Ten Things I've Learnt About Love

by Sarah Butler

  I decide to go downstairs voluntarily. I don’t want her marching up here.

  The kitchen smells of baking. There are twelve fat brown muffins on a cooling tray next to the sink. Cee is sitting at the heavy pine table, pulling her laptop from its case. Tilly is faffing with the cafetière.

  ‘They’re bran and honey,’ Tilly says with a forced smile. ‘It’s from Good Food. Do you want coffee?’

  I nod, and sit opposite Cee, who flicks me a glance and then starts to unwind her laptop cable. She is the sort of person who winds the cable around the adapter every time she’s finished using it.

  ‘Cee wants to draw up a plan,’ Tilly says.

  Cee turns the computer on and it whirrs and chirps to itself. ‘Now you’re here, we can divide up duties.’ She’s wearing jeans with a white shirt tucked into the waistband. Her face looks pinched.

  I rub at my jaw and fix my eyes on a thin scratch on the tabletop – it’s about the length of my little finger. I wonder who made it.

  ‘I’ve been doing some research,’ Cee says. ‘I think we should talk to the doctor, about his mouth. It’s terribly dry.’

  ‘Hasn’t he got that pink thing, on the stick?’ I say.

  Cee’s lips twitch. ‘I think we need to look at other solutions. And then I’ve been reading about this transdermal background pain relief.’

  I could ask her to explain. Instead, I stare past her at the fridge, which leers, big and white and ugly, in the corner of the kitchen. I remember when Dad bought it, and none of us dared ask what on earth he’d do with so much cold space.

  ‘Alice?’ I tune back in. Cee’s glaring at me. I smile. ‘The chime,’ she says, and I know from her tone that she’s repeating herself, ‘is right here.’ She points to one of those portable doorbell receiver things, perched on the end of the table like some kind of incendiary device. ‘Dad has the bell push by his bedside,’ Cee says. ‘In case he needs us. That was Steve’s idea.’ She juts her jaw forward a little, the way she does when she’s trying to prove a point. ‘If you’re the only one in, you might want to take it around with you,’ she says. ‘There’s a clip on the back. Now, Margaret comes three times a day, takes care of the catheter and all that.’ She wrinkles her nose when she says catheter. ‘Tilly’s got a whole load of food in. And now you’re here’ – she smiles; it looks more like a grimace to me – ‘I’ll be working mornings and coming in the afternoons.’

  ‘I came as quickly as I could,’ I say. ‘Ulan Bator’s a fuck of a long way away, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t suggest for one minute—’ Cee says. ‘I’m just saying that now you are here—’

  ‘I thought maybe you could read to him, Alice.’ Tilly puts three plates, the top one stacked with muffins, and three cups of coffee onto the table. ‘He’d like that, and you’re so good at reading aloud.’ She sits down and looks at me, imploringly.

  ‘The important thing is to keep him company, make him feel loved,’ Cee says.

  ‘He is loved.’ I break off the top of a muffin and bite into it. I glance around my father’s kitchen. It’s old, 1970s at a guess. The oven stands on its own, the grill hood reaching high over the hobs. The cupboards are white chipboard, edged with pine. It is not the kind of kitchen my generation aspires to. No granite work surfaces imported from Italy, no Portuguese wall tiles, no double sink with a mixer tap you can pull out to sluice down the corners. The floor is lino – the kind that never looks clean, however much bleach you use. It’s an old man’s kitchen. I can’t stop thinking about the colour of his skin.

  ‘How’s he got this bad in two weeks?’ I say.

  Cee’s hand moves over the plate of muffins, then withdraws. ‘We called you as soon as he got the prognosis, if that’s what you mean,’ she says.

  ‘He’d been losing weight before that,’ Tilly says. ‘But not so much as you’d notice, and then a couple of times I was here he seemed tired.’ She shakes her head. ‘The next thing we knew he was calling us from hospital.’

  ‘Surely he must have known something was wrong?’ I say. Tilly takes a second muffin and pulls off the paper. I stare at the surface of my coffee. ‘He’s a doctor, for God’s sake. He’s a surgeon. He knows about – about health.’

  Cee drums her fingers against the tabletop. ‘He smokes, Alice. And drinks.’

  ‘Alice, why don’t you tell us about your trip?’ Tilly says.

