Now, I don’t blame Doris one bit. She was quite right. But then, I couldn’t see it.
By the time I came to, Dad was sitting at the kitchen table nursing a large scotch.
‘Daddy?’ I said, when I could speak again. I hadn’t called him Daddy for years. ‘Daddy?’
He shrugged and didn’t look at me. But a flicker of a smile widened his mouth before it set in its tight-lipped melancholy bow again.
I sat down opposite him. ‘Dad?’
He drained his glass and said, ‘Doris is right. You’ve been a bit of a pain in the arse lately.’ He turned his empty glass between his fingers. ‘Not quite my old Cordelia.’
‘But I am. I’m your even older Cordelia,’ I said, trying to wheedle by being coy. ‘What have I done? Tell me, Daddy. I’ve done nothing bad, not that I know of, have I?’
He pushed his glass away and stood up and smiled his regretful smile, which from long experience I knew meant he didn’t want to pursue the conversation, and said, ‘Nothing will come of knowing nothing, my love,’ and left the room and slowly and without stomping climbed the stairs and joined Doris in their bedroom.
Do our patterns of behaviour ever change? How early in our lives are they set? If I’m anything to go by, they are set quite early and don’t ever change. New ones are added but the old ones stay very much the same. Perhaps we change as we get old(er) and learn from experience? I’m not old enough yet to know. But for as long as I can remember I’ve reacted in one of two ways when I’m severely ticked off. Either I accept the rebuke, don’t try to excuse myself, whether I think the criticism is justified or not, go silent, withdraw into myself and sulk for a while until something lifts me back into good spirits again, when I forget about it. Or I fight back, even if I know I’m in the wrong, argue my case quite vehemently, demand chapter and verse, examples and instances of my misdeeds, and then, if it’s obvious that this is an open and shut case and there’s no denying it, I apologise and feel horribly guilty and do something to try to restore myself in the good books of my accuser.
I don’t know what causes me to behave in one way or the other. Perhaps it depends on the person ticking me off – whether I like them or not – and how it’s done – with sympathy or aggression. Perhaps it depends on the state of my hormones. I’m much more vulnerable and apt to give in and withdraw and sulk if it happens a day or two before my period, whereas a day or two after my period I’m much more in the mood to fight back. Perhaps it depends on the weather or what I’ve just eaten or how well I’ve slept or any of a catalogue of possibilities. We often like to think we know why we behave as we do but in my opinion most of the time the reasons are far too tangled and complicated and intricate for anyone to sort out. We can only try to, as I do in my mopes and as I’m doing here, right now, for myself and for you. But we also know we can only fail. There isn’t really anything else to do. Except give ourselves up to ignorance.
This time I was in the mood to fight back. But there was no one to argue with. My accusers knew me better than I knew myself, had assessed the mood I was in and how I’d react, and weren’t going to grant me the satisfaction of a row (which Dad, who hated rows, would have avoided anyway). This time, though, I didn’t want to argue my case just for the sake of it. I genuinely didn’t know what they were talking about. I needed examples. But I did feel vaguely guilty, as if the evidence was inside me, if only I could dig it out. I knew in my heart that Doris wouldn’t have spoken to me like that if what she said wasn’t true, and Dad wouldn’t have taken her side against me if he didn’t know she was right.
As I sensed there was a case to answer and my accusers weren’t there to argue it, I sat at the kitchen table and became my own accuser, my own devil’s advocate, searching the files of my memory and the archive of my conscience for evidence in support of the prosecution.
Item Yes, I was spending as much time as possible away from home. I was staying on at school at the end of the day to do my homework. I was taking part in ‘extracurricular activities’ as I’d never done before – drama club, debating society, yoga classes, charity walks, visiting the aged, and work beyond the call of duty on the school mag. I was visiting Julie to meditate and staying for supper afterwards whenever she offered. Saturdays were spent in Edward’s office, and a couple of times before our day in the sewer he’d kept me on to do ‘overtime’ because (he said) he was so busy and wanted to ‘clear up’ ready for Monday. (Yes, we fiddled around with bits of paper, but these occasions were merely excuses to continue conversations about ourselves begun over lunch, though I didn’t admit this even to myself.)
