This Is All

by Aidan Chambers

  I could think of no one I trusted, no one to whom I could trust myself, no one I admired, no one who I wanted to attend to me, except Ms Martin.

  I fled to her on my bike.

  She opened the door, took one look, stood aside and said, ‘I think you’d better come in.’

  (What would I have done had she not been there? Would I be here to tell the tale? How iffy, how dependent on chance life can be.)

  I expected that she would sit me down and ask what was wrong and listen to my tale of woe, and coddle me and persuade me not to do anything foolish. I wanted to tell her my woes, yet at the same time I didn’t want to. I think I didn’t know what I really did want. Except that she be there and care for me.

  But she didn’t sit me down and didn’t ask me what was wrong. (She knew something of it anyway because I’d told her. What she didn’t know but must have seen in my face was how desperate I’d become.) Typical of Ms Martin, she did something quite different.

  ‘I’m busy cleaning,’ she said. ‘Would you like to help?’

  I nodded, robotic, speechless.

  ‘Good. I hate cleaning on my own. Start in here. Tidy up. Vacuum. Dust. The things you need are in the cupboard in the kitchen. While you do that, I’ll do the bathroom. Then we’ll have a breather. Okay?’

  We didn’t talk that day, not about the reason I’d come to see her. Instead, I became obsessed with cleaning her house. After finishing the front room, I started on the kitchen. At first she tried to stop me. ‘Enough, Cordelia, you’ve done enough. I really did not intend you to do so much.’ But I ploughed on with the determination of a fanatic, saying, ‘No no! I’m enjoying it. Please let me do it. Please!’ ‘Well, I’ve had enough, so let’s stop. One room a day is about all I can stand of housework.’ ‘Leave me,’ I commanded as if she were the pupil and I her teacher. ‘Go away. Do something else. I want to do this. Honest.’

  After further protests, which were only for show (I could tell she was amused and pleased by my change of mood), she gave up and went off to her attic workroom, which I hadn’t seen yet but later discovered was a room after my own heart (old writing table with laptop, printer, phone, delicious stationery items; a tower of file drawers in different cheerful colours; gorgeous white-painted shelves laden with books and CDs and curiosity-provoking personal objects; a daybed of the kind they used to call a chaise longue covered in untreated linen; pine-wood floor with copper-coloured scatter rug; a compact sound system; one dormer window looking out over the back garden and one looking over the road at the front to the park beyond).

  In the kitchen, I scoured the cooker inside and out, unpacked, wiped the shelves, and repacked the cupboards (it was while doing this that I found out how faddy Ms M. was about health items like vitamins and food supplements), swabbed the work surfaces, dusted and polished the kitchen furniture, and finished by scrubbing the floor.

  With nothing left to do downstairs and not having enough brass face to tackle the bedrooms (I felt that would be overstepping the mark), I went outside and set to, cleaning the windows I could reach without a ladder, front and back, brushed the paths, and cleaned the inside of the windows.

  By then it was after one. I’d been at it for four hours. All the pent-up self-destructive energy had burnt off, I felt calm and myself again, but exhausted. And felt that I too had been given a good clean-out, as if cleaning Ms M.’s house had scoured from me the muck and rubbish, the dust and grime that had been polluting my soul and the nooks and crannies of my mind. As there was no sign of Ms M. and I didn’t feel like calling for her, I sat down to wait on the sofa that faced the strange icon in her front room, and before I knew it I’d fallen asleep.

  When I woke I was curled up on the sofa, my head on a pillow and a fleece blanket over me. As soon as I opened my eyes I saw Ms M. sitting on the floor in the lotus position, facing the icon, which she had taken down from the wall and propped up on the kind of stand people use to display pictures. She was as still as a statue, yet the intensity of her concentration radiated so strongly that I would not have been surprised if she glowed. I understood at once what she was doing, but this was the first time I’d been in the presence of someone who was completely absorbed in truly deep meditation. I felt it would not just be impolite but sacrilege to disturb her.

  For some time I remained exactly as I was, not allowing myself to move or make a sound, intending to stay there till Ms M. was finished. But while I observed her a hunger came over me, a want, a wish that I could do what she was doing. I wanted to be as deeply absorbed, I wanted to know what it was she knew, I wanted to be with her and to emulate her.

  As quietly as I could, as smoothly as I could, I slipped the blanket from me, stood up, took the one step required to place me an arm’s length to the side of Ms M. so that she and I and the icon were the equidistant corners of a triangle, where I lowered myself to the floor, copying the lotus position as well as I could, legs crossed with feet tucked into the inside of my knees, back straight, hands resting palms up on my knees, first fingers and thumbs lightly touching, head square, eyes focused on the icon, and waited to see what would happen next.

