This Is All

by Aidan Chambers

  Today’s the Day

  I know you’re going away,

  It’s the thing you cannot say.

  I know you’re going away,

  And today’s the day.

  We’ve done a lot of lovin’,

  Never tired of our cummin’.

  But I know you’re going away,

  And today’s the day.

  Don’t call me when you’re gone,

  Don’t pretend I’m not alone,

  ’Cos I know you’re going away,

  And today’s the day.

  Don’t promise to come back,

  Don’t say I’m all you lack.

  I know you’re going away,

  And today’s the day.

  If we never meet again

  At least we’ve shared this pain.

  I know you’re going away,

  And today’s the day.

  I promise I won’t weep,

  Won’t tell you I shan’t sleep,

  the self made

  of all my selves

  who must learn each other

  in order to make Me

  the Self who is Myself.

  Sex talk

  Today Will and I talked about sex. This is what we said (well, actually, it’s really more what I said than what he said, because Will is rather reticent on this subject, much preferring, he says, to do it than talk about it, whereas I find talking about it before we do it is very stimulating and talking about it afterwards adds to the pleasure. And I’ve found that it has the same effect on Will, but he doesn’t like to admit it):

  Me: You know, after we had sex last night? That was the eighth time.

  Will: Seventh-and-a-halfth, to be accurate.

  Me: What?

  Will: We didn’t quite make it all the way the first time, not really, did we?

  Me: Pedant! Well anyway, after last night, as I was lying in that after-glow – you know what I mean—?

  Will: Post-coital exhaustion. Otherwise known as shagged out.

  Me: How crude! I mean the lovely time afterwards when I’m snuggling up to you, under your arm. Well, last night I thought how sex is like reading a book.

  Will: No. No it isn’t. Nothing is like sex, only sex. And when I’m at it, the last thing on my mind is a book.

  Me: Yes, I know. But it is like reading a book, because the first time you’re just finding out what happens next and what the characters are like and how the story goes and all that stuff. Then, the second time, and with the best books – but

  Won’t say I’ll often mail,

  I know I’ll only fail,

  ’Cos I know you’re going away,

  And today’s the day.

  We returned home saturated with each other. But as soon as I saw Dad and Doris sitting under the apple tree, the remains of their lunchtime salad and bottle of wine lying on the grass between them, my heart shrivelled, my stomach sickened, and the shimmer of my skin turned cold. Something in their attitude, their looks, their aura, enclosed them in a transparent membrane that I felt I couldn’t penetrate and induced a premonition of distress.

  I walked towards them, Will holding my hand – he told me later he felt through my fingers the change of mood come over me at that moment – all four of us smiling, all four of us helloing and hugging and babbling the routine things everyone says at such homecoming reunions.

  It was after we’d settled, and Doris had brought us salad and drinks, that Dad said, ‘We’ve something to tell you.’

  I kept my head down, eyes on my food. I don’t want to hear it, I thought, I don’t want you to spoil everything. Since our sex saga, I’d been so besotted with Will that I’d had no room for anyone else. And school work had occupied me for weeks, revision for exams, then the trauma of the exams themselves – I detest exams and would never have got through without Will’s help and Izumi’s consolations and Ms Martin’s encouragement. I just hadn’t paid any attention to what was going on around me at home. Not to Dad, busting up with his latest woman (yet again, so what was new?). Not to Doris, joining us for meals more often than before. Not to Dad, spending evenings at Doris’s, which was rare usually. Not to them going out together, which was even rarer. I’d supposed Doris was trying to jolly Dad along till he got over

  only with the best books – the third time and the fourth time et cetera repetizio, you start to notice all sorts of things you hadn’t noticed before. You know, like the subtleties and the little details – words and ideas and phrases and bits of information. And things about the characters. All sorts of wonderful stuff hidden underneath the story, so to speak. You understand?

  Will: I understand. But the same thing would apply to playing music, so you might as well compare sex to playing music.

  Me: Yes, why not, that’s true too. Sex is like playing music. And that’s the best, isn’t it? Not what happens but how it happens, and how the story is told, how it’s done, and all the lovely details. And what you find out about the other person while you’re doing it – reading the book or playing the music. That really is the best, don’t you think?

  Will: Put like that, yes, I agree. But the thing is—

  Me: What? … Go on.

  Will: Putting it like that puts me on.

  Me: Shall I get your oboe out and tune it for you?

  Will: Then I’ll open your book and see if I can get into it.

  Me: And the thing about our book and our music is that I never tire of reading it and I never tire of playing it and I always find plenty of new touches to enjoy.

  Will: Nuff said! Sordino now, sordino!

  Sometimes

  Sometimes I want to be famous. To be honest, more than sometimes. And then I think, But how banal! That’s what everyone wants. Do you know anyone who doesn’t? How silly to want what everyone wants.

  Sometimes I think my mind is so mazy it will never be as

  his latest affair – he was always mopey and depressed and drank too much after a break-up.

