This Is All

by Aidan Chambers

  You lived with Julie because that saved us from carrying everything you needed to and from her house and ours every day. We also thought it least likely to disturb you. We had no idea how the loss of your mother would affect you, and we all agreed it was best that you were in a settled home with a woman you knew well and who loved you. I made sure you saw me every day at the times you were used to seeing me, in the morning before I went to work and every evening when I played with you and helped to bath you and put you to bed.

  To do this, Julie took time off from school. Because your mother was well known there, everyone sympathised and there was no problem. A supply teacher was engaged and some of Julie’s colleagues called in after school and at weekends to bring her work to mark and to see if there was anything they could do.

  Three weeks went by. We knew by then that George and Doris couldn’t help. George was in too bad a condition and Doris was too busy looking after him and their businesses. We decided to try day care, with Julie and Arry and me taking turns to look after you in the evening. You responded badly to this and we hated it. You cried endlessly, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t go to sleep unless Julie or I held you. We were so upset by the end of the second week we knew we couldn’t go on that way.

  It’s not putting it too strongly to say that you made the decision. By the Sunday afternoon, the three of us were at the end of our tether, exhausted by the worry, the anxiety, the endless discussion about what to do, and the debilitating undercurrent of grief. We were lying on the floor in Julie’s front room, with you on cushions in the middle like the hub of a wheel, when you looked at Julie and smiled and held out your arms to her.

  We made the oh ah noises adults seem to produce at such times, then looked at each other with suddenly grim faces as the significance hit us.

  ‘That does it,’ Julie said. ‘No more day care. No more taking turns. I’m looking after her full time.’

  Arry said, ‘Great.’ I said, ‘You can’t. What about your job?’ Julie said, ‘I’m leaving. As of now.’ ‘You can’t,’ I said. ‘How will you live?’

  Julie launched into a riff. She began by pointing out that I had been earning enough for Cordelia to stay at home with you. Now I’d have to pay for day care, so why not pay her for doing the same job and doing it better? We could try it for a year and see how it went. She could go on working for her PhD. Looking after you wouldn’t prevent that. She could earn a bit more by taking a few pupils for private tutoring – there were always people who wanted that for their children. Also, she pointed out, I’d need someone to do the office work Cordelia used to do for Tree Care. That would cost money. Why shouldn’t she do it? We’d get by well enough. Money wasn’t the problem. The problem was ensuring your welfare and your happiness. She loved you, she said, loved you as her own; you were Cordelia’s daughter and she had loved Cordelia as her own as well. So why not keep it in the family? The family Cordelia had made – of me and Arry and her.

  She was more passionate by the time she finished than I had ever seen her. She wept then, too, her grief coming out after weeks of suppressing it while she helped me cope.

  I couldn’t say no. I had to accept there was no better solution in the circumstances.

  As for Arry, he muttered his agreement with every point Julie made and by the end was smiling the self-satisfied smile of someone who had thought this all along.

  The days after that I think of as the time when we tidied up, pulled ourselves together, and began to live fairly normal lives again. Julie’s resignation from her school took effect from the end of that term. To keep everything as convenient as possible, I moved into her house, using her spare bedroom. Arry worked with me full time – we were offered more jobs than we could accept – and though he continued lodging with Doris and George he might as well have been living with us, as he would have had there been room.

  And you? With all the love and attention you were receiving you thrived. That you were so happy gave us the heart to pick ourselves up and go on. You made us smile. You restored us. You gave us a purpose. Eventually you spoke your first word. You called Julie Mamma. It was an acknowledgement of something we knew, of course: that by then you took her for your mother. You were too young to know otherwise. We have often talked of when we should tell you and how. You are nearly three years and a half. You go to preschool playgroup three afternoons a week. Julie didn’t return to teaching after a year, as we thought she would; she’s a Doctor of Philosophy now and works at home, doing exactly what she said she’d do: tutoring private pupils, dealing with the office work of Tree Care, and – her new project after gaining her PhD – researching and writing the biography of a lesser-known poet whose work she admires.

