Page 58 of This Is All


  ‘What’s an ogham?’

  ‘Ancient Celtic writing.’

  Rune:

  ‘And rune?’

  ‘Old Scandinavian writing. Viking, so I gather. Each letter or whatever you call them had a magic meaning.’

  My mind misses a beat. Like those scenes when a safecracker listens for the clicks that tell him he’s found the numbers of the combination. I’ve seen the same ogham and rune on Julie’s icon.

  I scan through the pages about the ash.

  ‘Did you know all this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did Will?’

  ‘Never mentioned it. But being of the scholarly sort, he read everything he could find about trees, so he must have.’

  I look around again at the basket of branches that holds us, at the sky through the leaves, at the peeps across the valley and down at the ground, where Cal is stretched out, apparently fast asleep. See it now with different eyes, my bird’s eyes, fear allayed, if not entirely banished, for my feet still tingle when I peer at the ground. No regrets, far from it, all being as Arry had promised, and more.

  >> Flirting >>

  Flatulence aka Farting

  One of the dictionaries in which I looked it up defined a fart is ‘a loud explosion between the legs’. But I was surprised to discover in my research that it’s more often soundless than noisy. By some people, especially teenage boys of the chavish variety and by adult males who have never grown up, farting is regarded as hilariously funny. By many others it’s regarded as vulgar, disgusting, and impolite when performed in public. The fact is, it’s natural. And it’s essential. Like breathing, everybody does it. You’d die if you didn’t. Explode perhaps?

  As it happens, the anus is one of the most amazing organs of the human body. It can tell the difference between a swelling in the intestine caused by wind or by faeces (i.e. crap). If gas is the cause, the muscle surrounding the opening of the anus, the sphincter, relaxes to allow the gas out but without allowing anything else to escape. Often it does this without you knowing it. Like your lungs, it works automatically. That’s why most farts are silent and go unremarked even by their owners. Unless they give off a pungent odour, a pong, a whiff, a nasal assault, when everybody, including the perpetrator, wonders who was responsible for fouling the air. (If in doubt, blame the dog, where available, or anyone who is asleep.)

  If the flatus (gas) comes out too quickly or in a large amount, the mind becomes aware of it, and you can control the escape so that no embarrassing noise is caused. (This is what is happening when you see people easing their bums in a shifty way while pretending to concentrate on something else. You can tell by the look on their faces and the slight smile when the process is successfully concluded.) Sometimes, however, you’re taken by surprise, and the gas escapes with an unintended noise before you can prevent it. Sometimes people who couldn’t care less or think it funny, such as the aforementioned chavish louts and their doxy equivalents, squeeze the flatus out with force, deliberately intending to produce an impressive detonation. My father enjoys doing this because he knows it annoys Doris and (I pretend) me too. Doris sometimes makes a mistake when trying to let one off silently, it emits a sound like a mouse being strangled, at which she coughs and tries to look innocent. (I have yet to catch Julie emitting.)

  It’s estimated that healthy people aged twenty-five to thirty-five break wind between thirteen and twenty-one times a day, producing about one litre of noxious fumes. As people age the frequency increases because more gas is produced as a result of less and less efficient processing of food and as the anal passage and control mechanism degenerate, just like every other part of the body. Geriatrics are therefore the most voluminous farters of all.

  In everybody, frequency and potency of fart is increased by stress and by certain foods. Beans are well-known producers of flatus. The reason is that they contain sugars we cannot digest, which scientists call ‘flatulence factors’: raffinose, stachiose and verbascoes. Bacteria in the gut get to work on these undigested ‘factors’, eating them up and turning them into gas, which must then be expelled. Other notorious fart-makers are Brussels sprouts, corn, cauliflower, cabbage, milk, and raisins. But just as you have personal tastes in food (some people like sprouts, some don’t), so there are foods that produce more fart in you than they do in others.

  It’s possible to hold in your farts if necessary, say, for example, during a job or university interview or when being told off by the head teacher or in a very quiet patch during a play or concert. Holding them in will not cause you grave injury. But the fart doesn’t evaporate inside you, as some people believe. It hangs around in your gut and will come out as soon as you relax or go to sleep. This is the reason you fart a lot after a social event, especially one that involves stress.