  ‘Not now.’ I sip my coffee. It’s too weak, so I walk to the sink and throw the rest of it away. The kitchen window looks over the garden, an uninspiring oblong of grass, the flower beds around the edges overgrown with weeds. My father is more of an indoors man. When I think of him I think of wood-panelled walls, books, the snap of a newspaper shaken straight. I watch a blackbird hop across the lawn, and stop to dig its beak into the soil. I can hear my sisters shifting their weight in their chairs and imagine them exchanging looks, Tilly silently urging Cee to keep her mouth shut.

  ‘They live in tents,’ I say, still facing the window. My voice comes out louder than I had intended. ‘In Mongolia,’ I say. ‘They live in tents. And every three months they pack everything up and put it onto their camels and they go off to somewhere else.’

  ‘Why do they do that?’ Cee asks.

  ‘I like it,’ I say. ‘I like the idea of always moving on.’

  Cee starts to say something but Tilly cuts in. ‘How do they decide where to go?’

  I turn then, and shrug. ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I suppose where there’s water.’ I lean against the edge of the sink and bite at my fingernail.

  ‘So why don’t they just stay in the first place they get to?’ Cee asks. ‘If there’s water there.’

  ‘How long will it take him to—?’ I say.

  Tilly crumbles the remains of her muffin onto her plate.

  ‘They said three to eight weeks,’ Cee says at last.

  ‘And that was two and a half weeks ago?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  * * *

  The rain carries on all morning: that shitty, English kind of rain – thin and soft, the sky flat and white and boring. I leave after lunch. I tell Tilly and Cee I need to buy clothes, which is true, and perhaps I slam the front door and walk down the steps with the intention of doing just that. I get on the Tube though, and I stay on it, past Warren Street, Goodge Street, Leicester Square.

  At Charing Cross a woman with wide, Slavic eyes gets on with a pushchair. Her baby wears a pink cord dress and white, wrinkled tights, and stares at me, unblinking. I stare back. The mother looks over. She is expecting me to smile, coo, wave. Instead I just hold the little girl’s gaze – and feel strangely comforted.

  I get off at Kennington and take the stairs instead of the lift. At every corner there is the possibility of meeting him – polished black shoes, trimmed beard, the umbrella I left behind held away from his trousers so it drips onto the floor. I meet no one. It’s been six months. More. I could work it out but I won’t.

  It is all achingly familiar. The whiteboard by the station entrance; the bin overflowing with crisp packets and takeaway wrappings; the metal grille on the newsagent’s windows; the pavement narrowing against the high brick wall, and then the stretch of Alberta Street down to Penton Place – a half-finished tower block creeping up above the horizon; the graffitied hoardings and flapping blue tarpaulin at the end of the row of flats, where there used to be another building.

  When I get to the corner of Amelia Street my hair’s wet against my scalp and I’m not sure what to do with myself. The odds are he’ll be at work. But even if he’s not, I can hardly just knock on the door: excuse me, Kal, I’m back from Mongolia, I was just passing by and was curious to know if you’d got married. And, by the way, my father’s sick and I can’t bear it. I lower my head and speed up, walking on the opposite side of the road, next to the gardens. I run my palm across the railings and listen to the wind push-pull the leaves. If he looks out of the window he’ll see me. I straighten my shoulders and lift my chin. It�
��s a beautiful street: a long line of arched red doorways and neat cream-painted window frames. The Victorians gave a shit about detail, Kal would say proudly, you wouldn’t get any of this in those newbuilds they chuck up in a couple of months. He took me onto the roof the first time I visited. I was wearing something too short and too thin for the time of year. He stood behind me, wrapped his arms around my waist, and we turned 360 degrees, from Big Ben round to Crystal Palace and back again. I pointed out the constellations: the ones we could see, and the ones we couldn’t. You’re happier outside than inside, aren’t you, he said, and I looked up at the stars and realised he was right.

  I find our bedroom window. His bedroom window. The geraniums are still there, with their cheery red petals. It was always him that looked after the plants, so it’s hardly surprising they’re thriving, but still I’m disappointed by it.

