How It All Began

HOW
IT ALL
BEGAN

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

FICTION

Family Album

Consequences

Making It Up

The Photograph

Going Back

The Road to Lichfield

Treasures of Time

Judgment Day

Next to Nature, Art

Perfect Happiness

According to Mark

Pack of Cards and Other Stories

Moon Tiger

Passing On

City of the Mind

Cleopatra’s Sister

Heat Wave

Beyond the Blue Mountains

Spiderweb

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Oleander, Jacaranda: A Childhood Perceived

A House Unlocked

The Butterfly Effect was the reason. For small pieces of weather—and to a global forecaster small can mean thunderstorms and blizzards—any prediction deteriorates rapidly. Errors and uncertainties multiply, cascading upward through a chain of turbulent features, from dust devils and squalls up to continent-size eddies that only satellites can see.

—James Gleick, Chaos

HOW
IT ALL
BEGAN

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

T
he pavement rises up and hits her. Slams into her face, drives the lower rim of her glasses into her cheek. She is laid out there, prone. What is this? Voices are chattering above her; people are concerned. Of course.

Bag.

She says, “My bag.”

A face is alongside hers. Woman. Nice woman. “There’s an ambulance on the way, my dear. You’ll be fine. Just keep still till they come.”

Bag.

“Your shopping’s right here. The Sainsbury bag.”

No. Bag.

Bag is not. She’d known that somehow. Right away.

Another voice, up above. Man’s voice. “She’s been mugged, hasn’t she? That’s what it is.”

Ah.

Voices discuss. She is not much interested. Nee-naw, nee-naw, nee-naw. Here it is. Know for whom the bell tolls.

Expert hands: lifting, bundling. In the ambulance, she is on her side, in some sort of rigid tube. She hurts. Where is hurt? Don’t know. Anywhere. May as well try to sleep for a bit.

“Keep your eyes open, please. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Trolley-ride. On and on. Corridors. People passing. Right turn. Halt. More lifting. They take the tube away. She is on her back now.

Nurse. Smiling but business-like. Name? Address?

Those she can do. No problem.

Date of birth?

That too. Not a good date of birth. Rather a long time ago.

Next of kin?

Rose is not going to like this. It’s morning, isn’t it? Rose will be with his lordship.

Next of kin will be at work. Not bother her. Yet.

On Mondays, Rose arrived at the house later than usual, having stopped off at the bank to collect some cash for her employer and to pay in any checks that might have arrived the week before. Henry did not care to fiddle with cash dispensers and could not be doing with the electronic transfer of money. He insisted on paper in the hand, for minor payments such as lecture fees or book reviews. E-mail too was beyond his remit; Rose dealt with that. Probably Henry did not know how to turn on the computer. Though you wouldn’t put it past the old devil to be cruising cyberspace once she was out of the house, Googling old friends and enemies.

“I propose we drop Lord Peters and Mrs. Donovan, Rose. All right with you?” Her second week with him, way back, and actually it hadn’t been all right, not at first. She had called him “you” for months. He was after all her mother’s generation, never mind what else he was, or had been. She called some of her mother’s friends by their first names? Yes, but she’d known them all her life and they hadn’t been Regius Professors and head of Royal Commissions and adviser to a prime minister and what have you. String of letters after his name; people sometimes glancing at him, thinking: why do I know that face? Shirty enough if anyone looked like taking liberties: “Curt letter, Rose, saying Lord Peters does not provide puffs for other people’s books, and if you’re feeling expansive you could add that no, Lord P. does not recall his conversation with the author in 1993.”

Well, in ten years a relationship tends to solidify. The newly retired, brisk and self-important Henry for whom she had first come to work had mutated into a querulous, though still self-important, seventy-six-year-old with a gammy knee, a high consumption of claret and certain unpredictable behavior patterns. You trod carefully. Occasionally you considered chucking in the job. Except that it was extremely convenient, he’d always paid a nice little bit above the odds, and you never knew what might happen, which was better than a desk in an office. And at the beginning, it had been the answer to a prayer: part-time, mornings only, she could be home to get the children from school, free to be theirs for the rest of the day.

Now, of course, that wouldn’t matter—James in Singapore, Lucy at college.

