This Is All

by Aidan Chambers

  Call Number Three, the night before our final weekend.

  ‘Hi, it’s me.’

  I went to the window. No car, no Edward.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In the kitchen at home.’

  ‘Is that okay?’

  ‘She’s dead to the world. The kids have been ill all day. Can we talk?’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘I need to. Look. This can’t go on.’

  ‘What can’t? You calling me at three in the morning? I agree.’

  ‘No. Me. Here.’

  ‘Have you been drinking?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You sound like you have.’

  ‘Tired. Bad day. And then the kids.’

  ‘You should go to bed.’

  ‘I’ve been to bed. Can’t sleep for thinking about you. I love you. You know that, don’t you.’

  ‘Go back to bed. You should.’

  ‘I want to see you.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Tomorrow. You’ll feel better in the morning.’

  ‘Why not now?’

  ‘Please, Edward.’

  I felt like a weary mother wheedling with a demanding child.

  A silence before he said, ‘Let’s go away. Tomorrow. A weekend by the sea.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You like the sea.’

  ‘What’d I tell Dad?’

  ‘The usual. A surveying job.’

  ‘He wasn’t too keen last time. Very against.’

  ‘Want me to call him? Square it with him? I can be very persuasive.’

  ‘No! … No.’

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Us.’

  ‘I’m not prepared.’

  ‘A proper talk. A serious talk.’

  ‘O, Edward, I don’t know, I don’t know! You’re rushing me.’

  ‘You’re up to it. You’ll cope. You’ll be fine.’

  ‘My hair’s awful.’

  ‘Forget your hair. Do it for me.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘When have I ever asked you to do something for me? Something that really mattered.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Well then?’

  How could I refuse?

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Bravo! The office, five-thirty?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I love you.’

  I knew he wanted me to say the same back, but I couldn’t. Another trivial detail, symptom of detachment.

  ‘… Night, Edward.’

  ‘Night, my lovely Cordelia.’

  The words that stayed in my mind as I climbed back into bed were: ‘This can’t go on.’

  18

  We were in a five-star hotel at boring bourgeois Eastbourne-on-Sea. We’d arrived late on the Friday evening. Next morning while I was sitting spread across him (which he liked, he the horse, me his rider), Edward reminded me of how our affair (he meant our sex) had begun two days after my seventeenth birthday – a prelude, I sensed, to the serious talk he’d mentioned.

  I said, trying to be light and jocular, ‘So, Mr Malcolm, what was it about me two days after my seventeenth birthday that made you dare admit to yourself that you fancied me something rotten?’

  ‘Not just fancy you. Fall for you.’

  ‘O, that.’

  ‘Yes, that. You don’t believe me? Still?’

  ‘I prefer not to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because.’

  ‘Because what?’

  ‘Because I don’t believe in falling in love. Not after Will. Not any more.’

  ‘Such cynicism in one so young.’

  ‘Such naïveté in one so old.’

  ‘Never mind about the old.’

  ‘But you do mind about the young.’

  He moved under me and was erect.

  ‘No, Edward, wait.’ I dismounted. ‘Not just now.’ And lay beside him, my face on his chest, looking up into the jut of his chin with its overnight growth of prickly whiskers and the kissable swell of his lips and the caves of his nose and his closed eyes.

  Since we’d become lovers we’d talked now and then about me, about him being married, about the difference in our ages, but always avoiding the heart of the matter by teasing each other all the time. We both knew that bringing anything important about our situation into the open and discussing it would have consequences. And we didn’t want to face them because we were scared of them. But, as I’ve explained, before we came away on this third clandestine trip Edward had behaved in ways that made me uneasy.

  ‘Please,’ I said, ‘I want to know what happened that made you fancy me and do something about it.’

  Whenever two people reach a dangerous moment of truth about themselves, they pause and draw breath before taking the leap into unknown depths of the ocean. And both of them know that if they take this step there can be no turning back. Nothing will be the same.

  Edward said, ‘You lied.’

  ‘What? You fancied me because I lied?’

  ‘No. I already fancied you. But I only dared admit it to myself because you lied.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘Yes you did. You lied about why you wanted to see me.’

  ‘O, but that’s not—’

  ‘Yes it is. A white lie. A social lie. Call it what you like, but it’s still a lie. You lied so that you could see me and you lied about why you wanted to see me. Two lies in one.’

  ‘You fancied me but didn’t admit it to yourself. But then I lied and then you could. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You’d never lied. Not once. About anything. Not even just to please me or out of politeness or anything. But that day you lied because you wanted to see me and didn’t want me to know the real reason. But you’re a hopeless liar. I knew straight away, as soon as you came into my office and babbled on about needing to know some information about sewage and then could hardly wait to thank me for the necklace and to show yourself off wearing it. I knew then you had a thing about me – that you wanted me. You’d lie about it. You’d lie to me, and I knew you’d lie to other people about it. And even to yourself. Isn’t that true? Isn’t that how it was?’