  The gardens are more of a park, really, open to anyone. We never used them – we preferred the roof, lying on the slope above the stairs, watching the clouds. I duck into them now, the gate screeching out my presence, and follow the gravelled path, thick with weeds, which twists around a semicircle of grass. I choose a bench – splattered with bird shit and lichen, fingernail scratches across its wooden slats, green metal arms. If it wasn’t summer I would have a clear view of the flat, but it’s the entrance to the communal stairwell I’m more interested in. From here I can see who goes in and who comes out.

  We were together a year before I moved in: hardly unconsidered, despite what Cee would say. I knew it would be hard, we’d talked about it. There would have to be rules, he’d said – I wouldn’t be able to answer the phone, there might be times I’d have to leave suddenly. We didn’t talk about how he’d gather up all my things and shove them into the wardrobe, how I’d come back and feel like I’d never lived there in the first place, but I should have been able to imagine that. When I left, Tilly was the only one who didn’t look relieved. Which makes sense, I guess, considering she’s the invisible woman in her relationship too.

  The month before, we had decorated the bedroom. Nothing fancy. Pale-blue walls, oak laminate floorboards, a new chest of drawers. I sit on the bench, bite at my little fingernail and picture each detail of the room: the chips in the skirting board, the built-in cupboard with its scuffed steel hinges, the mark on the wall from the headboard. Kal used to water the geraniums every morning in his dressing gown, his legs sticking out the bottom like a wading bird. I guess he still does.

  He’ll disappear off to India and marry someone he’s never met, and then where will you be? Cee used to say, hands on her hips. I would roll my eyes and accuse her of being racist, and yet, all the time, there was a bit of me – however much I didn’t want there to be – that felt a frisson of panic every time she brought it up.

  I stand, stretch my arms above my head and leave the gardens. I intend to walk past the stairwell, but instead I turn into it, and walk up, because why shouldn’t I? No harm done. I run my finger over the tiled walls. My feet leave wet prints on the concrete, but he won’t notice. There’s a new mat outside his door – muted rainbow stripes. He wouldn’t have bought a new doormat himself. But the label I made – no junk mail please – is still taped to the letter box, the blue felt-tip writing starting to fade. Any new girlfriend, any wife, would have taken that down, surely. There’s no doorbell, just a cheap brass knocker, shaped like a fox. I reach up a hand and stroke its head, then turn away and run down the stairs and onto the street before I can do anything stupid.

  Ten things I own

  1) A ball of cotton thread, every colour you can think of.

  2) A small penknife, the blades almost blunt.

  3) My mother’s wedding ring – I wear it around my neck, on a piece of string.

  4) A wax jacket.

  5) A pair of brown cord trousers, a little too short.

  6) A pale-blue shirt.

  7) A pair of brown leather shoes, which almost fit. There’s a hole in the bottom of the left one.

  8) Eleven pounds and thirty-six pence.

  9) A white plastic bag.

  10) A picture I drew, years ago, of your mother.

  On days like this it’s important to keep moving. I cut across to the other side of the peninsula, past blocks of flats with brightly coloured balconies, over wide empty roads, past endless hoardings, to where the machines belch aggregate and the air is bitter with burnt sugar. I would like to bring you here. We could sit in one of these concrete cylinders, layered with graffiti, and we could talk. Maybe I’d tell you that when I was twelve I found a tin of orange spray paint with just enough left to write my initials on the wall in our local park. D.W. The W tucked inside the loop of the D. It stayed there for months, and I got a thrill every time I walked past.

  * * *

  I worry about you. I worry you aren’t happy, I worry you’re hungry, I worry you’re ill. I worry you aren’t in this city. I worry you are here but hate it. I worry you are dead.

  * * *

  I carry on into Greenwich proper, find a lilac scarf screwed up beneath a fence by the Royal Naval College. When I spread it out, I see a thread has snagged through its middle. In the busy square by the Cutty Sark, I pick up the silver back of an earring. I see a man drop a half-eaten pasty into a black bin. Beef and onion. Still warm. As I bite into it, I try not to think of my mother, red-faced in the kitchen, glaring at the pastry which never turned out right, however many times she tried.

  On the corner of Evelyn Street and New King Street I find a snapped grey shoelace, one end still squeezed into its plastic coating. It reminds me of school – short trousers and cold calves.

