This Is All (56 page)

Such discoveries about yourself are unsettling when they well up for the first time, unexpectedly, without preparation or instruction or knowing you want them. You seem to be a stranger to yourself, someone you can hardly recognise.

Afterwards we clung to each other like children, both of us trembling because of the confusing, unfamiliar mix of feelings which at the same time excited us.

‘I’m sorry,’ Will said.

‘Don’t be.’

‘I shouldn’t have.’

‘I wanted to.’

‘It just—’

‘Shush! You needed it. Me too, but I didn’t know. I never thought. But it was good. Please, Will. Amazing. I’m glad.’

‘Honest?’

‘I liked it. Always ask. Whenever.’

‘Why was it so good?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It felt like … A privilege.’

‘That’s it. Yes. A privilege.’

‘You doing it for me, I mean.’

‘For me too. You wanting me to do it.’

‘How weird!’

‘How strange!’

‘I wish I understood. I hate not understanding.’

‘I know. But you will. One day. When we’ve done it some more.’

‘I’m so ignorant.’

‘No, you’re not. Only in your mind. We both are. But our bodies know. We have to trust them, Will. Don’t you agree? Sometimes, anyway. I’m glad we did just now.’

I wish the rest of the weekend could have been like that.

6

Next morning Will left obscenely early. Tree people seem to live by the sun, dawn to dusk. I went back to sleep.

Dad had chosen well. The hotel was a converted mansion with its own extensive grounds in the country a few miles from Will’s college. I planned to get up late, luxuriate in the bathroom, have a lazy brunch, and spend the rest of the day reading and writing and exploring the grounds. They even had bicycles for guests to use, and as I prefer cycling to running, I thought, if the weather was right, I’d tour the local lanes to tone me up for my activities with Will that night.

I was still in bed when Will phoned. He’d talked to his tutor, who’d invited me to join him that afternoon to watch the students being tested for the skills they’d learned in rescue and first aid, a required part of their course. If I’d like that, Will would pick me up about one. Maybe I sensed it might not be a good thing to do, because I dithered. Not at all the enthusiastic visiting girlfriend. What did he think? I asked. Did
he
want me to come? Wouldn’t I be in the way? I didn’t have the right clothes for rough stuff. What would the others think of his girlfriend watching them being tested?
Wouldn’t they be vexed or put off? It was up to me, Will said, but yes, he’d like me to be there, no I wouldn’t be in the way, the tutor was a good guy, he’d look after me, it didn’t matter about my clothes, he could borrow some gear for me because there was always plenty spare, no one would mind me watching, in fact it would make them all try harder. So I said yes.

I knew as soon as I arrived that I should have said no. Groups of people who live and work together become very close-knit, especially when they live away from other people and their work is physical and potentially dangerous. Customs grow, and habits, and private in-jokes and jargon. They get to know the details of each other’s everyday lives, their secrets and personal quirks, their strengths and weaknesses. Which binds them together almost as closely as the intimacy of two lovers who are so totally entwined that any guest feels shut out, however much the lovers try to make the visitor welcome. Which is what happened to me that day. The worst of it being that I felt excluded from Will himself.

The college was housed in an old country estate. All the students, about a hundred of them, were studying trees and their management. They were organised into small teams. Will’s seemed to do everything together, in their spare time as well as at work. There were six of them, four boys and two girls. I say boys, but two were in their twenties, having tried other occupations before deciding to be tree men. Will and the other boy, Sam, were straight from school. So were the girls. One of them, Emma, was tall and athletic and cheery and boy-tough. The other, Hannah, was slight and very clever and self-confident. She wanted to be a university expert on the history and ecology of trees and was taking a year out before beginning her studies so that she could learn the practical skills that would be useful to her. I saw straight away that she and Will got on.

The test that afternoon required the team to rescue one of
them who was supposed to have been injured while working high up in a tree, and to lower the victim to the ground, where they were to administer first aid for a broken leg. For each test one of the team was put in charge so that his/her qualities as a leader could be assessed. That afternoon it was Will’s turn. And because Hannah was the lightest of the group she was chosen as the victim.

