This Is All

by Aidan Chambers

  *

  you don’t do it and hate it. (The people involved with the Olympic games are the worst.)

  Dogs that bark aggressively at me when I am passing by. I do not blame the dogs, I blame their owners, who have no thought for others. In my opinion, they should be fined for not training their dogs properly and be sent to Dog Owners’ Training Courses until they and their dogs have learned how to behave.

  String vests. Ugly ugly ugly.

  Dad’s feet. (They have white nails because they suffer from some sort of fungus.)

  Polyester sheets.

  Anything acrylic.

  Dandruff. Chunder chunder.

  Anything to do with hospitals.

  Lavender tops as worn by old women. Even worse when they also have blue-rinse hair in artificial curls built up from their heads but so thin their skulls show through.

  Public loos.

  Traffic jams.

  The muzak they play in lifts and public buildings.

  Cigarettes in cars. Cigarettes anywhere, but especially in cars.

  Halitosis (and o lordy I hope I don’t have it or don’t know I have it).

  Emily Dickinson again

  It’s very odd, how she uses dashes in nearly all her poems. I haven’t come across any other poet who uses them like this. Why does she do it? Is it to help you when reading, or is it just a peculiar kind of punctuation? It makes the poem look strange. The dashes catch your eye. They give her poems a certain look. And as I think the shape of a poem is as important as anything else about it, I’m sure the dashes are there to

  The next thing I remember is Doris knocking at my door.

  ‘Cordelia?’

  ‘Go away!’

  ‘Let me in.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘We need a kaffeeklatsch.’

  ‘Nothing to say.’

  ‘But I have. Let me in.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please.’

  Little C wanted to keep her out, wanted to throw things at the door, wanted to scream and shout and stamp, wanted to climb out of the window and run away. But Big C knew I’d have to give in in the end. Big C won. (‘I hate you, I hate you!’ Little C yelled at Big C. ‘You’re so flaky!’)

  I unlocked the door, scrambled back onto the bed, and curled up in the foetal position, head tucked in so that I couldn’t see and couldn’t be seen. Doris shut the door with excessive care, stood for a moment, no doubt assessing the scene, then sat in the armchair that used to be Mother’s, which I’d placed by the window. My favourite place to read and to spy what was going on in the street below. That Doris chose to sit there irritated me all the more.

  A game of chicken ensued. Who’d break the silence first? I don’t like to think of myself as competitive. But women are with each other, whether we like to think so or not. Especially when we’re jealous or feel betrayed. Isn’t that so? I think we must be biologically engineered to behave that way, like so much else that controls our feelings. On this occasion I felt betrayed. But I hadn’t yet worked out why, so my rational override couldn’t function.

  What would we be, if we had no feelings? Unfeeling machines. Cruel automata. What would we be without our rational minds? Beasts of the field. Stupefied animals. What would we be without memory? Mad.

  give her poems the look ED wanted. And maybe they are like the beat of a drum in music – they mark out the rhythm and the pulse of the music.

  I’ve just said ‘Wild Nights’ out loud, almost as if it were a song, trying to be guided by the dashes. They do give the poem a special life of its own. And they do something to the meaning, but I’m not quite sure what. ED’s poems are like the kind of music that sounds both easy and difficult at first but if you listen to it again and again you hear much more going on than you heard at first and you begin to feel the sense of it.

  As I wrote the poem out, it occurred to me that this could be a spiritual poem, as well as a poem about passionate human love. The loved one could be ED’s god and she could be talking about her soul and the journey of her soul on the sea of the spirit until it is ‘moored’ in ‘Thee’ – her god. I like this idea very much, because it makes the poem say two truthful things, not just one. But I have to admit I prefer to think of it at the moment as a human love-sex poem. And I do not think anyone could have written it who had not experienced such a love. Which, in my humble opinion, means that ED must have had a hot hot hot passionate lover. And I do hope very much for her sake that she had. (I love it when Will is really hot.)

  Past v. Future

  When the past is vivid in your memory it blots out the vision of your future.

  I wonder if that is why their past is so vivid to old people and why they think about it and talk about it so much? The memory of their past blots out the only vision the future holds for them, which is their death.

  Where ignorance is bliss, it’s folly to be wise.

  Wrong.

  Ignorance is always stupid, and it’s folly to be unwise.

  Never one to hang about, Doris spoke first.

  ‘We thought you’d be pleased.’

  Worms squirmed in my mind.

  ‘We thought you’d understand.’

  Bile soured my tummy.

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ I said. ‘And I don’t.’

  ‘Look – I’m sorry. We got it wrong.’

  Why at such times is an apology as annoying as stubborn intransigence? Or was it, this time, just a case of teenage angst?

  I uncurled, pushed myself up, battered a pillow into shape behind my head and sat back, still unable to look Doris in the face.

  ‘Got what wrong?’ I grumped. ‘Deciding to get married, or not talking to me about it first?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘You’re doing the talking.’

  ‘Don’t be like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘A teenage pain in the arse.’

  ‘I am teenage, or hadn’t you noticed?’

