This Is All

by Aidan Chambers

‘But?’

  He turns on his side to face me, head propped on hand. ‘You had some good times with Will, some very good times?’

  ‘I was just thinking about them.’

  ‘Which were the best? Which were the happiest? I mean, not the details, I’m not prying. But in general. If it’s not overstepping the mark to ask.’

  ‘No, it’s okay. Well, some of them were in this room, on this bed. Afterwards. You know?’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Nothing much. Holding each other. Talking.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Anything. Trees, music, books, school, the meaning of life, ideas, parents, friends, us.’ I laugh. ‘Especially us!’

  ‘And was it the talk that made those times so happy?’

  ‘Yes. No, not on its own. Everything. All of it.’

  ‘Being together?’

  ‘Yes. Being together. That’s what I liked. Just us together. And after sex Will was always relaxed, just himself. And always so, you know …’

  ‘Loving.’

  ‘Tender.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. Tender. I’ve never had that.’

  I’m shocked. ‘Never? Not with anyone?’

  ‘Not even when I was a kid. Except with Will once or twice. And these last few weeks with you.’

  I don’t know what to say. Try to joke. ‘And we’ve never even had sex!’

  He doesn’t smile and says, ‘Sex without the other, without that, doesn’t really matter. It’s just quenching an appetite. And it’s like junk food. Doesn’t last for long. Doesn’t really satisfy. Doesn’t feed you for more than a few minutes. Then you want some more. And the more you have, the more you want, and before long you end up an addict, a sex junky, and you don’t care where you get it or who from or what kind.’

  It’s painful to hear him talk like this. And makes me uneasy.

  I ask, ‘Is that what you are, a sex junky?’

  He breathes out heavily. ‘Was.’

  ‘But you stopped?’

  ‘Did.’

  ‘Did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Past tense?’

  ‘Will once said the arboretum was my drying-out clinic where I was kicking the habit. And the trees, he said, were my care workers. I looked after the trees and they looked after me. With a little help from a few friends.’

  ‘Who were?’

  ‘Will, for one. And a couple of the older women volunteers. I told you, I inspire mothering in women of a certain age.’

  ‘I get it. You went to work at the arboretum to keep away from temptation. You were in recovery. But they turned you out, and now you’re on your own again, and the temptation is too strong, and you’re getting hooked again.’

  ‘The best way to deal with temptation is to give in to it, didn’t you say?’

  ‘No. Oscar Wilde said it.’

  ‘Right. And Oscar liked teasing with a joke.’

  ‘Saying one thing and maybe meaning the opposite? It’s called ironic ambiguity.’

  ‘Is it now! No wonder I’ve always tagged you a smart colleen.’

  ‘And you needn’t come the begorras with me, Mister McLaren, because I’m not taken in for a second.’

  ‘Ah now,’ he says, camping the Irish, ‘but aren’t you the wily one, you are indeed!’

  We chuckle. I turn on my side, to face him. He has beautiful skin, and a lovely sharp-featured face.

  ‘Why keep doing it, if it makes you feel bad?’

  ‘Fear.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘Being alone. Being alone all my life. No one ever being there. None of those tender times. Afterwards.’

  He’s touched a nerve. Alone, alone, all, all alone.

  I reach out and touch his cheek with a finger and say, ‘I wish I could help.’

  ‘You have,’ he says. ‘You do.’

  We’re silent for a few minutes.

  I’m feeling sleepy. A slight breeze has got up and is cooling the air.

  I’m drifting off when Arry says, almost a whisper, ‘Will you do something else for me, if it’s not asking too much?’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Let me lie beside you with nothing on. Let me hold you.’

  I hear me catch my breath.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Never felt a woman’s body. I’d like to. And tonight it would be a help.’

  I wait a moment, unsure I want to do this.

  Arry says, ‘Not sex. Just lying together. If you can.’

  There’s something so childlike in his voice, all his posturing, his camp defensiveness gone, just Arry, stripped down. He’s made me aware of my own loneliness, and now I’d like to hold him too. Wouldn’t have thought twice, were he Izumi. So why not?