  Silence. I hid my face from him. I couldn’t say anything. I knew he was right. But I couldn’t even then bring myself to admit it.

  After a moment he said, ‘You don’t like that, do you?’

  I shook my head. I felt like a little girl when caught red-handed, not the woman I’d always felt I was when with him. Little C wanted to be cuddled, soothed, told there there, it’s all right. Typically of Edward, he sensed it, put his arm round me, pulled me to him, and with his other hand began to stroke my hair.

  He said, ‘You’d rather I lied? Said I fell for you because you’re so beautiful?’

  ‘No! Yes!’

  ‘You are beautiful.’

  ‘No I’m not,’ Little C puled.

  ‘Yes. To me. And I don’t care what anyone else thinks. Nor should you.’

  ‘But you didn’t do anything.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I do have some scruples.’

  ‘You did something the next Saturday, though.’ I sat up, cross-legged beside him. Big C in the ascendant again. We considered each other, eye-to-eye. He began to caress my thigh. ‘What happened to your scruples then?’

  ‘More accurate to say we did something, wouldn’t you agree, Ms Kenn?’

  ‘You started it. You kissed me.’

  ‘Sure about that?’

  ‘I didn’t stop you, no. But you’re the man and you’re the adult, and you were – you are – my employer, so you were the one in charge and you were the one who was responsible.’

  ‘Ah, that modern PC rubbish.’

  ‘It isn’t rubbish.’

&
nbsp; ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t want to get into an argument about that. This is too important. Please, Edward.’

  ‘Yes, I am a man, and yes, I am an adult, and yes, I employ you. But you’re quite sure, are you, quite certain, that I was the one in charge? That I was the one making the running and – what? – imposing myself on you? – and you weren’t responsible in any way? And that you aren’t responsible now, my sweet Cordelia, who never lies, except once so that she could see the man she wanted to show herself off to, and was wearing a nice tight top and a short-short skirt and was carefully made up and was air-brushed and warm from cycling fast and was flashing her eyes and flirting her hair, and pretending to be an innocent schoolgirl on a homework mission with not a thought in her gorgeous head except sewers. Is that how it was? … Give me a break, Cordelia! Lies aren’t worth lying for.’

  I didn’t, couldn’t look him in the face. I propped myself up with pillows against the bed-head and stared at the room. A smart hotel room. We were supposed to be on a surveying job, but that was only an excuse. Another romantic adventure. I’d been excited by the others. Being spoilt by this clever, sophisticated man. Being made love to in ways I didn’t know were possible. And talking about it. Nothing out of bounds, nothing taboo, nothing embarrassing or unexplained. I’d learned so much, been stretched in mind and body. But suddenly now this plush room with its prairie-sized bed rumpled from our night of sex seemed a terrible cliché, a scene in so many movies. As I looked at it something shifted inside me. Something about Edward and me. But, as I’ve told you many times, I don’t ever really know what I think till after an event is over and I’m alone in the safety of my own room and can think about what has happened, feel my way through it and probe its meaning.

  ‘Well?’ Edward said. ‘Cat got your tongue?’ There was an unfamiliar harsh tone in his voice, which frightened me.

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘When I came to see you.’

  ‘You mean, you weren’t lying and you weren’t dressed sexy and you weren’t flirting?’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Okay, then, explain.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that in the front of my mind.’

  ‘But it was like that in the back of your mind?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know. Yes, I suppose it must have been.’

  ‘So if that was in the back of your mind, what was in the front?’

  ‘What I knew I knew about. I was excited because of your necklace and because you’d thought about me and remembered my birthday, and I’d had a row with my father and my aunt, and Will wasn’t – I don’t want to talk about Will – I just wanted someone – I wanted you – to be pleased with me, to pay attention to me. That’s all.’

  ‘And the way you dressed? You’d never dressed like that before. Not that I’d seen.’

  ‘I wanted to look nice for you.’

  ‘Nice!’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Again.’

  ‘About girls, I mean. Of course we want to look sexy. And we learn how to do it so that men look at us. Not boys. Men. Boys are hopeless. They can’t get it right. They don’t know how to behave. Not Will. He knows. But I don’t want to talk about Will.’

  ‘You can hardly blame them. They’re not experienced. Give them a chance.’

  ‘They’re all over you one minute and the next they’re off with their mates, and forget all about you. Mates! I ask you! Mates! You’d think they were married. They’re hopeless. They aren’t subtle and they aren’t exciting.’

  ‘But men are?’

  ‘We want to be looked at, we want to be liked by a man we admire and can look up to. It’s just the way we are. It’s biology. But that doesn’t mean we want them to do anything. We don’t want them to grope us. We don’t want to sleep with them. We just want them to admire us.’

