So Many Ways to Begin

Nothing, she said, her voice muffled against her skin and her hair. I want left alone, please; there's not anything you can do.

She said, I don't know what it is David. But don't worry, I'll be fine. Smiling as she said it, looking up at him, the ends of her cardigan sleeves unpicked and frayed, a wet tissue clenched in her fist.

These were things which shouldn't have been discussed, no matter how often someone said, are you sure? or, is every thing really okay? or, you shouldn't keep these things bottled up you know. But he sat with Anna on the bus and he told her about it.

She seems to change so completely when she's like that, he said; I hardly recognise her. She's always been so fearless and now she's terrified of even leaving the house. Speaking quietly, so that no one else would hear. So that Anna had to lean closer to listen to what

he was saying. I want to fix things for her but it just seems to upset her when I try, he said. It feels like it's my fault but I don't know what I've done.

Anna had a way of looking at him while he said these things, then, and later, her head tilting slightly to one side, her eyes widening, her front teeth biting sympathetically into her bottom lip. It was a way of looking which made him feel better about the things he was saying, even as it made him feel guilty for saying them to her.

I'm sure it's not you, she said.

The pill bottles were bigger than any he'd seen as a child; translucent brown, as big as a fist, three months' supply at once to save the trouble of too many trips to the surgery. The pills were small and colourless, stamped with illegible codes and offering no clue as to what was inside them or what function they might perform.

The prescriptions were always identical: a date, Eleanor's name and the name of the drug, the doctor's signature, all written in the same frenzied scrawl which suggested the sheet had been torn from the pad even as the prescription was being written. Which perhaps it had, the words inscribed as she went in through the consulting-room door, the doctor standing and saying hello Mrs Carter and what can we do for you today, nodding and mmmhmming as he handed over the illegible paper, saying perhaps you should try and get more sleep, more exercise, find a new hobby, saying he'd see her again in three months' time.

Each day she came down for breakfast the first thing she would do was reach for the pills, shaking one out into the palm of her hand, a blank puzzled look in her eyes, while he stood at the sink and poured her a glass of water. She would swallow it with a hard gulp and a wince and only then think about starting the day, eating something perhaps, having a hot drink, even getting dressed, as the colourless pills sank down inside her, turning over, breaking open, spilling their powdery cargo into her stunned bloodstream. Each time he would want to stop her, his hands fat and useless by his sides; each pill felt like a failure on his part, like something he hadn't done for her, another mark of his inability to help. But he would watch, to be certain she'd taken them, and then he would pick up his briefcase and head out for work, kissing her lightly on the cheek or the top of the head, saying goodbye and take care and I'll be back soon while she gazed flatly at the window or the wall.

Sometimes she would still be in bed when he was ready to leave and he didn't have the time, or the energy, to persuade her out from under those heavy covers, into a dressing gown and down the steep stairs. He would bring the pills up to her instead, and ask her to please at least sit up. Sometimes she would only stare emptily back at him, and he would have to prod a tablet into her mouth with his thumb, holding the glass of water up to her lips. He would open the curtains, slam the door, and call out his pointless goodbyes from the bottom of the stairs.

Sometimes when he came home he would find that she hadn't eaten all day, and couldn't be persuaded to eat any tea, and he would look on helplessly as she poked at the food on the plate and said that she really couldn't eat a thing.

Sometimes she would stay up all night, unable to sleep, watching television or reading in the spare room or staring out of the window with tears pouring down her face in the dark.

This isn't me though David, she said to him once, despairingly. This isn't what I'm like. She waved a hand around the bedroom, at the heaped bedclothes, the empty mugs, the drawn curtains. I thought I was tougher than this, she said, I really did.

But mostly she denied there was even a problem. It's nothing, she'd say, when he asked. I'm okay, really, I'm fine. I just need some rest. Or she'd say it's not you, there's nothing you can do. I just want to be left alone a while.

