So Many Ways to Begin

by Jon McGregor

  But it was too late to apply when she first got to Coventry. She went to talk to someone about it, about applying for the following year, and they said there was an issue with the funding, that she'd have to contact her local authority, that special rules applied for Scottish students. David didn't understand her explanation when she got back, and when he phoned them about it they weren't at all helpful. She tried to apply, but she did something wrong and the funding was refused. She went to the admissions office again, insisting that there must be a way for her to do the course, and they said there was, but unfortunately she'd have to wait until the following year.

  His mother arranged a job for her, assembling component boards at the GEC factory, and after her upset about university she was glad to have something to get her teeth into. It'll be interesting to do something different for a while, she said. It'll make a change from studying books or breaking rocks or pouring teas. The new plan then was that she would work there until she could start the degree course the following year and they could save some money from her wages for books and materials. And for formal evening wear and bedlinen, he said, smiling, and she smiled back, shaking her head, tutting fondly. It'll be a good way of meeting people, his mother said; you'll want to make plenty of new friends if you're planning on settling here. But she didn't make any friends. She said it was too noisy to talk to people, or it was too busy, or that people just weren't all that friendly. She said she couldn't get the hang of the work, it was too fiddly, they wanted her to work too fast, the woman in charge of the line kept shouting at her when she got things wrong. He came home in the evenings sometimes to find her face red with furious tears, telling him she couldn't do it, she wasn't cut out for it, she didn't want to do it any more. She started not getting up in the mornings, saying she was ill, and when they sent a letter saying her services would no longer be required she said she was glad. She said she just wanted to stay at home for the time being. She could get back to doing some studying, she said; she didn't want to lose touch. Maybe she could make herself useful doing some decorating, she said, because that flowered wallpaper in the back room was really getting too much and wouldn't it be nice to have their home just as they wanted it? Just the way they 'd planned it, wouldn't that be nice?

  Susan found her a job, not long afterwards, working in the canteen at the council offices, and although she said it was strange to be pouring teas again she seemed to get on well with the other people working there. It'll do for now, she said, when he asked how her first week had gone; at least until I get things sorted out with the university. They went out a few evenings each week - to the cinema, to a restaurant, for a drink after work - and they started to tackle the decorating in the rooms upstairs. They went to his mother's for Sunday lunch now and again, or had her round to theirs. He took her to visit Julia, and even though Julia was too ill to say very much, Eleanor said how glad she was to have gone. They spent long evenings talking, watching television, pulling off each other's clothes as they scrambled up the stairs. They had people round for dinner, and talked about work, politics, sport, the weather, the news. Things weren't quite as they'd expected, not yet, but they had all the time in the world for things to fall into place.

  27 Model fishing boat, handmade c. 1905

  Her father gave her the boat when she was no more than four or five years old. She could remember running from the kitchen to the front room one cold autumn evening, she said, the backs of her legs bright red and stinging, bruises rising blotchily beneath the skin on her arms, and her da looking down at her from his chair.

  I can't remember what I'd done wrong, she said. Probably I didn't even know at the time; probably it was nothing more than my ma being in a short temper.

  She stood and looked at her father, her small grubby fingers wiping her cheeks, wanting to turn around but not wanting to go back. She could hear her sister listening to music upstairs, and she could hear her mother turning the squeaking handle on the mangle in the kitchen, muttering and sighing as she crammed the wet clothes into it and choked out the water. She locked her arms around his leg and pressed her face against his hand.

  That's my girl, he said, picking her up and setting her on his lap. You okay now? he asked. She thought for a moment, and nodded fiercely. Good girl, he said, smoothing down her short fair hair with his hand. Her mother had cut it again, roughly, and the sides were uneven and coarse, her fringe a slanted line across her forehead. The sun's got your hair again, hasn't it girl? he said, tracing the lines of blonde brought out of the mousey-brown by the sun. That'll be the Viking coming out of you, he said, smiling.

  She'd liked the feel of his touch, she told David, the rough loose skin on his hand, the warmth of it. She'd liked it when he pinched her cheek and when he wiped her tears away with a stroke of his broad flat thumb.

  Now then, he said. There's no need for all that crying, is there? Eleanor shook her head, shamefully. Would you like to see something special then, something your da's been saving for you? he said. She looked at him, not daring to nod, and he pulled a shabby cardboard box from the cupboard beside him, opening it up and peeling back the layers of crinkled yellow newspaper inside, lifting out the small model fishing boat and cradling it in his hands, feeling the scrapes and scratches which still pockmarked the hull, feeling like it could have been yesterday he was sailing this boat across the soap-sudded scullery floor while his mother scrubbed pans and sang high above him, remembering launching it off the edge of the worn back step, flipping it upside down and sending men and fish and ropes and sandwiches down into the endless ocean. He held the boat out towards her, straightening the unsteady mast and wiping it down with his handkerchief. It's an old fishing boat petal, he said. Your Granda used to go to sea on one like this. Look, see, there's the net for all the fishes, eh? He unfurled a knotted string net from the stern and draped it out across his thigh, sailing the boat across imaginary waves to his daughter, the net trailing across his oil-stained trousers, the blunt-pointed bow bucking and yawing into her outstretched hands. Do you think you can look after that for me then Eleanor? he asked. Will you keep it safe now? She looked up at him, holding the old wooden boat protectively against her chest, her eyes wide and clear, nodding solemnly. They heard the back door open, and her mother letting out a loud and weary sigh. Go on and play with that now, he whispered, gently pushing her forwards, and she slipped away to her room to sail the boat across the grey waters of a fraying rug, to cast weatherbeaten men into the hold and tip them back out into the sea.

