Read So Many Ways to Begin Online
Authors: Jon McGregor
33
Pill bottles, prescriptions;
dated variously 1973-1987
There were some things which should have been kept hidden from view. Pill bottles. Prescriptions. Days spent in downcast silence, days spent refusing to leave the house. These were things which shouldn't have been discussed. But it was difficult to lie, always, when someone said and how's your wife, what's her name again, Eleanor? Haven't seen her for a while, is she okay? It was difficult to always shrug and say oh, she's fine, you know, not working at the moment but she's fine.
He was having lunch with a colleague at work when he found himself saying she's not so good actually Anna, she's not very well at all. He hadn't expected to say it, and he regretted it almost as soon as he had. Anna put the remains of her sandwich down and looked up at him, leaning a little closer.
Oh, she said, lowering her voice, what's wrong? He was embarrassed, immediately, and he wished he hadn't said anything.
No, he said, no, it's nothing really, I mean, it's nothing serious. She's just been feeling a bit under the weather lately, you know. She pushed her plate to one side and wiped her mouth with a paper napkin.
David, she said, reaching across the table and touching his arm, it's more than that, isn't it?
No, he said, really, thanks. I shouldn't have said anything, sorry. He moved his arm away. She stood up.
Oh, she said, okay. Well, if there is anything. I mean, if you need to talk about something. He nodded, looking down at the table, looking at her crumpled napkin smeared with lipstick and food.
Thanks, he said. I will.
It's hard to explain, Eleanor insisted, when he asked. She said, you know if you're on the phone and something distracts you, like someone outside the phone box or something on the TV and suddenly you can't concentrate? I mean you're listening but you just you can't quite hear what they're saying on the other end of the line. I mean, you can hear the words but you can't put them in order, you can't make them make sense, you know? It's like that. It's like there's always something distracting me but I don't know what it is, she said. It's like I just feel distant from everything and I don't know how to get back.
He tried so many things to make her better. He tried taking her for walks, day trips, dinners out. He bought her flowers, presents, bottles of wine. None of it did any good, but he couldn't help trying.
She said it's not you, it's me. She said, I'm sorry there's nothing you can do. She pushed him away. She wrapped her arms around her legs and buried her face in her lap.
What do you want me to do? he asked.
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 moment 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.
He said, I should tell you something; I've been meaning to tell you for a while. He said, I've been speaking to your brother a little, to Donald, on the phone. She jolted, as if she'd brushed her hand against a stinging nettle, and she said oh? Yes? What have you told him?
Just, how things are, he said. That we're well. That you were working but you're not at the moment, bits and pieces. He asked me to say hello, he added. He wanted you to know that everyone's okay, that any time you wanted to get in touch you'd be welcome. He told me your dad's been ill but he's okay now.
They walked on, reaching a stile between two fields, and she turned to him as she climbed over it.
You didn't tell him where we were at all? she asked.
Well, no, David said, only that we were living in Coventry.
You didn't give them our address though? Our phone number? David shook his head.
I didn't think you'd want me to, he said.
I don't, she said. Promise me you won't, will you? He nodded.
Of course, he said. She jumped down from the stile, stumbling as she landed, and stood looking out across the rise of the field, over towards a strip of woodland with a church tower rising behind it. She brushed dry mud and grass from her hands and made a noise that sounded like the beginning of a laugh.
You don't mind that I rang him then? he asked.
No, she said, I don't suppose so. But I don't want to speak to them myself. Not yet.
He climbed over the stile and jumped down beside her, and almost without meaning to he carried the conversation further.
He said, but when do you think you will? When do you think you'll want to see them again?
She said, don't ask me that. Come on David, don't say things like that.
He said, don't you think you should at least write and tell them you're okay?
And she said, utterly unexpectedly, I have done.
A letter when she first got to Coventry, a photograph of their wedding, a Christmas card once or twice. The envelopes addressed only to her father, the messages brief and uninformative: I am well; I hope you all are well; take care. She told him this, and he wondered if there would ever be a time when they knew everything there was to know about each other.
And it was after this, walking away from the stile and up over the hill to the woods, once the echo of her confession had faded, that something slipped inside him. Perhaps because they were suddenly talking about these things, perhaps because she was answering him so calmly and firmly, in a way that made it seem fine to be talking that way at all, perhaps because he felt some kind of safety in being out of sight in the field there, with a barely clouded sky overhead and the slow groan of a tractor three hedgerows away; something slipped and he felt a rush of tears rising to the surface like bubbles of air bursting through him as he turned to her and said:
Eleanor I can't stand it she's out there somewhere and I don't know where she is or who she is or why she did it and I need to know Eleanor I so so so want to know what am I going to do why can't I know I need—
And she turned to him, immediately, and he was still speaking as he bowed his head into her embrace, and her whole body shook with the force of his shuddering tears. She didn't need to ask him what he meant, and there was nothing more she could say than I know David, I know, I'm sorry, I know.
It was the first time he'd said these things so clearly, and it was years before he said them again.
After a few minutes he lifted his head, wiped his face and said nothing more. She slipped her arm around his and they walked on, leaning together into the rise of the hill, climbing up to the small patch of woodland and out into the village. They found a bus stop at the edge of the village green, and he noticed the shop window of the potter's gallery and wandered over to have a look, and bought the vase. They went home, and although it was years before they went out to the countryside again, she did at least seem to be better for a time; leaving the house, talking about university again, letting the pills gather dust in the bathroom cabinet. He dared to hope that that might be the end of it, that they could go back to the way things were always meant to have been; so when she went back on to the medication after Christmas, dulled and shaken by a higher dosage, he began to feel that things might never really change, that this was the life he'd stumbled into, that he was trapped by something he could neither understand nor control.