  ‘Only in years.’

  ‘Sometimes I can only be what I am.’

  ‘Rise above it. I know you can if you want to.’

  ‘For the first time ever, I really don’t like you.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, but that’s something I’ll have to rise above. What we’re talking about matters more than your addled hormones.’

  ‘What about your hormones? Are they addled too?’

  ‘Meaning?’

  I shifted on the bed. Sat up, cross-legged, my arms clutched round my knees, my gaze fixed on my hands.

  Funereal fun

  I suppose all businesses and professions have their in-jokes and disgraceful stories. Dad certainly does about his travel agency. The hilarious and dreadful goings-on behind the scenes of package holidays, for example, would fill a book. Because of Will’s spare-time work, underbearing at funerals, he often can’t help telling me of the latest exploits. You’d think that burying the dead would be a sad and gloomy, not to say depressing business, but to judge from the things Will tells me it’s funnier than any of the comedy shows on tv.

  He’s told me many stories about mishaps with priests and other servants of the Lord during funerals. But I think my favourites are about accident-prone Father David Pippin, a saintly old priest, who recently retired from active service. He’s so small, hardly more than a metre and a half tall, that he might have been a troll. He’s forgetful, clumsy, humble, devout, and a huge big football fan. Mr Blacklin is tall, well-built, meticulous, certainly not humble, decidedly undevout, and a huge big football fan. Though in everything but their passion for football they are complete opposites, they are great friends. Will and the Richmond underbearers call them Laurel and Hardy, and they do indeed look like Will’s favourite comedy duo when you see them together.

  One cold winter morning after days of rain, Father Pippin was officiating at a funeral conducted by Mr Blacklin. The cortège approached the grave in the usual solemn procession. Will was paired with the hearse driver, carrying the foot en
d of the coffin. Leading the procession in front of him were his father and Father Pippin, who were conversing in whispers about a football match they had attended the previous Saturday. Father Pippin was wearing his far-too-large priest’s cloak. His puny head was dominated by jug-handle ears – the reason he was known behind his back as Ellylugs. Mr Blacklin was, as usual, in his immaculate morning suit and

  I said, ‘I don’t know what I meant. It just came out.’

  ‘You might be more right than you know.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘My hormones.’ Doris sighed and took a deep breath. ‘Remember I told you your dad and I were just like you and Will? A few years older, but just as much in love. Just as passionate about each other. But I broke it off. Let’s say life got in the way.’

  ‘I know it does sometimes – e.g. now.’ I was trying to be flippant but it came out like a whinge.

  ‘Love is a slippery business. I broke it off. Your dad suffered badly. My sister comforted him. He fell for her. But I’ve always thought it wasn’t your mother herself he fell for but that she made him comfortable.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear this.’

  ‘Maybe. But there’s a time for everything.’

  ‘I won’t let you talk about my mother like that. She was my mother and she’s dead.’

  ‘She was also my sister and I loved her. Just remember that. Do you think her death means any less to me than it does to you?’

  Tears welled up. It was like when a doctor is going to hurt you but you can’t get away and you know she has to do it.

  ‘I’m not talking about your mother,’ Doris said, hanging onto her patience. ‘I’m talking about your father and me.’

  ‘Just get to the point.’

  ‘There is no point to get to! … Look. We’ve always told each other the truth. Yes?’

  I nodded.

  Doris waited a moment, before going on.

  ‘Your dad likes to feel settled and cherished. He’s not happy otherwise. I know it mustn’t seem like that to you, with the succession of women he’s had since your mother died and the way he’s always going off somewhere or other. But maybe he’s just trying to find someone who can replace what he lost

  overcoat, including his ‘high-shiner’ top hat and tightly rolled umbrella. (He’s a great showman who believes that a funeral should be conducted with all the drama of a play, it being, he says, the last performance in which our dear brother/sister will take part on earth, while for the loved one’s mourners it’s a life-time sad occasion that should be marked with suitably cathartic ritual. He is greatly admired for this and gains much business from it.)

  When they reached the graveside, Mr Blacklin turned to help the bearers lower the coffin from their shoulders before placing it on the supports over the grave in preparation for the prayer of committal and final rites. But when he turned back to rejoin Father Pippin the diminutive priest was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Father?’ called Mr Blacklin. ‘Father Pippin?’

  At which a still small voice, as gentle and as unassuming as Father Pippin himself, was heard to reply from the depths of the grave, ‘I’m all right! I’m all right! I’m quite all right!’

  Somehow or other in his jumbly way, poor Father Pippin had slipped on the wet ground and tumbled in.

  Peering into the grave, Mr Blacklin saw the holy father sprawled in the mud two metres below. Whereupon, losing his professional aplomb for once and forgetting the solemnity of the occasion, he called out to his godly friend, ‘Now then, Father, what do you think you’re doing down there? It isn’t your turn yet.’

