This Is All (17 page)

‘Bit of a parody maybe?’

‘That’s what it felt like anyway.’

‘She isn’t like that now.’

‘Not entirely. But you’re never completely cured of a virus like that.’

‘So she chucked you.’

‘She wasn’t in love with me. Not really. Not the way I was with her. Often like that the first time. One of the couple loves more than the other.’

‘So how come you married Mum?’

‘After Doris chucked me I was in a bad way. Your mother helped me through. She was a couple of years younger than Doris. Nineteen. I was twenty-nine, but she was already far more grown up than me, far more mature. Took me in hand. Sorted me out. Then one day your mother brought me up here. Someone had told her about it. She was always interested in history. The more ancient the better. And old customs. Believed in ley lines and astral forces. That kind of tosh. Well, we sat here. Sandwiches. Bottle of wine. Lovely summer day. And out of the blue, no warning, she told me she was in love with me. Had been all the time I’d been going with Doris. Said she always knew she’d have me in the end. And she said, “You make me laugh. Especially when you don’t think you’re being funny.” I said, thinking it would make her laugh, “In that case you’d better marry me and then you’ll have all the laughs you want.” “Yes,” she said, “I’d like that.” I said, still joking, “All right then, you’re on.” And she said, “I mean it. Do you?” I looked at her then. And knew. She really did mean it. I wouldn’t say I was in love with her at the time. I made us wait six months. Thought she’d change her mind. But she didn’t. And me? I’d never really looked at her. She was just Doris’s younger sister. Wasn’t sexy the way Doris was. Didn’t dress that way, either. It was Doris who was all for that. It came over me gradually. Falling for her. Found myself thinking about her. After a while, couldn’t see enough of her. And the more I saw of her the more beautiful she looked. So we married. And it’s a funny thing. Doris never forgave me. She didn’t want me. But she didn’t want your mother to have me either. I never understood it. But I’ve never really understood women anyway. Don’t understand you, either!’

He laughed. Me too. Both of us needing relief.

‘Seems to me,’ he said, ‘women always know more about men than men know about women. Or men know about themselves, come to that.’

And some of my mother at my feet.

I said, ‘We’re going to scatter Mum’s ashes on the horse.’

‘Yes.’

‘But, Dad. Why today? Why not on the anniversary of the day you came up here? Or your wedding?’

‘Ah, now we get to it. That’s the point. Your mother wanted children. Some people want to be doctors or engineers or actors or footballers or whatever. Your mother wanted to be a mother. From the day we were married we tried. Tried and tried. But nothing. Three, four years. Began to upset her. Really really upset her. The doctors said there was nothing wrong with either of us. No reason why she shouldn’t conceive.’

A young couple in rambling gear stood for a moment near us. When they moved on:

‘One afternoon. Bright March day. An early spring that year. Your mother said she wanted to come here. I thought she just felt like a ride out. But when we got here she said we were staying the night. She’d stowed everything we needed in the boot of the car without me knowing. You’ve read the leaflet. The horse is supposed to be the goddess Epona—’

‘Goddess of fertility, health and death.’

‘And there’s a legend. If a woman spends a night on the eye of the horse she’ll conceive.’

‘You didn’t!’

‘We hung around till after dark. No one about by then. Your mother laid a sleeping bag over the horse’s eye. And we spent the night there. Afterwards, your mother wouldn’t let us try again till after her next period was due. It didn’t come.’

‘She was pregnant.’

‘Your mother always believed you were conceived here that night.’

‘And you?’

‘I’ve no doubt you were.’

‘But – you don’t believe it had anything to do with the horse? Or the goddess Epona?’

‘No.’

The horse and some of my mother at my feet.

‘Dad, what
do
you believe?’

‘You mean, what do I believe
in?
Like God or whatever?’

‘Yes.’

‘Contingency.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Contingency. I believe in contingency. Some people call it “happy accident”.’

‘What happens just happens but for no reason?’

‘More than that. It might be true you were conceived that night because of the horse goddess. It might not.’

‘But only one can be true, can’t it?’

