stands out. You can be honest,’ Meryl added when Andrew stared at the image. ‘It’s your story. What do you think?’

  Andrew said he thought he was perfect.

  Black House released The Lion Tamer Who Lost in April and it turned out that Tara was wrong about some things being just too dark for children; they embraced the dark.

  Andrew read a newspaper piece describing how, in their thousands, with their pocket money and with birthday money, children had bought the book. Something about Ben’s story must have resonated. In the reviews he read, parents described how their children had told their friends who told their friends who told their friends. How they had tidied bedrooms and done homework on time and put shoes away properly, just so they would be rewarded at the weekend with a trip to the bookstore.

  Andrew took part in a whirlwind of promotions, interviews and signings. A lot was expected; no sooner had he returned to his flat than a call came from Tara about a radio host who wanted him for a show about the demise of classic children’s books, and a journalist who would give a rave review in exchange for an exclusive chat with the diabetic recovering from cancer who had got lucky with his overnight success.

  Andrew kept a bag permanently packed at the end of his bed.

  Everyone wanted to know about forthcoming books and new ideas. Tara expected either a proposal for a sequel or something new by July, which she wanted completed by the next spring. The hard work, Andrew learned, was not the writing but the promoting. He understood why a lot of the successful names on Black House’s list lived in or near the capital, where most events took place, but he couldn’t imagine moving there. For all his absence of family, and having no one to leave behind, Andrew clung to Beverley – the place he knew.

  Early in May, between a book fair and an appearance on a local news show, Andrew’s phone rang before he woke. Expecting it to be seven o’clock he found the day had rushed on without him, that it was already nine-thirty. He rarely slept so long. He did a blood test: 6.9. A good reading. Andrew thought about looking for the sixes and nines in the day, but he hadn’t done that in so long.

  Recently, his readings had been more erratic though. He put it down to being so busy. Rushing from train to tube, office to bookstore, he had struggled to eat as regularly as when he had the luxury of a routine at home. Hypos caught him unaware. In a bookstore toilet in York, a warning LO had flashed across the blood meter’s screen, meaning his sugars were so low a number couldn’t be provided. Andrew had forgotten his glucose tablets and asked the store manager if she might get him some Coke. She had looked him up and down and said she would see what they could do. Andrew laughed later to think how she might bitch about the stuck-up writer with incessant demands.

  Now the telephone continued ringing.

  Andrew answered it.

  ‘Do I get a signed copy then?’ It was Leo.

  ‘How are you?’ asked Andrew.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?

  He had not seen or spoken to Leo since the awards ceremony. Leo had called and left messages, but he never returned them.

  ‘Tell you what?’ Andrew’s chest tightened.

  ‘About the book. You must be delighted. How did that happen?’ Leo paused, seemingly aware of the bitterness in his voice, and then said more evenly, ‘I’m happy for you. I suppose you deserve it. You’ve been writing longer than me.

  ‘Tara contacted me after the event and things went from there.’

  ‘Great. Listen, I’ve been calling you for weeks – is your machine broken?’

  Andrew sensed the reason for Leo calling was not only because of the book. He waited for him to get to the point, which never took Leo long.

  ‘Are you and Ben still separated?’ And there it was.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is he seriously your brother?’

  Andrew couldn’t speak. This again.

  ‘If he isn’t, why would have you ignored me then? Ignored me since?’

  Andrew got a cereal bar and bit into it. A moth flew into the window, seemed stunned and fluttered off.

  ‘I can tell this is hard for you,’ said Leo. ‘Why not talk to me?’

  Andrew still couldn’t.

  ‘Who else you gonna talk to, for fuck’s sake?’

  ‘Okay.’ Andrew sat on the sofa. ‘It’s true. We’re brothers.’ It felt good to unburden himself. ‘Ben offered to donate stem cells when I had cancer. That’s how we found out.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Yes. Jesus.’

  ‘But if you didn’t know then there’s no reason to feel disgusted is there?’

  ‘Of course we didn’t know,’ Andrew cried. ‘You think I’d have begun that kind of relationship with a man I knew was my brother?’

  ‘Does his family know?’

  ‘No.’ Andrew scrunched up the cereal bar wrapper. ‘Why would they?’

  ‘They’re your family now. You always wondered about your father.’

  Andrew didn’t tell Leo that he had seen Will a week earlier in Morrison’s, the first time since he and Ben split. Will hadn’t noticed him. How strange it was to view him with knowing eyes – his father. He wore a checked jacket that had seen better days and his basket bulged with meals for one and bottles of alcohol. Andrew had hidden behind a tower of cereal boxes, wanting to approach but afraid. Scared Will would somehow recognise their new relationship in Andrew’s expression and turn him away. This all ran through his mind in a flash. Will approached the cashier before Andrew could intrude; before he could suggest he not have those awful packet meals, that he’d cook something for them.

