To continue with the morning after the traumatic night before. Prolonged indolence couldn’t be indulged. There were household goods to be bought, otherwise we’d be eating out of saucepans and drinking out of tooth mugs from the bathroom, not to mention the bottles of comestibles and lord knows what else I’d demolished. And as I was the guilty party and was shamefaced not only for causing the mayhem but for leaving Julie to clear it up, I levered myself out of bed by ten o’clock, and while Arry kept you entertained, Julie and I drove to the largest superstore open on Sundays and bought as cheaply as possible barring the ugly and badly made (which means that nothing was that cheap) enough of the essential items to keep us going till we had recovered and had had time to decide which style, make, price and quantity of permanent replacements we preferred and could afford.
Talking (writing!) about buying crocks reminds me that I was going to tell you how it came to pass that Julie, Arry and I are sharing a house.
When you were conceived, your mother and I were living in my brother’s caravan, but had decided we couldn’t put up with it much longer and were looking for a flat or a small house we could afford to rent. By Easter we still hadn’t found anything we liked in our price range. We were spending more and more of our spare time at Doris and George’s and even sleeping there quite often. During the Easter holiday we held another Kaffeeklatsch Council, at which we reluctantly decided to move into D&G’s full time until after you were born. And so that Cordelia and I could have a living room and a bedroom to ourselves, Arry moved into the caravan, but of course spent most of his spare time with us anyway.
When Cordelia died we were in the middle of negotiating for a small house very like Julie’s and a five-minute walk away. Your mother’s death put an end to that. There followed a very difficult time. George’s condition made life hard for Doris. Julie was looking after you, which meant I was often at her house. I needed Arry’s help so much both at work and personally, and as Doris often needed help too, he moved back into his room at D&G’s and I made do with the one room that used to be Cordelia’s and had become our bedroom.
It was an ugly time, we were depressed and sad and uncertain of the future.
As I mentioned earlier, it was my father who stepped in with the help we needed. Without saying anything to me, he visited Julie and talked to her about the situation, and suggested that he should buy a house big enough to accommodate herself, Arry, you and me, with our own rooms, two or three bathrooms, a couple of sitting rooms, a garden where it would be safe for you to play, a utility room and a garage. Julie would sell her house and become joint owner with my father of the new house. If she received for her house less than half of the cost of the new place, Dad still wanted her to own half of the new one. He said she deserved no less for all she was doing for us. I would pay Dad rent, which he would count as repayment for his share of the house until I’d bought it from him. He would leave me to decide what arrangement to make with Arry. If things changed and the house had to be sold, Julie would take half of the sale price and Dad and I would divide the other half between us. This, at least, was the general idea. The details would be sorted out by Dad’s accountant (i.e. Doris), a lawyer and the estate agent.
After thinking about it overnight Julie agreed. The day after, Dad took me to lunch and laid out the plan, adding one condition: my mother was to know nothing about the arrangement. That afternoon I discussed it with Arry. He was keen. He would pay rent for his accommodation. I could see the advantages for each of us. That evening I talked with Julie. Not that it took long. The more we thought about it, the more we liked it.
Next morning I rang my father at his office and said we would go ahead. As I might have known, he already had a house in mind, two streets from Doris and George’s, very like theirs, only larger, an empty, chain-free Victorian family house, recently refurbished. We visited it that evening. Six weeks later we moved in. I took your mother’s possessions with me and stored them in a room connected to my bedroom, originally intended as the dressing room or a walk-in wardrobe for the master bedroom, though the estate agent had it listed as an optional extra single bedroom. It was there that I kept your mother’s Pillow Boxes until the night I opened them.
Which brings me back, not before time, to where I started and to what I wanted to tell you about your book – the book you will have read, if you started at page one and worked through to here.
On the Sunday evening of the day after my fit of rage, Julie and I went through your mother’s Pillow Boxes together. Each one was a different colour and each box seemed to cover one period of the story she wanted to tell. That is:
The Red Box covered her life from aged fifteen until the day of our ‘Sex Saga’ just before her sixteenth birthday. Written on the inside of the lid of the box were the words ‘Romeo and Juliet’.
The Green Box covered the time from her sixteenth birthday until the day before I left for college the summer after our Saga. The note in this box said ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’.
The Orange Box told the story of Cordelia’s affair with Mr Malcolm and my rejection of her, which happened in March, four months after her seventeenth birthday. The note on this one was ‘Measure for Measure’.
The Black Box covered the time from our break-up to my return after her awful experience with Cal, when she was eighteen and a half. The note: ‘A Winter’s Tale’.
The Yellow Box was a pretty straightforward account of your mother and me setting up together, ending with your conception. ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’.
The Blue Box contained a play and many pages of poetry, but there was no indication of what she meant to do with them or if she planned to add anything more; and there was no note on the lid.