I was stationed beside the tutor, James, a rugged out-of-doors man in his thirties, kindly, but not one to waste words. I felt foolish, dressed in an oversized yellow boiler suit Will had dug out of a cupboard, a regulation white hard hat that made me look like one of those cartoon characters with a round blob for a head, and my feet like bulldozers in a pair of Will’s forester’s boots packed with newspaper to make them fit. I shouldn’t have changed out of my own clothes, however inappropriate. At least then I would have looked like myself and not like an incompetent version of one of them.

James watched every move the team made, ticked off a list of items and scrawled unreadable comments now and then on a mark sheet clamped to a clipboard, grubby from his tree-soiled fingers. He was punctilious. But close though his inspection was, it was nothing compared to the minute examination I made of Will’s every glance, every facial expression, every physical contact, whenever he was anywhere near Hannah, which he was quite often during the hour it took to complete the test. The worst was when they’d brought Hannah to the ground and were dealing with her ‘broken’ leg. Will took off her boot and sock, rolled her trouser up above the knee, and felt her leg, pretending to check for damage before ‘finding’ the break. It seemed to me that Hannah was enjoying it far too much. Higher up, she kept groaning with mock pain, higher up, and when he was above the knee the groans modulated into exaggerated shrieks of pleasure, which evoked laughter from the others.

James confined his inspection to the test. My invigilation
continued every second of the rest of my visit. I wasn’t so foolish as to give myself away by staring all the time. I could during the test, because I was meant to be watching that and Will was far too busy to take any notice of me. Afterwards I made sure only to look directly for any length of time when it was expected that I should, as when being talked to or when he – or Hannah – was the object of everyone else’s attention. But indirectly I was observing them second by second out of the corner of my eye, because you can often learn more with brief surreptitious glances than you can from looking a long time straight on.

And just as James had a check-list of items by which to judge the performance of each member of the team, so I compiled my own interior check-list, a catalogue of proofs that Will and Hannah were more than team-mates, more, even, than just good friends.

I had plenty of opportunity. After the test, we returned to the college. They went to their rooms to shower and change. I went with Will to his room, where I changed back into my own clothes while he showered and dressed. We didn’t even kiss. The team were all very quick and took me into their dining hall where we sat together at the same table. They scoffed vast quantities, as if they hadn’t seen food for months. And then went to the bar, where we sat round a table sloshing beer. Because Will was driving me back to my hotel, he didn’t have more than one, and as I dislike beer I didn’t either. But that didn’t prevent Will getting as high as the others. They joked and teased, they discussed the test and how this and that could have been done better, they gossiped about tutors, argued about politics and conservation, they asked what I was doing (but weren’t, I felt,
that
interested, only being polite), they sang tree songs I’d never heard before, and all the time my catalogue grew, and the longer it grew the more despondent I became.

Item
Will is happier than I’ve ever seen him. I know because
(a) he is more relaxed, (b) he is more talkative, (c) he throws himself into everything the team does, (d) he belongs wholeheartedly like he never did at school; no restraint. And the others like him. They defer to him, he’s the centre all the time, not just because he was leader for the test. He’s one of them.

Item
Whenever they can be, Will and Hannah are together. Examples: (a) They sat beside each other during the tutor’s pep talk before the test. (b) They sat beside each other during his talk afterwards. (c) She walked back to college with Will and me (the others followed behind). (d) She sat beside him during the meal (I sat opposite). (e) She sat with us in the bar, me one side of Will, she the other. (f) She came to the car with us when we left and waved us off.

Item
Whenever they glance at each other they smile with the kind of bright-eyed private smile of people who are special to each other.

Item
When things are being said in discussions or jokes are being made, they often give each other a look that is an unspoken private comment.

Item
She brought him his pudding. She also brought mine, but I’m sure she always does this for Will. She put her hand on his shoulder as she put the pudding down in front of him and muttered something into his ear that made him laugh.

