How It All Began (6 page)

None of that now, except the reading. She has a stack of books from home with her, and has commissioned Rose to get a new paperback she wants. So the most important thing is still available, though somehow reading was more savored when kept for those special periods in the day. When you can do it any old time it is less cherished. And her concentration is all askew: the medications, the nagging hip.

Forever, reading has been central, the necessary fix, the support system. Her life has been informed by reading. She has read not just for distraction, sustenance, to pass the time, but she has read in a state of primal innocence, reading for enlightenment, for instruction, even. She has read to find out how sex works, how babies are born, she has read to discover what it is to be good, or bad; she has read to find out if things are the same for others as they are for her—then, discovering that frequently they are not, she has read to find out what it is that other people experience that she is missing.

Specifically, she read bits of the Old Testament when she was ten because of all that stuff about issues of blood, and the things thou shalt not do with thy neighbor’s wife. All of this was confusing rather than enlightening.

She got hold of a copy of
Fanny Hill
when she was eighteen, and was aghast, but also intrigued.

She read Rosamond Lehmann when she was nineteen, because her heart had been broken. She saw that such suffering is perhaps routine, and, while not consoled, became more stoical.

She read Saul Bellow, in her thirties, because she wanted to know
how it is to be American. After reading, she wondered if she was any wiser, and read Updike, Roth, Mary McCarthy and Alison Lurie in further pursuit of the matter. She read to find out what it was like to be French or Russian in the nineteenth century, to be a rich New Yorker then, or a midwestern pioneer. She read to discover how not to be Charlotte, how to escape the prison of her own mind, how to expand, and experience.

Thus has reading wound in with living, each a complement to the other. Charlotte knows herself to ride upon a great sea of words, of language, of stories and situations and information, of knowledge, some of which she can summon up, much of which is half lost, but is in there somewhere, and has had an effect on who she is and how she thinks. She is as much a product of what she has read as of the way in which she has lived; she is like millions of others built by books, for whom books are an essential foodstuff, who could starve without.

So, this morning, Charlotte settles herself on Rose’s sofa, after breakfast, and opens
The House of Mirth
, which is part of a deliberate program to revisit books that have been influential for her in the past, and see if they still taste the same. But after five minutes or so her attention starts to stray; she is looking out of the window, not at the book, staring at Gerry’s meticulously clipped garden hedge while her thoughts drift, unfocused—she simply sits there, and realizes suddenly that half an hour has passed. She reads a few pages, relapses once more, is gazing at the hedge, at a white butterfly dancing along it, at a plane forging across the sky above.

The morning is half gone. She gets up, crutches it to the kitchen, makes a cup of coffee. This will not do, she thinks. I cannot spend the next few weeks in a trance. If reading is to fail me thus, then something else must be found.

She cannot do useful things around the house, because of the crutches, and anyway Rose would not hear of it. She cannot get out and about. Today is her adult literacy class, where she is not. The class floats into her head, person by person. There is Lesley, who is in her forties, had some debilitating illness in childhood, missed much schooling, emerged unable to read, and has somehow got by ever since with
subterfuge and the help of her family. There are the Bangladeshi mother and daughter, who cannot read or write in their own language, let alone English, but are now triumphantly mastering whole sentences. There is Dan, in his late fifties, a builder and heaven alone knows how
he
has got by, but he has, by dint of a compendious memory and a wife who does the office work; Dan has been propelled to the class by becoming a grandfather, he would like to be able to read to the kids, and this of all motives has Charlotte fervently at his side, wishing that there was more scope for one-on-one attention. There is seventy-year-old Liz, who has been bullied into coming by her daughter but doesn’t actually give a hang whether she learns to read or not, she’s got along all right without all her life, hasn’t she? Yes, it’s a nuisance sometimes in the shops, but you can always ask someone. There is eighteen-year-old Paul, who also missed much schooling, was labeled dyslexic, but is not, he just needs patient coaching. There is the girl who is half Somali, half English, born here, and quite why she has had so little school is a mystery; thereby hangs a tale, no doubt, but she is making headway at last, a confident finger rushing from word to word. There is Anton, a newcomer, a soft-spoken man, central European of some kind—Charlotte hasn’t gathered from where—his spoken English good but some block where reading is concerned. That is why he is on an adult literacy course, rather than English-as-a-foreign-language; reading is the problem, not speech.