  There are more than six hundred (600) words and phrases in English for this human necessity. (I have no idea if other languages are so verbally fecund or whether it’s just the English.) These range from air attack to windy pops, via back-blast, bottom burp, colon calamities, flooper, hydrogen bombs, laughing ass (American of course), pluts, SBD (Silent But Deadly), stinker, talking trousers, ventifact, and wet one.

  Since Will and I conducted our experiment as described here, I’ve researched further into the question of whether fart can be seen in the air like breath on a cold day. Although our experiment suggested it couldn’t, I’ve read how other people have shown that a plume of fart can be seen streaming like a bushy tail from the backside in very cold weather, when the farter has just come outside from a warm room. Undoubtedly, however, the wearing of a number of layers of clothes, as you would in very cold weather, increases the likelihood that expelled gases will condense inside your clothes before they reach the air, which is probably why we do not witness fart-enplumed backsides as a regular phenomenon in cold weather.

  As for me, the only thing I’ll admit is that detoxing is a great manufacturer of flatulence. I suppose because it clears out the rubbish, gaseous as well as organic.

  That is all I have to say on this subject for the moment.

  Flirting

  As Cal lowers me down I feel higher and higher, so that by the time I’m on my feet again I can hardly contain myself which is why, before he can unhitch me, I grab him and give him a hug and a kiss (not on his luscious mouth but on his bristly cheek – he’s one of those men who sport permanent three-day growths), noticing he doesn’t smell at all bad, I suppose because I’m pongy myself and am dusty and grimed all over, sweated through from the heat of the day and from nervous excitement – how staining and sticky and contagious trees are! – by which, by my hug-and-kiss I mean, Cal is as surprised as I am, as well as so pleased, to judge by his toothy grin (he has big strong handsome teeth), the hug he gives me back is so crushing that it would have ended my life had he held on.

  Because Arry is still up the tree, which prevents me from hugging and kissing him and I need to let off more steam and don’t want to encourage hope in Cal, I call Dad on my mobile, as I know he was anxious about this escapade when we told him of our plan – ‘But you’re a height phobe, you get hysterical just standing on a chair [disgraceful exaggeration], so how the hell are you going to survive climbing a tree?’ – and tell him wildly of my success, which sends him high too with cries of ‘I don’t believe it, and you’re still in one piece, what a relief, well congratulations, sweetheart!’ – and I hear Doris in the background saying, ‘I knew Arry would get her through and see her right,’ Arry being by now the apple of her eye and incapable of doing wrong, because she’s quite as much gone on him as she would be were he the son she doesn’t have, which only sometimes touches me with jealousy, though Dad doesn’t mind because he knows Arry is no threat and that he, Arry, matters to me – and meanwhile Dad is continuing with his riff, which he ends by saying, ‘I’ll stick a bottle of bubbly in the fridge and we’ll have a glass in honour of the event as soon as you get home.’

  Cal is packing up the gear by the time I’m o
ff the phone and Arry is down from the tree so I give him his hug-and-kiss, which he returns so tenderly while looking at me with such genuine love and admiration – he really is the perfect companion – that I impetuously kiss him properly on the mouth, which he also returns, so passionately in fact that when I realise what we’ve done, I come over shy, because his response has confused me and Cal is watching with greedy eyes.

  During a jokey joshing drive home, when I’m teased for being scared now that the ordeal is over, I explain that Dad is preparing bubbly as a celebration and they are invited, which is received with proper enthusiasm, after which I offer to make a meal as a thank-you to them both – yes, please, and quite right too, they say, and how about steak and chips, Cal says, and I tell him he’ll get whatever there is in the house because I’ve no intention of doing boring shopping when I’m celebrating – but add as a condition that we must all have a shower first, as I feel too grungy to cook, never mind eat, as I’m sure they must too, giving Arry a significant look, hoping he’ll clock that my real aim is to deodorise Cal, though I needn’t have worried because Cal at once says how if I don’t mind he’ll have a hot bath rather than a shower, because he hasn’t had one for days (weeks, more likely, I think), a statement uttered as if the news will come as a complete surprise.

