So Many Ways to Begin

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.