This Is All

by Aidan Chambers

‘But you’re trying to find out?’

  ‘I’d like to.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘But you said belief is essential, so you must believe something.’

  ‘Well, to start with, I believe I’m alive.’

  I laugh. ‘That’s obvious!’

  ‘Is it? Some religions say life is an illusion.’

  ‘What do you say?’

  ‘That it’s all I know, so whether it’s an illusion or not doesn’t matter. I might just be a figment of someone’s imagination, I might just be a character in a story. But it doesn’t matter whether I am or not, because the life I’m living is all I can actually know about.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know why you’re alive? Don’t you want to know what life means?’

  ‘Doesn’t everybody? But I don’t know the answer. No one does. They only believe they do. They can never prove it.’

  ‘So what do you believe?’

  ‘That life is like a poem.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Suppose I said I was going to give you a poem of a hundred lines long and asked you what it was about – what it means?’

  ‘Before you let me read it?’

  ‘Before I even show it to you. What would you say?’

  ‘How can I know what it means? I haven’t read it yet.’

  ‘Right. So I give you the first fifteen lines and ask you again what you think the poem means?’

  ‘I might try and guess, but I can’t really know.’

  ‘You’d have to read all the poem first?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can only really work out what a poem means when you’ve read all of it, and thought about it, and reread parts of it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think asking the meaning of your life is like that. You can only know at the end. You have to live it first.’

  ‘But that means you’ll be dead before you know.’

  ‘Exactly. That’s why, to me, the meaning of my life, the meaning of life itself, the point of it, is living it. And a poem is like that as well. The meaning of every poem for the poet is writing the poem. The meaning for the reader is the reading of it. Writing it and reading it are more important than anything anyone says it means. You should know. You write poems.’

  ‘Try to.’

  ‘Haven’t you felt that yet, even if you haven’t thought it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I know the excitement is when the poem comes and when I’m writing it. In a funny way, when I’ve finished it, it doesn’t matter that much any more. What I want to do then is write another.’

  ‘It’s the writing of it, the doing, that matters.’

  ‘Yes. Though I haven’t thought of it like that before.’

  ‘And you write poems because that’s what you have to do. You don’t feel you have choice. You’re a poet because you can’t help writing poems. It’s essential to you.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Isn’t that what life is like? We live it because we have to, even though we might not be very good at it, and some of us are very bad at it indeed.’

  ‘And you’re saying that what you believe—’

  ‘That what belief is—’

  ‘That what belief is, is trying to live – how did you put it?’

  ‘By willing myself to live with as much loving gladness as I possibly can in the world I think really does exist.’

  ‘Why willing yourself?’

  ‘Because no one can make me do it. Only myself. And if I don’t will myself to do it, I’ll turn into a lazy slob who believes nothing and does nothing except the things that please me at each passing moment. I’d be like a stupid dog, following every little whiff that takes my fancy.’

  ‘And why loving gladness?’

  ‘Because so much garbage goes on in the world, so much that’s horrible and disgusting and unbearable, if I didn’t will myself to love life and do so gladly, I’d end up suffering from chronic depression and go mad.’

  ‘And where does meditation fit in?’

  ‘Fit is the right word. It helps keep my belief in trim. During meditation I strip everything away. All the distractions and petty aspects of life, and I concentrate on the essence of things. The essence of life. Meditation takes me beyond the limits of the life I know and believe is real. It’s the way I search for the life that is more than the life I think I know.’

  ‘So for you meditation is a kind of journey into the unknown?’

  ‘In a way, yes. The problem is that you can’t talk about it. Words aren’t adequate to explain it or to describe what happens. You have to find it and do it for yourself. That’s why all I can do for you is show you how I meditate and help you do it for yourself. The rest is up to you. In that sense, we’re all on our own. But we can help each other to keep going. That’s what I try to do for you.’

  ‘And who helps you?’

  ‘Someone you don’t know. And you.’

  ‘How do I help?’

  ‘By being here and keeping me company. Isn’t that what everyone wants? A companion.’

  I hug her.

