So Many Ways to Begin (10 page)
Read So Many Ways to Begin Online
Authors: Jon McGregor
These things, the way they happen. The way they begin. Sometimes he felt as though he could hear the words being spoken. Sometimes he felt as though he had been there, sitting up in his cot, studying the two women's faces, wondering which way the conversation would go. But he hadn't been there at all. He'd been off in some other ward, a numbered baby in a row of numbered babies, sleeping or stretching or wailing, waiting to be taken back to his mother. And these words became something like a treasured fragment of parchment script, studied over and over again, handled in a humidity-controlled room, learnt by heart. It didn't matter that they were second-hand, third-hand, blurred by time and mistranslated, rubbed smoother and cleaner by his own re-telling. These broken pieces were all he had; like keepsakes pulled from the ruins. Fragile traces, dug from the cold wet earth.
A young woman, too young, fifteen or sixteen, crying it's no use, I can't do it; one of the nurses turning to her, brushing her hot damp hair away from her eyes and saying yes you can, come on my darling, you're nearly there. Slumping back on to the bed, giving up, and the nurses saying her name, saying, come on now, come on, Mary, raising their voices as if calling her back from another room. Covering her face with her hands and crying louder to block them out. Or not even thinking of giving up, even when the pain and the fear were enough to make her pass out breathe, they tell her, keep breathing, as if her body had become so alien that she couldn't remember how to work it properly - sitting up, and grinding her teeth, and doing what young women have always had to do, her body and her choices no longer her own. Calling out for her mother, or her eldest sister, or her father. Calling out a man's name, and two of the nurses catching each other's eye. Or perhaps even in the middle of it all managing to keep such a thing to herself, not out of loyalty but out of fear and an instinct for self-preservation. Slamming her hands down on to the mattress, clutching at the cold metal rails of the bed; soiling herself, more than once, a nurse reaching quickly beneath her to clear it away, her humiliation complete, the nurses looking at her that way, knowing the sort of girl she was, thinking only that she was paying the price and it was too late to go crying now, but not saying this, maybe not thinking it at all. Praying aloud, oh dear lord Jesus have mercy on me now, her voice quiet and song-like between screaming contractions. Or not daring to pray, thinking who was she to turn to God at a time like this?
The nurses saying come on, just a little bit more, we're nearly there now, howling out a cry which seems to burst from somewhere in her spine, and the baby is born and it's over. Looking on in dazed confusion as the baby is lifted, cleaned, examined, and the cord cut. Someone telling her to push just a little bit more, and the afterbirth being scooped up and removed. A nurse wiping her down and giving her an injection. The baby being carried away, and her eyes following it out of sight before she falls into a long, dark, drugged sleep. Julia didn't tell him any of this. Julia didn't tell him anything. Soon after the day she first let the secret slip, forgetting for a moment that it was supposed to be a secret at all, she went into a sudden decline. She forgot his name. She forgot Dorothy's name. Eventually she seemed uncertain of who they were at all, although they always told her when they arrived, and she always smiled in pretend recognition, gamely entering into conversation with them for a moment or two before losing her thread and gazing vaguely out of the window. Her body began to age rapidly. She lost weight. Her skin scrunched up into an old woman's wrinkles, her hair thinning out until there were only a few loose wisps floating around her scalp like a halo. Her eyes began to sink back into their sockets, and her shoulders started to round and hunch forward until she looked twenty years older than she was. She rarely looked at them when they spoke, and if she did she showed few signs of understanding what they said. But even when it came to feel useless, he kept asking her about what she'd said.
Auntie Julia, he'd say, can you remember Mary? Do you remember the young girl with the baby? What was her second name again? I can't remember. Where was she from? She'd look at him, her eyes empty of expression, the makeup she insisted on applying each morning beginning to look out of place, frowning or nodding or looking right past him. Whatever happened to that girl - Mary? he'd say, hoping to catch her in one of her lucid moments. But he never did. She'd only ever gaze back at him, or out of the window, or turn and look for her cigarettes.
I'm awfully sorry my dear, she said once, tapping ash into a saucer, but sometimes you do seem to talk such absolute bloody sodding nonsense, really you do.