  There’s only one more thing to tell you before I continue with the story of Cordelia’s book. Once things settled down it became clear that we needed somewhere bigger than Julie’s little house. We needed a room each for you, for Julie and for me. And one for Arry if he came to live with us, which we all wanted. This is when my father stepped in.

  So far, I haven’t mentioned my parents, your grandfather and grandmother Blacklin. I’ll have to now. My father arranged and conducted Cordelia’s funeral. I wasn’t sure this was right; I thought he should allow one of his staff to do it. But he insisted; he said he owed it to Cordelia. It was then that I found out how deeply he too felt about her.

  It’s customary during a funeral for the undertaker to wait with the underbearers at the back of the church or the crematorium after he has seen the coffin and the mourners to their places, and then to come forward after the service and accompany the chief mourners to the cars for their journey home. After my father led us in, he went to the back as usual, even though he was officially one of the mourners. But at the end of the service he didn’t come forward to see us out. One of the underbearers did that. When we reached the cars and he still hadn’t turned up, I asked my brother to go home with Doris and George, and asked the hearse driver to wait till I found my father and then to drive us back.

  Dad was in the lavatory, weeping. I’d never seen him weep before, not in the whole of my life. He was so upset during the service that he left the crematorium, intending to wait outside till it was over. But as soon as he was out of the chapel he started to cry uncontrollably, and not knowing where else to go to be out of sight, he went into the washroom and locked himself in one of the lavatories. I persuaded him to come out and helped him pull himself together, and had to make sure everyone had gone before he’d come outside.

  There’s a small tree-lined garden of remembrance beside the crematorium with a couple of park benches for visitors to use. He asked if we could sit there for a while.

  We sat in silence side by side till he suddenly took a deep breath and said with almost angry passion, ‘She saved you, you know that, don’t you?’

  I asked him what he was talking about.

  ‘What do you think I’m talking about?’ he said. ‘Cordelia! I’m talking about Cordelia. She saved you.’

  ‘Saved me from what?’ I asked.

  ‘Turning into your mother,’ he said.

  I said I didn’t know what he meant.

  He said, ‘Look at you. You’re twenty-two, you’ve just been to the funeral of your twenty-year-old lover, the mother of your infant daughter, and what are you doing? You’re dragging your stupid father out of the bog because he’s the one who’s crying like a baby, and you haven’t a tear in your eye. I couldn’t have been that tough at your age and I still couldn’t. Only your mother could.’

  ‘Don’t tell me how to grieve, Dad,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it my own way.’

  ‘I’m not telling you how to grieve,’ Dad said, calming down and blowing his nose. ‘I’ve been in this business for thirty-odd years. I’ve seen every kind of grief and every kind of expression of it. I know you’ll do it your own way. You always do everything your own way. Just like your mother. And I don’t mind. I admire you for it. I wish I was like that, I’d have done a lot better for m
yself. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about that lovely girl, who saved you from turning into your mother. At least, I hope she did. I hope she finished the job.’

  I’d never had a conversation like this with my father before. I was learning that what he’d always told me was right: a death in the family brings out the best and the worst in people, and funerals are occasions when the harshest truths are spoken.

  ‘If you think so badly of my mother,’ I said, rattled and wanting to get back at him, ‘why did you marry her?’

  Dad shrugged. ‘The same reasons Cordelia wanted you. Your mother was clever, and single-minded and ambitious. They were qualities I wished I had and knew I hadn’t. And she wanted me.’

  ‘So what changed?’

  ‘What makes someone attractive when they’re young can turn sour when they’re older. Cleverness can turn into arrogance, single-mindedness into one-track bloody-mindedness, ambition can turn into ruthlessness. And it’s possible to want someone, not for themselves, but because you can use them to achieve what you want for yourself.’

