Ten Things I've Learnt About Love

by Sarah Butler

  Her hair turned white the year he died. It had been laced with grey before, but that autumn, after she found him and all those bills, it faded until there wasn’t an ounce of colour left. There were times she tried dyeing it – a virulent orange, a washed-out purple; eventually she gave up and let it be.

  Time to move, but there is nowhere to go. I turn onto my side and the bed creaks beneath me. I hear someone cough on the other side of the room. I think about Anton’s daughter, imagine her riding high on his shoulders, her hands in his hair, laughing. I want to wake him up and ask how he could have left her, how he could have lost her.

  Ten things about my father’s house

  1) The front door sticks.

  2) There’s a painting of Tilly and Cee in the hallway. They are seven and five. They wear matching pink dresses and white socks.

  3) There is still a faint stain on the living-room carpet, underneath the coffee table, where my mother spilt a bottle of red wine, thirty years ago.

  4) My father’s study smells of cigarette smoke.

  5) There are four bottles of malt whisky in the cupboard under the sink: Talisker, Ardmore, Jura, Laphroaig. The Talisker has a couple of centimetres left, the rest are more than half full.

  6) When I was eight I pulled my bed away from the wall and wrote my name in red biro on the wallpaper. It is still there.

  7) There’s no Internet connection or computer.

  8) There are three squeaky floorboards on the second landing: one a third of the way across, just outside Cee’s room; one directly outside my room; the other at the bottom of the stairs up to the attic.

  9) If you stare at the wallpaper in the utility room for long enough, the pattern starts to look like hundreds of tiny people standing on hundreds of tiny islands.

  10) It’s not somewhere I’ve ever really felt at home.

  I know as soon as I open the front door that he’s dead. It’s like the house is squeezing its eyes shut and holding its breath and hoping, praying even, that what has happened hasn’t really happened. I stand in the hallway with the door still open and consider turning around and going back out.

  I don’t remember how many times I ran away when I was a kid. The returns were never fun: strangers insisting I tell them my address; policemen eyeing me suspiciously whilst speaking into telephones – skinny, short, red hair, green eyes: yes, that’s her. Teachers got flustered, or shouted; either way they kept repeating themselves over and over, like I hadn’t heard it all before. Dad always looked disappointed and slightly pained, like he’d eaten something that hadn’t agreed with him. Cee slapped me once; I slapped her back.

  I loved the beginnings: the thrill of sneaking outside into the cool night; the smell of frost on the school playing fields, the yellow glow of street lights, the quick hushed pad of foxes. I imagined myself a cat burglar, a detective, an assassin. I crept away from the building – school or home – and then turned back and looked at it: the blank, darkened windows, the heavy silent bricks. Sometimes I literally ran, sprinted until I felt the burn in my thighs, my heart like a trapped animal in my chest. I was never going anywhere in particular, just away.

  I slam the front door shut, take off my jacket and hang it up, over the top of his summer coat. My father. I try to picture his face, but can’t. There was no need to go out. I had nowhere to go and nothing to do, just wandered the streets trying not to panic. I should have talked to him instead, told him it didn’t matter – whatever it was with him and Tilly and Cee; it was his business. I should have told him I loved him.

  ‘Alice?’ Cee appears at the living-room door. ‘Alice, he’s—’ She presses her lips together.

  ‘Did he—?’

  ‘We tried your mobile.’

  I had left it in my bedroom.

  ‘The doctor’s just left.’

  I nod.

  ‘I’ve called Steve. He’s going to tell the boys.’

  I stare at the raised pattern repeated across the walls – the same arrangement of flowers inside a square border that must be on the walls of a thousand other hallways, in a thousand strangers’ homes.

  ‘You’ll want to go and see him,’ Cee says.

  I have never seen a dead person.

  ‘Where’s Tilly?’

  Cee angles her head towards the living room. ‘They say it helps,’ she says. ‘To see the body.’

  My mind balloons. I try to imagine him, one floor above us. I hope someone’s opened the curtains, and lifted the sash window. I hope it’s not gloomy and hot in there. Did it just happen without warning, or did he know? Did he lie and stare at the ceiling and feel his heart about to stop? Did it hurt?

