Read So Many Ways to Begin Online
Authors: Jon McGregor
20
Examination results, Scottish Highers, July 1967
A single sheet of paper, slightly larger than letter-size, an expensive-looking rough-grained texture with a circular watermark just visible about halfway down the page. The name of the examinations board at the top, an address, a reference number. An official seal at the bottom, lipstick red and frilled at the edges. A ruled table with columns for subject, paper, date, and grade. The thick black type that can change a life. The paper held delicately, at arm's length, as though creasing it or tearing it would invalidate what it said. As though the ink were still wet and could be smudged or removed.
She hadn't got any sleep the night before it came, she told him. He imagined her sitting up all night, drinking cocoa and trying not to think about it. Sitting in the kitchen, sitting in the front room, in her father's chair, standing out in the backyard, looking down at the lights in the harbour, softened and wavering in the warm night air.
She didn't want to open it when it came, she said. She heard the letter box go and she sat in the kitchen and she didn't move. The envelope landed with a tap and a skid across the smooth stone floor, and it was a minute before she stalked out of the kitchen with a butter-knife at the ready to slit open the envelope. The brown paper broke into two rows of jagged teeth. She slid out the letter and unfolded the clean white sheet.
She didn't know what she was expecting. For months she'd been going over it in her head, going backwards and forwards, convincing herself she'd passed, convincing herself she'd failed. She didn't know what was going to happen. She didn't know what she wanted to happen. It was new territory; her staying on at school at all had been new territory for the whole family. Her mother had left school at fourteen to work at Williamson's, learning to gut and split and fillet the heavy flat fish with vicious speed, salting and carrying them into the field and spreading them out like great white sheets in the sun to dry. Her father had left school at eleven to help his father's friend in the shipyard at the bottom of the hill; there was a photo of him from soon after he'd started there, half-hidden in a group of hard-looking men all bristling with moustaches and hammers and tongs, his small eyes shut tight against the blaze of the flashgun, his cap a few sizes too big for him still. So they didn't understand, either of them, what Eleanor had been doing at school those last few years, why she'd carried on fussing with books and things when she could have been bringing money into the house.
She unfolded the sheet of clean white paper, and read the words in thick black type.
Chemistry, B. English,
C.
Geography, B. Mathematics,
C.
Physics, B.
She read the words over and over, holding the paper up to the light, a pale gasp of excitement breaking out from her pursed lips. The first in the family to stop on at school, and now the first in the family, the first in the street, to go on to university. She refolded the paper and put it back into the jagged-toothed envelope. She propped it up on the kitchen table, leaning it against the empty cocoa mug, staring at it, checking her name and address on the front. She didn't know what to do straight away, who to tell, whether to have a drink and celebrate, whether to start packing her bags there and then.
All the different ways there were of leaving home, and the one she'd chosen had finally settled within reach. Her first brother, away with the merchant navy before she was even born. Her second and third brothers married. Her sister, gone with a story that no one ever spoke of. And now her, with a place waiting at Edinburgh University, ready to slip out of the house for good.
She heard footsteps on the wooden stairs and her mother came into the room, standing just inside the doorway, looking at her. What's that you've got there? she asked, her voice a little slow with sleep.
Eh? It's just a letter from the school, Eleanor said, leaning over it slightly. Is Da awake? she asked. Is he up yet?
No, he's still sleeping for now, her mother said, walking across to the kettle and filling it with water. What's the letter for? she asked. Eleanor turned round in her chair.
It's the results, she told her. Ivy put the kettle on top of the stove.
Oh aye? she said. I didn't know you were expecting those. There was a creaking from upstairs, the sound of someone getting out of bed, footsteps across the floor. So what does it say? Ivy asked. Eleanor listened for the steps to come downstairs. She glanced up at the ceiling, and at her mother, and at the empty doorway. Well? her mother said. Eleanor handed over the piece of paper in its thin brown envelope.
It's good, she said quietly, pre-emptively, watching her mother's eyes scan over the words. Or she didn't say anything, and looked the other way.
Ivy read the sheet of paper, nodded, and made an mmhmm sound in the back of her throat. Oh aye, she said. Stewart came into the room and looked at them both expectantly. Ivy handed him the sheet of paper and went back upstairs. Will you make that pot of tea? she said, as she left the room. Eleanor watched her go, unsure whether to be shocked or not, waiting to see if she would come back and say anything more. Her father looked at the results and let out a long low whistle, breaking into a shuffling jig around the kitchen table, pulling Eleanor into a tight and startling embrace, rushing to get dressed and knock on the neighbours' doors, launching a day of toasts and hugs and hearty thumps on the back - and never you mind what your mother thinks, he whispered to her at one point, wonderfully - a day in which the letter would take pride of place on the front-room mantelpiece, repeatedly taken down and unfolded and passed around from hand to careful hand.
And by six o'clock, when the front room was crowded full, the men still in their workclothes and the women quickly changed out of their aprons and headscarves into something a little smarter, their glasses full to the brim, and the conversations falling round to work and weather and sport, she managed to slip out of the house to the telephone box, dialling the number she still had scribbled on a paper napkin from work.