He got desperate. He asked her over and over again. He took photographs in to try and prompt her, photographs of her and his mother during the war, of his mother and Susan, of her house. Her puzzlement seemed to turn into amusement, as if the whole thing was a game. Is it time to go home yet? she'd sometimes say, getting to her feet and looking around for her coat. No Julia, he'd have to tell her, it's not time to go home, not just yet.
There was one thing, his mother admitted to him once. There was one thing Julia told me, a few years after, she said. She told me the girl had a bad time of it, told me they thought they were going to lose her, she said. And it was obvious, after so many years of silence, how difficult it was for her to have told him even this much. But it wasn't enough. It was nowhere near enough. Nothing she could ever have told him would ever be as much as he wanted to know, and so he started to fill the vast gaps for himself, to read books about London and Ireland, to buy maps and brochures and magazines, to lie awake at night until he could make a story, any story, to fit.
Perhaps it was raining when she got off the bus, but she was already feeling better, just standing by the side of the road and breathing in the wet air. Everything feeling familiar, at last. The loose chippings on the tarmac beneath her feet. The walled-in tree where the bus was turning around. The frosted glass window of the shop on the other side of the road. The boxes of vegetables on a trestle table outside the grocers. The noticeboard by the bus stop behind her.
The bus turned its circle and drove back up the hill, and the place was quiet except for the water running along the gutter into the drain, a steady slurping gurgle, the same song of streams and ponds and falling water that she'd always known and grown up with. She looked at the wet grey veils of the sky, smiling for the first time in weeks, months, wiping the dampness from her face. I don't mind a bit of rain, she said, beneath her breath, and picked up her suitcase.
It was nearly three miles from the bus stop to her family's house, but the rain-sodden walk seemed to take no time at all, and the suitcase which carried the last two years of her life was as light as a handful of feathers in the clutch of her fist. Every step of the road was just as she'd dreamt it all the time she'd been away. Every step took her further away from the smoke and the noise and the loneliness and fear of the city she'd left behind. Every step drew her deeper into the hollows of the landscape, the green hills and shining rivers and mist-tangled treetops, as though she was clambering into the postcard she used to keep propped up on the mantelpiece of her small room at the top of the big house. The rain didn't let up, and the damp seeped through her thin clothes, clinging to her skin, the whole place wrapping itself around her, but she couldn't stop smiling and she felt like yelling her hello again into the hills. She was soaked by the time she was halfway home, but she knew that when she opened the door there would be a smouldering fire, a kettle on the stove, a slab of cake in the larder. She knew that the neighbours would be sent for, her brothers called in from the fields, the bottle of whiskey brought down from the sideboard.
Perhaps she remembered with a sudden cold shiver why she was there now, how different this walk might have been, how much colder her reception would be then, and she knew that she'd done the right thing. She told herself again that she'd done the right thing.
She passed the house at the top of the rise, and saw old John there in his open barn, still fiddling with that useless lump of a tractor that no one had ever seen run. His wife was coming out with a cup of tea for him, a ragged cardigan wrapped around her shoulders; she called out a little hello to the two of them as she walked past. They raised their hands and gave her a how're you doing there, and then they looked at her twice and their faces lit up in recognition. She smiled, but she kept on walking. They'd be along down the road soon enough, too wise to say they were the ones who saw her first, and she could say a proper hello then.
And then she could see her house at the bottom of the hill, caught between the road and the strip of woodland which ran along by the stream. There was a curl of faint yellow smoke lifting into the mist, and somebody moving around down in the yard. There was a good tall stack of turf by the side of the house. One of the dogs was ambling around in the yard, getting under the feet of whoever that was down there, getting in the way of whatever it was they were doing.
She'd done the right thing, she told herself. He'd be alright where he was, he'd be safe and well, it was the right thing to do; she said it to herself like a prayer.
