This Is All

  I whispered lest the moment took fright and flitted away, ‘Is this what you wanted to show me?’

  You’ve noticed how boys fiddle with their fingers? Men don’t. Is it a sign that a boy has become a man when he stops fiddling with his fingers? Will fiddled with his fingers now and said,

  ‘Remember “show and tell” in primary school?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Wanted to show you – wanted to tell you …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kind of a secret.’

  ‘A secret?’

  He nodded, his eyes on his fiddle-faddling fingers. He might have been nine, or ten at most.

  I thought for a moment, aware that something out of the ordinary was happening. Something so private and precious it was a privilege. A declaration. And therefore a danger too. Because every secret told, every declaration made, is a boundary crossed, a step taken into unknown country that can never be unstepped, never reversed, never erased.

  I said, ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t.’

  He set his palms flat on the bench between us and looked me in the eyes. Not ten now, more like thirty. How he could slip from boy to man, man to boy, between one look and another!

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Might regret it.’

  ‘I’ve thought about it. I’ll risk it.’

  Another pause.

  Secrets. Funny how, when you’re about to be given something precious, something you’ve wanted for a long time, you suddenly feel nervous about taking it.

  Everyone wants more than anything to be allowed into someone else’s most secret self. Everyone wants to allow someone into their most secret self. Everyone feels so alone inside that their deepest wish is for someone to know their secret being, because then they are alone no longer. Don’t we all long for this? Yet when it’s offered it’s frightening, because you might not live up to the desires of the one who bestows the gift. And frightening because you know that accepting such a gift means you’ll want – perhaps be expected – to offer a similar gift in return. Which means giving your self away. And what’s more frightening than that?

  I wavered and havered and gazed at the auditorium of trees leaning towards us in anticipation. (Ms Martin would have called this ‘the pathetic fallacy’ – ascribing human feelings to nature – and dismissed it with a sniff. But honestly, I did feel they were listening that day.) Now and then, autumn leaves fell like slow-motion confetti. I couldn’t let Will tell me something so important when all the time I knew I’d been trying to trap him.

  ‘I think,’ I said at last, ‘I think I should tell you something first.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes. I’m the girl, I go first.’

  ‘Sexist!’

  ‘Chauvinist!’

  ‘I really hate all that ist stuff.’

  ‘Me too.’

  We laughed.

  He said, ‘Can you play Nine Men’s Morris?’

  ‘Haven’t for ages. Dad taught me once.’

  ‘I’ll play you. Winner goes first.’

  ‘No. Loser goes first.’

  ‘Okay, worst of three.’

  He found a pebble in the grass and scratched a board on the bench between us while I broke a twig into the eighteen men we needed, saying, ‘Let’s hope it’s not filled up with mud.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’m quoting.’

  ‘Old Shakes again?’

  ‘You know me too well already.’

  ‘Better than I know old Shakes anyway.’

  ‘I forgive you.’

  Nine Men’s Morris

  A game for two. It takes about two minutes to play. Each player has nine ‘men’ – sticks or little stones or anything convenient. Each takes a turn to lay the pieces on the spots on the board. The aim is to get three men in a row on one of the lines on the board. This is called a ‘mill’. When a mill is achieved the player removes one of the other player’s men, unless it’s already one of a mill. You can remove a man from a mill only if all your opponent’s men are in mills. The players take turns to make a move. A move can be made to any free adjacent point.

  To win, a player must form mills and take the opponent’s men until the opponent is left with only two men or is blocked and unable to make a move.

  Three basic steps: 1. Place all the men on the board. 2. Move the men to the next of any vacant points on the board. 3. When a player has only three men left, a ‘man’ is allowed to ‘hop’ or ‘leapfrog’ to any vacant point and build a mill that way.

  How much easier it is to learn how to play a game when someone shows you than by reading how to do it.

