How It All Began Read online

  Teaching people how to read is a far cry from teaching teenagers how to appreciate reading. Sometimes, Charlotte tries to see the words in the way that the members of the class must see them—black marks: shapes, lines, a baffling code that has to be cracked. She compares the mysterious eloquence of a page of Arabic or Japanese, to which one is blind. The members of her class move around shut off from the cacophony of advertising, the instruction of road signs, the information of newspaper headlines. They are in the world, but not entirely of it. Their inability to read is crippling; a failure to respond to literature is merely a restriction.

  Charlotte drinks her coffee and considers. She is now focused. And the idea comes to her. She cannot get to the adult literacy class, but why should a member not come to her? Someone for whom extra coaching would be a godsend.

  She makes a phone call to Marsha, the class coordinator. Marsha is delighted to hear from her, wants to know how she is doing, when they can hope to see her again. Charlotte is one of the most valued members of Marsha’s team. Her innate skills as a communicator work just as well on getting people able to read as on the exegesis of Pride and Prejudice or the Ode to Immortality. Charlotte is a born teacher, that’s all there is to it. “We need you back,” says Marsha.

  “Look,” says Charlotte. “I’m wondering if…”

  Marsha ponders. This is a touch irregular, but she doesn’t see why not. The class is full to bursting, there are several people for whom some extra teaching would make all the difference. She ponders further. Then she makes a suggestion. What about Anton?

  Charlotte is surprised. She had imagined the Bangladeshis, or maybe Dan.

  But Marsha is pressing Anton. The thing is, she explains, that he is clearly highly intelligent, but for some reason he is not making progress. He is frustrated, he is somewhat out on a limb in the class—reserved, diffident, much more sophisticated; he could benefit greatly from some personal attention.

  “Right,” says Charlotte. “Let’s have Anton then.”

  She makes a successful foray to the garden gate, her spirits lifted. Now she has a purpose, something to do, she can be useful.

  Henry does not have anything to do. Or rather, he does not have that essential something. He has not identified a way of reestablishing his name, grabbing the attention of academia—no, of the cognoscenti generally. Restlessly, he sifts through his papers, in the service of the memoirs, in order to keep busy; all those files and boxes, in which are interred reputations, disputes, scholarly scandals. Could it be that the answer lies here?

  He finds it on a Thursday morning, at around ten-thirty. He tips out the contents of an unpromising-looking wallet file without a label, and flicks through the pile of papers. Letters. Letters that have never been sorted and filed. Letters from a while ago, from way back; he is looking at the late 1960s here, when he was not yet forty, the rising star of academia, the clever young man who knew everyone, whom everyone wanted to know. He picks up a letter with House of Commons heading, glances at the signature. Ah. John Bradshaw—Labour elder statesman cultivated by Henry and who had taken Henry up, got him into that think tank, wined and dined him and fed him tidbits of political gossip.

  Henry reads the letter, which is a quick note proposing a lunch and throwing out some digs at Harold Wilson, with whom Bradshaw is currently on bad terms. Not of great interest. Here’s another—what’s this one about?

  Bradshaw is long dead. Henry has not much thought of him in years. He had quite forgotten he had those letters. He reads the second letter, with growing attention. What’s this? Bradshaw is pushing an issue he wants taken up by the policy unit, and is talking about Hall, a fellow minister. “Hall agrees entirely about this—incidentally (strictest confidentiality here) he admitted to me that he’s dead worried because he’s been having an affair with Lydia Purkis. Of all people! Is trying to break it off—all very painful, deeply fond of her etc. Silly ass! My god, if the press get hold of this…Sleeping with the enemy and so forth, they’d go to town on it. We have to see they don’t.”

  Henry had forgotten all about this choice nugget, buried here. Lydia Purkis was the wife of a Tory grandee, hence the shame of it—crossing party lines—though to be caught sleeping with anyone’s wife, enemy or not, would be a resignation matter, probably, for a cabinet minister. But this never was. The press never did get on to it, the whole thing was whisked under the carpet, and all concerned are now dead.

  Well, well. Henry sits with the letter in front of him, his mind ticking. A suppressed scandal, but the names are still familiar—there could still be an interest. Suppose…It occurs to Henry that there is a nice contrast here with misdemeanor in eighteenth-century high society—politicians, royalty—and the way in which it was lampooned by the pamphleteers and the cartoonists. Gillray, Rowlandson, Hogarth. Exposure was an art form; today it is the heavy hammer of the gutter press. This particular scandal never reached the red tops, but if it had the headlines would have screamed.

  Henry has it. The idea. The answer.

  An article for one of the broadsheet Sundays. An article ostensibly contrasting the eighteenth century’s way of outing the misbehavior of the great and the good as opposed to the practices of today. A scholarly piece, which would cite instances from both periods, but which would slip in—quite offhand, as it were—this intriguing instance of a scandal that got away: “…a letter in my possession.” Furthermore, this will be a trail for the memoirs—a hint of further interesting revelations.

