Jon McGregor - So Many Ways to Begin

He could pinpoint the moment precisely. Julia with her cigarette held up beside her face, his mother nudging into the room. The window open and a woman zimmer-framing her slow way across the garden. The sound of television laughter coming from the main room, and an unanswered telephone ringing somewhere. The cymbelline shaking of the teacups as his mother gasped and put down the tray. And David not knowing where to look or what to say or whether to just stand and leave the room as quickly as he could.

It was a small room with a single bed, a pair of easy chairs, a side table, a wardrobe, and a large window that opened out on to the enclosed garden. His mother had helped Julia try to make it her own — there were photographs on the wall, and one of her jewellery boxes on the side table, and flowers but it still had the feel of a hospital room. The bed was metal-framed, with rails that could be cranked up to keep her from falling to the floor. There was a button on the wall which would bring a member of staff running if it was pressed. There were charts — medication, temperature, blood pressure, behaviour — and although they were kept on a shelf in the wardrobe rather than clipped to the end of the bed, they were still there. And there was a distinct hospital odour lingering about the place, that clinging smell of endless cleaning. But it was still Julia's room, and she seemed comfortable enough to feel somehow at home there. Perhaps she thought it was a hotel, or a room in an absent-minded friend's house, a friend who seemed to have forgotten she was coming, or had even forgotten that she was there at all.

They sat in silence for a while, Julia smoking one of her long menthol cigarettes and staring out of the window. He didn't know what to say. She'd always done the talking when he was growing up and it had been enough for him to listen, to say, really? or, what happened next? or occasionally, can you tell me about. .? but since moving into the home she had mostly just sat and waited to be spoken to. His mother was much better at doing what was needed, skating briskly over the cracks in the conversation, the inconsistencies and the repetition and the hard-to-understand, seeming to always find a way of stopping the whole thing sinking into the icy chill of who are you, and where's Laurence, and why haven't we had breakfast yet?

How are you feeling Julia? he asked eventually, not knowing what else to say.

Bored, she said sharply, turning to look at him. Bored, and tired. She stubbed her cigarette out in a glass ashtray and gestured at him to empty it. He leant across, and as he picked it up she whispered, loudly, the trouble is the other people staying here are a little sub-normal. He emptied the lipstick-tinged cigarette ends into the bin.

Really? he said.

Oh, yes, she said. Some of the things I hear about, you wouldn't believe your young ears, really. There's an old man out there, she said, haven't a clue who he is but they have to put plastic sheets on the furniture when he sits down, due to his tendency. She said tendency with pursed lips and a note of disgust, as though the word itself was somehow unhygienic, and she nodded delicately, to confirm what she was saying.

His tendency? David asked.

She leant towards him, mouthing the words: he wets himself if he laughs too much. She took another cigarette and lit it with a quick flourish. Not really my kind of people, David, she said.

He smiled and said no, I'm sure, and for a moment the Julia he'd grown up with was back there in the room. She turned to look out of the window and they both watched a young boy kicking a football up and down the garden path until a woman opened a window and told him to stop it. The boy sulked slowly back into the building, and when Julia turned to speak he could see that she'd already slipped back into vacancy and confusion.

She said, I wanted to go home but they wouldn't let me, can you believe that?

He tried to explain, gently, that there were reasons she couldn't go home just then but she didn't seem to hear. And that bloody lot in there are no good either, she said, pointing through the door to the main room where most of the other residents sat and watched television. Half of them are stone deaf, she said. He nodded. Mind you, that's often a result of the explosive impacts, she said, and the shock, you know, and suddenly she was talking about the war, talking as though the mist had cleared and she'd found herself twenty years younger, working in the hospital through years of air-raid sirens, walking home in the morning to find whole streets flattened, seeing doodlebugs droning their way through a bare blue sky.

They were all given cigarettes for Christmas and he kept on to his you see, she said. Sometimes even the bandages were in very short supply but we did what we could. Your mother used to get back from a shift exhausted and we'd just have time to eat together before it was my turn to go out, she said.

He wondered whether to interrupt her, to bring her carefully back out of her confusion or to let her just chatter on. He heard footsteps in the corridor and his mother nudged the door open with her foot.

Julia said and of course we never saw the poor girl again. He moved to clear a space on the table for the tea tray, stacking the magazines to one side, taking his mother's cardigan and laying it on the bed, putting the radio back on the shelf. Julia said Mary, wasn't it? His mother looked up at her. She was all for insisting that it only be for a few days, Julia said, but of course we never saw her again, she disappeared off the face of the earth. Very sad for the poor girl, she said, and she turned and looked him clearly in the eye. She said so when your mother asked me what to do, I said well Dorothy my dear, you'll have to keep the little darling now, won't you? She said you were such a lovely baby, and anyway we couldn't very well give you back, could we?

He sat back down, looking at Julia, looking at his mother, looking back at Julia, gripping the arms of his chair as if he was afraid he might fall to the floor. He heard his mother putting down the tray, the cups and saucers shaking against each other.

Oh Julia, she said.

The poor girl hadn't even left you with a name, so we chose David, after that actor, you know the one, what was his name? said Julia, and she looked up at his mother on this last question, smiling fondly, trying to remember, looking for help. His mother was holding both her hands up to her face, covering her mouth.

Oh Julia, she said.

They left soon afterwards, catching an earlier train than they'd planned, leaving Julia in her room, asking did I say something wrong? Dorothy did I say something wrong? They didn't even drink the teas, leaving them on the side table for a member of staff to clear away while they walked quickly and silently down the corridor. He heard his mother crying as they walked from the home to the tube station and he reached back to hand her a clean handkerchief from his pocket. She tried talking to him a few times, asking him to slow down as he paced through the tunnels at Whitechapel and Euston, and later, on the train, asking if they could talk, if she could explain, if he would at least say something. But he kept his face to the window and he didn't say a word, seeing nothing, hearing only the sound of Julia's voice, fragments of it repeating over and over again.

Of course we never saw the poor girl again.

You'll have to keep the little darling.

She disappeared off the face of the earth.

Did I say something wrong?

When they got back to the house, they sat in the lounge and looked out into the garden. The rose bushes had been in full bloom for a few weeks and were in need of dead-heading. The lawn was starting to yellow. The spade had been left out, sunk into the earth. They drank cups of scalding tea, and finally looked at each other.