This Is All (61 page)

And when he’d finished he was all a-bubble: Hannah had pulled off an interview with the Great God Oliver Rackham at Cambridge for a place next year, she’d finished her essay on such-and-such, which he hadn’t even started, and blah-diblah, and sorry but she needed to talk to him because her parents were never interested in anything she did, only in her budding bank-manager brother who was earning a stack and was regarded as a success whereas Hannah was earning nothing and wasting her talents on trees, et cetera et cetera et cetera, till I said none too sweetly, ‘Could we get on with our practice, do you think?’ and he said ‘Yes, sorry,’ and we started again but we might as well not have bothered because neither his mind nor mine was on the music.

*

It was after that that the demons arrived. At first in the night, as is their wont. And then, having clawed their way into my mind, they appeared at any moment, day or night, whenever the merest flicker of a thought gave them the chance to poke and slash.

What did these demons play on? Jealousy, and fear of betrayal. Why those two weaknesses? Because they were strong in me. The demons of the Devil don’t use your weak weaknesses against you, they use your strong ones. If you’re rational and logical, they argue their case rationally and logically. If you’re loyal and faithful, they turn those against you. If you’re passionate and emotional, they make you passionate and emotional about your worst fears. Your weak weaknesses are no use to them. For example, it would be no good them trying to get at me by saying people are making fun of me behind my back, because, though I don’t like it, I actually don’t really care if they do. And it would be no good them telling me that people who pretend to like me actually don’t (as the chavs did sometimes) because, though I like to be liked – who doesn’t? – I don’t actually expect anyone to like me and I really don’t care whether people who do not matter to me like me or not. If they had told Will that something he had done was rubbish, not up to scratch, a bodge, he’d have suffered agonies. His pride would have been sorely wounded. But not me. I’d just think, too bad, do better next time.

Something else I learned about the Devil’s demons. They find the strongest weaknesses you didn’t know were yours and use those against you. Before Will, if anyone had accused me of being a disgustingly jealous person, I’d have laughed and said, Don’t be so ridiculous, I’m not a jealous person
at all
. Had I been told I have a bad hang-up about betrayal, that I fear it so much I am wary of any close attachment with another person, with a
lover
especially, because I unconsciously expect they will be unfaithful, disloyal, and betray
me with someone else, I’d have said it was nonsense. Then to discover, as I did at the wicked hands of these cruel demons, just how deeply, painfully jealous I am of anyone I truly love, and how vulnerable I am to fear that they will betray me – to discover that this is how I really am was a torture in itself. I disliked myself for having such feelings. And making you hate yourself is as much the aim of the Devil’s demons as making you hate the person of whom you are jealous.

And so they appeared, these cunning ogres, and began to pour the venom of jealousy into my soul and to burn my heart with the suspicion that Will had been unfaithful.

Look, the demons said, you can see how it is, you’re not blind. He’s living a hundred miles away, with Hannah right there a few study
bedrooms
away from him, he likes her
a lot
, that’s perfectly obvious, isn’t it, you only have to listen to the way he talks about her to know that, he doesn’t talk to you like that, does he, he doesn’t get all bubbly with you, not any more anyway, does he, I mean just think about it, he’s probably in love with her, wouldn’t you agree? And remember the way he talked about her the other day when you were in bed together, I mean
in bed together after making love, after having SEX
, for heaven’s sake. I mean,
come on
, Cordelia! If someone really loves you and only you, would he talk all lovey-dovey about another girl and tell you how wonderful she is and how helpful she’s been and how she’s his only real friend, would he talk like that
at any time
, never mind straight after you’ve made love? Would he? Be honest with yourself, Cordelia. Would he? No! Never!