  ‘We’ve both said goodbye.’

  I walk past her, into the living room. Tilly is sitting on the sofa, her hands clasped in her lap, her face white.

  ‘We tried to call you,’ she says.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ They are waiting for me to cry. I am waiting for me to cry.

  ‘Did he—?’

  She lowers her gaze. ‘He wasn’t really with it, Alice. At the—’ She twists her hands against each other and looks up at me.

  I want Kal. I want him to stroke my hair and sing to me. He used to make up songs, silly nonsense songs with meandering tunes: Alice, Alice, Alice. Don’t run down the rabbit hole, I can’t bear to see you go. Stay here with me, Alice, Alice, Alice. I want to feel his lips on my skin, the vibration of his voice in his chest. I could call him, but it would just make things more complicated.

  ‘Honey.’ Tilly holds out her arms. If I let her hug me I don’t know what will happen. ‘I’m going to—’ I gesture towards the hallway, and Tilly nods.

  But I don’t go into his room. I walk straight past it and up to the attic and I sit in the rocking chair and rock, back and forth and back and forth, digging my nails into the palms of my hands. When my sisters work out where I am and call to me I can’t answer. And when Cee comes up the stairs and stands in front of me with her arms folded I can’t look at her. Eventually she gives up and goes away.

  Kal and I had a fight about avoidance. It was towards the end, when the problems were getting harder and harder to ignore. He told me I was passive-aggressive. I told him he was a coward. We’re stuck, I told him, we can’t move anywhere, because you refuse to tell your parents I even exist. They don’t rule my life, he said, they’re not everything. You could have fooled me, I said. Sometimes I think you’re jealous, he said. Are you fucking joking? I threw my coffee cup on the floor for effect. It didn’t even break, just rolled a little way and dribbled its dregs onto the thin dark-brown carpet we both hated.

  * * *

  I hear the shrill of the doorbell, then voices. This is what they mean by hushed tones. Four sets of footsteps on the stairs.

  They will put my father in a coffin and nail the lid shut. I press my face into my knees and squeeze my hands around my bare feet. I can feel myself shaking.

  I try not to listen. When they’ve gone, I go down to my room and turn on my phone. It takes a while – a network of conversations and connections and fragments of hold music – to get to the lost-luggage section at Heathrow airport. I sit on my bed, open and close my fist around the edge of the duvet. The sheets are plain, navy blue, the kind of thing my father buys; the kind of thing my father used to buy. I ache, as though someone has dug out a hollow from the bottom of my chest and filled it with lead.

  ‘How can I help you?’ The man on the end of the line has a rich Nigerian accent. I would like him to read me a story. I would like to lie in my bed, with the duvet tucked around my chin, and have him read me a story.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Sorry, yes, my rucksack.’

  ‘Do you have the identification code, Ma’am?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The code to identify your bag, Ma’am. It should be on a sticker – on the back of your passport, or it might be on any papers you had at check-in.’

  I stare at the wallpaper – pink roses reaching their thorny s
tems up past my bed. ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t think I have that.’

  The man on the end of the phone sighs, quietly, but loud enough for me to hear. ‘Well, perhaps we could start with you telling me your flight details.’

  I remember the seats were dark blue, with little napkins over the headrests. I remember the meal was chicken with tomato sauce, and rice. I remember the woman sitting next to me wore a yellow jacket with buttons that looked like chocolate coins.

  ‘Have you ever argued with someone and then they’ve – I don’t know, gone?’ I say.

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘And then when you think about it, you realise you never really did anything except argue with them. Or at least you never said what mattered. Not really. And then they’ve gone, and there’s nothing you can do, is there?’ I trace my finger around a rose. I try to remember choosing this wallpaper; it’s horrible.

  ‘Ma’am, if you could give me your flight details, and a description of the bag, then I can—’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘But, Ma’am, I can—’

  ‘Really, it’s fine, thank you. You’ve been very helpful, very patient. Thank you.’

