by Sarah Butler
‘The place on the Heath. Is that, sort of, a home?’
He shakes his head. ‘For you – a flat in London, that’s a good thing.’
‘I was going to book a plane ticket yesterday, at my sister’s,’ I say. ‘To Delhi.’
‘You could stay here for a while.’
I look down at the river shifting beneath us. I’m tired. My body aches. I need a shower. ‘Shall we keep walking?’ I say.
We plunge from daylight into fluorescent light, the walls of the tunnel lined with dirty cream tiles, a bulb shrouded with grimy metal mesh, the rows of pigeon spikes wreathed in dust. Daniel walks ahead of me, his head down. I can see the ragged hems of his trousers, a rip like a knife slash on the left leg, just above the back of the knee. We reach the open platform over Villiers Street, like an Italian balcony, looking out to the park, and beyond it to the river. I almost miss it: the skeleton of a leaf, dyed orange – the kind of thing you would buy in a craft shop to stick on a greetings card. It’s broken, the edges frayed like ripped silk. Daniel keeps walking, towards the quiet market perched above the road. I stand and watch him go. When he stops and turns round, even from this distance I can see the panic flare across his face.
I hold out the leaf and walk towards him. ‘Here,’ I say. ‘It’s for you.’ It weighs nothing, like it doesn’t really exist. ‘I know it’s not quite the right colour for your name, but I thought it was beautiful, so—’ He looks at me and I make myself hold his gaze. A couple walk past and the woman turns back to look. ‘So I wanted to give it to you,’ I say.
The smile reaches his eyes before it tugs at his lips. He lays the leaf in one palm and covers it with the other.
‘Alice,’ he says, his voice soft and unsteady. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this—’
‘Then don’t.’
He frowns.
I think about Dad, propped up in bed, a cigarette trembling between thin fingers. I should have left it. I should have told him I loved him and let the rest of it lie.
‘Sometimes it’s best just to let things be, don’t you think?’ I say.
He stares at me for a moment, and then smiles, nods, and turns away.
I follow him down the Strand and out into Trafalgar Square. We skirt the base of Nelson’s Column and come to rest by one of the fountains: a serene-faced woman holding onto a dolphin. Two-pence pieces rest on blue tiles, distorted by the water. Tourists flock across the square. To our right rise the columns of the National Gallery.
‘My mother used to take us to the National Portrait Gallery,’ I say. ‘Except I don’t remember.’ I dip my fingers into the water. ‘Seems I don’t remember a lot of the good stuff in my family.’ Daniel is perched on the side of the fountain, his hands clasped in his lap. ‘Is that where you met her?’ I say.
‘What?’ He jolts his head up.
‘Didn’t you meet my mother in a gallery?’
He looks towards Charing Cross Road. I catch the blue of his eyes, and I can imagine him as a young man again. Good-looking, slim, slightly awkward but with a kind smile. I wonder if he was ever married. I wonder what my mother made of him.
‘I had a photo of her,’ I say. ‘It was in my rucksack and it got lost on the flight home.’
‘They didn’t find it?’
I flick my hand out of the water, a noisy slosh of drops across the surface. ‘I didn’t ask,’ I say. ‘It’s stupid, but I just couldn’t. I guess because Dad—’ I give him a half-smile. ‘I kind of hope it ended up somewhere interesting, not just in a room at Heathrow with no windows. I was thinking somewhere with good beaches – Jamaica, or Sumatra or Mauritius.’
‘You look a lot like her.’ He is holding his left hand in his right hand, tight enough to turn the skin white. ‘I loved a woman once,’ he says. He rubs at his jaw. ‘It didn’t work.’ He lowers his eyes.
‘It happens like that, sometimes,’ I say.
‘I’ve never quite been able to let go of it.’ He says it as though it might not be true any more. ‘I started walking,’ he continues. ‘I used to walk for hours, days, to try and forget. And then I learnt how to look, how to notice things.’ He shifts his weight a little. I can smell his skin, the sweat in the weave of his clothes. ‘And then I learnt how to stand still.’ He looks at me as though he’s said something of consequence. ‘That’s the most important thing,’ he says. ‘To stand still.’
I watch tourists take the same photograph, over and over. It strikes me that some of the photographs will show the two of us, standing by the fountain, talking. These people will download their images onto computers in France, America, New Zealand, and there we’ll be, suspended, ignored, but present.
‘If you stand still in a place, for long enough, it will show itself to you. It takes time, but you find the patterns, and once you find them you can start to feel at home,’ he says.
I feel tears, quick and unexpected, at the bridge of my nose. I press my lips together and concentrate on a group of teenage girls wearing I Love London T-shirts tied into knots above their navels.
When I’m sure I won’t cry, I glance at Daniel. He is staring across the square, his face quite serene.
‘I’m glad I met you.’ I’m not quite sure why I say it.
He turns and smiles. Then he takes hold of my hand, and the rough edges of his skin feel like a surprise, even though I’ve felt them before. I look down – at my own hand, stacked with silver rings, and at his, a man’s hand, callused, but still delicate enough to fold tiny pieces of paper into the shape of a flower.
‘Let’s watch the sky,’ he says, and to please him I tip back my head and look up at the sky.
‘No.’ He sounds annoyed. ‘Not like that.’