  ‘It’s all very well for you to go on about boys being hopeless with girls, but from what you’re saying girls aren’t any better with men. One thing I know for sure is that when most men see a girl dressed like you were that day they want her, and not just to be nice to. They think she’s up for it. And maybe that’s biology as well.’

  ‘But we don’t know that. How can we? We haven’t enough experience of men to know.’

  ‘So I’m right. Girls are no better about men than boys are about girls. QED.’

  ‘All I’m saying is, all I’m trying to explain is, that I dressed the way I did because I wanted to look attractive for you. That’s all.’

  ‘And to look attractively sexy.’

  ‘Well, is that so bad, is that so wrong?’

  ‘Now I suppose you’ll give me the line about how you should be able to wear anything, however skimpy, however provocative, and if you inflame the guy you’re so keen will be nice to you, that’s his problem not yours.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘O for God’s sake, Cordelia, come off it! You’re not that crass.’

  ‘I’m only saying how girls think. How they are.’

  ‘You can see why men complain that women give mixed messages.’

  ‘I’m not talking about women. That’s the point! I’m talking about girls. I don’t know about women. I’m not a woman yet.’

  ‘And you’re not a girl either. Or else, to judge by what you’ve just told me, you’d have run a mile as soon as I made a pass, and you wouldn’t be lying on this bed, engaging in this deliriously exciting talk after a night of hot sex.’

  ‘That’s because you never made me feel like a girl. You always made me feel like a woman. I liked that. That’s why I didn’t run away.’

  ‘Made. Made? Past tense? Not now? You don’t feel like a woman now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you’re not talking to me like I’m a woman, you’re talking to me like I’m a girl. You’ve never done that before.’

  ‘I don’t mean to.’

  ‘Well, you are. And it’s okay. I know I’m not really a woman yet. And whatever you say, I know you fancy me because I’m still more a girl than a woman.’

  ‘Really? Okay. Let’s talk about you, not about girls. Let’s talk about us.’

  He sat up, pulled the duvet over us, neat and tidy (he was always neat and tidy, precise, in control), and propped himself up with pillows next to me, both of us staring ahead, not touching, our hands in our laps.

  He waited.

  He’d frightened my mind into a blank.

  I said, ‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’

  He breathed out heavily. Impatient Man being Patient with Indecisive Woman.

  ‘That day you lied your way into my office you were a girl, a flirty, excited girl-girl. And so vulnerable. Trying so hard not to be what you were. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to take you in my arms and hold you tight and protect you from all the danger you were inviting.’

  ‘But you didn’t.’

  ‘Because, as I said, I do have some scruples. And unlike most men, I don’t think a girl is up for it just because she dresses sexy.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘That she’s naïve and foolish and needs protecting.’

  ‘But what was different three days later?’

  ‘You. You were dressed the way you usually were. Your office clothes. Sharp V-necked top. Smart black trousers, tight round the bum and loose round the ankles. Boots with heels. Well made up. Hair beautifully done. Woman, not girl. Still excited. Still looking at me enough to melt the Arctic. But you were the Cordelia I’d seen in Mario’s and every Saturday in the office and had admired in the sewer. You were so lovely and so mature and so pleased to be with me, I couldn’t resist it, and gave you a hug.’

  ‘But you didn’t just hug me. You kissed me.’

  ‘I put my arms round you and it seemed the thing that had to happen next. You felt that too.’

  ‘But I didn’t do anything to encourage you.’ />
  ‘You didn’t back off. You didn’t resist. If you had—’

  ‘You’d have stopped.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘I’m never that sure of anything. And anyway, there was no doubt that you wanted it. And I could tell it wasn’t your first time either.’

  ‘I’d had a lot of practice with a good partner.’ And I laughed. The first time since we began this conversation.

  There are many reasons why people laugh, not all of them to do with pleasure or amusement. They laugh sometimes when they’re embarrassed or shy or scornful or afraid. And they laugh to please. Which is why I laughed at that moment. I was out of my depth. Edward was irritated with me. He didn’t want to talk about us in this way. He was so much more confident in his opinions than I, he was so sharp when arguing. I knew he was right about the way I’d behaved that day with the necklace in his office, and the next Saturday when he put his arms round me and before I knew it we were kissing and I didn’t stop him. But I knew it wasn’t as straightforward as he was making it out to be, not for either of us. But I couldn’t work it out with him, because he wasn’t discussing it, he was arguing and was arguing to win. And I was afraid he would get bored or reject me for being fussy and indecisive and girlish. So I laughed to please him.

  ‘This isn’t,’ Edward said, not laughing, ‘about why I fancied you, is it? It’s about us. About the situation. You and me and me being married and a father.’

  I nodded, because it was.

  ‘That’s what I want to talk to you about,’ he went on. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

  ‘Not just for a weekend of nooky by the sea?’

  ‘No, not just for that.’

  ‘So what is it you want to say?’

  ‘Later. I’m hungry. Let’s have breakfast first.’