This Is All

by Aidan Chambers

  ‘Sounds like we’ve klatsched as much as we can for today.’

  ‘Well. Thanks anyway.’

  Song

  Izumi massaged my body, Doris massaged my mind. I felt fit to face Will again, and craved him.

  WILL WILL WILL WILL WILL WILL WILL O WILL

  I want to write a proper letter to you for a change and SWALK it in a proper envelope with a proper stamp on it FIRST CLASS, then wait on tenterhooks for your reply.

  I’m sorry. Sorry sorry sorry. I know I’ve been a bit remote lately. Nothing to do with you. Not me going off you, I mean, or anything. No No No No. Absoluto notto. Just the oppositivo.

  A family glitch, that’s all. Secrets. Revelations. Nothing horrible. But important. I’d like to tell you about them, if that’s OK with you. But tell you about them, not write them.

  And also I’ve thought of a Cunning Plan for us.

  What about after school Thursday? Or do you have oboe practice, orchestra, boy band, running, homework, and a funeral to go to then? Please mobile or em. I really would like it if we could.

  Also: I’ve written a song for you. I’m sending it to you all neat and clean and written out in my best handwriting, sir, on specially chosen paper. (Do you like the colour? The texture? The size? The smell? It’s Japanese handmade paper, v v v v v v v expensive. Made out of the leaves of trees.)

  Is it the kind of song you wanted? I made it up while I was languishing in the bath last night, pretending I was Cleopatra soaking in goat’s milk. (10.30 till 11.00 p.m., if you MUST know. I know you like to know EVERY detail of my boring life, including when and how and by what means I depilate my underarms and legs, manicure my nails, etc., so curious you are about my PRIVATE life. And as you would ask if we were mashing on the phone, I’ll tell you I am at this time adorned in a clean white sloppy T-shirt with no bra, my fav fraying faded blue jeans over a pair of new black panties, no socks, as I’ve just painted my toenails scarlet and they are still drying.)

  I sometimes feel melancholy in the bath, I don’t know why. And was très très very très melancholy last night because of Family Matters referred to above. And (to be honest) because of NOT seeing you and not snogging for D A A A A Y S.

  So here is my melancholy (sort of) song.

  But honestly honestly, I really am naff at songs. Never written one before, you see. I mean, bin it if you want to. I won’t mind. It’s crap, isn’t it? O, well, you did ask!

  But look, if you do by any chance compose some music for it:

  could I be the very first to hear you sing it, and all on our own? and

  I thought you might add an improvised riff for the oboe, like a little cadenza, between the third and fourth verses. (Just a suggestion.)

  Cordelia

  No one more unlikely

  There’s no one more unlikely,

  No one meant to be,

  There’s no one more unlikely

  Who’s only made for me.

  You’ve never said you love me,

  You’ve never said you care,

  You’ve never said you want me,

  It doesn’t seem quite fair.

  I tried as hard as I could

  To make you go away.

  I would have gone – I really should,

  But something makes me stay.

  I don’t believe in heaven,

  I even doubt there’s hell,

  And if there is no heaven

  Is there paradise as well?

  I’ve never wanted anything

  More than I’ve wanted you,

  And now there isn’t anything

  I’ll ever want but you.

  You’re everything I don’t know about,

  You’re a whole new world to see.

  There’s no one more unlikely

  Who’s only meant for me.

  Two days later …

  Two days later, Wednesday evening, 10.30, there he was, on the phone, and when I said, ‘Hello?’ he said nothing, just sang my song to the music he’d composed, and played a riff on his oboe in the middle, and when he’d finished all he said was, ‘Thursday, after school,’ and rang off before I could say a word.

  It was so lovely, he was so lovely, I wept.

  Mrs B. interferes

  Next day Dad came to my room as soon as he arrived home. Hi, how’s things? etc. Then, as I recorded in my pillow book:

  ‘Had a visitor today.’

  ‘O?’

  ‘Mrs Blacklin.’

