How It All Began (16 page)

“If you could just sit here, beside the desk. Lovely.” The flowers were now on the desk, where piles of papers should be. A light shone in his eyes. A camera pointed at him. A young man stepped forward with a sheet of paper. Very young man—he looked to Henry about sixteen, but Henry would concede that his judgment could be faulty, where age was concerned.

“Here’s the text I’ve roughed out for you. Do feel free to depart from it.” Henry beamed. Quite a nice boy, possibly. “Just cast your eye over it before they get going. See if you feel it will do.”

Henry read. He was to speak in general terms on the eighteenth century. Age of transition, of innovation, of political intrigue. A somewhat alien style—short, sharp sentences. Actually, not much in it to which he could take exception. Well grounded. One might, though, slip in a few observations of one’s own. A word or two about—um, Walpole. (A moment of panic—another name had teetered at the edge of the black hole.)

He beckoned to the boy. “I can’t quarrel with this. Quite well put. I may well depart, at points, as you suggest . . . um, I didn’t catch your name?”

“Mark.”

“Mark. I can see you’ve read up a bit on the eighteenth century, Mark.”

The boy was all charm, a touch self-deprecating. “Well, not really. Actually, I’ve just finished my Ph.D.—on the Scottish Enlightenment.”

Henry looked at him in alarm. “Really? How interesting. Not my field, of course. I’m a politics man. Well now, do you think they’re ready to get going?”

The next twenty minutes were purgatory. The light shone, the camera stared, Henry spoke. He spoke sitting, he spoke standing. He spoke with and without Mark’s paper prompt, whose crisp sentences should have been easy enough to remember, but somehow were not. He experimented with delivery, and found himself stumbling. He who had been renowned for his lecture theater fluency. At last it was over. “OK,” said the young woman. “That’ll do. Lovely.”

“One is out of practice,” said Henry stiffly.

“Not to worry. In fact, hesitations can be rather effective.”

“More natural,” said Mark.

Up to a point, thought Henry. Except that hesitation was bloody nearly full stop. He thought of that unshaven young fellow in jeans, declaiming while shinning up some Welsh mountain. Not quite as simple as one had imagined, this.

The room was put back to rights. More coffee was had, with polite
conversational exchange. Mark asked what Henry was working on at the moment. “Oh, some ideas on electoral patronage,” said Henry evasively.

They went. Henry sank into the armchair. “Rose . . . I rather think I’ll have a glass of claret. Could you be an angel?”

“
N
o,” said Charlotte. “There is absolutely no need. Minicab there and back. Helpful driver. On arrival, I can demonstrate my crutch abilities.”

Charlotte was to go to the hospital for a checkup. Rose frowned: “Why couldn’t they have given you an
afternoon
appointment. Then I could come—no problem.”

“Clinic is mornings, I suppose . . . I shall be fine. Think of it as the first step to independence.”

In fact, independence seemed still a distant utopia. Charlotte had had a near fall, though she was not going to mention this; she felt weak and unsteady, at moments. And pain forever growled, of course.

“I’m going to tell Henry I need to . . .”

“
No
.”

Interesting, thought Charlotte. Role reversal. Now I am the one to be pigheaded, obstinate. I know how she feels.

Rose, like her mother in the past, capitulated in the face of determination. “All right, then.” A little exasperated shake of the head. “I’ll sort out a minicab.”

And interesting also the shifts in negotiation, mother versus daughter, over time; the ebb and flow of power—no, not power exactly—
the way in which authority tips from one to the other. When she was a child, you were the fount of wisdom, of instruction. In old age, you
have stepped to one side, it is you who look for sustenance. Trying not to, silently complaining, aghast. How has this come about?

But grateful. Bear with me, she tells Rose (silently). I am only doing what you once did—trying to stake out my own ground, establish myself. I will go to the hospital alone to show that I can. To look time in the eye.

