This Is All (18 page)

*

I have had a torrendous week.

I have not seen Will.

O Will, my Will!

Not once. Not even in school. Didn’t want to. (Did want to, but didn’t want to more.)

I fled from him. I hid from him. Even inside myself I fled from him and hid from him.

He doesn’t understand. (
He
doesn’t understand! So?
I
don’t understand either.)

What’s the matter? he ems me again and again. (I like it that he ems me again and again because it means he minds, he cares, he wants me. Doesn’t it?)

hv i dn smthng wrng, he texts.

no, I reply.

He wakeup phones. We talk, but not about us. I can’t. I won’t. He doesn’t press it. O I
hate
myself for doing this!

I don’t know how to make sense of myself. There is so much to make sense of there is too much to make sense of. One day in a year, and all my life is turned inside out upside down the wrong way round.

I’ve been sticking words into clothes like there’s no tomorrow. (There never is tomorrow, there is only today.) Why does this give me comfort?

I have done zilch work at school. Ms Martin enquired. I said, ‘Don’t ask.’ She hugged me. ‘Whatever it is,’ she said, ‘this too shall pass.’ She is the best teacher in the whole world. I mean it. She is. I wanted to hug her back. But daren’t. It would have been too much. More too muching. I took her a Mars bar. A
Mars bar?!
I mean! I felt like a prepube Year Eight sprog again.

I want to be a woman.

I want to be grown up.

But how do you do it?

*

Izumi came.

‘Need glow time,’ she said.

We went to my Doris room. Couldn’t stand my Dad room a second longer. No glow time would have happened there.

I told Izumi about my clothes-word binge. ‘Weird,’ she said, but in a way I knew she liked it. And she giggled her Nippon gigs. I love her gigs. I love Izumi. Really love her. She is my best friend.

She said, ‘Why only on clothes? Why not on body?’

She made me lie on the bed. She undressed me. Everything. She massaged me head to toe. Slowly. With orange blossom in grapeseed oil. Then she towelled me down. Then she gave me my hand mirror to hold so I could see what she did. And she began to write on my body with eye-liners and lipsticks and eye-shadowers and face paints.

On my chin in blue:
flower
.

On my right boob in red:
succulent
.

On my left boob in black:
perky
.

Around my navel in green:
lost in moon
.

She drew a black arrow from my navel down to the hair of my bush and wrote in mauve along the shaft of the arrow:
pleasure
.

On the inside of my right thigh she wrote in pink:
sensational
.

On the inside left:
yearning
.

On one knee:
hinge
; on the other:
pray
.

On the sole of one foot:
earth
; on the other
soul
.

She turned me over onto my stomach.

‘Say words,’ she whispered, ‘give dictation.’

confused, friend, lost, found, craving, horse, Epona, William, pining, mother, Izumi
.

I felt her writing these on my shoulder blades and down my spine and on my buttocks, on the backs of my thighs and knees, on my calves.

‘Where did you write horse?’ I asked.

‘In crack of bum.’

‘Where William?’

‘Along line of waist. And now I write
beautiful
on back of neck. In Japan we think back of neck most erotic.’

And then speeding up, faster and faster, till in a frenzy I fired words like bullets and Izumi scribbled them onto me here there and everywhere, back and front and sides, and hands and face, even my lips, till I was covered all over in our impetuous lexicon. How many words I do not know. It felt like all the words in the dictionary.

‘Now,’ Izumi said, flinging off her clothes, throwing them away as I had never seen her do before, she being so tidy and precise normally, ‘now I print your words on myself.’

And she spread herself on me, first back-to-back, pressing herself against me as hard as she could. And then front to front, legs to legs, bush to bush, boobs to boobs, our arms round each other, eyes open and looking into each other’s, and finally mouth to mouth, Izumi kissing me to imprint my lips on hers.

I said, ‘We’re kissing words.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘no. I eat your unhappiness. None left inside when finished.’