So there they are, the two of them, Will and Hannah, together all the time, studying together, going out together, helping each other, joking together, eating together, and what else? Sleeping together, of course. Obvious, isn’t it. Why doesn’t he write to you often, why doesn’t he call you often (he used to when he first got there, remember)? You know
the answer. Because all his attention is going on Hannah. You’re just the girl back home, the one he went out with while you were at school. Well, now he’s
at school
with someone else, with Hannah, who’s attractive and sexy in her way and is lively and funny (he thinks) and puts herself out for him. She wants him and she’s got him. She goes into his room at college as if it were her own. She’s used to being there. You saw that when you visited. Think what the two of them must do together. Since he came home, hasn’t he been better in bed than before he went to college? Yes, he has. Why? Because Hannah has taught him a thing or two and they’ve had lots of practice. Night after night fucking each other. How could he have got so much better if he’d remained faithful to you and had no sex with anybody else but you?

Besides, he’s never said you were the only one for him. He never
promised
he’d be faithful, did he? So why shouldn’t he fuck Hannah? Only natural, isn’t it? And that’s what they’re doing. Fucking each other. That’s the truth, isn’t it? It’s staring you in the face. What more do you need to know to prove that he’s betrayed you? He’s fallen for her and he daren’t tell you. He always did have trouble talking about what he felt about you. I’ll bet he’s not like that with Hannah, you can tell from the way he talks to her on the phone – which he keeps
switched on
just for her, remember, he said so himself, switched on for her because he’s
switched on
to her. He’s always
on
for her. He’s not always on for you, is he? He doesn’t keep his mobile on when he’s at college just so you can call him any time you need to talk to him, does he? No, he does not. You’re forgotten while he’s at college. All he has time for is Hannah. She’s opened him up, and he likes that so much he’s fallen in love with her. You belong to his past. You’re history. Well, don’t put up with it. Don’t be
his
story. Don’t be anyone else’s story. Be your own story. Protect yourself.

So what are you going to do about it? Say nothing? Don’t be such a fool. Chuck him? You ought to. Confront him, have it out with him? That
at least
, Cordelia. You’re being a coward if you don’t. You’re allowing him to use you. Don’t let him get away with it. Have more respect for yourself. And by the way, what’s good enough for him is good enough for you. Why should he have what he wants and not you? If he wants to play away, so can you. Yes? Think about it, Cordelia. Don’t be a fool and don’t be made a fool of. He’s two-timing you. He’s betraying you. And he’s lying to you – by saying nothing about what he’s doing, he’s lying to you. Don’t let him lie to you. And don’t lie to yourself. Be true to yourself. Face up to it.
Get rid of him
.

They knew, those demons, that I love words, so they used words against me. But they also knew that I have a strong imagination. Or, anyway, I’m good at fantasising, which isn’t quite the same thing.
³
It’s like I have a film unit in my head, always making movies out of my life. And as I say, the demons always use your strengths to destroy you. So they didn’t just use words, didn’t just talk to me, they directed my film company, showing me scenes of Will and Hannah together, and all of them so convincing I was certain they were showing me exactly what was happening every day
and every night
in Will’s room at college. Talking as he had never talked to me. Making love –
doing things
– as he and I had never made love.

I tried to tell myself that I was making all this up. But look, the demons said, if you’re only making this up, if we’re
nothing more than figments of your imagination, how do you know about sex-acts like you’re seeing them perform when you’ve never experienced them yourself?
⁴

By the end of the second week of that Christmas holiday I could think of nothing else but what the demons showed me Will was doing with Hannah and of how he had betrayed me. I hid this from him, because I was ashamed of mistrusting him, and because you cannot accuse someone of betraying you when the only evidence you can offer is your own daydreaming. Besides, I was afraid of what would happen if I did accuse him. Even in my ugly state of mind I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. I worried that if I accused him, or merely told him in a light-hearted way of my fantasies, he would be so offended, so hurt, that he would reject me, even if he had done nothing wrong; and if he had, he would be so ashamed, he would cut himself off from me anyway.