  History: A board has been found in Egypt, carved in the temple of Kurma, making it 3,000 years old. Boards have been found in England and Wales scratched on the surfaces of stones belonging to buildings erected in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was often played by workmen during their meal breaks. Shakespeare mentions it in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II, sc. i, referring to a board made in the ground by cutting lines in the turf, with holes dug for placing large stones representing the men. In wet weather, the holes filled up with mud.

  Also sometimes called Nine Men’s Merrils, from ‘merelles’ or ‘mereaux’, an ancient French word for the jettons or counters with which the game was played.

  Wood words too

  That night I wrote in my pillow book:

  I lost two of the three games. Didn’t have to try hard. He came on so competitive! Win win win, he just had to win win win. Didn’t think he’d be like that. Thought he’d play to lose so he could tell first. And he did lose the first one. But then the testosterone kicked in and he couldn’t help himself. Lordy, how he does melt me when he comes on all male and forgetful of himself and, well, thrusting actually. He moved the men like he was shooting rapid-fire bullets. Bang crash crunch. Same when he runs races. But not when he plays his oboe. He’s differently ‘on’ then, the onness seems to go into his playing and not against anyone. Love it when he’s man-boy then boy-man. Love his rough and smooth, his tough and gentle, his doing and waiting, his giving and wanting, his can say and can’t say, his knowing and not knowing, his telling and asking, his fortissimo and pianissimo, his sounding and his silence. Sometimes when we’re talking his eyes will look away and his head go down and he’ll say nothing for a minute or two – only seconds probably but it feels like an age – before his head comes up again and he looks me full in the eyes, and smiles just a flicker of a smile with his wide luscious lips, before he replies, and when he does that I go mad for him, just want to jump him and kiss him and eat all of him and scrunch him to me to feel the solidness of him, the weight of him, the hardness of his body.

  Anyway, I lost and he still tried to go first, but I said, no no, and rammed my hand over his mouth, the first time I’ve touched him, really touched him, and it quite startled him, took him aback as they say, in fact actually aback because he leaned back like I’d triggered a spring. And I giggled like you giggle when someone catches you out with one of those electric shock toys, because touching him like that, not thinking, on the spur of the moment, while wanting him the way I did right then, was like an electric shock. The feel of his mouth, his lips, his chin on my hand, the softness of his lips and the hard boniness of his chin. And when I’d giggled and taken my hand away and he’d sprung back, we were both shock-silent for a minute before I said, I tell first, and he nodded, and I had to take a deep breath and turn away and look at the trees again to collect myself and nerve myself because I was a bit afraid that when he heard what I had to tell him he might ditch me. Doris always says the best thing to do at times like that is just get on with it straight, no frills.

  So I said, Look, Will, about us playing Schumann together, I like it, don’t get me wrong, but the fact is, to be perfectly honest, the real reason I asked you to do that with me is, well, you see, I read somewhere that the average age when girls have sex is sixteen and three months, or some such rubbish, and to tell the truth, I haven’
t yet, had sex, I mean all-out sex, I’m still wearing L-plates, I’m still flying Virgin Atlantic, and you see I don’t plan to be one of the average, not about anything, if I can help it, and so I decided to, you know, choose the boy I’d like to have my first sex with, and you were the one by a long way, I mean a long long way, and I had to meet you somehow and playing Schumann seemed like a good idea at the time, and I hoped you’d make a pass but you didn’t, and well – you know the rest – and here we are – and I feel a bit dreadful about it now, actually, but that’s what I wanted to tell you.

