How It All Began

by Penelope Lively

  Henry was satisfied to learn that Mark too was disillusioned: “Quite right to get out of that world. Amusing for a bit of youthful experience, I dare say, but no place for a serious-minded man. Now when I was your age I had of course my first Fellowship . . .”

  More along these lines. Mark realized that Henry had entirely forgotten that there was an ostensible reason for the visit, and was quite happy to treat it as a social occasion with no particular purpose, which was just as well. No need for explanations. Henry was talking now about My Memoirs.

  “I shall of course concentrate on the memoirs now that I have disposed of Ms. Canning.” Henry paused, and looked inquiringly at Mark. “Did you say you had some project in mind—I’d rather forgotten, remind me . . .”

  Oh dear. Mark regrouped, with smooth efficiency. “I’m fascinated, of course, with the prospect of the memoirs. I was wondering about doing a piece for one of the papers—a taster, as it were.”

  Henry, of course, thought this an excellent idea. He warmed to the theme. He got out the typescript of My Memoirs. He explained the extent and range of the archival resources on which they were based—the shelves of files and boxes stuffed with papers. He led Mark over to the file cupboard, to view. He pulled out a file, at random—letters and other documents spilled to the ground. Mark gathered them up.

  Henry tutted and shook his head. “One can never find anything, that’s the problem.”

  “Really?” said Mark. Thoughtful. Very thoughtful. No, I can see you wouldn’t be able to. Interesting.

  Over the next half an hour or so Mark assessed the potential. He displayed a constructive interest in Henry’s papers: “Of course with proper cataloguing . . . if you had a comprehensive index, then retrieval of any specific item would be simple . . . an orderly system could help your own approach to the memoirs.”

  “Quite,” said Henry helplessly. “Quite so.”

  “If I could assist in any way . . .” murmured Mark.

  And thus was the arrangement born. Mark had done a quick investigation of the shelves and reckoned that he could get this stuff sorted within a few weeks, couple of months max, if he went hard at it. But he would not go hard at it. This would be an on-going process, a lengthy and time-consuming process which would fund Mark’s own, concurrent work. He could fiddle about with Henry’s papers, in a leisurely way, for part of his day, and get on with the Scottish Enlightenment during the rest.

  He explained the complexity of the task to Henry: “A modern database requires meticulous presentation . . . fortunately I do have some experience . . . an archive of this importance can’t be dealt with in a hurry.”

  Henry liked the idea of a database. He eyed the file cupboard, and saw it transformed into a streamlined twenty-first-century research facility. He saw My Memoirs float forth from it, to critical acclaim and resounding sales.

  It took Mark a while to get across the idea that he would need to be paid for his services. He murmured something about funding, a term with which Henry was not familiar. When the penny dropped, Henry brushed the matter aside as a mere technicality: “But of course, dear boy, of course. Whatever suits you. Sort something out with Rose.”

  Mark saw at once that this would not be a good idea: “. . . far happier if you yourself could suggest an arrangement.” A sum was arrived at that was rather more than Mark had had in mind.

  “Excellent!” said Henry. “Now when can you start?”

  “Archivist!” Rose slammed the lid on the saucepan. The cat bolted from the room in protest. Charlotte kept silent; wisest not to risk comment.

  “And will I get hold of two dozen box files, and will I clear the lobby so he can use it as his work center, and is it all right if I call you Rose, Mrs. Donovan? Please yourself. It’s Henry now, I note, no more Lord P. Got his feet properly under the table, he has.”

  “Young?” ventured Charlotte.

  Rose sniffed. “Thirty acting twenty-four. Boyish charm.” She wrenched open the oven, banged a dish of lasagne onto the hob. “Gerry . . . supper . . .”

  The cat returned, sheltering behind Gerry. Rose piled lasagne onto plates. “He needs surface space, and I’m stupid enough to remember that trestle table in the loft, so it’s ‘Oh, Rose, you’re brilliant, shall we go up and get it?’ And ‘The lobby’s a bit dark, Rose, would there be a table-lamp I could have?’ And he dumps his stuff in the cloakroom where I fall over it.”

