This Is All (39 page)

4. He must be a genius kisser.

5. He must know lots about lots of things I do not know about, and he must like to explain these things to me, even when I do not want to know anything about them.

6. He must be passionate about an interest (
not
another lover) other than me.

7. He must not always let me have my own way.

8. He must be very strict with me about things at which I am rubbish when I ought to be better.

9. He must find sex funny as well as very serious.

10. He must have eyes that make me melt, hands to die for, a voice that makes me wet between the legs as soon as I hear it, and he
must
be endowed with callipygous buttocks.

11. He must like reading, arguing (I mean discussing, not having rows, I
hate
rows), music, silence, and being alone with me for very long times without needing to say anything.

12. He must be older than me, both in years and in knowing about ‘out there’ everyday life (like how to do practical things), but I must be older than him in knowing about our life inside us.

13. He must want to learn from me and I must want to learn from him. (Some people know a lot, but you don’t want to learn anything from them because of the kind of person they are.)

14. He must have male equipment which I adore to play with and think is beautiful. (From what I have seen in the flesh and in pictures, the equipment of many men is either ugly or just plain silly.)

Me: ‘I’m sorry—’

Doris, quickly: ‘It’s all right.’

Dad, at the same time: ‘Forget it.’

Me: ‘No, I mean, you see, I don’t really know why I was upset, really – it’ll be nice for you to be married – nice – silly word – sorry – I mean, logical – good for you—’

Doris: ‘You don’t need to say anything.’

Dad: ‘Not at all.’

Me: ‘I want to – we have to get it right – put it right – whatever – I just want to say …’

Doris: ‘What?’

Me: ‘Dunno. I’m stuck.’ Tears were imminent. I hated (and still hate) not being able to put feelings into words. I forced the tears back. I hated (and still hate) tears washing out thought.

Doris and Dad sat as if hypnotised, Dad’s big thick hands on the table either side of his plate, Doris’s dainty hands hidden away on her knees, both of them staring at me with tortured eyes. I couldn’t bear to go on looking at them. I wouldn’t have been able to say anything if I had. So I looked down at my plate and talked to my food.

‘It’s just – I think it has something to do with Mum – Mother – even though it’s so long ago and I was only little when – and it’s something to do with this house, and Doris’s house, and something to do with not having you any more, having you to myself, I mean, having you the way you’ve always been, each of you, just for me, separate, but together – o, lordy! – well – because I love you both – and love you, Dad, as my dad because you are my dad of course, and I know how hard it’s been for you since Mum – Mother – and I know you’ve done your best to bring me up well, which can’t have been easy – and I love you, Doris, because you’re my aunt of course but more because you’ve been like a mum, like a mother, to me, and you’ve always been there for me, and helped me, and let me make your house, where you and

15. He must believe there is more to life than the life we know and he must want to know about the life that is more than the life we know (the spiritual life).

16. He must want to tell me everything about himself, especially his most secret things, and I must want to tell him everything about myself, especially my most secret things.

17. He must be more sophisticated than me and have good manners and not embarrass me in public places.

Nothing that’s everything

Thirty spokes on a cartwheel

go towards the hub that is the centre –

but look, there is nothing at the centre,

and that is precisely why it works.

If you mould a cup, you have to make a hollow:

it is the emptiness within that makes it useful.

In a house or room, it is the empty spaces –

the doors, the windows – that make it usable.

They all use what they are made of

to do what they do,

but without their nothingness they would be

nothing.

Will has sent me this, which he found in some book or other. It was written by Tao Te Ching. I am adding it to my favourite quotations because it is simple but deep and true.

It makes me think of my body, that it is like a house, the house of my self, the house of my soul. I too have doors and windows. I have a framework of bones to which are attached walls of flesh and a covering of skin. I have an electrical circuit and I have plumbing. I use what I am made of to do what I do. It is my self who inhabits my house. But no one can see my self. I am a nothingness which is everything.

Mum – Mother – were born and grew up together – you’ve let me make it my home as well, my second home – but I don’t think of one as first and one as second, they both mean as much as each other – and I love it for that – your house – and I don’t know whether I’ll be able to love you like I have when you’re married and living together all the time – or whether you’ll be able to love me the same as before – it’s bound to be different, isn’t it? – and I’m worried about all of that because – I dunno – I’m getting confused, sorry – you see, so much has happened to me, to us, in our houses – our homes – and now one of them will be got rid of – that sounds bad – I didn’t mean it like that – but one of them will be sold, and other people will live in it, and I’ll have to pass it, whichever one it is, every day, and I can’t bear the thought of seeing other people in it, living in it, using it – and I just feel that everything in my life is changing – because, I mean, Will will leave soon as well, and I love him so much, I mean
so
much, so much it hurts, it really
hurts
sometimes – and there’s something else I don’t understand
at all
that came over me when you said you were getting married, which is that I suddenly thought I won’t be a child any more – I mean, I know I’m not now, already – I knew that the day Will and I – well – anyway, I didn’t seem to mind – I wanted to be grown up in fact – until yesterday – I dunno – I just feel afraid – of being grown up – and, I mean, of losing everything – not being a child any more – losing everyone I love – everything I love – you, Dad, and you, Doris – the way I’ve always loved you – and everything the way I’ve always loved it – our houses, our life, the way we’ve lived – and nothing being the same – and not knowing what will happen to me – nothing seems safe any more – secure, I mean – I just
don’t know
– and I
hate
, I really really HATE
not knowing
– because as far as I can see, knowing is everything – there’s nothing if you don’t
know
– and
knowing
you
know
–
understand
– if you see what I mean – d’you see what I mean? – I mean – KNOW.’

