Ten Things I've Learnt About Love

by Sarah Butler

  9) In a concrete pipe casing on the west side of Greenwich Peninsula, listening to the river.

  10) Sitting on the edge of Blackfriars Bridge, trying to decide.

  The night after the funeral I slept on the Heath, and when I walked back to the house the flower had gone. I imagined you holding it, and it gave me an idea.

  Before I met your mother, I spent a couple of years doing labouring contracts on building sites. We’d spend weeks preparing foundations for new houses. You’ve got to lay the groundwork; if you don’t do it properly it’s not worth building at all. That is what I am doing – groundwork. It takes time; it is always worth it.

  I spent a few days collecting. If you walk far enough and look hard enough, you can find pretty much anything you’d care for. In a skip – filled with broken door frames, cracked glass and concrete rubble – outside a house in Belsize Park, I found an empty blue plastic bag.

  I walked across to Kentish Town and on towards Camden. I found a string of fake white pearls curled up on a shop windowsill and four squares of chocolate, wrapped in gold foil, on the ground.

  As I queued for soup in a church on Buck Street, I scoured the line of people for Anton, but didn’t see him. It wasn’t until I lifted the spoon to my mouth that I realised how hungry I was. It was a pale, oily broth, swimming with diced carrot, potato, and bloated barley. I ate three bowlfuls of it, and five slices of white bread.

  My mother didn’t like to cook. Every meal would start with an apology – the vegetables were overdone or underdone; she hadn’t been able to get the gravy to thicken; the white sauce was her second attempt and still lumpy. My father, instead of laughing it off, would nod seriously, and approach his plate with an air of forensic investigation. I always wanted to tell her it was good, she was good, but somehow I couldn’t. Once I’d left home, I took to eating standing up. Sometimes I’d just open a can of beans and eat them straight from the tin, perched on the kitchen counter, or leaning against the living-room door, watching the television.

  Your mother liked to eat out. We only did it a couple of times. I can’t have been much company – terrorised by rows of cutlery and polished glasses. You eat like there’s a war on, she’d say, and I’d try my best to slow down. You’re making me nervous, she’d say, and I wouldn’t know what to do to make it better.

  Outside the church I found some broken glass, the kind of thing I’d expect to pick up from a beach, almost the right shade of green for the letter T.

  By the end of the day, the blue plastic bag was a quarter full. After three days it was bursting. Bottle tops. Crisp packets. A pink plastic clothes peg. A bright-green paperclip. A length of electricity cable. Sweet wrappers. An orange toy car. An empty silver photo frame.

  I began with your name.

  I found a piece of pale-blue paper, one of those squares with a sticky strip at the top, for writing messages, or ideas you’ve just thought of. The stickiness was long gone. I rolled the paper into a tube and pushed through a thin grey nail, so it would keep its shape. I looped a length of gold ribbon round it – the thin papery ribbon people tie round gifts. I found the perfect flower – magenta pink, its petals shaped like hearts – and slipped it into the blue tube. Then I searched for navy blue; found, eventually, a strip of denim, frayed at the edges. It was criss-crossed by orange stitches, which I carefully removed.

  I went back to the house, and walked up the steps towards you. I glanced through the window. The table had disappeared. There was a book lying with its pages splayed on the sofa but I couldn’t make out the title. I laid the piece of denim on the side wall. My plan was to stand the paper tube upright, like a vase, but it wouldn’t balance and so I laid it flat, the flower pointing towards the door.

  * * *

  Better for her to have no father, than a father like me. I can’t get Anton’s words out of my head.

  * * *

  Alice. Daughter.

  * * *

  The next day I chose a piece of orange cardboard, not quite the right shade, but good enough. I pushed holes through the surface. When you hold it up to the light it will show you the stars. It’s a long word: daughter. The more you think about it, the stranger it seems. Most of the letters I found in bottle tops. Pale blue, a warm orange-red, heavy purple. The broken bottle did for the T; the electric cable, coated with magnolia plastic, for the H. The last two letters are ones you can find in trees. The charcoal grey of E, the chestnut brown of R, written out in bark. I threaded everything onto the cable, and carried it to you.

