This Is All (5 page)

Then, after lunch one sunny autumn day a few weeks after Izumi joined us, I wanted to be on my own and sat down by myself under a maple tree on the edge of the school field well away from the buildings. I didn’t know Izumi was sitting
round the other side (do trees have sides?), where she hoped she wouldn’t be seen. But she sneezed. I peeked round to see who was there. She was eating lunch. She never ate school food but always brought her own Japanese-style food arranged like a work of art, a still life, in a black-lacquered box. Delicious. I’d spied on her at other times, always envying her exquisite lunchbox. She ate with chopsticks, delicately, slowly, almost as if performing a religious ritual. Watching her was like watching a play, I loved it, she was so studied and graceful and so wholly attentive to what she was doing. And I could imagine how our gobbling manners must offend her. I longed to learn how to eat like her, how to behave with such grace and unfussy careful elegant style. By comparison, I felt crude and coarse and brutish.

Under the glowing golden maple that autumn day, I wanted to shift round and sit beside her and somehow or other ease through her reserve and win her acceptance. The wish to befriend her, to be her friend, the strength of my desire to
know
her, flushed me with determination. I’ve always been quite good, I think, at seizing the right moment when it comes, and not letting it pass me by. Before that I can hesitate and dither and feel sure of failure. But at those rare times when a truly important moment arrives, I seem to recognize it, something clicks inside me, and whatever doubts and wobbles I may have suffered until then seem to disappear in a surge of will-to-do.

But I didn’t know this at thirteen. That was one of the self-learning times. I’m going through another now, as I carry you in my swollen womb and ready myself to mother you. Doris says life is a succession of learning zones, and I’m finding out that she’s right.

I hadn’t started writing my pillow book yet, or even my mopes, so I don’t have an at-the-time record of what happened next. But I remember it vividly.

I knew better than to follow my impulse to sit beside
Izumi. Such an intrusion would be the last thing she’d want. I tried to put myself in her place, tried to imagine what might win me over, if I were feeling alone and unhappy in a foreign land. I decided I’d like a message, written not spoken, so I wouldn’t have to answer unless I wanted to, and wouldn’t be confronted by the other person face to face when receiving it. The message would have to be personal, but be something about the other person not about me, so I wouldn’t be embarrassed by anything she wrote. And it would have to be trusting and private so that it was like a little gift, but not
too
private, because that would be too intimate for a first approach. (I wouldn’t trust anyone who was so self-revealing before we even knew anything ordinary about each other.) The message would be special but still somehow only a message, not a confession or a secret.

Nor could it wait. The moment was right. The message must be given to her now, while we were sitting by ourselves on opposite sides of the tree, or it would be too late.

The problem was, I didn’t have any paper or anything to write with. And of course there was the problem of how to give Izumi my message without putting her off by handing it to her. But when something is meant to happen the answers to problems come to you out of nowhere and you find what you need lying around waiting for you. In this case, a fallen leaf, a twig, and an eye-liner.

A carpet of fallen leaves covered the ground all round the tree. A wind the night before had brought down a harvest of them, fresh leaves in lovely bright golds and reds and pale yellows and washed-out greens. And as they’d been so recently plucked by the ruthless wind from their parent branches they weren’t dry and brittle but still firm and even leathery, like vellum perhaps, or parchment. Easy to write on with something soft and painterly. Like my black eye-liner, which naturally I’d brought with me in my little security bag containing keys, mobile, make-up and other necessities.

As for the message, when I thought I was alone under the tree before Izumi’s sneeze gave her away, I’d been thinking how mega-gorgeous the autumn trees looked, how tasty the sun-soaked sky, how refreshing the air after inhaling the school’s recycled breath all morning. And because I suppose I must have been a little sad or perhaps only because autumn can be a melancholy time, I’d been saying to myself these lines:

But you are lovely leaves, where we

May read how soon things have

Their end, though ne’er so brave:

And after they have shown their pride,

Like you a while: they glide

Into the grave.

(‘To Blossoms’ by Robert Herrick, 1591 to 1674. And if you’re wondering how I knew such a poem when I was only thirteen, the answer is a loved teacher, Ms Martin – but I’ll tell you about her later.)

Thinking about that, I knew at once the message I wanted to send to Izumi.

As for the way to deliver it: lying near me was a little branch, hardly more than a twig, rather like a wobbly arrow in fact, or a sleeping snake perhaps, about half a metre long, which the wind had snapped from the tree. The end where it had broken off was split as if sliced by a knife.

So I wrote my message with my black eye-liner on the underside of a pale-yellow leaf, fixed the leaf into the split end of the snaky twig, and then carefully flicked my message-stick round the tree trunk, hoping it would land at Izumi’s feet.

This is what I wrote:

Izumi. I like poetry. Cordelia
.

Of course, I didn’t know why she was called Izumi, or that she was also potty on poetry, or that the Japanese are a nation of poetry buffs – they hold poetry competitions in which millions, really
millions
, of people take part. So I didn’t know that my little personal declaration would touch her where she lived.

For a few nervy minutes nothing happened. I sat as still as a hibernating hedgehog, all of me on tenter hooks (a row of hooks or bent nails on which cloth is stretched out to dry after dyeing or washing, and that’s certainly how I felt).