Life etc
. …

Education: that which discloses to the wise and disguises for the foolish their lack of understanding. – Ambrose Bierce, 1842–1914.

Life is like playing the piano in public and learning the instrument as you go on. – Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1803–1873 (only he said violin instead of piano).

He must have had a magnificent build before his stomach went in for a career on its own. – Margaret Halsey, 1910–1997.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. – William James, 1842–1910.

Brevity is the soul of lingerie. – Dorothy Parker, 1893–1967

Half a love is better than none. – Helen Rowland, 1875–1950.

No time like the present

I’ve just heard someone say, ‘We must live for the present. The past is over, we don’t know what the future holds. Now is all we have. There is no time like the present.’

I don’t agree. I say there is no present. The present doesn’t exist. There is only the past and the future.

This is why:

Suppose there is a ‘present time’. In order to live in it, we have to know we are there, living in the present. To be a human being, you have to
know
, you have to
be aware
, you have to be
conscious
that you are alive. Human beings are different from all other animals because we
know
we are alive and are human. To be human is to be conscious.

But the problem is that you can never know you are living
now
, this minute, this second, this milli-second, this nanosecond until the nanosecond has happened to you. You cannot know about it at the very instant it is happening to

The last word exploded round the kitchen, ricocheted off the pans, recoiled from the fridge, reflected from the windows, bounced off the floor and cannoned off the ceiling.

Then there was total silence, as if the world had died.

And at last, when the silence itself had died, and only with an effort, I made myself look up.

Dad and Doris were staring at me unblinking, like people in a still photo. Except for tears running down Doris’s cheeks.

I thought, I’ll always remember this moment, this scene, this picture of Dad and Doris, remember it till the day I die.

And suddenly, quite at that instant, I felt happy. Such relief! A cloud-floating lightness of being. All my body was smiling. Except for my face. Which remained impassive, as if mildly frozen with dentist’s Novocain.

Now, with all words spent, all spilt out of me like rubbish from a bucket, I could think of nothing else to do but pick up my knife and fork and eat my food. Smoked trout, rice and salad.

Doing this seemed to release Dad and Doris from the spell that had fixated them. Now they too picked up their knives and forks and began to eat.

Nothing was said, not a word, till we’d finished eating, and sat back in our chairs, replete but shell-shocked, our eyes still anywhere but on each other. PTS. Post Traumatic Stress.

Then, after a decent interval, Doris got up, practical and decisive as always, saying in her everyday voice, ‘Coffee?’

Dad nodded, I nodded, Dad said, ‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘Please.’ Doris put on the kettle, prepared the coffee pot, arranged the cups. Dad wiped his mouth with his napkin and dropped it in a crumple, as usual, on his plate. I picked it up, as usual,

you because there is always a small delay, a small gap of time, between it happening and you knowing about it.

For example: a pinprick on your finger. There is a very small gap of time between the pin pricking you and you feeling it. This gap in time which it takes for the message that you are being pricked by a pin to reach your brain and for you to become conscious of it may be very very brief, but it
is
a gap. The event has happened
before
you
know
it has happened. You can actually see this when you watch it happening to someone else.

When I burned myself the other day while I was putting a casserole into the oven, I was burnt
before
I could react. This is obvious. I did not know about the present moment when I was burnt until
after
the burn happened.

In other words, by the time we
know
something has happened, it has become part of our past. What is happening inside us is just like light coming to us from the sun and the moon and the stars. It takes a certain amount of time to reach us. And by the time it reaches us the sun and the moon and the stars are no longer where they were when the light started from them, because they have moved on. What we are seeing, when we look at them, is the way they were in the past. In the same way, it takes a certain amount of time for an event that is happening to us to reach our consciousness and by then the instant of the happening is in the past and something else is already happening to us.

I think of time like an hourglass, a figure of 8. In the top part are the sands of the future. In the bottom part are the sands of the past. Each grain of sand, each particle of everything that happens to you, must pass from the future to the past through the neck of the hourglass, the waist of the 8. And the neck of the glass is so small, so brief, that it is impossible to say when the moving grain of sand is precisely at the point of ‘the present’.

Therefore, though there is such a thing as the present time

folded it neatly and laid it beside his plate, as usual. Dad smiled at me, as usual after this ritual. I smiled at Dad, as usual.

‘Might be nice to have it outside,’ Doris said.

‘Good idea,’ Dad said.

‘Could I take mine to my room, if you don’t mind?’ I said. ‘There’s something I need to do.’ (Be on my own.)

‘Of course, darling,’ Doris said.

‘Only if you give your old dad a kiss,’ Dad said.

‘Only,’ I said, ‘if my old dad stops calling himself my
old
dad.’

‘Quite right,’ Doris said, pouring my coffee.

‘Promise?’ I said to Dad.

‘Promise?’ Doris said to him.

‘Okay,’ Dad said. ‘If it means getting a kiss from my amazing daughter. Promise.’

I gave him a kiss.

He gripped my arm with one hand and stroked my head with the other and kissed me back.

‘Now,’ he said, pretending to push me away, ‘bog off and leave us love birds to fart about alone.’

‘You’re disgusting,’ I said.

‘Thanks for the compliment. At least that’s one thing you can rely on.’

‘True,’ I said, taking my coffee from Doris and making for the door. ‘You are consistently obscene.’

‘Always have to have the last word,’ Dad said.

‘Yes, you do,’ I said, closing the door behind me before he could answer.

I was fast asleep when my mobile went off just after one. Will. The gig had gone badly. His drummer hadn’t turned up. A substitute had been found at the last minute but he was hopeless. The sound system had gone on the blink. The gig’s manager had refused to pay the full fee, saying his

punters
in theory
, there is no present time in our real lives. There is only what has already happened and what will happen. There is only the past and the future.