Mar: Byron

© Jane Harvey-Berrick

I don’t have an exciting life or an exciting job, but it suits me. I work in a library in London, and I’m surrounded by thousands of books. Yes, Kensington Central Library is a proper library, not somewhere that’s become ‘a learning space’ where it’s all computers and pods with earphones. My library has books, lots and lots of books, all lined up inside a beautiful redbrick building, built in the Renaissance style, although it’s only 70 years old.

It was built on the site of a bomb crater from the Second World War. If you read about the history of my library, some people protested against the Renaissance design because they wanted a modern style like the slab of grey concrete that’s Southbank on the River Thames, all brutalist architecture that makes you want to throw yourself in the river because it makes life seem so grim.

Anyway, my library smells of books and old paper, and it sighs quietly with pleasure in the morning before I’ve opened the doors to the public, sun streaming through the high windows, and I can’t help wishing that I could spend my whole life here where it’s calm and peaceful and every book has a place on the right shelf.

Which isn’t to say that we don’t have children’s hours or author readings or things like that, because we do. People think libraries are boring places, but they’re not. Just think of all those ideas floating between the pages, all the radical thoughts, the love and loss and longing. All of life is in these books.

We do have some computers for the general public but it seems to me that they’re ordinary and utilitarian, and books are … just wonderful.

My life was ordered and peaceful, just how I liked it.

And then one day not long after Christmas, he walked through the library doors.

I noticed him immediately because, well, he’s hard to miss – tall and athletic with sandy hair and deep blue eyes, and tiny flakes of snow clung to his long eyelashes, and so handsome that I knew he had to be a model. Oh, and under 40, which  really made him stand out around here.

The woman he was with looked like a model, too. She had silky blonde hair, stood a foot taller than me with a teeny, tiny waist, and the kind of frame that is described as willowy.

So, because I’m basically shy, especially around good-looking men, and feel intimidated by beautiful, well-dressed women, I started to sweat and my glasses slipped down my nose.

“Can I help you?” I said, too quietly for anyone to hear. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Can I help you with something?”

The man turned those deep blue eyes on me and smiled. It felt like something wilted inside me. It was so unfair for him to be so gorgeous and walk in the world of mere mortals.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve just moved into the area and I’d like to get a library card.”

I just stared at him. I’d felt sure that he was going to ask directions to Holland Park or Kensington Palace – I simply hadn’t programmed my brain for him to want a library card.

He cocked his head one side. “Do you have library cards?”

My brain stuttered to life. “Yes, of course! Right. Yes. I’ll need to fill out an application for you: I’ll need proof of address and some ID, please.”

He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket while I opened the screen on my computer. (I can use a computer – I just don’t like them very much).

“Name?”

“Byron.”

“First name?”

“Lord.”

I started typing then stared up at him, a frown on my face. “Lord Byron?”

“Sorry,” he grinned. “I couldn’t resist. You look so serious.”

I flushed an even brighter red and pushed my glasses up my nose.

“God, Byron! Aren’t you done yet? You didn’t say this was going to take all morning!”

The blonde woman huffed loudly and my hands sweated so much, they slipped on the keyboard.

“I’ll be a few minutes,” he said, without looking at her. “Go and have a look at the books.”

“No, thanks. I actually have a life,” she said, yawning rudely and pulling out her phone.

“Ignore her,” he said to me with another wide smile. “I think her Mum dropped a book on her head when she was a baby.”

I almost smiled at that. But I didn’t.

“Name, please?” I said again, staring at the screen because staring at him was too hard.

“Byron George Gordon,” and he showed me his driver’s licence and a rental agreement with his new address on it, close to the library, but in a very expensive part of Holland Park.

“Occupation?”

“Adventurer.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“No tick box for that? How about explorer?”

“Uh, sorry.”

“Poet?”

“Um, I have ‘self-employed’?”

He nodded and smiled at me. I tried not to look.

I entered all the information and used the laminating machine to give him his own barcoded library card.

“Thank you, Mary,” he said, glancing down at the small name-badge I wore just above my left breast.

As he turned away, the blonde woman slipped her hand in his back pocket, squeezing the muscled globes of his buttocks. I slid under my desk in a puddle of sweat.

Not really, but I could imagine that I did.

He didn’t even stay to look at the books.

But the next day he came back, and he was with a different woman, a brunette, who was clinging to him like a particularly virulent ivy. She left after ten minutes of complaining, but Byron stayed all morning, reading a heavy tome on Greek mythology.

He left with a smile at lunchtime and said, “See you tomorrow, Mary.”

“Bye, Byron,” I whispered, so quietly he couldn’t possibly have heard me.

On the third day, I was discreetly looking out for him, wondering if he’d be with the blonde or the brunette, but he surprised me by arriving with an astonishingly good-looking man who spoke in French, whom he kissed on the lips, holding the man’s hips firmly against his own.

I didn’t know where to look. I wasn’t used to public displays of affection in the library, or anywhere really.

When I dared to look up again, Byron was at the same reading desk as the day before, once again immersed in a heavy book, this time on modern Greek history.

And so it went on. Every day, he came to the library, almost always accompanied by a gorgeous specimen of humanity, and I never knew whether it would be a man or a woman. I took to making bets with myself: blonde, brunette, redhead, male, female.

Several of the girls I went to school with said they were bisexual when they were in year 10, but by sixth form, all but one of them went on to have serious relationships with men.

I lost my bet, because the next day, Byron arrived by himself.

“Good morning, Mary. How are you today?”

“F-fine, thanks.”

“Great! I wonder if you can help me. Yesterday, I was looking for Richard Clogg’s book about the Greek War of Independence. The book was written in 1973 but there’s supposed to be a copy … somewhere.”