  I walk down the stairs and along the corridor towards Dad’s room. The door is closed. It’s painted white, with four recessed panels. I’ve never really looked at it before. I put my hand on the brass doorknob. There’s a red line where I’ve pulled off a strip of skin by my thumbnail. I need a cigarette.

  You know you shouldn’t smoke, Alice, Dad would say every time I was home. I would laugh and point at his own cigarette. He’d say, I know, one rule for me, one rule for everyone else, but seriously, it’s bad for you. I know, Dad. I just don’t want to have been a bad father, he said once, and I laughed it off. I should have told him: You’re not; you weren’t.

  I open the door and walk in. The curtains are closed, which makes me angry. I march from the doorway to the window, the one by the sofa, and yank them open. Golden afternoon light. Suddenly I’m not sure about opening the others, but it is easier than looking at the bed. A large black car, studded with chrome, sits in the courtyard opposite. Mrs Williams’ cat watches me from next door’s windowsill.

  The bed is empty. Someone has stripped off the sheets. I wasn’t expecting that. The duvet is bundled just off centre, like a child’s impression of a cloud. The mattress reveals its stitching, the thick beading around its edge. Six pillows lie, coverless, by the bedhead. What did he want with six pillows? One has a yellowed stain at its edge. I can’t move.

  When they took him away, did they lever him onto a stretcher, or put him straight into a coffin? I don’t know why I want to know. I don’t want to know. I want to know. They must have marked the door frames, chipped the paint on their way down the stairs. I don’t want to look.

  I am standing right by the bed now. If I bend my knees I can feel the hard edge of the frame. When I lie down, the springs press into my spine. I can see a black speck on the ceiling right above me. I can’t tell if it’s a fly, or a spider, or just a mark. I watch to see if it moves. It doesn’t, which could mean it’s just a mark, or that the spider or the fly is dead.

  Ten things I’m frightened of

  1) Turning out like my father.

  2) Not being able to explain it all to you.

  3) The sea. I can cope with it at the shoreline. I can take my shoes off and paddle. It’s further out, where it gets cold and black, that it scares me.

  4) Being locked up.

  5) Not having the right words.

  6) Sleeping.

  7) Dying.

  8) Dogs.

  9) Never finding you.

  10) Finding you.

  Anton is staring at my scar. I turn my head so he can’t see it – a thin mother-of-pearl line that stretches from the corner of my right eye down towards my ear. There are maybe ten of us dotted around the table. A couple of people are still sleeping. Lady Grace has left already. I am halfway through a bowl of cornflakes, which are starting to bloat with milk.

  Anton sits opposite me. He has a mug of tea, a bowl piled high with sugar-sprinkled cereal, and a plate stacked with white toast. He points at my face with his spoon, spattering milk across the tabletop.

  ‘What is this?’ he says, touching his own cheek with his free hand.

  ‘An accident,’ I say.

  He takes a mouthful of cereal, raises his eyebrows.

  ‘I used to drive a cab,’ I say. ‘There was an accident, about five or six years ago.’ What I don’t say is that I nearly killed a man. What I don’t say is that it happened because I was looking for you.

  ‘You get insurance, yes?’

  ‘I got sued.’

  He slurps his tea and pulls a face.

  My memories of that time are all broken up. Even the crash: I didn’t have the slow-motion awareness people talk about. I was looking for you. I thought I’d found you. A woman with red hair just like your mother’s walking down the street, and then nothing, a yawning white blank, until I woke up with my body turned inside-out by pain.

  Anton digs his spoon into the bottom of his teacup, retrieves a mound of half-dissolved sugar granules and sucks them into his mouth. Behind him I can see sunlight creeping in through the kitchen windows. The glass is streaked with water, but I can’t hear rain.

  ‘What you do today?’ he asks.

  ‘Walk.’

  He frowns.

  ‘And you? You’ll look for work?’ I say.

  He shrugs his heavy shoulders. ‘I don’t know. Three days now and they no take me.’

  ‘If you want, you could—’ I stop myself. It’s been a long time since I got involved with someone else.