All along, I knew such behaviour was not like Will, it was not in his character. I knew he was the truest person I had ever met. Yet, isn’t it strange, isn’t it weird, how we can
know
that someone is not behaving in the way we imagine, and at the same time we can be totally convinced that he is! How clever the human mind is, that it can accept two contradictory beliefs as ‘facts’. Yes, I know that in this case one ‘fact’ was untrue. But the human mind can
know
something is untrue and still accept it as a ‘fact’, and act on it as if it were true.

So my days with Will became a torture and my nights a
waking hell. And all this torture, all this hellish confusion of beliefs and convictions was self-created – another of the brutal self-destroying capacities of human nature. I was torturing myself. I was in a hell of my own making.

The day before Will left for college early in January, we spent the afternoon at the arboretum. He needed to check on some species or other. Everything was damp, drooping, the ground muddy, the trees dripping like leaky showerheads. Our walk took us by the bench where I confessed my secret the first time we went out together. The Nine Men’s Morris Will had scratched on the seat was still visible, but blurred and faded and filled with moss. We sat there again for a while, silent. I’m sure Will was also remembering our first time.

Then, trying not to sound bleak, I said, ‘When will you be home again?’

‘Easter.’

‘Not at half term?’

‘There’s a work-experience project in Scotland.’

Before I asked I knew the answers to my next questions.

‘For all your group?’

‘We go in pairs to different places.’

‘Who will you be with?’

‘Hannah.’

My stomach clenched. I felt my head would explode. I couldn’t look at him. Just stared at the sign that said: 12,000
YEARS AGO.
History. His story. Can the past grow again?

My voice sounding strangled, I said, ‘You seem to be quite – you know – close.’

He said, sternly, ‘I’ve told you. She’s a good friend.’

I said, but didn’t need to ask and didn’t want to hear the answer but needed to, like you finger a bruise or poke your tongue at an aching tooth, ‘Did they let you choose who you paired with?’

‘Yes.’

I couldn’t ask anything more and Will didn’t offer. He didn’t say Hannah didn’t matter to him, only I mattered, he didn’t say he’d call, didn’t say he’d write, didn’t say I could visit him for weekends. Nor did I want him to. Because instead of those promises he might have said something to confirm that the demons were right, and that would have been the end of us.

We walked back to the car. Will drove me home. Nothing much was said, everyday things, hollow chatter. We had made love after our run that morning. I knew his mother wanted him at a family dinner that evening, and afterwards his mind would be fixed on going back to college early next morning. He was always like that, thinking of the next thing. Some people live in the past, others, like me, live in the present. Will lived in the future.

As he stopped the car I said, ‘Let’s say goodbye now.’

Which is what we did, gently and without anything more being said.

When I got out of the car and he drove away, I was crying and Will was crying too.

14

I was in trouble. I knew I was in trouble. I was about to do something foolish. I tried to stop myself. I went to see Julie and poured everything out, the story of Will and me that Christmas holiday. But I didn’t tell her what I wanted to do. Why? Because I would have felt ashamed and she would have done everything she could to persuade me not to.

How easily we fool ourselves. And how we revel in our own emotional dramas. At heart, we are all performers in our own soap operas and we thrill to the tragicomedy, the comic-tragedy of our lives.

And I’ve come to see that I am secretive. There is the Cordelia I show to others. And there is the Cordelia, the real Cordelia, the private, secret Cordelia, who I never show to anyone. Well, here I am, the secret Cordelia laid bare for you, embarrassing flaws and all.

Julie listened, sitting on the sofa in her meditation position, me on the floor in front of her.

Only when at last the torrent ended did I look properly at her and notice she was wearing glasses.

‘You’re wearing specs,’ I said.

She smiled. ‘All the better to see you with.’

‘You haven’t before.’

‘Onset of middle age. Short-sighted. Perfectly normal at my age. D’you want to talk about glasses?’

‘No, I want to talk about Will.’

‘I’ve nothing to say about Will.’

‘Well, me and Will.’

She unfolded her legs and sat with her feet on the ground and her hands on her knees.

‘Leave well alone.’

‘What?’

‘Wait.’

‘
Wait!
I can’t! How can I wait? Why should I wait? What for?’