Teaching people how to read is a far cry from teaching teenagers how to appreciate reading. Sometimes, Charlotte tries to see the words in the way that the members of the class must see them—black marks: shapes, lines, a baffling code that has to be cracked. She compares the mysterious eloquence of a page of Arabic or Japanese, to which one is blind. The members of her class move around shut off from the cacophony of advertising, the instruction of road signs, the information of newspaper headlines. They are in the world, but not entirely of it. Their inability to read is crippling; a failure to respond to literature is merely a restriction.

Charlotte drinks her coffee and considers. She is now focused. And the idea comes to her. She cannot get to the adult literacy class, but
why should a member not come to her? Someone for whom extra coaching would be a godsend.

She makes a phone call to Marsha, the class coordinator. Marsha is delighted to hear from her, wants to know how she is doing, when they can hope to see her again. Charlotte is one of the most valued members of Marsha’s team. Her innate skills as a communicator work just as well on getting people able to read as on the exegesis of
Pride and Prejudice
or the
Ode to Immortality
. Charlotte is a born teacher, that’s all there is to it. “We need you back,” says Marsha.

“Look,” says Charlotte. “I’m wondering if…”

Marsha ponders. This is a touch irregular, but she doesn’t see why not. The class is full to bursting, there are several people for whom some extra teaching would make all the difference. She ponders further. Then she makes a suggestion. What about Anton?

Charlotte is surprised. She had imagined the Bangladeshis, or maybe Dan.

But Marsha is pressing Anton. The thing is, she explains, that he is clearly highly intelligent, but for some reason he is not making progress. He is frustrated, he is somewhat out on a limb in the class—reserved, diffident, much more sophisticated; he could benefit greatly from some personal attention.

“Right,” says Charlotte. “Let’s have Anton then.”

She makes a successful foray to the garden gate, her spirits lifted. Now she has a purpose, something to do, she can be useful.

Henry does not have anything to do. Or rather, he does not have that essential something. He has not identified a way of reestablishing his name, grabbing the attention of academia—no, of the cognoscenti generally. Restlessly, he sifts through his papers, in the service of the memoirs, in order to keep busy; all those files and boxes, in which are interred reputations, disputes, scholarly scandals. Could it be that the answer lies here?

He finds it on a Thursday morning, at around ten-thirty. He tips out the contents of an unpromising-looking wallet file without a label,
and flicks through the pile of papers. Letters. Letters that have never been sorted and filed. Letters from a while ago, from way back; he is looking at the late 1960s here, when he was not yet forty, the rising star of academia, the clever young man who knew everyone, whom everyone wanted to know. He picks up a letter with House of Commons heading, glances at the signature. Ah. John Bradshaw—Labour elder statesman cultivated by Henry and who had taken Henry up, got him into that think tank, wined and dined him and fed him tidbits of political gossip.

Henry reads the letter, which is a quick note proposing a lunch and throwing out some digs at Harold Wilson, with whom Bradshaw is currently on bad terms. Not of great interest. Here’s another—what’s this one about?

Bradshaw is long dead. Henry has not much thought of him in years. He had quite forgotten he had those letters. He reads the second letter, with growing attention. What’s this? Bradshaw is pushing an issue he wants taken up by the policy unit, and is talking about Hall, a fellow minister. “Hall agrees entirely about this—incidentally (strictest confidentiality here) he admitted to me that he’s dead worried because he’s been having an affair with Lydia Purkis. Of all people! Is trying to break it off—all very painful, deeply fond of her etc. Silly ass! My god, if the press get hold of this…Sleeping with the enemy and so forth, they’d go to town on it. We have to see they don’t.”

Henry had forgotten all about this choice nugget, buried here. Lydia Purkis was the wife of a Tory grandee, hence the shame of it—crossing party lines—though to be caught sleeping with anyone’s wife, enemy or not, would be a resignation matter, probably, for a cabinet minister. But this never was. The press never did get on to it, the whole thing was whisked under the carpet, and all concerned are now dead.