  Later, she heard her mother come up the stairs and, with a quick-thinking wisdom beyond her years, she sheltered the boat beneath the harbour of her over-hanging bedsheets before the door had even swung open. And there'll be no supper for you either my girl, so get yourself away into bed now, her mother said calmly. Eleanor undressed and got into bed without saying a word, and her mother closed the bedroom door. It was five o'clock, and she was already hungry. She closed her eyes against the daylight still flooding into the room. She listened to her father's voice, rumbling below the floorboards, and to her mother's brief muttering response. She stretched a hand out under the bed, finding and running her fingers over the gnarled and knotted wood of the model boat as she waited for sleep to come.

  Sometimes, if he woke in the middle of the night and found himself alone in their bed, he would go downstairs and find Eleanor sitting on the sofa there, wide-eyed and unable to sleep, holding the model boat in her lap once more and stroking the grain of the wood. Go back to bed, she'd say, not looking at him, I'm fine. I can't sleep, that's all; it's nothing, I just can't sleep. He'd sit next to her, fetch her a glass of water, ask her if she wanted to talk, smooth her hair away from her face. You've got to work in the morning, she'd say. I'm fine, go back to bed. He'd ask her to come back to bed with him, to talk if she needed to talk, to lie down and close her eyes and come back to bed with him.

  I'm fine, she'd say, leave me be. Go back to bed yourself.

  28 Page torn from
Aberdeen Press & Journal, crumpled, August 1968

  Sometimes, if she was prompted, Eleanor would tell other people besides David about her life before she came to Coventry; Susan perhaps, or Susan's husband John, or one of David's colleagues from work, if the wine had been around the table a few times and she felt for once that no harm could come from it. You never tell us about Aberdeen, Susan would say, somewhere in the lull between main course and pudding; what's it like?

  Aberdeen? she'd say. There's not all that much to tell. It was a bit colder than it is down here, there were fewer jobs about - what did you want to know?

  Well, Susan would persist, I don't know. I mean, what did your parents do, and your brothers and sisters, what was your house like, that kind of thing.

  And Eleanor would tell them about the small house in which all eight of them had lived, making a joke out of the bed-sharing and the outside toilet, the tin bath hanging on the wall, the belting for getting soot on the laundry that hung around the fireplace, making it all sound distant and unreal. She told them about her father's job in the shipyard, and her brothers leaving the house one by one to work in the merchant navy, the shipyard, the railways, the joiner's shop at the far end of town; and she told them about her own first job at the museum tea rooms. We didn't have much for entertainment, she told them once, mainly I had my head stuck in a book and just about the only place I could find quiet enough for reading was in the lav so long as it was warm enough. That got me in trouble as well, she said, laughing, filling her glass again, bawling out an imitation of one of her brothers - Mam! Ellie's been in there for hours, will ye tell her? - and lowering her head for a moment as she ran out of steam.

  People laughed when Eleanor told these stories. Not at the stories themselves, but at the delight she took in turning these things into bleak caricatures, at the unexpected contrast with her usually quiet and self-contained self. Sometimes, David thought, people laughed more from an awkward embarrassment - especially when she joked about being sent to bed without supper for cursing, or being smacked in the teeth for losing a schoolbook - than because they were amused. She'd usually had too much to drink when she said these things, and by the time everyone had gone home she would tip over into regret. Did I say too much David? she would ask, as he helped her up the stairs. Did I embarrass myself any? Did I say too much?

  Was that true? he asked her, once. What you said last night? He was standing halfway up a stepladder as he said this, a paintbrush balanced wetly on the lip of a tin. They were decorating their back room, finally, the furniture stacked under a sheet in the middle of the room, wallpaper shreds scattered across the floor. Eleanor was rubbing down the wall on the other side of the room, her hair tied back from her face with an elastic band and the sleeves of an old work-shirt rolled up to the elbow.

  Hmm? she said, above the rough shush of the sandpaper. Was what true?

  You know, he said, about being smacked, in the teeth you said. The words felt odd even as he said them.

  Oh, that, she said, aye, of course. She seemed distracted, surprised that he'd even had to ask.

  I mean, literally in the mouth? he said. She laughed a little, picking at a stray scrap of wallpaper still stuck to the bare grey plaster.

  Yes David, she said. Right in the mouth. Why?

  Well, he said. It just seems a bit much, that's all. She didn't say anything, and he lifted the brush to press another wet slick of pale yellow paint against the wall. They both worked in silence for a few minutes, Eleanor taking a damp cloth to wipe the dust from the wall, David dipping the brush in and out of the pot.