  But nothing happened. Nothing, I mean, of the kind that resembled what was happening to Ms M. I didn’t become deeply absorbed, didn’t radiate with concentration. Far from it. It was all I could do to keep still, keep my eyes on the icon, and keep my mind from wandering off into wayward thoughts. Before long my legs started to hurt, my bum felt it was on pointes, I wanted to scratch my nose and rub my eyes, I wanted a drink because my mouth was dry from sleep, and worst of all I needed a pee. It was stupid of me, I decided, to think I could get into meditation straight away first time. And, I wondered, what was the time? To find out I’d have to take my eyes off the icon and look at my watch.

  I was struggling to keep still and not check the time when Ms M.’s voice, as quiet as moonshine, said, ‘You’re trying to play a concerto before you’ve learned the scales.’

  In my fragile mood, this rebuke, though feather-light, might have shattered me. But I must have gained some strength already, because instead it braced me.

  I said, ‘You could teach me.’

  Ms M. said nothing for so long I thought she was ignoring me, which pricked resentment. But then she muttered, ‘You ask too much.’

  I was so young in knowledge of life I couldn’t grasp what she meant. She might not want to teach me, but how could it be too much to ask?

  I said, ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You don’t.’

  ‘Could you explain?’

  ‘Catch twenty-two.’

  ‘What?’

  She breathed a sigh and stirred for the first time, unlocking her feet and stretching her legs out. ‘To explain I’d have to tell you what I don’t want you to know, and therefore I can’t explain because I don’t want to tell you.’

  ‘It’s too personal?’

  ‘You’re catching on.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, but didn’t see at all.

  ‘No you don’t,’ she said. ‘It’s very private. Very personal.’ And was silent again, while I grumbled to myself about her being obtuse, before she added, ‘Also.’ Sigh. ‘It’s not easy.’ Deep intake of breath. ‘This isn’t a hobby. It isn’t a pastime. It’s very serious. Even more serious than studying to be a concert pianist.’

  ‘And you don’t think I could be that serious.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’ Another pause, another intake of breath, before, ‘I mean I’d only teach you if you were totally serious – as serious as you are about your poetry.’

  ‘But how can I know whether I’ll be that serious till I try? And how can I try if you won’t teach me?’

  ‘Catch twenty-two,’ she said.

  I was so annoyed with her by now, I stood up and said, ‘’Scuse me, I need to go to the lavatory.’ And rather flounced out, I’m sorry to say. Petulant Little C.

  When I returned Ms M. was in the kitchen preparing a meal. Two pla
ces laid. I stood at the door, unsure what to do – go or stay.

  ‘Thanks for doing so much cleaning,’ Ms M. said, nodding to ‘my’ place.

  Little C wanted to leave ‘just to show her!’ But show her what? How silly I could be, how childish and immature?

  I sat down, and watched Ms M., absorbed in the task, as in everything she did. Love for her swept through me and got tangled up with my feelings of resentment like clothes in a tumble dryer.

  The meal presented, Ms M. sat down. Neither of us made a move to eat. How can you eat with a loved one when disagreement separates you?

  After a moment Ms M. cleared her throat and (her eyes, I saw from a quick glance, averted) said, ‘I’d teach you … I’d like to teach you … I love teaching you … But this is different. It’s about me. My private life.’

  ‘And,’ I said, looking at her hard and an unintended flavour of spite in my voice, ‘you don’t trust me. Not that much. But I’ve trusted you.’

  She flinched and turned sharply from the table. Hesitated. Then got up and quickly left the room.

  I heard her running heavy-footed up the stairs, and a door close.

  How prone we are at awkward times in our youth to gibe at the adults who tend us. How tempted we are to hurt the most those who love us most. We’re told we do this because we are biologically programmed to find out where the limits are, or how unlimited love of us is. We do it so that we can become independent and adult ourselves. We do it because in our youth we learn from extreme behaviour the range and power and effect on others of our feelings and actions. But knowing this doesn’t make it any better than the ugly business it is.

  (I expect I shall have to accept the same behaviour from you one day – perhaps at the very time you are reading this. I must try to remember that it isn’t deeply meant, that it’s a universal experience, a suffering we all go through.)

  I remained where I was, shocked by my rudeness and by its effect on Ms M.

  What should I do? Go or stay? Say nothing or apologise? Be quiet or call up to her?

  My mind is a desert of indecision sometimes.

  At last, footsteps coming down the stairs, steady, unhurried.

  Ms M. sat down opposite me. Regarded me with a straight firm gaze. I could see she had been crying. It made me feel embarrassed. I couldn’t return her gaze. I looked at my untouched plate of food.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘About trust. Let’s forgive each other.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Good. Now. Eat. You must be hungry. And while you eat I’ll tell you my story.’

