June: Byron, Part 2
© Jane Harvey-Berrick
She wasn’t coming. I knew she wasn’t coming. Why would she come here? I was a fool to think that she would. We’d barely had a proper conversation over the three months I’d known her as the girl behind the desk at Kensington Central Library. Why would I think that someone I hardly knew would travel two thousand miles on a whim, because of an off-the-cuff comment I’d made in the first sunny days of Spring?
I was also a little hazy on whether ‘meet me in three months’ really mean yesterday or today … possibly even tomorrow. As it was, I’d already wasted a whole day sitting here in the shade of a dusty olive tree waiting for her.
The burning sun that had darkened my skin and lightened my hair had turned the dusty, rolling hills into a scorched and barren land. Any softness had been stripped away, leaving the carcass of dried bushes twisted into wind-blasted sculptures. But its rawness had a beauty of its own, too, the bones of this mythical land showing through the layers of later centuries.
For a thousand years before the Greek gods made Olympus their home and the miniature island became the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, Delos was a sanctuary.
Behind dark sunglasses, my eyes strain against the bleached earth and the violence of the harsh blue sky. The sea, the Aegean, is a softer, darker blue, promising cool currents in its quiet depths.
The Terrace of the Lions guard this ancient place, seven silent, snarling beasts glow in the sunlight, the brilliant white marble impossible to stare at for long.
The original guardians are long gone, tamed and caged in a museum, only the replicas remain.
I sit with my back to the pride, staring instead toward the slowly setting sun.
She didn’t come. I knew she wouldn’t. But learning has not taken place and I know that I will be here again tomorrow, waiting one more day. Waiting for a woman who won’t come.
As the sky fills with pink and peach-coloured clouds, I keep watch for a short, brown-haired woman with glasses – which describes most of the women I’ve met in Greece. But none of them have Mary’s bright blue eyes and her shy smile.
I don’t know why I’m here.
But somewhere, somehow, over the last three months as I slowly made my way from Thessaloniki to Peraia to Katerini, Lamia and Athens, she was no longer just ‘my little librarian’, she’d become ‘Mary, my friend’. The shift was subtle, intangible, but I thought about her more each day, wondering what she was doing, what books she was reading, the joy flickering on her face like a stuttering candle when she found another bookaholic, and on those nights I didn’t wake up screaming and sweating, seeing the accusing eyes of the dead, the friends I’d loved and lost; on the nights I thought of Mary’s quiet sense of calm, of knowing her worth in the world, on those nights, I slept with the innocence of a child.
I found myself looking forward to seeing her again, needing to see her again.
And finally, I yearned for her.
But now, as the hours dragged by, and the edge of darkness filled the sky, here I am, filled with doubt and disappointment.
A stone skitters behind me and I whirl around, ready to face a mugger, a drunken fool, a lost tourist, or a bandit with a knife.
But it’s a gentle figure in an ugly floral dress that looms out of the darkness, her breathing loud and harsh, her soft grunts of effort filling the silence.
“Mary?”
“Oh!” she stops so suddenly, her glasses slip down her nose and her large sunhat falls over her eyes.
“Mary!” Happiness bubbles up with the laughter that escapes my mouth.
“Hello, Byron,” she says shyly. “You’ve grown a beard.”
I bound upwards, my titanium knee skimming the crumbling hillside, and scoop her into a hug, squeezing the rest of her words from her lungs.
“My God, you came!”
“I said I would,” she says indignantly, smoothing the creases in her dress when I finally put her down.
“No, you didn’t. But I hoped you would.”
“You did?” she says, her voice bewildered, as if she can’t imagine why anyone would be happy to see her. “Why?”
Her question brings me up short.
“I’m not good with people, Mary,” I said, honest for once.
She shoots me her trademark look, the one that says I’m talking crap.
“You’re always surrounded by people! Everybody loves you.”
I snort a bitter laugh.
“It’s not the same thing, believe me.”
The truth is, yes, I was often surrounded by people, but even then, I was always alone. I’m good with alone because then I can’t hurt anyone. But now, I want … I need…
“You’re good with everyone,” I say to her.
She gapes at me. “No, I’m not! I’m awkward and a bit strange and never say the right thing at the right time.”
“You always know what to say to me.”
“That’s because you’re…” her words trail away.
“Because I’m what?”
“Because you’re you.”
“A broken, one-legged fool with an inability to sit still; a restless, purposeless wanderer.” The words pour out of me as if I’ve never spoken before. “Mary, I have no idea how to operate in the real world. I keep walking to keep moving, but I don’t know where I’m going … I don’t know where I’ll end up.”
“Is there somewhere you want to go?” she asks, her simple question cutting through my confusion.
I take her hand in mine, so small and damp with heat and nerves, but I’m the one who doesn’t know what to say.
“I read about Delos,” she says quietly, still holding my hand as we walk slowly past each marble lion. “It was a holy sanctuary for thousands of years. People came here on pilgrimage. Is that why you came here?”