  Andrew thought about the one Sunday lunch he’d had with him, the mismatched crockery, the undercooked peas. He wished there was a way to have a relationship with Will. To say, You’re my dad. But he was afraid that the truth about him and Ben would somehow end it all.

  ‘Shit, you’ve had some bad luck,’ said Leo. ‘Diabetes, cancer, and this.’

  ‘It’s … just life.’

  ‘Can’t you
two be friends?’

  It was the question Andrew had asked himself over and over. If they could be friends, then they would be able to be brothers.

  ‘Could you be just friends with someone you’ve loved more than anyone you’ve ever known?’ Andrew asked Leo.

  ‘Yes,’ said Leo. ‘I’m your friend, aren’t I?’

  Andrew didn’t know quite what to say.

  ‘Why don’t we meet up?’ Leo said. ‘Maybe this sibling thing happened for the best? Maybe we could make a go of it.’

  ‘I’m not around much,’ said Andrew sadly.

  ‘And if you were?’

  Leo deserved the truth, didn’t he?

  ‘Thank you for listening,’ Andrew said. ‘But I don’t think we could work now.’

  Letters arrived at Black House and got sent on to Andrew. Children wrote notes full of mis-words and exclamation marks and drawings. They wrote: I think lions knock on my door at night too on paper that smelt of wax crayon and bedrooms. They enclosed their photos and collectable cards and dead daisy chains and their own short stories in jiffy bags, which Andrew put into a folder to keep forever.

  To the lion tamer mister, said one notelet, each word carefully printed. Andrew pictured a girl of eight chewing her lip as she painstakingly put down her thoughts in joined-up letters, just as he had once written the wish that changed everything. He made sweet tea because his blood sugars had dipped again and sat with the note, moving his mouth quietly around the syllables.

  I were leg brases because i have an old person diseese and i walk one up one down like ben and i love him because he never worrys too much. I sometime wish to walk write but ben makes me happy to be wrong.

  Andrew responded to every letter he got. He would wake up at three in the morning slumped over his desk, having passed out on the pile of notes. As a kid, he had written to his favourite authors and never once heard back. Waiting by the letterbox, he made up excuses for his heroes and heroines – they had such important things to do and book-writing was so very time-consuming. He knew now that many of these writers had died long before he got out his pen.

  Andrew would stumble to bed after waking at his desk, waking again hours later ravenously hungry, one of the signs his blood sugars were low. He would pass out halfway through a chocolate bar, dream vividly about starving lions, and come to with the wrapper stuck to his cheek.

  Then one morning before returning to London for another book event, Andrew received a postcard. Sometimes the postman had to knock now to hand over all the letters he got. Something fell from the bundle as he carried it to the living room. He knew immediately when he picked up the glossy card and saw two lions curled together by a tree that this was not from one of his young readers.

  It was from Ben.

  Judging by the date and various countries’ stamps it had taken almost three weeks to travel from Africa to England. Andrew put the other letters on his desk with a twinge of guilt at preferring the postcard, then carried it to the bedroom. The bed squeaked gently beneath his weight, an accepting sigh. He sniffed it first as though even after a month it might carry some remnant of Ben’s essence. It hadn’t; the card smelt dry, emotionless. Next he analysed it for fingerprints or some other link.

  Finally, he read the words.

  Just his name and address and I saw it and thought of us.

  Andrew felt sick.

  He had turned his back on Ben for something that was not his fault, something with which he too was struggling to come to terms and had also just discovered. Had this denial made the sibling relationship not exist? No. They still were what they were. But what they hadn’t been was two children who had grown up side by side, two children who had shared a bath or a bed, who had fought and argued, who had bonded in innocence within a family unit. He and Ben had been two adults who met in a library, who went to the circus, and who listened to a soft-voiced doctor say one of them had cancer. Only the blood pulsing through their veins made them brothers.

  Nothing more.

  Sitting on the bed they had once shared – with the postcard in his hand – Andrew realised that Ben was not the brother he had wished for. It had not been his childhood wish to find and sleep with and fall in love with and then lose a brother. Ben was the lover, the love of his life, who he had failed to wish for.

  The telephone rang. Andrew dropped the card.

  ‘It’s me,’ said Leo. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’

  ‘No need to,’ said Andrew. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Listen, I read this article in yesterday’s newspaper about a brother and sister who slept together from being fourteen. Remember that novel that came out in the eighties – Flowers in the Attic.’

  ‘I can’t talk, I’ve got to catch a train in a few hours.’

