How It All Began (9 page)

So she hesitated over how to deal with his message. Eventually she called him, still hesitating, and her resistance was immediately undermined by the fervor of his response: “
There
you are. Thank goodness. I’ve been
needing
you.”

He had had a foul day. A delivery of new stock had arrived with a prized mirror cracked right across. The woman who was going to take that marble fireplace had rung to say she’d changed her mind. Another letter from Stella’s solicitor.

“So I’ve been dreaming of you—thinking, please, please can I see her this evening. Can I?”

This is the original Jeremy, the initial Jeremy who was so beguiling and refreshing. He can surface still, putting Marion back at square one, when she walked into the warehouse that morning.

“All right,” she said. “Yes, that would be nice.”

C
harlotte’s nights are not good. Sometimes her hip hurts, sometimes her back; there is no such thing as a comfortable position, and when she has to go to the bathroom she is afraid of waking Rose and Gerry. At home, she would probably go downstairs and make a cup of tea; she longs for the release of home. She falls heavily asleep in the early morning, often, and then she dreams—vivid, surreal dreams in which one scene segues into another like the scenes in
Alic
e—and Carroll must of course have been inspired by the inconstant landscape of dreams, Charlotte has always been sure of that. In these dreams, she is not the Charlotte of today but another, younger Charlotte, and sometimes Rose is there, often a child once more, and always Tom is present, not always as himself, exactly, but simply as a shadowy companion figure who is, she knows, Tom. This morning, she and he are in the house they had in Edgbaston, when both were teaching there, looking out of the window, and all around there is water—water has crept over the road, the garden, is lapping round the walls. And as they observe this a rowing boat appears, manned not by people but by two dogs (very
Alice
). Neither she nor the shadow Tom are surprised by this, but she is wondering if all this water will have affected the electricity. And then the scene melts into another, in which she is with her old university tutor, who is going to drive her somewhere in a little motorized caravan, equipped
with cooker and sink and folding beds; this time, Charlotte
is
surprised.

Then she wakes, is confused, as on each of these mornings. Where is she? Oh, Rose’s house.

You slide, in old age, into a state of perpetual diffidence, of unspoken apology. You walk more slowly than normal people, you are obliged to say “what?” too often, others have to give up their seat on the bus to you, on train journeys you must ask for help with your absurdly small and light case. There is a void somewhere in your head into which tip the most familiar names; President Obama went into it yesterday, for all of five minutes, along with her over the road at home who has just sent a get-well card from “Sue,” but what on earth is her other name? You can use a computer, just about, and cope with a mobile, but with such slow deliberation that the watching young are wincing.

When you were young yourself you were appropriately nice to old people, gave up your seat and so forth, but you never really thought about them. They were another species, their experience was unimaginable, and in any case it was irrelevant; you were not going there, or at least not for so long that there was no need to consider it.

Nowadays, you eye the young and remember—oh yes, just—how it was. How it was to have smooth skin and a supple body, to be able to bend and squat and lift and run for a bus and skip down the stairs. To have this long unknowable future, in which lurked heaven knows what, and it is the mystery that is so alluring. Your own future is also unknowable, except that you can make a few shrewd guesses, and it is not particularly alluring.

You are on the edge of things now, clinging on to life’s outer rim. You have this comet trail of your own lived life, sparks from which arrive in the head all the time, whether you want them or not—life has been lived but it is all still going on, in the mind, for better and for worse. But don’t imagine that anyone else wants to know about it; this narrative is personal, and mind you remember that. Even Rose can take only so much of that holiday we had at Mevagissey, and the birthday party when you dropped the cake. It is strange that for so
many years your life ran parallel with hers, but she knows little of how yours was—and, indeed, her child’s eye view is opaque to you. What did she see and hear?

She saw you and Tom, presumably, and that you were happy together. She must have seen and heard affection, compatibility and consideration. Oh, the occasional spat, of course, this was marriage, and the best of marriages meet rough water from time to time. But she saw unity, a unity that is quite rare, Charlotte has come to realize, observing and hearing over a lifetime. How lucky we were, she thinks, how lucky ever to have met, to have been able to link up and sail ahead together, until that malign little cell began to form and grow, destroying him, and everything.

