This Is All (91 page)

Mrs Blacklin wanted only one thing: for Will to go to Cambridge and have nothing to do with me, ‘except as an occasional friend’.

Mr Blacklin officially agreed with her, knowing what was necessary for his domestic peace, but tipped the wink to Will that he would support him in doing whatever he thought best and would make him happiest.

Julie said, ‘Use my house whenever you need to.’

*

Very quickly after Will returned to college the work we had to do took us over. Not just Will and me, but Dad and Doris and Julie and Arry. There wasn’t much time for anything else. Will and I settled into a routine. We emailed each other every day, phoned before bed at night. Most weekends we were together, and usually Will came to me, because it was easier for him with his car than for me by train and bus. He never complained, though I knew the journey cost time and energy he needed for work.

I split my time out of school between home and Julie’s. We all accepted that Julie’s was my new second home. None of us even thought about it any more. Dealing with the Cal crisis had made friends of Julie and D&D. She came to meals quite often and sometimes went shopping with Doris. But I remember wondering after staying with her one night whether I’d been so conditioned by my childhood that for the rest of my life I’d always need two homes. It used to be Dad’s and Doris’s. Now it was D&D’s and Julie’s. And I knew it was true that I liked being able to stay as the mood took me in one or the other of two different houses with two different ways of life, D&D’s relaxed and family-messy, Julie’s ascetic and aesthetically ordered. Each satisfied one side of my still unblended personality. And if it was true that I was conditioned to needing dual homes, what was the implication for Will and me?

I mentioned this to him next time we were together.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ he said. ‘Neither of them is yours, is it? It’s the same for me. I have my room at college and my room at home, and I can’t wait to get out of both of them and into a place of my own. Correction. Of
our
own. It’ll be different then.’

‘I suppose so,’ I said.

But I thought: He hasn’t understood. We should talk about what I
need
in my life and what he
needs
. We should each know what’s essential to us before we decide to live together,
shouldn’t we? People say that love conquers all, and that if you really love someone things will work out. But if that’s the case, why do so many people who start off saying they’re in love split up before there’s even time for boredom to set in? If love conquers all, why are there so many divorces (or didn’t they
really
love each other to start with)? Why do so many people say they broke up because ‘things weren’t right’ between them?

Yes, I was naïve, my knowledge of life was (and still is) very limited, but I couldn’t help thinking that
for myself
, at any rate, it was important at least to try and understand and be clear about what living with someone else entailed, and not leave everything to the happenstance of those slippery concepts life had taught me to question in myself as well as in others: being in love and
really
loving someone.

I don’t want to give the impression that when Will returned I quickly recovered from Cal. It took much longer. It was weeks before I could go out on my own, for example. When I did, I suffered panic attacks, fearing that Cal would suddenly appear and snatch me away again. Or that someone else would. Traumatic fears caused by one person can enlarge into a fear that many people are like that. And then you begin to suspect everyone and trust nobody. I was also nervous when left by myself in the house. That’s why it became accepted that Julie’s was my second home. When school started that winter term, Julie picked me up in the morning to accompany me to school, and after school she took me back to her house until Dad or Doris or Arry picked me up on their way home from work. And when everyone was very busy it was easier for me to stay with Julie overnight.

By the time of the Easter holiday I was feeling stronger and more confident and was able to go out alone most of the time, except at night, but by then my need always to be with someone had segued into choice – which home I wanted to
be in, and whether Julie wanted me to be with her.

There were other hangovers. Lack of confidence in my opinions was one. I doubted myself more than before. Uncertain judgement was another. I was easily influenced, because I wasn’t sure what to do for the best. So I relied a lot on Julie for advice and talked everything through with her, because she was the one I’d confided in and trusted completely after Edward and Cal. I was wary of other people’s views, even D&D’s. Which was another reason why I couldn’t commit myself to Will the way he wanted. From being a rather self-confident and opinionated person I’d become a doubter. This remained, even when my self-confidence gained in strength and the events with Cal began to fade into memory.