Halfway down the road, while she was still far off, the man in the yard, her father, happened to turn round and catch sight of her. He looked up, lifting a hand to his forehead, as if shielding his eyes from the absent sun. He took a few steps in her direction, stretching his head forward. She kept walking. She didn't wave. Or perhaps she stood still and she waited. Perhaps then there was a moment's doubt in her mind as to how she might be received, how fast news and gossip and broken secrets might travel. She gripped her suitcase tighter and the thought that she could always turn and flee entered her head, the knowledge that with the case in her hand she could carry on her exiled life; but it was a small thought, and she did her best to blink it loose, to let the rain wash it away. She kept walking. Her father dropped the tools he was holding, lifted his head to call someone from the house, and ran towards her, his steps clumsy and lumbering, the dog barking suddenly now, confused, running a tight circle around the yard and then outpacing her father towards her. She kept walking. Or she stopped and she waited. She tried to keep the smile from breaking out all over her face, or she didn't, and when her father had nearly reached her she saw the door of the house open and her mother appear, wiping her hands on her apron, looking first to the yard and then to the commotion on the road, lifting her hands to her mouth, stepping towards them, breaking into a scurrying run. And already, while her father was still rushing to meet her, breathing hard, his muddy boots clumping on the tarmac, she could feel the all-encircling bulk of his embrace, the tickle of his woollens on her face, the rub of his chin on the top of her head, the pad and scratch of the dog jumping up to claim his place in the moment, the rush of her father's breath in her ears, the rich mumble of his voice saying ah now, Mary, it's been a while has it not? And she knew that she'd done the right thing. She told herself again that she'd done the right thing.
Perhaps it was like that, he would think, sometimes, or perhaps it wasn't like that at all. Perhaps she went to Ireland, but never made it as far as home, kept away by fear, or by warnings of how she would be received. Perhaps she went to Dublin, an exile in her own country, finding a place to stay through someone who knew someone, finding work, making friends, pushing what went before to the back of her mind. Perhaps she married, had children, gave them names and raised them. Three children, four children, five children. Brothers and sisters born and bred in Dublin, and her northwestern inheritance didn't pass on to them but faded from view. Or perhaps she had no children, no more children, perhaps she didn't marry and she lived out her life further south, Waterford, Cork, nestling into some small village community and busying herself with work and the intricate weave of a new social life, and she grew old and built herself a new history to talk of in the village shop or at the club, fond talk of do you remember when with no need to think of what went before. Or she became a nun, clothed herself in righteousness and hid herself away in the cloisters and the rituals of religious life, praying and meditating and good-deeding her way out of the skin of the young girl she was when she first joined. Or she didn't go back to Ireland at all. She went as far as Liverpool, and put her savings together with a few weeks' work in a hotel kitchen, and bought herself a ticket to the New World, following in the wake of so many who had gone before, walking the gangplank aboard the White Star liner without a backward glance, keeping away from the deck until the ship was well clear of land so as not to have no one to wave to. Or she went back to London, losing herself in the crowds, walking out every day in the hope that she would bump into Julia, or Dorothy, or David; lingering by the hospital gates, waiting, hiding without hiding, never able to actually step inside. Or she went to Leeds, or to Birmingham, or to Coventry and she got a job in the Hotel Leofric and served David his very first under-aged pint. Or she died young, killed in various road accidents, explosions, struck down by illness and disease, drowned on her way to America, sodden with cheap drink in a one-room flat on the Kilburn High Road. Or she did go home, eventually, a few long years smoothing over the rough calluses of shame and gossip, a family's love and longing for a lost daughter overcoming any talk of sin and curse and letting down, a father brimming with tears as he brings himself to look her in the eyes and say, well, come inside, welcome home, it's been too long.
It was the not knowing, he would say to someone, much much later. The not knowing was the hardest thing.
He woke early, stiff and tired from the previous day's long drive but restless with preparations for the journey to come. He left Eleanor sleeping, her fists clenched against her face, and slipped into Kate's old room, looking out the two albums and the scrapbook he planned to take, glancing at all the other scrapbooks and albums and shoeboxes and wondering if he should maybe take a few things more. He went over the route in his mind, uncertain even now that he was doing the right thing, sitting down on Kate's old bed, smoothing the pillow and the duvet, looking at her old postcards still Blutacked to the back of the door.