  ‘And you’re saying that’s what’s happened to Mother and it’s what could happen to me because I take after her?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. I could see it happening already before you took up with Cordelia. You were always your mother’s son and she was determined you always would be. Like she’s done with your brother and is doing with his kids. But then Cordelia got hold of you and I saw how she gave you some of the qualities that made her such a lovely person. And what’s more, she had the guts and the strength to stand up to your mother and take you away from her. Your mother met her match and by god, I was pleased. You’ll be lucky to be loved like that again.’

  ‘I know, Dad,’ I said. ‘And I know I’ll never love anyone else like I love her. But thanks for telling me.’

  ‘See what I mean?’ Dad said with a wry smile. ‘That’s Cordelia. Your mother would never thank anybody for telling her the truth about herself, not in a million years. Instead, she’d cut them into little pieces and leave them for dead.’

  I couldn’t help asking why he’d stayed with her, if he felt like that.

  Dad stood up, blew his nose again on his crisp white handkerchief, checked his tie was straight, adjusted his heavy black funeral director’s overcoat and brushed it down – always dapper, always neat – and said, ‘I’m not like you, Will. I don’t do things my own way, much as I wish I did. I’m good at my job but I’ve never been ambitious. I like what I know rather than taking a chance on what I don’t know. And I admit to the terrible weakness of keeping my promises. For better or worse, till death us do part. I meant it when I said it, and I’m sticking to it. But apart from that, what you’re forgetting is that the business that provides us with a good living isn’t called Blacklin’s, it’s called Richmond’s. Your mother is the apple of her father’s eye. Whatever she wants she gets. Me included. He’s more in love with her than he ever was with his wife. What you don’t know, because I’ve been too ashamed to tell you, is that when he retired, your grandfather didn’t hand the business over to me, he gave it to your mother. She owns it. As far as your grandfather and your mother are concerned, I’m still their employee.’

  For the first time in years, I couldn’t help getting hold of my father and hugging him like I used to when I was little and saying, ‘Dear god, Dad, I’m so sorry.’

  He hugged me back, and kissed me on the cheek, and let go, and adjusted his overcoat again, and sniffed and wiped his eyes, and smiled and said, ‘Don’t be, son. There’s nothing to be sorry for. I’m happy enough. I’m not complaining, only explaining. And I’ve got you, haven’t I. And I’m proud of you. And honest to god, Will, I didn’t mean to say any of this, not today of all days. But there it is. And you see why I was crying just now. I wasn’t crying for Cordelia. She has no need of tears. I was crying for you.’

  My father hadn’t intended to tell me that, and I hadn’t intended to tell you. I’m just following my nose. Not my usual style, more your mother’s. On a journey she had absolutely no sense of direction. It was not unknown for her to get lost on her way home from school or from work. Sometimes I wondered how she found her way to the bathroom. But when she was writing she knew exactly where she was going and how to get there without a plan or any notes to help her. Whereas I have no trouble navigating on land but have about as much sense of direction when I’m writing as your mother did when driving, and I get lost even when I’ve made careful notes. But I don’t think this was a congenital condition in either of us. I think it’s a question of attention – of where the mind is focused and what matters to it and gives pleasure.

  I mentioned your mother’s funeral, and must tell you something about it. Though saying that (writing that!) makes me wonder whether you’ll need to read any of this when you’re sixteen. Between now and then I’ll have told you who your birth mother was, you’ll have questioned me, we’ll have talked about many things, and so much will have changed. I wonder where we will be living, and who with, and what we will be doing and why, and what will have happened in our country and in the world, and whether you will have fallen in love, and how we will regard each other. What your mother has written will still be news to you, but what I’m writing for you will be familiar history. Not only because I’ll have told it to you already, but because we’ll have lived together for sixteen years, you’ll know me, the worst as well as the best, and you’ll be the age when the main attribute of a father is that he is a bore and an embarrassment. But when you read for the first time what your mother wrote for you, she’ll be your age and unknown and as fascinating as a new lover.

