This Is All (100 page)

It is not an occasion I like to think about.

As an antidote I want to remember a happier time. On Cordelia’s twentieth birthday, two months after you were born and two months before she died, we took you tree climbing. In the morning Arry and I rigged the ropes on the ash tree she and I had climbed and at the top of which we’d nailed the little plaques recording the dates. We drove back home for lunch and to fetch Cordelia and you.

Arry hauled Cordelia up from the ground. I pulled myself up, with you in a baby harness strapped to my front. At the top we nailed a plaque with your initials and the date inscribed on it underneath ours, took photos, fed you warm milk from a flask and shared a small bottle of beer ourselves, before descending. There was no doubting that you enjoyed it. When we reached the top you smiled and slavered with pleasure. On the way home you celebrated the occasion by
spewing up all over your mother. Luckily she was still wearing her waterproof climbing gear.

Your mother declared the outing a decided success and was as happy as I’d ever seen her.

There was one thing we didn’t tell her. In the morning, when we were fixing the ropes, Arry found a new plaque nailed under Cordelia’s. On it were the initials CB – Cal’s – and a date two days before – the second anniversary of his abduction of your mother.

Arry removed the plaque and rubbed some moss into the hole made by the nail, in case your mother noticed it. We decided not to tell her, knowing it would spoil her birthday and revive her fear. Next day I called at the police station, reported what we’d found and handed the plaque over as evidence.

The week after Cordelia died we heard that Cal had been arrested only a few streets away from us, and was in custody, charged with numerous offences of burglary and assault. He was tried and sent to jail for three years. He wrote to me, saying he was sorry to hear of your mother’s death and how he loved her and never meant to harm her. Had your mother been me she would have replied. I couldn’t because I’m not so forgiving, but also because of a poem I’d found on the table in her room when I was packing her things in the days after her death. She must have been working on it the day she died, and quite clearly it was unfinished. There were eight different versions, each of them dated, with changes written in pencil on the printout. Here is the last one:

Thank You

(
to Cal
)

I should thank you

not resent

your unexpected love.

I should rejoice.

Not I but you

brought him back.

I should bless

not wail for

violence repaid.

I should cheer.

Why then do I weep?

A week has gone by since writing the above. I’ve just read it through for the first time. What a mish-mash! As plain and boring as an ash tree in autumn. (Despite what your mother wrote about it and the importance to us of the one we climbed, the fact is that the ash is not blessed with autumnal colours but deciduates into its winter skeleton with its tired summer green undecorated.) As your mother sometimes pointed out to me, I am not possessed of a metaphoric mind.

I started off intending to explain about the Pillow Boxes and was tempted off course by other topics. To spare my blushes, let’s call it Improvisation on a Cordelian Theme, which suggests it’s a lot more artful than it is, the term ‘improvisation’ often being used as a cover for their incompetence by those who enjoy a mediocre talent. I wouldn’t have got as far as this without Julie’s help.

Back to the main tune:

I hoarded your mother’s boxes for months, poring over their contents secretly at night, like a miser gloating over his money. I wept torrentially when I first opened them, but, as I’ve explained, my tears were as much of joy that Cordelia was alive in them as of grief over her death. The fact is, I had
accepted in my mind that she was dead, but not in my heart.

Then one evening during our meal Julie asked what I had done with your mother’s writings. I said they were safely stored away.

‘And what,’ she asked, ‘are you going to do about her book?’

‘Which book?’ I asked with alarm.

‘The one Cordelia intended for her daughter’s sixteenth birthday. I wondered if you’d let me see it.’

Until then I was certain that no one knew about it but me. And during the hours and hours of living with Cordelia in the pages of her Pillow Boxes, I had come to think of the book as mine. It was mine because Cordelia was mine and therefore the pages of writing that defied her death and kept her alive must also be mine. I had forgotten it was meant for you. I’m sure I assumed I would show you your mother’s writing when you were old enough to appreciate it, as I would show you photographs and her other possessions, and I also assumed that when I died the book and everything of hers would become yours. But not until then.

Now I had discovered that someone else knew about the book, and this someone else was reminding me that the book wasn’t mine, and this someone else was the person my daughter was calling Mummy.

I felt betrayed.

‘How do you know about it?’ I asked, spiky as chipped granite.

‘Because Cordelia told me,’ Julie said with surprise.

‘She told you?’

‘Yes. Didn’t you know?’

It was impossible to say anything more, impossible even to shake my head.

‘She told me about it,’ Julie said, anxious now, aware of my reaction. ‘She discussed it with me sometimes. She showed me some of the parts she thought she’d include. I’m sorry, Will. I thought you knew.’

I told you earlier how the grief I felt when your mother died was mixed with anger. When I wept the night I opened the boxes, I let my grief out and faced it, but my anger was buried deeper than I could dig out of myself. Now it emerged hideous, resentful, and cold as ice.