  ‘Where you go?’ Anton asks.

  I consider telling him about you, but decide against it, even though – perhaps – he might understand. I recognise how his eyes flick away from whoever he’s talking to, and I know that I do the same.

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ I say.

  Anton spins his cup on the plastic tabletop. ‘Buckingham Palace.’ Buckingham – a rich mahogany word, the colour of an old-fashioned dresser – sounds unfamiliar when he says it. ‘I want to see Buckingham Palace.’

  We beg sandwiches from the volunteer clearing up the kitchen. She gives me a toothbrush and toothpaste. The bathrooms here have a single urinal and a single cubicle. I stand at the sink and brush my teeth until my gums bleed. I try not to look in the mirror.

  Anton wears white trainers. His jacket looks like an old army sleeping bag, a puffed-up, shiny olive-green, the colour of his daughter’s name. I pull on my boots and tighten the laces from the bottom.

  At the top of the stairs, Anton turns right instead of left. I follow him into the church, which has the feel of a school hall about it, and look away as he crosses himself, then kneels in the back pew. I am not a religious man, but as I wait for Anton, I look at the painting of Christ on the far wall, encased by feathered gold flames, and I let my prayer – words that sit on my lips all day long – drift up towards the arched ceiling.

  Outside, the day is already bright. It’s still cool from the rain, but I can sense the heat, waiting. It will be a day I have to walk with my jacket tied around my waist; I have a way of doing it that doesn’t crease the picture in the inside pocket.

  * * *

  I used to meet your mother in a flat in Bloomsbury. It belonged to a friend of hers, Marina, who worked in Paris, but kept a place for trips to London. Maybe you don’t want to know this; I can’t help but tell you. It was small but perfect. We locked the door and it was just me and her in this tiny bubble, the world babbling away outside without us. She made me laugh. She’d tell me stories about her girls, and the other mothers she knew; she had a way of seeing the absurd in everything. When she laughed, really laughed, I felt happiness as solid and real as cut glass. Sometimes we’d go out – afterwards. I remember walking through Woburn Square Garden, just as the daffodils were opening up into yellow, deciding
which of the elegant terraces we would choose to live in. But she’d be nervous about being seen, and sooner or later we’d argue and she’d say she had to go.

  * * *

  ‘This place is rich, no?’ Anton twists his head left to right, taking in the black-fenced squares, the haughty rows of brick houses, students pouring in and out of university buildings: flocks of fashionable shoes, careful hair, and serious textbooks. I can almost hear the click of her heels on the pavement, the touch of her hand on my arm, the light in her eyes.

  Anton stops on the corner of Gordon Square and watches three girls cross the road. He nods.

  ‘Sylwia, she come here,’ he says. ‘Me? I am probably dead, but she come here. She study. She speak English already, better than me. She come here.’

  We carry on walking, along Torrington Place towards Tottenham Court Road. I could listen to him all day. I like to know that Sylwia’s hair curls when it’s wet, that her skin smells like warm milk, that she mumbles in her sleep. I have missed all these things.

  When I ask him if he writes to her, he twists his face away from me.

  ‘What is to say?’ His skin colours, a sharp red reaching up from his jawbone, and I know, as clearly as if he’d told me, that he cannot write.

  He wants to buy beer, but I shake my head and he doesn’t push it. When we walk through Soho, his eyes widen at the sex shops and he chuckles to himself. As we cross Mayfair the two of us shrink towards each other, saying nothing.

  I’ve never been impressed by Buckingham Palace, but Anton loves it. He loves the gold-topped statue. He loves the soldiers in their furred hats. He loves the families who take photos lined up against the fence.

  ‘Four years in London, Anton,’ I say. ‘And you’ve never been here?’

  He shrugs. ‘I here for work, for money, for daughter,’ he says, and his eyes flick away from me. ‘I wish for camera,’ he says. ‘I wish for camera to send picture for Sylwia.’

  We stand in silence. The soldier on the right could be carved out of wood. I wait for him to move, to give himself away, but he stays absolutely still. I wonder if he is thinking about someone he loves.