The Lion Tamer Who Lost Read online

  Will looked at Ben’s empty glass. ‘Kim is flawless. She’s cheerful. She’s kind – she’d give you her last penny if it was all she had. And pretty as a flower.’

  ‘She’s deceitful,’ said Ben.

  ‘Yes.’ Will moved Ben’s glass to the opposite side of the table, leaving a trail of moisture, like damp footprints from a shower to a bed.

  ‘So it’s over?’

  Will nodded; said it hadn’t gone anywhere further than the sink. Kim had cried again afterwards and begged him to let her be, saying she loved Mike, that Will had been a comfort in his absence.

  ‘Nowt else happened,’ said Will. ‘She’s like a daughter to me.’

  ‘Most fathers don’t sleep with their daughters,’ said Ben. He braced himself for the heaviest question. ‘When did she find out she was pregnant?’

  Will got up and went to the bar once more. The students laughed and flicked beer mats. Will returned, drank thirstily, and said he couldn’t be exactly sure when she found out she was pregnant, only that she and Mike revealed it a month or two after his and Kimberley’s union.

  ‘Lola could be yours.’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Will finished the drink. ‘She and Mike have been together three years. I’m old and he’s young. Who do you think more likely to be the father?’

  ‘But the doubt. Doesn’t a kid have a right to know who their parents are?’

  ‘Mike is Lola’s father in every way that matters,’ said Will.

  Ben shook his head. ‘I’m supposed to carry this around?’

  Will asked what else he could do; surely Ben didn’t think it right to hurt Mike when there was no point. He quoted the statistic he had seen in the weekend newspaper, that thirty percent of men had not fathered their own children.

  Ben hated having numbers used against him.

  The barman wandered over, took away the empty glasses.

  Outside, in another world, the day went on, sun high in the sky, tide low.

  ‘I won’t tell Mike,’ said Ben, ‘but only because you should.’

  ‘Why cause pain for something that’s over?’

  Ben felt guilty. It was an odd emotion, difficult to deal with alongside the host of others. Was his dad right to let things go?

  And wasn’t Ben the biggest liar of all, hiding who he was?

  ‘You don’t think he should know that his child might be yours?’ he

  asked.

  ‘You’ve never been unfaithful?’

  ‘No.’

  Will rolled up both sleeves as though preparing for battle and said, ‘Only because you’ve never had a relationship. What the hell’s wrong with you, lad?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Ben said softly.

  The regulars laughed at Brackie’s joke about two parrots and an Irish man.

  ‘You’ve no experience,’ said Will, ‘so you’ve no room to judge.’

  ‘I know I’d never be as dupricitous as you.’

  ‘It’s duplicitous.’

  ‘Don’t correct me.’ Ben flushed with anger.

  Will’s voice was low. ‘I’m only trying to stop you telling Mike something that will hurt him. Do you want to ruin his life on the tiny chance the baby isn’t his? She’ll look like him. What’s the difference?’

  ‘One day you’re going to really mess someone’s life up.’

  Ben stood. The table hit his father in the knee. A couple of the students looked up and nudged one another.

  ‘All these years you’ve picked up and dumped women. Maybe I don’t know as much as you, but I know how to treat people!’ Ben’s outburst surprised even him. ‘Thanks for the drink. I’m going.’

  ‘Are you going to tell Mike?’

  Ben didn’t answer. He had been so sure that Mike deserved to have the full story but now he couldn’t see straight.

  He got so far down the cobbled street and realised he’d gone the wrong way and was heading for the river. He continued anyway. For ten minutes, he watched the murky brown water. Maybe some stories were not for sharing. Maybe some, like the ones he and Andrew shared in bed, were private.

  Maybe his dad’s should remain that way.

  20

  ZIMBABWE

  A Letter from Home

  Ghosts don’t haunt people. People haunt people. Ghosts just wander into the wrong rooms.

