Jon McGregor: So Many Ways to Begin

They came in the morning, early, walking with the others along tracks and lanes and roads, across fields, down the long low hills which led to the slow pull of the river, down to the open gateways in the city walk, the hours and days of walking showing in the slow shift of their bodies, their breath steaming above them in the cold morning air as the night fell away at their backs. They came quietly, the swish of dew-wet grasses brushing against their ankles, the pat and splash of the muddy ground beneath their feet, the coughs and murmurs of rising conversation as the same few phrases were passed back along the lines. Here we are now. Nearly there. Just to the bottom of the hill and then we'll sit down. Cigarettes were lit, hundreds of cigarettes, thin leathery fingers expertly rolling a pinch of tobacco into a lick of paper without losing a step. Cigarettes were cadged, offered, shared, passed down to nervous young hands eager for that first acrid taste of adulthood, cupping a mouthful of it in the windshield of their open fists in imitation of fathers and uncles and older brothers, coughing as it burnt down into their untested young lungs, the spluttered-out smoke twisting upwards and mingling with their cold clouded breath as they made their way between flowering hawthorn hedges and cowslip-heavy banks, down towards the city walk. They wore suits, of a kind, all of them: woollen waistcoats and well knotted neckerchiefs, thick tweed jackets with worn elbows and cuffs, moleskin trousers with frayed seams tucked into the tops of their boots. The younger ones carried bundles of clothes, brown paper parcels fastened with string, slung across their shoulders or clasped to their chests, held tightly in their damp nervous hands as they started to gather pace, pulled down the hill by the sight of the city, by their eagerness to be first and by the impatience of the men and the boys pressing in from behind; still foggy from sleep, still aching from the long walk the day before, but forgetting all that as they came to their journey's end.

From the top of the hill, where others were only now beginning that last long downward traipse, the city looked quiet and still, wrapped in a pale May morning mist, weighted with the same brooding promise that cities have always held when glimpsed from a distance like this, the same magnetic pull of hopes and opportunities. But as those first men and boys came into the city, their boots beginning to stamp and echo across the cobbled ground, windows were opened and curtains pulled back, and the city began to wake. Sleepy children peered from low upstairs windows, the hushed chatter and the rumbling of feet signalling the start of the day they'd been looking forward to, calling to each other and pulling faces at the children in the houses across the street. Landlords opened the doors and shutters of their bars, sweeping the floors and standing in their doorways with brooms in their hands to watch their customers arrive. Stallholders finished preparing their pitches around the edges of the square, keeping an eye on the small group of guards by the steps of the new town hall. And from each end of the long square, from the road leading in from the bridge to the east, from the gateway under the lodge to the west, from the road winding out along the river to the south, the army of workers appeared, hurrying on with the growing excitement of arrival, calling greetings to friends not seen for the past six months, looking around for others yet to arrive, asking after health, and families, and wives. And the crowd of people in the square grew bigger, and noisier, and fathers began to lay hands on the shoulders of their youngest sons, keeping them close, wary of letting them drift away too soon, listening to the snatches of conversation echo back and forth, looking out for the farmers and foremen to start to appear, waiting for the business of the day to begin.

Mary Friel stood with her father and brothers, watching, her youngest brother Tommy clutching her hand. You okay there Tommy? she whispered down to him. He looked up at her, nodding, a look of annoyance on his young face, and pulled his hand away.

Soon, as if at some unseen signal, deals began to be made all over the square. You looking for work son? the smartly dressed men would say, glancing down. How much you after? And the older boys, the ones who knew their price, or the ones who could say they were experienced, stronger, would get more work done, tried their luck with eight, nine, ten pounds, while the younger ones, who knew no better or could ask no more, said seven or six as they'd been told. Deals were made with a terse nod and a handing over of the brown paper packages, an instruction to meet back there in the afternoon, sometimes with a shilling or two to keep the boy busy for the day, sometimes not; sometimes the father taken for drinks to smooth over the awkwardness of the scene, sometimes not.

This was the first time Mary had been to town for the hiring fair. She'd only ever watched her father setting off with her brothers before; stood in the low doorway to wave them goodbye, her sister Cathy beside her, Tommy holding on to both their hands, their mother turning away before the boys got out of sight and saying no time to be standing around all day now. She'd had an idea of what it would be like from hearing her father those evenings he came back home alone; she and Cathy lying in bed listening while he talked in a low voice to their mother by the last few turfs of the fading fire. But she hadn't been expecting quite so many people, or so much noise, or the way her father would stare sternly straight ahead when a gentleman approached him and said your boy looking for a job?

They left the square as soon as the price had been agreed, telling Tommy to be good, to work hard and to do what the man said, and to meet them back here at the next fair day in six months' time. They walked through the town towards the river, Mary, her father, her two older brothers who were past the age of hiring now, out to the docks to catch the boat across to England. She listened to her brothers talking to her father as they sat waiting for the boat, talking and joking about their time as hired boys, the threshing and weeding and picking of stones, the early mornings and the endless thoughts of food. She sat slightly apart from them, looking up into the hills on the other side of the river, feeling the imprint of her young brother's hand across the palm of her own. Other men joined them, walking over from the square, lighting up cigarettes, sitting on sacks of grain and crates of wool, talking about where they'd heard the work was that year. Following the harvests from Lancashire up to Berwick and all the way on to Fife. Waterworks round Birmingham way. Munitions in Glasgow, Manchester, Coventry, Leeds. Talking of the best ways to get there, the cheapest places to stay, the names to mention to stand a better chance of work at the end of the trip. Some of the men looked across at Mary, curiously, wondering what she might have been doing there, wondering who she was with, until their gaze was interrupted by her father's hard glare.

They were going over the water early this year. The weather had changed sooner than usual, and the field was dug and planted, the turf cut, before fair day came. Work had been arranged for Mary, in London, and so their father had announced that they would all make the journey together. It's a long way for a girl to go on her own, is it not? he'd said, and her mother could only agree, making up slices of cake for their journey, taking out the brown paper from its place beneath the bed.

On the boat, the four of them found a place in a quiet corner and settled themselves in, the two brothers on either side, Mary resting her head on her father's shoulder, his heavy coat laid over them both. It smelt of damp soil and turf smoke and the cold clean air of their two days' walking. It smelt of him and she concentrated on the smell as she drifted into an uncomfortable sleep, broken by the tip and slide of the boat, by the shouts of other men, by the hard wooden deck beneath the both.