So Rose saw . . . happiness. Charlotte is not quite sure that she sees happiness here, in Rose’s house. She does not see unhappiness, oh no. What she seems to see is an equable coexistence; nobody shouts, nobody slams out of the house, there are no disturbing silences. There are conversational exchanges of an anodyne nature; there are brief discussions about domestic requirements or arrangements. Rose reports e-mails or phone calls from one or other of the children. She does not much speak of how her time has been, with his lordship; nor does Gerry, of his day at work.

Here are two people who live equably together, and maybe that is as much as anyone can ask. Charlotte is embarrassed to be a witness to this, to be thinking about it. She has never actually lived with Rose and Gerry before, close as she has been to them. And she is aware that these thoughts are prompted because she knows that this marriage is not like her own; it is colorless, by comparison, it lacks the zest, the give and take, the hours of discussion and debate, the hand on the knee, the arm round the shoulder, the silent codes of amusement and of horror. The laughter.

She would have wished this for Rose. But then, she does not know what it is that Rose and Gerry have. We only think that we know the lives of others. So, she tells herself, mind your own business and leave Rose to hers, it is bad enough that she has you foisted on her like this, not that she would use that word or even think it. And this is for a
finite period only, eventually Charlotte will be crutch-free, able-bodied or thereabouts, she can go home and resume normal living. As can Rose and Gerry.

These thoughts arrive on a bad day. Pain is in residence. Charlotte is a pain expert, or maybe connoisseur is a better term. She can rate pain on a scale of one to ten, as required in hospital, even slipping in a half on occasion. “Six and a half this morning,” and the nurse’s pen falters—the charts do not allow for this. But when you have lived for years with pain you are nicely tuned to that extra notch up or down. More than that, she is familiar with the way in which pain chases around the body, popping up where it should not be. Referred pain, this is called, a sly escape from the root site of the problem. Indeed—but Charlotte sees it also as pain’s malign capacity to mutate, to advance and retreat, to behave like some bodily parasite with its own agenda, gnawing away when it feels like it, going into deceptive hibernation only to spring back grinning just when you thought the going was good.

Today her back is howling. This should not be. If anything has a right to howl it is her hip, her broken and mended hip. But the hip is quiescent, and pain has sneaked into the back, which is because the fall, it seems, badly strained the sacroileac joint, thus exacerbating Charlotte’s long-term back condition, which has had her hampered and in frequent anguish for a decade. So pain has seized the opportunity, has danced into her spine—and into the backside and down the legs—and has shoved the hip aside for the moment. Tomorrow all may be otherwise; hip may snarl, back may be in remission—pain’s agenda is unpredictable, perverse, defiant. For the moment, she has two options: endure, or take one of the painkillers that may or may not kill but will make her drowsy and play havoc with the gut. She decides on endurance; Anton is coming this afternoon, which will at least be a distraction. She can cock a snook at pain. Half a snook.

Anton arrives late, breathless with apology. He had had to stay longer at work, then wait for a bus. Charlotte had been concerned about
having to have the lessons in the afternoons, thus occupying Rose’s sitting-room, but this apparently did not bother Rose: “Look, I’ve always got things I need to do—I don’t sit around in there anyway, and it’s only for an hour.” So today she could be heard in the kitchen busy at something, while Charlotte and Anton settled to the lesson.

Charlotte had decided to put her idea into operation. They spent some time on the standard work, going through the words and sentences, and then Charlotte produced a book.

“This,” she said, “is a story. You like stories, as do I. I think you are tired of ‘This is our house,’ and ‘What is the time?’ ”

Anton studied the cover of the book. Charlotte had him attempt the title. Eventually, he achieved it:
Where the Wild Things Are
.

He looked at Charlotte. “I think this is a book for children?”

“Indeed it is. An interesting one. You’ll see. Let’s go.” She turned to the first page.

Anton read, with hesitations, false attempts, and prompts, the adventures of Max and his wolf suit.

They reached, at last, the end.

Anton laughed. He turned back the pages, looked right through the book again. “This is a clever book. A clever story. It is about how the child feels. How he is angry and cannot stop his angry. He cannot . . . control. This is the wild things. And then he find that he can control. And his supper is still hot.” He laughed again. “Very clever.” He turned back and looked once more at the text, running his finger beneath words.

