This Is All (22 page)

The place is stripped bare. It’s a deconsecrated, defrocked church denuded of life. It smells of decay, of rot, of mouldy death.

‘O, Will,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know. We shouldn’t have come.’

He’s walking around, gazing up at the timbered roof, at the stark altar, at the silvered oak pulpit, on which he rubs a hand as if caressing a loved body, and inspects the cold stove.

I want to cry.

He leans against the west wall with a smile on his face I’ve not seen before, surveying the building and me standing in the middle of the floor.

‘No no,’ he says. ‘It’s lovely.’

‘
Lovely?
’

‘Really.’

‘You like it?’

‘Come and look.’

I join him, clutching his arm for comfort.

‘See?’ he says. ‘This is how it was the day they finished building it. Look at the proportions. Aren’t they perfect? The shape and the height, just right. And the roof. The A-frames, the stringers, the rafters. All good oak. They fly. And the neat little windows down the sides, exactly placed. Look at the altar. Hard stone. Heavy. Solid and ancient. The pulpit. Growing out of the floor like a flower. No weight at all. Old wood, but it looks fresh and new. This is the real church. This is how it was meant to be. Only the essentials. The furniture and ornaments and other stuff were clutter. This is right. Lovely. Natural. Beautiful. Really beautiful. You could worship here. I could anyway.’

*

Seeing with other eyes
. We were studying
The Tempest
that term. One of my most favourite of Shakes’s plays. I remembered how Miranda and Ferdinand fall for each other at first sight. (What naff losers! scoffed the chavs.) And how Daddy Prospero, observing them, says, ‘They have changed eyes.’ And I knew it to be true because I felt my own eyes really were changed the moment I fell for Will.

Now I think that it could also mean that Miranda and Ferdinand have
exchanged
eyes, each seeing with the other’s. And I think how it’s true that your view of the world can be changed by seeing it through a lover’s eyes, as Will has just changed my view of this church.

In the car I’d realised how I could only fall in love with someone who was difficult because he is particular and strong in his self. Now I knew something else. I can only remain in love with someone who knows how to re-vision me.

‘I’ll bring the gear in,’ Will says.

New eyes bring inspiration.

I tear a sheet from my notebook and write a short list. Then help Will unload the car.

That done, I say, ‘There are some things I need that I didn’t think of at home. Can you get them while I fix things up? We passed a supermarket on the edge of town.’

He takes the list, saying, ‘There’s something I want as well.’

‘When you get back, wait in the vestry till I tell you to come in. I want everything to be right.’

He leaves. No kiss, not even a look back. As if we are fasting before the feast. So much is going on between us the air crackles. I feel my hair might stand on end. My arms and legs are pincushions.

When he’s driven away I go outside and breathe deeply to
dispel the static, and then scribble a mope to calm myself before setting to.

Why is it I know what to say

until you appear when

words melt in my spine?

Why is it I know what to do

until you appear and I

lose my native skills?

I am your instrument,

your fingers play my keys,

your lips blow the wind

out of my lost soul.

Why do you play your tune

on my heart

so mercilessly?

Why do I sing

for you with such joy?

While Will was shopping, I set the scene. Imagine:

First, using utensils brought from home in anticipation, I cleared the dust from the area of the floor immediately in front of the altar where I will make our bed.

Next a ground sheet laid down. Then a double-sized blow-up mattress stuffed into one of Doris’s old linen duvet covers, chosen for its yellow sunshine appeal. Both ground sheet and mattress ‘borrowed’ from Will’s camping-mad brother.

After blowing up the covered mattress to a nice squashiness, I spread it out on the groundsheet, head to altar, and finished it off with two crisp white pillows and a lavish duvet from my bed at Dad-home, spring green in colour over which was printed a scattering of golden autumn leaves.

Spring, summer, autumn, winter made our bed.

On the altar and underneath it I arranged sprays of ivy and
sprigs of red-berried holly cut from bushes in the churchyard.

When Will returned with the things I’d sent him to buy, I piled a confection of oranges, apples, bananas and grapes at the head of the bed, where we could easily reach them. Along with three bottles of Woodchester Water.

I placed a line of seven incense candles on the altar and clusters of unscented ones here and there around the church where I thought their light would be pleasing and throw interesting shadows. Of course, I didn’t light them. Doing that would mark the beginning of our ritual.

And I meant it to be a ritual. This was the inspiration that had come to me as I looked at the church through Will’s eyes, showing me how to set the stage for the performance of this once-only event in our lives.

Perhaps this same thought had occurred to Will, because when he returned he called through the door, forbidding me to come into the vestry, just as I had forbidden him to come into the church till I told him to. He handed my things round the door so that I couldn’t see what he was doing in the vestry.

When I’d finished my own arrangements, I called to him that I was ready, but that he was to close his eyes and keep them closed till I told him to open them.

He shuffles through the door, arms outstretched, searching the air, hamming the part of a man struck suddenly blind. I take him by his groping hands and guide him to the west wall, where we had stood before. And say, ‘Open.’

‘
Ah!
’ he says, half in dry jest, half in glad surprise.

‘You approve?’

‘I approve.’

‘Kiss me, then.’

And he does. Tenderly, gently, as never before. A new kissing. A different kind of intimacy. Something has moved
between us, something has grown. The sight of our bed has brought it about.

‘Now,’ Will says. ‘Stand with your face in a corner while I add a touch or two.’

‘I’m not standing in a corner like a duncy child!’

‘Then stick your head in a bag or blindfold yourself with your bra. Whatever. But don’t look.’

I hit him a mock slap. ‘You’re disgusting. I hate you. Is this going to take long?’

‘As long as short is long.’

