by Bloom, Anna
“You know, Ben, you sound pretty good by yourself,” Big Baz says as we get into our coats.
“Thanks, Baz. I don’t usually bother. Guess I am just used to the band being with me,” Ben replies, as he peers out of the door into the pouring rain.
“Well, you’re welcome to play here anytime, especially if you help me shift stock like that!”
Ben flashes him his rock-star smirk in return. “No worries. Should be easy.”
Cocky git.
“Come on, Lilah.” Ben says. “Ready to run?”
We run a whole thirty paces to the nearest pub where we settle down and drink all of our bonus money.
We drink pints of beer, eat lots of crisps, and then come home for lots of catch-up sex.
I love having a boyfriend. I love having Ben as my boyfriend even more.
3rd April
“Shall we go to the library and find those sources?” I try to ask without giggling. I am turned on my front and Ben is kissing up the back of my bare leg, one sneaky hand creeping up my inner thigh.
“Nah, let’s just stay in bed.”
Okay then.
I wonder if the end-of-term paper is going to have a multiple-choice section entitled, ‘Things that make you giggle in bed.’ I hope so, otherwise I am screwed.
4th April
Work and the Ben Chambers show
I wondered why we had such a crowd until I noticed that Big Baz has snuck up some flyers in the window.
‘Ben Chambers of Sound Box playing here, today at 11.’
What a cheeky shit! But it is good for business, and it has surely got to beat sitting around in a sea of depression like last week, selling only one item the whole day.
Big Baz was so thrilled with his increase in profits he slipped us a hundred this time.
Pub.
Beer.
Crisps.
Sex.
No Library.
5th April
8.00 p.m.
“Are you guys on a honeymoon or something?” Meredith shouts through the door.
“Go away,” I call. We’re snuggled in Ben’s bed at the halls and Meredith’s voice is that last thing I want to hear.
“No, come out with us,” Meredith persists. “Beth’s here, too.”
“Where?” I call back.
“Fez! Come on! You know you want to.”
Ben and I look at each other, scrunching our faces up. It’s clear neither of us ‘wants to,’ but we are both too soft to say ‘No’.
“Okay. Give us fifteen minutes,” I shout back.
“No! Say, ‘Half an hour,’” Ben whispers.
“Why?” I whisper back.
“I have something I want to show you,” he explains, chuckling against my ear as he rolls me on top of him.
“Half an hour, guys!” I shout through the door.
“That’s disgusting,” Meredith and Beth mutter in unison.
8:45 p.m.
No need for makeup. I am flushed to the max.
“Can you wear those high heels?” asks Ben, coming up behind me and buttoning his shirt.
Sexy.
“Why?” I ask, but he just wiggles his eyebrows at me.
“Oh, my God! You are insatiable,” I screech with giggles as he attempts to pull me back over onto the rumpled bed sheets.
Midnight.
We walk home, hands swinging between us. Ben is on the side of the traffic, of course. It’s raining but we don’t care. We're happy together, just casually walking along. His dark hair is flattened by the water, which drips onto his shoulders. A raindrop slides down his nose. He turns and catches me looking, gives me a wink and a squeeze of my hand.
I do not want this to end.
6th April
4.00 p.m.
The band is back, and Ben has gone to see them. I am at work, drinking Budweiser.
10.30 p.m.
A text from Ben:
It’s a late one. I’m going to stay at Dave’s. See you in the morning. Sorry. XX
Ugh! It’s not that late. It is half past ten. What does he mean ‘late one?’
It’s 79 days until he leaves for good. Not that I am counting.
7th April
6.00 a.m.
“Why are you in your room and not mine?” he asks, his arms winding around me.
“Why are you here? It’s not dawn yet.”
“I missed you.”
“Really?”
“Really,” he murmurs against my ear. “Now, Lilah, we really need to talk about your sleeping apparel . . .”
I giggle as he slides his tracksuit pants down my legs and lifts his holey T-shirt up over my head.
10.00 a.m.
We are back in his room, which it seems has now become ‘our’ room.
“So what happened with the band?”
“Oh, we had an argument, but nothing out of the ordinary.”
I push up onto my elbows. “What about?” I ask.
“Lilah, it is nothing to worry about. Just forget it.”
“The fact you say it is nothing to worry about makes me think that it is.”
He nibbles my ear, which I know he thinks will distract me.
Not a chance.
“They questioned my commitment, so I got angry. It was nothing and not the first time it has happened.”
“Because you left the States and came home?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, Delilah. I did what I needed to do, and that is all there is to it.”
“Yeah, but your friends are freaking out that you might be about to fuck this up for them.”
He has not exactly told me this, but I know that’s what’s going on.
