So Many Ways to Begin

Later, with a cup of tea poured out but not yet drunk, sitting in his armchair by the window, he heard the front door open and Ivy come in, talking to Donald. They stood in the doorway, Donald holding two baskets of shopping from the Co-operative, Ivy out of breath from the long walk up the hill. She smiled. Enough in the pot for us, is there? she asked.

Aye, but it'll be stewed by now, he replied quietly. He nodded hello to Donald. Ivy looked at him and stepped into the room.

What's got you? she asked.

You're home early, Stewart said.

The job was done, so they let us go before time, she said. She studied his face. What are you not telling me? What's got you? she asked again. Stewart said nothing, looking away into the empty fireplace. Has something happened? she said. There been an accident?

No, he said. No accident.

What then? she insisted. Eh?

Stewart took a deep breath, and waited. Donald turned away, saying something about putting the shopping down in the kitchen and making a fresh pot.

Our Eleanor's away to the train station, Stewart said, pinching at the loose skin on the back of his knuckles.

Where's she going? asked Ivy sharply. Was she with that English boy?

Aye, he said. The two of them are away to the train station with a suitcase of Eleanor's things. She'll not be back for a time, he added.

Aye right, you're no mistaken there, are you? Ivy snapped sarcastically. She's no just away to the beach?

Stewart didn't reply.

Did you not try and stop them Stewart? Did you not try and keep them at least while I got back? Or did you just wave them off goodbye, eh? She came towards him as she said all this, her voice rising and breaking, and he looked away from her and he didn't say a word.

Aye and what happens now Stewart? Where are they going to? How are they going to get by? What did she say Stewart, what did she say? And by now she was shouting, until her voice collapsed and she sat suddenly down on the small sofa across from the fire.

In the kitchen, Donald was standing by the window, his hands gripping the edge of the stone sink, his head bowed, listening.

Ivy looked at her husband. She said, is she in trouble?

Stewart pulled at the skin on the back of his hand again. He twisted his finger until it clicked, painfully, in its joint. I don't know, he said.

Oh, aye, she said, her voice hardening again, I'll warrant she is. I never trusted that pair. She stood up again, peering out of the window, checking that no neighbours had seen or heard what she'd said. Stewart looked up at her, running his hands along the seams of his trousers, not knowing what more to say. In the kitchen, Donald poured out the tea and wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt.

Ivy took out a handkerchief and rubbed a smear of finger-grease from the window. She said, well, she's an adult now; she can do as she pleases. She turned away from the window, and as she left the room she said aye and she always was a handful anyway.

Stewart watched her go. He remembered when Hamish had left home, and the room had been full of people wishing him well on his way, chairs squeezed in around

the walls and barely any space to move. He looked at it now, and the small house felt suddenly huge. He had the feeling that if he called out to Ivy she would be too far away to hear him. He imagined he could hear floorboards creaking, and joists settling against brickwork, as though the house were subsiding after a storm. He imagined he could hear the echo of footsteps, fading away. Children's voices whispering into the distance.

He stood, and walked slowly through to the kitchen.

He said, Ivy, don't be too hard on the girl now, eh? He said, you've been doing that for too long.

23 Handwritten list of Coventry addresses, August 1968

No one ever said it out loud, but he knew that people thought he was rushing into things, acting carelessly, stupidly even. His friends, when he told them, all paused for a moment too long before offering their congratulations, as if they were checking that they'd heard him right, wondering who this girl Eleanor was even. His colleagues at work, when he gave out the invitations, read them and said oh, you're really going ahead with this then? And his mother, trying so hard not to say the wrong thing, not to make things between them any worse than they already were, still managed to say too much when she said but David, I'm just worried. I just want what's best for you.

And the front door slammed, again, and she noticed that the paint was starting to flake away around the edges of the frame.

Susan, being Susan and having a better idea than Dorothy of what not to say, asked him about it more disinterestedly: meeting him for a drink after work and saying so anyway, when did you ask her to marry you? How long did it take her to say yes? When is she coming down? Nodding and smiling when he said not long; saying oh I'm only joking when he refused to tell her whether he'd gone down on one knee. She waited a moment, reaching into her pocket for a packet of cigarettes muttering don't tell Mum as she lit one, and then she said so tell me about her anyway David. I mean you haven't said much. What's she like?

There were so many things he could have said.

He could have described the way she looked; she's shorter than me but not by much, she's got quite long hair, it's a kind of faded brown but it goes blonde in the sun and it falls across her face when she's daydreaming, she doesn't smile all that often but when she does the whole shape of her face changes, it gets rounder and softer, and her eyes are the colour of honey and her skin, her skin's so smooth it's like it's been polished by the cold north wind, and her body, I mean, her skinny hips her slip of a waist her pebble-round shoulders her smooth small breasts I mean I can't keep my hands to myself when I'm with her she's so warm and alive and she's just so I mean when she undresses I just want to applaud and do you know what I mean?