This Is All (26 page)

Will and I had been to see the great yew at Ashbrittle in Somerset, the largest yew tree in England, three thousand years old and more than twelve metres round. It had been a three-day trip to celebrate Will’s four A-level results (all As) and my GCSEs (four A-stars, three As, one B, and one C). We’d camped in a tent. On the way we’d visited the Tortworth chestnut again to commemorate Will’s epiphany as a tree-boy, and on the way back we stopped off in Bath to see a production of
The Tempest
at the Theatre Royal so I could pay homage to the other Will in my life.

From leaving to returning we enjoyed one of those carefree unblemished times when everything seems destined to be exactly right. Will and I were at one, the previous weeks of worry and torment forgotten, and the world conspired to please us. Will and I made love twice each night and once in the day. There’s nothing more beautiful than making love outside in the country, and especially at night beneath a glowing moon.

During the day Will studied the trees, photographing them and making notes, while I wrote mopes and read. I also wrote another lyric for Will’s band. He asked for a melancholy song about lost love, because that was always popular. It came

When a boy you love quietly cries because he’s so moved by something beautiful.

Daffodils in the dusk. They glow as if from an inner light.

Daffodils at any time, because they are brave.

Who am I writing to?

When I’m writing in my pillow book like now, who am I writing to? I don’t think I’m writing to myself. I mean, I already know what I’m writing about, so why bother to write it to myself?

Am I writing to myself in years to come, when I’m a lot older and have started to forget and need to be reminded of how I used to be? Probably. But that’s not all. For I do feel I’m writing
to
someone and
for
someone who is here right now. Perhaps the self who writes is writing to, and writing for, one or more of my other selves. Maybe my readers are my other selves.

Also, maybe the self who is writing is not always the same self, but might be any one of my other selves? This would explain why my writing isn’t always the same in style, not always the same in the way I express what I want to say and the things I write about.

The self who is writing each time is the self who needs to say something, and the self who is being written to is the self who needs to read it.

This must be how I tell myself about myself.

This must be how I find out about myself.

This must be why writing is so important to me. And my poems are the most important because they tell me more about myself than anything else. They are my best way of telling me not just about myself but about everything.

I read my selves

for I am Myself

easily, like doing a crossword puzzle just for fun. I was quite unaffected by it, had no inkling that it forecast a dark cloud rising over the horizon of our happiness. You can’t see clouds when your eyes are facing the sun.

Today’s the Day

I know you’re going away,

It’s the thing you cannot say.

I know you’re going away,

And today’s the day.

We’ve done a lot of lovin’,

Never tired of our cummin’.

But I know you’re going away,

And today’s the day.

Don’t call me when you’re gone,

Don’t pretend I’m not alone,

’Cos I know you’re going away,

And today’s the day.

Don’t promise to come back,

Don’t say I’m all you lack.

I know you’re going away,

And today’s the day.

If we never meet again

At least we’ve shared this pain.

I know you’re going away,

And today’s the day.

I promise I won’t weep,

Won’t tell you I shan’t sleep,

the self made

of all my selves

who must learn each other

in order to make Me

the Self who is Myself.

Sex talk

Today Will and I talked about sex. This is what we said (well, actually, it’s really more what I said than what he said, because Will is rather reticent on this subject, much preferring, he says, to do it than talk about it, whereas I find talking about it before we do it is very stimulating and talking about it afterwards adds to the pleasure. And I’ve found that it has the same effect on Will, but he doesn’t like to admit it):

Me: You know, after we had sex last night? That was the eighth time.

Will: Seventh-and-a-halfth, to be accurate.

Me: What?

Will: We didn’t quite make it all the way the first time, not really, did we?

Me: Pedant! Well anyway, after last night, as I was lying in that after-glow – you know what I mean—?

Will: Post-coital exhaustion. Otherwise known as shagged out.

Me: How crude! I mean the lovely time afterwards when I’m snuggling up to you, under your arm. Well, last night I thought how sex is like reading a book.

Will: No. No it isn’t. Nothing is like sex, only sex. And when I’m at it, the last thing on my mind is a book.

Me: Yes, I know. But it
is
like reading a book, because the first time you’re just finding out what happens next and what the characters are like and how the story goes and all that stuff. Then, the second time, and with the best books – but

Won’t say I’ll often mail,

I know I’ll only fail,

’Cos I know you’re going away,

And today’s the day.

We returned home saturated with each other. But as soon as I saw Dad and Doris sitting under the apple tree, the remains of their lunchtime salad and bottle of wine lying on the grass between them, my heart shrivelled, my stomach sickened, and the shimmer of my skin turned cold. Something in their attitude, their looks, their aura, enclosed them in a transparent membrane that I felt I couldn’t penetrate and induced a premonition of distress.

I walked towards them, Will holding my hand – he told me later he felt through my fingers the change of mood come over me at that moment – all four of us smiling, all four of us helloing and hugging and babbling the routine things everyone says at such homecoming reunions.