Well, well. Henry sits with the letter in front of him, his mind ticking. A suppressed scandal, but the names are still familiar—there could still be an interest. Suppose…It occurs to Henry that there is a nice contrast here with misdemeanor in eighteenth-century high
society—politicians, royalty—and the way in which it was lampooned by the pamphleteers and the cartoonists. Gillray, Rowlandson, Hogarth. Exposure was an art form; today it is the heavy hammer of the gutter press. This particular scandal never reached the red tops, but if it had the headlines would have screamed.

Henry has it. The idea. The answer.

An article for one of the broadsheet Sundays. An article ostensibly contrasting the eighteenth century’s way of outing the misbehavior of the great and the good as opposed to the practices of today. A scholarly piece, which would cite instances from both periods, but which would slip in—quite offhand, as it were—this intriguing instance of a scandal that got away: “…a letter in my possession.” Furthermore, this will be a trail for the memoirs—a hint of further interesting revelations.

Now—how to handle this?

Anton arrives for his first session a couple of days later. Charlotte had barely registered him, a new arrival to the class. She is struck now by his rather formal manners, his courtesy. She installs him in Rose’s sitting-room, one afternoon (he can only do afternoons, apparently, he has a morning job), but he leaps anxiously to his feet when she gets up to look for paper, or put the kettle on for tea. Rose has gone to Brent Cross on a shopping expedition, so they will not be in the way. Charlotte now takes in Anton’s appearance—a man pushing fifty, perhaps, neatly dressed in gray trousers, white open-necked shirt, black leather jacket. A lean body, long face, and notable eyes. He has these large, dark brown eyes that to Charlotte are interestingly foreign; these are not homely English eyes, they are eyes from elsewhere, central European eyes, eyes with forests in them, and Ruritanian castles, and music by Janácˇek or Bartók.

Anton can speak pretty good English, he understands well, but he has this great difficulty with reading the language. There is some mysterious block between English in the ear or on the tongue and English on the page.

He spreads his hands, a gesture of defeat, taps his head. “I am so stupid. It is here—but in the books I cannot see it.”

Anton must be able to read. He explains: “If I read, I get good job. Without read—job, yes. With read—job I can like.”

Anton is working on a building site, but he has none of the building trade skills. He is not a plumber, or an electrician, or a carpenter, he tells Charlotte. “I wish,” he adds with a smile—that beguiling, apologetic smile.

So what is he, what has he been, when he was at home, Charlotte wonders, and why is he here? And Anton knows that she wonders. He was—is—an accountant, he tells her. But there are no jobs where he lives. He has tried other places, with no luck, he was jobless for months. And then came the EU membership, and the possibility of work outside the country. Work here, in the UK.

Anton’s English was learned not at school but from contact with visiting English-speaking colleagues. He felt confident that he could manage, once here; he had not reckoned with this reading problem.

Anton is concerned about Charlotte’s injury, and shakes his head angrily when he hears the reason for it. “That is terrible,” he says. “A lady like you.”

An old lady, he means. Charlotte smiles. “A soft target, I suppose. They prefer not to take on the young and fit.”

Anton looks puzzled. She translates herself. “Soft target—something easy to…to hit.”

He sighs. “English is so…so many ways to say. But my language like that also.” A wry smile—and Charlotte glimpses the easy fluency in another tongue, the ability to say exactly what he means, but now he is floored, fettered by this lack of language, made to seem child-like, stupid.

“Your English is not so bad at all,” she says. “And it will get better all the time, the longer you are here.”

She has made tea; this is an acclimatization moment; she wants to get to know him better. “So how long have you been here?”

Anton has been in England for six weeks. He is staying in a house
in south London that is an enclave of his compatriots; mattresses on floors, communal meals. Those who land a decent job move out to a bed-sit or a flat-share. Some are seasonal only, trying to earn enough in a short time to fund some long-term plan back home: the deposit on a house, the wedding. Anton is older than most; “I am uncle,” he says, smiling. Literally so, in one case; a nephew of his is here, doing waiter work. “He read well. He have English from school. He try to teach me, but no good. So I look for the class.”