It was the first time she'd actually phoned him. After all their letters, and after all the times they'd spent together, it was still somehow unexpected. Her voice sounded strange and thin, coming all that way down the line while he stood in the entrance hall of the house, twisting the cable in his hand and glaring at his sister who had come down from upstairs to look at him accusingly.
That's bloody brilliant Eleanor, he said when she told him the news, and his excitement was as much from her phoning at all as from what she had to say. Her voice, breaking into his neat house like that, made him feel as though he were passing some kind of test. I knew you'd do it, he said.
Oh, she said, and then she was quiet for a moment. I've been waiting for someone to say that all day, she said.
She told him everything that had happened, how she'd waited a few moments to open the letter, how she'd hoped her father would see it first, how she hadn't really been surprised by her mother's reaction, and as her money started to run out, she said quickly, so you'll be coming up to see me again soon, aye? I'll see if I can't arrange for my folks to go away again, she said slyly. And he grinned and said you do that as the line went dead.
He sat on the bottom of the stairs for a minute, holding the warm receiver in his hand, looking out through the still open front door. His mother had gone outside with a pair of shears and her gardening gloves, and was busily cutting the hedge. She hacked at it with loose, stabbing gestures, letting the cut branches fall around her, stopping now and again to wipe the backs of her wrists across her eyes, glancing at him through the doorway once or twice. He put the phone down and went upstairs.
21
Train ticket, Aberdeen-Coventry (single),
15 September 1968
Eleanor took a model wooden boat from her bottom drawer, wrapped it in an old piece of newspaper, folded it into a navy-blue sweater, and tucked it down into a corner of the suitcase. She pressed folded skirts and blouses around it, a pair of shoes stuffed with balled-up socks and stockings, a handful of knickers, a pair of blue jeans, a dress still wrapped in the dry-cleaner's bag. She packed her field notes and sketches, her textbooks, her washbag, a packet of tissues, a hairbrush which had once belonged to her sister. She packed a magazine, a pillowcase, an envelope full of photographs and a thick bundle of letters, and when she pressed the lid down and forced the catch closed there was still plenty left that she wanted to squeeze in. Her father appeared in the doorway.
You all done there then petal? he asked, his head angling towards her and his thick eyebrows crinkling upwards. She looked at him a moment and tried a smile.
Aye, I think so, she said, as much as this case can manage anyhow, and she pushed on the lid to make sure the catches weren't going to burst open and spring her possessions back out into the room. She stood by the window, looking out down the street, towards the harbour. Stewart sat down on the chair in the corner of the room.
What time's he here? he asked.
About five, she said, looking at her watch.
Not be long now then, he said, folding his arms.
No, she said, not long.
Stewart must have sat in that room before, watching a son or a daughter pack up and leave, and now he was having to watch the last of his children go through the same routine; looking around for something forgotten, stroking the hair on the back of the head, not being able to look him in the eye. It was no easier now, surely, than the first time must have been.
You're not going for long then? he said. Just for a week or so?
No, she said, not long.
And you're sure you don't want to wait for your mother to come home first? She'll be awful surprised. Eleanor shook her head.
The train will go before she comes back, she said. She won't be back from work until six.
No, he said, I know. He narrowed his eyes, briefly, and she turned away, embarrassed, looking out of the window again.
It's not five yet, is it? he asked.
No, she said; I just wanted to be sure. He stood, slowly, lifting himself to his unsteady feet by pushing on the wooden arms of the chair, and picked up the suitcase.
Well, he said, puffing a little, let's at least get you all downstairs and ready for the young man. You sure you've got everything in here? he asked again, moving awkwardly towards the door and the top of the stairs. Eleanor tried to take the case from him.
I'll be alright with that Da, she said, let me take it. He put it down and turned to her, breathing heavily, and said now Eleanor, you're not out that front door yet. She didn't say anything. She looked at the floor and nodded, or she looked straight at him and tried to say all the things she was feeling, or she turned to the window again. He picked up the case and went downstairs, one heavy step at a time, clutching on to the handrail, stopping twice to get his wind, and by the time he got to the bottom his breath was pinched and loud. Eleanor stood in her room, trying not to listen, looking at the two neatly made beds, the chest of drawers, the wardrobe, the chair in the corner, the window.
He was sitting in his armchair in the corner when she got downstairs, wiping his forehead with a white handkerchief, the suitcase squatting in the middle of the room. She stood in the doorway. The street outside was quiet, the children and their families away to the beach, and the only sounds in the room were the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece, the softening wheeze of her father's breath. They heard hurried footsteps outside, and a knock at the door, and they looked at each other.
That'll be David then, she said, and he nodded.
He was standing in the entranceway at home when she told him what had happened, just as he'd been standing there when she'd told him about her exam results a year earlier, fiddling with the address book and pens on the phone shelf, the last of the evening's light falling through the glass panels of the front door. It took him a while to understand what she was saying, her words not making sense even once he'd told her to slow down and start again.