Item Yes, it was true, I was beginning to think that my aunt and my father in their combined life as Doris’n’Dad were boring, tedious and annoying. But I had to defend myself against this charge.
Before they married and lived together full-time I could have one kind of talk with Doris (e.g., serious on piano, gossipy-instructional-practical on women’s matters and sex and boyfriends, chatty-intellectual on books and plays and tv and films), and another kind with Dad (e.g., flippant-jokey father-daughter teasing, abrasive-argumentative on school and domestic arrangements, him cuddling and comforting me when I was upset, me nagging and manipulating him when he was low and on a drink-binge, me uppish and him waggish about his ‘girlfriends’). But since they had combined they had formed a phalange, a homogenised being who I felt was always against me. Even when I was alone with one of them the other always seemed to be there like a ghost, inhibiting us.
Item Yes, I had said hurtful things because of the above. But I hadn’t thought about the effects, because to me each time seemed a one-off outburst, like saying a rude word to release tension. I hadn’t thought of them sticking together, accumulating like a roll-over in the lottery so that each time they seemed to D&D like a bigger and worse insult, even when the words were the same: ‘you’re so boring’, ‘you’re so provincial’, ‘you’re so drossy’, ‘you’re so behind the times’, ‘you’re so embarrassing’, ‘you’re such a pair of dodos’, etc. But as I retrieved these bouts of teenage boorishness from the filing cabinet of my memory, I felt how these must have seemed to D&D like having a load of garbage poured over their heads, until that moment on my birthday when they could stand it no longer and Doris threw some of it back in my face and said: Enough. No more.
Yes, the evidence was against me. I felt suitably contrite. But something kept me from taking the next step and apologising, as I would usually have done when found guilty. Two of the phrases Doris had thrown at me still rankled: ‘closeted with your precious Ms Martin’, and ‘now you’ve added Edward Malcolm to your clique’. Closeted, precious, and clique were the trigger words. They, and Doris’s sneering tone, spoke to me not only of resentment that Julie and Edward had befriended me and that I found them more interesting than D&D, but also seemed to insinuate ugly suggestions: that Julie and I were engaged in unpleasantness behind closed doors, and that I had some sort of nefarious designs on Edward or he on me.
We resent being faced with facts we’d prefer to ignore as much as being wrongly accused of doing something we haven’t. Bubbling with that roil of troubled emotions, I gathered up my presents and fled to the security of my room.
After I’d calmed down I tried on Edward’s necklace for the first time and as I gazed at myself in the mirror felt confident, mature and sexy. There was something of ancient Egypt about it, something Pharaonic. It made me think of the beautiful boy-girl face of Tutankhamun, stately and golden and inscrutable. I loved it and wanted to run there and then to Edward and show myself off wearing it.
Julie’s present was still unopened. A parcel with ‘ARTWORK. PLEASE DO NOT BEND’ printed in large red letters on the front. I had an inkling of what was inside. But didn’t want to find out if I was right. Why? Before this I’d have been so eager to see anything Julie sent me, I’d have ripped the parcel open as soon as I got my hands on it. But not that day. I left it on my table till I was ready for bed, thinking I might look
at it then, but instead, stowed it away in my underwear drawer.
Next morning, a touch ashamed for treating her present like that, I opened it carefully, eased out the contents. My inkling was right. Julie had made a reproduction of her icon, about half actual size, and mounted it on art-board. I put it away again in my drawer. I didn’t want to look at it. What I wanted was to show myself off to Edward, wearing his necklace. But I wouldn’t be able to do that till the next Saturday. Four days. Four days! How could I wait that long? I couldn’t wait that long. No no no! But I didn’t want him to think me naïve, gauche, gushing. I must wait. I must!