This summary makes it seem that everything in each box was neat and trim and finished. Not so. The Red and Green boxes were full and the arrangement of the passages wasn’t clear. There were lists in which the titles of each piece were arranged differently and there were poems and passages not included on the lists. It seemed fairly certain that Cordelia had intended the Red Box to be arranged in a sequence, one item following another. But the Green Box contained the uninterrupted story of the months after our Saga, up to the day before I left for college, and separate from this, many passages of different kinds. There was nothing to indicate whether Cordelia had intended to insert these different passages into the story, as she had in the Red Box, or to keep them separate, or had some other plan in mind.
The Orange Box contained the story of her affair with Edward Malcolm and nothing else. She had worked on it a lot – there were three versions, each numbered and dated, the third in a printout without any handwritten changes or revisions on it. It looked as if she had intended this to be like a short novel. It is certainly written in a style different from everything else.
On the other hand, the Black Box was a jumble of items with no hint of how Cordelia intended to arrange them.
We’ve left the account of Cordelia and me getting together again exactly as we found it in the Yellow Box. But both Julie and I felt it was only a first draft – a sketch, in fact, no more than an aide-mémoire, which Cordelia had intended to rewrite and expand with other (as she called them) ‘Scenes’.
Julie knew Cordelia’s working methods better than I did. She was convinced that none of the boxes was anywhere near completed, except perhaps for the Orange Box. What then, we asked ourselves, should we do? Should we leave the boxes as they were or should we try to make a book that was as close as we could to what might have been your mother’s intentions?
We agreed to think about this for a few days and then talk about it again, which we did the following weekend. To be honest, I felt at a loss. I knew I couldn’t, to use Julie’s word, ‘edit’ the boxes. It would have been like chopping Cordelia into bits and sticking her together in a different shape – recycling her into someone who resembled her but wasn’t her. I couldn’t face it.
I said this to Julie, who understood, but argued th
at we owed it to Cordelia to do whatever we could to present the story as clearly as possible, while making sure at the same time that it preserved her personality, her ‘voice’, her way of thinking. What we had in the boxes, she said, was a blurred picture. Our job was to try to get the picture into focus. That meant selecting the passages and items that were finished or nearly so, and removing those that were still very rough. And to present the selected passages in the order that seemed to be indicated in each box. This meant the finished book would be in five separate parts, one for each box, each one different from the others. The sixth part would be my account of Cordelia’s death and what we had found in the boxes and what we had done with them.
I wasn’t keen on this; it still felt offensive to Cordelia’s memory. And it seemed to me that if Julie and I could read what your mother had written, disorganised and rough as much of it was, why wouldn’t you?
Julie settled the disagreement by suggesting that she produce an ‘edited version’ of the book, while leaving the contents of the boxes exactly as they were. She would do this by typing up the passages she felt should be included – making changes indicated on the pages by Cordelia, correcting spelling and grammar, checking the quotations from poems, etc. – then arranging everything in the order she thought best, and printing out the result and binding it into the book. When the time came, we would present you with the boxes as Cordelia left them and with the book Julie had made out of them. Though still uneasy, I agreed.
I don’t think either of us thought it would take Julie as long as it did to finish the job. But it’s completed at last, and I have to admit I’m pleased with what she has achieved. It isn’t the whole of Cordelia – it’s like looking at someone in profile rather than full-face. But it is her, and it is in focus, sharp and clear, just as Julie wanted.
In the end, we decided not to include the play or the poems we found in the Blue Box. The play is based on her affair with Edward Malcolm, including episodes with me, but is a fiction. It and the poems in the Blue Box, of which there are many – hundreds in fact – belong to her imaginative life, to the writer Cordelia was trying to be, rather than to her everyday life and the story of her teenage self that she meant to give to you.
There is so much I want to tell you about your mother and me, about how different some things seemed to me from the way she describes them, and about what I was doing when we were apart. But that must wait. For now, this is enough, except for one more important scene from our life together.
As you will know by now, Cordelia loved lists. Julie left most of them out of the edited book. One of them was attached to the inside of the lid of the Blue Box, a list of titles of passages Cordelia meant to include in her book but hadn’t yet written. The last title on the list was ‘Our Marriage and Your Naming’. She planned to end with that event. It was because of you that she started her book and she wanted you to end it. I cannot write it as well as she would. But for love of your mother, Cordelia, and for our love of you I must try.
Happy birthday!
Three weeks after you were born, your mother and I invited our families and a few friends to meet us in the Oak Hall at the arboretum on Saturday at noon. None of them knew the others were coming; we told them we had something special we wanted to show them.
Only Julie and Arry knew of our plans. They helped us organise the occasion. We laid on drinks and buffet food, decorated the hall with flowers and greenery, screened off one end from the rest of the room and arranged chairs in front of it, leaving a little area as a stage.
Our guests were surprised to see each other and wanted to know what was going on. ‘Wait,’ we told them as we handed out drinks and sat them down. ‘It’s a surprise.’