  In Rotherhithe, I walk the long, silent road which bends to fit the river. The buildings on my right – with their private river views – turn their backs to the road. On the opposite side, there are St George’s flags and tea cloths tacked across windowpanes. The likelihood is you would live on the river side. I imagine you have a job which requires a suit. I try to picture you, short like her, with her red hair, your heels clipping the pavement. A skirt, cut to fit; the neat pressed lines of a cotton blouse. My picture of you flickers and fades; I can’t see your face.

  I don’t remember buying the last suit I owned, but I can see the bulk of it on the plastic coat hanger, on the clothes rail in the corner of my room. I remember the feel of it – the weight of the jacket, and the belt I had to start using to keep the trousers from sagging around my waist. I remember destroying it. If the scissors had been sharper, it would have been more satisfying.

  Beneath a bench in a tiny cobbled square, where the light sneaks through the leaves and moves across my skin, I find a child’s hairgrip, the colour of gold. Is that what it’s called? A grip? It worries me, sometimes, that I’ll become someone who has forgotten the names of too many things. I’ve considered making some kind of litany in my head, a list of words to keep repeating in case I lose them. I don’t do this because of you; because the thought of you turning away from a mad old man mumbling nonsense to himself is worse than the fear of losing words.

  Sometimes, holding an object can make your hands look like a stranger’s. The hairgrip – well, you’ll see, but the two fingers are actually a single piece of metal folded back on itself; and where the metal bends there is a tiny flower with five gold petals and a red plastic centre. I hold it between my finger and thumb and I see how tired and old and hardened my skin is. I see the dirt ingrained into the lines. I see that my nails are thick and yellow, the area around them flaked and sore where I have pulled off thin strips of skin with my teeth – a habit from childhood.

  It would be better if the scarf was gold and the hairgrip lilac, but I can’t hope to always be exact. I leave them on the kerb at the corner of Mill Street. I lay the scarf flat. I turn the shoelace into a circle and I put the silver earring-back and the gold hairgrip inside it.

  * * *

  This, as you probably don’t know, has been going on for some time. Not as many years as you’ve lived, I’ll
admit that. There was a long time, most of your life if I’m honest, that I packed up my knowledge of you and locked it away with the rest of the things I have decided, for many reasons, not to dwell on. I imagine the inside of my head as a catacomb – a maze of dark corridors with the memories rotting in their sealed stone caskets, shelves and shelves of them.

  I was twenty-seven when I first knew of you. It might have turned out differently – I wanted it to, but your mother was insistent, and I couldn’t find the right words to make her change her mind. I left London, limped off to Leeds and tried to pretend I’d never loved her in the first place. I drove a courier van. I walked around the city and thought about limestone and brick. I spent a night, once, on a bench in Roundhay Park; no one bothered me. I met a group of artists who’d just left college. We smoked pot and stayed up all night. I had a relationship with one of them: Melissa – she had hair shorter than mine and a line of tiny stud earrings up each ear. It didn’t end well. And all that time you were growing, and I had to work hard to stop myself thinking on that.

  And then my dad fucked up. I spent the winter in Preston. Wet tarmac. Bare trees. My mother’s jaw so tense I thought she’d grind her teeth down to nothing. I lost my way after that.

  * * *

  Don’t listen to my grumbling. I mustn’t bore you. I met a Buddhist once – he sat on the raised triangle of grass where Stamford Street meets Blackfriars Road, his eyes closed, meditating. This is it, he told me. Here and now, you and I, these streams of traffic: this is it. This is the only time and the only place we have to make the changes we need to make in our life. I’d like to say I took it on board. I didn’t. But it comes back to me – the freckled dome of his scalp, the pale pale blue of his eyes, like the sea reflected back from rain-filled clouds. Here, now. This is all there is.

  * * *

  Tower Bridge is split in half, raised up towards the sky. The cars tail back to Druid Street. Drivers tap impatiently on their steering wheels. Tourists exchange gleeful looks; they take pictures of their friends pointing at the white bulk of the ship and the tipped-up miracle of the broken bridge. I catch a curl of cigarette smoke from an open car window. The man reluctantly hands one over when I ask, a flash of fear at the back of his eyes. He lights it before he gives it to me. I breathe in cool grey. I find they calm me down, cigarettes. Kill you too, the doctor told me. I shrugged and said something has to, which is true enough, except the truth is I’m not ready yet.