Lost For Words

by Stephanie Butland

  Nathan would have told me everything. He had told me about the stage fright, and he didn’t have to. Rob had gambled on me being scared of people finding out who I was, and let me screw up my own life. I didn’t believe he wanted me. He just wanted to feel as though he was in control of something. He reminded me of the kids at school who’d steal your books and throw them in the nearest toilet, or river, or fire, or whatever. They didn’t want them, they just didn’t want you to have them.

  I sat in the pew and I shook. I watched my fingers as they vibrated. Then I saw that my feet were planted, solid, firm, on the earth above the buried bones. The church was empty of people, and empty of my ghosts now, too. I didn’t know how long I’d been there. The place where my parents’ initials were carved felt cold under my fingertips when I reached out to them again. If I didn’t tell Nathan about my parents, then I was letting Rob choose my destiny. Fuck that. If Nathan and I went wrong, we’d do it by ourselves. I stood up and stood still, as I saw it: it wasn’t Nathan I had no faith in. It was me.

  On the way out, in the shop, I bought a polished grey stone heart, with a white fault line running through it, and I put it in my pocket. Walking back down the steps, I lost count, and I had to go back to the top again. I didn’t mind.

  For the time I had left in Whitby I read and slept and walked and ate, and all the time I was thinking about the poem I was going to write. On my last night, I wrote it. I sat up until three, and I thought and wrote, and in the morning when I woke I had a plan. I packed and I waited for Archie’s comedy toot-toot, which came forty-five minutes late.

  There was a version of myself that was going to tell Archie everything, in the car, on the way back, and get his advice, and apologise for never telling him all of it before. As soon as I saw him it all came rushing up, not the words but the feelings, and I hugged him, tight. It took him a moment to respond. Presumably he was in shock.

  We put my rucksack in the car and set off. I was working out where to start when I realised he was quiet, even by a normal person’s standards, which is unheard of for Archie.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. I didn’t believe him.

  ‘You’re not closing the shop, are you?’ I said it jokingly but it’s my third worst nightmare, the first being my mother turning up, the second being never seeing my mother again. Yes, I know.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Archie,’ I said. ‘Please, you’re scaring me. What’s happened?’

  He sighed, and glanced at me, before looking back to the road. ‘I asked Melodie to work on Saturday,’ he said, ‘and she didn’t turn up. No sign of her on Monday either – I thought she might come and at least spin me a yarn about why she hadn’t bothered. But not a peep, all week. Then today –’

  I knew what was coming, or at least where this was going. I should have tried harder to warn Melodie. I should have told her what Rob did, instead of pussyfooting around telling her to be careful, as though she was ever going to take any advice from me. I thought about Rob at Archie’s party, the anger and the malicious glee. It would have come out somehow.

  I opened the window, for air. I felt sick. ‘Yes?’

  ‘She came in. Half of her face is bruised. All of it, from her temple to her mouth. One of her eyes is swollen shut. She went to hospital, and they said her cheekbone is fractured. There was a story about how it’s supposed to happened, but I’ve phoned Rob and told him that he’s not to darken our door again. She offered to work but I’ve shut for the morning.’ Archie shook his head, a sad, slow movement. I put my hand on hir arm. ‘I hardly recognised her, Loveday’

  ‘Oh, god,’ I said.

  ‘He didn’t ever hurt you, did he?’ Archie asked.

  I thought about Nathan, how he’d tell the truth, without pause. Not because he’s absurdly sheltered but because he’s whole.

  ‘He slapped me,’ I said. ‘He took my boots so I couldn’t leave. I walked home in my socks in the middle of the night. I thought about reporting it but he didn’t hit me hard enough to make a mark. He has medication, and I don’t think he always takes it properly. I don’t know enough about it to really understand how it all links up.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Archie said.

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ I said. We were quiet for the rest of the journey.

  POETRY

  2016

  Salt and violets

  Melodie took to coming into the shop most days.