  Lordy, did he stare! A sort of blank silent-movie stare, like him, whatshisname, the one with the white face, Keaton, him, Buster Keaton. But with glasses. So I stared straight back at him through my glasses. Who would blink first? Neither. Stare stare. Thought the end had come, thought he’d get up and walk away and leave me stranded in the woods, Gretel abandoned by Hansel (not quite, he not being my bro). But he didn’t. Both of us staring unblinking, he opened his mouth in his blank Buster face and said, I’m coming to get you. Then I blinked. What? I said. For that, he said, I’m coming to get you. I said, Here? And he said, Yes. I said, Not here. And he said, Give me ninety-nine good reasons why not? And he hitched himself along the bench towards me, his face still blank as a kipper and his eyes still not blinking (how could he not do it for so long?). I said, No you’re not! and I was giggling in ripples already. And he said, Just watch me, and hitched closer. I pushed myself up off the bench and took a couple of steps back, and he hitched himself to the end of the bench and stood up and came towards me, slow step by slow step, like a lion or a tiger stalking its prey, and I took a step back to match each of his, and thinking, He’s going to chase me, that’s what he wants, he wants to chase me, wants to play tag, and my vag was so wet I even wondered if the excitement had started my period ’cos it was due soon. Then he made a lunge with his hand, and I screamed one of those ear-splitting sex screams that curl your toenails with embarrassment when other people suddenly let them off, but couldn’t help myself, and as much because of the embarrassment as because of Will lunging at me, I turned tail and legged it along the path, Will in his hunky hiking boots pounding the earth behind me at about half the rate of my fleeting legs. Not surprisingly, he managed to tag me within about twenty strides, and I realised then he wasn’t just playing tag, because he tried to grab me, but I side-stepped and tagged his hand and he dodged round me and ran away, me after him, determined now not to lose. He tried to double back round a tree but I guessed he’d do that and tagged him as he came round the other side, and I hared off back down the path, side-stepping this way and that to keep him guessing. I didn’t think he’d be as nifty as me in his hunky boots. We got back to the bench and played tick and tock either side of that. He got me once on the arm, then I double bluffed and threw myself at him across the bench and tagged his knee, and he said, Right, that’s it! and I knew he’d grab me properly next time if he got the chance so I chased off along the path again, him a breath behind me, and I thought, I’m up against the school’s middle-distance champ, not a hope except to shake him off somehow. So jagged into the chest-high tangled undergrowth, thinking that would slow him down. But we weren’t far into it before suddenly his arms were round me and all his weight came plummeting onto me, he must have done a flying tackle, and down I came, him on top of me, onto a bed of crushed bracken that smelt of almonds and that pong of damp autumn leaves which is like a crotch on heat. I tried to struggle free, but Will flipped me over onto my back and held me down by the shoulders and one of his legs pinned over mine.

  I was panting from excitement as much as from the chase. He was hardly breathing faster than normal. I was shaking with spasms of hiccuppy giggles. He lay on me very still and only just smiling. I was hot and basted with sweat. He was glowing and nicely glazed. I could smell him, his lovely sweat-sour smell that I’m sure would sell a million as an aphrodisiac if I could bottle it but I want to keep it all for myself. My eyes and nose were runny. I thought, He won’t like me now, like this, he can’t like a girl with a snotty nose and watery eyes. Which put a damper on me and I gave up and went slack and let go of him and looked at his close-up face staring down at me and wanted him so much so very much right then, his head in the tops of the trees and the blue sky shining through the gaps in the blazing autumn foliage. For a second I thought, He’s going to kiss me, and thought, Go on, go on, DO IT! I’m sure he wanted to, was going to. But instead he rolled over onto his back and we lay side-by-side saying nothing for minutes, and me thinking, Damn, damn, damn! Why didn’t I take his head in my hands while the mood was right and pull him down and kiss him? I still think I should have done. Honestly, I could have cried as I lay there with him stretched beside me on the prickly bracken.

  Bracken. Will gave me a present two months later. At first I thought it was just a little brown pebble shaped like the end of a thumb. But when I unwrapped it from the blue ribbon he’d tied round it, it broke into two and I found I was looking at the inside of the pebble where there was a tiny frond of baby fern, a sprig so perfectly fossilised I could see every weeny leaf on each little branch. Eight branches on one side of the stem, nine on the other up to the point of the tip. So lovely. So poignant. A second of life one hundred thousand years ago preserved in stone. I could read it like Braille with my fingers. Could read it like print with my eyes.