‘No. Both can be true. Both can exist at the same time. As a possibility. All we
know
, the only fact we can be sure of, is that you were conceived that night. Whether because of the horse goddess or for some other reason is beyond what we can know.’

‘And you think everything is like that? Everything in the world?’

‘Everything there is anywhere.’

‘In the whole universe?’

‘And whatever else there is beyond that. And I’m sure there is more than just our universe.’

‘Shouldn’t you say you
believe
there’s more than our universe? You can’t
know
, can you?’

‘Touché! So that’s something I believe, after all. That there’s
a lot more to know than we know. And a lot more we already know that we can’t understand.’

‘But no god?’

‘No. No god.’

‘What about Mum?’

‘She believed that everything is all one, and everything is held together by a power, a force, whatever – there are no words for what she meant. It’s a mystery. And this power, this force is in everything. Everything is made of it. And it itself is more than everything. She said people call this mystery God because there is no other word for it. And they find ways to express it that don’t need words. Like this horse. She just accepted that this power or whatever it is just
is
. That it’s
there
, in us, in everything. And that it’s more than us and everything. And she believed that at some special times and in some special places we can get closer to it, can get in touch with it, more than at other times and in other places.’

‘And she believed this was one of those special places and the night you spent here when I was conceived was one of those special times?’

‘Exactly.’

I shivered. ‘Lordy! What a thought!’

He put his arm round me and hugged me to him and kissed the top of my head.

‘I can’t really explain it. I wish she were here to explain it to you herself. If I could be granted one wish, only one wish for the whole of my life, that would be it. That she was here with us now.’

And some of my mother at our feet.

Dad stood up. Picked up the box.

‘How are we going to do this?’

I got up and stood beside him.

‘Never done anything like this before.’

‘When we did it at Doris’s, she read something she’d written.’

‘You?’

‘Scattered the ashes. Didn’t say anything. Couldn’t.’

‘If you’d told me I could have prepared.’

‘Might have spoilt it, don’t you think?’

‘Yes. Still.’

‘What I think.’

‘Yes?’

‘We’ll stand beside the head. I’ll open the box. You scatter the ashes. Nothing else. Enough. No need for words. After all, what more is there to say?’

‘Okay.’

‘Right.’

We took the few steps down the hill to the top of the horse’s head. You’d think, seeing it from afar, that it’s big. But it isn’t. And close up, it’s like a child’s drawing carefully drawn on the grass.

Neither of us could look at the other.

Dad held the box out to me. I took it. Such a strange sensation. He produced a little brass key from his pocket and steadying the box with one hand as I held it inserted the key, turned it, withdrew it, and took a step away.

I opened the lid. A snug fit. It lifted on little brass hinges. Inside was three-quarters full of fine light-grey powder. I looked and looked. It was then I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. I thought, I’m meant just to tip the box and spill the ashes out. But that somehow seemed insufficient. Unworthy. This grey ash was not to be tipped out like unwanted dust. It was once my mum. I had once been part of it. It had borne me. It had made me. Made me right here one night sixteen years and nine months ago. With a little help from Dad.

It was then I felt Dad’s hand on my arm. I knew he meant, Please do it.

On impulse, but as if ordered to do so, I stepped over the chalk line of the horse’s head onto the grass inside. Felt like I was transgressing. Entering the sanctuary of a church
without permission. Then, holding the box in one hand, dipped into it with the other, scooped up a handful of Mother’s ashes, gritty on my fingers, unexpectedly warm. And slowly slowly, small step by small step, walked round and round the horse’s head in narrowing circles until I reached the eye, all the time allowing the grey powder that was once my mother to sieve through my fingers and fall in a thin gentle stream onto the grass. Like the sands of time. Like sowing seed. Finishing with a palmful of ash veiling the white eye itself.

All done, the box empty, I rejoined Dad.

We stood side-by-side, hand-in-hand.

Till it seemed right to turn away, retrieve Dad’s backpack, and walk to the car as wordlessly as we had arrived.

