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.
I said, ‘You’re waiting for an answer.’
‘Yes. But I know you. You’ll only tell me when you’re ready. I can wait. It would be different if we were apart. I’d be a mess then.’
I put my hand on his thigh, the way I always used to when he was driving. He took it in his, put the back of my hand to his lips and kissed it.
But something in that action made me panic again. An echo of Cal doing something similar. It confused me.
I took my hand away and said, ‘Will we be there soon? I need to get out.’ And added, to make sure Will didn’t think I was rejecting him, but also because it was true, ‘I get like that in cars now. From being tied up in Cal’s van. It brings it back and I get scared. I should have thought before we started.’
‘A bit at a time,’ Will said. ‘You’ll get over it.’
There was nowhere to park safely until a few minutes later, when he drove into a Happy Chef.
‘Let’s have a coffee or something and then see whether you want to keep going or go back home.’
‘At a Happy Chef? Have you gone bananas?’
‘You don’t have to actually eat anything, happily or otherwise. Just pretend, and soak up the ambience.’
‘What d’you mean, just pretend? The whole place is pretence. Plastic heaven with tacky-top tables and Muzak.’
‘But the loos are all right.’
‘You mean the vomitorium.’
‘You’re a terrible snob, Miz Kenn.’
‘And the desperate can’t be choosy.’
‘You’re harder than you used to be.’
‘That’s it, you see.’
‘No, I don’t see.’
‘I’ll tell you when we’re inside.’
We sat at a table by a window with a ringside view of cars and lorries tanking along the road a few metres away. We ordered orange juice. It was called fresh, which meant fresh out of the dispenser.
‘So tell me,’ Will said, ‘why you’re harder.’
>
‘Mistakes have consequences.’
‘Yes.’
‘Experience teaches lessons.’
‘Agreed.’
‘The consequence of the mistake I made with Edward and the lesson I’ve learned from the experience with Cal is that I don’t trust it any more when people say they love me. And I don’t trust myself when I say it either. Edward said he loved me but I don’t think he did. He wanted me, but that’s not the same thing. Cal said he loved me, but if he really did, it was a pretty warped kind of love. You used to say you didn’t trust that word, and so you wouldn’t say it. Now you’ve said it. What’s different? What changed your mind? How do you know you mean it? How do you know it’ll last? And how do you know that someone else won’t come along and you’ll do a swap?’
Will smiled and made one of those Indian side-to-side neck-jerks with his head.
‘Which of your questions would you like me to tackle first?’
‘What changed your mind?’
‘The same that changed your mind. The consequence of making a mistake and the lessons of experience.’
‘O, thanks.’
‘But it’s true.’
‘I suppose the mistake was the girl you had it off with.’
‘No. The mistake was thinking I needed more experience before I could be sure I loved you the way you have to love someone if you intend to spend the rest of your life with them.’
‘Is that why you’d never say you loved me when we were together?’
‘Yes. I wanted to be sure.’
‘And the lesson of experience?’
‘That you can never be completely sure. And I should have stayed with you till experience taught us that we were or weren’t meant to be together … I was going to say for ever, but I don’t believe anything is for ever. So I should say for as long as I can imagine.’
‘So you’re saying you believe you love me and we should stay together till we don’t.’
‘And that I believe don’t doesn’t come into it.’
I pushed my untouched glass of orange juice away. ‘I don’t like talking about this here. It’s too important for this place. Can we go back?’
Will said nothing, got up and paid and drove us back to Julie’s in silence.
How good to be with someone I didn’t feel I had to talk to and who didn’t force the issue or resent my silence. O, Will, Will, I thought; what am I to do? I love you. But do I love you? Or do I just want you because you make me feel safe and put up with my silliness and make me feel better? A good friend like Arry can do that. Giving all of yourself to someone requires more.
When we got back, I laid out the food Julie had left for us on the table in the kitchen. I wasn’t hungry, but it gave me something to do. I wasn’t ready to go on talking.
Will stayed in the front room. When I asked if he wanted to eat, he took hold of me and kissed me, and in a second it was like no time had passed since we were like this, and I knew that though I wasn’t hungry for food, I was hungry for Will, and before we could pause to think, we were in bed, and it was like being let out of jail, free again. How strange that being held and entered by the person you need sets you free, when being without him is like imprisonment. Perhaps, I thought as we lay together afterwards, this is the test of Love itself: that when you give yourself to the other, the loved one, you are given a freedom you cannot have otherwise. And if that doesn’t happen, if you are not set free, then it isn’t Love but only the beastly chemistry of biology.
We spent the afternoon in bed. We said nothing for all that time. Our bodies did the talking, and what they said was enough. And when we’d had enough of that kind of enough, I fell asleep.
It was dark when I woke. Eight o’clock. Will wasn’t there. I pulled on a T-shirt and jeans and went downstairs. He was in the kitchen, eating.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Hungry. Haven’t had anything since yesterday morning.’
‘What!’
‘Couldn’t eat. Just wanted to get to you. Drove overnight. Dozed in the car outside till it was time.’
‘Didn’t you go home?’
‘No. They don’t know I’m here.’
