This Is All

by Aidan Chambers

  ‘What does more than that mean?’

  ‘Not sure. No, that’s wrong. I am sure. But I mean I’m not sure I want to go into it here. It wasn’t what I was going to tell you. I was only going to tell you about the trees. To see how you reacted. I only told you about … the other matter … because of what you told me.’

  ‘You know what I think, William Blacklin? I think you’re a deep dyed bolloxing, what-you-call-it? Is pedant the right word?’

  ‘I do like things to be right, that’s true. If that’s what you mean.’

  ‘So you more than fancy me, which you were not going to tell me, and you brought me here to tell me you love trees, which you were going to tell me and which is something you haven’t told anyone else in the whole wide world?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  And because I couldn’t stand it any longer, I leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. And he didn’t resist and he didn’t pull away and he did kiss me back and we went on and on kissing for ages, starting feather gentle and slow-motion slow and our lips hardly touching and then his tongue lightly tracing my lips like it was a pencil drawing my mouth and then my tongue drawing his lips and then his tongue lifting my top lip and feeling all under it before both his lips took my top lip and kissed me that way, then my tongue exploring his bottom lip and when this wasn’t enough any more, we kissed with our mouths open wide and our lips covering each other’s and our tongues playing tag and flicking and circling and our breaths in one and out the other until I felt I would explode, the star burst starting in my vag and spreading down my thighs to my feet and up my body like a wave breaking till I thought I would disappear altogether for ever into Will and there would be nothing in the whole wide world but him in me and me in him.

  Realisations: Sayings to Myself

  (selections from being 15 till now)

  One good friend in a lifetime (e.g. Izumi) is worth celebrating.

  Learn to say no.

  If you can’t get to sleep, get up and do something very boring.

  Use moisturiser daily, Doris says, from the age of fifteen.

  Don’t assume Doris is always happy.

  Don’t assume Dad is as daft as he sometimes seems.

  Unhappy people are often aggressive.

  Men usually don’t always mean it when they say they love you.

  Never try and rescue a man in trouble unless he asks.

  Pushy people push everybody around, not just you. Don’t take it personally.

  People are like flowers. They need different amounts of watering.

  Water improves your complexion.

  Respect is at the heart of poetry.

  When buying clothes, don’t look at yourself in the mirror from the back. It makes your nose look big and your bum look even bigger than it is.

  Don’t buy clothes when you’re unhappy or they’ll never feel right.

  Eye liner makes you look tarty.

  There’s good gossip and bad gossip. Good gossip is funny and helpful and is not meant to hurt other people. Bad gossip hurts other people and is meant to.

  The reason old Shakes is god is that he can be all people and at the same time is beyond them. Also, he is the best of anybody at using the English language.

  When sad, read one of Shakes’s sonnets (nos 18, 27, 29, 30, 36, 60, 66, 71, 73, 80, 91, 94, 116, 129, 130, 138, 144, and 145 are my favourites).

  I write bad mopes when I’m unhappy. I write good mopes about being sad when I’m happy.

  I know I really will write poetry one day, so long as I keep trying, no matter how many failures, and how many mopes it takes.

  Real writers don’t make mistakes. They make changes.

  When I’m tired I become intolerant.

  Nice knickers are very important.

  Accept the fact that you don’t always snap out of things fast. That’s just how you are.

  When upset, be systematic.

  Ariel

  ‘Better stop,’ Will said, pulling away. ‘Sorry. Not ready.’

  I knew he was right, though I wanted to go on. How dangerous the body is when left to its own devices.

  And I also assumed he meant he hadn’t any protection. Neither had I. In my wobbly state before leaving the house I hadn’t even remembered to pack a tampon, and was anxious in case my period had started early, which it did sometimes. Luckily, Izumi had made me wear black jeans. (‘Never know where boys take you. And this one might take you to a graveyard.’)

  On our way back to the car park a rope dropped from a tall tree in front of us and a bean-pole of a boy came down it like a spindly spider – a young man really, but boy-face and chestnut hair like a tangled mop, which I didn’t see till he took off the helmet he was wearing, and strong man’s hands, and all geared up like a mountaineer, ropes and boots and belt dripping with tools. ‘Arry!’ said Will. ‘Will!’ said Arry. Long lost mates.