I held out for another day but then could bear it no longer. I’d thought of nothing else. It was as if the necklace had cast a spell from which I could be released only by showing it off to Edward. So after school on Wednesday I cycled to his office, making sure to arrive just before closing time, and asked to see him, pretending I needed to consult him about sewage for a school essay.
10
I was so confused after Edward’s first kiss I needed someone to talk to. I went to see Julie next day.
There’s a song that says something about a kiss being just a kiss and a sigh being just a sigh. I remember it now because a few days before my kissing Saturday with Edward, Julie had shown me another way to begin a meditation. Positioned in front of her icon, you chose a card at random from a pack, and used the word or phrase or sentence printed on it as the focus for your meditation. I’d picked a card with a saying by one of those enigmatic ancient holy men – something like:
When I was a child I thought
a river was a river and a mountain was a mountain.
When I became a man I thought
a river was not a river and a mountain was not a mountain.
Now I am old I know
a river is a river and a mountain is a mountain.
I can’t remember what I made of this, if anything, during my meditation, but as I cycled to Julie’s I told myself that, if a river was a kiss and a mountain was a sigh, then I wasn’t a child any longer and wasn’t yet old, because a kiss was not just a kiss so far as kissing Edward was concerned, and a sigh was not just a sigh.
In fact, to tell the truth, that afternoon there’d been many more than one kiss and many more than one sigh, every one of them meaning more than just a kiss. They were followed in bed at home by a night of sighs, every one of them meaning more than just a sigh. But meaning what? And what should I do? About Edward. About myself. O lordy! Help! Help!
*
There had been a hard frost. Church bells were pealing across the park, the sounds falling like broken glass.
I had thanked Julie for her present but still hadn’t looked at it. She was reading when I arrived.
‘Serious and urgent?’ she said, her forefinger in the book to keep her place.
The icon hanging on its wall was a rebuke.
Untongued by double-edged guilt, I collapsed from being a woman with Edward to being a schoolgirl again.
‘Go and make us some coffee. I’ll finish this chapter and be with you in a minute.’
When she joined me at the kitchen table, cupping her hands round her mug, she said, ‘Why so pale and wan?’
I managed to utter, ‘Something’s happened.’
‘Would you come to tell me nothing had happened?’
I couldn’t smile. Confusion freezes the lips. At such times you can only go crabwise.
‘You know I work for Edward Malcolm?’
‘I do.’
‘On Saturdays.’
‘Yes.’
‘At his office.’
‘Yes.’
‘On our own.’
‘And?’
‘Well.’
‘Well?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘Yes?’
‘He. Sort of. Kissed me.’
‘Sort of?’
‘Hekissedme.’
‘Ah, I see!’ Fixed, quizzing look. ‘And you sort-of-kissed him? Or was it forced on you?’
‘No. Yes. I mean, no it wasn’t forced on me he started it but I did kiss him back.’
‘So you’re not saying he abused you or anything like that?’
I shook my head.
‘Then what are you saying?’
‘Just wanted to talk about it. Just wanted to tell you.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. I’m confused. I thought you might help.’
‘How?’
‘Tell me what you think.’
‘You want me to approve, say it’s all right, is that it?’
‘Do I?’
‘I’m asking.’
Tears were not far away. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘Correct me if I get this wrong. Mr Malcolm kissed you. You liked it. You’d like some more. But you feel guilty because he’s a lot older and married, and you’re afraid of what might happen. And you’re shocked, because you’d quite like an adventure with this mature attractive man, who treats you as someone special, and teaches you things, and you like the power you have over him, knowing he fancies you.’
Being told the unvarnished truth can make you belligerent.
‘Some of that’s true,’ I said, tearless now. ‘But not all of it. Not the last part anyway. I don’t feel I have any power over him.’
Julie smiled one of those annoying smiles adults wear when they think they know a secret about life you don’t know yet.
