So Many Ways to Begin (12 page)

And the rest, she said.

She looked for a moment, tilting her head to the side, curious. She stood up and pulled her skirt and her tights and her knickers to the floor, stepping gracefully from the gathered heap like a magician's assistant. The sight of her made him want to applaud. His whole body was straining and taut, arching towards her.

She shifted uncomfortably beneath him, and the movement made him spill over into sudden regretful delight.

Don't stop, she whispered, it's okay. He mumbled something, his face still pressed into the pillow. No, he said, I've finished.

Oh, she said. He lifted his weight away from her. Oh, she said again.

He said - he whispered - bloody hell, Eleanor.

She smiled, pulling the covers up across them both, her eyes dimming and closing. He looked at their clothes, spread out across the room like stepping stones. He asked her if she was okay, if she was glad they'd done that, and she kissed him and stroked the side of his face, her eyes closed, her breathing slowing and deepening.

He said - he whispered - bloody hell. I feel like I hardly know you. She opened her eyes.

You do too, she murmured, you know me well enough.

No, but really I mean, he said, bringing his leg up towards hers, running his hand down her thigh, there must be plenty that I don't know at all. She pressed a finger to his lips, smiled, and closed her eyes. She opened them again after five minutes or ten minutes or an hour, and looked at him.

Are you awake? she whispered. He looked back at her.

Just about, he said. She shifted a little closer to him.

Would you tell me something? she said. Would you tell me something nice so I can get to sleep?

18                    
Disciplinary letter, typewritten
on headed paper, January 1968

There were weeks when the only time he spoke to his mother was to ask her again what she knew. There must be something else, he would say. A second name, a date of birth. Tell me something, please. Why didn't you tell me before? he would ask again. And his mother would insist that there was nothing else, that there was no more she was hiding from him, that she knew she'd done wrong but could he please stop all of this, it was breaking her heart. He would always leave the room when she said that, slamming the door behind him.

It was like a hunger, an insatiable hunger, this need to know. There were weeks, months, when he could think of nothing else, could hear nothing else besides the slow refined sigh of Julia's voice, saying the words over and over again. Of course we never saw the poor girl again. You'll have to keep the little darling. Did I say something wrong? Of course we never saw the poor girl. The words repeating like a stuck record in a locked room, haunting him, so that he could get to sleep only by drinking too much and leaving the radio on, loud. You'll have to keep the little darling. We never saw the little darling. You'll have to keep the poor girl. And of course she disappeared off the face of the earth. Did I say something wrong?

He thought about leaving home, about cutting himself off and starting again, about never speaking to his mother again, but he was too numb to do anything about moving out, and his mother was the only person he could ask for answers, and so he stayed, seething with hurt and anger and betrayal and loss, wishing he'd never found out.

And even when he was at work he struggled to concentrate, his thoughts blurred by the many questions he wanted answering: why he'd never been told; why he'd never suspected; whether Susan was lying when she said she'd never known; what he could do now to find the answers he was looking for, to find the people he'd never known he'd lost. One of the curators would ask him to repair a broken display cabinet, to rewrite an outdated label, to take a parcel to the post office, and within moments of being asked he would forget, sitting down on a gallery chair, or in the staffroom, or in the pub, knocked off his feet again by the memory of Julia's words. His colleagues started to comment, joking about his forgetfulness, his empty stare, his vacant tone of voice. The Director called him into the office to discuss his attitude towards work.

The poor girl hadn't even left you with a name, so we chose David, after that actor, what was his name? And of course, she disappeared off the face of the earth. What was his name?

He was surprised, when he asked, that it had taken him so long to think of it. What did Dad say when he found out? he said, and as soon as he'd said it he knew what the answer would be. His mother was in the back garden when he asked her, kneeling over the border, pulling out weed seedlings and heaping them into a small basket. How did you tell him? he asked, something cold and fearful turning over in his stomach. She straightened up, pulling her gloves off before answering him. She seemed uncertain what to say.

David, she said, and she looked up at him.

Did you even? he asked quietly. She put the gloves back on and pulled more weeds out of the dry soil, working her way around the thickly spiked stem of a rose bush.

I thought it was best, she said. He'd been home at the right time, she said. She pulled a bulb out by mistake and pushed it quickly back in, packing the soil in around it. Her voice was stretched and thin. The dates fitted, she said. I didn't think he needed to know. David turned away before she'd finished speaking. I thought he'd find it easier, not knowing, he heard her say, her voice falling away into the earth.