  Suspicion. ‘What did she want?’

  ‘She’s worried about you and Will.’

  The sting of anxiety. ‘Why?’ (And why does Mrs B. always scare me?)

  ‘She thinks you’re spending too much time together and she worries Will won’t do as well as he should in his exams.’

  ‘That’s rubbish. We’re working hard. We help each other.’

  ‘Well, she’s going to have a word with Will and she asked me to talk to you.’

  ‘So talk.’

  ‘You do spend a lot of time together.’

  The bile of anger. ‘We’ve had this out before, Dad. He’s my boyfriend. I’m his girl. You of all people should understand about that.’

  ‘She thinks you’re getting too involved with each other.’

  ‘But that’s not what she meant. This isn’t about Will and me not working, because we are. She just doesn’t like me. I’m not good enough for her precious son. And she’s trying to split us up.’

  ‘Look, Cordelia—’

  ‘I’m looking.’

  ‘Please. Don’t make this difficult for me.’

  ‘Difficult for you! It’s me who it’s difficult for.’

  ‘I don’t think she’s trying to split you up. I really don’t. I know she’s bossy and all that—’

  ‘And snobby and bitchy and possessive as well, I expect.’ (Is that why she scares me, because she wants to keep Will for herself?)

  ‘Maybe. But I think she is genuinely worried that you and Will are too involved with each other and might do something silly.’

  ‘Silly, like what? Get me pregnant? We haven’t even had sex yet.’

  ‘Not that so much.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘You’re both very young. You’ve had no experience of—’

  ‘If you say relationships I’ll hit you! I hate that word.’

  ‘Of life. Of – passion.’

  I couldn’t help laughing. ‘Oh, Dad. Come on!’

  ‘You’re both still growing up. You’re not mature yet. You’re still forming. I don’t mean you’re not intelligent or sensible or responsible or anything of that kind. You are. But you’re going through so many changes at the moment, and you’re under such pressure, what with exams and deciding on your future careers, apart from anything else.’

  ‘Anything else like what?’

  ‘Like being in love. The first time is always a whirlwind. It can carry you away. It can make you lose your judgement and do daft things.’

  ‘So you agree with her.’

  ‘I’m not saying that.’

  I wanted to hurt him for going on about this. ‘Then what are you saying, Dad?’

  ‘I’m just saying, can’t you cool it for a bit? Till after the exams maybe? See each other once a week and at weekends. Wouldn’t that be enough?’

  Yawn yawn. ‘No it wouldn’t.’

  ‘Give yourself a chance to meet some other people.’

  ‘Other boys, you mean.’

  ‘Would that be so bad?’

  Why is it so tedious, having to explain obvious things to parents? ‘I meet other boys every day at school. And that’s all they are. Boys. Boring boring boring boys. Will is the only one who’s anywhere near being a man. He’s the only one who interests me. He’s light years ahead of any of them. He really is, Dad. He’s the only one who challenges me. He’s the only one who stretches me. He also understands me and he makes me laugh. And anyway, he’s the only one I fancy. And I know he fancies me.’

&
nbsp; ‘But giving him all your attention the way you are. You really are very wrapped up in him. I can see that. Doris can see it. Mrs Blacklin is right about that. It’s just a fact, sweetheart.’

  I was really irritated by him now. ‘What’s wrong with that? I love him. We’re doing our school work. We’re not hurting anybody. We aren’t sleeping together. Yet. So neither you nor Mrs Blacklin have any reason to separate us.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘I should hope not!’ I wanted to hurt him a lot. ‘You’ve no right to lecture me, given your behaviour.’

  ‘For god’s sake, Cordelia! I’m just trying to explain that you’re giving yourself to somebody else before you’ve had half a chance to know what it’s like to be independent. To be yourself. You’re going from being a child, dependent on me and Doris, to being Will’s girl, dependent on him – on being the girl he wants you to be.’