  Andrew Fitzgerald, The Lion Tamer Who Lost

  Lucy reclines languorously by the one tree in the lion enclosure, relaxed in her full acceptance by the pride. She ignores Ben at the fence. Ignores a younger lioness who tries to play. Ben inhales the air, the putrid smell of shit and fur and heat. He wants to remember the intoxicating perfume forever. Never to forget standing here with the heat on his back, the wire fence to his front, and so many churning emotions inside.

  He often stands here. It has become his second favourite spot after the deck at dawn. He prefers it alone here too.

  The light begins to die. Shadows elongate. Summer is slowing now here, just as it is speeding up back home. Night will fall many times after Ben has gone. New lions will arrive; older ones will go free. In a few months, Lucy and Chuma will be released into the wild for good. Ben isn’t sure he wants to wait around and see her disappear forever. But that means he will have to go home first.

  Is he ready?

  He has been here for more than five months now. How can it be that long? Where have the days gone?

  He feels footsteps approaching. Esther. She nuzzles her cheek to his chest.

  ‘Didn’t see you at breakfast,’ he says.

  ‘Wasn’t hungry.’

  ‘Not like you.’

  ‘No,’ she admits. ‘I just can’t stomach that coffee at the moment.’

  ‘You didn’t eat much last night either.’

  ‘No. My appetite has been really off. I just feel dead icky.’

  ‘The heat?’ asks Ben.

  ‘Maybe.’

  They have been a couple for two months, and have fallen into an easy, comfortable routine. Sometimes he experiences a curious homesick sort of feeling, except he doesn’t yearn for England. He yearns for what he knows Esther can’t give him. He tackles it by leaving her sleeping in the dark sometimes, and walking the perimeter of the enclosure, over and over. Only when his body is exhausted by the midnight trek does he fall back into bed, surrendering to the fact that nothing will satiate the wistful longing, and he will have to learn to live with it.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Esther asks.

  ‘Yeah. You? Aside from your ickiness?’

  She shrugs, doesn’t respond.

  Esther has not expressed her love for him again. Ben can’t help but be glad. Though he is fond of her, he would never lie. He might live this lie, but he will not lie about love.

  ‘This came for you,’ Esther says, and hands him a letter.

  Ben hardly dares look at the handwriting. Has Andrew received the lion postcard and responded? He sent it over a month ago. It’s quite possible. Then Ben will know he’s okay. Two more phone calls have only resulted in the answering machine.

  ‘You sure you’re okay?’ Esther searches his face for answers, something she often does. He knows why; he knows how distant he can be.

  ‘Yeah.’ Ben looks at the envelope.

  The scratchy scrawl is not Andrew’s.

  ‘Who’s it from?’

  ‘My dad.’

  ‘Oh.’ Esther pauses. ‘Are you going to open it?’

  ‘Not now,’ he says. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’ He doubts it will be tomorrow. ‘I just need to … I dunno. Prepare.’

  ‘Have you still not rung him?’

  ‘You know I haven’t.’

  ‘Maybe he’s apologising in it.’

  It will be for the wrong thing, thinks Ben. He can’t apologise for something he doesn’t know he’s done.

  ‘I’ll read it tomorrow,’ he says.

  They stand in silence for a while, watching the animals. Soon it will be dark. The blackness here is different from that at home, lit only by the moon an
d stars, by the nightly campfire, and the small sun-powered bulbs hanging from huts. Chuma approaches Lucy. He playfully attacks her, pouncing and growling. She simply looks at him with disdain.

  ‘She no longer wants him,’ says Esther sadly.

  ‘She’s just showing him who’s boss.’

  ‘Maybe. She no longer bothers much with him at all. So much for blood.’

  ‘She’s just letting him know,’ says Ben.

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘That she doesn’t need him. That’s got nothing to do with blood. She’ll know it’s kinder to let him go. He won’t survive otherwise.’

  ‘You sound like bloody Stig now.’

  ‘Shit. I do, don’t I?’

  ‘But you’re right,’ admits Esther. ‘I just wish Chuma was doing as well as Lucy is.’

  ‘He will.’