  I say, ‘Take your T-shirt off but keep your knickers on.’

  He slips under the sheet. We face each other, and fidget for the right combination of arms and legs. We’re slippy because of the heat, suppress laughter at our awkwardness or we’ll end up with the giggles and spoil the mood. Then, the cuddle settled, our faces close, looking at each other, we breathe out together, and relax.

  Echoes of Will. The pain of losing him returns. My eyes fill up.

  ‘Will?’ Arry says.

  I nod.

  ‘Sorry I can’t take his place.’

  ‘No one can. I’ve learned that. You’re afraid there’ll never ever be anyone for you. Well, I’m afraid I’ll never want anyone except Will.’

  ‘He’ll come back.’

  ‘I doubt it. He’s not the forgiving type.’

  We’re silent. Dad goes to the loo and back to his room.

  Arry says, ‘Maybe we should try the dating columns. “Well endowed young queen seeks handsome prince for fun and life-long companionship.” ’

  I smile. ‘Are you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well endowed?’

  ‘Like to inspect?’

  He lifts the sheet and pulls his pants open. He is. More than Will, not as big as Edward.

  ‘Hmm!’ I say. ‘My my! Nelson’s Column has a rival.’

  ‘Well, hello, sailor! And that’s before reveille.’

  We settle together again.

  ‘Size isn’t everything,’ I say.

  ‘O, no?’ Arry chuckles. ‘Tell that to the birds, sweetheart.’

  ‘I am a bird, precious, or hadn’t you noticed? You’d better tell it to the boys.’

  ‘It’s my best feature. Never had any complaints in that department. Right. Now, for you. “Recently bereaved princess seeks stunningly clever deliciously handsome young lord for sampling of restorative kisses and post-coital discussions with prospect of successful applicant succeeding previous occupant as princess’s consort.” ’

  ‘And only Will Blacklin need apply.’

  ‘Don’t be so narrow-minded. Or what about a dating agency? We could chaperone each other on blind dates. “Hello, sailor. This is my sister. She’s here to check out your credentials before handing you over.” ’

  ‘ “Good evening. This is my brother. He’d like to examine your endowment on my behalf to ensure you’re sufficient for my purpose.” ’

  And Arry, not smiling now, says in a serious whisper, ‘Don’t turn me out. Please don’t turn me out. I can make it if you help me.’

  I seriously whisper, ‘I won’t. Promise. If you’ll help me. You’re not the only one who’s been ditched.’

  He whispers, ‘I will.’ And smiles and says, ‘We’re like the kids lost in the forest.’

  ‘Hansel and Gretel?’

  ‘But your dad’s not as flaky as theirs.’

  ‘And Doris isn’t such a bad stepmother.’

  ‘She is not so! And there’s no wicked witch with a gingerbread house who’s trying to cook us in her oven.’

  ‘Thank god! I’ve never believed in fairy tales, have you?’

  ‘Only the ones we make up for ourselves.’

  ‘You should know!’

  ‘Cheeky chitty!’
/>
  After a pause I say, ‘What do you believe?’

  ‘If anything.’

  ‘You have to believe something. Everybody does.’

  ‘All I know is that all there is to know is what I know there is.’

  ‘Someone else I know believes something on those lines. Only she expresses it better, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

  ‘This teacher you spend so much time with?’

  ‘Julie.’

  ‘Would I like her?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Would she like me?’

  ‘I do, so I’m sure she would.’

  ‘Would it be right to guess you love her?’

  ‘It would.’

  ‘And that she loves you?’

  ‘Yes. But not sexually. A true friend.’

  ‘What more can you want?’

  ‘Only Will.’

  ‘Some people are never satisfied.’

  Before I can retort he plants a finger over my lips, then returns his hand to my back, holding me to him, stroking me.

  We say no more.

  In a while we drift off to sleep.

