This Is All (89 page)

Zygote

The cell resulting from the union of an ovum and a spermatozoon. That is, the moment of your conception.

1
To save you looking it up: as defined by the poet, Mr T. S. Eliot: ‘objective correlative: a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which are the formula of that particular emotion’. The objects, etc., evoke the emotion. My room evokes my life, and tidying it evokes my feelings about sorting out my messy life
.

BOOK FIVE
The Yellow Pillow Box

Scene One

Reconciling

THE SIGHT OF
Will standing alone in the middle of Julie’s front room stopped me dead. I think I couldn’t believe that he was really there. But in that spelled moment the shock of seeing him breached a dam that was holding back a store of anger and without meaning to I surged at him and hit him across the face with the flat of my hand so hard his head jerked to one side, his glasses went flying, he stumbled back, tripped, and fell into the armchair by the window. Had he not, I’d have gone on hitting him.

‘Hell, Leah!’ Will said when he could speak, his hand against the burning side of his face, the other side pasty-green. ‘What was that for?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, still flooded with rage. ‘Everything!’

‘Then I wish I’d done nothing,’ he said, hitched himself up and combed his fingers through his hair.

I foraged his glasses from behind the sofa – thank goodness they weren’t broken – and said as I handed them to him, ‘Why are you here?’

‘After that welcome, I wish I wasn’t.’

A bubble of laughter burst out of me at the sight of him spread-eagled in the chair.

He inspected his glasses for damage, put them on and queried me with his eyes, the seduction of which I avoided by turning away and perching on the sofa.

‘Arry,’ he said.

‘What about him?’

‘He told me what happened.’

‘He shouldn’t have. Where’s Julie?’

‘She’ll come back when we phone her. She’s left us some food.’

‘So this is a plot. You cooked it up with Arry and Julie.’

‘If you like.’

‘I don’t like it one bit.’

‘I wanted to see you alone.’

‘Well, you’ve seen me. I’m not much to look at and I’m scared to go out on my own and I feel like shit but I’m still in one piece.’

‘And I want to say something to you.’

‘I can’t think what. You made it pretty clear in your letter you never wanted to speak to me ever again.’

‘Is that why you’re so angry?’

‘I didn’t know I was till I saw you. And I don’t know why … Yes I do. Because you went away and left me. I missed you more than I knew it was possible. Which is why Edward happened … And because you wouldn’t forgive me for my mistake … You’re so hard, Will, so hard on yourself and so hard on others … And now Cal … And everything.’

The anger was draining away as I talked.

I said, ‘I’m sorry I hit you.’

‘Expect I deserve it.’

‘No one deserves to be hit.’

Julie’s icon was on the wall. I fixed my eyes on it and while taking steady controlled breaths named silently to myself its woods and colours. Apple, ash, birch, holly, oak; red, green, orange, brown, yellow, violet, blue.

After a few minutes Will said, ‘Can I sit beside you?’

I managed a smile. ‘I’d rather you didn’t. I might want to hit you again, so we’re both safer where you are.’

‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I’ll stand up, because it feels wrong to
say it sitting here.’ He got up. ‘Or no, on second thoughts what I want to say requires abasement, so to the basement I’ll go.’

He knelt down in the middle of the room, squatted back on his haunches, clasped his hands in his lap, took a deep breath, looked at me with puckered brow, and said, ‘Cordelia.’

‘Will.’

‘The embarrassing thing is, I’ve been a fool.’

‘Join the club. I’m beginning to think it includes the entire human race.’

‘I really didn’t want to see you ever again. Couldn’t bear what you’d done. I thought we were special.’

‘But now?’

‘I still think we’re different in many ways. We don’t like what most people like, we don’t go much on socialising, we’re not big on family stuff, we’re loners. We like silence. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But we are no different from anybody else in our weaknesses and the things that hurt us. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.’

It was hard not to laugh. Not at what he was saying but the way he was saying it. Will always has this effect on me. The more serious he is, the more I want to laugh. He’s the only person I’ve ever known who can deliver a lecture on one of his favourite topics – e.g. trees, ecology, music, the idiocy of our rulers – and at the same time be impatient with words and try to avoid using them. When he’s holding forth, you can’t help feeling he’s saying to himself, ‘Why the hell am I going on like this? What’s the point? Who cares what I think? Why don’t I just shut up?’ And that day his word-avoiding
et cetera
s finally did break me up.

