by Jon McGregor
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.
35 Tobacco tin; used for storing buttons, beads, safety pins, c 1960s
She was fourteen, she told him, sitting on the quayside with two of her friends, laughing and talking about boys, enjoying the long evening and glad to be out of the house. She heard her mother's voice behind her, and was pulled to her feet. Spun around to face those hard, narrowed eyes.
Let me smell your breath child.
The words spoken low and calm, the gaze intent and steady, the grip on the arm already bringing a soft smudge of bruising to the skin. Eleanor's friends looking carefully in the other direction, edging away, brushing down the backs of their skirts with their hands. The cigarette floating away between driftwood and dead fish and polystyrene scraps, rising and falling on the swell, the paper unfurling and spilling burnt tobacco down into the dark water. Ivy leant closer into her daughter's pale face.
Breathe, she said. Eleanor looked at her. She exhaled as weakly as she could but Ivy must still have smelt the damp sour stink of cigarette smoke. She stood back and slapped Eleanor hard around the side of the face. Her friends jerked their shoulders at the sound and moved a few steps further away. Eleanor's face coloured suddenly and her eyes started to shine.
I'm sorry Mam, she whispered. I'm sorry. Ivy pulled her closer.
Don't give me sorry, she said, it's too late for sorry child. You'll get what's due and keep quiet, aye? Standing close to each other, intimately close, blind to anyone else, their world reduced for the moment to this self-enclosed space of anger and resentment and shame.
Eleanor tried to say something, sorry perhaps, or I won't do it again, or they made me, or any of the other weak responses she knew wouldn't be enough. But her words crumpled under the weight of Ivy's glare, and all that came out was something like a whimper.
What's that? said Ivy. You say something? There was no reply, and perhaps it was only then that something snapped inside Ivy, the sight of her louring daughter, the embarrassment of people turning to watch, the knowledge that people would be talking later in the day. Or perhaps it didn't take anything to snap for Ivy to pull her daughter suddenly by the arm, to swing her round and point her in the direction of the steep road home. Get going girl, she spat into her ear, pushing the back of her head, get going quick or you'll see what I don't do. Eleanor walked quickly across the quayside, her head bowed and her shoulders turned protectively in, keeping her eyes to the ground. Or she walked tall, daring any of the onlookers to meet her eye, even turning to wave to her friends. Or she ran, her eyes a blur of tears. Before Ivy followed her, she turned to Eleanor's two friends and called out to them: I'll be talking to your mothers too, Ruth, Heather, don't think I won't. They watched her silently, and she turned and followed her daughter home.
The walk back to their house was a steep one. The pavement was stepped in places, and there were handrails bolted to some of the houses, to be caught hold of on icy days. The first time David went to see her parents he'd had to stop twice on the way to catch his breath, and Eleanor had laughed at him, saying he was nothing but a soft southern sass.
I never said a word more, she told him, safe in their bed with the lights out and the covers pulled up around them, I could just hear her steps and her breathing at the back of me. I thought she might have calmed down once we got to the top, or that she might be too worn out to do anything much. But she had this way of winding herself up, you know? David looked at her eyes in the half-dark under the covers; they were calm and clear, almost puzzled, as though she was considering something that had happened to someone else, as though she was still surprised by it all.
The door closed behind them, and Eleanor turned to face her mother's fury in the unlit hall. There were open-handed slaps at first, to the arms and legs, to the face, each slap held high in the air like a question - as if to say do you want this one too my girl? - and although Eleanor held out her hands to block them, Ivy was always quick enough to find a way through. There was nothing frantic about it. There was no loss of control. Each blow was considered, aimed, carefully delivered. And there was no sound from either of them; just Ivy's laboured breathing and the occasional wince or whimper escaping through Eleanor's tightly gritted teeth. The slaps closed up into tightly clenched fists, thudding into her ribs and the side of her head. Eleanor cowered under the punches, wrapping her arms around her head and crouching against the wall as Ivy whispered why don't you stand up, child, stand up now, eh? Or Eleanor refused to buckle, looking her mother in the eye, flinching with each thud
of a fist but not falling down this time; Ivy realising with a sudden shock that her daughter was now an inch or two taller than her.