  ‘And best of all,’ she says, ‘a loving companion.’

  And she hugs me back.

  Boarder

  ‘We could offer him a room,’ Dad says.

  ‘If you’d like that,’ Doris says.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ I say. ‘It’s up to you.’

  But I’m secretly pleased. Ariel takes the weight off me.

  ‘I’ve checked him out with the arboretum,’ Dad says. ‘Clean bill of health. Highly recommended, in fact. They’re sorry to let him go.’

  ‘Sack him, you mean,’ I say. ‘You employers do love the euphemisms.’

  ‘Don’t start,’ Dad says.

  ‘You two!’ Doris says.

  Ariel’s first visit was a great success. He’s naturally charming, by which I mean he knows instinctively how to please people. I usually suspect that. But he’s not smarmy, not exploitative, just likes people. Being interested is part of his make-up. He’s a good listener and funny.

  He’s an instinctive person by nature, it seems to me. The opposite of Will, who has to reason everything out, and isn’t interested in other people for their own sake, but only when they are part of his world. Which makes him sound selfish and self-centred, which I don’t mean and he isn’t. It’s a question of focus of attention. Will is focused on his work, on trees, on conservation and on the people who are allied with him in doing this. I think I was the exception, and therefore a surprise to him, which he could never quite come to terms with, and which is why he could never say ‘I love you’. He couldn’t say it because he couldn’t understand it rationally. (Why should he be in love with me, who was not part of his work-world, and what does ‘being in love’ mean anyway? He couldn’t answer either of those questions rationally – intellectually – so he couldn’t say the words.)

  ‘What’s your ambition in life?’ I ask Ariel after we’ve eaten that first time and are sitting on our own in the garden again.

  ‘My ambition is to have no ambitions,’ he replies. ‘And you can call me Arry if you feel up to it.’

  ‘And you can call me Cordelia, because I don’t like the short forms of my name.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘So how come you’re working at the arboretum?’

  ‘I did a tree-climbing course at school.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For fun. And to prove myself.’

  ‘To?’

  ‘The lads, God blessem.’

  ‘Who required proof that you were one of them or rather not one of them or they’d beat the living shit out of you, you poof?’

  ‘Something of that quality. But I do like physical work. And I like working in the open. The pay’s not good but nothing to bring on a sneeze. And the job was going when I needed it.’

  After that evening he phones to thank us for the meal, and then another time to say he�
��s heard from Will. No jobs going at the college. Doris takes the call; I’m out.

  ‘Come for dinner,’ she tells him. ‘You need cheering up. And we’ll help you think out what to do next.’

  He’s there when I get home. I’m glad to see him. He always makes me smile, just to look at him. He tells me Will’s okay but is missing me.

  ‘Was that a message for me?’

  ‘No. I didn’t mention you. Thought it best not to. He offered the information off his own bat.’

  ‘Did he mention Hannah?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Nobody.’ (Meow meow.) ‘Just a friend.’

  While we’re eating, Dad and Doris go through Arry’s options with him. He has to leave the arboretum on Saturday – two more days. No savings, but he’ll receive a month’s severance pay and a reasonably good redundancy payment. So he has a few weeks to find a new job before he’ll be in a financial hole. Except he needs somewhere to live, and quickly. He’s phoned a few places for rent but they were all more expensive than he can afford. He needs to hunt for cheap digs. One of the men at the arboretum has offered him a floor to sleep on, but Arry would rather camp out till he finds somewhere.

  ‘The ground’s no harder than a floor, the sky’s a better roof than somebody’s ceiling, and I’ve no great affection for other men’s sweaty feet,’ he says.

  ‘Hardly the best solution,’ Doris says, rising to clear the plates and serve the pud. ‘The slippery slope to down-and-out dossery.’

  Dad gets up, muttering something about fetching more wine, and gives me the nod towards the kitchen. In the kitchen he puts his proposal, which he and Doris have already thought up.

  Back at the table, Arry says, ‘No, I couldn’t. I’d be imposing.’

  ‘Not if we want you to,’ I say.

