So Many Ways to Begin

by Jon McGregor

  He was stationed in Germany when they moved her into the home. He'd had to be sent the admissions papers to sign, and the financial documents, but he'd refused to discuss the situation with them. Dorothy had written, and even spoken to him by telephone on one occasion, but he'd only ever said that he trusted her judgement. I'm out of the picture here, he'd said, you're the one on the ground. I don't think she's looking after herself properly any more, Dorothy had told him, I don't think she's able to. Right, absolutely, he said, if you think so. We're trying our best, she told him, but we can't be down there every weekend. No, of course, he said, whatever you think's best Dorothy. You're the expert, he said, leaving her to talk to Julia about what was going to happen, to arrange a place for her, to make sure that the house was cleaned occasionally. And when they'd met him outside the home that morning, running a few minutes late, he'd seemed reluctant to go inside at all, standing away from the door and tracing lines in the gravel with the toe of his shoe. Ah, hello there, he said, seeming surprised to see them. This is it then, I've got the right place? I wasn't sure what to expect, he said.

  They sat quietly for a while, the four of them, drinking the tea Dorothy had sent David to fetch, looking out into the garden. Julia asked for her cigarettes, and Laurence sprang up to find them for her, holding one out of the pack and lighting it when she put it to her lips. He looked pleased with himself, relieved to be able to do something for her at last. She smoked, and they waited for her to say something. She said, I hear they're building a new school at the end of the road there, where the theatre used to be, that'll be nice. Laurence looked at Dorothy, questioningly, and she discreetly shook her head. She said, I had a letter from Kathleen. Kathleen wrote and said she was coming to stay. I hope she does. I'm sure she will. She will, wouldn't you say? she said, turning to Dorothy, lifting her head to blow a stream of smoke towards the ceiling. She said, David, how's that girlfriend of yours, what's her name, the Scottish one, how's she? He looked at her, and at his-mother, and his mother smiled and turned her face away.

  She's not my girlfriend Auntie Julia, he said, embarrassed, trying to remember when he'd said anything to his mother. Not really, he said.

  Oh, Julia said, smiling, my mistake, sorry, and she winked at Laurence, making him roar with sudden delighted laughter.

  They left him alone with her for a couple of hours, walking out around the streets, down through the park to Julia's old house and back along the canal.

  You know she's not going to get any better, his mother said, and David nodded, and they didn't say anything more about it.

  14 Pair of letters, handwritten, February 1967

  That's so sad what you told me about your Auntie Julia. I told my friend Ruth about it and she said her Gran went like that too, but she was much older which makes it almost not so bad. I hope it's not upsetting your mam too badly. It's funny saying that when I've never met her, but you've told me so much about her that I feel like I know her somehow. Sometimes I feel like I know her better than my own mam.

  There's something strange about my mam at the moment though (more strange then normal I mean1.). I think she's upset about something, or worried, but Da won't tell me what's wrong. She's barely speaking to either of us, or going out the house, and I think I maybe heard her crying last night. She was like this sometimes when I was a wee girl, she used to blame me for it then. She said I'd tired her out completely and she needed a rest. I'm sure she'll be better soon but it's funny seeing her like it again - it seems like such a long time since it happened before. I wonder if she thinks it's my fault again, I don't see how she can when I'm hardly ever in the house. Me and Ruth stayed out until almost eleven o'clock last night1. We weren't doing anything, just sitting in town and talking and walking about, but it was great to be out like that. I almost caught it when I got home, and Da said I was lucky Mam was away in bed already and not to do it again. Ruth was looking at boys all evening but I told her I had no need.

  She's like a wind-up toy that's all wound down, my mam, I mean. She moves all slow and shuffly, like she's no sure what she's doing. I hope she's not like it long this time - it gives me the creeps. I'd rather she was shouting at me, you know? I think my da is maybe taking her to the doctor's tomorrow.

  Anyway I'm sorry, you didn't need to know all this. I'm just blabbering what's on my mind. How about you? What have you been doing this week? How's the museum? Have you been on any more research trips? Is Mr Newbold still giving you grief about taking time off? Write to me soon, won't you. Tell me some more things about - oh I don't know, anything. I want to know everything, David!.

  Everything's a bit of a tall order, Ellie-Na. Do you want to know what I had for breakfast this morning? (Fried egg and toast.) Or how many cups of tea I made at work? (Not sure, something like twenty-eight, but I usually lose count after lunch.) Or how many files I had to look through before I found the lost index card for a thirteenth-century dish that's been on display since the museum opened? (No idea, but it felt like half the files in the whole office.) If I told you everything, Ella-Nor, I'd spend my whole life writing letters, and there'd be nothing left to tell!.

  Sorry, that's a bit pedantic of me, I know. What should I tell you? My Auntie Julia's not getting any better but she seems to have stopped getting worse for the time being. Mum went down to see her again this weekend and left me and Susan on our own in the house. If you think eleven o'clock's late you should see what time Susan got home1. I think she might be seeing someone she met at work but she's being very mysterious about it. I promised not to tell Mum ifshe paid my bus fare for a week, and she said that was bribery but she still agreed. On Sunday me and Danny took the train up to Birmingham -1 wanted to go to an exhibition at the Gas Hall and he wanted to see a jazz group in a pub, so we did half of each. He was asking me about you again . . .