Item
When the team were talking about work, she and Will referred to each other and listened to each other more than they did to anyone else. I think they talk about everything together, you can always tell when people do that.

Item
She left her file of lecture notes under her seat in the dining hall. She remembered it when we were in the bar. Will went back and got it for her as if that was the natural thing for him to do.

Item
When it was her turn to buy a round of drinks, she stood behind Will with her hands on his shoulders while she took the orders.

Item
There were a few minutes in the bar not long before we left when she and Will talked quietly and seriously, heads together, while the others were joshing around. They attended to each other so carefully that the rest of us might as well not have been there. At one point she put one hand on his knee and stroked his arm up and down once with her other hand, as if reassuring him.

Item
It was after that, when I went to the loo, that she followed me and made a point of telling me how well Will was doing and how everybody liked him and how much he helped her, especially with the physical stuff – tree climbing, tree surgery, etc. – that she wasn’t very good at and for which she wasn’t really strong enough, and said how much Will talked about me, and how much she’d been looking forward to meeting me. ‘Well, here I am,’ I said, and she said, ‘And you’re exactly like I expected from what Will’s told me and from the photo of you in his room.’

Hannah in Will’s room. That’s what niggled. That’s what inflamed my suspicions. That’s what aggravated my jealousy.
Hannah in Will’s room
. When? How often? Why?

I hadn’t lived in a college. I didn’t know that resident students are in and out of each other’s rooms all the time, I didn’t know how little they bother about who comes in, who is there or when or for how long. Maybe I’m too ‘territorial’, maybe I’m too private, too secretive, and not sociable enough. I know I grew up as an indulged only child who had not just one room of my own but two, and maybe that conditioned me. But whether it’s my inborn nature or my upbringing I don’t know, but it’s how I was, and how I still am.

Besides, it wasn’t only ignorance of student life that made me suspicious. There was another reason. Will had always been as protective of his privacy as I was of mine. I’d only ever been into his room at home twice in the months I’d
known him. I knew that was because Mrs Blacklin didn’t approve of my being there. But I also knew, because we’d talked about it, how carefully Will kept his room to himself. He even locked it when he went out. If he wasn’t like that now he must have changed completely during his few weeks in college. I could see he was different, more outgoing than he used to be. But did people change that much in so short a time? Or had he changed because Hannah meant more to him than I did?

As we drove back to the hotel I doubted Will – seriously doubted him for the first time. And for the first time was seriously devious with him. I didn’t want him to know of my suspicions because I didn’t want to hear his explanations – his
excuses
. I couldn’t bear the thought that ‘my Will’, who might not be ‘my’ and only ‘my’ Will any longer, would lie to me. While being devious with him, I couldn’t abide him being devious with me. Liars abhor other liars, as thieves denounce theft among themselves and as criminals require complete honesty of the police. But if I faced him with my suspicions and he confirmed they were right, confessed that he and Hannah were ‘an item’, that would be worse for me than him lying. My already shaky world would be shattered.

But one deception breeds another in an endless chain.

When Will asked what I thought of the college I said it was great – beautiful – I could see why he liked it so much and was so happy there, all of which was true. What I didn’t say was that because it was so small and so cut off from other places and other people I thought it was a bit ingrown, a bit too insular. When he asked me what I thought of his ‘friends’, I said they were very nice and I could see how much they liked him and he them and how well they got on, which was true. (But ‘nice’! When we lie, the bloodless words we use often betray us. As when people say something is ‘interesting’ when they don’t like it. We talk then in verbal Lego: we slot together bland prefabricated words and phrases that make
sentences as mechanical and squared-off and impersonal.) When he asked me about Hannah, I said I thought she was lovely (which she was) but didn’t say I thought she was a threat. He said she knew more about trees than any of them, even most of the tutors, she helped him with his essays, he helped her with practical stuff, she was the only one who liked classical music, she played the cello, she hoped to go to Cambridge to study with Oliver Rackham. He really envied her, he said, and was wondering whether he ought to try for the same course after all. I listened to this encomium in raving silence.