  ‘And we do,’ Doris says. ‘We like you. Just accept it as a gift. Would that be asking too much of your highness?’

  ‘You’re a hard woman, Mrs Kenn,’ Arry says, shining with pleasure. One thing I like about him is that he doesn’t hide his feelings and isn’t ashamed of them whatever they are. Which makes a change in this household.

  ‘But I must pay my way,’ he says to Dad. ‘What would you have in mind?’

  Doris says, ‘You need to save all you can.’

  ‘No no,’ Arry says. ‘Only if I chip in.’

  ‘I’d feel the same,’ Dad says. ‘So how about this? The back fence needs repair. The lawn needs attention. There’s weeding to be done. The shed needs a good sorting out.’

  ‘Not to mention the garage,’ I add, as this is supposed to be my job, which I’ve resolutely ignored for months.

  ‘Let’s say five days’ work for a start. And say you do half the day for us, and spend the other half looking for a job and a place to live. That makes ten days total. Add the weekends as legitimate holidays. That’s fourteen days’ room and board. How’s that?’

  ‘Do it,’ I say emphatically, ‘while he’s in the giving mood.’

  ‘An offer you can’t refuse,’ Doris says, ‘or we’ll break your legs.’

  ‘In that case,’ Arry says, ‘I’d be a fool to turn my nose up.’

  ‘Done,’ Dad says.

  They shake hands, laughing, Doris gives him a hug and a kiss, and I feel a slight touch of jealousy at the attention he’s receiving but am glad he’s accepted.

  ‘We’ll move you in after work tomorrow,’ Dad says.

  Which doesn’t require much effort. Arry loads a modest cardboard box and an equally modest backpack into the boot of the car.

  ‘That it?’ I say.

  ‘All my worldlies,’ Arry says.

  Dad’s so shocked he can’t speak. When Doris sees what we’re carrying up to the room she already calls Arry’s, she looks like she’s going to faint – not her usual reaction to anything at all.

  ‘I suspect,’ she says to me while Dad is showing Arry the upstairs arrangements, ‘we’d better choose an appropriate moment to audit his belongings.’

  ‘I’ll go up,’ I say as Dad comes down, making would-you-believe-it eyes at Doris.

  Arry’s unpacking his box. I sit on the bed and watch. Tree-climbing gear, rope, helmet. Walkman CD player and radio, ten or so discs (trad jazz and songs circa 1920), toilet gear wrapped in plastic bag, electric razor possibly older than he is (20), two tatty paperback books: Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum and The Journal of Denton Welch, neither of which I’ve heard of. ‘Car boot sale last Sunday,’ he says when I look at them.

  ‘Travelling light,’ I say, ‘would be an exaggeration in your case.’

  ‘And that’s the prettiest compliment I’ve received for weeks,’ he says.

  He starts on his backpack: three T-shirts, two sweatshirts, a spare pair of jeans, two pairs of Adidas trainers (one old, one newish), three pairs of blue y-fronts, five pairs of heavy-duty grey socks.

  ‘Why so little?’

  ‘One on, one to wash, one spare. What else d’you need? The less you have the less to carry.’

  ‘Or be stolen?’

  ‘There is that. Work clothes were provided and my social life was not demanding.’

  ‘I’ve a feeling Doris will be tempted to improve your wardrobe.’

  ‘Now why would she want to do that?’

  ‘She doesn’t share your admirable detachment from possessions and you inspire the mothering instinct in her.’

  ‘I do have that effect on women of a certain age, I can’t deny the fact. Not that I refuse an offer from time to time, so long as there’s no strings attached.’

  ‘Apron or otherwise,’ I say.

  ‘Particularly otherwise.’

  ‘So if the question comes up, you’d suggest I give her Oscar’s advice?’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘The best way to deal with temptation is to give in to it.’

  ‘Begorra,’ he says, camping the Irish, ‘but that’s an admirable sentiment from the great man.’