  I tried to be kind. She was quieter, which was sad, but also made her less annoying, so that helped. She wore her hair styled over half of her face to cover some of the damage, and made up her good eye with dark makeup to disguise the bruising on the no-longer mirror side of her face. Her cheekbone was fractured but not displaced, so it was just a question of waiting for it to heal.

  I did ask her, on a quiet afternoon, why he had done it, and then I could have bitten my tongue off because the answer, obviously, was ‘because he’s a prick’. She said something about him having a bad day. I wondered if that was the sort of thing my mother used to say. The police had interviewed Melodie when she was in A&E, but she stuck to her lame ‘fell onto a door’ (or whatever it was) story. She told me that she worked cash in hand doing her tours, and Rob knew, and she thought he would report her if she reported him.

  That first week after I came back from Whitby, Archie drove Melodie home in the evenings, or I walked with her, pushing my bike. She lived in a big shared house not far away from the city centre, and she always invited me in, and I always said no thank you. We were both lousy company. After that afternoon she didn’t say anything else about what had happened with Rob and I didn’t say anything about my experience, either. I thought about it, but it would only have been to make me feel better about not saying something earlier. We were mostly silent. In the evenings I went home and worked on my poem. The plan that had seemed so clear, sitting in the box pew at Whitby, had become less certain. I could see the merit of it but I doubted my ability to carry it out.

  I was crying less but the pain was exactly the same. I thought about Nathan all the damn time. When I pulled an old, out-of-print book about close-up magic out of a box, I put it to one side for him, and I realised that what was keeping me going was not acceptance, but hope. I didn’t know whether that was good or bad.

  Whitby Loveday, sitting clear eyed in the stillness of the church, had known that it was time to move on, and tell a new tale. Everyday Loveday was starting to think she’d just had a bit of a holiday moment. Archie takes a couple of weeks off once a year and when he comes back he’s always full of ideas. The most recent one was to start a travelling book-circus with clowns and fire-eaters and books. (Me: books and fire? Really?) The next was to buy an ice cream van and kit it out as a bookshop and sell books in tourist areas in summer. (Me: while disappointing a hundred hot and previously happy children. You and I might think books are better than ice cream but I’m not sure that we’re in the majority.) You get the gist. What looks good on holiday sits on the borderline between untenable and stupid when you get back to your life.

  So although I worked on the poem I’d written in Whitby, I wasn’t sure I was going to do anything with it. There was a version of me who would. She was the best version: she came and went, and couldn’t be relied upon.

  Nathan was as good as his word, and stayed away. Well, you’d expect that, wouldn’t you? He didn’t come in to the shop or, if he did, I wasn’t there. But Melodie would have grassed him up for sure if she’d seen him.

  I’d taken the Delia Smith book back to my flat but I’d pinned the postcard to the ‘Found in a Book’ noticeboard. Hidden in plain sight, I suppose. I felt odd about taking it home. I have no photographs, no letters, nothing from my old life (except me, unfortunately). Annabel said she would keep the stuff for me that I didn’t take when I moved out. I’m sure she has. I don’t need it. So I hid my mother’s handwriting on the noticeboard, where I could look at it if I wanted to, but where i
t couldn’t find its way into my hand in the middle of a wakeful night.

  I came into work at 11 a.m. as usual the next Wednesday. Melodie looked paler than usual. The bruising was yellowing and she couldn’t quite disguise the jaundice tinge with makeup, but this was worse than that. She came straight to me when I opened the door, and followed me through to the back.

  ‘Loveday,’ she said, ‘Rob is next door. In the cafe. He wave at me when I pass by.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked, because why say something useful when you can say something stupid. She nodded. I was tempted to tell Archie, but suddenly, looking at Melodie, her scared little heart-face, I was too furious to let a balding old bloke with a pipe get all the kicks. If there was going to be kicking, I was going to be the one doing it. I told her to stay put.

  Rob was still there, sitting at one of the tables by the window, smirking as he saw me approach. I don’t know why I ever thought he was handsome.