  Your mother’s death was such a shock that none of us could think straight about her funeral. All we could decide was that Cordelia would be cremated and we wanted the funeral to be simple and private, for family and close friends only. We didn’t have the strength to face anything more. That’s why we left it to my father to organise for us. Which is why it was held in the crematorium chapel and why, though none of us is a practising Christian or even a Christian by faith, Dad’s friend, Father Pippin – Ellylugs – took the service and followed the rites of the Church of England.

  George and Doris were there, of course, though George was hardly conscious; we’d had to drug him to the eyeballs just to keep him on his feet. The other mourners were Julie and Arry, my brother David, one member of staff from each of George and Doris’s offices, my father and myself. You were looked after by Elizabeth along with her two girls, who loved playing with you. My mother was there but arrived at the last minute and left as soon as the service was over and before anyone else, claiming she had ‘a business appointment I really can’t cancel, darling, I’m so sorry.’

  Afterwards, Julie was upset. It wasn’t the kind of funeral Cordelia would have wanted, she said, and she was right, we all knew that. So, with her usual persistent determination, she put together a programme ‘In Celebration of the Life of Cordelia Kenn’ and laid it on in the theatre at school. She invited everybody she thought Cordelia would want to attend – friends and teachers from her school days, staff from the clinic where she’d worked as a receptionist until the last few weeks before your birth, people from the local bookshop and library, friends she’d made through me, and many more – 136 turned up on the day.

  The programme included poetry and prose selected and read by Julie and Arry. Doris and I played César Franck’s Piece No. 5 for piano and oboe, a favourite of Cordelia’s. Three of her oldest friends performed a scene they’d written in which they talked about her like characters in a play waiting for the arrival of a friend they hadn’t seen for a few years, remembering what she was like as a child and the things they used to do. The scene ended with the doorbell ringing and the three girls going to let her in. It was funny and sad, and the hit of the evening. My old band got together again to play the three songs Cordelia wrote for me, which one of the band’s girlfriends sang (I didn’t dare try). A video wa
s shown, made by Izumi and sent from Japan, about Cordelia and their friendship. She reminisced about the day Cordelia made friends under the maple tree at school and the day they were having a facial and I turned up late. Then Julie read three of Cordelia’s poems followed by a montage of photos Arry had put together of Cordelia from childhood to some camcorder shots of her playing with you on our bed taken just before she died. To finish, three boys and two girls from the present Year 11 sang unaccompanied two pieces from Shakespeare: Ariel’s song ‘Full Fathom Five’ from The Tempest, and Sonnet 18, ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ in arrangements by the Swedish jazz composer, Nils Lindberg.

  At the end we rose to our feet quite spontaneously as though it had been planned and stood in silence for a minute or two before someone started to clap, slowly, alone, then others joined in, and then everyone, and the clapping became faster and faster and louder and louder, and people began to cheer, and some to whistle, till the noise reached a climax when suddenly, to the split second, everyone stopped clapping and shut up, and there was complete silence again. And then with shufflings and gathering of belongings we left the theatre, no one saying a word.

  Outside in the dining hall buffet food and drinks were provided, and people started talking and laughing and greeting each other as if they’d just arrived, all a little too loud to cover the emotions the celebration had stirred up, though some were still crying, during which I wondered what Cordelia would have made of it, Cordelia the loner, who didn’t like mixing her friends and never enjoyed being together with more than two of them at one time. Whatever she’d have thought, I’m sure of this: she’d have been surprised by the number who were there, the depth of feeling for her, and the ages of the people who came to celebrate her life, from you, a five-month-old baby, to a man of eighty, a client of the clinic, who came, he said, because Cordelia had ‘the most beautiful spirit of anyone I’ve ever met’. Apparently, he’d taken her for a coffee quite often during her break after his treatment; she used to ask him about his experiences as a soldier in the Second World War. That she was interested in his wartime stories didn’t surprise me, she was fascinated by that period of history and had studied it at school; what did surprise me was that she had never mentioned him. What else, I wondered, didn’t I know about her? And I thought again how mysterious other people’s lives are, most of all those you love and are closest to.