  << Ms Martin’s Story, Book 2, here <<

  3

  Most of the following day, Sunday, I spent with Ms M. We didn’t talk much, and not at all about ourselves. We jogged through the autumn mist in the park, we read, Ms M. allowed me to make lunch, afterwards we separated, she to her attic workroom and me in her front room, and wrote (she preparing for school, me some mopes), and then before supper she gave me my first lesson in meditation. Sit in the lotus position, fix your eyes on the icon, breathe in and out deeply and regularly, settle the body, imagine your thoughts draining away out of your eyes, you’ll feel like closing them but keep them open till your mind is quiet, and wait. ‘What for?’ ‘The Silence.’ ‘How is it different from ordinary silence?’ ‘You’ll know when you find it.’ Not easy. The first session lasted fifteen minutes and seemed like an hour. And I did not find the Silence. ‘I warned you. Scales and practice pieces first. Could take months before you can play the simplest sonata.’ In the evening after supper we watched a movie on tv. I wished I could stay the night, but knew I had to go.

  A perfect day.

  As I was leaving, Ms M. said, ‘We’re friends?’

  I said, trying to keep the thrill out of my voice, ‘I’d like to be.’

  ‘Private friends? Out of school friends?’

  I nodded, and couldn’t help thinking, Why? Why me? But this was not the time to ask.

  ‘Please call me Julie.’

  ‘It’ll feel strange. I’ll try.’

  ‘Only if you want to.’

  ‘I want to.’

  We hugged and said goodnight.

  4

  When Dad arrived home from work next day he came to my room, wheedling me to play hostess at one of his ‘promo parties’. He laid these on two or three times a year. Good regular customers and potentially valuable new ones were invited to drinks and a buffet, preceded by Dad and staff doing what he called his ‘floor show’ in which they presented ‘come-ons’ about new travel deals and package holidays. He liked me ‘to keep the male punters happy’ by ‘chatting them up’, handing out ‘the slosh and nosh’ and generally ‘touching up their testosterone’ so that they’d ‘take the bait and come through with the dosh’. I hated doing this and was persuaded only by emotional blackmail sweetened with a suitably lavish bribe. This time I’d have told him to get lost and give the job to Doris, who after all, I’d have acidly reminded him, was his wife now, had not my restorative weekend with Ms M. – Julie – imbued me with a more charitable attitude than recently. Not that this prevented me from squeezing out of him the price of a two-night first-time visit to Will, five-star hotel included.

  The party was as ugly and crass as usual. Towards the end, when the less restrained men were ‘well oiled’ and behaving with tedious innuendo, not to mention offensive groping whenever they got the chance, I was pinned in a corner by an ageing en bouffant buffoon, a plastic surgeon who, he leered, breathing gin-tanged fumes into my face, would not need ‘to take an improving knife to any part of you, my dear, as all your parts are already as improved by nature as anyone could desire’. He was about to deliver the seductive coup de grâce (he hoped) when he was neatly interrupted by Edward Malcolm, the man who had given us the celebratory bottle of wine on the night of Will’s goodbye dinner. I’d spotted him earlier and avoided him, not wanting to be plied with questions re Will and me. That was a topic too delicate and personal to be sullied by idle chatter anywhere at all, never mind at a ‘promo bash’.

  ‘Cordelia!’ he hallooed in the familiar tones of an old friend. ‘How are you?’ and, turning to the bouffant buffoon, ‘Forgive me for butting in, but it’s ages since Cordelia and I had a chance to exchange our news. Would you mind if I stole her for a moment?’

  Before bouffant could splutter an objection, Mr Malcolm took me by the elbow and escorted me away, through the thinning throng (it was approaching midnight, long past bedtime for the more geriatric oldies who were ‘a lucrative sector of our clientele’, to quote Dad’s annual company report, and were therefore a sizeable crowd of party-poopers on these occasions). He guided me across the room to a picture window that looked at the sky.

  There was nothing to see but the night, which converted the window into a cinema screen, reflecting us in close-up and the dying party in the background behind us. We stood side by side like tailor’s dummies, and talked to our ghostly images.

  ‘You seemed in need of rescue.’

  ‘For this relief much thanks.’

  ‘A pleasure. We met—’

  ‘I remember. Sorry I didn’t speak to you before.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘Takes one to know one.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘I was press-ganged too.’

  I felt deflated. Sussed out. Seen through.

  ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘Not at all. But I’m fairly good at spotting when someone’s putting on a performance. Even one as good as yours.’

  ‘I’m helping Dad out.’

  ‘Want to sit down? You’ve been on the entire evening.’

  After being deflated, I suddenly did want to sit down, preferably on my own. But at least with him I’d not be pestered by anyone worse, and it was flattering to be so courted.

  He collected a couple of those naff hotel chairs that have gold-painted curlicue backs and red plush seats, and placed them
together not quite facing each other.

  ‘What about you?’ I asked for something to say. ‘Who press-ganged you?’

  ‘A valuable client who likes such occasions.’

  ‘And you don’t.’

  ‘I detest them. The social equivalent of McDonald’s.’

  I’d learned that the trick of hosting parties, especially ones you don’t like, is to ask ‘the punters’ questions. They love talking about themselves and you don’t have to think of anything to say. I was so in the swing after four hours of it and was so tired that I couldn’t help parroting the script.

  ‘What d’you do? Or is that a rude question?’