  ‘Well, hello, Loveday,’ he said. ‘Seen your mum lately? I’ve heard prison-visiting can be quite a nice way to spend a Sunday, if you haven’t got anything else to do with your life.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ I said quietly, ‘and piss off. And don’t say anything about it being a free country. If you don’t get up and go, I’m going to call the police. Melodie and I will tell them what you did, and then we’ll see how brave you are.’

  He crossed his arms, uncrossed them, took a drink of coffee. I thought it was probably cold. I took a gamble on him being more scared than he looked. I was more scared than I looked. All I had to do was hold out for longer than he did.

  He looked up. I took a step away, just a half pace back, and his shoulders relaxed for a minute until I opened my mouth.

  ‘I suspect we’ll find,’ I raised my voice, enough to make people look around and listen, ‘that you only hit women. Did you know you fractured Melodie’s cheekbone? What did you hit her with?’

  Then he looked scared, for a second. I felt thrilled – it could be this simple – and then sick, because how was I different to my dad, if I was getting off on intimidating someone? Then I remembered how my mother did nothing wrong, and I thought of Melodie, trying to sleep, waking up every time she lay on the wrong cheek.

  ‘Have you paid?’ I asked. ‘I’ll walk you out.’

  Rob raised his hands in a mock submission, ‘have it your way’ gesture, and stood up. He’d recovered enough to try and save some face. He stood up, gathered his things, and then stepped close to me, not touching, looking straight into my eyes.

  ‘After you,’ he said. ‘Lead the way.’

  I did, because the space was too small to make him go ahead of me, though I resented doing as he had said. Once we were outside on the pavement I turned. I saw that Melodie and Archie were watching from the window of the bookshop. I nodded to them: I’m okay. Rob had used the few steps of the exit to find his arsey equilibrium and he slouched in the early autumn sunshine, hands in his pockets, looking at me as though I was dinner.

  ‘That was sexy,’ he said.

  I had thought and thought about asking him about my mother. I knew that I couldn’t. I would have no way of knowing if he would tell me the truth, for a start. And my heart froze solid at the thought of saying her name to him. But right then I could have gone down on my knees and grovelled for any crumb. I took a breath and touched the jet pendant at my throat. And focussed on the job in hand. I’m good at that.

  ‘Rob,’ I said, ‘get yourself some help. Please. I don’t know what’s going on but I can see that you’re not well. I think there’s a good person in you. Help them.’

  For a second I thought he was going to cry. We looked at each other. Then he blinked the moment away and said, ‘Maybe see you at poetry night later?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you will.’ I had the satisfaction of seeing the shock on his face – he must have thought this was a masterstroke of intimidation, at once ‘you can’t stop me from doing what I want to do’ and ‘don’t forget I know that you lied to the people you love’.

  He walked off and I stood, committed now to the course of action that only a stronger, better, more courageous me would have taken.

  I realised Archie had come out of the bookshop and was standing behind me. He put his big hand on my shoulder. It was steady and my skin hummed against it. That was when I realised I was shaking.

  ‘That was brave,’ he said. ‘Don’t do it again, Loveday.’

  ‘Archie,’ I said, ‘will you come to poetry night tonight?’

  I had a hard time persuading Archie that he mustn’t do anything to Rob at the pub, because I wanted him to hear my poem. I had a harder time persuading Melodie not to come – in fact, I failed altogether: ‘Melodie cannot be intimidated all her life,’ she said, and I thought, well, fair play to her. Rob’s cameo cafe appearance had rattled us all.

  I texted Nathan and asked him to put me on the list of performing poets. It turned out that deleting his number was pointless, as my fingertips still knew it. He texted back immediately, a simple ‘It’s done,’ and at lunchtime I went through the door marked ‘Private’, sat in the chair, and made sure that I knew my poem by heart. I wanted to be able to look Nathan in the eyes when I spoke it; I didn’t want to stumble.

  Archie closed the shop early and took Melodie and me for a meal. We went to a Greek restaurant on a parallel street, about three minutes’ walk away. I’d never been there.