  I stood by the front door and looked through the window. The book had gone. I couldn’t see anything except the sofa, a dark-red carpet, the curtains tied back with thick velvet bands, and the start of a bookshelf on the far wall. I arranged my gift on the wall and left.

  * * *

  Better for her to have no father, than a father like me. I can’t think like that. It might, after all, just be a matter of appearance. Imagine it: a woman answers her doorbell. A smartly dressed man stands in front of her. She listens to what he has to say. The world shifts. Imagine it: a woman answers her doorbell. A tramp stands in front of her. He has a broken tooth, a scar across his face, and he smells of the street. She closes the door, locks it for good measure.

  * * *

  Love is the colour of gold. I have never met you, but what other word is there, except love?

  Alice. Daughter. Love.

  I made a tiny bowl from the gold chocolate wrapper, pressed the foil between my fingers until it hardened into shape. I made a silver ball from another piece of foil and dropped it into the gold curve. I added a lilac flower, smaller than a baby’s fingernail, and a sliver of charcoal-grey slate. I walked to you with a light heart and balanced the word Love on the wall outside your house.

  * * *

  Today, I carry on collecting, despite the rain; wipe what I find against my shirt and hold the top of the plastic bag tight in my fist so everything stays dry. I picture you as I walk, sitting on the striped sofa with your book, your knees tucked underneath you, a cup of tea on the floor, listening to the rain tap against the window. I hope you are warm and dry; it’s not a day to be out.

  The first night I ever slept out in London it rained. I’d been staying at a friend’s place in Camberwell, sleeping on the sofa in the one-bed flat he shared with his girlfriend. I had come back from Leeds, still raging with grief. The girlfriend – I can’t remember her name, only that it was tinged through with lilac – was sympathetic for the first week. She made me cups of tea and listened to my ramblings, but soon enough I could see the frustration prickling off her. One night, I went out for a pint, to give them some space. I drank too much. I remember falling out of the pub, my head swimming, and feeling the cold rain on my face. Halfway to their flat I threw up, down my coat and onto my shoes, and knew I couldn’t go back. I crawled underneath a bush in Myatt’s Fields, or at least that’s where I woke up. Everything ached. My bones shook with the cold. My clothes were wet through. Stones and twigs had pressed their shapes into my skin. I remember telling myself I was lucky to be alive, but thinking it might have been better if I wasn’t.

  I waited until I knew they’d be at work and then slunk back to the flat, ran a bath almost too hot to get into, washed my clothes and put them straight in the dryer. I even polished my shoes. I sat on their sofa and drank a whole pot of tea. I wrote them a thank-you note, and then packed my bag and left.

  That’s the thing with taboos. Once you’ve broken them, they don’t seem such a big deal any more.

  I prefer grass to benches. I prefer corners to open spaces. I like to sleep with the sound of leaves rather than the sound of cars. Sometimes I’ll go back to a place: down by the canal where it dips underground near the Angel; the porch behind St Peter’s church, tucked off the Walworth Road. I slept for a while on Clapham Common, just south of the bandstand. What I liked best was the stars. Most of the time you can’t see them in the city. I had never learnt the constellations. I still don’t know
their names, but I can pick them out. I stayed there long enough to see how the earth turned.

  The thing is, you lose the rhythms of the everyday. Sleeping, washing, shaving, eating, going out to work. The whole thing disintegrates faster than you’d think. You will ask me why I live like I do. You have every right to. But there is more than one answer.

  Wednesday, I walk west, across the Heath and down through Golders Hill Park, with its spaced-out trees, neat tarmac paths and manicured grass. I take a route past the aviary and watch an egret fly back and forth above the shit-stained concrete.

  My heart feels strong today. A young woman smiles at me as she passes. I see a couple embracing by the war memorial opposite Golders Green Tube station, underneath the word ‘courage’; he lifts her off her feet and they sway like a tree buffeted by the wind. I walk along Accommodation Road, past the low wooden building covered with painted tiles, past the white fence with its mural of sunflowers and parrots. Black iron fire-escapes curl up the backs of buildings and air-conditioning units spew out discarded air. Hotel workers and shop assistants pull nicotine into their lungs.

