After a while I drifted into sleep. And as so often happens to me at such times, it was as if my meditation had continued while I was unconscious, because when I woke, though I felt drained, my mind was clear, I knew what I thought, and needed to write it down before it was lost in the mish-mash of everyday life. This time, I wrote my thoughts as a ‘full dress’ email to Will. (When we wanted to email something serious to each other we wrote in what we called ‘full dress’ English, which meant proper spelling and punctuation and not emailese.) This is what I wrote:
Will: I’m sorry.
That’s the first thing I want to say.
And now I want to explain what happened and why I think it happened. Please try to understand.
When you left straight after exams, I was a bit upset, because I so much wanted us to celebrate this important event in our lives. After you had gone I just felt I had to do something to mark the occasion.
did distract you both from your school work. But we sorted that little problem out, didn’t we. And since then things have gone along swimmingly. You helped each other with your exams, and your mutual interest in music has been a plus as well. But I won’t hide from you that I’ve been a little worried sometimes that you might be going too far – in other directions. But you’re both very sensible and William assured me you were taking proper precautions, so I didn’t say anything. You know how parents worry about that sort of thing. I expect your father is the same about you. – Are you sure you wouldn’t like some cake? It’s very nice. Home made. No? Well, to get to the point. – The difficulty is, Cordelia, as I say, your friendship with William has mostly been a good thing for both of you. But not to mince matters, it’s now become a problem. You know that his father and I wanted him to go to Cambridge. In my opinion, he should have pursued his music professionally. He’s so talented in that department, I’m sure you agree. And it would be so nice to have a son who’s a professional musician among all of us business people. I’d be so proud of him. But he was determined to go to this tree college place, which is no more than a training school for forest workers if you ask me, not prestigious or academic. In the end we felt we had to let him have his way. You know what he’s like. Stubborn when he wants to be. Just like his father. The whole sorry business was making him unhappy. All of us in fact. So to keep the peace I gave in. I haven’t said so to him, but once he’s there, I hope he’ll realise it isn’t really what he wants, that it isn’t right for him. And then I hope he’ll treat it as a useful gap year, and go on to Cambridge and take up music or at least study the subject of trees properly. Or do both, he’s quite clever enough to do both. And a year out might do him good. More experience before he goes to university. Anyway, just in case he does change his mind, you know how much he admires that book on trees he’s always reading? It’s written by a Fellow at a
Because you were not here, I didn’t think of this as being anything to do with you or ‘us’. It was only for me. So I didn’t think whether you would approve or not. In a way, I was just playing and letting off steam. We have been so pressured lately. I wanted to let go and at the same time to do something – buy something – that would remind me of this important time and how I felt about it.
Yes, sure: if you had been here we would have talked about this. I would have asked what you thought about my idea. We would have chosen what to do together.
Anyway, I did what I did. And your reaction today was a shock. I really really hadn’t expected it.
Tonight, I thought about why I did this. One of our differences is that you take things very seriously. Even when you are having fun you have fun seriously. (I don’t mean you don’t have a sense of humour, not at all. You have always made me laugh more than anyone else. I love your sense of humour. But you even take your humour seriously.) You think about everything before you do it. And you take little things in life as a sign of big things.
I am not like that. I can be careless and frivolous. I often do things and only think about what I’ve done, or understand what it means, afterwards. I suppose I am sometimes quite childish. (You can be childish too, but in a different way from me. You go into a sulk or cut off from people who have annoyed you and don’t speak to them. And then when the problem has blown over, you go on as before, as if nothing has happened. I’m not like that. When I have understood what the problem is, I have to talk about it with the other person and try to sort it out.)
I think children sometimes feel when they are alone that they can do whatever they like and somehow it has nothing to do with anyone else. They think it won’t affect anyone else. That it only has to do with themselves. They are just playing. What does it matter? But they do not realise that
Cambridge college. I’ve written to him, asking for advice. I haven’t told William, of course, and I must ask you not to betray my confidence. I’m only telling you because I want to be quite candid and open with you so that you’ll understand my worries.’
She poured herself another cup of tea and selected a chocolate éclair.