Even when my phobias of being outside and alone subsided, however, there was a period of weeks – roughly from Easter until the half-term holiday in May – when I felt neutralised. I had no strong feelings or thoughts about anything to do with myself. I wasn’t
neutral
about them, which suggests I chose to be like that, but
neutralised
, by which I mean they felt imposed on me. Instead of being a flesh-and-blood presence, Cal had become a malign ghost, an incubus. In the flesh, he had intended us to die together; in his ghostly habitation, he intended to nullify my sense of myself and reduce me to an insubstantial shade like himself.

This sounds over the top and melodramatic. In the cold terms of reason, it is. But for weeks it was how I felt, except during weekends when Will was with me. Then, I felt safe and secure and free of my oppressor. Most weekdays I was quiet and doggedly purposeful, working as hard as I could – work being, as I’d learned from Julie, the great redeemer – but I was often low in spirits. Everybody noticed that I laughed more at weekends, looked better, moved with vigour and enjoyed myself. They put it down to love: unhappy without my lover, happy when I was with him. Which was also true.

But one thought worried me. Was my love what Granddad Kenn called cupboard love? Was it gratitude and not
real
love that I now felt for Will? Gratitude for his coming back to me? Gratitude for helping to lift me out of the pit into which Cal had thrown me? Gratitude most of all for loving me? People do feel love – some kind of love – for those who relieve them of pain and for those who love them. It’s natural. But it isn’t the kind of love on which to base the sort of total commitment Will asked for.

Which brings us to the half-term holiday in May, the last time Will and I could be together before final exams. The weather was gorgeous, late spring sun and fresh bright greenery, some rain but mostly dry and mild. During the winter, Dad and Arry had built a summerhouse, our grand name for a wooden hut in the garden big enough for six people to sit in, with windows in the sides and a front that opened out onto a paved patio where we could sit in the sun and have barbecues. Will and I spent most of our days there, revising, and camped out in it for a couple of nights, so that we could be on our own and make love without thinking of other people in the house. And it was there, on the Saturday afternoon at the end of the holiday, that we held what we afterwards called our ‘Kaffeeklatsch Council’.

It began quite literally as a coffee-break chat between Will and me during which we started talking about our future. It became so serious that we were still at it when D&D arrived home from a shopping trip and joined in while we had a drink before supper. And then Arry arrived and added his views, so on we went through a barbie supper and into the evening, until after dark, by which time important unexpected decisions had been made. It was one of those exciting occasions when separate threads that till then have been tangled and untidy are unravelled and examined and
then woven into a pattern so obviously right that you wonder why you didn’t see it before.

It went on for hours, so I won’t report it in detail. And I’d better tell you that before we started we already knew Will had a place at Cambridge to study with his hero Oliver Rackham, beginning that autumn term, and that I’d take a gap year before going to uni or doing something else, I wasn’t sure which. The assumption was that I’d spend my year with Will, probably getting a job, but this hadn’t been properly discussed; because of the state I’d been in we’d avoided the question.

A stray, unintended comment of mine set the discussion off. I said I was worried about how we would manage in Cambridge. Will said we’d work it out; we’d go to Cambridge for a few days when our exams were over, suss the place out, check out accommodation and see about a job for me. I said I didn’t think it would be that easy. Will said we wouldn’t know till we tried. I asked what we’d do if we couldn’t find cheap enough accommodation – which must be pretty hard to find in a university town like Cambridge – or jobs were scarce, and how would we manage for money? Will said we should cross those bridges when we came to them, where there was a will there was a way, and I said, that wasn’t good enough, and began to get quite worked up.

We brooded in silence for a few minutes, neither of us quite knowing what to say next. And as I sat stewing, the real problem came bubbling up out of the mash.

‘The thing is,’ I blurted out, using Will’s favourite introduction to the main point, ‘I don’t think I’m ready to live full time in a strange place and in a grotty little flat, with you out all the time being one-track-minded about your work and me hacking at some stop-gap job, just to earn money to keep us.’

Will fiddled with his coffee mug and said nothing.

‘That’s a harsh way of putting it, I know, and I’m sorry. I’m
only saying I don’t think I’m ready to take all of that on at one go. In fact, I think it’s asking too much of both of us. Don’t you? Or is it just me?’

