Dying to Know You

by Aidan Chambers

  Sunday morning early. Very little moving on the road once we were away from the city.

  I could sense Karl settling in, and driving with increasing confidence. Loving the car, its power and strength and robust sleekness.

  “You said you’d failed the theory part of the driving test?”

  “Four times.”

  “But you don’t have to write anything, do you? Isn’t it all multiple choice questions or ticks in boxes?”

  “There’s more to it than that. Didn’t score enough marks. So I was failed.”

  “There was none of that stuff when I did my test. But that was fifty years ago! And you can’t take the practical test on the road till you’ve passed the theory?”

  “Right.”

  “Aren’t there theory tests on the internet for practice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you do them?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Bloody-mindedness.”

  “What?”

  “It’s stupid. I don’t do them because I know I can pass the test. The trouble is I go to pieces when I know it’s a test. I hate tests. I always fail. So I don’t do the practice tests because I know I’d pass them easy. They’re not a proper test. And the examiner isn’t breathing down my neck.”

  I knew exactly what he meant because I was the same.

  I didn’t pursue the topic. The irritation in his voice was a warning, and I didn’t want to spoil the pleasure of the day.

  Silence again for a few miles before Karl said:

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “You said you’ve been married over forty years.”

  I said, “That’s right.” Adding quickly to avoid more questions, “Did you give Fiorella the letter we wrote?”

  He nodded, eyes firmly on the road.

  “And?”

  “She asked why I wrote about rugby first.”

  “And you said?”

  “Easiest to start with.”

  “Have you decided what to write about next?”

  “I haven’t. But Fiorella has.”

  “Which is?”

  “Love.”

  “Love!”

  “She wants to know what I think love is.”

  I couldn’t help a burst of laughter.

  “Sorry! But she certainly goes for the jugular.”

  Now Karl laughed.

  “What are you going to say?”

  “Dunno. Googled it to find out.”

  This time I managed to keep a straight face.

  “Any use?”

  “Pages of the stuff. Loads of sections with titles like ‘personal love,’ and ‘interpersonal love,’ and ‘cultural views,’ and ‘religious views,’ and ‘how to love.’ It even had one called ‘warnings.’”

  “Warnings like what?”

  “You must love yourself before you can love another. There’s always a risk of getting hurt. Don’t ask for love and don’t force love, and—”

  But he couldn’t go on because by now we were both bubbling with laughter.

  I managed to say, “Not much help, then?”

  “About the same as for plumbing a loo.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “Easier to find out how to do it by doing it than by reading the manual. Every job is different. The instructions are too general. They don’t allow for the quirks.”

  When we’d calmed down, I said, “Must have been a bit of help, though.”

  “Nar! I mean, I already knew love is supposed to be like it said. A strong emotion. Feeling attached to somebody. Wanting to be with them all the time. But the bit I liked best was where it said it’s impossible to define love because it takes so many forms and is so complicated.”

  “Like plumbing a loo.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But,” I said, “when you think of all the books there are on the subject, and the thousands, probably millions, of stories there are about love, you’d think we would know everything there is to know.”

  “Can’t say I’ve read that many.”

  “No, but still, the fact is, at least this is how it seems to me, everybody has to learn about it from scratch for themselves. And we all make the same mistakes time and again while we’re learning.”

  “Like me learning to read.”

  “But not when you were learning to plumb a loo.”

  “No, I was pretty good at that from the off.”

  “Every man to his last.”

  “His what?”

  “His own trade. The thing he’s best at.”

  “Like you’re best at writing?”

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  “Not that I’ve read anything you’ve written.”

  “And I haven’t had the pleasure of your plumbing my loo.”

  “Anytime. You only have to ask.”

  “Thank you, good sir. Same goes for my books and you reading them.”

  “One day, one day. Promise.”

  “And by the way,” I said, “as we’re talking about plumbing, could you pull over somewhere suitable, at your earliest convenience. My old man’s plumbing isn’t as efficient as it used to be and my morning coffee is on the way out.”

  He smiled and after half a mile or so pulled into a lay-by.

  There’d been rain in the night. The hedgerow behind which I relieved myself smelt of rotting vegetation and the spoor left by other travellers observing the calls of nature.

  When we were on our way again, I said, “What would you like to do about the letter on love to Fiorella? Would you like me to draft something while you’re fishing?”

  Karl didn’t reply at once, then said, “I’ve been thinking. I know I asked you for help. But it’s a bit of a cop-out for me, isn’t it?”

  I kept quiet, waiting for him to go on.

  Which he did after an uncomfortable silence. “Anyway, what I’ve done is I’ve written, I mean I’ve tried to write, well, I have, I’ve written, it’s only a few lines, a try at it, about love, because I think I should give it a go.”

  “Great!” I said. “That’s great, Karl! And you’ll send it?”

