This Is All (19 page)

‘Will or sex?’

‘No no, not Will. Sex.’

‘Sex isn’t like food, whatever anyone may tell you. It isn’t something you can select from the menu to suit your taste, enjoy eating, digest, excrete the unwanted parts, forget about, and then have another meal when you feel like it. I know that’s a current view. But it’s wrong.’

‘What then?’

‘It has post-prandial consequences.’

‘It can give you indigestion?’

‘It can. Emotional indigestion, and worse. But what I really mean is it has after-sex knock-on effects.’

‘No knock-up without a knock-on.’

‘Elegantly put.
And
. Two people feed from the same dish.’

‘I don’t mean I just want to get it over. You know. Just with
anybody
. I mean I want to get it over
with Will
.’

‘Good. But why?’

‘You were the one who said get on with it.’

‘That was then. It would have been okay then. You were lighter about it. Lighter hearted. Now you aren’t. You’re heavier hearted. Something has happened. What you’ve learned has deepened you. Made you a bit more serious.’

‘… Yes.’

‘And that changes everything. Especially sex.’

‘So, why?’

‘Because …?’

‘Because …’

‘Dig it out.’

‘Because … like you say … because I want to get to the other side.’

‘Of?’

‘… Of me … Of him … Of us.’

‘Keep going. You feel?’

‘The sex will get us there. To the other side. Or
start
to anyway.’

‘And that’s somewhere you really want to go?’

‘Not want to.
Have to
. Must. I just know I have to try. And try with Will. It has to be with Will. I don’t know why. But that’s what I know.’

‘You see. You knew all the time.’

‘No. Only when you said it. About food and knocking-on.’

‘Glad to be of service.’

While we were clearing away and washing up, I said, ‘I know he likes me. I know he wants me. Why won’t he get on with it, d’you think?’

‘Good question.’

‘Well?’

‘I’m not as all-knowing as you’d like me to be.’

‘A guess will do.’

‘You go first.’

‘Okay. Try this. Maybe he’s scared. That he won’t be good at it. Or something.’

‘Some men are, that’s true. Not the stone-heads, but the good men.’

‘Is Will a good man?’

‘I’m sure of it.’

‘Not
nice
. You don’t mean
nice
, do you? I can’t bear
nice
and being
niced
to.’

‘Not like you mean it, no.’

‘Is Dad good?’

‘Yes, I think so. Yes, he is. Sad. Disappointed. And not at all nice.’ She laughed. ‘But good. Yes.’

‘And not like Will. Dad’s sloppy. But Will likes everything to be
exactly
right. Doesn’t he? So maybe he’s scared because he’s afraid he won’t do it
exactly
right.’

‘Is that how it seems when you talk about it?’

‘We haven’t much.’

‘So how does it seem?’

‘Let me think … Like … He’s holding back … Afraid … Of losing something … Yes. Like that. Like he’s afraid of losing something.’

‘And what might it be he’s afraid of losing?’

‘Not his virginity. It’s not like that for boys, is it? They don’t have a hymen to lose, do they?’

‘So all this is only about a little piece of skin?’

‘Sorry. Silly thing to say.’

‘No apology needed. We’re just doing a thought experiment, after all. It’s right to get things wrong in order to get them right.’

‘Therefore?’

‘Therefore …’

‘Virginity is a state of mind as well as a state of body.’

‘Bravo!’

‘But why would he be afraid to lose it? I’m not. I want to.’

‘With
Will
.’

‘Ah! I get it! – You mean, maybe he doesn’t want to lose his with me?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Because he doesn’t feel about me the way I feel about him?’

‘I think he loves you as much as you love him.’

‘He hasn’t said so.’

‘Have you to him?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Too soapy.’

‘Too soppy?’

‘No. Too
soapy
. Like in the soaps. On tv? They’re always saying they love each other. Haven’t you noticed? And then one of them does something that’s supposed to be terrible, like snogging the other’s best friend, and they have a row and break up, and then they say sorry, and in the next episode it all starts again with another pair. I hate it. It’s so naff. Nobody ever changes in soaps. Whatever happens to them, everybody remains just the same as they always were. They just keep saying sorry to each other, and making one of those six faces they all make. You know, like surprised, happy, pissed off, sexy, angry and weepy. Oh, and a seventh. Lovey-dovey. They’re so stupid, the soaps! And so boring! They’re about as real as a clockwork Barbie doll. I won’t behave like someone in a soap, thank you.’

‘You must watch them a lot.’

‘Not that often. Only when I want to puke.’

‘Let’s take a walk. Burn off the pasta.’

*

The path we walked along has been used since at least Roman times. Nearly two thousand years. Perhaps longer. More than two thousand years of people’s feet. Strolling, striding, hurrying, running. Marching, toddling, limping, plodding. Trudging, jogging, tramping, dawdling. Strutting, staggering, shuffling, crawling. Prancing, dancing, waddling, skipping. Running to, fleeing from, marking time, standing still. Autumn, summer, winter, spring. I was carried along it as a baby, played on it as a child, got up to no good in its bushy nooks and crannies as a pubing girl, ran its length and back again with Will, and now paced it with Doris. There is a photo taken on it of my mother, crouching down while holding me, on my third birthday, as I reach out all smiles, towards the camera. Another of Dad carrying me piggyback. Another of me aged five walking hand-in-hand with my mother. She must have died soon after it was taken. My mother’s footprints were where I was walking now. As were many of my younger selves.

Paths
. How many feet make a path? All those previous soles still imprinted in the earth. All paths are history written in footprints. We keep them alive by reprinting them with our own footsteps. History dies without the present. There is no future without the path made to it by the past.