  They stopped and talked, laughing, shifting on their feet the way boys do as displacement for hugging and kissing. Or at least Will did. This Arry person, who wasn’t a man and wasn’t a boy, stood stock still on his hefty boots and held his rope in his workman’s mitts, and smiled with pleasure at Will’s attention but didn’t give me more than a glancing nod. So, feeling left out, I thought, Let them get on with it, and wandered away. ‘I’ll only be a sec,’ Will called, as boys/men do when they’re palling around. I waved a ‘Carry on’ backhand at him.

  Feeling miffed already after just one session of kissing! One bout, one explosion, a first that can never be a first again. An only time. I wanted him with me, to prefer me, to choose me before everyone else. I wanted us to celebrate our first kissing time. I wanted us – wanted him – to mark the occasion. But there he was, dancing attendance on this tree boy who I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. I wanted only to know Will and wanted Will to want only to know me. And because this wasn’t happening I wanted to cry. And between my legs I was sticky wet and didn’t know whether from my period or from kissing or both. And I wanted to pee.

  As I arrived at the car park I saw a sign saying CAFÉ GIFT SHOP TOILETS and followed its wooden finger. All the time on my way and in the loo my two voices argued in my head. Big C and Little C. Big C is my stronger, wiser, more sensible self. Little C is my weaker, sillier, ungrownup and unforgiving self. The yak went something like this:

  LC: How could he! How could he!

  BC: He met a friend, that’s all.

  LC: He should’ve just said hello and walked on with me!

  BC: You wouldn’t treat a friend like that. You’d have stopped and talked.

  LC: No I wouldn’t. Not after first kissing. He doesn’t really like me.

  BC: Yes, he does.

  LC: He was just getting what he wanted.

  BC: Don’t be silly.

  LC: I am not being silly, I’m being realistic.

  BC: It’s just your period starting. You’re feeling wobbly.

  LC: This has nothing to do with my period. It’s boys. They’re sludgeofferous.

  BC: Not all of them. Will’s not like that.

  LC: He was just having a bit of fun. That’s all boys ever want.

  BC: It’s what you wanted as well. You wanted a snog with him and that’s what you got.

  LC: But I meant it.

  BC: So did he. You could tell. He wasn’t faking, that’s for sure.

  LC: How would you know? You don’t know any more than me.

  Et cetera. So tedious, so tiring, goes on and on till something switches the mood. This time, it was finding my period hadn’t started that did the trick, and something I bought in the gift shop.

  When I came out of the loo Little C said, Let him wait for me now, and I wandered into the shop. The usual knickknacks. Such a silly nice word, Middle English in origin, meaning toy, trinket, or ‘ingenious contrivance’. Plenty of trinkets but no ingenious contrivances that I could see. But on a twirly rack were some little bookmarks with first names on them, eve
rything from Adam to Zoë, but none for Cordelia. There never is, I’m glad to say. One for common-or-garden William, of course. On each side were pictures of fruit and trees and seeds and flowers, and a pen and paper. And round the edges the caption:

  WILLIAM: Derivation: ancient name meaning ‘desiring protection’. Origin: Old German. Strengths: Makes an excellent employee. Physical: Does not allow his aggression to show. Character: Organised. Emotion: Artistic with a calm nature.

  Cue for laughter.

  Yes, said Little C, he certainly needs protection. And you see, said Big C, he doesn’t let his emotions show. Well, said Little C, he certainly did while kissing. There you are, said Big C, that shows how much he really fancies you. I don’t want him just to fancy me, said Little C. Don’t start that again, said Big C.

  I couldn’t help buying it for him. My first gift.

  Will was sitting on his scooter, patience on a monument, smiling at me as I approached. Does not allow his aggression to show … a calm nature. So how could I tell if he was pissed off with waiting the way I wanted him to be?

  ‘For you,’ I said cheerily as I gave him the bookmark.