He heard Eleanor getting up and moving around downstairs, and then she appeared in the doorway with two coffees, squinting slightly, her face puffed with sleep. She put one down on the windowsill, glancing at the pile of boxes and folders he'd been going through. She looked at him, the faint lines on her face softening as she smiled, and said you're a case though, aren't you David? He looked at her, sharply, and stood up.
What? he said.
Well, she said, waving her hand vaguely, all this stuff. I mean, it's a bit much, isn't it? He looked down at the floor, and then at the window, holding his hands tensely by his sides. He didn't say anything.
He said, Eleanor, couldn't you just for once take something I'm doing a bit seriously? I mean, couldn't you do me that favour, just once? He said, it's not as if I'm taking it all with me. I was just looking; what's wrong with that? He gripped the edge of the windowsill, and realised he was shouting. He said, I'm sorry but— She moved towards him and put a hand on his shoulder, and she felt him tense against her touch.
She said, I'm sorry I didn't mean anything. Her voice was flatter, the teasing note of a moment before drawn out of it by his reaction. She said, I am taking it seriously, it's just— It seems like you're rushing into this a bit.
He looked at her, disbelievingly, shaking his head.
She said again, I am taking it seriously.
He lowered his head and said well it doesn't feel like it. She sighed, loudly, and pulled away from him, moving towards the door.
I'm sorry love, he said, rubbing his forehead with the knuckles of his fist, I'm just tired. It was a long drive. She held on to the door frame, and closed her eyes.
It was the first argument they'd had for months. The last time had been when her brother Donald contacted them to say that her mother was very ill and would Eleanor consider going up there at all, and David had tried to insist that she should. She'd shouted at him then, and told him that he must be stupid if he still didn't get it after all these years, and he'd shouted back that maybe he was stupid, for marrying her in the first place. There was nothing like that being said this time at least. But there was something of that same bristling tension; in their voices, in the tight grip of their hands on the windowsill and the door frame, in the way their eyes dared one another to go further. Later, over breakfast, they would agree that they were getting too old for that kind of thing, that it wasn't worth getting so wound up about it all, and the sharpness of their words would be forgotten. But for a moment, as they stood there facing each other, trying to think what to say, it felt as though they were newly married all over again.
Perhaps you shouldn't go today then, she said quickly, if you're really so tired, if it was such a long drive. Perhaps you should leave it. He raised his hands, shaking them in the air.
But I've bought the ticket now, he said, almost shouting again. It's all been arranged. They'll be expecting me, he said, his voice suddenly trailing away and his hands falling to his sides. And something like resignation or defeat must have shown on his face, because when he looked at her he could see that she regretted what she'd said. Maybe I shouldn't go at all, he said. She let go of the door frame and stepped back towards him, touching a hand to his arm.
Oh no, she said. I didn't mean that, I didn't mean that. I'm just saying, she said, you said you were tired. He turned away from her, looking out at the small back garden. She said, I'll put some toast on. She left the room and went downstairs to the kitchen. The steam rose from his coffee mug, settling to a steady twisted stream as the stillness seeped back into the room. He glanced at the clock.
They were in the middle of breakfast, still catching breath from their brief argument, when the phone rang. It was his sister Susan, wanting to know how things had gone at the funeral. I'm not interrupting anything, am I? she asked.
No, David said, reaching across to the table for his toast, you're fine.
Only it seemed like a good time to call, she added. How had it been at the service, she asked, and afterwards - were people friendly enough, how did Kate take it all, had Eleanor changed her mind at the last minute? No, he said, she hadn't. She asked him how Kate was in general, if she was still living in London, if she'd had any luck finding a proper job yet.
She's still in London, he told her, and she's working. She seems happy enough for the time being, he said, and Susan must have heard the slight edge in his voice because she said oh no, no I'm sure she is, I was just wondering. He heard the splash of something being poured into a glass, juice perhaps, and pictured her sitting at her breakfast table in the bay window, with toast and yoghurt and folded white napkins, looking out at the long stretch of garden between her house and the road. She asked him what he had planned for the day, and he said well I'm just getting things ready and then I'm heading off, on my trip.
Oh? Susan said, sounding surprised. You're still doing that? So soon?
Yes Susan, he said tautly. So soon. How much longer did you want me to leave it?