He gave me a puzzled look and said, ‘Why are you laughing?’

‘Nothing! Nothing.’

‘Because it’s taken me so long to work this out for myself? I expect you got there months ago?’

I put on a serious mask. ‘It has occurred to me, yes. But that isn’t what you’ve come to tell me, is it?’

‘No no. I’m just trying to explain why I want to say what I want to say. Or rather I mean, how I got to the point of wanting to say what I want to say.’

Another outbreak of laughter in the offing.

‘Well, good,’ I said, nodding vigorously as laughter-displacement activity. ‘So why not get to the point without more ado and we’ll talk about the reasons later?’

‘Right. Yes. Well. The thing is, Leah, the thing is, when I’d got over being angry with you and upset and hurt, because it really did hurt a lot the thing with … you know—’

‘Edward.’

‘Yes. I started to miss you, I mean miss you a lot. I have to admit I did try to forget you. There was a girl at college, not Hannah. I knew she fancied me and I quite fancied her. So we went out a couple of times. And we did go to bed, but it was no use, I couldn’t forget you and, she just wasn’t …
you
… If you see what I mean. I won’t go into details—’

‘O, do!’ I said quickly, greedy for every scrap, especially of comparisons in my favour. ‘If you feel it would help. Help me understand, I mean.’

‘No, it wouldn’t. [
Damn!
] I don’t want to upset you.’

‘It won’t. Who am I to criticise?’

‘Well, anyway, I got to thinking. About us. About us and other people. I told her I was sorry and ended it. And I missed you more and more. Then Arry came to live with you, which was good, because he kept me up with how you were and what you were doing.’

‘What?’

‘You know he’s a friend. You knew that.’

‘But he told me he’d lost touch with you. That’s why he came to see me, to ask where you were.’

Will smiled and pulled a face. ‘I wanted to know how you were and he needed an excuse to meet you to find out.’

‘Lordy! Just wait till I see him.’

‘Leave him alone. He’s a good friend to you as well.’

‘But
honestly
.’

‘If we’re talking about honesty …’

‘All right, all right, Mr Integrity, get on with what you want to say.’

I knew Arry had kept in touch, but intended to make the most of pretending to be annoyed.

‘Arry told me about you climbing the tree and I knew then you were missing me as much as I was missing you. Arry had said you were, but I didn’t want to believe him.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’d have wanted to come back to you and I wasn’t ready yet. I still wanted to believe you were the one in the wrong, and I was right to break us up. Then he told me about Cal and I couldn’t stand the thought of you being so hurt. I was so angry I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to come back and find him and hurt him, really hurt him, wanted to murder him in fact. But slowly. And painfully. I thought of all the ways I could do it. And I wanted to be with you, to help you. And I wanted to know exactly what happened. I wanted to hear it from you. But I knew it was stupid, wanting to kill him. And I thought you had enough to cope with, without me making things worse. And Arry told me how everybody was doing their best to look after you. So I made myself stay away. It’s been the worst time in my whole life. Then yesterday Arry told me how low you were. He said he didn’t think you were recovering and he was afraid you might get worse the longer it went on. And I knew I had to come back, I couldn’t stay away any longer. I had to see you and tell you … what I’ve come to tell you.’

He paused, looking at his hands, and my throat was so tight and my chest so tight I couldn’t say anything.

‘The fact is,’ Will went on, ‘I know the thing with Edward Malcolm wasn’t all your fault. It was mine as much as yours. Yes, I do think you made a mistake. But I’d made a mistake as well, but mine wasn’t so easy to see, at least not to me.’

He stopped again.

I managed to say, ‘Which was?’

He looked up and we were eye-to-eye the way we used to be before our ‘mistakes’, straight and clear.

Will said, ‘I took you for granted.’

‘Sorry? How? In what way?’

‘When I left for college I was so sure that we were there for each other and nobody else that I let myself get involved in my work and didn’t keep you in mind. I didn’t write to you enough, or phone you enough, and I should have come back home to see you every now and then. I could have done. Could have done all of those things. I know I’m one-track-minded. I should have thought about you more.’

He drew a deep breath and let it out, easing his tension.

‘And there was Hannah. We weren’t lovers, we didn’t even kiss. We were friends, good friends. I think we probably always will be. I don’t think there was anything wrong with that. But I should have realised how it must have looked and I should have talked to you about it and done something to reassure you. I don’t know what, I’m not clever at that kind of thing. But if we’d talked, you’d have helped me work it out. Instead, I was a fool.’