  He looked and laughed and said, ‘What’s yours say?’

  ‘There wasn’t one. I’m too rare, you see.’

  ‘Then I’d better put a conservation order on you.’

  ‘Like I’m a rare old tree?’

  ‘I love rare trees, young or old.’

  This induced a glottal stop and a swallow to clear it before I could reply, ‘You’re the one who needs protection.’

  ‘That’s what Arry said.’

  ‘The boy?’

  ‘Ariel McLaren. And he’s not a boy. He’s twenty.’

  ‘Well, he looks like a boy. A friend, is he?’

  ‘Said you were dangerous.’

  ‘Did he, the cheek! Hardly even glanced at me, so what does he know!’

  ‘Only what I told him.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘We’d been snoggin’ in the bracken.’

  ‘You horror!’ I tried to hit him, but he caught my hand and held on.

  ‘No, I didn’t. He guessed.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘There’s bits of bracken stuck all over your back.’

  ‘No!’ I tried to get at it.

  He turned me and brushed it off.

  ‘How could you let me go like that!’

  ‘Didn’t notice till you were walking away. Couldn’t do much about it then.’

  ‘O, bollox! In the loo and the shop. Everybody must have seen.’

  ‘Who cares?’

  ‘I do.’

  He turned me to face him again, kissed me quick and said, ‘I don’t.’

  I blushed. O lordy!

  ‘And him – that Arry person – he knows.’

  ‘He’s okay. Just joking. Said we looked good together.’

  I was probably red as a cooked lobster by now. ‘Well, I hope he keeps it to himself. Don’t want it getting around. You know what they’re like at school.’

  ‘Arry won’t tell. He works here. I help out as a volunteer. Pruning, path clearing, that sort of thing. He’s been teaching me tree climbing.’

  ‘You have to be taught tree climbing?’

  ‘To do it right, yes, and professionally.’

  ‘You want to do it professionally?’

  He laughed. ‘Not just tree climbing. Forest management. Tree ecology.’

  ‘Tree ecology?’

  ‘Study of trees – history of, biology of, conservation of, that sort of thing. What is probably the oldest living thing in Britain?’

  ‘A tree, I have no doubt.’

  ‘Yes. And also a coppice stool.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Coppicing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A kind of tree farming. Since Neolithic times. About six thousand years. Longer more than likely. Young trees, six, seven years old, are cut down from just above the ground. The wood is used for all sorts of things, fuel, house-building, fences, tools, all sorts. The tree sprouts shoots from the stump, called spring. After six or eight or ten years, depending on the kind of tree, the new growth is about two metres high, nice straight sticks. They’re cut and used. And the process starts again. The cut wood is called underwood. The stumps are called a stool. And some of the oldest rings of stools are more than five and a half metres across and are at least four thousand years old, which makes them some of the oldest living things in Britain.’

  ‘Really!’

  ‘You know how to tell how old a tree is?’

  ‘By counting the rings?’

  ‘But you have to cut it down to do that and then you don’t have a tree any more.’

  ‘So how?’

  ‘You measure round the trunk about two metres from the ground. If it’s a tree that’s standing on its own you reckon two and a half centimetres of its girth for every year of its age. If it’s in a wood, you reckon about one and a third centimetres for every year. So you measure the girth and divide by two-point-five or one-point-three.’

  ‘So a tree that’s a metre round is …’

  ‘About—’

  ‘I can do it! I’m just a bit slow with maths … Forty.’

  ‘Right. About forty years old. So suppose you were a tree, what’s your girth?’

  ‘Mind your own business!’

  ‘No, come on.’

  ‘Depends where you’re measuring, idiot! I’m not the same all the way down like some spindly tree.’

  ‘Eighty-eight, thirty-eight, ninety-two?’

  I slapped his arm. ‘Horror! Thirty-two, twenty-four, thirty-four, if you must know.’

  ‘Can’t be!’

  ‘I am!’

  ‘You’re more than thirty-four centimetres round your hips.’

  ‘Idiot! I’m talking inches.’

  ‘No one talks inches these days.’

  ‘Well you do when talking women’s vital stats.’