  I find a conker from last year, dry wrinkled brown. I find an empty purple cigarette lighter and half a dark-grey watch strap. Outside a grocery store, with vegetables piled up in shallow plastic boxes, I find a postcard of a glacier. There is a fast-flowing river heading downhill – milky blue water, the colour of your name. On the back of the card someone has written Dear in blue biro. The next word has been scribbled out, and then the same blue biro has dragged a wavering line diagonally across the white space. In the bottom left-hand corner are printed the words: Franz Joseph Glacier, New Zealand.

  Let’s run away, she’d said, and my heart leapt. Just for the weekend, she said, and I did my best not to show my disappointment. Malcolm was taking the girls up to see his parents; she would make an excuse to stay at home. She wanted to go to the sea. Don’t you find the sea a sad place, I asked. She called me a silly, sensitive boy, and then kissed me, hard.

  We went to Brighton. Our hotel sat on the road that ran the length of the seafront. The window frames were battered by salt air and the wind slipped in under the sash. She threw herself onto the bed – a narrow double, pale-blue sheets tucked tight against the mattress. I feel sordid, she said, and smiled. Come here, she said.

  Later, I asked her if she loved me and she said of course she did, and then laughed as though none of it mattered. She called me her ‘escape’, her ‘naughty secret’. She got cross if I ‘came over all serious’.

  I turn up Hoop Lane, past the shock of the cemetery – fields of tombstones jostling for position – and the red-bricked crematorium. I concentrate on the colours. I concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.

  It takes a long time to walk back to you. I stand in Christchurch Passage, and look at the slice of city wedged between the tall brick buildings which reach up over a silent playground. I am sorry, Alice, daughter, love. I am sorry I couldn’t give your mother enough to make her stay. I am sorry I couldn’t be a father. I am sorry I couldn’t find you. I am sorry for everything.

  The letter S is olive green. I found an army-style cap on the Heath, hanging on a fence just by the pools. There’s a stain on the peak that I couldn’t get off with soap and water, but I hope you’ll ignore it. I put the letters inside. A broken silver chain for the O, two chestnut-brown leaves for the Rs, and a maroon wheel from a toy truck for the Y.

  The curtains are open and the light is on. I walk up the steps and look through the window. You are lying on the sofa. My heart cracks in my chest. You are asleep, your face a mirror image of your mother’s. I stand on the top step and look at you. Avoid emotional upset. I could ring the doorbell. I could wake you up. But you look peaceful there, with a jumper underneath your head, your bare feet resting on the sofa arm. And I am not ready, not yet, not quite. I place the cap on the wall and walk away.

  Alice. Daughter. Love. Sorry.

  * * *

  I have one more word to write, and then I’ll be ready; you’ll be ready. I will go back to Angel, find Anton. He will understand. And if he can’t help, then I’ll find someone else. A haircut. A shave. I remember my father getting ready for work, how he would stand in front of the hallway mirror and pull down the sleeves of his jacket; jiggle his legs to make sure his trouser seams were straight; lick his forefinger and draw it across each eyebrow; lift his head to check his nostrils were clear. If he saw me watching, he would smile, and pat me on the head. You’ve got to make an impression, boy, he’d say. Never forget that.

  I sometimes think it was the fact my mother refused to be angry with him that was the hardest thing to deal with.

  He lied, I said.

  He was frightened, she said.

  He fucked up.

  He always wanted to do the right thing, and there’s no need to use words like that.

  He threw everything away.

  He was lost. I just wish he’d talked to me.

  I wish he hadn’t done it.

  Well there’s no use in thinking that, is there?

  In the end it got too much for me: her tiny, crummy, rented flat with its worn-out carpet and ugly storage heaters; her face, her eyes without anger, her mouth soft and ready to smile. I hated her acceptance. I hated the tins of cheap sausages and beans, the extra blankets piled onto the beds, the jar of coppers on the mantelpiece. I didn’t stop visiting completely, but the gaps between stretched longer and longer; I admit that. She was there for years before her eyesight meant she had to go into a home. She sorted the whole thing out herself. I have not been a good son.