Over half an hour late. There had been a long wait at the bank, to get that check in. He’ll be tetchy. Opening the post himself, grunting over each sheet of paper. Or purring: “Rather a nice letter from Cornell, Rose. They want to give me an honorary degree. What do you think—shall we go over and collect it?”

He did not like to travel alone now. From time to time she was prevailed upon to escort him. Swings and roundabouts: you got a trip to somewhere you wouldn’t otherwise have been; but the trip was with him, who could be a pain. One became “Mrs. Donovan, my PA,” and there was a lot of hanging about and making small-talk to strangers or no talk at all. The hotels could be a bit of a treat. And because someone else was paying it, was business flights, or first-class rail.

She walked the last few hundred yards away from the bustling road and onto his leafy quiet street with the smart white stucco houses. Expensive houses. Academics are not usually well-heeled, apparently, but Henry’s father had been some sort of industrialist; money had filtered down to Henry—hence the house in a grandish part of London. Distinctly grand if you yourself live in a semi in Enfield, and grew up modestly enough in the suburbs of St. Albans, daughter of two teachers. Henry was kindly patronizing about her parentage, on occasion: “Accounts for your exemplary syntax, Rose. Breeding will out.”

Her mother had ever been crisp about Henry. His lordship.
Needless to say, they had never met. Her mother was entertained by the stories that Rose could tell of his lifestyle and his remarks—gleeful, indeed, sometimes—but Rose was well aware that she considered the job menial. Rose could have done better than that. The subject was never raised—comment and counter-comment remained unspoken: “Literate, numerate, efficient—there’d have been all sorts of options”; “But I never
wanted
a career. I
chose
this.”

And thus had one chosen Henry also, though unwittingly, a blind date as it were. Face to face at that initial interview, across the now so familiar large desk with the tooled leather top: he seems nice enough; rather grand, lovely house, never seen so many books (thought
we
had quite a few); salary’s good, actually.

“Do sit down, Mrs. Donovan. Suppose I start by outlining my requirements.”

Correspondencea…diary…travel arrangements…protect me from the telephone…my memoirs.

My memoirs.
My Memoirs
were but a gleam in his eye then, and remained so for several years. Only relatively recently—“Commitments thank goodness, being less consuming”—has the spiel gathered pace, the handwritten sheets waiting each day for her to type them up. “Here you go, Rose, this morning’s offering. You may be amused at what I have to say about Harold Wilson.” Chuckle, chuckle. There’ll be quite a few people distinctly unamused when the spiel at last achieves publication; good thing Harold Wilson’s dead.

“Now tell me a bit about yourself, Mrs. Donovan.”

What had one told? Secretarial experience, period as PA to a company chairman (who tried to put his hand up my skirt, so I walked out, but no need to tell that), five-year break for family reasons.

Henry does not have children. Dear me, no. A dad figure he is not. Never a wife, either. But not gay, it would seem. There have been ladies, occasionally wined and dined or taken to the theater, but clearly none have managed to adhere. So Henry is a lone spirit. He had a sister, who died a few years ago, and he appears to have some affection for her daughter, Marion, who is a businesswoman and visits from time to time.

About once a year Henry remembers to ask after James and Lucy.
He never displays interest—assumed or otherwise—in Gerry, who is evidently beyond his horizon. “Ah, your husband…” in vaguely baffled tone, when once Rose mentioned him (with pneumonia, as it happened, requiring unusual attention).

Gerry is not interested in Henry, either. Gerry is interested in local government, carpentry, sacred music and a spot of coarse fishing. Gerry is fine. Who’d want a husband who would run you ragged?

She climbed the steps to that handsome black front door with the pillared portico, took out her keys, opened, entered. She went through to her own office, hung up her coat, removed the cash from her bag, and knocked on the study door.

“Come in, come in.” Tetchy, yes. “Ah, there you are. A whole lot of stuff from the insurance company that I don’t understand and don’t want to. Deal with it, would you? Some other bits and pieces we can see to together—here’s a fellow I barely remember asking if I’ll stand as a referee. He’s got a nerve. The rail tickets for the Manchester trip have come. Why are we going so early? Nine-thirty at Euston. Christ!”