Jon McGregor - So Many Ways to Begin

Ivy took out a handkerchief and rubbed a smear of finger-grease from the window. She said, well, she's an adult now; she can do as she pleases. She turned away from the window, and as she left the room she said aye and she always was a handful anyway.

Stewart watched her go. He remembered when Hamish had left home, and the room had been full of people wishing him well on his way, chairs squeezed in around the walls and barely any space to move. He looked at it now, and the small house felt suddenly huge. He had the feeling that if he called out to Ivy she would be too far away to hear him. He imagined he could hear floorboards creaking, and joists settling against brickwork, as though the house were subsiding after a storm. He imagined he could hear the echo of footsteps, fading away. Children's voices whispering into the distance.

He stood, and walked slowly through to the kitchen.

He said, Ivy, don't be too hard on the girl now, eh? He said, you've been doing that for too long.

No one ever said it out loud, but he knew that people thought he was rushing into things, acting carelessly, stupidly even. His friends, when he told them, all paused for a moment too long before offering their congratulations, as if they were checking that they'd heard him right, wondering who this girl Eleanor was even. His colleagues at work, when he gave out the invitations, read them and said oh, you're really going ahead with this then? And his mother, trying so hard not to say the wrong thing, not to make things between them any worse than they already were, still managed to say too much when she said but David, I'm just worried. I just want what's best for you.

And the front door slammed, again, and she noticed that the paint was starting to flake away around the edges of the frame.

Susan, being Susan and having a better idea than Dorothy of what not to say, asked him about it more disinterestedly: meeting him for a drink after work and saying so anyway, when did you ask her to marry you? How long did it take her to say yes? When is she coming down? Nodding and smiling when he said not long; saying oh I'm only joking when he refused to tell her whether he'd gone down on one knee. She waited a moment, reaching into her pocket for a packet of cigarettes muttering don't tell Mum as she lit one, and then she said so tell me about her anyway David. I mean you haven't said much. What's she like?

There were so many things he could have said.

He could have described the way she looked; she's shorter than me but not by much, she's got quite long hair, it's a kind of faded brown but it goes blonde in the sun and it falls across her face when she's daydreaming, she doesn't smile all that often but when she does the whole shape of her face changes, it gets rounder and softer, and her eyes are the colour of honey and her skin, her skin's so smooth it's like it's been polished by the cold north wind, and her body, I mean, her skinny hips her slip of a waist her pebble-round shoulders her smooth small breasts I mean I can't keep my hands to myself when I'm with her she's so warm and alive and she's just so I mean when she undresses I just want to applaud and do you know what I mean?

But he didn't say this. He took out a photo and showed it to Susan, and she smiled and said oh, well, she's pretty isn't she? and he took it back and said I know.

He could have described the way he felt when he was with her; she's the only girl I know who laughs at my jokes, and the sound of her laughing is my favourite sound in the world, we do so much talking when we're together, we talk about so many things and it's exciting to find out about her and have her find out about me, it's great to have someone so interested in who I am, and she loves making plans, she makes plans for us, we make plans, what we'll do in the future, where we'll go, she makes anything and everything seem possible and she wants to do it all with me, she wants me to be a part of her life and that's all I've ever wanted, does that make sense to you at all?

But instead he shrugged and said, I don't know, we just get on well together. And Susan said well, that's good. That's the main thing.

He could have said I've never felt like this about anyone before.

He could have said and you know what? She doesn't keep any secrets from me.

To which Susan could have replied how do you know that? You can't know that.

But he didn't say these things, and she didn't reply.

Instead, he talked briefly about Eleanor leaving school with good exam results, about her saving up for a year to go to university and her family now not allowing her to. He said that she was going to study geology at the new university, once they were settled in. He mentioned the flat he'd found, and the social club he'd booked for the reception, and Susan said it sounded like he'd got it all worked out, she was impressed.

And you're sure you're doing the right thing? she asked. He laughed.

No, I'm not sure, he said. But I can't imagine doing anything else.

It rained the day they moved into their first home together, a second-floor flat on a main road about half an hour's walk from the museum. It was early evening by the time she unlocked the door and they burst in, rainwater streaming from their hair and down the collars of their damp clothes.

You said the weather was finer in England, she said, laughing accusingly, wiping her face with her hands.

I lied, he said, holding up his hands in surrender, letting her come for him.

It had rained all day. It was raining when he left home in the morning, a thin drizzle which seeped through his new suit and clung to his skin, and it was raining when he stood on the steps of the registry office to wait for her, the rain thickening and the woman behind the front desk coming outside to hand him an umbrella, saying he wanted to be careful he didn't catch a cold. It was raining when Eleanor arrived, ten minutes late, in a car his friend Danny had borrowed from his uncle and strung with white ribbon, and she had to lift the skirts of her dress a little as she came up the steps towards him, smiling and avoiding his eyes, sheltered from the rain by a folded newspaper Danny held over her head. It was raining when they repeated their vows, raising their voices over the noise of the rain rattling impatiently against the wired-glass skylights, the dozen of them in that small office-like room glancing up at the heavy sky, and it was raining as they drove to the reception.

Everyone was waiting for them when they arrived, David's family and his colleagues from the museum and his friends from school, and some of them rushed out with umbrellas to gather the two of them safely in, and some of them stood in the doorway and laughed, and everyone raised the first glass of many as David stood on a chair to welcome them all, and thank them for coming, and ask them to tuck into the food which had been provided. And the afternoon went by as fast as the rain flashing past the window — people shaking his hand and offering advice, or tipping a cheek towards him for a kiss and beaming congratulations, and his mother crying, of course, partly from happiness and partly from his father not being there to see it, and his grandparents, all the way up from Suffolk for the first time, saying they couldn't believe how much he'd grown and they couldn't believe he was marrying already and how happy they were for him, and Eleanor sitting quietly for a while when Susan said something about welcome to the family, but she couldn't sit for long because someone drifted by to talk to her and squeeze her hand and fill her glass. And the speeches came and went, and the music got louder, and the tables, littered with half-eaten sausage rolls and cucumber sandwiches and emptied-out bowls of cheese and onion crisps, were pulled to one side so the two of them could be pushed across the carpet to dance.