  ‘So you think all I’m being is what Will wants? Like some kind of plaything. Like a doll. You really think that’s what’s happening?’

  ‘I’m just saying it’s a danger.’

  ‘For your information, Dad, I’m nobody’s plaything and nobody’s doll and never intend to be. And for your further information, I don’t think you’d be saying any of this if Mrs bloody Blacklin hadn’t asked you to say it.’

  ‘That’s unfair.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s unfair of you to take her side—’

  ‘I’m not!’

  ‘– and to try and spoil the best thing in my life. I think that’s mean and nasty—’

  ‘That’s not—!’

  ‘– and I hate you for it.’

  ‘O, for Christ’s sake, Cordelia!’

  We both shut up.

  Dad stared at his hands. I stared at the top of his head. There’s a bald patch starting at the crown like the beginning of a monk’s tonsure. Some monk!

  Then he said, like a boy who’s been caught out, ‘No, you’re right. I’d not have said anything of the sort if she hadn’t brought it up.’ He looked at me. ‘I’ve more faith in you than that.’

  I felt a sudden rush of love for him, love like I used to feel when I was little.

  I said, ‘Thanks for being honest. And I’m sorry I said what I did. I don’t hate you at all.’ And I don’t. He just pisses me off now and then.

  He said, ‘I’ve always tried to be honest with you. I know I haven’t always talked to you about – some things. Things I should have. But I’ve never lied to you.’

  ‘Except about Mum. When she died.’

  ‘You were little then. I was trying to protect you.’ He looked away. ‘And I thought I’d been forgiven for that.’

  My turn to be shamefaced. ‘Sorry. Don’t know why I said it. Just came into my head. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about when I was little, and Mum and, well, since then. I think it was taking me to the White Horse, and her ashes, and what you told me.’

  ‘I knew it would do something. Bring something to the surface. We think we can put the past behind us and forget it. But we can’t. Better to look it in the face. When the time is right. And I thought the time was right. We were ready. Both of us.’

  What is it about being bloody teenage, bloody adolescent (a drossy word), that makes you want to fight your dad and hurt him and be rude to him and try to shock him? And not just your dad, grownups in general. But especially the ones who are responsible for you. Has it something to do with breaking away? ‘Finding yourself.’ Becoming independent. Is that the only way you can make the break, by being nasty? Is that what Mrs B. ‘having a word’ with Will, and Dad ‘talking to me’ was really about? Wanting us to be independent but not wanting us to be independent. Just like we want to break free and don’t want to. Why is so much of life about wanting something and not wanting it at the same time? I do want to be grown up, but it does scare me so that sometimes I don’t want to be. I do want to be in love with Will, but sometimes I wish I wasn’t so that I didn’t think about him all the time. I do want to write poetry, but at the same time I don’t want to because I know I’m more likely to fail than succeed. Is everything a yes-no? Are we all just bloody computers that only go bloody 0 or bloody 1, bloody plus or bloody minus, bloody positive or bloody negative? Are we just bloody preset bloody machines? Are we just bloody biology and nothing else, no self-bloody-determining spirit? And why am I saying bloody all the bloody time today? I never have before. It’s such a bloody naff bloody dud bloody anaemic bloody swear word, and I bloody hate bloody blokish swearing anybloodyway. It’s so bloody ignorant.

  I told Dad I knew he was just trying to protect me and do his best for me and all that, which I truly believe, but I added, There is no way I’ll give up seeing Will, unless Will himself stops me, which I’ll die if he does, and Dad said again he didn’t want to break us up, blah-di-blah, and how much he liked Will, what a terrific boy he was, blah-di-blah, and how he couldn’t imagine such a mother producing such a son, ha ha, and I said I wasn’t promising anything, I’d have to talk to Will and find out what his mother (the bossy old trout) had said to him and what he had said to her etc. etc., and that I’d report back a.s.a.p., and then ‘we’d see’ (which is what parents say when they mean they won’t do what you want them to do but they don’t want to say so straight out, which is what I also meant), and Dad said this was reasonable and then asked how things were at school, blah-di-blah, just to end the conversation on an amicable note.