Didn't you ever try to push her away, or hit her back? David asked, stroking the side of her face.
It didn't occur to me, Eleanor said. I was used to it. I knew she'd stop eventually. I didn't want to make it worse, she said.
Ivy paused a moment, lifting her daughter's face to look her in the eye. Is that enough for you child? she asked. Will you be lying to me again? Eleanor didn't speak. Did you hear me there? said Ivy, raising her voice. I asked you a question. Eleanor looked at her, her mouth firmly shut, and Ivy, infuriated, lunged forward, shoving her fists against Eleanor's shoulders, knocking Eleanor off balance and against the front-room door, the door banging open and Eleanor stumbling backwards to the ground. Stewart was standing there, staring at Ivy, his fists trembling by his side.
God's sake Ivy, he said tensely. Do you not think that's enough now? The two of them looked at each other. Eleanor struggled to her feet, pushing past Ivy and up the stairs to her room.
You'll not be eating tonight, Ivy called out after her.
Later, she told him, after her parents had gone to bed, she stood in the washroom and eased out of her clothes, hanging them up on the back of the door and looking at her pale marked body in the mirror. She splashed herself with water, flinching against the cold, and worked a bar of soap into a lather across her skin. She ran her hands carefully across her body, working around the bruises and the swollen cuts, rinsing off the soap with cupped palmfuls of cold water which splashed down her chest and her belly and her legs and on to the dirty towel on the floor; taking her time, as though soap and water might wipe away the bruises and the hurt and the fear of it happening again one day soon.
And the next time she saw Ruth and Heather, nothing was said. They didn't ask if she was okay, or offer sympathy, or make any reference to what had happened at the harbour or to what they assumed had happened afterwards. There were things which didn't need to be said, or which had been said before. Instead, she told him, they took a packet of cigarettes each across to the golf course, and sat on a bench together, and smoked their way relentlessly through the evening until Eleanor was sick into the bushes, the girls laughing and applauding as she wiped her mouth and pretended to light up once more. It was funny, she said. We laughed about it for hours. It felt like some kind of triumph, you know?
36 Catalogue from museum exhibition, 'Refugees, Migrants, New Arrivals', 1975
The exhibition had been Anna's idea, but the senior staff gave it to David to take charge of, allocating him a budget and a month away from usual duties, telling him this was his opportunity to live up to what they had thought was his earlier promise. The Director made it clear that he wasn't entirely in favour of the form of social history the project would entail; but, as he conceded, it was becoming increasingly fashionable in certain circles and would do the image of the museum some good at a challenging financial time.
It wasn't difficult to find material. He did a series of presentations at social and religious centres - the Irish on Stoney Stanton Road, the Ukrainian on Broad Street, the Polish on Whitefriars, a mosque, a synagogue, the Sikh temple which had taken over the old Bamba Nightclub explaining the nature of the project, inviting participation, and his office quickly filled with boxes of loaned material, photographs, interview tapes, lists of people still to visit. This project is about the journeys you or your parents made to come to Coventry, he told them, the ways you remember those journeys, and the ways you remember the places you or your parents came from. He wasn't surprised by the number of responses he had to these presentations. He'd learnt, working at the museum, how many people wanted someone to tell their family's story to, how often the children of people who died would bring their parents' possessions to the museum to be archived or put on display, assuming that because these objects had belonged to someone who was no longer alive they would naturally take on a historical importance, assuming that the words museum and mausoleum were somehow the same.
He wasn't surprised by the interviewees' eagerness to loan him their few treasured keepsakes - the watches, the framed photographs, the religious artefacts - trusting him to keep their last attachments to a lost home safe, pushing them gladly into his arms. But what he hadn't quite been expecting was just how readily people held these things to hand, arranged together in the alcoves of their front rooms, or across a chest of drawers in a bedroom, or filling a glass-fronted cabinet in a kitchen, like miniature museums of their own. He interviewed, and was offered material by, people from all across Europe, from India and Pakistan and Bangladesh, from Vietnam, from Africa and the Caribbean. He interviewed people from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, from Sunderland and Southport and Somerset, people who had at some point come to Coventry in search of work and ended up staying. And he found himself hoping that when people contacted him from the Irish Club one of them might start by saying so I left home when I was a young woman, heading for London, looking for domestic work. I came over on the night boat. I had to leave London just before the war ended, on account of a sort of disagreement with my employers. He wondered how that would feel, to hear the beginnings of that particular story, to be able to hear it out to the end.