  ‘Pteridium aquilinum,’ Will said.

  I hadn’t a clue what he was on about so remained silent. Silence is often the best defence. In case of doubt say nowt.

  ‘Older than the last ice age,’ he said after a bit.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Over a hundred thousand years old, older than us homo sapiens.’

  ‘Heavens!’

  ‘Roman soldiers used it for bedding for themselves and their animals.’

  ‘You don’t say!’

  ‘And people have always used it for roofing thatch and for packaging. Some people even burned it for fuel and used the ash to make a kind of soap. It’s been used for brick-making.’

  ‘Think of that!’

  ‘Cattle can eat it when there’s nothing better, and in the Far East people eat the young shoots, but you have to be careful because it’s carcinogenic if you have too much.’

  ‘I’ll be careful.’

  ‘It can even be used as a contraceptive, but I don’t know how.’

  ‘A pity, we might have used it now.’

  That put a silence on him. Verbal contraceptive: prevents birth of speech.

  ‘Only joking,’ I lied.

  No reply.

  ‘Will?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Bracken.’

  Silence again.

  I said, ‘Is that what you wanted to tell me?’

  ‘No, just thought you might be interested.’

  ‘Well, I am. Yes, I can quite see it sounds a very useful plant. Never knew.’

  ‘Most people don’t.’

  I could tell he was pretending not to notice I was joshing him.

  ‘But,’ I said seriously, ‘it’s not what you wanted to tell me?’

  ‘Not exactly. Not about bracken. No.’

  ‘Well, it’s your turn. To tell me what you really wanted to tell me. I mean, if you still want to.’

  Another silence. You did have to be patient with Will. All I wanted to do was rip his pants off.

  The dampness began to seep through my jeans.

  Finally, at last, he turned on his side, facing me, propped his head on his hand, and I knew it would be best if I didn’t move or look at him. I was sure he was easy to spook when being so serious, which he was, I just knew, very serious. And I wasn’t at all expecting what came out.

  ‘I love trees.’

  I mean, what are you supposed to say when a boy says such a thing? What I heard myself say was: ‘You love trees?’ With too much emphasis on trees, which made it sound like I was sneering, which I wasn’t. I w
as just surprised.

  ‘You can laugh if you like,’ he said.

  I said, ‘No no. Is that what girls usually do when you tell them?’

  He said, ‘I haven’t told any girls.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘boys then?’

  He said, ‘I haven’t told any boys either.’

  So I said, ‘Anyone?’

  He said, ‘No one.’

  ‘No one? Not anyone at all?’

  ‘Not no one no when.’

  I took a deep breath before saying, ‘But you’re telling me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I’m the first person you’ve ever ever ever told in the whole wide world that you love trees?’

  ‘Correct.’

  Now it was me who had a spell of silence while I took this in. Then turned on my side, my head propped on my hand just like him, and for the same reason – because I needed to look into his eyes to be sure of his reaction when I said, ‘You’re telling me and you expected me to laugh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For liking trees?’

  ‘Loving trees.’

  ‘For loving trees.’

  ‘For loving trees.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just thought you would. But hoped you wouldn’t.’

  ‘And I didn’t.’

  ‘But most people would, wouldn’t they?’

  I waited to see if he would tell me what he really wanted to tell me without being asked. But no. I was beginning to understand that, when it came to his emotions, Will was the question-and-answer kind of person. He couldn’t tell you anything, not anything important, unless you asked the right questions. The exactly right questions.

  I looked him in the eyes and asked, ‘Why me?’

  ‘You know how you wanted to tell me about choosing me? Well, the fact is, I fancy you. Have for ages. Well, I mean, not just fancy you, which I do, but more than that.’