  15 Picture postcard, John Lewis shipyard, Aberdeen c.1967

  Eleanor's parents didn't approve. Or perhaps it wasn't as dramatic as not approving, nor as genuine; perhaps they simply didn't consider David a serious proposition. She wrote about it in her letters: he's from so far away, she told him they said, it's just not practical. He's older than you. He's not got a proper trade. He's English. She spiked these quotations with exclamation marks, as if to deflate their power, and underlined the words she most objected to: practical, proper, serious. She joked about it, sometimes, but he knew that she resented the way they felt able to interfere in her life, to set such narrow limits for her. Is that English boy still writing to you? her mother would ask, when his letters dropped on to their hallway floor and Eleanor hurried from the breakfast table to retrieve them. You should tell him to find himself a local girl, she would add scornfully.

  But beneath their disapproval and scorn lay a simple fear that Eleanor's father eventually voiced one afternoon while he and David were sitting together in the kitchen. He looked at David across the table, two mugs of tea between them, and he said so when you taking her away then son? He was sitting back in his chair, but his gaze was fixed and intent, his thick eyebrows hunched darkly over his eyes. David stalled.

  I beg your pardon Mr Campbell? he said, leaning forward as if he hadn't quite caught the question. Stewart Campbell didn't even blink.

  You heard, he said.

  Eleanor and her mother Ivy were out on the front step, talking to one of the neighbours, the neighbour doing most of the talking, Eleanor laughing occasionally, her mother keeping up a steady supply of ayes and reallys and oh-no-I-knows.

  Stewart's hands were resting on the table, his fists clenched, the knuckles white. I asked when you're planning on taking Eleanor away from here, he said, laying a slow emphasis on each word. His self-contained ferocity took David by surprise. There was no shouting, no banging on the table, but for a few moments it felt as though one wrong word would bring Stewart vaulting across the table towards him. And even though he was in his late sixties by then, and often short of breath, it was obvious what a lifetime of working in the shipyards ha
d done for the steel-rope hardness of his body. Shaking his hand had been evidence enough.

  Mr Campbell, David said, trying to look him in the eye, I haven't, we haven't, really thought about that.

  Stewart looked back at him, saying nothing, waiting for him to continue.

  I mean, Eleanor's got her life here, David said. Her friends, her job, it wouldn't make any sense to, you know.

  Aye and you'd know about that, would you? Stewart asked quickly, his voice picking up volume. You'd know all about her life here then? You want to tell me about it, do you? He leant forwards as he said it, gripping the edge of the table now, peering in at David's face as if looking for something. David could still hear Eleanor laughing outside, the sound coming through the open door. He wondered if the back door was open behind him.

  But almost as quickly as Stewart's temper had flared, it softened again. He sat back, held out his palms, laid them in his lap. His face lost its pointed glare. Let me tell you something, he said, his voice calm again, distant. Let me tell you. It's not long ago, not long ago at all, that Eleanor was sitting here with her legs halfway to the floor and her chin resting on the edge of the table. David nodded and rubbed the sweat from his palms under the table. They were all that small once, Stewart said, and then before you know it they're banging their heads on the ceiling and popping out the door and that's them gone. Doesn't take long, he said. Hamish was gone before Eleanor was even born, and Eleanor will be gone soon enough.

  He looked at David again, his eyes clear. But it's fine, he said. Your children grow into adults, and they leave, and they make a life of their own. It's the way the world turns, he said. He closed his eyes for a moment and eased out a loud slow breath. He lowered his head, rolled it from side to side, and looked up. But there's leaving and there's leaving, he said. You understand me? David nodded, and he knew from the look in Stewart's eyes that he hadn't meant to say all these things, and that when Eleanor asked him later what they'd been talking about he should say oh nothing much, he was just telling me about when you were small.

  Ivy came back into the room, asking David if he wanted another mug of tea before he was on his way, and stopped for a moment, looking at him, looking at Stewart. Years later, David thought about the two of them in that kitchen and imagined them there when they were much younger, the children asleep in bed, both of them exhausted from a long day's work, sitting and talking while all around them wet sheets, hung from lines strung across the ceiling, steamed and dripped and swayed like storm-sodden sails; other people's laundry putting food on the table. And he imagined them sitting at that same table much later, the house empty around them, unspoken regrets and recriminations swept out of sight like crumbs from the table, silence blanketing the room, the two of them avoiding each other's eyes.

  No, thank you very much, he said, standing up. That's enough tea for me, thank you Mrs Campbell. He smiled. I'll be on my way now, thank you. He glanced at Stewart briefly. Ivy stepped aside to let him pass, and he walked down the hallway and out into the sunshine, where Eleanor was waiting for him.