  “Who?” said Gerry.

  “His lordship has employed an archivist.”

  “Ah.” Gerry went no further, scenting a problem.

  “Database! Since when does he need a database? Perfectly happy rooting about in the file cupboard.”

  This is about territory, thought Charlotte. Her territory has been invaded. Is it Lansdale Gardens that is her territory, or his lordship in person?

  “My files are in perfect order,” said Rose. “If he lays a finger on those there’ll be real trouble. The last ten years are immaculate.”

  “I wish I could say the same,” said Charlotte, seeking to cause a diversion. “When I get home I plan a major search-and-destroy operation. Incidentally, to the garden gate and back without the crutches this morning!”

  Rose glanced at her. “So?”

  “Just . . . progress,” said Charlotte humbly.

  Rose attacked her lasagne, without further comment. After a minute, she said, “Dictionaries. Which do you reckon is the best?”

  “Ah,” said Charlotte happily. “Now Chambers has its fans, but I suppose in the last resort the Shorter Oxford . . .”

  The bookshop has many dictionaries. A shelf of dictionaries. Rose and Anton cruise dictionaries, taking down now this, now that.

  “Too heavy,” says Rose. “You can’t lug that around.”

  “Lug?” says Anton. “That I do not know. Carry, I think? Yes, I need a dictionary very much.”

  “Maybe this . . .” Rose is on the verge of selection. They consider the choice, heads together.

  “I try a word,” says Anton. “Say to me a word I do not know.”

  “Oh, goodness . . . Charismatic.”

  “How do you spell?” Anton turns the pages. “Yes. Here. ‘Charisma . . . a special personal . . .’ ”—he struggles, valiantly, wrestles his way through—“‘. . . quality or power that enables an individual to impress or influence many of his fellows.’ Now I say to the site manager, ‘It is a pity you are not more charismatic.’“

  They are both laughing. A passing head turns; can dictionaries be so amusing?

  And Rose knows that dictionaries will never be the same again. Dictionaries will be forever imbued, sanctified, significant, suggestive. They will not be just themselves, but this moment, these moments, being here, like this, in this place, her and him, in this now. She will always have this now, tethered to Collins and Chambers and the Shorter Oxford.

  Charlotte was quarreling with Henry James. That is to say, she was finding James’s sentence constructions a bit too much, on a warm afternoon in the garden. Get to the point, man—stop piling on another phrase, another qualification, another flourish. Yes, I know it is unique, admired, an intriguing labyrinthine process, but today I am not receptive.

  She put down What Maisie Knew, and picked up the mug of tea that Gerry had kindly brought. He was in his shed, attending to that table. She could hear woodwork sounds, and his radio—there was cricket on somewhere.

  And where had Rose gone, this Saturday afternoon, hurrying off with a preoccupied look, saying that she had some shopping to do?

  Charlotte sighed, engulfed by a wave of discontent. When will I be off somewhere once more on a Saturday afternoon, or indeed any other afternoon? One was not exactly skipping hither and thither, pre-mugging, but well able to come and go, walk to the bus-stop without a second thought, make a trip to the garden center, or into town for a spree to the Royal Academy or Tate Britain. When
will I cease to be tethered, hobbled, grounded?

  Stop whingeing. The hip is improving, you know that. Crutch-free to the garden gate now—a stab at the corner shop tomorrow.

  “Not Starbucks,” says Anton. “We go somewhere else, yes? Perhaps this place—how do you say it?”

  “Euphorium. Odd name for a café-cum-bakery. It means—oh, being in a heightened state, being very . . . uplifted, happy.”

  “Then I think this is very much the right place.” He turns to her and smiles. That smile. He puts a hand under her arm to steady her up a rather steep step. They stand at the counter and contemplate apple tart, chocolate tart, strawberry and cream tart, chocolate éclair.