Charlotte grinned. “More fun than what we’ve been doing.”

Rose came in. “Tea? Or am I interrupting too soon?” Her eye fell on the book. “Oh. Sendak.”

“Next week,” said Charlotte, “
How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen
.”

“Isn’t this rather unorthodox, Mum?”

“Possibly. Anton isn’t complaining.”

“I am like child,” said Anton cheerfully. “Child learn when he is interested. When he want to know what come next in the story. Nothing come next with ‘I go to the shop’ and ‘This is our house.’ ”

Rose put down the tea tray, sat, poured out. “It’s Earl Grey, Anton. Mum said you liked it.”

“I like and I have—buyed.”

“Bought,” said Charlotte.

“Bought. And I send to my mother, so she can be English. Soon I try to find English clothes for her.”

Rose frowned.

“But clothes I see in the shops are for girls,” Anton continued.

“Quite,” said Charlotte. “I have the same problem. The senior citizen is disregarded by the fashion industry.”

Rose broke in. “I know a place that does sensible stuff for the older lady. If you like I’ll take you there sometime, Anton.”

Anton stared at her. The forest eyes. The lakes. “That is kind. That is very kind.”

“You’ve never taken
me
there,” said Charlotte.

“It’s where I got you that jacket for Christmas.”

“Oh.”

Rose went to the kitchen and returned with a plate of scones: “I’ve just made these.” Charlotte was impressed; Rose was not given to baking. Anton ate two, with relish. They sat over tea and scones, the exercise books and Sendak laid aside. Anton talked of his mother, of her bad knee—Charlotte grimaced in sympathy—of his desire to move her from a flat to a bungalow, if possible: “She likes to have a garden.” Further fragments of his circumstances emerged: he himself lived in a city apartment—“For a time now, since my wife go. Before, there was a house in the country”—he had worked with an accountancy firm until made redundant last year –“Not just me—many, many—they have no work for us.” Rose and Anton discovered a shared taste for walking. This was something that Rose and Gerry had in common; their holidays usually consisted of a hike along Offa’s Dyke or the Pennine Way. Anton described week-long excursions with two men friends, camping beside lakes, amid forests. Of course, thought Charlotte, seeing these reflected, he still carries them about him, somehow, that whiff of elsewhere, making the Pennine Way look homely.

“Perhaps one day I walk in England,” he said. “When I have a job, and holidays.”

Charlotte suggested Richmond Park, to be going on with, one Sunday. Rose fetched a London map, and showed him how to get there. She brought out photos from her own walking holidays and showed him pieces of the Lake District, of the Black Mountains. He pored over these, intently: “These are places I would like very much.” He pulled a face. “It is a pity I see only Stratford and Tottenham.” He was working at the moment on a vast building site in Tottenham. “Everyone from central Europe, Eastern Europe. If you shout ‘Anton,’ five–six people answer.” He laughed. “Shift work—that is why I am mornings.”

Charlotte noted Anton’s crisp blue shirt, his hair that she could see had been freshly washed. He comes off the building site, and cleans up for his sessions here, she thought. Of course—an office is his natural habitat, not a building site. He has had to grit his teeth and adapt. She tried to imagine Gerry on a building site, in sagging jeans and a dirty vest top, heaving a barrow. I don’t think so. Or Tom? Possibly, possibly. If the economy had gone pear-shaped, if history had run differently. Tom could have changed color, if he had had to—become someone else, survived.

“My mum is quite nutty,” said Rose to her best friend Sarah. “She’s teaching this man out of children’s books—the one who comes to the house for adult literacy.”

“How’s she getting on? The hip?”

“So-so. Actually, it works—he’s reading. Sort of.”

They had met for a quick lunch—Rose after her morning with Henry, Sarah in her break from the hospital where she worked as secretary to a consultant. Rose and Sarah had been at college together, had proceeded through life in parallel, sharing complaints and anxieties about husbands, children, their own feelings—close in a way that women can be. Today Sarah was worried about a daughter distraught after the collapse of a relationship. She was not much interested in adult literacy.