It was after we’d settled, and Doris had brought us salad and drinks, that Dad said, ‘We’ve something to tell you.’

I kept my head down, eyes on my food. I don’t want to hear it, I thought, I don’t want you to spoil everything. Since our sex saga, I’d been so besotted with Will that I’d had no room for anyone else. And school work had occupied me for weeks, revision for exams, then the trauma of the exams themselves – I detest exams and would never have got through without Will’s help and Izumi’s consolations and Ms Martin’s encouragement. I just hadn’t paid any attention to what was going on around me at home. Not to Dad, busting up with his latest woman (yet again, so what was new?). Not to Doris, joining us for meals more often than before. Not to Dad, spending evenings at Doris’s, which was rare usually. Not to them going out together, which was even rarer. I’d supposed Doris was trying to jolly Dad along till he got over

only with the best books – the third time and the fourth time et cetera repetizio, you start to notice all sorts of things you hadn’t noticed before. You know, like the subtleties and the little details – words and ideas and phrases and bits of information. And things about the characters. All sorts of wonderful stuff hidden
underneath
the story, so to speak. You understand?

Will: I understand. But the same thing would apply to playing music, so you might as well compare sex to playing music.

Me: Yes, why not, that’s true too. Sex
is
like playing music. And that’s the best, isn’t it? Not what happens but how it happens, and how the story is told, how it’s
done
, and all the lovely details. And what you find out about the other person while you’re doing it – reading the book or playing the music. That really is the best, don’t you think?

Will: Put like that, yes, I agree. But the thing is—

Me: What? … Go on.

Will: Putting it like that puts me on.

Me: Shall I get your oboe out and tune it for you?

Will: Then I’ll open your book and see if I can get into it.

Me: And the thing about our book and our music is that I never tire of reading it and I never tire of playing it and I
always
find plenty of new touches to enjoy.

Will: Nuff said!
Sordino
now,
sordino!

Sometimes

Sometimes I want to be famous. To be honest, more than sometimes. And then I think, But how banal! That’s what everyone wants. Do you know anyone who doesn’t? How silly to want what everyone wants.

Sometimes I think my mind is so mazy it will never be as

his latest affair – he was always mopey and depressed and drank too much after a break-up.

Dad said, ‘Doris and I have decided to get married.’

I froze – literally went cold and rigid.

Will uttered the kind of automatic tosh expected after such an announcement, then clammed up when he saw I wasn’t exactly brimming with joy.

Dad and Doris waiting and watching.

Dad said, ‘Aren’t you pleased? … Don’t you have anything to say? Like “congratulations” perhaps?’

Will stood up. ‘Maybe I should go.’

My hand went out to him. He took it, I gripped his hard, he waited a moment, deciding, before hitching his chair closer to mine with his foot, and sitting down again, resting my hand clutched in both of his, on his lap.

Silence.

I remember a ladybird landing on my knee and thinking how pretty she was. She began to crawl up my thigh. I was wearing a short loose summer dress, not just because of the heat but because Will liked it. He liked me to wear short things because he liked my legs so much, to look at and to touch, to caress and to kiss, and liked sitting with his hand on my bare thigh as we read or lazed or watched a film or listened to music, and I liked him doing that, as I liked to sit with my hand high up on his thigh and to feel the firm roundness of the muscle covering the hardness of the bone underneath and the soft swell of his crotch against the edge of my hand. I thought how tanned my legs were this year, from lying around in the sun while revising.

The ladybird had almost reached the hem of my skirt. I didn’t want her to crawl under it. (Why did I think of it as she? Because of the name, I suppose. I didn’t know how you could tell a female from a male ladybird.) I placed a finger in her path. She climbed onto it without a pause, as if she’d planned all along to take this route, and continued towards

clear and sharp and clever as I wish it were. And this makes me vexed with myself.

Sometimes I feel I’ll never achieve in my life all I want to achieve, like writing a book full of great poems or being loved so completely that nothing else in all the world will matter.

Sometimes I think I’m the best person I know, and then I meet someone who really is the best person I know and I feel like I need a good bath.

And sometimes I’m happy and sad at the same time because:

Sometimes

I wish I

Were what I

Was when I

Wished I were

What I am

Now.

Fear & Intuition

Fear is always something old.

Intuition is always something new.

Emily Dickinson

Today Ms M. read us a poem by Emily Dickinson. I knew at once she was a poet for me. I want to know all about her and to read all her poems.

This is the one Ms M. read to us:

A word is dead

When it is said,

Some say.

the back of my hand, her tiny legs causing the faintest tickle.

She’d reached the second knuckle when Doris said, ‘Darling? … Cordy?’

For the first time Doris’s use of that name angered me.

‘My name,’ I said, cold and stiff as a corpse, ‘is Cordelia.’

I heard her catch her breath.

‘Right,’ she said, stretching the word out as people do when understanding is dawning. ‘Right. I see.’

The ladybird arrived at my wrist where she met a bead of sweat. She paused. Then took off into the air and was gone in a blink.