This is the most beautiful wonderful exciting thing so far about being pregnant – to hear your heart beating within me.
Now you are you.
My baby.
My child.
My you.
You and me.
Every I is a You, every You is an I.
Hello, you!
Kaffeeklatsch two
‘Why now? Why am I only blubbing now?’ I said after weeping enough to flood the world. ‘It’s eleven years since she died.’
‘Delayed reaction,’ Doris said. ‘Grief takes its own time. But it’s got to come out eventually. Has to be expressed. And tears seem to be the language it knows best.’
‘But why now?’
‘When your mother died your father kept everything from you. He told you she’d only gone away for a while. Wouldn’t let you see the body. Or go to the funeral. He thought you were too young for such terrible things. I thought he was wrong. But you gradually got used to her not being there. Now, scattering her ashes … well, obvious, isn’t it.’
‘I promised not to tell you.’
‘I knew already.’
‘You knew?’
‘Dear Cordy! I know Frank Richmond well. I’ve been his accountant for years. He thought I should know, your mother being my sister.’
‘But you never said anything to Dad?’
‘You mother was his wife. If he wanted to keep some of her ashes for himself he had every right to.’
‘But not to tell you!’
‘Men and their puny secrets. They’re all little boys really.’
‘You were going to marry him.’
‘He told you that too, did he?’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Wasn’t ready. Wanted to enjoy my freedom for a while longer. Going through a heavy feminist phase at the time.’
‘So Dad said.’
‘Because that’s what I told him. But there was something else. Something more important. Something I couldn’t tell your father. It would have hurt him too much.’
‘What?’
‘My father – your grandfather – was the best man I’ve ever known. The most intelligent. The most loving. The handsomest as well. I quite fancied him, to be honest.’
‘Not like that though?’
‘Yes, like that.’
‘Doris!’
‘Today, let’s not be mealy-mouthed or mealy-minded.’
‘Are you ever?’
‘I try not to be. But today is a day for hard truths.’
‘Am I up to it?’
‘My father taught me just about everything I know that I care about. I admired him. Didn’t just love him, I adored him. No other man could ever be to me what my father was. I realised that the day your dad asked me to marry him. One of the biggest moments of truth in my life. I just knew it wouldn’t work. Not because George wasn’t a good man and full of fun too. And I did love him, in a way I think many women are willing to settle for. Even mistake for being in love.’
‘Mistake for being in love?’
‘What it is really is a fear of being alone. They fear nothing better will come along. Mainly because they feel they aren’t worth anyone better, or don’t deserve anyone better, or can’t attract anyone better. So they take the best that’s on offer.’
‘But d’you think they know they’re doing that?’
‘Mostly not. Some do. I knew I couldn’t.’
‘Because of how you felt about your father?’
‘I looked at George and I looked at my father, and there was no competition.’
‘And you thought you’d meet somebody one day who was?’
‘No. No, I knew then I’d never meet anyone I’d want to spend every day of my life with. And when my father died, he took the best part of me with him.’
‘That’s awful.’
‘That’s life. My life, anyway.’
‘I’ve never thought of you as a sad person.’
‘I’m not. There’s many have it a lot worse. By a long way. Sometimes I feel sad, of course. Who doesn’t? I read somewhere that the cure for sadness involves the continual discovery of the possibilities of life. I think that’s true. I like life. I like discovering its possibilities. That’s what keeps me going.’
‘Is that what you do when you go to London? Explore the possibilities?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you have lovers there?’
‘From time to time.’
‘Thought so.’
‘And I also love you. I like watching you explore the possibilities of life, too.’
‘Do I do that?’
‘You do. Many times you’ve made me happy when I’ve felt sad. If I had a child, I’d be glad and proud to have you.’
‘O lordy, you’ll set me off again.’
‘Have some more coffee.’
(There was something else about my mother’s dead body I’d promised not to tell but which I found out now that Doris also knew all the time. But I’ll tell you about it later.)
‘… All this … You’re telling me something. Aren’t you? I mean, not about you. About me.’
‘You’re lucky, you know. Twice lucky, in fact.’
‘How?’
‘Well, for a start, I don’t think you feel about your dad the way I felt about mine.’
‘That no other man can—’
‘Replace him.’
‘No, I don’t feel like that about him. And I don’t want him like that either.’
‘Still – he is quite fanciable, don’t you think?’
‘Then you can have him. I expect it’s his laid-back world-weary look that appeals to the older woman.’
‘Thanks. How generous of you.’
‘You’re welcome …’
‘… You said twice lucky.’
‘You don’t have a mother.’
‘Excuse me? Lucky that I don’t have a mother?’
‘I wanted my father, or a man who could replace him. Some women are like that. For other women it’s different. There’s a terrible way that some daughters – most, I think – want to be like their mothers. Or their mothers want their daughters to be like them. It imprisons them. Stultifies them. I think it’s harder for a daughter to free herself from her mother, or from her father if he’s as matchless as mine was, than it is for a son to free himself from his mother or his father.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I know it’s been hard for you not having your mother there for you. Especially now, when you’re feeling you need her more than ever. But in the end, it might be better for you. Don’t let yourself think that what’s happened to you is worse than for most people.’