‘Well, it better not,’ I say, looking for somewhere to hide. ‘I’ll sit inside the pulpit and read. And if I get to a good bit it’ll be you who’ll have to wait.’

‘Drama queen.’

‘Bully boy.’

And he kissed me again, only this time it was the meat-eating variety.

Little C wanted to take him to bed there and then, wanted to eat him and be eaten by him, but Big C said no, no, not yet, not yet, don’t spoil it.

I was always melted by his sillinesses, his faked machismo, his pretended butchery, while his hazel eyes mocked us both from behind his glasses. If it’s cool to be cool, Will could sometimes be a refrigerator. But if he thought cool was required he could turn into a pretty good arsonist.

Whatever words I read while squatting in the pulpit were unread. However long Will took he took longer than he took. I felt as if I were in a womb, hearing the sounds of the world outside and that it was my time to be born. Do you, my baby, feel like that as you lie curled inside me so near to the time of your own delivery?

*

At last at last I hear the sound of Will playing a quiet happy woody piece I don’t recognise (Donizetti’s solo for oboe). I didn’t know he’d brought his instrument and am touched. But I do know this is my cue to look. I stand in the pulpit and see:

Flowers. Flowers flowers flowers. Bunched in containers filched from the churchyard. (I put them back with the flowers in before we left.) Frost-white and blood-red roses. On the altar, at the foot of our bed, on the floor against the walls, on the window ledges. And in the very centre of the room, a lichen-covered stone urn that must once have topped a tomb, on which Will has placed a large cauliflower.

The music ends.

‘Lordy, Will!’ I say, reduced to banality by his thoughtfulness. ‘How lovely!’

‘You like?’

‘Mega plus. But where did you get them, at this time of year?’

‘Undertakers and florists have a symbiotic relationship.’

‘Which clearly is blossoming.’

‘And the mobile phone is a useful device. As usual, it’s not what you know but who you know.’

He begins to meddle with the potbellied boozer.

‘What’re you doing?’

‘Lighting the stove.’

‘Didn’t you say the smoke might give us away?’

‘In this fog? And’ – he turns and taps his temple with a finger – ‘there’s such a thing as smokeless fuel and firelighters. BBQs? So even if the fog lifts, we should be okay.’

‘Good thinking.’

‘Besides, it’s all right to be flowery, but the male dinger rings the bell better when it’s warm and not chilled.’

‘Then we’d better make sure it’s properly heated.’

He finishes stoking, lights a match, gets the firelighters going, and begins to feed fuel through the old boozer’s gaping mouth.

I say, ‘Will? Are you nervous? A bit?’

He pauses but doesn’t turn round.

‘Am I?’

‘You’re tense but pretending not to be.’

‘… You know me too well.’

‘And putting it off maybe?’

He gives a shrug. The fire is well started. He closes the boozer’s mouth but still doesn’t turn to face me.

The centre of gravity has shifted. Till now, I’ve felt I was in Will’s hands. Suddenly, I feel strongly the need to take the lead, bring everything together, and draw him to me.

And it’s as if our spirit moves me. Words fly to me from the air.

‘Dearly beloved,’ I say, unthinking – the effect of being imprisoned in a pulpit, I suppose.

‘No no, spare me, not a sermon!’ Will says, laughing.

‘The congregation is requested to remain silent.’

Dearly beloved. My text this afternoon is taken from the First Book of Cordelia, Chapter One, Verse One. ‘In the beginning was Will.’

Let us consider this simple statement.

What does it tell us about life and about ourselves?

I would appreciate it if the congregation would not grin like that and hold its big finger up, it puts me off. Thank you.

If it is the case that Will is the beginning then there cannot have been anything before Will. Before Will all was void and empty.

If the congregation wishes to throw up, please do so outside.

But this simple statement, ‘In the beginning was Will’, can mean that there is no beginning without Will.

It is not necessary for the congregation to punch the air when agreeing with me.

For anything to begin – for example, for our life to begin – we must will it to be.

But if Will is necessary to all life, then it must also be true that will exists before Will and before everything. Even before we exist as ourselves. Before we are, we are will.

No, I’m not sure I know what I’m talking about. But at least
I’m trying
.

In other words, dearly beloved, everything depends on Will, and on the strength of our will.

But we must also remember—

This is not the Church of the Upsidedowners. You need not stand on your head, a feat I admit I was unaware you were capable of, and which I note provides a tasty view of your torso because of your T-shirt falling over your head … Now you’ve made me lose my thread. What was I saying? … It was
not
bollox! … O, yes.

We must also remember, as our revered Head Teacher often reminds us a great man once said, ‘It is not the beginning of any great work but the successful conclusion thereof wherein lies the glory.’

Please stop imitating Mrs Headbutt. Thank you.

In the beginning was will. But in the beginning of what? What is it that calls our Will to action? What is it our Will feels it worth willing for?

As we all know, dearly beloved, where there’s a Will there’s a way. Let us consider what the way is.

Incidental music is not required.

In this place when it was the place it was willed to be, people used to say, ‘In the beginning was the word. And the word was God.’

They also said that the God they worshipped in this place was the God of Love. In fact they said God
is
Love. And that the God of Love made all things. And that the God of Love was the beginning of everything.

This must mean that the God of Love is will and the Love of Will is the Word.

Which also means that all three are one.

And that God must be called Wordwillove.

Therefore, let us proclaim again, dearly beloved, the ancient ever-living truth that the Will of God is called to action by the word love and is itself love and the love of the word wills us to a new beginning.

Thank you for your applause. It was pretty fit, wasn’t it?

That is why today, dear dear beloved Will, here in this ancient place, which seems like it has been sent to Coventry by the rest of the world, I speak of my love of Will and my will to love Will.

I fancy the Will I love like nothing I have ever felt before.