  ‘Archie! It must be fifty years since the Odessa Incident!’ said the owner. I sometimes think that I am, in fact, in some monstrous piece of performance art, and one day Archie will take a bow and I’ll discover that not a single element of my life since I walked into the bookshop the first time is true.

  We ate moussaka and salad – I don’t think we chose, I think it just came – and Archie talked non-stop about when I first started working for him. I let him get on with it. He did a sort of mini-play where he performed the parts of the customer, me, and himself:

  CUSTOMER:

  Excuse me, do you have a book on cultivating vines?

  ME:

  Probably.

  ARCHIE:

  I think what Loveday meant to say was, let me show you where you might find exactly such a book.

  Melodie laughed unnecessarily loudly. I hardly minded. He had a point. And what he doesn’t know is that even though he would consider that I’m a lot better at that stuff than I used to be, I still think most people are a pain in the backside. So I win.

  I didn’t see Archie pay, just like I didn’t see him order. I did see him put a foil takeaway carton in his Gladstone bag before we left. I guessed it was baklava: we hadn’t had time for dessert. He asked me once or twice if I was all right and I said I was. I wasn’t not. He asked Melodie and she said, ‘Melodie still Melodie,’ which was sort of encouraging as she hadn’t been on full whimsy setting since Rob had hit her.

  We walked to the pub, and because Archie needed to fill his pipe, and then walk along at his stately pace as he smoked it, and then have a long chat with the homeless man who sleeps in one of the doorways and another with a woman who was having difficulty in finding her friend’s house, it was just before eight when we arrived. As we started to walk up the stairs I heard the end of Nathan’s five-minute-warning announcement.

  The first person I saw when I walked in was Vanessa. She walked over and hugged me. I’m not good at unexpected hugs, but I smiled and said that I was glad to see her, which I was.

  ‘Nathan’s at the bar,’ she said. ‘He’s getting you a gimlet.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say so I introduced her to Melodie. I sat at what I thought of as my usual table and listened to Melodie witter and Vanessa admire her outfit, which consisted of DMs and a 1980s shot-silk dress with a tear in one sleeve, sort of Miss-Havisham-does-the-gardening.

  Nathan came over, and the nearer he got the more I wanted to run, and cry, and touch him, and blurt, and hide, and kiss him, and generally behave
as though Barbara Cartland had just sneezed me out. Of course I did none of those things, just sat there like – well, like me, wordless without a book to rely on. He put my drink down in front of me and then kissed my cheek, softly, in front of my ear. His eyes – for the second I dared look into them – were asking a thousand questions. I felt myself lean towards him.

  ‘I put you on straight after me,’ he said, just the sound of his voice ruffling me all over. ‘Is that okay?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I felt as though my throat was closing. I wasn’t sure I could do this.

  Then Rob came in. I didn’t see him at first but I saw Melodie’s face go still mid-word and Archie look at me, ready to move, either to my side or to lob Rob down the spiral staircase, I wasn’t sure which. I nodded to him: let it be.

  Nathan had watched the looks bounce around. I saw him add it up. It hurt that I could read him so easily, and at the same time it made what I was about to do worth the effort.

  He said, so only I could hear, ‘Oh god. Melodie’s face? Rob?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She knew he was coming.’ Nathan looked at me and I looked straight into his eyes, something I’d been avoiding, and said, ‘Trust me.’

  ‘I will if you will,’ he said, quietly, and I thought, touché. I deserved that. Then he looked at his watch. ‘Shall we start?’ he asked. He got up before I could say anything, and as soon as I saw him standing up there I felt the opposite of nervous, which was the last thing I expected. Three sharp claps and then he started to speak and I started to listen.

  Beggars Would Ride

  As performed by Nathan Avebury at the George and Dragon York, October 2016

  I don’t miss the things I thought I’d miss.

  Well, I miss getting laid – who wouldn’t – and I miss the thought of you.

  I miss being one of two people who are making a couple.

  I miss washing up two of things in your kitchen and buying two coffees in the cafe next to the place where you work.