Читать книгу So Many Ways to Begin - Jon McGregor - Страница 11

It was his father’s idea to move to Coventry. He heard that from his mother, more than once, sitting around the kitchen table while his father read the evening paper and grumbled about some factory closure or rates increase. It was your father’s idea to move here, she’d say, to David and Susan, pretending that she thought he couldn’t hear. Or he heard it from their bedroom late at night, their tempered voices breaking through the thin walls and closed doors; this was your idea remember Albert, not mine. To which his father usually replied that they’d otherwise still be squatting in Julia’s bloody spare room and how would she like that then, eh?

Julia had been Dorothy’s closest friend at nursing college, despite being a few years older and more familiar with silver cutlery or linen tablecloths than anyone Dorothy knew. She’d been widowed early on in the war, and her young son Laurence was living with her brother in the country, so when she offered Dorothy lodgings in her house she claimed that it was as much to keep her from getting lonely as anything. You’ll be doing me a favour dear, she said, and she refused to let Dorothy even think of finding somewhere else to live once Susan was born, or David, or even when Albert came back from the war for good, and Laurence returned from the country, and there were six of them squeezed into the house and making do. It hadn’t always been easy, especially once Laurence came back and began to compete noisily for his mother’s attention. But the house was big enough, just, and Julia generous enough, that they could easily still have been living there had Albert not heard about the houses being offered in Coventry for building workers, or had Dorothy not secretly done all that she could to encourage him.

They went back to Auntie Julia’s house now and again, once a year if they could, using the postal orders she sent to pay the fares; David and Susan wearing their Sunday clothes and watching the train rattle past the newly built suburbs of Coventry, the long reaches of wasteground, the farms and woodlands and market towns which soon gave way to the smoke and noise of London. Look, that’s where I went to school, his father would say, as they walked from the underground station to Julia’s house, squeezing David’s hand to get his attention, pointing to a tall high-windowed Victorian building; and this is where I took my first job, a few moments later, as they passed a builder’s yard with a few small piles of bricks and sand and waste timber. This is where your grandparents lived, he’d add quickly, gesturing at an open scrap of wasteland between two houses; that’s where I grew up. And this is where we all used to live, his mother would say, as they rounded the last corner into Julia’s street, David and Susan both slipping out of their parents’ hands in a race to reach the house first, stretching up to reach the doorbell before Julia, who would always be looking out for them, swung open the door.

Their visits usually followed the same pattern. Julia would have lunch waiting for them – cucumber sandwiches, sliced meats, fruit pies, all laid out on the big table by the window, with Laurence hovering sullenly while he waited for permission to begin – and once they’d eaten Albert would make some excuse and slip out to see old friends in the pub, leaving the women to talk and the children to get down and play. It was a tall and narrow terraced house, with three floors and a cellar, and although the rooms were small and crammed full of Julia’s many possessions, there was plenty of space to explore. Sometimes Susan and David would play together, or with Laurence, while Julia and Dorothy did the washing up and chattered about grown-up things; playing hide and seek up and down the three flights of stairs, making handkerchief parachutes for Susan’s dolls and dropping them with a quick thud from the top landing, daring each other to creep down into the dark cellar. Sometimes they’d play apart, allocating each other a floor of the house and muttering their imaginary narratives around cars and teacups and soldiers and dolls. And sometimes they’d make so much noise, encroaching on each other’s games or flaring up over some half-imagined slight, that Auntie Julia or their mother would give them some money and some coupons to go to the sweet shop, telling them to run off some of their silliness in the park. Laurence never came to the park with them, and often ignored them altogether, barricading himself in his room to read comics or listen to the crystal radio set he’d built himself. He was five years older than David, so it almost didn’t seem strange that he would keep himself apart like that, although sometimes he heard his mother complain about it on the way home, saying well Laurence was a bit rude, a bit sulky, nothing like his mother, and didn’t Albert think Julia should be doing something about it?

Dorothy was up on her feet before he’d even opened the door, reaching for him, saying David David love, what happened? Lifting him into her arms, kissing the top of his head and wiping his eyes with a handkerchief, saying oh David, it’s okay, it’s alright, what’s happened to you? And by the time she’d sat him down on a chair to have a good look at him, Julia had taken a wad of cotton wool from her useful drawer, and a bottle of antiseptic from the cupboard, and set them on the table.

She asked him again what had happened. There were some big boys, he said, in the park, and he didn’t manage to say much more through his sniffs and juddering tears. He didn’t say that they’d asked him what he was doing in their park, that they’d told him he wasn’t from round there and to get lost, that one of them had pushed him off the swing and that another had thrown stones while he was running away, that he’d tripped and fallen and they’d all laughed. He was already learning that some things were easier not to say.

This is going to hurt a little now David, his mother said, as she dabbed antiseptic on to his broken skin. He nodded, wincing, sucking the breath in between his teeth, and when she was done he said are we going home soon? and his mother said yes love, we are, we’ll go soon, but why don’t you have a lie down first, have a little rest, okay?

And while David lay in the bed in one of Julia’s spare rooms, a cool damp cloth folded across his forehead, and while Susan went up to see him, to offer him something from her thruppenny bag of sweets and say are you alright? I’m sorry I left you in the park, and while David thought about it for a moment and said that’s okay, Dorothy was wiping at tears of her own with the same handkerchief she’d offered David a few moments before, sitting down on the chair and smiling up at Julia, saying well, you can’t always be there with them, can you?

No dear, Julia said, sitting down next to her. You can’t.

It’s a good job I wasn’t there, Dorothy said, smoothing her handkerchief. I probably would have belted them.

I daresay you would have done Dotty, Julia said, shaking her head, and where do you think that would have left us? A long line of upset mothers knocking on my door I’d imagine. Dorothy smiled, wiping her eyes again and folding the handkerchief away.

But where does it come from, this? she said, looking down at her clenching and unclenching fist. I mean, Julia, you know, from the first moment I set eyes on him, I—He was such a beautiful child, wasn’t he?

They always are, said Julia, smiling.

No, but Julia, he was; I couldn’t, I couldn’t take my eyes off him; I couldn’t put him down for more than a minute. I used to watch anyone who came near him like a hawk, you know I did. Julia nodded.

I know Dot, she said. Of course I do.

I would have stepped in front of a bus for him, Dorothy said. I still would. Where does that come from? she asked again. Julia shrugged.

It’s only natural, she said.

Dorothy looked up, almost startled.

But this was different, she said, this is different. I’d never felt like that before, she said fearfully. Don’t you remember me telling you that? Julia nodded, smiling, squeezing Dorothy’s hand and then letting go as they both heard Susan stepping carefully down the stairs.