  Dad said, ‘Doris and I have decided to get married.’

  I froze – literally went cold and rigid.

  Will uttered the kind of automatic tosh expected after such an announcement, then clammed up when he saw I wasn’t exactly brimming with joy.

  Dad and Doris waiting and watching.

  Dad said, ‘Aren’t you pleased? … Don’t you have anything to say? Like “congratulations” perhaps?’

  Will stood up. ‘Maybe I should go.’

  My hand went out to him. He took it, I gripped his hard, he waited a moment, deciding, before hitching his chair closer to mine with his foot, and sitting down again, resting my hand clutched in both of his, on his lap.

  Silence.

  I remember a ladybird landing on my knee and thinking how pretty she was. She began to crawl up my thigh. I was wearing a short loose summer dress, not just because of the heat but because Will liked it. He liked me to wear short things because he liked my legs so much, to look at and to touch, to caress and to kiss, and liked sitting with his hand on my bare thigh as we read or lazed or watched a film or listened to music, and I liked him doing that, as I liked to sit with my hand high up on his thigh and to feel the firm roundness of the muscle covering the hardness of the bone underneath and the soft swell of his crotch against the edge of my hand. I thought how tanned my legs were this year, from lying around in the sun while revising.

  The ladybird had almost reached the hem of my skirt. I didn’t want her to crawl under it. (Why did I think of it as she? Because of the name, I suppose. I didn’t know how you could tell a female from a male ladybird.) I placed a finger in her path. She climbed onto it without a pause, as if she’d planned all along to take this route, and continued towards

  clear and sharp and clever as I wish it were. And this makes me vexed with myself.

  Sometimes I feel I’ll never achieve in my life all I want to achieve, like writing a book full of great poems or being loved so completely that nothing else in all the world will matter.r />
  Sometimes I think I’m the best person I know, and then I meet someone who really is the best person I know and I feel like I need a good bath.

  And sometimes I’m happy and sad at the same time because:

  Sometimes

  I wish I

  Were what I

  Was when I

  Wished I were

  What I am

  Now.

  Fear & Intuition

  Fear is always something old.

  Intuition is always something new.

  Emily Dickinson

  Today Ms M. read us a poem by Emily Dickinson. I knew at once she was a poet for me. I want to know all about her and to read all her poems.

  This is the one Ms M. read to us:

  A word is dead

  When it is said,

  Some say.

  the back of my hand, her tiny legs causing the faintest tickle.

  She’d reached the second knuckle when Doris said, ‘Darling? … Cordy?’

  For the first time Doris’s use of that name angered me.

  ‘My name,’ I said, cold and stiff as a corpse, ‘is Cordelia.’

  I heard her catch her breath.

  ‘Right,’ she said, stretching the word out as people do when understanding is dawning. ‘Right. I see.’

  The ladybird arrived at my wrist where she met a bead of sweat. She paused. Then took off into the air and was gone in a blink.

  I stood up, cueing Will through our hands to stand up too, as I said, ‘If you don’t mind, I need a shower and want to change.’

  No one replied.

  Without a glance at Dad or Doris, I led Will to his car parked in front of the house.

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ I pleaded, ‘please don’t say anything! I’ll call you. No, you call me. No, I’ll call you. Oh, bollox, I don’t know.’

  Will shut up my blether by putting his hand over my mouth, then took it away so that he could continue to shut me up with his lips.

  When he’d finished, he said, ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I don’t myself,’ I said. ‘Later, okay?’

  ‘I’ll stay, if you want.’

  ‘What’re you going to do now?’

  ‘Stow the gear. Shower. Write up my notes. Print out the photos. Oboe practice. Check tomorrow night’s gig. Worry about you.’

  ‘A general statement would have sufficed,’ I said, trying to be funny in Will’s way.

  ‘The devil’s in the detail,’ he said.

  Neither of us smiled.

  I said, ‘I just need to be on my own for a bit.’

  I say it just

  Begins to live

  That day.

  I love the simplicity of it and the truth it expresses without any decoration or fuss. It’s like the distilled essence of a thought. Its simplicity is beautiful and graceful. It cannot be bettered. I wish I could write just one poem as good.

  Ms M. loaned me her copy of Emily D.’s Complete Poems. It’s a fat paperback. ED wrote hundreds, none of them longer than a few stanzas. There are 1,775 in the book.

  There’s an introduction, which tells that ED was an American who lived at Amherst, Massachusetts, USA, from 1830 to 1886. She had to look after her strict religious father and never married. But she wrote many love poems. Who was her lover? No one knows. Good on her!

  From what I can see, she wrote most of her poems in a very short period of time. As if she’d turned on a tap and out they flowed full pelt. I think this is wonderful. But even more wonderful is that she went on writing even though no one would publish her poems. She sent them to some high and mighty old man who she thought was an expert. He told her they were not proper poems. Then four years after she died, he published them (and tampered with them to make them the way he thought they should be, the cheek!). But since then other people have published them the way ED wanted them. I am already fascinated by her and must find a biography that will tell me all about her.