  He glanced at me, the car wobbled, he attended to his driving again, and said, “Yes, but I thought you might have a look at it while I’m fishing, and, you know, tidy it up a bit maybe, or make a few suggestions.”

  “Be glad to.”

  “We’re nearly there.”

  “Not far off,” I said, checking the map. “Listen to what Mr. William Wordsworth wrote about the place many years ago:

  And again I hear

  These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs

  With a soft inland murmur. Once again

  Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,

  That on a wild secluded scene impress

  Thoughts of more deep seclusion …

  O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro’ the woods

  How oft my spirit has turned to thee!”

  “Sounds like he liked it,” Karl said.

  “He did.”

  “And sounds like you like that stuff.”

  “Poetry? I do.”

  “Don’t know how you remember it.”

  “The same way you remember how to plumb a bathroom, I suppose.”

  “Like you said, every man to his trade.”

  “What I said was, every man to his last. I took my metaphor from the cobblers.”

  “And it sounds like a load of old cobblers to me.”

  “Could be,” I said.

  “Only kidding,” he said.

  “Me too,” I said.

  “Fiorella writes poetry.”

  “Really?”

  “I could show you some if you like. I’ve no idea if it’s any good.”

  “Everybody has to start somewhere. You should see my stuff when I was her age. Embarrassing!” I said, and, checking the map again, added, “Take the second to the right and go straight on to the next lay
-by.”

  I

  How we dote on gear.

  The clothes, the gadgets, the tools of our chosen pleasures.

  With many people, perhaps most, all this clobber appeals because of our obsession with fashionable regalia.

  I sometimes wonder whether most people choose their hobbies because they lust after the gear more than for the benefits of the activities themselves.

  Togged up for fishing, Karl didn’t just look the part, he was the part. And he was so adept with his rod and line it was hard to imagine him ever being a learner. While he was fishing, he was a man at home with himself.

  I noticed his fishing togs and his gear were well used, and not only well used but old-fashioned. Perhaps he couldn’t afford new stuff and had bought it all secondhand?

  II

  You want to know about love what I think about it but I don’t know about it not like you mean. I Googled it and it said there are a lot of kinds of love and I think you only mean what people call true love which I don’t think is such a good word because love can only be true because if its not its not love is it. anyway all I can tell you is I like being with you and think about you all the time—well not all the time, you cant think about anyone all the time can you because you have to think of other things like when I’m at work if I don’t think about what I’m doing I can make mistakes which can be very serious like the other day when I was NOT thinking about what I was doing because I was thinking about you and I forgot to tighten up a clamp on a joint and there was a leak when we turned the water on again and there would have been a flood if I hadn’t been there to turn it off and tighten up the clamp. what I mean is I do think about you a lot and want to be with you, I won’t say all the time because no one wants to be with the same person all the time do they—be honest but I want to be with you more than I want to be with any one else, you interest me more than any one else and make me laugh and say things I haven’t thought like that before which are important points about love I think and also other important points are respect and admiration which both of which I have for you but what I think you want me to say is that I am in love with you which you say you are with me but this is what I don’t know about, well not yet even if I think I am because I don’t have anything to compare it with in my life, I mean I haven’t been in love before so how do you know

  III

  Because the early spring day was too cold to sit for long, I read Karl’s letter, then took a walk along the riverbank, content in that beautiful place, one of the best in England, to watch some mallards, gem-bright in their mating colours, and let my mind wander along its own track, remembering my wife, Jane, and thinking how much she would have loved it here, until the sun burnt off the overcast, and warmed the day with a foretaste of summer.

  I kept well away from Karl so as not to disturb him or the fish. But by midday, having had breakfast so early and the crystal air and exercise giving me an appetite, my stomach was grumbling for lack of its mid-morning coffee and wanting its lunch earlier than usual.

  I set up a couple of fold-up camp stools in the dapple of sun and shade between two trees in sight of Karl, who was up to his thighs in the river, laid out the picnic on a fallen tree trunk, and hoped Karl might notice and join me.

  I’m sure he’d have gone on fishing all day without a break, lost in the rhythm of casting and dancing his barbed fly on the frobbling water as he wound it in, if he hadn’t moved a few metres downstream and was so intent on the spot he was aiming to land his fly he hadn’t noticed an overhanging tree, which was in the direct path of the flight of his line. When he whipped it behind him before casting it forward, the hooked fly snagged a branch, and Karl found he’d caught a tree instead of a fish.

  As he waded out of the river to disentangle his line, he looked sheepishly around, and saw me watching, unable to keep a grin off my face. For a second he was torn between anger and embarrassed laughter, and, choosing laughter, he shrugged his shoulders, retrieved his fly, rewound his line and joined me.

  Then without a word, he set to on the food. I’d made a mix of sandwiches: egg, bacon and tomato; ham, cheese and pickle; cucumber and avocado; chicken, onion and stuffing. He went through half a dozen before I’d finished two.