“Lilah, I have given them ten years. I think they can allow me to have one minor blip, even if it is when we are abroad.”
“Liam told me that you threatened to leave once before.”
He is silent for a moment. “Yes, but I didn’t leave. I decided to stay.”
“Because of me?”
He doesn’t say anything, just gives a slight incline of his head in acknowledgement.
“And now they think you are going to leave because of me?”
“Yes.”
“I am not going to let you.”
“I know. Now shut up. I missed you last night and need to make up for it.”
“What? Again?”
Cue ridiculous giggling.
Summer Term
8th April
It’s here, the beginning of the last term of the academic year. I’m not sure how it has come around so quick. Oh, okay I am, but I am trying very hard not to think about my track record of stropping, sulking, stalking, and drinking.
After lectures, I tell Ben and Meredith that I have things I need to do. I actually want to go and study. It would be nice if, just once, I could study without Meredith obsessing over my brother, or the fabulous home we are going to have and the parties we are going to throw. Or what wedding dress she may or may not wear in two years when they get married, happily fucking forever after, not that I’m bitter.
It would also be nice to study for once without Ben somehow talking me into taking my clothes off. See? I am growing as a person.
I’m all for naked study, but it is probably best not to do it in the library.
I want to look at the sources for the group project. Since I came up with the idea, it has grown inside my imagination and become something that I feel very strongly about.
What is loss?
How do you let go?
What does it mean to admit your sorrow an
d regret?
How do you live with the memory of what was and is no longer?
These are the thoughts on my mind as I climb the bloody stairs all the way to the history books.
Luckily I find the most extraordinary source. My god, I actually feel like a university student right now!! I find it impossible to read it without being moved to tears.
This is real life, real loss and real sorrow. It makes my heart ache with the enormity of it all.
The source is a soldier’s thoughts on the Menin Gate in Ypres. The Menin Gate Memorial Hall of Memory records 56,000 ‘missing’ of the British Empire who fell from October 1914 to August 1917.
Fifty-six thousand soldiers, who lost their lives in one town, in less than three years? How can you possibly compute that sort of loss? The record I have found is heartbreakingly touching. The author has to consider why the memorial is there. Surely no one will ever forget what happened in that town.
He writes that he wonders who will march through the gate now that their numbers are dwindling. He believes that the names are well graven on the arch for there will come a time when nobody remembers the names of those who gave their lives.
Can you let loss go? No. You immortalise it in any way you can, so that you will never forget. Even when you are no longer there to remember, the testament to your loss will stand forever more.
The other source I have found is entirely different and this is why I know I am onto a winner topic. It considers the comparison of the drastic loss of a nation with that of the private loss of parents who have lost their children through war. Kathe Kollowitz’ statue in Roggevelde Military Cemetery, Vlasdlo, depicts a mother and father kneeling in grief at the loss of their son during the war. The husband kneels, arms folded over his chest, remorse set in stone on his face. The wife is kneeling forward, and forever in mourning for the son that she blessed to go to war but who never came back.
Is it possible to move on from that? How do you give your blessing and let your child leave you in a futile pursuit, to have them never to return to you again? Should you let go? Can you ever let go of your guilt afterwards? Can you learn the art of letting go?
This has been a thoroughly depressing trip to the library. By the time I have made it back to the dorm, I am choked to the max, with a tight chest that's unable to lift the weight of loss that grips me. It’s not personal to me but I can feel it like the cut of a knife.
When I walk inside I give my notes to Ben who is sitting in the lounge talking to Jayne and Beth. I then go to my own bedroom where I sit in the dark for what feels like an age.
Later.
Ben comes in to find me in the end.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yeah, I am.”
I am now.
“I love the stuff you’ve found,” he says. “It’s very thought provoking.” He leans against me so we are touching all along our side.
“Thank you.”
“What’s wrong, Lilah?”
I sit there and think about it. “I can’t imagine how you deal with that sort of loss. I don’t understand how to let go of something that you love that much without it killing you on the inside.”
He sits there for a while and we watch the lengthening shadows spread across the room.
“I don't know either,” he says at last.
Then he reaches for my hand and we head back to our room.
9th April
“Who the fuck is Miranda?” I ask, my green-eyed monster back with a vengeance.
“Our rep in the States.”
“Why is she texting you?”
“Why are you asking? And why are you looking at my phone?”
“I am not looking at your phone. It’s right there by my leg and it flashed clear as day.”
“Seriously, Lilah. Are you jealous?” His tone is incredulous.
“What, that some strange woman is texting you? Who I’ve never heard of before? Yes, I fucking am.”
Cue major stomp off out the front door.
Damn it. What am I supposed to do now? It is a Tuesday and it's only five in the afternoon.
7.00 p.m.
I love wine.
