So Many Ways to Begin. Jon McGregor
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and not in the space of a few hurried months.
We only had a few days, she said, before he went away. It was difficult not to think about it, she said, raising her voice against the rain, turning to a slow halt, her hands falling to her sides, her face lined with shadows. The details of her story were becoming confused, and she seemed breathless, unsteady, nodding slightly in time with the music or in agreement with her own muddled recollections. He wanted the music to stop, or Julia to say something like, well really I think that’s enough for now, let me just sit down, but she didn’t. She leant back against the writing bureau, her eyes half-closed and her hands seeming to conduct the music, and she carried on talking.
He used to send me short little notes, she said. Writing wasn’t his strong point but I loved to get them all the same. He couldn’t tell me where they were, or what they were doing, but he’d mention little details about life with the men, and I’d feel almost as though I was there with him for a minute or two. I found out later that they hadn’t got all that far at all, she said softly; they were heading back to Dunkirk when they got caught out. Shelling, she said. She stopped for a moment, tipping her head towards the record player, listening to the music and smiling slightly.
In the ballroom, the dance floor less crowded than it had been a few moments before, one of the tail-coated medical students and his partner danced alongside William and Julia, matching their movements step for step, the student looking at Julia with interest. She glanced across at him nervously, and he said excuse me, I’m sorry, may I? reaching his hand out to her stomach, slipping a stethoscope from his inside pocket and looping its end inside her dress. I thought as much, he said, nodding to his partner; three months on, and they smiled and turned and twirled away. Julia looked down at herself, startled, and up at William, his thoughts seemingly somewhere else entirely. She took a few moments to compose herself, her heels clicking time across the ballroom floor, and then she leant forward to whisper in his ear: My darling William stop Pregnant stop Surprised but happy be careful I love you stop. Quietly, almost inaudibly, he replied, with a hoarse whisper in her ear: Surprised but happy also stop Suggest Laurence if a boy stop Be careful yourself all well here stop.
And almost while he was still speaking the blue sky of the ballroom ceiling was covered over with smoke and oily clouds, and a kettle-drum roll from the orchestra sent the soldiers in the corner, the officers of William’s party, clambering under a table which offered no protection when the mortar shells came raining down through the stained-glass skylight, tumbling and exploding directly amongst them, scattering shrapnel and mess tins and glassware and limbs.
There was a moment’s startled pause in the room, a dramatic swish of cymbals, and then the waltz continued, the waiters moving in with stretchers to take the bodies away, the medical students standing around to see if there was anything much they could do, a pair of maids hanging back with sponges and buckets and mops.
And the music was slower then, quieter, and many of the guests were returning to their seats, some of them even fetching their coats and heading for home, and Julia and William were soon the only ones left dancing, with small tired steps, back two three and turn two three, and William was silent and pale-faced in her arms, not meeting her eye, barely keeping a hold of her hand or her waist, his shoes dragging rather than smartly clicking across the polished floor. William? she said, and waited in vain for a reply. The music came to an end, and there was a strange crackling hiss as the musicians put down their instruments and the conductor turned to face the two dancers with a bow. There was no applause, and William broke away from her, not hearing her thank you or acknowledging her smile, lowering his head as he shuffled towards the table by the corner of the stage where his men had once sat. Julia crossed the dance floor for the last time and rejoined her friends at their table. They silently poured her a drink, avoiding her querying gaze.
Oh, she said, as she sat down, as if something she’d not thought of before had only just crossed her mind. Oh. She wondered what the crackling hissing sound could be. A young waiter glided past with a silver tray, turning and holding it out to her, indicating with a nod that the slim white envelope was for her. Oh, she said, again.
She showed David the two telegrams later in the evening, while he sat at the kitchen table drinking hot chocolate, the rain still pounding against the window and traffic sliding wetly through the street. She had them in a brown envelope, at the back of the useful drawer where she kept string and sellotape and candles and cotton wool. The paper was blackened and cracked along the folds, and one of the corners was stained with damp. He read both of them, the one beginning Surprised but happy also, and the one beginning Regret to inform, and he slid them delicately back into the envelope.
People are very resilient you know, she said to him later, when he pressed her about it. People find all manner of ways of working things out. I wouldn’t mind but it was just so quick, she said.
She stood up from the kitchen table, put the envelope with the telegrams back into the cluttered drawer, and headed out of the room.
I don’t think I’ll have any chocolate tonight, she said. Will you be okay to sort things out down here? All that dancing, she said, I’ve worn myself out, I’m not as young as I was. She stood in the doorway a moment and something blurred and drifted in her eyes, as though she was confused, trying to remember what she was doing. He turned in his chair, his bare feet cold on the stone floor, watching her.
Auntie Julia? he said, and she turned her focus back towards him.
Yes dear? she said.
What was he like though? he asked. When you knew him at least; what was he really like?
She looked at him, her hands weakly twisting and untwisting the hem of her long cardigan. She shook her head, as if she was still surprised.
I have absolutely no idea, she said.
9 Contract, wage slip, duty sheet, from Coventry Museum, 1964
They gave him a small rectangular name badge when he started work at the museum, three years after that opening night; its white plastic soon yellowed from sunlight and the nicotine stain of the staffroom. David Carter, it said, Junior Curatorial Assistant. His mother insisted on him wearing it when she took his first-day-at-work photo, and said it was a pity they didn’t give him a uniform as well but she supposed it was all modern these days. He told her that it was only the attendants who wore uniforms, but she said she couldn’t see the difference. She said oh if your father could see you now he’d be so proud, and he said do you think so? Julia, when she saw the photograph, sent him a postcard of the British Museum, with Onwards and upwards! written on the back.
His first day was a disappointment. He spent the morning being shown around the galleries by the Senior Keeper, despite knowing every last inch of the place, and the afternoon sitting in the staffroom while someone tried to work out what jobs they could give him to do. He’d half expected to launch his career with a dramatic discovery in some lost corner of the basement stores, or at the very least to be given immediate responsibility for the design and layout of a groundbreaking new exhibition. But instead he spent the first few weeks doing odd jobs for the rest of the curatorial staff; looking for records in the enormous card-index boxes, taking draft documents to the secretaries’ office to be typed up, checking the mousetraps and the thermohydrographs, keeping the stores spotlessly clean, making the teas and taking away the post. By the end of his first week he had an encyclopedic knowledge not of the archival filing system but of the milk and sugar preferences of each member of staff. It’s not what I thought it would be like, he told his sister, and she told him he’d better get used to it, he was the new boy, and what did he expect without any proper qualifications?
But after a few weeks things started to improve. He was assigned to the Keeper of Social History and cast more into the apprentice role that he’d been expecting. And once the Director had convinced himself that this was a career David was serious about, there was mention of training courses, placements, personal responsibilities. He began to be allowed away on research visits, to Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, as far north as Edinburgh and Glasgow, even Aberdeen.