‘The thing is, Cordelia, and I take no pleasure in telling you this, I was changing the linen on William’s bed this morning and found a print-out of one of your emails under his pillow. And I must say, the sort of style you young people use these days, not to mention the extraordinary spelling and lack of punctuation and so on quite appals me. Not my idea of good English at all. I know I shouldn’t have read it, quite wrong of me, but I did. I expect you remember it. About doing anything for him and going with him, going to live with him while he’s at this so-called college. You remember? Yes, of course you do. Well, as soon as I read it, I knew I had to do something about it at once. Something to save the day before things go too far. You see, I’m sorry, Cordelia, but it won’t do. I quite understand that you want to be with him. I’ll miss him myself when he leaves home, miss him terribly. I don’t quite know how I’ll bear it to be honest. It’s quite the worst part of being a mother. Having to let your favourite son go. You shouldn’t have favourites, I know. But there it is. William is everything to me. His father will miss him too of course. But not like me. Men are different about these things, aren’t they? They don’t feel them as deeply as we do. So I quite see how you feel and how you want to be with him. But you’re both very young. I don’t mean just in age, but in knowledge of the world. You both need to find out more about other people before you consider living together. I know you think you’re in love with William, but wouldn’t it be best to wait a bit? It’s so easy to mistake adolescent passion for love. I mean real grown-up love. It’s quite natural. Entirely understandable.
sometimes they are playing with fire, and that other people are affected. I think this is how it was with me and my nose stud.
I am sure many people – women anyway – would say it is my business and no one else’s what I do with my own body, and that any boy/man who makes a fuss of it is just being chauvinist and domineering. I thought this myself for a while this evening. And it can be true. Probably is, often. But then I started to think about you and me and what I expect of you, or hope for, and what I want us to be like together. And I had to admit that I would not like it if you went off and had something done to your body – like a tattoo, maybe, or your navel pierced, say, or some other vital part of you. And I know it would upset me. Not the tattoo or the piercing but you not having discussed it with me first.
I asked myself: Why? Answer: Because I love you, and hope you love me. I mean, love you more than as a friend. This kind of love, I decided, makes you more responsible for the loved one. Responsible for the other person and responsible to each other.
I feel responsible for your body. I cannot bear the thought of you being hurt. I want to keep your body healthy and safe. In my opinion, this is part of what truly loving someone – being in love with someone – means.
I hope you feel the same about me. I hope you feel responsible for me. And I hope this is why you felt disappointed in me. And this is why I want to say sorry. I should have t
old you what I wanted to do.
That is all. Please understand.
I love you.
Cordelia.
An hour after I sent this, Will was flipping pebbles at my bedroom window.
It happens to us all. I know how strong the feelings are. I had them myself at your age. And all I can tell you is, I’m very glad I wasn’t foolish enough to go along with them and do anything silly. The boy involved turned out to be quite unsuitable. You should see him now! Please don’t be upset. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with you or with your feelings for William. All I’m saying is, it’s too soon for you to be thinking of living together. Apart from the practical problems of money and so on. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t continue to be friends. But I’m sure William isn’t ready for more than that at the moment. And to be quite frank, I don’t think you are either. Not at all. If you joined him while he’s studying, I’m sure it would be a disaster for both of you. It could ruin your lives. You both need to finish your studies and find your feet in your careers and grow up a lot more before you make that kind of commitment. So the reason I wanted to see you is that I feel it’s my duty as a mother to ask you – to plead with you – I want you to promise that you’ll drop any idea of joining William at college. And to promise you won’t discuss it with him again. If he mentions it, you could just say it’s impossible and you didn’t really mean it or have changed your mind, or something like that. Which wouldn’t be a lie, because it is quite impossible, and I’m sure, when you think it over in the light of what I’ve said, you will change your mind. Anyway, you’re quite clever enough to think of something convincing. And also I want you to promise you won’t tell him we’ve had this little talk. He’d be deeply upset if he knew, and it would only make matters worse. Please believe that I have the best interests of both of you at heart. As I say, William’s father and I think very highly of you. I know you don’t have a mother to advise you at a difficult time like this, which must be very hard for you. And William mentioned about the crisis in your family at the moment with your father and your aunt. So I’ve taken it upon myself to speak directly to you. In any case, I’m sure
Not Mean, but Be (Part III)
I am now going to try to demonstrate what I meant about poetry and prose, about why poetry is poetry and why prose is prose, and why a poem means what it is.
To do this I am going to use one of my own poems as an example. This might seem pretentious but I am doing it for two reasons. First, I do not feel confident enough to do it with a poem by a great poet. Second, because I wrote the poem I know what I was trying to do and why I made it like it is and therefore I can explain better.
Here is my poem. It is called darkness (please note: no capital letter D):
darkness –
your hand –
light enough
If this were written in proper full-dress prose it would look like this:
Darkness – your hand – light enough.
In my opinion most people would think this was a bit odd and would make sense of it by adding words and punctuation that seem to be missing, like this:
In the darkness you give me your hand, which helps me to find my way as if it were a light.
And I admit that this is partly what I was trying to say. But only partly.
I said before in Part II that poetry uses words differently from prose. And it does this so that it can say more than prose can say, and say it in fewer words. Or, I suppose I mean, in a more concentrated combination of words.
you’d rather I didn’t discuss any of this with your father. We wouldn’t want to upset him, would we? Best to keep it to ourselves, don’t you agree? I’m trusting you completely, Cordelia. I hope you’ll respect that, and won’t let me – or yourself – down. I’m sure you won’t. Can I count on you in this? Will you promise me?’