  And as his visits became more frequent, their letters to each other became less guarded, their thoughts less veiled. They began to make half-serious suggestions about one day living not so far apart. They said that they missed each other, and thought about each other as they were going to sleep. They told each other more, much more, about their lives and their families and their secrets. And after he'd been there half a dozen times, and after they'd written maybe a hundred letters and postcards between them, she wrote this at the end of a short note she sent, almost as an afterthought, almost as if she thought he might not notice: You could come up again the weekend after next. My parents are away to Glasgow and Donald and Ros will be gone as well. You could come and stay at the house. If you'd like that.

  He remembered thinking, on balance, that he probably would.

  16 Birth Certificate, 17 March 1945

  And this was the part of the story they would most want to hear, he thought. This was where they would quieten, and lean forward, and when he'd finished they'd say so that's how it was. You know, I always wondered.

  I was sitting in Auntie Julia's room at the nursing home when it happened, he was going to start by saying. My mother had gone down the corridor to get cups of tea for the three of us, and even though she was gone for a long time she still managed to be back at just the right moment, nudging the door open with her foot as she carried the tray into the room. He imagined someone leaning towards him as he said it, as they realised what he was talking his way towards.

  He could pinpoint the moment precisely. Julia with her cigarette held up beside her face, his mother nudging into the room. The window open and a woman zimmer-framing her slow way across the garden. The sound of television laughter coming from the main room, and an unanswered telephone ringing somewhere. The cymbelline shaking of the teacups as his mother gasped and put down the tray. And David not knowing where to look or what to say or whether to just stand and leave the room as quickly as he could.

  It was a small room with a single bed, a pair of easy chairs, a side table, a wardrobe, and a large window that opened out on to the enclosed garden. His mother had helped Julia try to make it her own - there were photographs on the wall, and one of her jewellery boxes on the side table, and flowers but it still had the feel of a hospital room. The bed was metal-framed, with rails that could be cranked up to keep her from falling to the floor. There was a button on the wall which would bring a member of staff running if it was pressed. There were charts - medication, temperature, blood pressure, behaviour - and although they were kept on a shelf in the wardrobe rather than clipped to the end of the bed, they were still there. And there was a distinct hospital odour lingering about the place, that clinging smell of endless cleaning. But it was still Julia's room, and she seemed comfortable enough to feel somehow at home there. Perhaps she thought it was a hotel, or a room in an absent-minded friend's house, a friend who seemed to have forgotten she was coming, or had even forgotten that she was there at all.

  They sat in silence for a while, Julia smoking one of her long menthol cigarettes and staring out of the window. He didn't know what to say. She'd always done the talking when he was growing up and it had been enough for him to listen, to say, really? or, what happened next? or occasionally, can you tell me about . . .? but since moving into the home she had mostly just sat and waited to be spoken to. His mother was much better at doing what was needed, skating briskly over the cracks in the conversation, the inconsistencies and the repetition and the hard-to-understand, seeming to always find a way of stopping the whole thing sinking into the icy chill of who are you, and where's Laurence, and why haven't we had breakfast yet?

  How are you feeling Julia? he asked eventually, not knowing what else to say.

  Bored, she said sharply, turning to look at him. Bored, and tired. She stubbed her cigarette out in a glass ashtray and gestured at him to empty it. He leant across, and as he picked it up she whispered, loudly, the trouble is the other people staying here are a little sub-normal. He emptied the lipstick-tinged cigarette ends into the bin.

  Really? he said.

  Oh, yes, she said. Some of the things I hear about, you wouldn't believe your young ears, really. There's an old man out there, she said, haven't a clue who he is but they have to put plastic sheets on the furniture when he sits down, due to his tendency. She said tendency with pursed lips and a note of disgust, as though the word itself was somehow unhygienic, and she nodded delicately, to confirm what she was saying.

  His tendency? David asked.

  She leant towards him, mouthing the words: he wets himself if he laughs too much. She took another cigarette and lit it with a quick flourish. Not really my kind of people, David, she said.

  He smiled and said no, I'm sure, and for a moment the Julia he'd grown up with was back there in the room. She turned to look out of the window and they both watched a young boy kicking a football up and down the gar
den path until a woman opened a window and told him to stop it. The boy sulked slowly back into the building, and when Julia turned to speak he could see that she'd already slipped back into vacancy and confusion.

  She said, I wanted to go home but they wouldn't let me, can you believe that?

  He tried to explain, gently, that there were reasons she couldn't go home just then but she didn't seem to hear. And that bloody lot in there are no good either, she said, pointing through the door to the main room where most of the other residents sat and watched television. Half of them are stone deaf, she said. He nodded. Mind you, that's often a result of the explosive impacts, she said, and the shock, you know, and suddenly she was talking about the war, talking as though the mist had cleared and she'd found herself twenty years younger, working in the hospital through years of air-raid sirens, walking home in the morning to find whole streets flattened, seeing doodlebugs droning their way through a bare blue sky.

  They were all given cigarettes for Christmas and he kept on to his you see, she said. Sometimes even the bandages were in very short supply but we did what we could. Your mother used to get back from a shift exhausted and we'd just have time to eat together before it was my turn to go out, she said.

  He wondered whether to interrupt her, to bring her carefully back out of her confusion or to let her just chatter on. He heard footsteps in the corridor and his mother nudged the door open with her foot.