This Is All (70 page)

My bed works hard. It’s one of my two favourite pieces of furniture, the other being my mother’s old armchair, in which I sit and read by my window and stare into the distance. My bed belonged to my mother’s parents, she was conceived and born in it, and my parents used it till my mother died. Dad didn’t want to sleep in it after that so it was put in the spare room. But I did want to sleep in it because it had been my mother’s. I claimed it when I was six and was allowed a grown-up bed instead of my child’s cot. King size, it has an oak headboard of a plain oblong design but no footboard (which I removed because I like to get on and off from the bottom as well as from the sides). I’m on my third mattress, because Doris believes they should be changed every five years as a matter of hygiene. I like lots of pillows of various colours, and a feather-light summer-weight duvet in a crisp white linen cover all year round.

Besides sleeping, I like bed for reading, writing, lolling, daydreaming, brooding, meditating, and of course for sex. But I never write in bed, and I never eat in bed because I don’t like the smell of bed when eating or the smell food leaves behind on the bedclothes.

There are two times when I don’t like being in bed. One is when I’m so anxious and tense that I can’t sleep. Bed is a prison then because I’m trapped in my own thoughts, and the only thing to do is get up and do something boring until the fit has passed or I’m so tired I can’t stay up any longer. The other is when there is something I want to do so much I won’t be happy till I’ve done it. Bed is a bore then.

Bed is where lovers love to love, where secrets are exchanged in pillow talk, where inhibitions are relaxed, and where we view the world and ourselves horizontally. Horizontal viewing is grounded, level, patient, settled. Vertical viewing is status-seeking (how do I get tall enough to see
further than anyone else?), hierarchic, ambitious (how do I get from here to there?), strident (striding out, loud), unsettled.

Sitting cross-legged for meditation on my bed combines the best aspects of both the horizontal and the vertical. It is calm and settled, and is also alert and
spiritually
ambitious. My bum is grounded on the bed, my head is in the air. I am relaxed and uninhibited because I am ‘in bed’, and I am concentrated and focused because I am upright.

Best of all about bed is sleep. But I’ve written about me and sleep before. (
See here
.)

Belief

We have just meditated.

‘Is belief essential?’ I ask Julie. ‘I mean, in God or something?’

‘I think so. Perhaps I should say I believe so.’

‘You’re teaching me to meditate, but you never say anything about belief or what you believe. I know you used to be a practising Christian, but you never say anything about what you believe now.’

‘You remember Nik, the boy I told you about, who was with me when I had my accident?’

‘The boy you tested yourself with.’

‘He asked me what I thought belief is. What it means. Is that what you’re asking?’

‘I suppose.’

‘I told him, Belief means willing yourself to give all your attention to living with loving gladness in the world you think really exists.’

‘Doesn’t it have anything to do with God and the life after death?’

‘Not necessarily, no.’

‘Not for you?’

‘No. I don’t believe in a supernatural being. Do you?’

‘I don’t know what I believe.’

‘Does that worry you?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘But you’re trying to find out?’

‘I’d like to.’

‘Me too.’

‘But you said belief is essential, so you must believe something.’

‘Well, to start with, I believe I’m alive.’

I laugh. ‘That’s obvious!’

‘Is it? Some religions say life is an illusion.’

‘What do you say?’

‘That it’s all I know, so whether it’s an illusion or not doesn’t matter. I might just be a figment of someone’s imagination, I might just be a character in a story. But it doesn’t matter whether I am or not, because the life I’m living is all I can actually know about.’

‘Don’t you want to know why you’re alive? Don’t you want to know what life means?’

‘Doesn’t everybody? But I don’t know the answer. No one does. They only
believe
they do. They can never prove it.’

‘So what do you believe?’

‘That life is like a poem.’

‘What?’

‘Why not?’

‘How?’

‘Suppose I said I was going to give you a poem of a hundred lines long and asked you what it was about – what it means?’

‘Before you let me read it?’

‘Before I even show it to you. What would you say?’

‘How can I know what it means? I haven’t read it yet.’

‘Right. So I give you the first fifteen lines and ask you again what you think the poem means?’