And when she finished, she stood and looked at herself in my full-length mirror, so beautiful, so lovely, her body smeared in many mixed-up colours, no words at all, all my words smudged into silence by the rub of her body on mine.

I got up and stood beside her. We put our arms round each other’s waist and looked at each other coupled in the mirror. All my words smudged all over me too.

At which we broke into giggles and fell in a hissy fit onto the bed.

And it was glow time.

And by the end I knew I must talk to Doris.

Heart to heart

Today, another visit to the ante-natal clinic. For the first time I heard your heart. The beat of your heart.

They fed the sound through an amplifier. The iambic beat of your heart
ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum
filled the room, surrounding me.

This is the most beautiful wonderful exciting thing so far about being pregnant – to hear your heart beating within me.

Now you are you.

My baby.

My child.

My you.

You and me.

Every I is a You, every You is an I
.

Hello, you!

Kaffeeklatsch two

‘Why now? Why am I only blubbing now?’ I said after weeping enough to flood the world. ‘It’s eleven years since she died.’

‘Delayed reaction,’ Doris said. ‘Grief takes its own time. But it’s got to come out eventually. Has to be expressed. And tears seem to be the language it knows best.’

‘But why now?’

‘When your mother died your father kept everything from you. He told you she’d only gone away for a while. Wouldn’t let you see the body. Or go to the funeral. He thought you were too young for such terrible things. I thought he was wrong. But you gradually got used to her not being there. Now, scattering her ashes … well, obvious, isn’t it.’

‘I promised not to tell you.’

‘I knew already.’

‘You knew?’

‘Dear Cordy! I know Frank Richmond well. I’ve been his accountant for years. He thought I should know, your mother being my sister.’

‘But you never said anything to Dad?’

‘You mother was his wife. If he wanted to keep some of her ashes for himself he had every right to.’

‘But not to tell you!’

‘Men and their puny secrets. They’re all little boys really.’

‘You were going to marry him.’

‘He told you that too, did he?’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘Wasn’t ready. Wanted to enjoy my freedom for a while longer. Going through a heavy feminist phase at the time.’

‘So Dad said.’

‘Because that’s what I told him. But there was something else. Something more important. Something I couldn’t tell your father. It would have hurt him too much.’

‘What?’

‘My father – your grandfather – was the best man I’ve ever known. The most intelligent. The most loving. The handsomest as well. I quite fancied him, to be honest.’

‘Not
like that
though?’

‘Yes,
like that
.’

‘Doris!’

‘Today, let’s not be mealy-mouthed or mealy-minded.’

‘Are you ever?’

‘I try not to be. But today is a day for hard truths.’

‘Am I up to it?’

‘My father taught me just about everything I know that I care about. I admired him. Didn’t just love him, I adored him. No other man could ever be to me what my father was. I realised that the day your dad asked me to marry him. One of the biggest moments of truth in my life. I just knew it wouldn’t work. Not because George wasn’t a good man and full of fun too. And I did love him, in a way I think many
women are willing to settle for. Even mistake for being in love.’

‘Mistake for being in love?’

‘What it is really is a fear of being alone. They fear nothing better will come along. Mainly because they feel they aren’t worth anyone better, or don’t deserve anyone better, or can’t attract anyone better. So they take the best that’s on offer.’

‘But d’you think they
know
they’re doing that?’

‘Mostly not. Some do. I knew I couldn’t.’

‘Because of how you felt about your father?’

‘I looked at George and I looked at my father, and there was no competition.’

‘And you thought you’d meet somebody one day who was?’

‘No. No, I knew then I’d never meet anyone I’d want to spend every day of my life with. And when my father died, he took the best part of me with him.’

‘That’s awful.’

‘That’s life. My life, anyway.’

‘I’ve never thought of you as a sad person.’

‘I’m not. There’s many have it a lot worse. By a long way. Sometimes I feel sad, of course. Who doesn’t? I read somewhere that the cure for sadness involves the continual discovery of the possibilities of life. I think that’s true. I like life. I like discovering its possibilities. That’s what keeps me going.’