But she can't do that, he said. It's not up to her; she can't just not let you go. Eleanor sighed impatiently, and it was years before he realised just how wrong he'd been. He heard her dropping more coins into the slot, and she said so what am I going to do?
She'd come in from supper, she told him, a bit later than usual because she'd been round the shops with Heather after work. There's something we need to discuss, her mother had said, as she sat down at the table, and straight away she'd heard something in that voice, in those words, something she was more than used to. She'd turned to her father, but he'd looked down at his empty plate and said only, are you not going to wash your hands before you come to the table now? She got up from her chair, washed and dried her hands at the sink, and sat down again, and as she did so her mother took a large white envelope from her lap and slid a stapled bundle of papers from it. A letter came for you from Edinburgh, from the university, she said.
It's not the first time she's done that David, Eleanor told him. I wasn't surprised about that part of it at all.
It's a list of all the things you'll be wanting when you start down there, her mother said. It's an awful long list. There's a couple dozen books and some of them are costing near ten bob each. Eleanor caught her father glancing up at her, and she could see already what was happening. You'll need a set of bedlinen for your room, her mother said, and a whole lot of stationery. And you know what else? It says here you'll be needing formal wear on occasion. On occasion!
She said all this, she told him, with a voice put on, a voice Eleanor described as her airs and graces voice.
So tell me, her mother went on, since you're the bright spark of the family now, where were you planning on finding formal evening wear, and bedlinen, and all those books? How were you thinking we were going to pay for it all? Because I don't think a year's worth of serving teas has quite covered it, has it now? She leant towards Eleanor, lowering her voice. Or had you not given it any thought, eh? she said.
The food was ready on the table. A large brown casserole dish on a mat in front of Stewart, steam piping out of the small hole in the lid. Butter melting over the hot salted potatoes in their bowl. Half a loaf of bread ready to be cut on the board, and no one touching a thing. Eleanor looked back at her mother, and perhaps allowed herself a smile as she saw a way around all these objections. Or perhaps she didn't dare smile. Perhaps she sat lower in her chair, dropping her gaze from the cold stillness of her mother's eyes.
There's a grant will pay for that, she said, quietly, or proudly, or defiantly. They give you a grant for all your expenses.
I thought that would be enough David, she said, her voice stumbling and rushing down the phone line towards him. I thought she'd maybe smile or say that's okay then at least, she said.
But instead there was her mother's hand cracking down on to the table, a flinch from both Eleanor and her father, her mother's voice cutting sharply into the room, saying this family has never taken charity and it's not about to start off now.
It's not charity, replied Eleanor, and David imagined that there were already tears in her eyes as she realised how soon the conversation would be over. It's a grant, she said. Everyone gets one, she said.
She'd worked a year for this, saving her wages from the tea room and working spare shifts at the social club so that her mother wouldn't have this excuse, couldn't say these things, and it seemed impossible that it would all come to nothing now, that the plans she'd made so carefully were not going to work out. She'd studied the prospectus so many times it was falling apart; she had a room booked in the halls of residence, and a suitcase ready to pack, and textbooks already bought. She'd been waiting a year for this, she'd been waiting her whole life for this.
It's a grant, she said again, hopelessly. Everyone gets one.
A couple of times before, waiting together at the station for his train, he'd said why don't you come with me, only half as a joke, and both times she'd been cross and said he wasn't to say that, it wasn't funny, it wasn't fair. But that August evening, with Eleanor waiting on the end of a 400-mile phone line, with the sunlight pouring through the frosted glass, with all the bearings he'd always taken for granted so recently pulled away, he saw with absolute clarity that it could be as easy as saying the words. That things can sometimes happen just because you ask them to.
What am I going to do? she asked him again.
He walked from the train station to her house in a slight daze, uncertain of what was going to happen, or whether he was even doing the right thing. The harbour quays seemed quieter than usual, the road less busy. A trawler headed towards the mouth, the low sputter of its engine floating back across the water. From somewhere on the north side came the sound of hammer on sheet steel, ringing through the afternoon. The still dry air was salted with the smell of fish and diesel and rusting iron. He got to the bridge, and crossed over the Dee into Torry, stopping a moment to wipe the sweat from his face, his hands, the back of his neck.
He walked up the hill, quickening his pace as he got closer, anxious to get it over with. There were very few people around, and his footsteps sounded out loudly along the narrow street. The front-room window of her house was open when he got there, and as he knocked on the door he heard her voice through the net curtain saying that'll be David then, and her father muttering something in brief reply.
He didn't go inside. He waited by the door, listening to their low voices, listening to her footsteps clattering quickly up and down the stairs, and then she wras there, ready, with him. Stewart met his eyes just once, as the three of them stood there shuffling their feet.
David, he said, nodding.
Afternoon Mr Campbell, he replied, as though they were bumping into one another in the street, as though it wouldn't be long before they saw each other again. He picked up Eleanor's suitcase. He said, well. He turned away, while Eleanor said goodbye to her father, and then he walked with her back down the hill.