  It didn't just happen once then? he said. She looked at him blankly.

  What? she asked.

  Being hit like that, he said, and again she seemed surprised that he was asking.

  Well no, she said, I suppose not. It didn't happen all the time, and I suppose getting hit in the mouth was unusual. But I can't really remember. Why?

  David climbed down, moved the ladder further along the wall, and climbed up again. Because it bothers me Eleanor, he said. It's not normal, it's not right. Why didn't you ever tell someone about it? She laughed tightly, as if she thought he was being naive, and she took the cloth into the kitchen to rinse it out.

  Oh, come on, she said. Tell who? She came back into the room and began wiping along the top of the skirting board. Anyway, she said, changing the subject, what did you think about John last night?

  John? he said. Oh, right. He seemed okay I thought. I mean, Susan seems very happy with him, doesn't she?

  Aye but he doesn't say much, does he? she said. He barely said a word all evening.

  David laughed.

  That's because he couldn't get a word in edgeways, he said, the way you were going all night. He laughed again, and Eleanor was silent. He finished painting what he could reach from the ladder, and climbed down, and it was only when he turned round and saw how flushed her face was that he realised how much he'd upset her.

  Oh El, he said. I didn't mean it. He moved towards her and she pulled away very slightly. I was only joking, he said.

  I ruined the evening, didn't I? she said, whispering, staring straight ahead.

  Of course not, he said. Don't be silly.

  I did, she said. I ruined the evening. She put her hands over her face, as if she was ashamed even to be looked at. He sighed and put the pot and the brush down on to a sheet of newspaper.

  Eleanor, he said, I was only joking. Everyone had a lovely evening. He took hold of her wrists and gently lifted her hands away from her face.

  Really? she said.

  Really, he said, licking his thumb and wiping a smear of plaster dust from her forehead; I promise. She wrinkled her nose and looked up at him, and the flush of embarrassment ebbed out of her face. She smiled.

  I'm sorry, she said. It just worries me, what people think, especially your family and everyone. He kissed her forehead, then her nose.

  They all think the world of you, he said. And so do I. He let go of her wrists, kissed her lips, and started to unbutton the worn-out shirt she was wearing, uncovering her small neat breasts. So do I, he murmured again, stooping to kiss each dark nipple, unbuttoning the rest of her shirt, slipping his hands behind her back. Eleanor stepped away, covering herself and fiddling with the buttons.

  David, she said, quietly. Not now. I'm not— she said, and stopped. We've hardly started in here, she said. Give me a brush. David passed her another brush, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, surprised and a little embarrassed at himself. He moved the ladder, and went back to the painting without saying anything more.

  Later, sharing a bag of chips while they waited for the first coat to dry, she said, I'm sorry about before. I just wasn't feeling like it; I wras a bit preoccupied.

  It's fine, he said, pretending to have forgotten. Don't worry about it.

  And the next day, when all the painting was done, the brushes washed and the spattered newspaper thrown away, the furniture shifted back into place and the pictures rehung on the wall, when they were looking around the room and each wondering if they'd ever really like the colour, she turned to him and said well, I think we're all done here now, aren't we? She swept the loose strands of hair away from her face and unbuttoned her shirt. He noticed that she still had yellow paint under her fingernails, and across one of her knuckles, and he noticed that she was shrugging her shirt to the floor.

  Afterwards, lying across their bed together, he said now tell me something. She turned her face towards him, questioningly. Tell me what it was like, at home, when you were growing up. I want to know more, he said.

  So she told him about watching her mother clean the kitchen floor when she was a child barely old enough to speak; hiding under the table, watching soap bubbles balloon and burst into the cold sunlight as her mother's wooden-soled shoes slid like skates across the wet flagstoned floor. The hot soapy water slopping towards her, and her mother hoisting the chairs from the floor and slamming them up on to the tabl
e as she caught glaring sight of her daughter.

  She told him about her mother not talking to her for days at a time, not talking to anyone, stopping in bed with a mystery illness that nobody ever discussed.

  She told him about having to make her brothers' beds each morning, slipping out of her own to straighten the mess left from the morning's rush into work, gathering the tight-rolled balls of yesterday's socks and heaping them into the wash-bag, untangling the sheets and blankets from their heap at the bottom of the bed.

  She told him about her mother cutting her hair, insisting on keeping it short so that it wouldn't be any trouble, never taking any time over it so that she always came out looking hacked and shorn and the other children would tease her. I didn't dare say anything though, or ask to get it done in a shop, she said, Mam would have walloped me. It was only when she was older, fourteen, fifteen, that she resisted and persuaded her mother to let her be, and her hair began to grow long and straight and fine. I couldn't keep my hands off it for a long time, she said, smiling, playing with it even as she spoke; it seemed like such a new part of me.

  She told him that once, when it had reached down to her shoulders, her brother's wife Rosalind had brushed it for her, telling her how she could keep it nice, showing her different ways of wearing it, running the brush and her fingers through it over and over again. It was the first time anyone had touched me like that, she said.