‘No no. I get your point.’

‘It isn’t as if we’ve lived together already and got used to each other and sorted out the problems – because there will be problems, won’t there? Bound to be. Living together all the time isn’t like being together for a weekend, is it? Or for a week on a camping holiday. I mean, for instance, we know that you like getting up early and are full of energy then, whereas I like getting up later and I’m sluggish at first and need to be on my own till I’ve got going. That’s okay for a week or two, when we know it isn’t going to be like that all the time. One of us does what the other one wants. Usually me doing what you want, I have to say. But it wouldn’t be like that if we were living together all the time, would it?’

Pause. His lordship remained occupied by his coffee mug.

‘Another thing, Will. You know as well as I do that we both need a room of our own to work in, where we can be on our own when we want to be. We want to be together, but we want to be on our own when we need to be, and that might be difficult in a small flat, even if we can get one we can afford. You’ll be studying. You need to study, I know that, and I’m glad, I admire you for it and want to help you. But I want to study too. I
need
to, just like you do. I don’t think I’d survive for long doing nothing but a stop-gap job full time. You do see, don’t you? I’m not just being wobbly, am I?’

‘No, no you’re not.’

Silence again before Will said, ‘What d’you think we should do, then?’

‘Don’t know. You have to go to Cambridge. You’ve set your heart on it. I know it’s important to you. You’ll be there for three years at least.’

‘Yes, for my first degree. Might do postgrad work afterwards.’

‘I’ll do my gap year. Stay at home. Go somewhere and do something. Haven’t a clue yet. Maybe I can earn enough to help us with the right sort of accommodation eventually … O, I just don’t know, Will. I’m thinking aloud. I hadn’t meant to talk about this today. We’ve enough on our minds with exams. But we do have to decide something soon, don’t you agree?’

Will nodded.

He stood up, said he had to go to the loo, and went inside.

I chastised myself for bringing this up now. We’d been having such a good time, working hard, enjoying each other. Now I’d spoilt it. Why hadn’t I kept my mouth shut? Will was probably right. Things would sort themselves out bit by bit. Why did I always have to analyse everything?

He was gone for longer than it should take for a visit to the loo. I began to wonder if he’d been taken ill. Or was so fed up with me, he’d gone home. I was about to find out when he reappeared. I knew at once from the way he was walking that he’d made up his mind about something. I can always tell, because he moves as if his body is five steps ahead of his feet.

He sat down, took off his glasses, held them out, as you do to see if the lenses are dirty, and said, ‘You’re having a gap year. So I’ll have a gap year too.’

‘
What!
’

‘We’ll live together, get used to living with each other, decide whether we – whether you – want us to live together permanently, and we’ll both find jobs and earn enough to make things right the year after, when we’ll both go to Cambridge.’

I couldn’t help breaking into laughter. It was so typical of Will. Make a decision, get on with it, and everything will turn out as planned, the end.

‘Why are you laughing? What’s funny?’

‘You! I’m sorry, Will. I’m not laughing at you. But you do
seem to think you can organise the world to suit you just by deciding that’s how it’s going to be.’

‘Well, why not?’

Which set me laughing again. I knew he was only pretending not to see the point, and that was part of his funniness too.

‘Okay, Mizz Hilarity Kenn, be good enough to tell me what’s wrong with my plan. In my opinion it’s a damn sight better than yours. Mine keeps us together next year. Yours keeps us apart.’

‘What’s wrong with your plan, Mister Dictator Blacklin, is that
you
are going to Cambridge
pronto
, no gaps allowed, I
insist
, my dear sweet lovely gorgeous I’d-like-to-jump-you-right-now let’s go to bed instead of having this stupid conversation which I am sorry I started on, because,
as I said half an hour ago
, your heart is set on studying with Mr Professor Doctor the Greatest Tree Ecology Expert in the Entire Universe Rackham, it is your Big Ambition, and I am
not
going to be the one to get in the way of you achieving it at the earliest possible opportunity, because,
also
, I’m afraid that if you take a gap year only so that we can be together you’ll fret and resent me for causing you to
wait
instead of
getting on
with your
work
, which you very well know is as important to you as living with me—’