‘I might try and guess, but I can’t really know.’

‘You’d have to read all the poem first?’

‘Yes.’

‘You can only really work out what a poem means when you’ve read all of it, and thought about it, and reread parts of it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I think asking the meaning of your life is like that. You can only know at the end. You have to live it first.’

‘But that means you’ll be dead before you know.’

‘Exactly. That’s why, to me, the meaning of my life, the meaning of life itself, the
point
of it, is living it. And a poem is like that as well. The meaning of every poem for the poet is writing the poem. The meaning for the reader is the reading of it. Writing it and reading it are more important than anything anyone says it means. You should know. You write poems.’

‘Try to.’

‘Haven’t you felt that yet, even if you haven’t thought it?’

‘I don’t know. I know the excitement is when the poem comes and when I’m writing it. In a funny way, when I’ve finished it, it doesn’t matter that much any more. What I want to do then is write another.’

‘It’s the writing of it, the
doing
, that matters.’

‘Yes. Though I haven’t thought of it like that before.’

‘And you write poems because that’s what you
have to do
. You don’t feel you have choice. You’re a poet because you can’t help writing poems. It’s essential to you.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Isn’t that what life is like? We live it because we have to, even though we might not be very good at it, and some of us are very bad at it indeed.’

‘And you’re saying that what you believe—’

‘That what belief
is
—’

‘That what belief is, is trying to live – how did you put it?’

‘By
willing
myself to live with as much
loving gladness
as I possibly can in the world I think really does exist.’

‘Why
willing
yourself?’

‘Because no one can make me do it. Only myself. And if I don’t
will
myself to do it, I’ll turn into a lazy slob who believes nothing and does nothing except the things that please me at each passing moment. I’d be like a stupid dog, following every little whiff that takes my fancy.’

‘And why
loving gladness?
’

‘Because so much garbage goes on in the world, so much that’s horrible and disgusting and unbearable, if I didn’t will myself to love life and do so gladly, I’d end up suffering from chronic depression and go mad.’

‘And where does meditation fit in?’

‘Fit is the right word. It helps keep my belief in trim. During meditation I strip everything away. All the distractions and petty aspects of life, and I concentrate on the essence of things. The essence of life. Meditation takes me beyond the limits of the life I know and believe is real. It’s the way I search for the life that is more than the life I think I know.’

‘So for you meditation is a kind of journey into the unknown?’

‘In a way, yes. The problem is that you can’t talk about it. Words aren’t adequate to explain it or to describe what happens. You have to find it and do it for yourself. That’s why all I can do for you is show you how I meditate and help you do it for yourself. The rest is up to you. In that sense, we’re all on our own. But we can help each other to keep going. That’s what I try to do for you.’

‘And who helps you?’

‘Someone you don’t know. And you.’

‘How do I help?’

‘By being here and keeping me company. Isn’t that what everyone wants? A companion.’

I hug her.

‘And best of all,’ she says, ‘a loving companion.’

And she hugs me back.

Boarder

‘We could offer him a room,’ Dad says.

‘If you’d like that,’ Doris says.

‘I don’t mind,’ I say. ‘It’s up to you.’

But I’m secretly pleased. Ariel takes the weight off me.

‘I’ve checked him out with the arboretum,’ Dad says. ‘Clean bill of health. Highly recommended, in fact. They’re sorry to let him go.’

‘Sack him, you mean,’ I say. ‘You employers do love the euphemisms.’

‘Don’t start,’ Dad says.

‘You two!’ Doris says.

Ariel’s first visit was a great success. He’s naturally charming, by which I mean he knows instinctively how to please people. I usually suspect that. But he’s not smarmy, not exploitative, just likes people. Being interested is part of his make-up. He’s a good listener and funny.