Clothed words

My
Shakespeare Lexicon
infected me with an obsession. I began to write words onto self-sealing tape – the kind we used for name tags on our school clothes – and to stick them onto parts of my clothes in places where they wouldn’t be seen by other people. Each word was special in some way, because I liked the look of it, or the sound of it, or the meaning. I especially liked words I discovered were invented by Shakespeare, which is quite a lot. And each word was carefully matched to the piece of clothing and attached in an appropriate place.

Izumi regarded this as weird. And I suppose I have to admit that it was. But one thing I know: everybody is more weird than they ever admit. In their minds if not in other ways. In fact, think of the most weird thing you can possibly imagine, and the truth is that somebody somewhere is already doing it. Being verbally weird seems to me to be pretty mild stuff compared with some of the behaviour I’ve heard of.

The first word I stuck onto my clothes the night after my day out with Father was
Epona
, the name of the horse
goddess. I attached her name to the inside of the waist-band at the back of a pair of white knickers that I especially liked.

To the inside of the backside of an old pair of jeans I had never quite liked – the fit just wasn’t right, too floppy round the bum – I attached Shakes’s word
dispraise
.

Under the exaggerated shoulder pad of a winter coat I applied
prolixious
.

To the inside rim of a lacy bra:
subtle
. To the hem of a school skirt:
fondly
, meaning it in Shakes’s sense: ‘foolishly, in a trifling, nugatory manner’. I stuck
nugatory
, ‘of little value’ – a word Shakes never used – to the inside leg of my gym pants. To a favourite T-shirt Shakes’s
initiate
. To the inside of a shoe:
inebriate
. To a mini-skirt:
sumptuous
. To a tight grey top with low neck:
nuzzle
. To a thong, Shakes’s
drossy
: ‘futile, frivolous’.

After a while some things had so many words inside them the pieces of tape resembled the rows of medals on a field marshal’s chest. The obsession got so bad I wanted to cover all my clothes in words. So I rationed myself to only those with extra-special meanings or associations. Of course the word
Will
was blazoned on just about everything.

I grew out of this obsession after a few months. But I thought of it this morning when I came across
gorbellied
and couldn’t resist attaching it to the voluminous maternity dress I’ve just bought to cover you in my swollen womb. I stuck it on the inside at about the place which will cover my distended navel. And underneath it:
imminent
. And under
imminent
I affixed your name. But I’m not going to mention that till after you’re born, so as not to tempt fate.

Skinprint

From my pillow book after our trip to the horse:

This week I dreamed every night.

Every night I dreamed of the horse. Sometimes bits of the
horse. Head. Boomerang legs. Whiplash tail. Eye. Looking at me. The eye in the head. Sometimes I was the horse. The horse was me. I am a horse. I am Epona.

I dreamed galloping breathless tiring dreams.

I woke unslept.

This week I longed for my mother. Needed to see her. Searched all the family photos. She wasn’t there. Dad had censored her, excised her, banned my mother. Why? ‘To save myself from pain,’ he said. But with persuasion he rendered her up. He’d hidden her in a box at the back of his wardrobe. Photos of her from childhood till when she was ill just before she died. In two big albums.

Photos
. Photos are not like words. Words are alive. They speak to you. They are always
now
. Though they were written in the past, even in the long long ago (as beloved Shakes), they are still alive when you read them. Words never die.
While men can breathe and eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee
. Lordy, yes, how true! People die. Mothers die. And unlike words, photos of dead mothers are dead too. Milli-seconds of light. Shadows caught by chemistry in the tomb of a camera. Photos are always memorials, the graves of ghosts. All photo albums are cemeteries.

I gave the photos back to Dad. ‘You were right,’ I said. And like a patted puppy, he wagged his tail and grinned.

I look like my mother when she was my age.

I don’t know what to think about that. Is it necessary to think anything? Why do I always think I should think something about everything? Why do I want to know so much – No, not
know
. What? Be
aware of?
Be
conscious of?
Yes, that’s it. I want to be
conscious
of everything. I don’t know why. But I do I do I do. I want to be conscious of
everything
. And I hope that one day I will understand why.