I love my Brother.
8:45 p.m.
“We need a BBQ.” I state mainly to the table.
“What, now?”
“No, you fool, for our new home.”
The room is spinning really badly and I think I may be sick.
“It’s April, and we don’t actually own it yet, Lilah.”
I blow a raspberry at these inconvenient facts. “When will we?”
“Four more weeks, according to Tracy, the world’s most useless solicitor.”
“Good. I’m going to paint my room purple.”
“Purple is for the sexually repressed, Lilah, which you are not.”
“Not now, but I will be.”
“Do you think you should go home?”
“Don’t want to. You can’t make me.”
9.15 p.m.
Ooh, shexy man coming towards me. I hope he doesn’t notice that I am slurring and looking through one eye. Sexy, shmexy.
“Are you ready to come home yet?”
“Oh, itchs youse.”
“Why are you looking through one eye?” He turns to the debris on the table. “Oh, that’s why.”
“Shwat, exacry aresh youse implysing?”
“Come on, Lilah, let’s go.”
“Shcant shmake shme.”
“You think so?”
“Yesh.”
“Sounds like a challenge.”
Cue Fireman lift. And a round of applause from the pub, fed up listening to a drunken old lush rambling with her head on a table.
10th April
8.30 a.m.
“I am sorry.”
“I know you are.”
“No, really. I am very sorry, but I need to be sick.”
8.40 a.m.
“Please don’t ever walk out on me like that again.”
“I won’t.”
“Lilah.” Ben holds my chin so I have to look at him. “You can ask me anything and I will always tell you the truth.”
I meet his gaze even though my brain is attempting to escape out of my right eyeball.
“I know, Ben. It’s just I have this very bad visual image of you being surrounded by tall, skinny, blond girls dressed in black underwear.”
He laughs as he pulls me in. “You are crazy.”
“I know. I’m missing lectures today.”
“I know.”
13th April
It’s Jayne’s birthday.
Jayne has been largely absent of late due to her embarking on some crazy love affair with a guy from the football team. I have only met him a couple of times, and I’m not entirely sure if he may not be a bit of a twat. I have not told her this, though. He strikes me as being a player, which is funny considering that a few months ago I thought that Ben was a player, too.
Anyway, Jayne is trailing this guy all over campus, which is rather amusing to watch. Meredith and I frequently get emergency calls like "Quick! Meet me outside the bar. He’s just gone inside. We can make it look like a coincidence," or "Guy’s! He’s on the third floor of the library. Meet me in the stairwell!" Meredith and I have started calling lots to see which one of us goes to rescue her.
Tonight we are going out to celebrate her birthday. Thankfully, we are not trailing the football team, but instead watching Sound Box play. This is good, I think, apart from the fact that I am worried about a couple of developments.
This is the first time I have seen the band since the whole America debacle and the subsequent row and Ben has told me (in his gentle don�
��t-scare-the-kitten voice) that their rep from the States is going to be there. Miranda.
Now this should not bother me since I know he loves me and he knows I love him. We are as set as cement.
However, let’s be honest: I am prone to crazy-green-eyed monster behaviour and I am trying very hard not to think about the fact that in two short months the love of my life will be leaving me to live in another country with this woman called Miranda.
No. It’s okay. I am a confident, attractive woman with a boyfriend who worships the ground I walk on. I do not need to be worried.
The Gig
Or I really bloody do.
Guess what? Miranda (pronounced Mihraandah) is six foot, blond, skinny, and I can clearly see her black frickin’ bra through her white shirt. Bloody ho.
So far she has said with a sexy slow southern drawl, “Wow, Lilah, how lucky are you to have such a talented boyfriend?”
“Mmm, that’s me, lucky, lucky, lucky.”
“He really is quite a catch. Girls love the guitar thing. Hope you are keeping him sweet.”
I hesitate for a moment unsure if I have heard her correctly. What? As opposed to sour?
“Well, I try.”
“Those girls were going wild for him out there.”
“Really?” I bet they bloody were.
“Oh, yes, Ben definitely got a lot of positive feedback.”
What is positive feedback?
I need a cigarette before I turn green and explode out of my clothes, but the band has only just started playing so I cannot escape quite yet. I decide to be a grown-up and move away from the annoying skinny American.
I stand and watch Sound Box play. They are so good and their new material really is amazing. The general pace of their new stuff is much slower than their usual fare. Ben’s told me he has not been writing much over the last few months, but standing here listening to the new tracks, I believe he may have been keeping a few things to himself. Sneaky.
“Did Ben tell you about the great night we had at the hotel before he left?”
Oh God, she is back.
“Uh, no, he didn’t.” We have been far too busy having crazy reunion sex. Get lost, you skinny bitch.