So that is settled. And, meanwhile, days progress. Rose goes to work, Gerry goes to work, Charlotte exists. At least, that is what it feels like. Before the mugger’s intervention, daily life was considerably more than mere existence; it sparkled with event—things seen and heard, conversational exchanges, going somewhere, doing something, news and views and stimulus. Not so, now. Oh, but that is not true. There is conversation with Rose and Gerry, there is news, there are views. But there are tracts of solitude, with only pain nudging its presence.

Charlotte found that her reading had undergone a seismic shift. She read now purely for distraction. She had had to scupper the plan to revisit familiar territory:
The House of Mirth
became hard going—goodness, surely not?;
Howard’s End
had no appeal whatsoever. As for
Paradise Los
t—forget it. But distraction took curious forms. High voltage thrillers did not work at all—but then, she had never much cared for crime. P. G. Wodehouse did the trick, but Rose’s shelves could only throw up two titles, quickly devoured. She read Gerry’s
Telegraph
from end to end, surprised to find herself visiting the arcane suburbs of Business and Sport, and it was a nice diversion to quarrel with the letter writers, and most of the columnists. Rose often brought back a
Guardian
, and Charlotte fell into that with relief. To know about the world beyond her own present discomfort was somehow deeply important, an antidote to self-absorption. Everything going on regardless, the helter-skelter of the historical process, and in the grand scheme of things you yourself are neither here nor there.

But while still here, hanging in, you wish to perform satisfactorily, and it annoyed Charlotte that the reading habits of a lifetime seemed to be compromised. She was not bolstered by books in the way that she always had been; they were no longer that essential solace, retreat,
support system. She thought that she could identify the problem: angst. When everything is wrong—you are in the wrong place, and your body has betrayed you—then malfunction is total. The mind too is out of order.

The malfunctioning mind seemed to require light nourishment only, and of a curious kind—things that would never normally attract her attention. On a foray to the corner shop—essential crutch practice—she bought
Good Housekeeping
, and read with superficial interest about the age-defying tricks that really work and the secrets of stylish living. No—diversion, not interest. And there was the constant need for reassurance—the need to reach out and touch the world, to make sure it was all still going on, and that even if you were not normal yourself, everything else was. When Rose and Gerry were out, she had the radio on most of the time. The news, on the hour, every hour: ah, attention has shifted to Zimbabwe, to Brussels, to some home-grown political spat; there is a new disaster, a new crisis, someone else is grabbing the microphone.

Charlotte winces at the disasters. People picking their way through floods, on the other side of the globe; a dead soldier, someone’s son; children with stick limbs and swollen bellies. To have sampled distress yourself—in a minor, Western, cushioned way—is to become more sensitive to the distress of others. She flinches. What have I got to complain about?

Gerry was concerned about the cat, which continued to be off its food. Malingering, said Rose, dismissive.

The cat exchange took place at breakfast, on the day that Charlotte was to go to the hospital for her checkup. Rose was writing down the number of the minicab firm for her, in case it was late or did not turn up. Cats were not on her agenda.

“And you will have your mobile on you?”

Charlotte nodded. “Of course.”

Gerry had gone to fetch his raincoat. He came back, with briefcase, kitted out for the office. He hoped that the hospital would go well, to Charlotte; he laid a hand on Rose’s shoulder. “My choir night. Early supper?”

Charlotte was not quite as calm about the hospital trip as she pretended. It would be the first time that she had been farther than a few yards from Rose’s house; the move felt both adventurous and daunting. She was ready half an hour before the minicab was due, and then stood in the window waiting for it. A few minutes before the due time, she realized that she had not thought to look out some reading matter—there was bound to be a long wait, one knew hospital clinics all too well.

She looked around the room—have to find something quickly—the car would be here any moment. Gerry had taken his
Telegraph
with him. There was a small pile of books on the coffee table—current reading matter. Rose had the new Jane Gardam from the library, and a paperback Carol Shields, both of which Charlotte had read. And there was
The Da Vinci Code
. This had been sitting there for a while, ignored by Rose; Gerry had acquired it at a station, before a train journey. Whether or not he had read it was not known.

Outside a car hooted. Charlotte grabbed
The Da Vinci Code
, and hopped toward the front door.