  Now—how to handle this?

  Anton arrives for his first session a couple of days later. Charlotte had barely registered him, a new arrival to the class. She is struck now by his rather formal manners, his courtesy. She installs him in Rose’s sitting-room, one afternoon (he can only do afternoons, apparently, he has a morning job), but he leaps anxiously to his feet when she gets up to look for paper, or put the kettle on for tea. Rose has gone to Brent Cross on a shopping expedition, so they will not be in the way. Charlotte now takes in Anton’s appearance—a man pushing fifty, perhaps, neatly dressed in gray trousers, white open-necked shirt, black leather jacket. A lean body, long face, and notable eyes. He has these large, dark brown eyes that to Charlotte are interestingly foreign; these are not homely English eyes, they are eyes from elsewhere, central European eyes, eyes with forests in them, and Ruritanian castles, and music by Janácˇek or Bartók.

  Anton can speak pretty good English, he understands well, but he has this great difficulty with reading the language. There is some mysterious block between English in the ear or on the tongue and English on the page.

  He spreads his hands, a gesture of defeat, taps his head. “I am so stupid. It is here—but in the books I cannot see it.”

  Anton must be able to read. He explains: “If I read, I get good job. Without read—job, yes. With read—job I can like.”

  Anton is working on a building site, but he has none of the building trade skills. He is not a plumber, or an electrician, or a carpenter, he tells Charlotte. “I wish,” he adds with a smile—that beguiling, apologetic smile.

  So what is he, what has he been, when he was at home, Charlotte wonders, and why is he here? And Anton knows that she wonders. He was—is—an accountant, he tells her. But there are no jobs where he lives. He has tried other places, with no luck, he was jobless for months. And then came the EU membership, and the possibility of work outside the country. Work here, in the UK.

  Anton’s English was learned not at school but from contact with visiting English-speaking colleagues. He felt confident that he could manage, once here; he had not reckoned with this reading problem.

  Anton is concerned about Charlotte’s injury, and shakes his head angrily when he hears the reason for it. “That is terrible,” he says. “A lady like you.”

  An old lady, he means. Charlotte smiles. “A soft target, I suppose. They prefer not to take on the young and fit.”

  Anton looks puzzled. She translates herself. “Soft target—somethi
ng easy to…to hit.”

  He sighs. “English is so…so many ways to say. But my language like that also.” A wry smile—and Charlotte glimpses the easy fluency in another tongue, the ability to say exactly what he means, but now he is floored, fettered by this lack of language, made to seem child-like, stupid.

  “Your English is not so bad at all,” she says. “And it will get better all the time, the longer you are here.”

  She has made tea; this is an acclimatization moment; she wants to get to know him better. “So how long have you been here?”

  Anton has been in England for six weeks. He is staying in a house in south London that is an enclave of his compatriots; mattresses on floors, communal meals. Those who land a decent job move out to a bed-sit or a flat-share. Some are seasonal only, trying to earn enough in a short time to fund some long-term plan back home: the deposit on a house, the wedding. Anton is older than most; “I am uncle,” he says, smiling. Literally so, in one case; a nephew of his is here, doing waiter work. “He read well. He have English from school. He try to teach me, but no good. So I look for the class.”

  Something more emerges. There is something else, in the crevices of what he says, or rather, of what he does not exactly say. He has no family; no children, and his wife has left. Charlotte senses someone whose world is all awry. At one point he shrugs: “I come to England because…because it not matter where I am. Perhaps I can start new.” Then he becomes embarrassed; he is here to be taught, not to unload his personal problems. He takes a hasty gulp of his tea, tells Charlotte that he is now quite a tea addict: “Before, always coffee. I learn tea on the building site and now I like. But this tea is different?”

  “Earl Grey,” says Charlotte. “No builder would touch it.”

  “It is good,” says Anton. “I shall buy.”

  They set to work. They study words in isolation—nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, connective words. They move on to a few simple sentences: the day is fine, I go to the shop, what is the time? Anton struggles, intense in concentration. He sits on the sofa alongside Charlotte, staring at fragments of language, at sequences of language, frowning, pursing his lips, breaking into a smile when he has triumphed over a word, a clump of words. Charlotte has met many adult literacy students, but she has seldom come across one more determined, more fervently applied to the problem. He does not find it easy; he can be stumped by some new combination of letters. “Chair,” he cries angrily. “Chair, chair, chair.” “I sit on the chair.”

  They take a break, and some fresh Earl Grey. Anton picks up the book on the coffee table, Charlotte’s book, and tries to read the title. “The. The house. The house of…”

  “Good,” says Charlotte.

  Anton scowls.

  “Mirth,” says Charlotte. “The House of Mirth. That’s a hard word. It means…laughter.”

  “What is it—the book?”