Sometimes, it was light outside before he was able to sleep. He would sit on the edge of the bed, reading, listening to the radio, his hands shaking. Or he would stand by the window, looking out at the lamplit blur of the night sky, hearing the occasional shouts and sirens drift faintly across the city. Or he would slip out of the house and walk through the shadowed streets, thinking, unable to think, trying to pound some sleep into his tired body. His colleagues got used to him rushing through the front door half an hour or an hour late, toast crumbs around his mouth, his shirt tucked in and his tie knotted as he ran from home. I'm sorry, I slept through the alarm, he would say, and Maureen on the front desk would usually reply that he didn't look as if he'd slept at all, beckoning him over to straighten his collar and tell him to wipe his mouth before the seniors saw him. They started to joke about it in the staffroom, marking up a graph of his arrival times on the noticeboard, and he had no answer when Malcolm asked him what was on his mind so much these days, and he could only smile and pretend to look embarrassed when Anna said odds on it's a woman and they all laughed. It was easier to let them think like that. He wouldn't have known where to begin if he'd wanted to tell them what it really was.

He went to the archive office at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, where Julia and his mother had worked, and under the pretence of a research project he searched through the lists of patients in the maternity wing at the relevant time. But he found nothing. He contacted trades unions, and Irish emigrant workers' associations, and even tracked down a domestic service museum in Bath, looking for more archives he could search through, looking for a box of files which would reveal a line of detail on a Mary who had stopped work suddenly in 1945. But he found nothing. Domestic employment tended to be rather informal, he was told. The names weren't always recorded, or even known. He went to Somerset House and found that the entry for his own birth matched the birth certificate he had, listing his mother and father as
Dorothy Carter and Albert
Carter,
and when he got home he asked furiously how such a lie had been incorporated into official history. But his mother could tell him nothing. He wrote letters, on headed museum paper, to museums and social centres across Donegal and the north of Ireland, asking for artefacts and recollections connected with domestic service in England during the war, and although he accumulated a large boxful of photographs and transcribed interviews he found no answers there. He discovered that history's secrets are not always easily found, that all the archives in the world weren't enough when he didn't even know who or what he was looking for, or where he should be looking.

He sometimes wondered what would have happened if he had lost his job then. He tried to construct an alternative story from the scraps of what would have remained, wondering if he would have gone to see Eleanor again, wondering if he would have found another job in a museum or whether that would have been the end of it, wondering whether he would have read and re-read Eleanor's letters with bitter regret instead of excitement and then fond recollection. He wondered what other story he would have ended up with, carried on the backseat of his car to show someone who at long last wanted to know.

But it was impossible to say, he knew. There was no clear parallel life into which he would have fallen had his job been taken away from him, just as there hadn't been a celibate loneliness waiting for him in the event of his failing to notice Eleanor in the tea room that day. Just as he hadn't been irrevocably formed, or broken, the moment Julia had said you can leave him with me, I'll look after him until you get back. It was more complicated than that. Lives were changed and moved by much smaller cues, chance meetings, overheard conversations, the trips and stumbles which constantly alter and readjust the course of things, history made by a million fractional moments too numerous to calibrate or observe or record. The real story, he knew, was more complicated than anything he could gather together in a pair of photo albums and a scrapbook and drive across the country to lay out on a table somewhere. The whole story would take a lifetime to tell. But what he had would be a start, he thought, a way to begin. What he had would be enough to at least say, here, these are a few of the things which have happened to me, while you weren't there. This is a small part of how it's been. You don't need to guess any longer, you don't need to imagine or wonder or dream. This is a small part of the truth.

19
Identity badge, Junior Curatorial Assistant,
Coventry Museum, w/photo, 1967

Hello love, she said. I just got off the train and I thought I'd see if you were around, you don't mind, do you? Who are those two? I don't think I've met them before. She was talking quickly, her hands fidgeting at her waist, and she leant in towards him as he told her that that was Paul from Conservation and a girl called Anna who was doing her second work placement from university. He didn't look at her as he spoke. Well, they both seem nice, she said, her hands still pulling at each other. Is work going okay then? He shrugged and started walking, and she walked with him, saying oh, well, as long as work's going okay, her voice trailing out as she waited for him to pick up the thread and tell her something more, some new project he'd been working on, a disagreement he'd had with another curator, something funny a visitor had said, any small part of his day he might want to share with her. But he said nothing.

They turned the corner towards the two cathedrals, Dorothy having to break into a half-run occasionally to keep up with his long strides. She said, I just got back from seeing Julia. She said, she's not doing too badly, all things considered. He didn't reply. She said, the nurses there are doing a very good job with her; it can't be easy.