  And then, intending to aid the unfortunate cleric, he bent down and held out his hand. But Father Pippin being quite unable to get to his feet because of the slippy mud, Mr Blacklin had to kneel and bend further in than was wise. He did manage to grasp Father Pippin’s hand, but as Mr Blacklin heaved and hauled and Father Pippin slithered and slipped, they succeeded only in pulling Mr Blacklin off balance, which in turn caused him to lose his foothold and take a

  when your mother died and maybe the travel is a way of escape.’

  ‘Who are you to pass judgement?’

  ‘I’m not. I’m describing. I’m trying to explain … Everybody has to make their own life and do it the best way they can. Your dad and mother were as happy as any couple I know. I can’t blame him for the way he’s behaved since she died, and I don’t.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Do you know – do you appreciate – how much your father loves you?’

  ‘Is this a test? I’ve had enough of exams.’

  ‘All right! All right! Let me say my piece and then you can say yours. Agreed?’

  ‘Get on with it.’

  ‘Cord— Cordelia! Please! … Your dad loves you more than I think you know. That’s not your fault. Most of us, most children, don’t know how much a parent can love them. And fathers love their daughters beyond all their knowing. I speak from experience, remember. But I only discovered it, only learned when it was too late to do anything about it.

  ‘When your mother died, you were all your dad had left. I’m sure, I’m quite certain, he loved you and still loves you more than he loved your mother – and don’t start on at me for saying so. Facts are facts. It’s best to face them when you have to.

  ‘This last year, and especially since Will came on the scene, your father has known the time is coming when he’ll lose you. I know – don’t say it! – not like he lost your mother. But he knew you were becoming a woman, that you’d fall for someone, that you’d go off somewhere to do whatever you have to do, and that he’d be left alone, completely alone for the rest of his life. Whatever anyone says about your father, one thing is for sure. He’s a realist. He accepts the world as it

  header into the grave, landing with all his substantial weight on top of his dinky friend with such a crushing thump that both of them expelled such a painful groan that everybody was convinced they would never rise again alive and intact from their predicament.

  This inspired much wailing and gnashing of teeth among the mourners and frantic activity among the underbearers. The coffin was set down with unceremonious haste. The hearse driver, assuming the duties of second in command, yelled at a gravedigger to fetch a ladder. The mourners and underbearers surrounded the grave where they gawped at the scene beneath their feet. So upsetting was the sight that the principal mourner, ancient wife of our dear brother here departed, suffered a fainting fit and was hustled away by the hearse driver to a funeral car, where he revived her by waving a bottle of smelling salts under her nose (an essential item of emergency equipment always carried by funeral staff, Will told me).

  Meanwhile, Mr Blacklin set about untangling himself from Father Pippin, and with some difficulty and a great deal of sloshing about in the mud, each helped the other to get to his feet. ‘We’re all right,’ Father Pippin kept chanting as if it were part of the service, ‘we’re all right, no cause for alarm, dear people, all is well, we are all right,’ while Mr Blacklin harrumphed and spluttered, red in the face and angry with himself for his unprofessional behaviour.

  Eventually a ladder arrived and Laurel and Hardy emerged from the tomb, their funeral garb caked in clay and their dignity in tatters but otherwise none the worse for the experience. Will half expected to hear his father mutter to Father Pippin, ‘Another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.’ And as he said to me afterwards, it seemed unlikely that Richmond and Co., Funeral Directors, would receive a repeat order from that client.

  is and knows it’s up to him to do whatever he can for himself in order to survive.

  ‘I don’t think you realise how different you’ve been these last few months.’

  ‘Different?’

  ‘Well no, not different exactly, that’s the wrong word. Preoccupied, let’s say. Distracted. Not the spiky loving daughter and niece you were before. Your attention has been on Will, and during the exams you were all over the place, moody, jumpy, irritable. Not your usual
self. And the way you were behaving made your dad feel he’d lost you already. Whether he had or hadn’t doesn’t matter. He felt he had, and that’s what mattered to him. I tried to comfort him. I’m not as good at that kind of thing as your mother was. I’m too edgy, too matter-of-fact. But I did my best.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I’m coming to that. Your dad and I have reached a certain age. Call it middle age, call it the menopause, some people call it a second adolescence. Yes, I know – that’s a laugh. Call it what you like, I can tell you it’ll happen to you one day. And when it does you’ll find you take stock of your life so far. It’s like auditing the books – credit and debit, what’s in the red and what’s in the black, what’s above the line and what’s below, and what it all adds up to. You start wishing you’d done this and not done that. You can see with the clarity of hindsight where you went wrong and where you were right, your failures and successes – though it’s the failures that occupy most of your report on your paltry life. And worst of all, you go on and on at yourself about what you’ve missed and can never have now, and what you wish you’d had more of while you had the chance.’

  ‘And you wished you’d not chucked Dad. Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘No, not quite. I don’t regret that. If we’d married, I don’t think it would have lasted long. We weren’t right for each

  Old sayings made new

  Great minds think alike.

  Ordinary minds think alike. Great minds think differently.

  When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

  When the tough get going, the going gets tough.

  If you can’t beat them, join them.

  If you can’t beat them, avoid them.

  A trouble shared is a trouble halved.

  A trouble shared is a trouble doubled.