‘Not a fool, Will. You’re never foolish. Thoughtless, maybe, sometimes.’

‘Worse than thoughtless. After we split up I tried to persuade myself that I’d been wrong about you, and that I’d been wrong about how I felt about you. That I didn’t really love you, that it was all just teenage stuff, infatuation, only sex, whatever. And you know I’ve always been suspicious of feelings. How can you trust them? Aren’t they just chemical reactions in the body, and as changeable as the weather? I told myself I’d get over it in time.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘It’s taken me till now to accept that I made a mistake. And to understand why you did what you did. And to accept that
what I feel for you isn’t like the weather. It’s permanent. It hasn’t changed. And I don’t think it will.’

He got up and sat beside me on the sofa and I didn’t stop him.

‘The thing is, Cordelia, I love you. You’re the only one I want. You’re the only one who makes any sense to me. Makes any sense
of
me. I’m as sure of that as I can be of anything. I don’t know how else to say it.’

‘I understand.’

‘I’m sorry for the way I behaved. I’m sorry I broke us up. I really was a fool. But I suppose I needed time to learn how much you mean to me, and what you mean to me, and I learnt the hard way. That’s what I want to say. And what I want to know is if you still feel the same about me. And if you do, I want to ask if we can be together again. Special for each other. No exceptions.’

You would think hearing these words would have a healing power of relief, would lift the pain of his loss from me and the horror of the last few weeks. And yes, I was pleased, as how can you not be when the one you love offers the gift of his life. But instead my stomach tightened and I clammed up. It was as if a glass door had closed to keep him out.

Suddenly, I needed air, I needed space, I needed to be on the move, to be outside. Had I been able to, I’d have preferred to go alone, but since Cal I’d been too scared to go anywhere by myself. This wasn’t rational. I didn’t really think Cal was lurking around, waiting to kidnap and torture me with his warped love again.

I went into the kitchen and drank some water, hoping this would settle me. But it didn’t. Will stayed where he was, waiting for my answer. I brought him a glass of water and said, ‘How did you get here?’

‘With my car.’

‘That retired funeral jalopy?’

He smiled. ‘No. A Polo Dad gave me for my birthday. Used,
but only fifteen thousand on the clock. One owner. An old biddy who hardly ever drove it.’

‘Could we go somewhere?’

‘Sure.’

‘Somewhere with a view.’

He thought and said, ‘Okay, get your things.’

While I was upstairs, I heard him on the phone. I guessed he was talking to Julie, letting her know.

His car was dark blue, and clean and trim inside. Well cared for, like everything of his. As soon as we were on the way, the sensation I’d always had when I was with him, that I was safe and protected, came over me again, wrapped me round like a comforting warming cloak.

There was a gentle distracting pleasure in wondering where Will would take me. Christmas was only a couple of days away. The traffic had that silly urgency that seems to take hold of people then.

After a while, Will said, ‘Like to hear a new CD? Beethoven. Early quartet. Eighteen, number two in G.’

‘You’re on a Beethoven binge?’

‘The late quartets. The last things he wrote before he died. He was deaf and his music had gone out of fashion and people thought he was mad—’

‘I know, Will.’

‘When what he was was a genius and light years ahead of any of them. Still is. But the number eighteen is one of his earliest, when he was young and on a roll. I was listening to it on the way here. Helped to keep me calm.’

He switched it on. A happy piece, not flippant, serious but not solemn. I hadn’t been listening to much music lately. I regretted that now. It would have helped. How easily we forget what keeps us alive, what it is that helps us when we’re down. As if we prefer feeling hurt to getting better. And I realised something I’d not thought of before. Julie wasn’t big on music, she didn’t listen to it with the seriousness and
attention she gave to reading and meditating. With Will, it was the other way round. Music was central to his life. He studied it as closely as he studied his beloved trees. Because I’d been all but living with Julie these last few days, and didn’t have any of my CDs with me, I hadn’t been listening to anything. I’d been deprived of an essential. Like I’d been deprived of Will. How much I wanted to be with him! He was everything I needed, everything I wished for. So why was I hesitating? Why couldn’t I respond to the very declaration I’d wanted before we broke up? Being depressed deadens your understanding, especially of yourself.