When everyone was there, fifteen in all, Cordelia and I joined Arry and Julie and you behind the screen. When we were ready, I banged on the floor three times with a stick, waited for silence, then made an entrance from behind the screen onto the little stage and said, having learned by heart the words Cordelia and I had written:
‘Thanks for coming. As you know, three weeks ago today, Cordelia gave birth to our daughter. And as you know, Cordelia and I have been living together for sixteen months. We’ve decided it is time to declare publicly that we are married, and at the same time to name our daughter before you as our witnesses. We didn’t tell you ahead of time, because we didn’t want any fuss and we didn’t want you to bring gifts. You have given us more already than we can ever thank you for, every one of you, but especially our families and friends, Arry and Julie. So this is meant as a thank-you as well as a celebration of our marriage and the naming of our daughter.’
Now Cordelia entered, stood beside me and said:
‘This morning, Will and I were married at the registry office in town. We did this because it is legally necessary. We wanted it to happen here but that was not allowed. We didn’t ask you to be with us, because we think a registry office marriage is like asking people to a feast at the dentist’s. We don’t mean to offend anyone,’ she added, looking at George and Doris, ‘it’s just how we feel about it. So Arry and Julie were the witnesses of the legal part of the ritual. But Will and I regard this as our proper wedding, the one we made for ourselves.’
Then Cordelia turned to face me and I her, and we joined hands.
‘William Blacklin,’ Cordelia said very formally, ‘you are my chosen companion in life. You are my true lover, my best friend, and my soul’s desire. You are the father of our child. I offer you my heart, my mind, and my soul.’
I said, ‘Cordelia Kenn, you are the chosen companion of my life. You are my best friend. You embody everything I wish for, admire and respect. You are the mother of our daughter. I offer you all I am and all I have. Please accept me, without conditions and without reservation.’
Cordelia said, ‘I do, and gladly. Please accept me, without conditions and without reservation.’
I said, ‘I do, and thankfully.’
We turned to face our guests and hand in hand said together:
‘Before you as our witnesses, we declare ourselves bound by our commitment to each other.’
There was a few seconds’ silence, no one quite knowing what to do next, until Cordelia’s father began to clap, and everyone joined in.
When the clapping ended, George started to get up, but Cordelia held up a hand and said, ‘Thank you.’
Everyone settled down again, all eyes for what would happen next.
I said, ‘Please join us now in the naming of our daughter.’
Cordelia and I let go our hands and stepped away from each other, making room between us. Julie and Arry came from behind the screen, Julie carrying you, and stood between your mother and me.
Julie said, ‘Cordelia and Will have asked Arry and me to be their daughter’s other parents, her guardians and helpmates.’
Arry said, ‘We happily accept this honour.’
Julie held you out, Cordelia and Arry and I joined hands one on the other over you, saying, ‘We name this child.’
And each in turn we spoke your name.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Permission to quote the following is gratefully acknowledged: the poems beginning ‘Wishing to see him’, ‘The one close to me now’, ‘On such a night’ and ‘The way I must enter’ by Izumi Shikibu from The Ink Dark Moon by Jane Hirschfield with Mariko Aratani, copyright © 1990, used by permission of Vintage Books, a division of Random House Inc.; the poem beginning ‘What shall I leave for you’ by Ryōkan from Only Companion, Japanese Poems of Love and Longing, translated by Sam Hamill, © 1997, reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications Inc., Boston, www.shambala.com, where the Japanese original is also given, and from the same collection, the poem beginning ‘An ocean of clouds’ by Kakinomoto no Hitomaro; the passage beginning ‘Man is afraid to attain what he longs for’ by Ivan Klima from Love and Garbage, translated by Ewald Osers, published by Chatto & Windus and Knopf, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group; the poems beginning �
��A word is dead’ and ‘Wild Nights! Wild Nights!’ by Emily Dickinson, reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass., the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and fellows of Harvard College; the poem ‘The Ship of Death’ by D. H. Lawrence, selected and introduced by Keith Sagar, revised edition, Penguin Books, 1986, copyright © the Estate of D. H. Lawrence, 1972, reproduced by permission of Pollinger Limited and the proprietor; lines from the poem ‘Cordelia, or “A Poem Should not Mean but Be” ’, from Collected Poems and Translations by Veronica Forrest-Thomson (Allardyce, Barnett, Publishers, Lewes, East Sussex, 1990), copyright © Jonathan Culler and the Estate of Veronica Forrest-Thomson, 1976, 1990, quoted by permission of Allardyce, Barnett, Publishers; extract of 40 words from the introduction of The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon edited by Ivan Morris (translator), 1996, by permission of Oxford University Press and Columbia University Press; image of The Sluggard by Frederic Leighton reproduced by permission of the Tate Gallery, copyright © Tate, London, 2005.
The editor and publishers have made every effort to trace the holders of copyright material in this book. Any query should be addressed to the publishers.
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