After a while, I heard a light small voice coming from the other side of the tree, which at first I thought was singing a song without words, but then realised was saying something in Japanese. The something was a poem. I knew because everyone in every language I’ve ever heard seems to use a half-speaking, half-singing voice when intoning poetry. Later, after we became friends, I asked Izumi to say again what she’d said that day, and this is it in Westernised Japanese words:

Katami tote

nani ka nokosan

haru wa hana

natsu hototogisu

aki wa momijiba.

After which there was silence again, before I heard Izumi’s still small voice say:

‘This mean something like:

What might I leave you

as a last gift when my time comes?

Springtime flowers,

the cuckoo singing all summer

the yellow leaves of autumn.’

Then another silence, before:

‘But my translation not good, sorry, Cordelia.’

I said, ‘I liked it, Izumi. Both in your language and in mine.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘By Japanese poet Ryōkan.’

Then silence again.

And again I waited. Now I didn’t know what to do. My certainty deserted me. I suppose, when you’ve risked yourself, and made the first move, you wait for the other person to take the next step. And not knowing anything about Izumi or her culture I didn’t understand that in her own mind she’d already taken that step by reciting a poem. I wanted her to come and sit beside me. Not words, but an action. It hadn’t occurred to me that words
are
actions.

Luckily, because of my sudden loss of confidence I held my tongue and did nothing. Sometimes doing nothing is a better way of making progress than doing something. Or as my father puts it: Do nothing till you have to.

At last, I heard Izumi stand up, and her footsteps approaching round the tree. Perhaps she was coming to join me after all. But instead of stopping when she reached me, she walked straight on without a pause, across the field towards school, and didn’t look back once.

I let her go, waited until she’d reached the buildings, then followed her, not knowing what her departure meant but feeling that at least I’d tried.

In class that afternoon Izumi behaved exactly as before, giving no sign of any kind, not even a glance, that acknowledged me and our exchange.

I had a club after school that day. When I got home a little package was waiting for me. Inside was an oblong cardboard box that looked like it was made from pressed autumn leaves. I thought at first it was a pencil case. But inside were two pairs of chopsticks, one pair jet black, one pair Japanese red, and each pair decorated in gold on the thicker ends with a design representing leaves and water and mountains.

Inscribed on the inside of the lid was an email address:

[email protected]

Guessing this must surely be an invitation, I replied at once:

izumi. thanx. when? cordelia.

And that’s how our friendship began.

Put out put on

Back to Will not turning up for our Saturday date. Izumi came over. I told her what had happened. She listened, she was always such a good listener, one of her best qualities – one of the best qualities in any true friend. She sympathised, comforted, reminded me of her own similar times. And then suddenly broke into a fit of Japanese giggles. Why? Why? Because, she said from behind her hand and between bouts, it was so funny (giggle giggle) that I had been (giggle giggle) stood up, or at least (giggle) let down (giggle) – me, who for the first time (giggle giggle giggle) was really serious (mega giggles) about a boy, when, she said, calming down at last, it was only to be expected, boys being boys.

Luckily, I saw the funny side too, or rather, was infected by her laughter, which is the nicest kind of infection. We held on to each other while we giggled till tears were running down our faces. And when our laughter subsided we held hands and kissed and repeated how foolish we were and how stupid boys were, all boys without exception, and asked ourselves the age-old ageless question why we bothered with them. By now we were talking for both of us as one, not just for me, and anyway, what we said was not what we meant, which was how good it was being together, Izumi and me, closest and best of friends, and our caring for each other and loving each other. And besides that, our laughter and talk and holding on to each other were an antidote to the hurt of thoughtless boys and their unreliability and waywardness.

‘Not their fault,’ Izumi said, always more forgiving than me. ‘They’re made that way.’

‘It
is
their fault,’ I said. ‘And even if it isn’t they should learn to do better.’

Which I still think they should. I won’t allow biology to be used as an excuse for unacceptable behaviour. We
are
animals, I know. But we are animals who think and have will power, which we should use to help us behave decently towards each other. (Here endeth the lesson.)

‘When this happens to me,’ Izumi said, trying to change my mood, ‘I take off everything put on for him, and put something on just for me. It helps very much.’

‘Good idea,’ I said, though I wanted to go on wallowing in my upset and anger, which I’m apt to do, but what are friends for if not to lift you out of such a slough? ‘Come upstairs. You can choose. Instead of putting something on just for me, I’ll put it on just for you.’

Izumi said nothing. But I knew, knew from the flutter of a smile across her face and the look in her averted eyes what she couldn’t say. And she made one little movement that she used sometimes when she couldn’t tell me what she felt about me – she raised her hand and drew the tips of her fingers with feather-touch tenderness down my cheek from temple to chin.

And I was happy again.

finger tips

writing sentences,

words of one syllable,

on my skin

spell of friendship.

Face lift

While I was undressing Izumi went to the bathroom. She came back to my room dangling a CD-sized packet in front of her face.

DEAD SEA spa MAGIK

ALGIMUD

active seaweed mask

REFRESHING

PEEL-OFF

FACE MASK

We go to the lowest place on earth, to bring you the highest standard of natural skincare treatments.

TIPS & HINTS

The easiest way to enjoy Algimud Facial is to ask a friend to apply it for you.

‘Yours?’

‘Doris’s. Extra special. Expensive.’

‘I know.’

‘Keeps it for times when she needs an extra special lift.’

‘
You
need extra special lift. Would she mind?’

‘No. And I can replace it.’

‘Let’s.’

‘But not just me. Both of us. I’ll get another.’

INGREDIENTS:

Solum Diatomeae, Algin,