She finished her éclair and served herself a slice of Jenny’s chocolate gateau, saying with a coy look and pretended guilt, ‘I’m afraid I have a dreadful sweet tooth and am a shameless chocaholic.’
I wish I could say that I didn’t promise any such thing. I wish I could say that I’d had the nous and the gump and the strength of will to take her on at her own game and challenge all she had claimed and horribly implied. I wish I’d had the wit to insult her with the same patronising condescension with which she’d insulted me. I wish I could say that I’d fought for myself and what I believed to be true. But I can’t. All I can say is that by the time she finished her speech I felt like spewing over her ample portion of chocolate cake. But I didn’t do that either. What I did was nod or shake my head at appropriate moments. Why? Because her pushy confidence poisoned me with doubt. Doubt about myself. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps I wasn’t really ‘in love’ but only blinded by a teeny pash for sex. And doubt about Will. Perhaps he wasn’t really ‘in love’ with me either. Had his mother given him a good talking to as well that very morning? Had she persuaded him she was right? Had she made him give her my mobile number so that she could ‘deal with’ me? I could hear her saying it: ‘Leave Cordelia to me, darling. I’ll deal with her for you.’
And there was something else that made me sit there like a dumb belle while Mrs Blacklin held forth. She frightened me. Adults forget, if ever they knew, how scary they can be to someone going through the distemper of teenage when they come on strong, full of certainty they are right. Or
I will explain how I tried to do this in darkness.
(1) The most obvious thing is that I have broken the words up into lines. When people see a passage set out in lines like this, they assume it must be a poem and they automatically assume they must therefore read it differently from prose. I am not sure how we learn this. I just know that everybody does it. I also think this is sometimes abused. I mean, some of the poems we read in Year 7 about families and animals seemed to divide the lines any old how, just because it was convenient. The so-called poems might as well have been prose for all the difference dividing them into lines made. This annoyed me but I didn’t know why at the time.
(2) There are no capital letters and there is no punctuation, except the dash at the end of two lines. The dashes indicate that these lines are part of a larger passage. They are like headings or bullet points when you write notes. They indicate – they point to – more than they say by themselves. So the reader is alerted that she must look for more than is said.
But they are not just pointers. They are also like beats in music. They are part of the rhythm. They stop your eye as you read so that you don’t just go straight on but feel the break between this line and the next. And when you read the poem aloud the dashes act like silent beats in music.
I think poetry is music as well as meaning. Music is an essential part of its being. And punctuation should be used in poems like rests of various strengths are used in a music score: a comma like a quaver, a semi-colon like a crochet, a full colon like a minim, a dash like a semi-breve, and a full stop like a breve.
(3) When we see words deliberately presented in lines we know we have to think differently about the words and the grouping of the words than we do when the words are in prose sentences. It means the words are not necessarily part of the same sentence. Or if they are, they also have meanings of their own. That is:
maybe adults like Mrs Blacklin don’t forget; maybe they remember very well and deliberately use their power to frighten in order to dominate and get their way.
I was afraid for another reason: that if I stood up to her, if I challenged her with the same cool condescension she used against me, she would take her revenge by making sure I never saw her son again. Whereas, if I played the fading flower, the submissive minor, she might think she’d won and allow Will and me to be ‘friends’, at least till he left for college. Which would give me a chance to find out whether he agreed with his mother or not. Besides, I couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing him again, never feeling his body against mine, never hearing his voice whispering in my ear as we cud
dled, never playing music with him again, never doing ordinary things together and watching his lovely body as it went through the motions of everyday life.
Well, a cat may cower to appease a stronger enemy, but that doesn’t mean it’s disarmed. While it cowers it’s ready to strike again when the enemy looks away.
It’s a strange aspect of human nature that even as we are being mistreated and preyed upon, done down and manipulated, we can at the same time observe what’s happening, and think about it, and judge how we should behave, and plan how best to escape, and plot what to do about it afterwards. While Mrs Blacklin pressured me to do as she wanted it was Little C who sat in mute submission before her and it was Big C who decided I must protect my need for Will, and find him as soon as I could, before his mother forced us apart.
And that’s why, when Mrs Blacklin reached across the table, laid a hand on my arm, and said with maternal heaviness, ‘Now, dear Cordelia, will you promise me?’ I lied and replied with a nod and a yes.
Or rather, I meant to lie. I intended to lie. At that moment I was a liar. And I didn’t like myself for it.
*
Each line can mean something.
All the lines taken together as a group can mean something more.
Or they can mean something different from when they are separate lines on their own.
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