  It wasn’t till after he had left me alone again that I felt how really angry I was – am – with Mrs B. for interfering. I wanted to scratch her eyes out and also to stuff five boxes of Belgian chocolates down my throat till I was sick. Little C was going ape and Big C was out of control. There are times when I feel I could blow up the entire world and myself with it and this was one of them. I only realised afterwards that my period is due and I’m always in a volatile condition just before.

  Of course, I phoned Will. We have to talk, I said. Not you as well, he said. I said, What do you mean, not me as well! I’ve just had my mother on at me, he said. I said, So you think I’m like your mother? (I knew as I was saying it that this was not [a] the tone, [b] the conversational track to follow, or [c] the best way to keep things right between us, but as I say, Little C was going ape and Big C was out of control, and I used entirely the wrong voice.) No no, he said, but you know what she’s like. I said, Not as well as you must know what she’s like. Scratch scratch, he said, which was not at all the right thing to say to me at that moment (but, then, I was not saying the right things to him either). I said, Don’t you dare lump me with your mother, William Blacklin! I’m not, he said. I said, My dad has been on at me as well, all because of your interfering mother. Look, he said (and I hate it when people say ‘look’ as if you’re not listening). Look, it’s nothing. Forget it, he said. I said, You mean, forget she’s trying to split us up? No she’s not, he said. I said, I think she is. You’re wrong, he said. No I’m not, I said. We’d better talk, he said. That’s what I said, I said.

  He came over. He was in a foul mood. I was in a foul mood. Two fouls don’t make a goal.

  I said, ‘What have you agreed?’

  He said, ‘I haven’t agreed to anything.’

  ‘We’re still seeing each other whatever your mother says?’

  ‘Look,’ he said. Urrrrrr! ‘The way to handle my mother is as follows. Listen to her. Nod politely. When she’s finished say, You’re probably right. She’ll say, I know I am. And she’ll go off and get on with something else. You do pretty much what she wants for a day or two, then after that you carry on doing what you want to do that she didn’t want you to do, and she either doesn’t notice because she’s too busy or she’s forgotten all about it. End of problem.’

  I said, ‘Doesn’t anybody ever tell her to mind her own business?’

  He said, ‘What’s the point? It’s easier the way I’ve just explained.’

  ‘So she always gets her own way.’

  ‘Only she doesn’
t get her own way, she just thinks she does.’

  ‘That’s just as bad. It encourages her to go on bossing people around.’

  ‘But it works. It’s easier. You know what parents are like. You can’t change them. You just have to manage them.’

  ‘So we’re not going to see each other for a couple of days and then go on as before?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Well, I think she’ll try it again because I think she doesn’t like me. She thinks I’m not good enough for you and I’m holding you back. Or something.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Has she said it?’

  ‘Not in so many words.’

  ‘But I’m not wrong?’

  ‘Who cares? All that matters is what you and I think about each other. No?’

  ‘And what do we think about each other?’

  ‘There’s no one more unlikely who’s only meant for me.’

  ‘I want a serious answer.’

  ‘That is a serious answer. You wrote it.’

  ‘But tell me in your own serious words, Mr William Blacklin.’

  ‘All right, Ms Cordelia Kenn. You – are – my – best – friend.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Isn’t it enough?’

  ‘I’d hoped I was more than a friend.’

  ‘I said best friend.’

  ‘Even than your best friend.’

  ‘What’s better than a best friend?’

  ‘A lover maybe? You’ve never said you love me.’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  ‘But you’ve never said it.’

  ‘Words words words.’

  ‘You are not Hamlet.’

  ‘I don’t trust them.’

  ‘We’d be badly off without them. Are you in love with me?’

  ‘Are you in love with me?’

  ‘Yes! I am in love with you.’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘Will! You do infuriate me sometimes.’