“I don’t know,” I say, tasting the quality of my honesty.
She doesn’t press me for an answer I don’t have, she just listens.
“I’m happy you’re here, Mary. And I want you … all of you. I’ve dreamed about you for three, long, lonely months.”
Her gasp is soft but audible.
“Lonely? You? How many men and women did I see you with in London? Too many to count. And if you keep sleeping with so many different people, your willy will fall off!” she says, indignant and stern.
I shout with laughter. “My willy?”
“Your dick!” she huffs.
“Nah, my dick is titanium, too.”
And that makes her laugh, and I feel like a god, but my smile soon fades.
“There hasn’t been anyone else, even before I left London. I want you, no one else. But I’m bad: bad news, bad to the bone, a bad man who’s done bad things.” My voice becomes hollow. “I’ve killed people.”
“You were a soldier.”
Her voice is tender.
“The dead don’t care.”
It’s fully dark now and pinpricks of stars salt the inky blank sky.
She says, “I read a book.”
And she smiles.
“I’m glad. Because you’re a librarian. Was it a good book?”
“Yes. It was about a sixteenth century Italian polymath, Jerome Cardano*. Have you heard of him?”
“No. What did he do?”
“Do you drive a car?”
“I can drive, yes. Can you?”
“No, but that’s not the point. But when you drive, you’re using something he invented: the Cardan shaft – it’s is a component for transmitting mechanical power, torque and rotation. I don’t really know what that means,” she admits.
“It makes the engine move,” I offer, amused.
“Thank you for explaining that,” she says primly. “Well, he was also a mathematician. He used negative numbers and helped invent cubic and quartic equations.”
“I don’t know what those are,” I say, frowning a little.
“Me, neither!” she says happily, and I wonder where this conversation is going. “He cured the Archbishop of Scotland’s asthma by changing his diet, making him exercise in fresh air, and swapping his feather pillows for ones filled with seaweed.”
I laugh gently.
“He was brilliant! Unique, amazing, but whenever something was going well for him, he seemed to deliberately sabotage his own happiness. And he wasn’t the most cheerful person,” she says seriously. “I suppose we’d say that he suffered from depression. He wrote, ‘What pleasure can be matched in magnitude to torture, what hope to fear, what happiness to bereavement?’”
“And you think he’s wrong?” I ask, concentrating hard.
“I know he’s wrong. I completely disagree. The darkness is pervasive and tugs at our consciousness every day – you have to choose the light. You have to train your brain to be positive, otherwise your life will always be the dark side. It’s about choice. Do you see?
“My little librarian,” I smile sadly. “You’re so beautiful. You’re utterly adorable.”
“Stop it, Byron!” she orders abruptly.
“Stop what?”
Confusion swims around me.
“Stop breaking my heart!”
Her words are a whipcrack in the night.
“Don’t lie to me! Don’t tell me I’m beautiful. I know I’m not.”
I can’t bear to hear her talk like his, frost hardening her voice.
“You don’t see yourself the way I see you,” I say, my voice whispering over the ancient stones.
She shrugs her shoulders and tugs her hand from mine.
“I know what’s true. I know I’m 5’3 and a stone overweight. I’m short-sighted and I wear bottle-top glasses and I squint and I have the most boring job in the world.”
“Is that what you really think?”
She pauses, thinks, nods, shakes her head, nods again.
“Well, yes. Except for the bit about the library. I love my job – but that’s what other people think when I say I’m a librarian.”
“I’ll tell you what I love about you…”
“Don’t,” she says, her voice an agonised plea that makes my heart clench.
“I think you’re kind, honest, loyal – a woman with a huge heart and a love of learning. Your imagination so vast, you’ve travelled all over the world.”
“This is the first time I’ve been out of the country,” she cries softly. “This is my first ever passport.”
“But you’ve travelled in your imagination.”
Her voice is lost in the night. Almost.
“Yes.”
“And you’re here. Because you knew that I needed you before I knew it myself. And that’s what I love about you.”
She sighs a long, heart-breaking sound.
I gather her into my arms and she rests her head against my chest. She must hear my heart as it rattles out its rapid rhythm. For her.
I whisper against her hair.
“Adventurer, poet, lover, liar
He lives life large
His heart on fire.
Soft in her bed
She watches me
Her eyes of night
Her heart fire-bright.”
“That’s beautiful.”
“I wrote it for you.” I kiss her hair. “This isn’t the end of our story, Mary. It’s the beginning.”
She shakes her head.
“No, the beginning was on a cold January day when you walked into my library. But I don’t know what happens next.”
I smile against her warm skin.
“Let’s ask the lions.”
* ‘The Quantum Astrologer’s Handbook: a history of the Renaissance mathematics that birthed imaginary numbers, probability, and the new physics of the universe’ by Michael Brooks