He drops my hand, walks a few steps, and lowers himself to the ground until he is lying on his back, in the middle of Trafalgar Square, Nelson’s Column rising disdainfully above him. I look about for someone to help; or if not to help, then to react, to tell me what to do. Daniel just lies there, with the orange leaf pressed against his heart. I tug at the beads around my neck. F is white. D is orange. A is blue. I think of the space on the Heath, colours tied to the branches. And then he says something, or at least I think he does, but I can’t be sure because the shapes of the words get lost amongst all the other voices, the splash of the fountains, the grumbling traffic. I notice a couple look at Daniel and then at each other. A smirk crosses both their faces, and I feel a swell of anger. There’s nothing wrong with it, I want to tell them, he’s looking at the sky – no crime in that. I walk towards him and stand with my feet almost touching his thighs. I wait for him to lift his head, to gesture with his hands that I too should lie down in the middle of Trafalgar Square at five o’clock on a Monday afternoon. But he does nothing. I wait, and still he does nothing. I wonder if he has fallen asleep, or died, even, but then he lifts his right arm and shields his eyes with his hand.
Instead of lying next to Daniel, I position myself at right angles: my head by his, my body stretched out and away from him. I am aware of his head next to my own. I can smell him – sweat and dirt and I don’t know what. The ground presses hard against my back, and I feel the cracks in between the paving stones through my T-shirt. I imagine a foot, treading the weight of another body into me. I imagine a uniformed arm gripping my shoulder and pulling me up. But nothing happens. Nothing happens at all, and eventually my breath pulls slower and deeper into my lungs and I am able to concentrate on the sky above me.
It’s like flying, as though it’s me that’s moving, not the clouds. If I roll my eyes to the edge of my vision I can see the tops of buildings – South Africa House, Canada House, the National Gallery, St Martin-in-the-Fields – and foreshortened fragments of passers-by. A seagull veers into view and is gone. I follow the slow, silent path of an aeroplane and think about the passengers inside, peering down at us, watching London get smaller and smaller. They’ll be able to make out the shapes of the buildings, but the people – me and Daniel and everyone here – will be inv
isible to them.
I think that maybe it will be a little while before I sit in a plane again, watching the world shrink into patterns beneath me.
People skirt around us; I sense their weight and hear snatches of their words, which hang in the air for a moment before vanishing. It’s dangerous to stand still in a city; I can hear Dad saying it, his forehead locked into the frown he reserved for his girls. I stare at the sky and wish for him: the smell of cigarette smoke and suede; the way his eyes lit up when he talked about civilisations who had left behind only carefully arranged stones, a shard of pottery, a hand-crafted tool. And then I think about what Daniel said: if you stand still in a place, for long enough, you can start to feel at home. I want to reach out my hand to him. I want to say thank you, but I am not sure what for, and I can’t think how to start. Instead, I pull the piece of orange cardboard from my pocket. I cup my hands around it and hold it above me, squint my eyes to focus on the tiny pinpricks of light. Ursa Major. Ursa Minor. Pisces. Orion. I sense Daniel turn his head to watch me, and I move the cardboard back a bit, so that we can both see the stars.
Acknowledgements
Three places have been particularly significant in the writing of Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love. The idea for the novel came to me on a magical Arvon course at the Hurst in Shropshire, run by Maggie Gee and Jacob Ross in 2007. I am grateful to the Arvon Foundation for the grant they gave me to attend the course, to Maggie and Jacob for their enthusiasm, wisdom and continued support, and to the other course attendees for their early encouragement.
In 2009 I was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship, and spent a beautiful autumnal month living and writing at Hawthornden Castle in Midlothian, Scotland. I owe huge thanks to all those involved in Hawthornden, and to my fellow writers there for their company and kindness.
Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love is, in part, a love letter to London, a city I have spent the last eight years living in, cycling across, loving, hating, and rediscovering. I have been involved in arts projects and writing residencies across the city, all of which have contributed in some way to my writing. Thank you to everyone who has shared their stories, and thoughts on place, with me.
Thank you to Spread the Word, The Literary Consultancy and Evie Wyld for the ‘Free Read’, and to Arts Council England for supporting the ‘Free Read’ programme. I am also grateful to Spread The Word for years of support and opportunities, and to the Arts Council for funding a mentoring relationship with Martina Evans during the writing of an earlier, unpublished novel; thank you, Martina, for your sound advice and that bowl of red pepper soup when I really needed it.
I am lucky to have the ongoing support of fabulous friends, many of whom are also fabulous writers. I owe particular thanks to Emma Sweeney, a brilliant writer and the best of readers, and to Emily Midorikawa and Will Francis. Thanks too to Emma Sweeney and Ed Hogan for introducing me to Francesca Main, without whose astute advice, warmth and enthusiasm this book would not be what or where it is today.
Thank you to Andrew Kidd for your calmness and advice, to Andrea Walker for your faith in this book, and to everyone at Picador – especially Francesca Main, and the rights team, who turned a dream come true into more than I had ever imagined.
Finally, thank you to Matt, for your love and constancy; and to my family, especially my parents, for being brilliant, and for nurturing the belief that if I tried hard enough for long enough, I could do anything I set my heart on.
TEN THINGS I’VE LEARNT ABOUT LOVE
Sarah Butler is in her early thirties and lives in Manchester. She runs a consultancy which develops literature and arts projects that explore and question our relationship to place. She has been writer-in-residence on the Central Line, the Greenwich Peninsula, and at Great Ormond Street Hospital, and has taught creative writing for the British Council in Kuala Lumpur. Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love is her first novel, and will be published in thirteen languages around the world.
First published 2013 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2013 by Picador
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