  >> Elevation / Escapade >>

  Consciousness

  We are nothing if we are not conscious. If we were not conscious, we would not know who or what we are. (See also: Memory)

  I would like to be conscious of every smallest detail of my self and my life. It is one of my aims to learn as much as I can that helps me to be completely conscious. But I want to do it quietly, not so intensely that I burst, which I think I would if I were seriously conscious all the time. I think I need a balance, allowing myself to do some things spontaneously and naturally, and other things intentionally, especially things involving other people.

  I also know from experience that wanting to be conscious all the time is a good aspiration, but actually doing it is another matter.

  Depression / Detox

  Happiness, it seems to me, is what you feel when your life is as it should be. Ergo, unhappiness is what you feel when your life is not as it should be. When you’re unhappy, you can become depressed. Depression is what happens when you exaggerate certain aspects of your life that are making you unhappy, and forget the others, which are not. Half the people I know at school are depressed, either permanently or temporarily.

  In my case, depression causes headaches, waking at four in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep until it’s almost time to get up, when I fall fast asleep again and am woken in a bad mood by my alarm. It causes me to withdraw into myself and ‘go quiet’ (aka sullen). I don’t want to see anyone, I want to remain in my room and do nothing. It makes my body feel heavy, convincing me I’m overweight, even though the bathroom scales indicate I weigh the same as I did before. I become irritable and hateful to myself and other people. Somehow I get through school, but only just.

  The above is a summary of my discussion on this topic with Julie.

  ‘Time to detox,’ she says. ‘I need it too. You’re not the only one who feels heavy at the moment.’

  This is Julie’s story of how she discovered detoxing:

  ‘Detoxing has become the done thing now. I’d never heard of it when I was in my early twenties, it wasn’t the fashion then. The first time I did it, I didn’t know what I was doing. It was just instinct. I knew there was something wrong so I did what seemed best to try and get better. It was after university. I used to eat irregularly there: big bowls of muesli at four in the morning when I got up to write essays, then nothing until about four in the afternoon when, if I was lucky, one of my friends had made a spaghetti bolognese or something. We drank a lot of coffee and tea and ate a lot of biscuits. Biscuits were somehow a required part of companionship at college in my day. And we also ate lots of stodgy food. By my third year, I felt bloated – mentally as well as physically. That was when some friends made me take up running, saying it would help, which it did. I tried yoga as well, which I didn’t understand at the time is only really effective when it’s part of a spiritual search.

  ‘Anyway, in my attempt to free myself from feeling low, I started to eat only fresh, clean, lightly cooked food, which I prepared for myself. It seemed the obvious thing to do. Up until then I couldn’t be bothered to cook, it seemed such a waste of time.

  ‘I’ve found that for me one of the key things about detoxing is that I must be in control. I don’t want other people telling me what to do, I want to do it myself. The Hay diet was all the go then. I learned from that how to cook a healthy detoxing vegetable soup, which I still do at least once every week.

  ‘Also, for me, detoxing has always been to do with rediscovering myself. Getting my body, my mind, my life back into proper order again after a period of confusion or stress or over-work, as now. I feel I’ve lost part of my consciousness, of who I am. I want to reassert myself to myself, and understand myself more clearly. Then, when I feel better and I’ve recovered myself, I relax my regime, until I need it again. I know you’re supposed to keep it going all the time, but that just isn’t me. I like variety. And I learn something from each cycle.

  ‘In the last year or so, Cordelia, you’ve lost your childhood home and changed in many ways as you’ve grown up, you’re working hard for exams, you’ve made a bad mistake with Edward and you’re grieving over the loss of your first love. As we said before, you’ve lost yourself, or you feel you have, and you need to rediscover yourself. You’re stripping down to essentials to do that, which means also stripping down to essentials with your diet. Does that make sense? So: time to detox.’

  This is what Julie called our ‘regime’. She means it ironically, but lordy, she is quite military about it, no lapses allowed:

  Lots of natural still water.

  Herb tea – no coffee or ordinary tea.

  Lots of salads, especially including celery, cucumber and watercress. (Julie is good at making dressings that don’t break the rule.)