‘Believe me,’ she said, ‘you do have power over him. And if you haven’t felt it yet you will. And you’ll like it when you do.’
‘You make it sound like I’ll lead him on.’
‘Well?’ She laughed. ‘Won’t you? If you go on seeing him and you don’t do something to stop yourself. Or stop him, because it takes two to tango, doesn’t it? And that’s what you want, isn’t it, to go on?’
Belligerence never willingly concedes. ‘Is it?’
‘You’re asking what I think?’
Reluctant now, a grudging ‘Yes.’
She thought a moment, staring into her coffee as if looking for the answer in a crystal ball (I always felt there was something of the witch in Julie), and said, ‘Remember when I told you about how I became a Christian and then gave it up? And how I took a friend with me on my birthday trip to Norwich on a pilgrimage to Dame Julian, and how I was in an accident and had to spend weeks in hospital?’
‘Where you had a sort of vision about God and the meaning of life? Yes, I remember.’
‘What I didn’t tell you was that the friend was a young man two or three years younger than me. I was nineteen at the time. He was still a boy really. His name was Nik. He thought he was in love with me. I wasn’t in love with him, but I liked him a lot, he was clever and amusing and innocent – not that I was very experienced or wise – but he was innocent in that way some young men can be that’s very attractive. You want to mother them as well as make love to them.’
‘I know that feeling. Will was like that sometimes.’
‘Nik was very attractive, very fanciable, very much to my taste. I tried to put him off, I really did. But you know how it is, the more someone you want tries to put you off, the more you want them. And that’s the way he was.
‘I knew when I invited him on my birthday outing it was the wrong thing to do. I knew it would only encourage him. But I pretended to myself that an overnight trip, when we’d have to camp out and spend all the next day looking at churches and go to a service, would put him off. He wasn’t religious, not the way I was, not a conventional Christian, and I told myself he’d come to his senses and realise I wasn’t the girl he wanted.
‘But I was deceiving myself. And deep down I knew it. The truth is, I was flattered that an attractive young man wanted me. I’d never had a proper boyfriend. Imagine! Nineteen and still a virgin. Which I was very proud of, mainly because I was church mad. I told myself that Christ was my boyfriend. I believed chastity was a virtue. I was scornful of my friends and the
ir obsession with boys and the time they spent on them and their endless crises over them. I thought I was above all that. Better than that.
‘But that was only part of it. I also thought I was plain, a plain Jane, that I wasn’t attractive, that boys wouldn’t want me. And what I feared was rejection. But Christ would never reject me. I was better off with Him. And because I thought I was plain and I belonged to Christ, I behaved like that. Didn’t mean to, didn’t even think about it. I wore boring clothes and no make-up or jewellery or anything like that.
‘Snobbery and low self-esteem. A lethal mixture.
‘And then, along came this lovely young man, this delicious boy, who sought me out, and fancied me and wooed me and said he was in love with me, and the more I tried to put him off the more ardent be became. And here I was, taking him on a pilgrimage in my battered little car and camping overnight on the way. I had a small tent with me. I said he should use it and I’d sleep in the car. He said, no, why shouldn’t we both sleep in the tent? I asked, pretending to joke, if he was making a pass at me – very well knowing the answer, of course. He came over shy but said very seriously, yes, he was making a pass at me. And I knew at that second, admitted it to myself, that the real reason I’d brought him along was that I knew he’d expect something to happen between us – who wouldn’t? – and that I’d deliberately led him on.’
‘Why?’
‘To test myself. Would I give in and have sex with him? Or would I resist? Which was strongest, my religious commitment to God, like a nun, or my ordinary so-much-despised human desires?
‘What I realised at that moment was that I was using this boy for my own ends. I’d gulled him. Just as bad, worse even, was that in some perverse way I can’t for the life of me now understand, I thought this might convert him. I actually thought I might make him a religious person like me. I thought by showing him I could resist the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil, he would admire me and join me in my beliefs.
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