  ‘Okay, then we have to do some conversion. Let’s take your hips. Thirty-four did you say? Multiply by two-point-five. That’s … eighty-five centimetres.’

  ‘And what did you just say? Ninety-two did you say? Really!’

  ‘Just a quick guess, honest.’

  ‘I could start to hate you.’

  ‘So eighty-five, and very nice too. Which in tree terms makes you the same age as you are round the hips. About thirty-four.’

  ‘So you might as well say a tree is the same age as it is in inches round its trunk.’

  ‘Well done! But I’m glad you’re not.’

  ‘Not what?’

  ‘The same age as you are round the hips. I’m not into older women.’

  ‘You’re not into me either, yet.’

  ‘True. But I live in hope.’

  That made me wobble again.

  ‘But you like trees because they’re old,’ I said to keep the subject off sex.

  ‘And because they’re beautiful and useful – we’d all be dead if we didn’t have them. And because they are totally different from people. There’s almost no living thing more different from people than trees. I think they’re fascinating, and I love them and want to live with them.’

  He stopped, his head went down in the funny shy way I was beginning to know, and he started finger-fiddling again.

  I wanted to ask him more. I wanted to tell him how I envied him, knowing so clearly what he wanted to do with his life. And how all I wanted to do was write poems, which at that time didn’t seem the same, not as useful as looking after trees.

  And anyway, it began to rain, a soft early autumn misty drizzle, no more, but enough to wet me through as we scootered back home. I asked him to come in, had fantasised on the way back about us stripping off each other’s wet clothes, showering together, making love afterwards. But no, he ought to get home, he said, and drove away with himself shut off as if by a prison door.

  That evening he sent an email attachment labelled 4 YR EYES ONLY. The first of his l
ove letters. Though, being Will, his love letters were never like any other love letters I’ve ever read.

  Will mail

  ck about this after. liked being with u. hope u with me. the bookmark u gave me – thanx – says i do not show aggression. true. do not usually show any big feelings as matter of fact. maybe cos my family do funerals but do not do big feelings. want to explain so u understand y i sometimes clam up, like this after about trees. 1 reason i like music. the music says wot i feel. also y i love trees. 1 reason anyway. do not know how to put this, but to me trees are like living feelings, like living sculptures of feelings, like feelings made of wood and branches and leaves and flowers and seeds. the shape of trees. like music in living wood. said i wanted to show u a different kind of woodwind. that’s wot i meant. u understand? i do want u to understand.

  this is rubbish I am writing. i can only do it as science. but i want u to know how i started to love trees and why i want to study them. so i have written u a kind of essay, which i am attaching. it is just 4 u. please do NOT show it to anyone else. i know i am a secretive kind of person, about myself i mean. i do not know y, i just am, and i do not know y i want to tell u these things, i just do.

  ATTACHMENT

  Why I want to study the ecology of trees

  William Blacklin for Cordelia Kenn

  When I was about eleven, our teachers took a group of us to camp near Tortworth in Gloucestershire. In the village, we were shown a chestnut tree which we were told could be 1,100 years old. It was gnarled and knotted, and looked half-ruined but was still flourishing. We were allowed to climb it. I was so amazed by this ancient living thing that I couldn’t get my mind off it after we went back to camp. Couldn’t sleep that night for thinking about it. So about two in the morning, I crept out of my tent and walked the half mile or so to the tree and climbed up to the top of the trunk, which looked like it had been sliced and chopped and split a long time ago probably by lightning. Branches spread out from the top of the trunk like arms with big muscles. I lay down in the elbow of one of them. I was so excited to be there, all by myself, in the night, the stars bright, the full moon shining through the branches, and me held in the arms of this ancient living being that had stood there since before William the Conqueror brought my name to England. I wasn’t afraid because I felt protected by the tree and also felt completely at home, almost as if I was meant to be there. I didn’t sleep. Not a wink. Didn’t feel tired. Just lay there, listening to the tree as if listening to it breathing, listening to its thoughts. I stayed until first light, then ran back to camp and was in my sleeping bag before anyone found out I’d left it.