  I learned that day the one-track-minded intensity of Karl’s concentration. He didn’t like doing more than one thing at a time. And once involved, he’d stick at it for hours.

  I also learned, as I’ll describe in a minute, the power of some emotions he kept locked away, because he knew that if he let them loose they’d undo his self-control.

  “Good nosh,” he said when he’d taken the edge off his appetite. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “Have as much as you want. By the way, I’ve read your letter.”

  “Pretty bad, isn’t it?” he said, biting into a ham-and-cheese sandwich. “Rammed it down and didn’t read it afterwards.”

  “It’s not that bad. I like its honesty. Just needs a bit of tidying up. Shall I do it for you?”

  “Please.”

  “One point, as you mention points.”

  “What?”

  “Do you think you’re in love with Fiorella or not?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know.”

  “But would you say you’ve felt stronger and stronger about her since you first met?”

  He stopped chewing and thought a moment.

  “Yes, I have,” he said, took an egg sandwich and started eating again.

  “So you could honestly say you love her, and love her more and more?”

  He nodded. “I suppose so, yes.”

  “Maybe you should tell her that? It would help her understand what you feel about her, and it seems to me that’s really what she wants to know.”

  More thinking without chewing.

  “That would be OK, yes.”

  “Would it help if I added a couple of sentences saying that?”

  “OK.”

  He finished off the sandwiches and drank a can of Coke.

  I knew him well enough already to sense when he’d had enough of a topic that cut too close to the bone.

  I asked, to change the subject, “Caught much?”

  “Not too bad. Five.”

  “Taking them home to eat?”

  “See what there is at the end of the day. Pick a couple of the best and put the rest back.”

  “They’re in a keep net?”

  “Would you like some?”

  “One would be nice, thanks. Very fond of trout.”

  “How d’you do it?”

  “Filleted. White wine. Seasoning. Twenty minutes in the oven.”

  “Never done it like that.”

  “Very easy. Very tasty.”

  “I’ll give it a go.”

  “You certainly have plenty of gear.”

  He nodded and launched into a mini lecture, showing me each piece as he talked about it. He was, he told me, a Hardy fan—which meant nothing to me. An old firm, I gathered, much admired for their quality. His rod was a Hardy Demon, thirteen foot long, three sections that pulled apart. He described what he liked about it and one or two features he didn’t like. His reel was a Cascapedia. (I thought he’d meant Cassiopeia, but on repeating it, as you do when someone uses a word new to you, like a child learning to speak, I was firmly corrected, the syllables of the word clearly enunciated—Cas-ca-pe-di-a.) Its characteristics were itemised and demonstrated. I asked about the flies he used. He opened a little metal box full of them, each fly resting in its own compartment on a bed of cotton wool. They were beautiful little works of representational art, each one different in shape and colours. They had names as alluring as their appearance. I remember March Brown, Morning Glory, Wickham’s Fancy, Red Tag and Pheasant Tail. Karl talked about when he’d use them, in which conditions. He handled them with the delicacy of a lepidopterist holding a live and fragile butterfly.

  What struck me most as he talked was how fluent he was. Not a hint of hesitation, no stumblin
g over words or thoughts, his explanations clear and the information well ordered. Just as when fishing he was so absorbed in what he was saying, and in showing me the gear was so full of quiet unselfconscious enthusiasm, that he infected me with his fascination and pleasure. This was a mature and confident Karl, different from the uneasy and sometimes awkward boy who balked at saying anything about himself, who tripped and stumbled when he did, and who couldn’t write a reasonably competent sentence.

  I watched and listened with admiration. Had Fiorella seen him like this? If she had, it was obvious why she wanted him, despite his hang-ups and his difference from herself.

  Finally he paused and, re-collecting himself, gave me a smile, shrugged and said, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to go on like that.”

  “Not a bit. I enjoyed it,” I said. “I can see you like your fishing.”

  “I do,” he said.

  “What’s the best thing about it?”

  He replied without a second’s thought, “I forget myself.”

  “You mean, all your worries, that sort of thing?”

  “No. I mean me. Myself.”

  “Why do you like forgetting yourself?”

  “Dunno. Just do.”

  His shifty look gave him away. He knew all right, but didn’t want to explain.

  Time to change the subject again.

  I thought a moment before saying, “Fiorella wants to know what you believe. Quite a few of her questions are on that topic, aren’t they?”

  “Yes. But I don’t know.”

  “Well, for a start, do you believe in God? Any god?”

  “No.”

  “What, then? I’m sure you’ve thought about it.”

  “I have. And if I hadn’t, Fiorella would have made me.”

  “Does she believe in God?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s Christian and goes to church?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “She says she’s working it out for herself.”

  “And wants you to do it with her?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what did you tell her?”

  He looked towards the river, wanting, I think, to get back to his fishing, and said with strained tolerance, “What is, is.”

  “What is, is?”