  Even before we’re properly inside, Dad is handing round glasses of champagne, Doris following him with bits of things such as cheese straws, which Cal gobbles up like he hasn’t seen food for a month, washing down the straws-and-bits with champagne like a parched man quaffing water, before Doris restores decorum by taking the third bottle from Dad then dispensing the booze with more discrimination than Dad does, while enquiring whether we plan to eat a proper meal later, thus providing me with a cue to say I’ve offered to cook and she to tell me there’s cold lamb from yesterday, plenty of salad and potatoes, with cheese and ice cream and fruit for afters if we want it, and that as she and Dad are going out for the evening with friends we can have it all for ourselves, enough, she adds, giving Cal a reproving glance, to feed a starving army.

  Fortunately, D&D are in a frisky mood or Cal would surely be quizzed re his antecedents (murky), background (disastrous), current domicile (a van), present employment (rubbish collector, sorry, waste disposal operative, aka a bin man), financial resources (skint), and thereafter been less welcome than champagne and cheese straws, a hot bath, and a full-scale meal would imply, D&D being in theory and in their own estimation liberal-minded, tolerant of alternative lifestyles, compassionate re the misfortunes of people’s lives, and advocates of the equality of all humankind regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, colour or creed, whereas in practice, they are like me and you and everybody else, an irrational mix of contradictory prejudices, including in their case, a complete acceptance of Arry, even though he is Irish, impecunious and gay, because he’s articulate, amuses them, and knows ‘how to behave properly’ (in other words, like them), while they are suspicious of Cal because he’s verbally inept, is intellectually challenged, looks like he’s on the skids, is unkempt and smelly, is physically handsome and powerful (therefore a threat), and doesn’t behave like them – a fact, as I think about it at this moment, catching D&D giving Cal a worried glance and then exchanging another of anxious agreement between them, that puts me on Cal’s side and disposes me to play up to him, the more so because by now I’m entering the stage of giddy sentimentality usually called ‘happy’, brought on by the mix of excitement and too sudden an injection of booze into an empty stomach.

  Guessing from D&D’s silent exchange that our jollity will soon outlast its welcome, I usher Arry and Cal upstairs to Arry’s room, with Dad calling after us, as much for their ears as mine, how he and Doris are going now but will only be round the corner at the Hendersons’ and to let him know if I need any help.

  How easy it is when geed-up and tiddly to let go and behave, as they say, ‘out of character’, how appealing then to be flippant, and how one hyper-excitement as it fades (which to be honest my tree-climbing high already has, for what after all have I done that’s so admirable?) leaves you wanting another to keep you buzzing (the cause of addiction, I suppose), which explains why when I take Cal a bath towel and find them both already stripped down to their underpants, and I tell them to wait till I’ve taken my shower because I want to prepare our meal while they take theirs, and Cal laughs and says why don’t we do everything together like we have all day, and Arry laughs and says that’s not my style, and Cal says how does he know, and I say he doesn’t, and Cal says, so what about it, all friends together, and I think, yes, why not, it’ll be fun (and another buzz, though I don’t admit that to myself), and Arry says he’s all for it if I am, and I say we can do it the Japanese way as taught me by Izumi, which is a shower first to wash off the muck followed by a long soak together in a deep tub of clean hot water.

  In two minutes flat we’re in the shower, soaping each other head to toe and hosing each other down and laughing and giggling and joking and washing the parts of each other we can’t reach for ourselves, me between the two of them, Arry so enviably sleek and slim, Cal so honed and hunky, I have to admit it’s thrilling to be naked and skin-to-skin with two such delicious bodies, not to mention that he’s hung as generously as Arry.

  Just as I’m thinking this, however, I feel Cal’s hands snake round my waist and pull me strongly to him, his erect astonishing penis against my bum, and I know playfulness is turning serious and it’s time to make a move.

  ‘Keep your wicked hands to yourself, you naughty boy,’ I say, laughing though I’m not amused, and pull away and out of the shower, leaving Cal to stumble full frontal against Arry.

  ‘Lucky me!’ Arry cries. ‘Joy at last!’

  ‘My my, Cal,’ I say as I climb into the bath. ‘Swinging both ways.’

  ‘Not me!’ Cal says, deadly serious as he scrambles out of the shower so quickly he trips over the step, and lands on his face, not to mention other parts of his anatomy, with a nasty slap that produces a howl of pain.

  ‘O calamity!’ Arry crows, stepping over him and into the bath, me indicating I want him between me, sitting at the round end, and Cal, who’ll be at the tap end when he recovers enough to join us.

  ‘Poor guy,’ I say, ‘we shouldn’t make fun of his predicament.’