  I hope I have the same courage as she had to go on writing my mopes whether anyone likes them or not, and to write them the way I want them to be and not the way people say poetry should be. Today I came to the conclusion that there are no rules about writing poems.

  I must study ED’s poems very carefully. So far, this is my favourite, mainly because it makes me think of Will and me.

  ‘Call my mobile. Whenever. Yes?’

  ‘Go. Before I change my mind. Go! Go!’

  He kissed me goodbye.

  I couldn’t bear to watch him drive away. I ran to my room and locked the door and threw myself onto my bed. I felt lost. Abandoned. And had made it worse by sending Will away, as if I was suffering a hurt I wanted to feel as painfully as I could on my own and wanted it to be as bad as it could be. Not that I understood what this hurt was. But whatever it was it seemed to well up from the pit of my stomach, in fact from my womb, causing an earthquake inside me. It made me tremble and found its way out in gasps and gulps and tears and howls which I tried to smother with a pillow. Panic took hold. I felt that if I let myself go, gave in to it, I’d completely lose control.

  I would have phoned Izumi and talked it through with her, but she was away with her family on a sightseeing holiday in Sweden. I couldn’t trust myself to anyone else when feeling so raw. Except Doris. And this time, I couldn’t talk to her.

  Quite without meaning to, I kept thinking of the horse, the white horse galloping over the downs yet never moving, like in a dream you see yourself running, feel yourself running, but are stuck to the spot. I remembered sitting with Dad above the horse’s head, remembered scattering Mother’s ashes over its eye. And its eye grew bigger and bigger and swallowed me.

  Afraid I’d freeze up if I remained on my bed, paralysed by panic, I made myself stand up. Made myself walk round my room. As I passed them, I fingered my possessions as if trying to stay in touch with some solid part of myself.

  Then suddenly my clothes were unbearable. Were contaminated. I tore them off. But then saw myself stark naked in the mirror and couldn’t bear to look. I’d have stripped my skin off if I could. I pulled on a favourite nightie, but this only made me feel more vulnerable. I searched my clothes for something I could wear, but nothing was right, nothing

  Wild Nights – Wild Nights!

  Were I with thee

  Wild Nights should be

  Our luxury!

  Futile – the Winds –

  To a Heart in port –

  Done with the Compass –

  Done with the Chart!

  Rowing in Eden –

  Ah, the Sea!

  Might I but moor – Tonight –

  In Thee!

  (NB. Ms M. is always criticising me for using too many exclamation marks. I shall take pleasure in pointing out to her how often ED uses them!)

  Some things I detest

  Bermuda shorts and long floppy shorts, especially on obese oldies. No: on anybody. They make obese people look ugly and piggy, and make everybody else look stupid and silly.

  Men with hairy backs.

  Beards. All beards. Too disgusting for words.

  Wearing sweaty clothes, especially undies, when I’ve cooled off and can’t change, as at school after hectic breaktimes or forced physical activity.

  Ageing so-called pop stars, like hideous Mick Jagger and C. Richard. The walking talking grinning (and I’d say caterwauling but that’s an insult to cats) dead.

  People who make sport into an essential moral virtue – i.e., you’re good if you do it and adore it and you are deficient if

  seemed to be me or mine, everything was alien. I was alien to myself. I saw the words I’d stuck inside so many of my things during my naming craze; now that seemed so foolish, so stupid, so childish, so naff. I began to rip them off, scattering them around my feet. Like soiled snowflakes. Shredded pages. But soon gave up. It only made me feel worse.

  A few weeks before, during the worst time of the exams, I’d filched one of Will’s T-shirts and a pair of his underp
ants from the laundry basket in his bathroom. I’d wanted some things of his, some things he’d recently worn next to his skin and were still heady with his most intimate smell. I’d used them to comfort me when I was on my own, especially in the night when I was awake with exam worry. Now I took them from their hiding place in an old pillowcase at the back of a drawer, buried my face in them and inhaled Will again like an anaesthetic.

  After a while that wasn’t enough. I wanted them on me, wanted them next to my skin, wanted to be in them. In his clothes with him. I’d never worn them before, had wanted to preserve his smell uncontaminated by mine. But now I just had to put them on, which I did with a deliberate kind of reverence, as if they were vestments. They were loose, of course, they swaddled me, even his underpants were at least two sizes too big. But I liked that. I was lost in him. I wished I had a pair of his jeans so that I could wrap all of my body in him. But the best I could do was pull on the trousers of the tracksuit I wore for our morning run, after which we often made love. At least I knew Will’s hands had been inside them. His hands, his hands! I made myself think of his hands, made myself see them clearly in my mind’s eye, feel them on my body, because his hands, like his kisses, could always banish my worries and calm me. Had he been with me, he’d have caressed me, stroked me, soothed away this unfamiliar peculiar pain that had put me into such a panic.