  Leo continued anyway. ‘I think your story would make a great adult novel. Worked for Virginia Andrews. Can I interview you if I need help?’

  Andrew snapped, ‘No! We’re not like the two you read about. We didn’t grow up together! Don’t you dare write about us.’

  ‘No, it’d be fiction,’ said Leo. ‘But what a tragedy it could make. I’ve been thinking about it ever since you told me. I’ve been reading all these tragic tales of adolescent girls finding comfort with an older brother. Read this student survey where ten percent admitted to sexual experience with a sibling’

  ‘Don’t even thinking about using my name in any way.’

  Andrew hung up.

  Felt dizzy and had to breathe deeply for a while.

  Then he propped Ben’s postcard on the dresser and left for London.

  41

  This Isn’t Nothing

  It took ten attempts for Ben to first walk. Each time he fell, he was more determined to get up.

  Andrew Fitzgerald, The Lion Tamer Who Lost

  Andrew felt safe when he was surrounded by books. His customary nerves at having to face the public were lessened somewhat by the fact that they would be children. Kids were always so receptive. Nonjudgemental.

  Andrew looked around the store, the biggest in the UK, and couldn’t quite believe he was here. The store manager, Stella, showed him to a table covered in heavy grey felt, where piles of his books had been propped in one corner and a selection of pens sat to the left. He still smiled each time he saw the cover of his novel. The words The Lion Tamer Who Lost were flowing gold letters. The final T wrapped around the tail of a playful lion cub. On the front, Book Ben sat cross-legged. Behind them both, chess pieces floated as though free of their rules.

  Stella put a welcoming hand on Andrew’s shoulder. ‘Coffee?’ she asked. ‘I suggest a strong one judging by the huge queue outside.’

  ‘Can I possibly have Coke?’ he asked. He didn’t have time to do another blood test and felt queasy, so wanted to make sure he could last the morning.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Sit down. Get comfy. We open in ten minutes.’

  Andrew sat in the chair behind the table. He was exhausted. Had been for days if he was honest. No matter how much he slept or how well he ate he felt lousy. No time now to think about it though. Or Leo’s idea for a novel. He only hoped the sugar would get him through the day.

  A nearby board advertised that Andrew and some other authors were appearing that week. He thought he looked confused in his picture, like an actor who had forgotten his lines. It was the same image they had used in the back of his book. Black lines were etched beneath his eyes.

  But I’m here, he thought. I’m in Waterstones. Like I always dreamed.

  There was no one to whom he could say it aloud. He had no one with whom he could share the moment. No Ben. All that wishing and here he was, alone.

  When the doors opened, children varying in age and size and colour tumbled through them. Some came with parents, some with grandparents, some with friends. But some were alone too. As a child Andrew, had gone to so many places by himself, spent hours in a dark library corner while his mother worked. He wandered the shopping precinct, then went home
and drank hot chocolate next door with Mrs Robinson. Andrew knew his mother wasn’t to blame; life had been unkind to her. Will had played a bigger hand than her in his solitary childhood.

  Andrew wondered now if his mother had ever wished for anything. Had she hoped Will would come back to her?

  ‘Will you sign it to Alfie, mister?’ A boy so freckled it appeared his face was scalded jolted Andrew from his thoughts.

  ‘Say please,’ chided his equally freckled mother, with a firm nudge.

  ‘Oh, please, mister,’ he said.

  ‘Of course I will, Alfie.’ Andrew turned the book around and wrote in loopy scrawl over the first page. ‘Did you read it already?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Alfie, hugging the book to his chest. ‘My friend Carl read it though and he said it’s dead good.’

  Alfie’s mother reminded him to say thank you to the kind man.

  And so began four hours of signing. Andrew lost count of how many times he wrote his own name. Halfway through the session he almost forgot how to spell it and had to look at the book cover for help.

  ‘I forgot how to spell the once,’ whispered a chubby girl who noticed Andrew’s momentary confusion. ‘I just couldn’t remember, so I put in a better word instead.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Andrew.

  Stella brought him a coffee and he ate two cereal bars. This event felt somehow like a conclusion; like the destination after a long, long journey. Something urged him to enjoy it. This isn’t nothing. The phrase came to him. Like déjà vu. Wasn’t that what he kept thinking that day in Ben’s kitchen? This isn’t nothing. Yes. The ticking clock. Ben’s kitchen before he collapsed.

  ‘Can I get a photo?’

  Andrew looked up. A boy gave him a mostly toothless grin.

  ‘Of course.’

  Andrew stood up. The room spun for a moment. He gripped the desk. Once steady, he posed with the boy. Others then asked to have pictures taken too. Andrew realised he might be forever immortalised in albums he would never see.