  ‘Question is,’ Arry says, ‘is his predicament still in one piece?’

  ‘Requiescat in pieces, you mean?’

  ‘Stupid buggers!’ Cal says, on his feet again, his member detumescent, thank heaven.

  ‘The fact,’ Arry says, ‘that you find Cordelia and me in this position, her behind me, should indicate to one of your experience of the world, dear Cal, that we cannot be engaged in the act you mention, but only that we’re resting in the arms of Lethe, where, if you join us and don’t mind curling your delicious limbs up a bit because there really isn’t much room, you’ll soon forget your unfortunate injury.’

  ‘Unless,’ I say, ‘you’d rather give it a miss, or no,’ I add, thinking that things will probably go further than I want them to go if I stay, ‘better that I leave you two to play with each other while I get the meal ready.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Cal says, in a bit of a huff, as who can blame him?

  ‘Cross, are we?’ Arry says, showing no mercy.

  ‘You’re a tosser,’ Cal says, but smiling again.

  ‘And you’re a zymy slob,’ Arry rejoins, as Cal climbs into the bath and I climb out and leave them to their mutual admiration.

  >> History lessons >>

  God

  Everything. Nothing.

  ‘Of that which we cannot speak, let us be silent.’ – Ludwig Wittgenstein, twentieth-century philosopher.

  History lessons

  If we don’t know our history,

  we cannot know ourselves.

  – Julie Martin

  There is a history in all men’s lives.

  – Shakespeare, Henry IV, Pt 2, III i, 80

  History is ph
ilosophy drawn from examples.

  – Dionysius of Halicarnassus, circa 40BC

  The only important thing is that

  somehow we all escape our history.

  – Hal Robinson, circa 1982

  Ariel McLaren. Born into a strict traditional Catholic family, the last of six children, two sisters, three brothers, in the south-west of Ireland. Father a businessman running his own small agricultural supply firm. Early in life he feels ‘different’ from other boys, all of whom seem obsessed with girls and ‘pulling them’. He likes boys but not like other boys like boys (he fancies them), and he likes girls but not like other boys like girls (as best friends). He acquires a reputation for being studious – ‘a scholarly soul’, his mother calls him – which he encourages because he does like learning but also because it excuses him in the eyes of other boys from behaving like them.

  When he’s about ten his parish priest suggests to his parents that Arry is ‘one of the elect, chosen by God for the priesthood’. From then on this is taken as gospel, another ‘fact’ of his life that Arry accepts, even though he doesn’t feel any desire to be a priest, because it’s stated with conviction by everybody responsible for him and because (a truth he realises only much later) it’s another convenient excuse for behaving differently from other boys. He enters high school and his pubescence as a (genuinely) conscientious student and as (apparently) a devout member of his church. Because of his special status he receives approval, privileges and rewards from adults and closet admiration from his peers, who frequently ask for help with school work and use him as an unofficial confessor of their sins and the kind of problems boys find it difficult to talk about with adults or with their peers. From this he learns how to charm adults and how to manipulate those of his own age who might be a threat.

  When he’s fourteen a young man, who works for his father and whom he likes, introduces Arry ‘to the sex that felt natural’. Now he knows what it is that makes him feel different. Nevertheless, the incident confuses him. He is well aware that his father detests ‘that filthy breed of sinners’ and makes no bones of his opinion that they should have their balls cut off or, better still, be hanged from their necks till they be dead. He is equally well aware of the views of the Church: all sex other than within the bonds of marriage and for the purpose of procreation is sinful; and all homosexual sex is doubly sinful. Dutifully, he lists his fall from grace during his weekly session in the confessional. The priest asks for details, Arry admits ‘a man’ was involved, the priest explains that ‘boys do go through a bad patch of this kind’ but that the main thing is to understand it is ‘an unnatural act abhorred by God’. He adds that there are some men who believe themselves to be born ‘that way’, but if they are to be acceptable to God they must shun their evil desires and live a chaste life. He is quite sure, the priest says, that Arry is not ‘one of those’ and that being of a devout nature and ‘chosen by God’, he will avoid all further contact with this wicked man who has abused him, and will ensure there is ‘no repetition of the vileness’. He asks Arry to promise this, and to express his remorse, which Arry does, is absolved and is given some prayers to say as a penance.