  Ben knows that in some ways Andrew turned him away so he would survive, too. So he could make a life in the world without what happened ruining anything. Ben realises that even his dysfunctional clan is better than having no one at all. Maybe even his adulterous dad is better than nothing. Family is family. Lions need one another, to hunt, to mate, to survive. Without it they die. How lonely Andrew must have been as a child; how much he must have wanted what Ben had.

  ‘Do you reckon you’ll ever come back here?’ asks Esther.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Ben. ‘Do you?’

  She shrugs.

  ‘To come back, we’ll have to go home first,’ says Ben.

  ‘God. Newcastle is gonna seem like a shithole after this.’

  ‘Hull won’t look much better.’

  ‘But I’m dying to see my brother.’

  ‘I want to see mine, too,’ says Ben.

  Ben realises now that Esther seems different. Quieter. It occurs to him that she been this way for a few days. He is always so wrapped up in his own problems that he overlooks her and feels bad. It is dark now, but he sees her more clearly than he has for a while.

  ‘You’re not okay, are you?’ he says, putting his dad’s letter in his back pocket. ‘I can tell. What is it?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Esther, it’s me. Tell me.’

  ‘Let’s go sit on our rock,’ she says.

  There is no hunt this evening, and Ben is glad. So they go to the rock where they watched the eclipse. Where Esther writes her journal, where now they often sit together, viewing the landscape. It’s harder to find in the dark. Esther leads the way. They sit. It is much cooler now in the evening. He puts his hoodie around her shoulders. The stars spread above them, like glitter dust from a witch’s wand. Ben puts a hand over hers, concerned.

  ‘Tell me what’s wrong,’ he says. ‘I’ve been so selfish, moping about my problems.’

  ‘No, it’s fine.’

  ‘It isn’t. Tell me, Esther.’

  ‘I don’t know how to say it,’ she says.

  ‘Why? Is it bad?’

  ‘Well, no. But it…’

  ‘You can tell me anything,’ insists Ben.

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  Ben hears the three words.

  But all he can remember is a birthday gift and a promise he once made about saying three words.

  A promise he would break.

  21

  ENGLAND

  Three Things

  In the books Ben read, the twists never surprised him. In real life, they turned his world upside down.

  Andrew Fitzgerald, The Lion Tamer Who Lost

  Andrew smiled, kissed Ben’s cheek, and handed him a birthday gift. Then he flopped onto the sofa by his Wish Box. Dust settled on the ridged lid like grey snow.

  ‘You remembered?’ said Ben.

  ‘Of course I did.’

  Ben peeled away the gold wrapping paper so slowly that Andrew urged him to get on with it. Laughing, he took even longer on purpose. He took out a book: Kingdom of Lions. On the first page, next to a sleeping cat, Andrew had written simply, For my lion tamer, happy birthday, Andrew.

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘You like it?’

  ‘I do.’

  Ben kissed Andrew warmly and then sat on the floor, at his feet, looking up at him as he had that day in the café. He put his head in Andrew’s lap. No matter what was going on around them, he had never been happier.

  Eventually Ben said, ‘I have three things to tell you and you won’t perhaps like or agree, but tough, I’ve decided.’

  There was a fourth thing – but Ben decided to keep to himself that he had secretly entered the first three chapters of The Lion Tamer Who Lost in a competition he’d seen online. If Andrew didn’t place he would never be disappointed; if he did, it would be a wonderful surprise.

  Surprisingly, Andrew didn’t argue, as though all the things he had been asking Ben over the last few weeks had finally quenched some thirst. He pulled his hoodie around his shoulders, despite the room being warm with late summer’s breath.

  ‘Go on then,’ he said.

  ‘You can’t argue.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘First thing is,’ Ben began, ‘I’m not going back to university. You can’t expect me to. I want to be here.’

  Andrew didn’t speak, just watched him. Ben lost his way a little.

  ‘Go on,’ urged Andrew.

  He didn’t object to Ben’s second suggestion. This was the one Ben had wrestled with most. The one he had feared Andrew would argue against. The sun edged across the sky, lingering like a child not wanting to go home for tea. They gazed at one another. Every shade of gold he viewed afterwards would take Ben back to his eyes in this moment.