They based the exhibition around a map of the world, with Coventry at the centre illustrated by an image of the three spires, and with red threads reaching out to each of the countries the interviewees had travelled from. At the end of each thread they placed a photograph of the interviewee, or of one of the objects which had been loaned for the exhibition. It took Anna and him three evenings just to put the map together, staying behind while the rest of the staff went home, passing each other scissors and paste and Letraset, talking and disagreeing about which images to use. It took them another two weeks to finish the rest of the display material, putting it together down in the conservation room, spreading the work across the wide wooden desks while they selected the best extracts from the transcribed interviews, the most relevant artefacts, the clearest images.
Sometimes, when they had finished for the evening, packing the uncompleted work away, they would stay there for a while, leaning against the table, talking about things other than work. Anna told him about her wedding anniversary, and he asked what her husband was like, what he did for a living. Chris had gone straight to a job at the car-works when they'd left school, she told him, working on the same line as his father, getting used to working long hours for good money until they closed the factory after a round of strikes. It was the worst time really, she told him, it was only a year after we'd got married and we didn't know what we were going to do. She asked him again about Eleanor, and he said well, she's better in a way, you know, with the medication, but she's still not right, and she said oh that's awful, that's so sad, how do you cope? Once she said do you ever regret it? Getting married, I mean. Saying sorry sorry as soon as she'd said it, looking away from him, picking up her bag. Saying sorry only sometimes I wonder.
She was younger than him but he only ever noticed when she said things like that, when she seemed to be asking his advice, talking to him like an older brother. There were only six or seven years between them, and even that didn't seem as much as it once had. She had dark hair, tightly curled, cut to her collarbone. She had a small flat nose, and dark eyes, and she held her hand to her mouth when she spoke, as if she was afraid of letting her teeth show. She was tall. She was slimmer than Eleanor had lately become. They talked. That was all. They worked together, and while they were working they talked.
But one evening she touched him, for the second time, and he didn't pull away or say anything to stop her. It came from nowhere, a lull in the conversation, her hand drifting to the back of his head with her eyes fixed firmly on his, her fingers trailing down through his hair to the expectant skin on the back of his neck. She said sorry, as if it had been an accident, and for some reason he said sorry too and they said no more about it, and he tried to forget t
he feel of her long fingers, the delicate scratch of her fingernails across his traced and tingling scalp.
They'd finished all the displays, and were going over the layout plans, disagreeing over the need for additional text and trying to work out where to put the model steam engine a Russian man had been very keen to loan. They were both leaning over the desk, the papers and designs spread across it, the glare from the desk lamp getting harsher as the evening quickly darkened outside. He was saying I'm not sure about all this Anna, maybe we should look at it again tomorrow, and then there were her fingers, trailing down to the back of his neck.
And all that happened next was he looked at his watch and stood away from the desk, turning on the main overhead light and saying I think we'll take another look in the morning. That far corner looks like it will be too cramped, visitors will be squeezing past each other. And all she did was shrug, smiling, starting to tidy away the papers from the desk. Okay, she said with her back to him. See you tomorrow, she said. He walked away, and when he got halfway down the corridor and turned back to look through the open door she wasn't looking at him. She was marking something on the floorplan, running her fingers up and down the back of her head, through the dark tangle of her hair.
It was a popular exhibition, one of the most popular of the year. Coventry's population had been growing rapidly for years, tripling even between the turn of the century and the war, so there was no shortage of people who had a story of arrival, or who had grown up hearing their parents' stories, or who could in some way relate to the themes of being a stranger in a new town, making a new life, holding on to the few fragile reminders of home. Even Anna's husband Chris turned out to have a story, muttering it so matter of factly to David in the pub one evening that David had to ask him to repeat himself to be sure he'd heard it right.