Jon McGregor - So Many Ways to Begin

They walked past the school Albert had been working on before he died, built to take the pressure off the overcrowded grammar Susan and David had both attended, where temporary classrooms had hidden the bomb-craters in the playground and lunch breaks had had to be taken in shifts. They turned the corner into their estate, past a small strip of woodland, and left again into their street.

She said, in desperation, David, I never lied to you. If you'd ever asked me I would have told you the truth, but you always seemed happy with the way you thought things were; it didn't seem fair to upset things for you. I wouldn't have lied to you, ever, she said. You believe that at least, don't you?

He stopped abruptly and looked at her, meeting her eyes for the first time since he'd seen her at the bottom of the museum steps. He peered at her for a moment, closely, as if watching to see what else she had to say, and when he saw that she was starting to cry he allowed a smile to open out across his otherwise impassive face before turning away. She watched him go. She called his name, quietly in case the neighbours heard. She followed him to the door. She said, oh if your father was here you wouldn't, and he turned, waiting for her to finish her sentence, but she said nothing more. He stood in the opened doorway, blocking her path, and saw Susan walking up the street towards them.

He said, almost in a whisper, you've got no idea, have you? He stood aside to let her into the house, and as she squeezed past him the phone started to ring. He left it a moment, watching her disappear upstairs, and when he picked it up he was almost breathless with the adrenalin pulsing through him. He said hello and Eleanor said guess what? Guess what? Oh David, you'll never guess what.

A single sheet of paper, slightly larger than letter-size, an expensive-looking rough-grained texture with a circular watermark just visible about halfway down the page. The name of the examinations board at the top, an address, a reference number. An official seal at the bottom, lipstick red and frilled at the edges. A ruled table with columns for subject, paper, date, and grade. The thick black type that can change a life. The paper held delicately, at arm's length, as though creasing it or tearing it would invalidate what it said. As though the ink were still wet and could be smudged or removed.

She hadn't got any sleep the night before it came, she told him. He imagined her sitting up all night, drinking cocoa and trying not to think about it. Sitting in the kitchen, sitting in the front room, in her father's chair, standing out in the backyard, looking down at the lights in the harbour, softened and wavering in the warm night air.

She didn't want to open it when it came, she said. She heard the letter box go and she sat in the kitchen and she didn't move. The envelope landed with a tap and a skid across the smooth stone floor, and it was a minute before she stalked out of the kitchen with a butter-knife at the ready to slit open the envelope. The brown paper broke into two rows of jagged teeth. She slid out the letter and unfolded the clean white sheet.

She didn't know what she was expecting. For months she'd been going over it in her head, going backwards and forwards, convincing herself she'd passed, convincing herself she'd failed. She didn't know what was going to happen. She didn't know what she wanted to happen. It was new territory; her staying on at school at all had been new territory for the whole family. Her mother had left school at fourteen to work at Williamson's, learning to gut and split and fillet the heavy flat fish with vicious speed, salting and carrying them into the field and spreading them out like great white sheets in the sun to dry. Her father had left school at eleven to help his father's friend in the shipyard at the bottom of the hill; there was a photo of him from soon after he'd started there, half-hidden in a group of hard-looking men all bristling with moustaches and hammers and tongs, his small eyes shut tight against the blaze of the flashgun, his cap a few sizes too big for him still. So they didn't understand, either of them, what Eleanor had been doing at school those last few years, why she'd carried on fussing with books and things when she could have been bringing money into the house.

She unfolded the sheet of clean white paper, and read the words in thick black type. Chemistry, B. English, C. Geography, B. Mathematics, C. Physics, B. She read the words over and over, holding the paper up to the light, a pale gasp of excitement breaking out from her pursed lips. The first in the family to stop on at school, and now the first in the family, the first in the street, to go on to university. She refolded the paper and put it back into the jagged-toothed envelope. She propped it up on the kitchen table, leaning it against the empty cocoa mug, staring at it, checking her name and address on the front. She didn't know what to do straight away, who to tell, whether to have a drink and celebrate, whether to start packing her bags there and then.

All the different ways there were of leaving home, and the one she'd chosen had finally settled within reach. Her first brother, away with the merchant navy before she was even born. Her second and third brothers married. Her sister, gone with a story that no one ever spoke of. And now her, with a place waiting at Edinburgh University, ready to slip out of the house for good.

She heard footsteps on the wooden stairs and her mother came into the room, standing just inside the doorway, looking at her. What's that you've got there? she asked, her voice a little slow with sleep.

Eh? It's just a letter from the school, Eleanor said, leaning over it slightly. Is Da awake? she asked. Is he up yet?

No, he's still sleeping for now, her mother said, walking across to the kettle and filling it with water. What's the letter for? she asked. Eleanor turned round in her chair.

It's the results, she told her. Ivy put the kettle on top of the stove.

Oh aye? she said. I didn't know you were expecting those. There was a creaking from upstairs, the sound of someone getting out of bed, footsteps across the floor. So what does it say? Ivy asked. Eleanor listened for the steps to come downstairs. She glanced up at the ceiling, and at her mother, and at the empty doorway. Well? her mother said. Eleanor handed over the piece of paper in its thin brown envelope.

It's good, she said quietly, pre-emptively, watching her mother's eyes scan over the words. Or she didn't say anything, and looked the other way.

Ivy read the sheet of paper, nodded, and made an mmhmm sound in the back of her throat. Oh aye, she said. Stewart came into the room and looked at them both expectantly. Ivy handed him the sheet of paper and went back upstairs. Will you make that pot of tea? she said, as she left the room. Eleanor watched her go, unsure whether to be shocked or not, waiting to see if she would come back and say anything more. Her father looked at the results and let out a long low whistle, breaking into a shuffling jig around the kitchen table, pulling Eleanor into a tight and startling embrace, rushing to get dressed and knock on the neighbours' doors, launching a day of toasts and hugs and hearty thumps on the back — and never you mind what your mother thinks, he whispered to her at one point, wonderfully — a day in which the letter would take pride of place on the front-room mantelpiece, repeatedly taken down and unfolded and passed around from hand to careful hand.

And by six o'clock, when the front room was crowded full, the men still in their workclothes and the women quickly changed out of their aprons and headscarves into something a little smarter, their glasses full to the brim, and the conversations falling round to work and weather and sport, she managed to slip out of the house to the telephone box, dialling the number she still had scribbled on a paper napkin from work.