Jon McGregor - So Many Ways to Begin

He wanted her, immensely.

He couldn't move.

Later, he would have liked to have been able to say that he thought of Eleanor at that moment, that he remembered how much he loved her still and how important it was that he went straight back home and told her. Or that he thought of Kate, and how privileged he felt to be a part of her life, and that he knew with sudden clarity that he could do nothing to jeopardise that. But these things wouldn't have been true. It was only fear which kept him from moving towards her. Fear of what might happen if he did, fear of what might happen then, and next, and for the rest of his life.

He turned and walked down the stairs, slowly, his knees buckling with each step, feeling the weight of her gaze on his shoulders, watching him. He hesitated again at the bottom of the stairs, wondering whether he should turn and say something, or change his mind, or stay for another drink so that they could both pretend nothing had happened at all. He heard the swirl of her dress behind him as she turned away from the top of the stairs, and he heard her bedroom door closing, and he thought, even then, about going back. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt and opened the front door, stepping out into the afternoon sun and walking quickly away.

He was surprised, as he lay there, by just how much pain there was, a ragged-edged, nameless, roaring pain. He was surprised by how much blood continued to spill out of him, pooling thickly across the cracked and broken ground. He tried to bring his hands to the place where it hurt, to see if he could take out what had broken into him, to pinch the edges of the wound and stop the endless outpouring of blood. But his hands quivered uselessly when he tried to move them, lifting weakly into the air, falling again. He turned his head, watching Chris moving further away, watching the birds cluster and sweep across the evening sky.

He thought about when Kate had been born, and the visceral sense he'd had of the need to protect her, the violence he'd felt rising in his body at the thought of anyone so much as intending her harm. He realised that he'd already failed her, and he wondered who would be there to protect her now, if they would do a better job than it seemed he was capable of.

He saw Chris turning round without breaking his stride, looking back from fifty yards away. He saw him stopping, turning again, shielding his eyes from the low sun. They looked at each other. David lifted his bloodied hands, in some feeble gesture of need, and Chris ran, stumbling, across the broken ground.

When Eleanor was eight years old, she told him once, she lost a pair of gloves on the way home from school. It was getting close to spring and the day had turned warm, so she'd left them in her coat pocket, not realising they had fallen out until just before she got to her front door. She spent an hour looking for them, running back to school with her head down, scanning the pavement and the gutter and the railing tops. She got to the school just as her teacher was leaving, and he let her back in to look under her desk, in the cloakroom, in the corridor, in the outside toilets, but they weren't there. She ran back to the house, her frantic search blurred by hot, frightened tears. I didn't want to get into trouble for being home late, she told him, but I didn't want to get into trouble for losing the gloves either. When she gave up, and knocked on the door, and wasn't able to meet her mother's questioning glare, she got into trouble for both. She was sent to bed without any tea, and smacked on each step of the steep stairs, and wasn't allowed another pair of gloves until she was old enough to buy them for herself. I used to wear socks on my hands, she said, when it was deathly cold, and hoick my hands up into my sleeves so that no one could see.

When Kate was seven years old, the autumn after David had been in hospital, Eleanor bought her a new pair of gloves and attached them to her winter coat with two lengths of bright red wool. She took a sewing kit out from the cupboard under the stairs one Sunday afternoon and settled down into the sofa by the window. Kate stood and watched her for a few moments, distracted from the farm she was building in front of the fireplace, a look of puzzled concentration in her eyes.

What are you doing? she asked. Eleanor looked up from trying to thread the needle, her daughter's coat laid out across her lap, the two gloves nestling together on the arm of the sofa.

I'm going to sew these gloves to your coat, she said. So you don't lose them. Kate thought about this for a moment, and turned away.

Okay, she said, as though giving permission. She went back to the farm, her grandmother watching her fondly and asking where she was going to put the sheep. In here! Kate announced, dunking the two plastic sheep into a felt duck-pond, picking up a horse and galloping it around the farm in circles, neighing loudly, knocking over dry stone walls and stumbling into a tractor, saying ow the horse has broke his leg he has to go to hospital and have stitches, her voice loud and shrill and excited. Dorothy glanced across at Eleanor, ready to shush her granddaughter, but Eleanor was still concentrating on threading the needle and didn't say anything. David came back inside from putting out the rubbish.

The aerial's come loose, he said, I'll have to go up on the roof and fix it. Or get someone round. No one replied, so he went back into the kitchen to make a start on the washing up, standing in the doorway a moment while he waited for the water to run hot, watching his wife and his daughter and his mother sitting together in his home on a quiet Sunday afternoon. He had discovered, with surprise, that this was one of the deepest pleasures in his life, to cook dinner for these three people, to eat with them, and to settle into a long afternoon of being in their presence. He liked to sit at the end of the sofa with his eyes closed, so that they would think he was asleep, so that he could be there without being there, listening to their lazy talk, Kate's babbling chatter, his mother's commentary on the afternoon's films. And he liked to listen to them before dinner, through the doorway, Eleanor telling Dorothy about their week, Dorothy telling Eleanor about hers, Kate interrupting to ask questions and tell them both about something that had happened at school, their conversation sharpened by hunger as he kept busy in the kitchen — checking the roast in the oven, lifting it out to spoon more juices over its back, sliding a knife between the bones to see if it was cooked, draining the vegetables over the sink with a rush of steaming water knowing that his mother would be listening, would be thinking that she'd taught him something at least.

Eleanor finally managed to thread the needle, and reached for the long hanging end of the thread, twisting it round her finger to make a knot. As she did so, the needle spilt out of her fingers and down between the cushions somewhere. She slammed her hand on to the arm of the sofa in frustration, knocking the gloves to the floor and saying a loud shit! before catching herself. David turned the tap off and stepped forward, wanting to help. Kate looked up, startled, with a hand over her mouth, saying Mummy said a naughty word, naughty word, Mummy said a naughty word, saying it almost as a song to herself, crouching back down amongst the pieces of her farm. Dorothy looked across at Eleanor, trying not to smile, and stood up.

Shall we go up and play with Sindy now? she asked Kate, reaching for her hand. Kate looked at her, and stood up as well.

Okay, she said, without seeming to think about it, and the two of them went away up the stairs.

You okay? David asked, moving towards Eleanor. She smiled, shaking her head, wiping her eyes with the tips of her fingers.