He’s an instinctive person by nature, it seems to me. The opposite of Will, who has to reason everything out, and isn’t interested in other people for their own sake, but only when they are part of his world. Which makes him sound selfish and self-centred, which I don’t mean and he isn’t. It’s a question of focus of attention. Will is focused on his work, on trees, on conservation and on the people who are allied with him in doing this. I think I was the exception, and therefore a surprise to him, which he could never quite come to terms with, and which is why he could never say ‘I love you’. He couldn’t say it because he couldn’t understand it rationally. (Why should he be in love with me, who was not part of his work-world, and what does ‘being in love’ mean anyway? He
couldn’t answer either of those questions rationally – intellectually – so he couldn’t say the words.)

‘What’s your ambition in life?’ I ask Ariel after we’ve eaten that first time and are sitting on our own in the garden again.

‘My ambition is to have no ambitions,’ he replies. ‘And you can call me Arry if you feel up to it.’

‘And you can call me Cordelia, because I don’t like the short forms of my name.’

‘No problem.’

‘So how come you’re working at the arboretum?’

‘I did a tree-climbing course at school.’

‘Why?’

‘For fun. And to prove myself.’

‘To?’

‘The lads, God blessem.’

‘Who required proof that you were one of them or rather not one of
them
or they’d beat the living shit out of you, you poof?’

‘Something of that quality. But I do like physical work. And I like working in the open. The pay’s not good but nothing to bring on a sneeze. And the job was going when I needed it.’

After that evening he phones to thank us for the meal, and then another time to say he’s heard from Will. No jobs going at the college. Doris takes the call; I’m out.

‘Come for dinner,’ she tells him. ‘You need cheering up. And we’ll help you think out what to do next.’

He’s there when I get home. I’m glad to see him. He always makes me smile, just to look at him. He tells me Will’s okay but is missing me.

‘Was that a message for me?’

‘No. I didn’t mention you. Thought it best not to. He offered the information off his own bat.’

‘Did he mention Hannah?’

‘Who?’

‘Nobody.’ (Meow meow.) ‘Just a friend.’

While we’re eating, Dad and Doris go through Arry’s options with him. He has to leave the arboretum on Saturday – two more days. No savings, but he’ll receive a month’s severance pay and a reasonably good redundancy payment. So he has a few weeks to find a new job before he’ll be in a financial hole. Except he needs somewhere to live, and quickly. He’s phoned a few places for rent but they were all more expensive than he can afford. He needs to hunt for cheap digs. One of the men at the arboretum has offered him a floor to sleep on, but Arry would rather camp out till he finds somewhere.

‘The ground’s no harder than a floor, the sky’s a better roof than somebody’s ceiling, and I’ve no great affection for other men’s sweaty feet,’ he says.

‘Hardly the best solution,’ Doris says, rising to clear the plates and serve the pud. ‘The slippery slope to down-and-out dossery.’

Dad gets up, muttering something about fetching more wine, and gives me the nod towards the kitchen. In the kitchen he puts his proposal, which he and Doris have already thought up.

Back at the table, Arry says, ‘No, I couldn’t. I’d be imposing.’

‘Not if we want you to,’ I say.

‘And we do,’ Doris says. ‘We like you. Just accept it as a gift. Would that be asking too much of your highness?’

‘You’re a hard woman, Mrs Kenn,’ Arry says, shining with pleasure. One thing I like about him is that he doesn’t hide his feelings and isn’t ashamed of them whatever they are. Which makes a change in this household.

‘But I must pay my way,’ he says to Dad. ‘What would you have in mind?’

Doris says, ‘You need to save all you can.’

‘No no,’ Arry says. ‘Only if I chip in.’

‘I’d feel the same,’ Dad says. ‘So how about this? The back fence needs repair. The lawn needs attention. There’s weeding to be done. The shed needs a good sorting out.’

‘Not to mention the garage,’ I add, as this is supposed to be my job, which I’ve resolutely ignored for months.

‘Let’s say five days’ work for a start. And say you do half the day for us, and spend the other half looking for a job and a place to live. That makes ten days total. Add the weekends as legitimate holidays. That’s fourteen days’ room and board. How’s that?’

‘Do it,’ I say emphatically, ‘while he’s in the giving mood.’

‘An offer you can’t refuse,’ Doris says, ‘or we’ll break your legs.’

‘In that case,’ Arry says, ‘I’d be a fool to turn my nose up.’