‘I don’t – do I?’
‘No, I don’t think you do. But I’m just saying. Trying to explain. You see, what I mean is, the lucky thing for you is that you don’t have to break away from your parents in order to establish yourself as yourself, the way most people have to. The break from your mother was forced on you early by the accident of life. And because of the way your father has lived since your mother died, you don’t have the sort of feelings about him that I had about mine. So you have the freedom to become your own woman in a way most women haven’t. It’s a special chance you’ve got. I know it seems hard. The best things always are hard, aren’t they? And this is the worst time, during your teens. But I know you can do it. And I know you have the courage to do it. In fact, you’re already doing it.’
‘With a little help from my friends, maybe.’
‘I’m sorry to say so, but I don’t think most women have that sort of courage. They actually prefer the mother trap. They feel safe in it. And they can always blame their mother for not being the person they want to be but haven’t become.’
What was I to say? When adults, older adults, especially adults you love, tell you about life before you’ve lived it, you don’t know how to respond. Or what you’re meant to do. They want to help, but they confuse you with their knowledge. There’
s such a world of difference between hindsight and foresight. Between arriving and departing. Between doing something and being told about it before you’ve been there and done that. Understanding requires experience. That’s why people repeat the eternally repeated mistakes.
Midday.
‘Let’s eat,’ Doris said.
This is something I can do. Eat. And cook.
‘Go and practise,’ I said, ‘and leave the door open so I can listen while I prepare the meal.’
She played (or tried to) Schubert’s Sonata in D major, D850 (no one can fault her courage), making enough mistakes for me to feel pleased and swearing at herself wildly enough to make me laugh while I orchestrated a pasta, improvised a tomato salsa and arranged a green salad.
While we were eating, Doris said, ‘What’s your grief done to you re Will?’
‘Haven’t seen him since. Not, you know, seen him.’
‘Too soon to know?’
‘No. I do know.’
‘Can I be told?’
‘Partly, it’s because of Mum. But also, I want to get it over.’
‘Will or sex?’
‘No no, not Will. Sex.’
‘Sex isn’t like food, whatever anyone may tell you. It isn’t something you can select from the menu to suit your taste, enjoy eating, digest, excrete the unwanted parts, forget about, and then have another meal when you feel like it. I know that’s a current view. But it’s wrong.’
‘What then?’
‘It has post-prandial consequences.’
‘It can give you indigestion?’
‘It can. Emotional indigestion, and worse. But what I really mean is it has after-sex knock-on effects.’
‘No knock-up without a knock-on.’
‘Elegantly put. And. Two people feed from the same dish.’
‘I don’t mean I just want to get it over. You know. Just with anybody. I mean I want to get it over with Will.’
‘Good. But why?’
‘You were the one who said get on with it.’
‘That was then. It would have been okay then. You were lighter about it. Lighter hearted. Now you aren’t. You’re heavier hearted. Something has happened. What you’ve learned has deepened you. Made you a bit more serious.’
‘… Yes.’
‘And that changes everything. Especially sex.’
‘So, why?’
‘Because …?’
‘Because …’
‘Dig it out.’
‘Because … like you say … because I want to get to the other side.’
‘Of?’
‘… Of me … Of him … Of us.’
‘Keep going. You feel?’
‘The sex will get us there. To the other side. Or start to anyway.’
‘And that’s somewhere you really want to go?’
‘Not want to. Have to. Must. I just know I have to try. And try with Will. It has to be with Will. I don’t know why. But that’s what I know.’
‘You see. You knew all the time.’
‘No. Only when you said it. About food and knocking-on.’
‘Glad to be of service.’
While we were clearing away and washing up, I said, ‘I know he likes me. I know he wants me. Why won’t he get on with it, d’you think?’
‘Good question.’
‘Well?’
‘I’m not as all-knowing as you’d like me to be.’
‘A guess will do.’
‘You go first.’
‘Okay. Try this. Maybe he’s scared. That he won’t be good at it. Or something.’
‘Some men are, that’s true. Not the stone-heads, but the good men.’
‘Is Will a good man?’
‘I’m sure of it.’
‘Not nice. You don’t mean nice, do you? I can’t bear nice and being niced to.’
‘Not like you mean it, no.’
‘Is Dad good?’
‘Yes, I think so. Yes, he is. Sad. Disappointed. And not at all nice.’ She laughed. ‘But good. Yes.’
‘And not like Will. Dad’s sloppy. But Will likes everything to be exactly right. Doesn’t he? So maybe he’s scared because he’s afraid he won’t do it exactly right.’
‘Is that how it seems when you talk about it?’
‘We haven’t much.’
‘So how does it seem?’
‘Let me think … Like … He’s holding back … Afraid … Of losing something … Yes. Like that. Like he’s afraid of losing something.’