  ‘That’s only two things,’ Andrew said.

  ‘And you’re not dissipating them – you’re fine?’

  He nodded. ‘The third thing?’

  ‘I’m nervous.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ Andrew smiled. ‘I’m knackered, and I look like crap. Hit me while I’m vulnerable.’

  ‘I know you like your distance.’

  ‘I used to. But not with you. Never with you.’

  Ben knelt up and put his hand over Andrew’s. Andrew’s was chilly. He warmed it.

  ‘I love you,’ he said, ‘and I’m going to tell my dad about us.’

  Andrew didn’t speak for a long time.

  ‘I’m going to tell him the next time I see him.’

  Ben’s knees began to ache, the joints nagging him to switch position. The light left slowly. Then Andrew shuffled lower down the sofa, slid onto his knees so he faced Ben. He parted Ben’s thin shirt collar, wider and wider, until the button popped and dropped to the floor where shadows won their game with the sun. He sank his teeth into Ben’s neck. Their heads formed a circle, tipped towards one another. As they moved closer, the lid fell off the Wish Box. They left it where it was.

  Ben hummed a low, aching song against Andrew’s cheek as he felt his teeth digging deeper still.

  ‘I love you, I love you, I love you,’ he said.

  Later, while Andrew slept, when his breathing evened out and the movement behind his eyes ceased, Ben stroked his hair. He wondered what the odds were of finding a man exactly like him, with hands that arched at the thumb like his did, with two fleshy mounds that pressed against his when he held him down, with one freckle nearer his left nipple than his right as though marking the spot for his heart, who believed in wishes and words and made-up games.

  Zero.

  The odds were zero.

  22

  ZIMBABWE

  Here We Are

  Nancy had a new sister. The family had a new baby. Ben longed for another sibling, but there was no chance of that now.

  Andrew Fitzgerald, The Lion Tamer Who Lost

  The savanna seems to quiet with Esther’s revelation. The long, shadowy grass stills. The insect song ceases. The exquisite memory of Andrew fades. Has Ben heard correctly? He can’t process the words.

  Esther is pregnant.

  ‘You’re … How?’ he asks eventually.

&nb
sp; She laughs. ‘So you missed biology at school as well as the class on undoing bras?’

  ‘No. Sorry. I mean … I don’t know what I mean. Are you sure?’

  In the dimness Esther’s face shines white. How can he not have noticed that she looks tired, washed out? How long has she been that way? Ben noticed every change when Andrew had hypos. He feels sick with regret. How can he have been so thoughtless towards her?

  ‘I was suspicious three weeks ago,’ says Esther, ‘because I’m always so punctual, and I was late. I knew there’d be no way of getting a pregnancy test here, so I asked my friend Chloe to send me a couple. They came today, with the letter from your dad.’

  ‘And you’ve done it?’

  ‘Yes. I did both of them. They were both positive.’ Esther sighs. ‘I know it anyway. I feel … different. It must have happened our first time.’ She looks at Ben and he realises she is nervous more about him, and his reaction, than she is about the pregnancy. ‘Yes, I’m on the pill – you know I am – but I had that tummy bug, didn’t I? Stupid, but I never thought I might not have absorbed it.’

  ‘You’re not stupid. I am. To not have known something was wrong.’

  ‘You couldn’t have known.’

  ‘I’m usually good at…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ sighs Ben. ‘Anyway, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. I’m not.’ Esther pauses. ‘So, here we are.’

  ‘Here we are,’ Ben whispers.

  ‘I don’t expect anything,’ she says.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, we’ve only been together a couple of months. There’s no pressure. But I want to have it. Crazy, but I do. It feels so … right. That it was conceived here, in this glorious place. Doesn’t that seem somehow extra special?’ She puts a hand over Ben’s. ‘Look, you can be as involved as you want to, but I also understand if this is a shock and it’s too much.’

  ‘It is a shock,’ admits Ben, ‘but this is my baby too.’

  He is sure she smiles in the dark. They have created a child. Here, in this wilderness, amidst fight and hunt.