‘You should have said.’
‘No fash. I’m good. You hungry now? Cheese and broccoli flan, nice salad. I’ll warm the flan for you.’
‘Please.’
‘Wine?’
‘Will?’
‘Leah?’
‘Are we fools?’
‘We are, sweet idiot!’
He kissed me and set about playing waiter.
When I’d finished, we sat in the front room, comfortably together on the sofa.
I said after a while, ‘I believe I love you, Will. I always have since the day I fell for you. But I’m nervous of thinking it’ll last. I think I don’t trust myself any more.’
‘We’ve changed sides, haven’t we? Now I’m the one who’s certain and you’re the doubter.’
‘What are you asking us to do?’
‘Marry.’
‘Now?’
‘One day. When you’re ready.’
‘And till then?’
‘Be together as much as possible. Live together, if we can. It was what you wanted, remember?’
‘That your mother put the kibosh on.’
‘True. But that was then and she isn’t now, and won’t be. Something else I’ve learned from experience. You have to grow out of your parents.’
‘It’s hard to grow out of one of mine, as I never had her for long to begin with.’
‘I know.’
‘So, what? You want me to come and live with you?’
‘If you want.’
‘I’m not sure. I’m still trying to cope after Cal.’
‘But you’d want to if you could?’
‘I don’t know. Part of me says yes. Part of me says no.’
‘It would be a bit of a jump. How about Plan B? You stay at school. Recover. Do your exams. We’ll get together every weekend. Me to you or you to me, whichever suits. And holidays of course. We’ve got this Christmas holiday to reestablish. Get used to each other again. Take it gently. See how we go. How you feel about us living together when you’ve recovered. What about that?’
‘I could try.’
‘And want to?’
I let the plan seep in before saying, ‘Yes. I truly want to. I do love you, Will. But I want to learn what that means. I’m ready to learn it properly now. Day by day. Week by week. Till I understand, and can say yes for sure.’
‘Stay there,’ Will said, untangled himself from me and went out to his car. He came back with a small brown paper packet and sat beside me again, one leg tucked under the other so that he could face me.
‘Hold your hand out.’
He opened the packet and tipped two silver rings into my hand. One narrow, one broad.
‘O, god, Will!’
‘If we put these on,’ he said, ‘they mean we’re exclusive to each other till we give them back. No words like engagement or marriage. No intention more than we’ve said. We’re each other’s till one of us gives the ring back. They bind us from now till then. They’re time bands. And if the time comes when we know we don’t ever want to give them back, we’ll make them into timeless bands. Agreed?’
‘Agreed. They’re lovely, Will. You knew!’
‘No. But I hoped.’
‘Which finger shall we wear them on? If we use the marriage finger, you know what we’ll be asked.’
‘And we don’t want those questions yet. So let’s wear them on the ring finger of the right hand?’
‘Good idea.’
‘I hope yours fits. I guessed it should be about the thickness of my little finger. But it can always be fixed if it isn’t quite right.’
‘Put it on for me.’
‘And you mine.’
‘Let’s stand up and do it.’
Which we did, face to face, silently.
Scene Two
Leaving
; That Christmas was the happiest since I was little. Because I’d been so out of it after the trauma with Cal, we hadn’t celebrated my eighteenth birthday, so Dad decided we’d make Christmas my birthday. In honour of which and of Will’s return and of my recovery, instead of calling it Mammonmas and paying it no attention, he renamed it Wassailtide. He laid on a plethora of food, drink and presents, and invited Julie and some of Will’s friends and mine to join Arry and Will and D&D and me to my delayed party two days after Christmas.
When I asked how he came up with Wassailtide, Dad said, ‘You’re not the only one who can look things up. Wassail. From Old Norse ves heill, and Old English wes hāl, meaning be in good whole health.’
I checked Mr Schmidt’s Lexicon. Shakes uses the word five times.
‘So,’ I said, choosing the most appropriate with which to tease Dad, ‘like King Claudius in Hamlet, you’ll take your rouse and keep wassail. But just you remember what a bad end he came to after wassailing his brother’s wife.’
‘And what end was that?’ Dad asked, pretending ignorance.
‘Hoist by his own petard. He died on the sticky end of the sword he himself had poisoned.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Dad said, being straight now. ‘I’ll watch my ps and qs.’
‘Such a funny expression, ps and qs.’
‘Be careful with your pints and quarts. Though now we’d have to say watch your ls and ls. Litres and litres. Which doesn’t have quite the same ring somehow. But I will anyway, watch my ps and qs and ls and ls, just for you.’
And he did.
*
During that Christmas holiday Will and I were together almost the entire time. Mrs Blacklin wasn’t happy about that of course, complained that Will was never at home, when he ought to be studying and preparing himself for Cambridge, where he’d been accepted for a place after tree college, next autumn term. Will handled this in his usual manner, by ignoring her.
We ran every morning and evening, and Will drove me somewhere every day, going further each time, to help me overcome my post-Cal phobia. Two days before he was due back at college early in the new year, we went to the White Horse. It was there, he told me, he’d intended to take me the day he came back, when we ended up in the Happy Chef instead.