  “Cappuccino, please,” says Rose. “And . . . no, I mustn’t, I’m getting fat enough as it is.”

  “You are not fat. And I shall have strawberry and cream tart.”

  “Oh, all right. They look irresistible.”

  Once served and seated, Anton reaches into his rucksack for the dictionary. “How do you spell this irri—irrisist . . . ?”

  “No,” says Rose. “If you’re going to dive into the dictionary every time I open my mouth we shall never have a conversation again.”

  “All right.” The dictionary is returned to the rucksack. “So I dive instead into strawberry and cream tart. That is good way to speak? Good colloquial? See, that is a word I know.”

  “It’ll do.”

  “I learn from the boys. In the flat, in the evenings. They tell me what is colloquial speak. Street speak, they say. Most is bad words. But I say now, ‘Cheers, mate’ and ‘see you later.’ ”

  “A long way from Where the Wild Things Are and Charlotte’s Web,” says Rose.

  “Children book, crossword, newspaper, advertisement . . . my nephew street speak . . . I learn from all sort.”

  “Across the board,” advises Rose. “That’s polite colloquial.”

  “Thank you. I should make list—two list, polite and not polite.”

  “I made lists of words when I was about fourteen. I remember doing it. New words. Grown-up words. Show-off words.”

  “What words?”

  “I’m not telling you,” says Rose. “Or that dictionary will come out again. I was trying to impress my parents. It wasn’t easy, being the child of teachers.”

  “Your mother is so clever teacher. She teach without you know you have been . . . teached.”

  “Taught. Oh, listen to me . . . I’m doing it too.”

  He laughs. “But you must. I would do the same, if you try to speak my language.”

  She sighs. “Do you feel . . . do you sometimes feel that there is . . . that there’s a sort of wall between us because we don’t speak the same language, think in the same language?”

  He looks at her. An intent, considering look. “No,” he says. “There is no wall. Where is the wall?”

  The garden shed had fallen silent. Presently, Gerry emerged, looking disconsolate.

  “I’ve done something stupid. Mucked up a perfectly good piece of wood. Miscalculation.”

  “How annoying. Have another cup of tea, to steady the nerves—and I’d love one too.”

  He came back, with tea, and sat beside her. He picked up Henry James. “I’ve never read him, I’m afraid.”

  “An acquired taste,” said Charlotte. “I go off him at times, and then find myself back on. This afternoon I’m off, for some reason. Interesting, the way a relationship with a book, a writer, can be a bit like real life relationships, with friends.” She thought of Gerry’s friends—the two or three that she had met. Alan, with whom Gerry occasionally played squash. Bill, to whom he gave a lift on choir nights. And there was an old college contemporary who visited once in a while.

  “Friends . . .” He considered. “I find mine stay much the same.”

  “That’s to your credit. My relationships have waxed and waned. I am guilty right now about an old friend I rather keep at arm’s length.”

  “I don’t have that many,” said Gerry. “Rose . . . Rose is forever on the phone, or meeting up with someone.”

  “Women,” she told him. “That’s women. We’re much more intimate. We tell each other things, confide, all that. We associate. Well, men associate, but not in the same way.”

  Gerry looked faintly perturbed, as though stepping onto dangerous ground. “You may be right.”

  “What do you talk about with . . . Alan, say, or Bill?”

  “Oh, I don’t know . . .” Contained panic now, definitely. “Current affairs, that sort of thing. Work, sometimes. The cricket, if there is any.”

  “Exactly. Focused. Practical. Men are more serious than women. Women’s talk is more haphazard. And confidential.”

  “Some men,” said Gerry, rallying. “Some women.”

  “Oh, of course. A wild generalization. A travesty. But there’s still a point.”

  “Haphazard . . .”

  “Talk for the sake of talk. Unconsidered.”

  “Plenty of men I know . . .”

  Charlotte laughed. “I think I’m winding you up, Gerry. At least I’ve taken your mind off the carpentry. And all prompted by Henry James.”

  He picked the book up again. “Who is Maisie?”

