Nov: Byron Part III

For Ann Clausen

© Jane Harvey-Berrick

I’d never had a long-term relationship and I had no idea what signals I should be looking for. But I think it could be said that one signal might be having heard from the object of one’s affections at some point in the last six months.

But I’d heard nothing from Byron – not a postcard, not an email, not a letter, not even a note written in hieroglyphics sent by carrier pigeon.

It was as if I’d imagined him, dreamed him from the depths of my being, invented him solely to let him loose into the world and never see him again.

We’d spent three wonderful nights together where he undressed me slowly and loved me from the tips of my toes to the tips of my fingers, where he’d shown me such tenderness that I’d cried, and so much passion that it had lit a fire inside me and his name was ripped from my lungs, where I’d explored his body, reading it like an adventurer in a newfound land, following every plain and gully, every scar and muscle, all to be puzzled over and understood, all to be experienced.

We’d spent three wonderful days together where we explored the tiny island and its exquisite antiquities, where we’d walked hand in hand as dust coated our feet, where we’d swum in warm blue seas that turned to gold and then silver as the sun began to sink, where we’d spoken each other’s names as if we’d known each other our whole lives, and where we’d whispered our secrets in the shade of an olive tree.

And then the final morning where his restlessness began, a soft breeze that was the harbinger of a mighty storm, and I knew I had to let him go.

“I have to do this,” he said, his eyes already far away. “I have to finish what I set out to do. I have to know that I can. All the months in rehab were about finishing this journey on foot. On one foot.”

And he’d stamped his titanium heel impatiently.

“I’ll be back before winter,” he said.

“I’ll wait for you.”

And then he was gone, and I learned a new and unquantifiable law of the universe: the void of a person’s absence increases beyond measure when you have fallen deeply and irrevocably in love with them.

I flew home, my skin darker than it had been, my freckles more vivid. Colleagues commented on how well I looked. I forced a smile in return because that was the polite thing to do, but Byron had taken my true smile with him, and I didn’t know if he’d bring it back again.

The rest of the summer passed, one day much like another, an indifferent summer with little heat and no reliability. But as the days grew cooler and the leaves burned with a thousand new colours, I dared to hope.

He’d said he’d come back before winter, so that could be any month after August.

Throughout the whole of September and October, I was in a perpetual state of anxiety as I waited for Byron to return.

But when October’s surprising softness bled into November’s storms and sudden flurries of snow, my hope began to drain away: 15 days before it was December, and therefore winter; 14 days, 13 days, 12 days…

I couldn’t bear to count, and I couldn’t bear to stop either.

It was the last weekend in November and Americans had celebrated Thanksgiving. The Black Friday sales had come and lingered like the smell of roasting meat, and now people were counting down to Christmas.

I couldn’t stand to be in my cold and silent flat any longer. So, I braved the wind that whipped dead leaves around my ankles and joined the queue at the bus stop, then climbed the stairs of the double-decker bus, peering out of the steamed-up windows.

I’d planned to go and see the Silk Roads exhibition at the British Museum, and maybe seeing pictures of desert artefacts would bring some warmth back to my chilly heart.

Another passenger had left a newspaper on the seat next to me, one of those free ones that’s half adverts, a quarter colourful photographs, and a quarter news. And clearly, I was hallucinating, because I saw Byron’s picture.

I closed my eyes because I’d been seeing him everywhere lately, every tall, handsome man morphed briefly into the man I’d loved and lost.

But when I opened my eyes again, I looked more closely. Those blue, blue eyes…

I snatched up the paper, scanning the photograph and reading the headline.

Byron! He was back. He’d remembered what I’d told him about choosing to be positive. He’d remembered!

And he hadn’t come to see me.

I felt utterly crushed.

When the bus arrived at the stop outside the British Museum, I simply crossed the road and took another bus straight home.

And I stayed there all weekend, the drawbridge up, curled in a soggy ball of sorrow and refusing to open the door to anyone who dared to knock.

But no one knocked on my door. No one rang my bell, no one called my phone, and not a single carrier pigeon cooed outside my fourth-floor window.

But because I was a good employee and a responsible person, when Monday rolled around, I showered, washed my hair and found a clean shirt to wear to work. And because I was a librarian, I would not let down my fellow bibliophiles, the people who came to my library and loved it as much as I did. And if all I ever had in my life were books, it would still be a life well lived. My lips might tremble and my eyes might glisten with tears, but my chin would be held high and the keys to the library were in my pocket.

And when I sat at my desk and breathed in the scent of thousands and thousands of books, my heart ached a little less. Books would never let me down, they would always be there for me, my whole life through.

A shadow fell over my desk, and I think I stopped breathing.

“Hello, Mary.”

I looked up, because I had to, not because I wanted to.

And there he was, the man who had moved into the cavity in my chest where my heart had once lived. Did I dare hope that he’d brought it back with him?

I tried to speak, I really did. But I couldn’t.

“I missed you,” he said, his voice softer. “I missed our books, our library.”

“Have you come home?” I asked quietly, painfully.

“Only you can tell me that,” he replied, his voice little more than a whisper. “Have I come home, Mary, my love?”

THE END

I hope you enjoyed their journey – and you can be sure that they will be travelling together from now on.

You might also be interested to know that Blesma was founded after the First World War, and of the 18,000 charities that sprang up to help those affected by war in 1919, it’s one of only ten that is still going.

Lara by Lord Byron

There was in him a vital scorn of all:
As if the worst had fall’n which could befall,
He stood a stranger in this breathing world,
An erring spirit from another hurled;
A thing of dark imaginings, that shaped
By choice the perils he by chance escaped;
But ‘scaped in vain, for in their memory yet
His mind would half exult and half regret:
With more capacity for love than earth
Bestows on most of mortal mould and birth,
His early dreams of good outstripp’d the truth,
And troubled manhood follow’d baffled youth;
With thought of years in phantom chase misspent,
And wasted powers for better purpose lent;
And fiery passions that had pour’d their wrath
In hurried desolation o’er his path,
And left the better feelings all at strife
In wild reflection o’er his stormy life.