  I wish I’d had the chance to be a good father, but your mother said it was for the best – for you, for her, for me. She had never meant for this to happen, she said. I was supposed to be her escape, she said. I am, I said, I can be, but she shook her head and smiled, except it was too sad to be a smile. She was more trapped than ever now, because of me, because of you: I can see that now.

  ‘You’re young, Daniel. You’re not even thirty.’ According to her there were men who would kill for things to turn out that way.

  Not me, not me, I kept saying. We can sort this out, I kept saying.

  ‘There can’t be a we any more,’ she said.

  The only way I can explain it to you is that she became a different person. It was like she’d been glazed, there was this new hard sheen across her and I couldn’t get through it.

  But I love you.

  But I want to be a—

  But I love you.

  She sat across from me, her eyes blank as pebbles. It was a cafe we’d never been to before. The tabletops were beige formica circles with thin metal rims. Either the legs were faulty or the floor uneven because every time one of us lifted our cup or put it back down, or knocked the table with our foot, the whole thing tipped precariously, splashing tea into saucers, rattling ceramic. I folded a napkin and jammed it under one leg, gave the table an exploratory prod. No good. I looked around for something else to fold and she put her hand over mine.

  ‘Stop it, Daniel. It doesn’t matter.’

  Her fingernails were perfect ovals, painted the same colour as her lips, the same colour as her name. I put my hand over the top of hers. She tried to pull away, but I wouldn’t let her. I saw a faint rush of colour in her cheeks and it made me feel fractionally better.

  ‘Let go of me,’ she said.

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I’ve explained, Daniel. I’ve tried to explain. I don’t have a choice.’ She fixed her gaze over my left shoulder as she spoke. She wouldn’t even look me in the eye.

  ‘You have me,’ I said.

  She shook her head. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen, Daniel. I’m sorry.’

  ‘But I have rights.’ I heard the pathetic tilt of my voice.

  She raised her eyebrows – neat, plucked lines, a shade darker than her hair. I released her hand then. She started fidgeting with her handbag, and I knew that she’d leave any minute.<
br />
  ‘I’ll tell him,’ I said. I sounded like a spoilt schoolboy.

  ‘He knows, Daniel, that’s the whole point. He knows.’

  * * *

  Alice. Daughter. Love. Sorry. Father.

  I take the string of plastic pearls from the bag. The letter F is white, with a pearly sheen. I use white cotton to tie the other letters in the spaces between the beads. A strip of the glacier postcard for the A. A piece of green string for the T. A triangle of creamy plastic for the H. A tiny rose made out of charcoal-grey silk for the E. The conker for the R.

  There is a pale-blue jumper draped across the arm of the sofa today, and a thin-necked glass vase filled with overblown daisies on the windowsill. You are not there. I look at the brass doorbell. Tomorrow, I tell myself. Tomorrow. I leave the plastic pearls on the wall and walk away.

  Ten things I’m frightened of

  1) This house. I don’t know why – not because of Cee’s ghosts.

  2) Staying here and dying of boredom.

  3) Leaving here and not knowing where to go.

  4) That maybe I do want to get married and have kids – all those things I swore I’d never do.

  5) That I’ll never see my father again.

  6) That I’m erasing him from the house, and I’ll never be able to undo it.

  7) That I could turn out like Cee, despite everything.

  8) The idea of heaven – existing, or not existing.

  9) That I’ve ruined something that could have been good with Kal.

  10) That my mother wasn’t a very nice person.

  Cee likes a family conference, as long as she gets her own way. She called one yesterday, came over with two bottles of sparkling water and a bag of salad. She made a point of collecting all the ashtrays and lining them up by the kitchen sink. Tilly brought quiche, and carrot cake. I served the water in coffee cups. Cee looked unimpressed but didn’t comment. Her proposition was that we should get in house-clearance people.