  Before the week is up, his make-over is well under way, to which he shows no sign of objection. Just the opposite. It seems to me he revels in the shopping trip Doris insists on, and soon she and he are bantering over such vital matters as whether he cleans the bath properly after use and whether he changes his T-shirts often enough. And when T-shirts are in question can underpants be far behind?

  ‘You’re a heartless woman when it comes to the laundry,’ Arry says.

  ‘And your hair needs attention as well,’ Doris replies.

  Two days later his blond locks are shampooed, shorn, disciplined and restyled by Doris’s favourite young man at Hair Wave, while she stands by to oversee and instruct, an occasion that takes far longer than necessary because all three enhance it with campery. And I must say, but don’t, the metamorphosis is impressive, nor am I surprised to hear that Arry is seen one night swanning about town with his Hair Wave stylist.

  As for Dad, by the time the second week is coming to its end, he’s equipped Arry with a bank account (‘Can’t imagine how he’s managed all this time without one’), and has taken to working in the garden with him in the evening, an activity it’s made wordlessly plain to me is confined to the two of them. ‘Good for them both,’ Doris says. ‘The exercise is good for your dad and having a father-figure to talk to is just what Arry needs.’ I do not offer comment, preferring to leave her to her illusions.

  The Saturday when the agreed two weeks’ board and lodging are up, Dad says, ‘You’ve settled in nicely. Nothing more suitable has turned up. We like having you. If you’re happy, why not stay a bit longer?’

  And so Arry becomes a permanent resident.

  >> Cal >>

  Books

  Books are essential to me. I cannot live without them, because I cannot live without reading.

  But, Arry has just said to me, you can always borrow them so why buy them?

  I don’t buy books just to collect them. I’m not a collector. I’m not interested in them as objects that might be valuable o
ne day, regardless of what they are about, nor do I want to own every book ever written by one particular author or on one particular subject. I buy them because I want to read them, and I keep them because I’ve read them.

  I can’t afford to buy all the ones I’d like to, so I have to borrow quite a few, and this has taught me something about myself, which I haven’t heard anyone else admit. When I’ve read a book which I really like, a book which matters, I feel it belongs to me. I mean, the book itself, the copy I’ve read. It’s as if I pour myself onto the pages as I read them, all my thoughts and emotions, so that by the time I’ve finished that copy holds inside it the essence of my reading.

  A borrowed book has to be returned, so I lose this essence of myself when I give it back. Besides which, a borrowed book has inside it something of everyone else who’s read it. They’ve fingered it and pawed over it, breathed on it, done heaven knows what else as well as read it. And knowing this spoils my reading. The other readers get in my way. I can feel their presence on the cover and on the pages. They even make it smell differently from my own books. In fact, to my mind they’ve polluted the book and everything in it. That is also why I never buy second-hand books.

  So I’m always nervous when I borrow a book. It doesn’t matter if all I need it for is to do some school work or to find out something. If I borrow a book that I want to read for its own sake, and when I get into it I realise this is going to be a book that is important to me, I get upset, because I know I’ll have to give it back. If I’m not too far in, I stop at once and buy a copy of my own, start reading again from the beginning, and try to forget that I’ve read some of it in a borrowed book.

  There’s another reason why I don’t like borrowed books. I always want to reread any book that matters to me, I want to look through it, and read parts of it again and again. In my opinion, the test of a good book is that you want to read it more than once and want it available to look at and read at any time. Obviously, you can’t do that with borrowed books. They have to be returned, so they aren’t there whenever you want them. And even if you don’t mind giving them back and borrowing them again when you want to reread them, you’re unlikely to find the very same copy – ‘your’ copy – to borrow the next time.

  All this came up because I decided that as my books are essential to me I ought to list them so that I have a record, and arrange them like a proper library on my shelves. I recruited Arry’s help. I called out the titles and authors, which he typed into my laptop, arranged in alphabetical order of author in one list, and in alphabetical order of title in another. I enjoyed doing this. It was a soothing task that took my mind off ‘other topics’ (i.e. Will, exams, university applications and interviews, undone homework, to mention but a few). And handling each book and looking at it was like meeting old friends again.