‘And what might it be he’s afraid of losing?’
‘Not his virginity. It’s not like that for boys, is it? They don’t have a hymen to lose, do they?’
‘So all this is only about a little piece of skin?’
‘Sorry. Silly thing to say.’
‘No apology needed. We’re just doing a thought experiment, after all. It’s right to get things wrong in order to get them right.’
‘Therefore?’
‘Therefore …’
‘Virginity is a state of mind as well as a state of body.’
‘Bravo!’
‘But why would he be afraid to lose it? I’m not. I want to.’
‘With Will.’
‘Ah! I get it! – You mean, maybe he doesn’t want to lose his with me?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Because he doesn’t feel about me the way I feel about him?’
‘I think he loves you as much as you love him.’
‘He hasn’t said so.’
‘Have you to him?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Too soapy.’
‘Too soppy?’
‘No. Too soapy. Like in the soaps. On tv? They’re always saying they love each other. Haven’t you noticed? And then one of them does something that’s supposed to be terrible, like snogging the other’s best friend, and they have a row and break up, and then they say sorry, and in the next episode it all starts again with another pair. I hate it. It’s so naff. Nobody ever changes in soaps. Whatever happens to them, everybody remains just the same as they always were. They just keep saying sorry to each other, and making one of those six faces they all make. You know, like surprised, happy, pissed off, sexy, angry and weepy. Oh, and a seventh. Lovey-dovey. They’re so stupid, the soaps! And so boring! They’re about as real as a clockwork Barbie doll. I won’t behave like someone in a soap, thank you.’
‘You must watch them a lot.’
‘Not that often. Only when I want to puke.’
‘Let’s take a walk. Burn off the pasta.’
*
The path we walked along has been used since at least Roman times. Nearly two thousand years. Perhaps longer. More than two thousand years of people’s feet. Strolling, striding, hurrying, running. Marching, toddling, limping, plodding. Trudging, jogging, tramping, dawdling. Strutting, staggering, shuffling, crawling. Prancing, dancing, waddling, skipping. Running to, fleeing from, marking time, standing still. Autumn, summer, winter, spring. I was carried along it as a baby, played on it as a child, got up to no good in its bushy nooks and crannies as a pubing girl, ran its length and back again with Will, and now paced it with Doris. There is a photo taken on it of my mother, crouching down while holding me, on my third birthday, as I reach out all smiles, towards the camera. Another of Dad carrying me piggyback. Another of me aged five walking hand-in-hand with my mother. She must have died soon after it was taken. My mother’s footprints were where I was walking now. As were many of my younger selves.
Paths. How many feet make a path? All those previous soles still imprinted in the earth. All paths are history written in footprints. We keep them alive by reprinting them with our own footsteps. History dies without the present. There is no future without the path made to it by the past.
‘I don’t think it has anything to do with Will not wanting you,’ Doris said as we walked. ‘I think it has to do with something he can’t say, not even to himself, because he isn’t conscious of it yet.’
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‘You mean, he knows it in the back of his mind but he doesn’t know it in the front of his mind.’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘As you say, he’s a perfectionist. Perfectionists want things to be exactly right. But they also don’t want to lose anything they’ve already got that is right.’
I had to pause a moment to work that one out.
‘So,’ I said, groping towards what Doris was getting at, ‘so … No, I can’t get it.’
‘He likes being a virgin and doesn’t want to lose it because it feels right. He’s a clever boy. He’s seen what a tangle his friends get into with their first attempts at love and sex, and he’s thought, That’s all too messy and not for me.’
‘I know he doesn’t like mess, that’s for sure.’
‘Besides that’ – she pulled a paperback from her pocket (I’ve never known her without a book tucked away somewhere) – ‘read this. I marked it specially for you last night. It’s by a Czech novelist, Ivan Klíma.’
Man is afraid to attain what he longs for, just as subconsciously he longs for what he is afraid of. We are afraid we might lose the person we love. To avoid losing that person we drive him or her away.
‘Will hasn’t tried to drive me away.’
‘No. But where sex is concerned, he has kept you at arm’s length. So what you have to do, Cordy love, is arrange things so that having your first sex isn’t a messy business but something he just can’t help wanting.’
‘And how do I do that?’
‘I don’t know. Take him on a sex saga perhaps.’
‘A what? A sex saga?’
‘You both choose a place where you’d like to take the other because it’s important in some special way. A long weekend trip together. And you hope that at some point on the trip everything is just right for sex. The time, the place, your mood.’
‘What if it doesn’t work?’
‘At least you’ll have got to know each other better. Until you’ve spent long days and nights with someone, without any relief, you don’t really know them. You have to see someone in their dirty undies and behaving at their worst before you know if you really are in love with them.’
‘But how? How do I do that?’
‘There are some things in life you have to work out for yourself. This is one of them. Use your imagination. You’ve plenty of it.’
‘I hate it when people say that. Use your imagination! I mean, what does it mean?’