Without a word, incapable of speech, I stood up and deliberately, mechanically picked up my plate, still bearing the remnants of my meal, and threw it onto the floor, smashing it to smithereens. And then one thing after another from the table, slowly, with intervals of several seconds between each – every plate, glass, bowl, cup, saucer, a bottle of wine, the salt and pepper shakers. When there was nothing left on the table, I turned to the worktop and started on whatever I could lay hands on, then to the cupboards: the crockery, the glassware, the cooking pots, the ketchup and olive oil and wine vinegar and soy sauce and mustard and marmalade and jam and and and …
Smash … smash … smash
.

I knew what I was doing, but had no control. I observed myself with horror as if watching a lunatic.

I was entirely unaware of Julie. When the fit was over she told me she’d screamed when the first plate hit the floor, then stood up meaning to try and stop me, but I brushed her aside so brusquely and with such an unblinking reptilian look in my eyes she knew she had no hope, and as I went on,
smash … smash … smash
, she thought of you and what I might do when I’d broken everything in the kitchen, so she ran upstairs and took you from your cot, and carried you down to the front room, where she picked up the phone to call the police, intending after that to take you out to the car to wait till the police arrived. But as she was picking up the phone Arry came in. He had heard the noise even before he opened the door. Julie explained that I was in a fit of rage at something she’d said and was wrecking the kitchen and she was going to call the police because I was out of control. But Arry said no, wait till he had a go at calming me. Julie thought that
unwise but Arry was already on the way to the kitchen, so she waited by the open door, prepared to make a bolt for it with you if Arry failed.

Arry says he paused in the kitchen doorway for a few seconds watching me in robot-like slow motion hurling things to the floor with both hands as hard as I could, then staring at the result for a few seconds, before selecting the next object and repeating the process. He called my name loudly three or four times during the silent staring intervals but I showed no sign of hearing him. By now the floor was littered with broken crocks. He crunched and slithered his way over it and stood an arm’s length in front of me. He repeated my name, asked if I was all right (!), waved his hands in front of my eyes. Nothing, no reaction, no response. On I went,
smash … smash … smash
.

Later he couldn’t account for what he did next, except that he felt he had joined a naughty child in a playpen. He reached out during one of my intervals of silence, took a glass vase from the cupboard I was in the process of emptying, and mimicking my deliberate robotic action, hurled it to the floor between us. My eyes, already on the ground contemplating the shards of the last item I had demolished, blinked. Blinked again. Then looked up into his eyes. Arry smiled. My face remained impassive. Arry reached out, took a glass jug, lifted it high above his head and hurled it to the floor. My eyes followed this action, observed the splintered glass, looked up and blinked again. At which moment, as if a button had been pressed, I came to, looked round at the carpet of broken crockery and glass, looked at Arry again and said indignantly, ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing!?’

‘I’m doing what you’re doing,’ Arry said, mimicking my indignation. ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’

I looked around once more, puzzled.

‘I’ve done this?’ I said. I can remember clearly how
astonished I felt and how sure I was that Arry had caused the wreckage.

‘You have,’ Arry said gently. ‘Look, Will. Come and sit down. I think you need to sit down.’

‘I’ve done this?’ I repeated, appalled now.

‘Come and sit down,’ Arry said, and taking me by the arm led me into the front room, where I saw Julie standing by the open door, you in her arms, her mobile and her car keys in her hand, visibly shaking.

‘It’s okay,’ Arry said as we came into the room. ‘Just a blip. All over now.’

He sat me on the sofa as if settling an old man suffering from senile dementia, which at that moment I might well have been.

Julie didn’t move from the door, still ready to make a dash for it were I to show the slightest sign of regression.

Arry went into the kitchen and brought some water for me in a small saucepan, there being nothing more suitable to carry it in.

Reassured, Julie closed the door and took you upstairs to your cot. You’d remained remarkably unconcerned throughout the episode and were asleep again before she laid you down.

Then the three of us began an hour of what might be called a debriefing. Julie repeated what she’d said that set off my rage. I numerously repeated how sorry and how embarrassed I was for what I’d done. Julie and Arry numerously repeated that I wasn’t to worry, what did a few old crocks matter so long we were all right, no harm done.

Our nerves calmer, our confidence stronger, we rehearsed the reasons why I’d behaved so disgracefully. I explained that I’d thought I was the only one who knew about Cordelia’s Book, and related what had happened when I opened the boxes.

Now all was understood. The adrenaline rush wore off and we felt drained.

‘Let’s leave it for tonight,’ Julie said. ‘We’ve had enough. Let’s clean up the kitchen, and tomorrow we’ll talk about Cordelia’s book. I think you should decide what you’re going to do with it, otherwise it’ll hang over you and upset you again, don’t you agree?’

I was in no state to agree or disagree. And she’d called a halt only just in time because as we went into the kitchen to clear up, I started trembling so badly my knees gave way and I sank to the floor as the shock of what I’d done hit me, really did hit me. Arry and Julie helped me to my feet and sat me on a chair at the table for a few minutes, where I trembled as if shivering with cold – and did indeed feel frozen – and made me drink more water. But the shivering continued.