They walked past the old cathedral, and David glanced up at the ruined north wall, the unroofed sky a burnished August blue through the arched hole where the windows had once been. He'd seen archive photos of the fire, the great billowing folds of flame reaching up through the sky to light the bombers' path, and he'd read the accounts of the churchwardens who'd put themselves on fire duty, chasing across the lead roof with buckets of sand, booting fizzing incendiaries into the road until they'd had to retreat down long ladders and watch the whole city burn. She said, I went over and cleaned her house afterwards. It doesn't look like Laurence has been there for a long time. We'll have to think about doing something with all her things sooner or later, I mean, there's a whole lot of it in there. We'll have to talk to someone about it, she said. She touched his arm, and he jerked it away. Oh, she said. Sorry love. He didn't say anything.

They walked past the looming walls of the new cathedral, with its tall narrow windows letting the light squeeze in, with the skeletal steel spire that crowds had gathered to watch being lowered into place by helicopter, and she said, well anyway, we'll have to talk to Laurence about it, when the time comes. She said, I don't suppose he'll be much use though. David didn't say anything. They stood across the road from the bus station, waiting for the traffic to clear so they could cross. She said, when are you going down there next? She said, I'm sure she'll be very pleased to see you again you know. A heavy lorry clattered past, loaded with rubble and soil from a building site, and they both stepped back.

She said, David, don't be like this, please. She was out of breath from trying to keep up with him. She said, David, please, I can't.

They crossed the road, and as they walked round past the bus station she said, I thought I might have a go at getting the garden tidied up this weekend. It's been getting a bit out of hand again. She said, of course it was your father who was the expert, and they both flinched a little at her use of the no longer comfortable word. She glanced at him, and continued, saying, but I imagine he'd have a thing or two to say if he saw the garden now, don't you think? He looked at her, not quite meeting her eye, and made a gesture with his head which was almost a nod. She sighed impatiently, and said, yes, well, it's up to you whether you want to give us a hand or not. Give me a hand I mean, she said, correcting herself.

She said, David, are you even listening to me? They crossed the route of the new ring road, following the fenced footpath between a maze of trenches and banks and towering concrete stilts. She said, this isn't going to make things any easier you know. She said, I mean, I know you're upset, but I don't see how this is going to help David. He didn't say anything. She held his arm, and said, David, and again he pulled it away.

They walked through the streets beyond the city centre, past flat-fronted terraces which opened straight out on to the street, past bay-windowed semis by the park, past a row of houses which had once been watchmakers' workshops, the attic windows built tall and broad to let the light flood in on their intricate work. They crossed the road by a parade of shops and started walking up the long hill which led towards their house.

She stopped for a moment to get her breath back, and when he didn't wait for her she scurried after him, turning to try and meet his eye, saying, David, how long are you going to keep this up? He didn't say anything. She said, what do you want me to do? She said, David, I've said I'm sorry; I've said it over and over again; what else do you expect me to do? It's not fair David, she said, it's just not fair. And if it hadn't been for people walking nearby she would have been shouting, the force of it already trembling in her voice.

Do you think I never worried about this? she said, a moment later. He was silent, and she said again what she'd already said so many times: I was going to tell you; I wanted to tell you. I was waiting for the right moment and I never found it and then it only got harder, I couldn't think of a way to begin. I'd have had to tell your father as well, and I thought you'd both be better off not knowing. She reached into the sleeve of her jacket for a tissue, and David still didn't speak.

They walked past the school Albert had been working on before he died, built to take the pressure off the overcrowded grammar Susan and David had both attended, where temporary classrooms had hidden the bomb-craters in the playground and lunch breaks had had to be taken in shifts. They turned the corner into their estate, past a small strip of woodland, and left again into their street.

She said, in desperation, David, I never lied to you. If you'd ever asked me I would have told you the truth, but you always seemed happy with the way you thought things were; it didn't seem fair to upset things for you. I wouldn't have lied to you, ever, she said. You believe that at least, don't you?

He stopped abruptly and looked at her, meeting her eyes for the first time since he'd seen her at the bottom of the museum steps. He peered at her for a moment, closely, as if watching to see what else she had to say, and when he saw that she was starting to cry he allowed a smile to open out across his otherwise impassive face before turning away. She watched him go. She called his name, quietly in case the neighbours heard. She followed him to the door. She said, oh if your father was here you wouldn't, and he turned, waiting for her to finish her sentence, but she said nothing more. He stood in the opened doorway, blocking her path, and saw Susan walking up the street towards them.

He said, almost in a whisper, you've got no idea, have you? He stood aside to let her into the house, and as she squeezed past him the phone started to ring. He left it a moment, watching her disappear upstairs, and when he picked it up he was almost breathless with the adrenalin pulsing through him. He said hello and Eleanor said guess what? Guess what? Oh David, you'll never guess what.