But there were things he could do, and he did them. He took her to the doctor's. He made sure she swallowed the pills. He cooked her meals, usually badly, often burning the sausages or letting the vegetables boil dry, but he cooked them and served them and encouraged her to eat when all she seemed to want to put in her mouth were the bitten ends of her fingernails. He opened the curtains when she tried to leave them closed, walked with her to the end of the street, the park, the shops, trying to help her push back the boundaries of the world that had closed in around her like a clenched fist. He asked her what she was afraid of when she went outside. You never used to be worried, he said. You know this area now, what could happen to you out there?

Anything could happen, she said, her eyes wide and unblinking, looking up at him as if it was important that he understood. Anything could happen out there.

And he found himself talking to Anna about it more and more often, feeling even as he did so that there was something underhand or deceitful about telling her these things, but unable to keep himself from saying the words. She was alright for a while but she's back on the prescription now.

I'm sure she'd feel better if she got out of the house more. Standing in the doorway of her office, always on the way to somewhere else, just stopping for a quick hello. Or noticing that they both happened to be working later than everyone else, and popping his head round the door to see if she was okay, to see if she wanted a hand with anything, to see if she was alright for getting home. Walking around the building together, checking the lights and the windows and saying she's always got an excuse for not going out; that's the thing Anna, there's always some reason. I don't know if it's me, or something to do with her family. I don't know what she's scared of.

Maybe you just have to be patient, Anna said, looking out at the cars passing along the street outside. I mean, it's an illness, isn't it? Maybe you just have to wait for her to get better. And it can't be easy either, she added, turning to him, losing touch with your family and everything like that. Maybe it's just caught up with her and it's taking some getting used to. He smiled tiredly.

No, he said, I know, of course. It's just sometimes, I wish. He unlocked the main front door. Sorry, he said. I should get back. Are you catching the bus?

No, she said, I've got some work to finish off here.

Right then, he said. See you tomorrow.

Yes, she said. See you tomorrow. She locked the door behind him and they looked at each other through the glass for a short moment before he turned and walked away.

34 Small vase, handmade by unknown Warwickshire potter, 1974

The vase was still on their kitchen windowsill now, empty. And each time he looked at it he was reminded of the day he'd bought it, when they'd gone out walking and talked about things that were usually left unspoken, and had seemed to bridge the gap which had grown between them; when they'd walked from the clapboard bus shelter across fields waiting to be cut, the ripened stalks crackling against their legs, over stiles and gates and narrow streams, through a small patch of woodland which opened out into the next village, Eleanor picking flowers along the way; when he'd noticed the small narrow-necked vase with the cracked blue glaze in the window of a potter's gallery by the village green, and bought it for her while they waited for the next bus home; when, back at home, he'd watched her peel off its veils of white tissue paper and set it on the kitchen windowsill, the delicate and still warm flowers rising out from its mouth towards the light.

It was late August. He'd persuaded her out of the house, out of Coventry, out to the open country between Warwick and Stratford, to walk and sit and breathe fresh clean air together. The air was thick with drowsy warmth and distant traffic, the huzz and hover of blur-winged insects, the sentry song of a lofted lark. He looked at Eleanor walking beside him, and although he knew they'd only be here for a few hours, it felt like an achievement to have got out of town at all. They'd already seen dragonflies, and butterflies, and even the flash of a kingfisher hurtling along the stream, and he'd noticed Eleanor's hands unclenching, her shoulders losing some of their anxious hunch. An unfamiliar contentment washed through him as they walked together, quietly, slowly.

He said it reminds me of when we first met, don't you think? All those walks we used to go on, down along the coast and places. She smiled and nodded, and for a momen

t he had to stop walking, caught out by how long ago that suddenly seemed, how much older they both already were. He stopped her, put his hands against her hips, her shoulders, her cheeks, tilting her face towards him, looking at her. She laughed, embarrassedly, as if to say what, what are you doing? He studied her. There were no lines on her skin, no wisps of grey hair, but she was no longer the girl she'd been when they met. She'd put on weight over the last year or so, and her body felt different against his touch. There was a tiredness in her face, a weatheredness, as he realised there must now be in his own, and although he thought she was as beautiful as he had always done, it shocked him to realise how much time had passed since they'd first met, how the months had become years and the years had slid ungraspably away.

She looked at him, wondering what he was thinking. He kissed her face, and lowered his hands.