Read Online This Is All by Aidan Chambers - Free Book Online

grew here thousands of years ago.’
    He swivelled on his bum, lifted a leg over the bench and sat astride, facing me. His body was so rangy and so supple, it roused me again. I stared ahead to avoid giving myself away. For a funny moment I felt we were characters in a Chekhov play (Chekhov being one of my favourite writers ever since I was taken to see The Seagull when I was about fourteen). We could have been Nina and Konstantin – before she went off the rails and he shot himself:
    Nina : Oh, Konstantin, Konstantin, wasn’t life so good before! Remember? Everything was so simple and clear and happy. The feelings we had! So beautiful! Delicate as lovely little flowers!
    Is life ever that simple? Is it ever so clear and nothing but happy? That it isn’t, at least never for very long, is the sadness of the play, I suppose. But it can be for a while, from time to time. And in short measures life may perfect be . I was happy at that moment, sitting with Will among the attendant trees, and knew that I was. Happy as you can be happy only at the beginning of being in love. Such a brief happiness, a butterfly time, as beautiful as anything in life, and as delicate and to be as treasured as butterflies themselves.
    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