‘I don’t think it has anything to do with Will not wanting you,’ Doris said as we walked. ‘I think it has to do with something he can’t say, not even to himself, because he isn’t conscious of it yet.’

‘You mean, he knows it in the back of his mind but he doesn’t know it in the front of his mind.’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘As you say, he’s a perfectionist. Perfectionists want things to
be exactly right. But they also don’t want to lose anything they’ve already got that is right.’

I had to pause a moment to work that one out.

‘So,’ I said, groping towards what Doris was getting at, ‘so … No, I can’t get it.’

‘He likes being a virgin and doesn’t want to lose it because it feels right. He’s a clever boy. He’s seen what a tangle his friends get into with their first attempts at love and sex, and he’s thought, That’s all too messy and not for me.’

‘I know he doesn’t like mess, that’s for sure.’

‘Besides that’ – she pulled a paperback from her pocket (I’ve never known her without a book tucked away somewhere) – ‘read this. I marked it specially for you last night. It’s by a Czech novelist, Ivan Klíma.’

Man is afraid to attain what he longs for, just as subconsciously he longs for what he is afraid of. We are afraid we might lose the person we love. To avoid losing that person we drive him or her away.

‘Will hasn’t tried to drive me away.’

‘No. But where sex is concerned, he has kept you at arm’s length. So what you have to do, Cordy love, is arrange things so that having your first sex isn’t a messy business but something he just can’t help wanting.’

‘And how do I do that?’

‘I don’t know. Take him on a sex saga perhaps.’

‘A
what?
A
sex saga?
’

‘You both choose a place where you’d like to take the other because it’s important in some special way. A long weekend trip together. And you hope that at some point on the trip everything is just right for sex. The time, the place, your mood.’

‘What if it doesn’t work?’

‘At least you’ll have got to know each other better. Until
you’ve spent long days and nights with someone, without any relief, you don’t really know them. You have to see someone in their dirty undies and behaving at their worst before you know if you really are in love with them.’

‘But how? How do I do that?’

‘There are some things in life you have to work out for yourself. This is one of them. Use your imagination. You’ve plenty of it.’

‘I hate it when people say that. Use your imagination! I mean, what does it
mean?
’

‘Sounds like we’ve klatsched as much as we can for today.’

‘Well. Thanks anyway.’

Song

Izumi massaged my body, Doris massaged my mind. I felt fit to face Will again, and craved him.

WILL WILL WILL WILL WILL WILL WILL O WILL

I want to write a proper letter to you for a change and SWALK it in a proper envelope with a proper stamp on it FIRST CLASS, then wait on tenterhooks for your reply
.

I’m sorry. Sorry sorry sorry. I know I’ve been a bit remote lately. Nothing to do with you. Not me going off you, I mean, or anything. No No No No. Absoluto notto. Just the oppositivo
.

A family glitch, that’s all. Secrets. Revelations. Nothing horrible. But important. I’d like to tell you about them, if that’s OK with you. But tell you about them, not write them
.

And also I’ve thought of a Cunning Plan for us
.

What about after school Thursday? Or do you have oboe practice, orchestra, boy band, running, homework, and a funeral to go to then? Please mobile or em. I really would like it if we could
.

Also: I’ve written a song for you. I’m sending it to you all neat and clean and
written out in my best handwriting
, sir, on specially chosen paper. (Do you like the colour? The texture? The size? The smell? It’s Japanese handmade paper, v v v v v v v expensive. Made out of the
leaves of trees
.)

Is it the kind of song you wanted? I made it up while I was languishing in the bath last night, pretending I was Cleopatra soaking in goat’s milk. (10.30 till 11.00 p.m., if you MUST know. I know you like to know EVERY detail of my boring life, including when and how and by what means I depilate my underarms and legs, manicure my nails, etc., so curious you are about my PRIVATE life. And as you would ask if we were mashing on the phone, I’ll tell you I am at this time adorned in a clean white sloppy T-shirt with no bra, my fav fraying faded blue jeans over a pair of new black panties, no socks, as I’ve just painted my toenails scarlet and they are still drying
.)

I sometimes feel melancholy in the bath, I don’t know why. And was très très very très melancholy last night because of Family Matters referred to above. And (to be honest) because of NOT seeing you and not snogging for D A A A A Y S
.

So here is my melancholy (sort of) song
.

But honestly honestly, I really am naff at songs. Never written one before, you see. I mean, bin it if you want to. I won’t mind. It’s crap, isn’t it? O, well, you did ask!

But look, if you do by any chance compose some music for it:

could I be the very first to hear you sing it, and all on our own? and

I thought you might add an improvised riff for the oboe, like a little cadenza, between the third and fourth verses. (Just a suggestion
.)

Cordelia

No one more unlikely

There’s no one more unlikely,

No one meant to be,

There’s no one more unlikely

Who’s only made for me.

You’ve never said you love me,

You’ve never said you care,

You’ve never said you want me,

It doesn’t seem quite fair.

I tried as hard as I could

To make you go away.

I would have gone – I really should,

But something makes me stay.

I don’t believe in heaven,

I even doubt there’s hell,

And if there is no heaven

Is there paradise as well?

I’ve never wanted anything

More than I’ve wanted you,

And now there isn’t anything

I’ll ever want but you.

You’re everything I don’t know about,

You’re a whole new world to see.

There’s no one more unlikely

Who’s only meant for me.

Two days later …

Two days later, Wednesday evening, 10.30, there he was, on the phone, and when I said, ‘Hello?’ he said nothing, just sang my song to the music he’d composed, and played a riff on his oboe in the middle, and when he’d finished all he said was, ‘Thursday, after school,’ and rang off before I could say a word.