“Oh, I can totally help you with that,” I breathed, scurrying to the shelves. “Someone has probably put it back in the wrong place.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

“Oh God, yes! All the time. I once found ‘Dora the Explorer’ in the Latin America resources section.”

He laughed softly, a quiet, rich sound that made my toes tingle.

“You’re funny, Mary.”

“Funny, ha ha; or funny peculiar?”

“A man knows when there’s no right answer, so I’ll just say, funny and uniquely you.”

I blushed, flushed bright red, my cheeks scorching. Any synonym you can think of for feeling a volcano of embarrassment was going off inside, that was me.

But after that, he always stopped by for a chat, telling me about the next trip he was taking, from Thessaloniki in the north of Greece, to Kalamata in the south, by way of as many as the islands as he wanted to visit, as well as climbing to the top of Mount Olympus, a trip that he estimated would be nearly a thousand miles.

On foot.

He planned to be away for a whole year.

My heart sank.

Byron had been coming into my library for two months. I’d catalogued the stream of men and women who often accompanied him to the library or met him when he left. Byron was so loose, he rattled when he walked, but my God, he was gorgeous with it. And such a liar! Sometimes he gave them his real name, but other times, his dates would call him, Percy Shelley or Samuel Coleridge, once even William Wordsworth, and none of them ever suspected that he was choosing a name from the Romantic poets.

“By yourself today?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

He grinned widely.

“Yes, sadly alone today, Mary. ‘Pale grew their cheek and cold, colder their kiss’.”

“You stole that from the real Lord Byron!” I said severely.

“Borrowed, Mary,” he smiled. “Just borrowed.”

Thank goodness I’d got over my attraction to him. I could never have dated such a manwhore.

That’s what I told myself.

Now, it was March and the planters in the street were full of daffodils with their bright yellow blossoms. I always thought that if daffodils could talk, it would be with a broad Cockney accent, “’Ello, mate! Done a blinder, innit!”

After a long, cold winter, the weather was becoming milder, and signs of Spring were everywhere. Even on Byron, who arrived wearing shorts.

I’m ashamed to say that I stared.

I looked, doubted my eyes, and looked again.

Byron had one long, tanned, muscled leg; but the other was a prosthetic leg – honestly, I would never have guessed. When he wore jeans, you couldn’t tell. And I’d been looking quite closely over the tops of my horn-rimmed, librarian glasses.

“Made you look!” he teased. “Not quite feet of clay – just one of titanium.”

I felt tears welling in my eyes.

“Don’t cry, Mary,” he said, kindness swirling in his smile. “It only hurts when I laugh.”

“Stop trying to make me laugh,” I hiccupped. “I can’t believe you’re walking a thousand miles…”

My words cut off suddenly.

“Because I’m disabled,” he said with a hard gleam in his icy-blue eyes.

“I … I…”

“You’re not the first to think that,” he said coolly. “But the military teaches you to achieve your goal, no matter the odds. Once a Royal Marine, always a Royal Marine.”

“I think you can do anything you want,” I said breathlessly. “I always have.”

And I was so embarrassed by my words, I had to rush into the back office and hide for 20 minutes.

I think that was the day that we went from friendly acquaintances to becoming friends. He’d always stop by my desk and ask about my day, or my week, or my weekend. Even on the days when he was accompanied by one of his beautiful friends, he always had time for me.

The chasm of my crush grew wider, and every day I missed him a little more, even though he hadn’t yet left.

And then one day, towards the end of March, it was the last day.

“I’m off tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll miss our talks, Mary.”

“Me, too,” I whispered, hoping my cracking voice wouldn’t give me away.

“I’d say that I’ll stay in touch, but I’m going off-grid: no phone, no laptop, just me and the mountains.”

“You’re not taking a phone?” I gasped. “What if you get into trouble?”

He shrugged and gave me a crooked, sexy smile. “What if I do?”

“But … how will I know that you’re alright?”

His expression softened. “You’re really worried about me?”

“Of course I am! We’re friends.” Please say we’re friends.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and studied my face so intently, I felt the familiar hot flush of embarrassment.

“You’re a nice girl, Mary.”

Nice.

“I tell you what, if you really want to check in on me, I’ll be on the Terrace of the Lions on the island of Delos in ninety days from today. Now you know where I’ll be.”

Then he walked around behind my desk that was a barrier against his intoxicating scent and perfect face. He scooped me into his arms and gave me the kissing of my life. My lips burned and my body went limp, his heated kiss taking me out at the knees.

Then he lowered me into my seat and gave me a sweeter, softer kiss on the top of my head.

“Take care, Mary and don’t worry about me. I can look after myself, I promise.” Then he sent me another warm smile, bending down and whispering in my ear. “Sweet lady, the dew of compassion is a tear.”

And he walked out of my library and out of my life.

That evening, I went home to my one-bedroom flat in the cheap part of North Kensington, and I cried. I cried for this beautiful man who was good and bad, a lover and a liar, who knew how to live and love. I cried because I wasn’t any of those things, because I was boring Mary with my boring name and boring job. And I cried until I felt hollow, my eyes burning and empty.

But before I went to bed that night, I opened my laptop and googled ‘Terrace of the Lions’, and I wondered…

How much would a plane ticket to Greece cost?

THE END

And because I’ve enjoyed writing this short story so much, look out for Part II in my June newsletter.

I hope you enjoyed this modern re-telling of the life of Lord Byon (1788 to 1824), the Romantic poet, soldier, and lover of men and women who scandalised London 200 years ago.

Here is the first stanza of his most famous poem, and a favourite of mine.

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus, mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.