‘Is that what you do when you go to London? Explore the possibilities?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you have lovers there?’

‘From time to time.’

‘Thought so.’

‘And I also love you. I like watching you explore the possibilities of life, too.’

‘Do I do that?’

‘You do. Many times you’ve made me happy when I’ve felt sad. If I had a child, I’d be glad and proud to have you.’

‘O lordy, you’ll set me off again.’

‘Have some more coffee.’

(There was something else about my mother’s dead body I’d promised not to tell but which I found out now that Doris also knew all the time. But I’ll tell you about it later.)

‘… All this … You’re telling me something. Aren’t you? I mean, not about you. About me.’

‘You’re lucky, you know. Twice lucky, in fact.’

‘How?’

‘Well, for a start, I don’t think you feel about your dad the way I felt about mine.’

‘That no other man can—’

‘Replace him.’

‘No, I don’t feel like that about him. And I don’t want him
like that
either.’

‘Still – he is quite fanciable, don’t you think?’

‘Then you can have him. I expect it’s his laid-back world-weary look that appeals to the older woman.’

‘Thanks. How generous of you.’

‘You’re welcome …’

‘… You said twice lucky.’

‘You don’t have a mother.’

‘Excuse me?
Lucky
that I don’t have a mother?’

‘I wanted my father, or a man who could replace him. Some women are like that. For other women it’s different. There’s a terrible way that some daughters – most, I think – want to be like their mothers. Or their mothers want their daughters to be like them. It imprisons them. Stultifies them. I think it’s harder for a daughter to free herself from her mother, or from her father if he’s as matchless as mine was,
than it is for a son to free himself from his mother or his father.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I know it’s been hard for you not having your mother there for you. Especially now, when you’re feeling you need her more than ever. But in the end, it might be better for you. Don’t let yourself think that what’s happened to you is worse than for most people.’

‘I don’t – do I?’

‘No, I don’t think you do. But I’m just saying. Trying to explain. You see, what I mean is, the lucky thing for you is that you don’t have to break away from your parents in order to establish yourself as yourself, the way most people have to. The break from your mother was forced on you early by the accident of life. And because of the way your father has lived since your mother died, you don’t have the sort of feelings about him that I had about mine. So you have the freedom to become your own woman in a way most women haven’t. It’s a special chance you’ve got. I know it seems hard. The best things always are hard, aren’t they? And this is the worst time, during your teens. But I know you can do it. And I know you have the courage to do it. In fact, you’re already doing it.’

‘With a little help from my friends, maybe.’

‘I’m sorry to say so, but I don’t think most women have that sort of courage. They actually prefer the mother trap. They feel safe in it. And they can always blame their mother for not being the person they want to be but haven’t become.’

What was I to say? When adults, older adults, especially adults you love, tell you about life before you’ve lived it, you don’t know how to respond. Or what you’re meant to do. They want to help, but they confuse you with their knowledge. There’s such a world of difference between hindsight
and foresight. Between arriving and departing. Between doing something and being told about it before you’ve been there and done that. Understanding requires experience. That’s why people repeat the eternally repeated mistakes.

Midday.

‘Let’s eat,’ Doris said.

This is something I can do. Eat. And cook.

‘Go and practise,’ I said, ‘and leave the door open so I can listen while I prepare the meal.’

She played (or tried to) Schubert’s Sonata in D major, D850 (no one can fault her courage), making enough mistakes for me to feel pleased and swearing at herself wildly enough to make me laugh while I orchestrated a pasta, improvised a tomato salsa and arranged a green salad.

While we were eating, Doris said, ‘What’s your grief done to you re Will?’

‘Haven’t seen him since. Not, you know,
seen
him.’

‘Too soon to know?’

‘No. I do know.’

‘Can I be told?’

‘Partly, it’s because of Mum. But also, I want to get it over.’