I didn't mean that, she said. You know I didn't mean that. I was just thinking about Eleanor, if she'll be okay while you're gone. He held his breath for a moment.
Yes, he said, well, I don't know about that. You'll have to ask her that yourself. He held the phone out towards Eleanor, saying it's my sister, she wants to talk to you, ignoring the faint sound of Susan telling him not to be silly. Eleanor looked at him suspiciously and took the phone.
Hello? she said.
David looked at the clock, put his breakfast dishes in the sink, and gestured to Eleanor that he was going upstairs. She watched him go, and he heard her say well it's difficult to explain Susan, it's mixed, you know? He washed, and dressed, and folded some clean clothes into his suitcase, standing by the window for a moment to look down at his car parked outside. When he went back downstairs, putting the kettle on to boil, Eleanor was saying oh is he, is that right now? I thought he wasn't going to. He spooned coffee and sugar into a flask. Eleanor said yes, he's still here, you want to speak to him again? He looked up, shaking his head, and saw Eleanor holding the phone out towards him. He reached out for it, and she put her hand across the mouthpiece.
Maybe I should come with you after all, she said.
He stared at her, trying to catch her eye, mouthing a confused what? while Susan asked him how their mother was coping with the new bungalow. Eleanor shrugged, smiling a little, as if it had just been a passing thought. David? said Susan. Are you there? He turned away and said sorry, yes, she's fine. I saw her last week and she seems to be settling in fine.
He looked at Eleanor, standing on the other side of the table, her hands resting on the back of the chair, waiting. He remembered the first night they spent together, and not being quite able to believe the sheer unadorned fact of her skin against his, and he thought how strange it was that after all that time she still slept beside him in their bed, with her hand spread out across his chest and her face turned in to his shoulder. They were both so much older now. Their bodies had crumpled and softened and worn, and no matter how many creams she kept by the bed the skin on her face had become as creased and lined as his. Her hair was shot through with threads of silver and grey. But her eyebrow still arched exquisitely when she didn't believe what someone was saying, and her lips still folded together when she was concentrating or frowning or confused. She still tucked loose wisps of hair behind her ear with a single long delicate finger. Sometimes, it was an effort to keep from kissing her while she slept.
Susan was saying of course I'll never be able to keep up with this garden, and he said no, well, oh. He said, Susan, look, sorry, I'm going to have to go now, I need to get on with things, it's been good talking to you, and as he put the phone down Eleanor jolted slightly and turned back into the room, wrapping the rest of the cakes she'd baked the day before in tin foil and stacking them into a bag.
He said what do you mean maybe you should come with me? She filled the flask, put it into the bag beside the cakes, and looked around the room to see what was missing.
Well, I just thought, she said. It's a long way, you might need someone to keep you company.
But I don't mind the journey, he said, I'm fine with that. I've done it before, he reminded her.
She took some fruit from a bowl on the side and tucked it into the bag, saying but that was a long time ago; things will have changed since then. He sat down, he looked at the ceiling, and he laughed.
I didn't realise it was me we had to worry about with long journeys, he said. I thought that was your department.
But I'm getting better David, she said. I am. Maybe it would do the both of us some good, she added quietly. He looked down at his hands on the table, turning them over, peering at his fingerprints and tracing the lines worn into his palms. He didn't know what to say.
He said, you really want to come then? and when he looked up at her she nodded. He sat back in his chair suddenly, the chair creaking with his weight. He said, bloody hell Eleanor, I really wasn't expecting this. He said, have you got any travel tablets? She smiled.
Are you still going over to your Mum's first? she asked. He nodded.
There's a few more photos I wanted to pick up, he said. And I should see how she's doing.
So have a think about it while you're there, she said. I'll get dressed and packed and we'll talk about it when you come back, she said. He looked at his watch, and he rubbed his face.
He said, but, I don't know El, this was something, I was planning— He stopped, and tried again. He said, I imagined doing this on my own. She moved towards him and put an arm across his shoulder. She leant forwards and kissed the top of his head, his hair thin enough now that he could feel her lips against his scalp.
She said, with her face still so close to his skull that he could feel the breath in her words, you've been doing this on your own for too long now, don't you think?