  Lightly cooked vegetables, especially broccoli, which is not at all my favourite; I don’t like its look, texture or taste.

  Brown rice. Wholemeal pasta or potatoes now and then, but no French fries (a favourite of mine).

  Oily fish twice a week (mackerel, herring) but not cooked in fat, along with stir-fry.

  Juices: carrot and apple; beetroot and apple (this turns your pee beetroot colour, which can be a shock when you forget).

  Smoothies made in the blender: passion fruit and orange, banana and yoghurt, pear, melon, etc.

  No biscuits, cake or meat.

  As I strip down to the essentials and look back at my life so far, I’m learning that Life is not made up of separate elements, separate aspects and activities, but that it’s all one. Everything influences everything else, and everything depends on everything else. You can’t do something to one aspect of your life without affecting all the others. This is now what I believe and therefore has to be part of how I live and how I think.

  Elevation / Escapade

  After three weeks of detoxing both Julie and I are looking and feeling much better. Skin, hair, eyes, all brighter, energy more vigorous, enjoyment returning, though, for me, with a sad undercurrent to all I do: regret and longing for Will. So we relax the regime.

  My restored energy requires an outlet. Arry goes swimming with me. He’s like a slim porpoise. We play tag, but he’s more agile than me, so I’m It for longer than he is.

  One evening while floating side-by-side hand-in-hand I say that I enjoy swimming but wish I could fly like a bird. How lovely it would be to skim through the air like a swallow or soar in slow spirals like the buzzards I see from my window. How lovely to have a bird’s-eye view of the world.

  ‘Take a ride in a little aeroplane,’ Arry says. ‘They do half-hour flights from the flying club.’

  ‘Too noisy. And you’re stuck in a box. Not the same at all.’

  ‘They do gliders as well. No engine noise in them.’

  ‘Still shut in a box.’

  ‘A trip in an air ball
oon?’

  ‘Maybe. But you’re with other people. I want to be like the birds. Just me and nature.’

  On the way home, Arry says, ‘Did you ever climb trees with Will?’

  I say No. He says that surprises him, Will being so keen on me and on trees. And I have to confess that I’m afraid of heights.

  ‘I don’t just mean scared, I mean mega-scared. I mean acrophobic.’

  ‘And you want to fly like a bird?’

  ‘Birds aren’t afraid of heights. It’s natural for them. So if I were a bird, I wouldn’t be acrophobic.’

  After supper, sitting in my room, Arry says, ‘Want to do something that gives you a different angle on the world? A bird’s-eye angle without needing to be a bird?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Something that gives you a buzz?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Some people say it gives them a spiritual buzz as well.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Let me take you to the top of a really tall tree.’

  ‘O no! No no! I’ve told you, I’m phobic about heights. I’ll die.’

  ‘No you won’t. You’ll be roped and geared so that you can’t fall. I’ll be with you all the way. We’ll need someone on the ground to haul you up and as a double check on your safety. And I promise you, colleen, it’ll be great. You’ll love it.’

  ‘I can’t. I couldn’t. Honest.’

  ‘You can. You should. Honest. You want excitement. There’s no bigger excitement than facing a phobia and beating it. D’you know that Will was scared at first?’

  ‘Really? He never said.’

  ‘Shit scared. It was me who got him over it. That’s one reason why he likes me so much. Everybody likes someone who cures them of a sickness, don’t they? So if Will could do it, you can do it. You say you’re stripping down, detoxing, clearing out the rubbish. Well, clear this rubbish out of your system. When you get to the top, you won’t regret it. You and the tree and the sky and the birds. And me for company and to keep you safe. You’ll never forget it. Promise.’

  Sometimes you say yes because to say no would be to fail the faith of a true friend. And too humiliating. So I say yes. But there’s another reason. To do what Will has done. To know what Will knew about conquering a fear. To find out what he found out at the top of a tall tree. It would keep me connected to him. Having done it, I’d know something of him, and something of myself, that I hadn’t known before. I want to please Arry, but I want to find out more about myself and I want to stay close to Will.