The journey was seamless, the driver entirely helpful, escorting her right to the doors of the hospital. During the journey, Charlotte had established that he was from Eritrea, and that minicab driving was for him a secondary occupation that funded his main concern, which was the compilation of the first dictionary that would give three-way reference between English and the two main languages spoken in Eritrea. This conversation had been prompted by Charlotte’s having noticed that he had a copy of Samuel Johnson’s
Rasselas
lying on the passenger seat. She had not been able to resist remarking on this, to which he had replied that his interest in Johnson stemmed from the
Dictionary
, being himself a dictionary man. All this quite took Charlotte’s mind off the business of the day, and confirmed the impression she had had before now—that some of the most interesting people in London are plowing the city in minicabs.

The waiting-room for her clinic was full, as she had anticipated. The lame, the halt, the terminally bored. Charlotte settled herself down and took out
The Da Vinci Code
. She noted that few others had
a book. People read magazines—their own, or the dog-eared ones supplied by the hospital—or they simply sat, staring at each other, or into space. One girl was immersed in a paperback with candy pink raised lettering on the cover. An elderly man had a battered hardback library book. She wanted to know what it was but could not see—unforgivable inquisitiveness, but the habit of a lifetime.

A few pages of
The Da Vinci Code
, and she knew that she could go no further with this. Moreover, she felt that her reading matter nailed her: the woman beside her had glanced at the book before Charlotte opened it, and given her a complicit smile and nod. I am seen as a
Da Vinci Code
person, thought Charlotte. Well, there would be a certain affectation in being someone who sat in a hospital waiting-room reading Dostoevsky.

Time passed. For some, the call came; for most, it did not. The waiting-room thinned out—a little. Those whose tolerance threshold was low made inquiries at the reception desk, and reported that the consultant was running late, the level of delay being unspecified. A certain camaraderie sprang up. The woman next to Charlotte was one of those whose hour came; rising, she said benignly to Charlotte, “At least you’ll get time to enjoy your book.”

Her other neighbor was restlessly impatient. She visited the reception desk several times, and came back shaking her head: “Is no good, wait so much. I have job this afternoon.” She was Turkish Cypriot, it emerged, and had broken her wrist tripping over her grandson’s toy fire engine. Complications had set in and there was talk of surgery, she told Charlotte. She patted her bag: “So I have here present for the doctor.”

Charlotte registered surprise.

The woman opened her bag, furtively, and revealed a bottle of Famous Grouse whisky. “I give to the doctor, and then he arrange I have surgery soon, not wait to go on the list.”

“Actually,” said Charlotte, “I don’t think it works like that.”

The woman smiled sweetly. “Oh yes, I think so.”

It seemed to Charlotte that the plot stemmed from a certain innocence rather than guile. She made no further comment, and they
exchanged medical experiences until the woman was called. She emerged from the consulting room after a relatively short space of time; Charlotte longed to know if she still had the whisky.

By the time her own turn came she was so accustomed to the wait that a summons came as a surprise—an intrusion, almost. The consultant was not the person who had done the surgery. Of course not. The National Health Service likes to make sure that you achieve as wide an acquaintance as possible among its operatives.

He thought she was doing pretty well. Mobility not bad. Pain unfortunately is always a hazard. It will improve. Patience is essential therapy, I’m afraid, with an injury of this kind.

Pleasant man. At how many old women with bashed-up hips has he beamed in that reassuring way? Charlotte began to struggle to her feet, dropping her bag in the process. The doctor hurried round his desk to help her, picking up the bag, and
The Da Vinci Code
, which had fallen out.

“Ah,” he said, handing it to her. “Isn’t that a terrific read!”

What could one do but nod? Smile.

Anton was reading
The Finn Family Moomintrol
l
—in the Tube, back at the flat in the evenings. He had given up concealing what he read, and amiably endured merciless ribbing from his nephew and the other young men. All that mattered, to him, was that his mastery of the language improved by leaps and bounds. At his last session with Charlotte she had been astonished.

He laughed. “You see! That is because I must know how the story goes.”