  “A child. And what she knew—or didn’t know—is a teaser. I’ve never quite been able to work it out. I suppose that’s one reason it’s a book you go back to.”

  He gave her a sideways look. “So maybe you should try out that old friend of yours again, too?”

  “Touché,” said Charlotte. “Well done. Would it be binge-drinking to have yet more tea, do you think?”

  He held out his hand for her mug. “Feel free. And we can go on with this haphazard talk.” Another sideways glance, with the hint of a grin.

  Rose and Anton are walking toward the Tube station. She slows up as they approach a green space with seats. “Shall we stop for a minute or two?”

  “You are tired.”

  “No. Just . . . there’s no great hurry.”

  They sit. “Tonight I dive into the dictionary,” he says. “My nephew and the boys, they dive into beer and street speak. I learn important words.”

  “Will they laugh at you?”

  “Of course. But it is nice laugh—I am the uncle, I do uncle thing, like read books and now buy dictionary. They are . . . they are . . .”

  “Indulgent,” says Rose. “And no. No dictionary.”

  “Later, then. Later I look for this word and I think of . . . now. I think of you.”

  “Yes,” she says. “Yes, I’ll be thinking too.” She looks away.

  He lays a hand on her knee. Withdraws it at once. They sit in silence for a moment. Moments.

  “It is the end of the afternoon,” he says. “I do not like now the end of the afternoon. It is a bad time.”

  “But we had a good time.”

  “We had a very good time.”

  “Some other afternoon,” she says. “We could . . .”

  “There can be other afternoon?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Yes.”

  And later, in the wasteland of a sleepless night, she thinks: Can there be another life? Could there? Don’t think of it. Don’t.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Jeremy made sure to be at the restaurant first. He wanted to

  be sitting there, watching the door, when Stella came in, so that he could get to his feet, and stand waiting for her, looking . . . well, looking thrilled and welcoming, and, one hoped, a welcome sight. He had chosen the venue with care—an Italian place where the background music was unobtrusive, and there were dimly lit secluded corners. A courtship restaurant. He had taken Marion there once, early on. No matter. She hadn’t cared for it—something wrong with the decor.

  He saw Stella arrive, hand her coat to the man, glance around. She was looking so pretty. Never seen that dress before—gor
geous color, suits her a treat.

  She joined him: “Hello.” No move to kiss him, so he made no injudicious lunge at her cheek, just smiled, pulled back her chair. “Stella . . . This is wonderful.”

  Discussion of the menu. “Fritto di mare? You used to love that. I thought a frascati to drink—or would you rather red.” The wait till food came, with chat about the girls. Stella was stiff, cautious, holding back. He raised a smile with a family joke about Daisy and her passion for shopping.

  Food. Frascati. And she was starting to thaw. He told her about some bizarre customers he’d had lately. The woman who collected vintage deck chairs actually raised a laugh. He told her about the sale at that Shropshire mansion, and the pile of William Morris curtains for which he’d entered into a bidding war with a hard-nosed woman dealer (one didn’t mention that Marion had come along on that occasion, of course): “I was absolutely determined that crone wasn’t going to get them—I knew her of old, she lurks like a spider in an awful dive in Hackney, and the stuff was super, much too good for her. You’ve always liked William Morris, haven’t you, darling?”

  She was responding. A definite thaw. She told one or two little anecdotes of her own. They were having a dialogue. No mention of the matter in question—the matter possibly in question, reconciliation. But no mention of divorce, either. They were a couple enjoying a meal together. Lovers, perhaps, to a casual observer. At one point he took her hand for a moment, and it was not removed. Not immediately.

  At the end, bill paid, coats on, he said, “Can we do this again, darling?”

  She looked away, fiddled with a button, hesitated. “So long as Gill doesn’t know. And . . . and Mr. Newsome.”

  Jeremy was about to say, “It’s none of their bloody business.” Then he saw how this could be interesting. He nodded. “Of course. It’s just between you and me.”