  “It’s a novel—a nineteenth-century novel by an American writer. Edith Wharton. Set in New York. I enjoy her work very much—I’m reading this for—oh, for the third or fourth time.”

  Anton picks up the book, opens it, turns over the pages, tries to read a line, sighs with frustration.

  He is a reader, he tells Charlotte, he reads a lot of fiction, he likes crime fiction, he has read P. D. James in translation (“This is English writer, yes?”), but he is eclectic in his tastes, he has enjoyed John Updike and Ian McEwan. He reads home-grown, he reads in translation. “I like story,” he says. “I read for story.”

  Of course, thinks Charlotte. Many of us read for that. Most of us, even. That is how children learn to read, why they do so. You reach them through stories, you lure them on with story.

  And here is Anton having to plod on with The day is fine, I go to the shop, thinks Charlotte. And she experiences the first faint smolder of an idea.

  But the afternoon has rushed by. Far more than the statutory hour has passed, and here now is the sound of the front door. Rose is back. Oh, dear.

  Rose comes in, slung about with carrier bags. She looks frazzled. An afternoon at the Brent Cross shopping mall would annihilate anyone.

  Anton leaps to his feet. Charlotte apologizes. “We’ve finished. Anton is just going. I forgot the time. This is Anton, Rose. My daughter Rose.”

  Anton holds out a formal hand, which Rose takes, a touch awkward.

  “Thank you for I come to your house,” he says.

  “That’s all right,” says Rose. “Don’t feel you must rush off. I’m desperate for a cup of tea, that’s all.”

  She moves toward the kitchen, but Charlotte waves the teapot. “This is still hot. Just get a cup. Don’t go, Anton. I want to give you some work for next week.”

  Rose returns, sinks into an armchair with the reviving tea.

  Charlotte sorts out some homework for Anton. He is greedy for it. “Some more,” he says. He lays a hand on The House of Mirth. “Perhaps in the end I read this.” He looks toward the well-stocked bookcase in Rose’s sitting-room, and then at her. “You have many books. You like to read?”

  “Well, yes,” says Rose. “Of course. I mean, I could hardly not, with my parents being what they were.”

  Anton looks confused, and Charlotte has to explain that both she and her husband were teachers of English literature. Anton has clearly been assuming that adult literacy instruction was her trade. He is much impressed. “Ah,” he says. “Ah. I did not understand.” He gets up. “May I look?” he asks Rose, and goes over to the bookcase. Rose watches him, interested. She glances at Charlotte, eyebrows raised.

  Anton is studying the shelves. He pulls out a book. “This name I know. I have read translation. R…rut…Ree…Ree…”

  “Ruth Rendell,” says Rose.

  He looks at Charlotte in satisfaction. “Nearly I read that. I see the name and I know I have seen before.”

  Rose says, “It must be so frustrating—because you speak English well.”

  Charlotte explains to her that Anton is an accountant; once he can read and write English with confidence he can aim for an appropriate job.

  “With your mother I learn,” says Anton. “Better than the class. I learn better.” He beams.

  “And it’s good for Mum to be able to do something,” says Rose briskly. “She was bored to tears.”

  Sidelined, Charlotte inclines her head gracefully.

  Rose seems well disposed toward Anton. She asks where he is living. He describes the compatriot enclave, amusingly. “We live like student. They eat out of tins and I am cross—the nasty uncle. I am too old for this. Soon I must find a bed-sit.”

  More emerges of his circumstances. He has an eighty-year-old mother to whom he sends money. He would like to send her some clothes—everything is so much better here, she would be delighted. “But it is difficult. I look in the shops and I do not know what size, what is good.”

  Half an hour or more has passed in talk. Rose has apparently recovered from Brent Cross. Then Anton gathers up his things, his homework books stashed carefully away in a rucksack. He thanks Charlotte warmly, turns to Rose. “And thank you for your nice house.” He goes.

  Rose carries the tea tray through to the kitchen. Charlotte follows her, saying, “Sorry about that. We overran. I’d meant him to be gone before you got back.”

  Rose says, “He seems a nice guy.” A pause. “Amazing eyes.”

  So she too saw the forests, thinks Charlotte. The castles. That elsewhere.

  It was on the fourteenth of April that Charlotte Rainsford was mugged. Seven lives have been derailed—nine if we include the Dalton girls, who do not yet realize that their parents are on the brink of separation. Charlotte, Rose and Gerry are thrust into unaccustomed proximity; Charlotte is frustrated and restless. Henry Peters—his lordship—has been chagrined and humiliated and is desperate to reestablish himself. Stella Dalton is taking five different kinds of medication, phoning her sister twice daily, and instructing a solicitor. Jeremy Dalton is writing placatory letters to Stella, nervously i
nspecting his accounts, and trying to sell an eighteenth-century overmantel for an exorbitant sum. Marion Clark is soothing Jeremy while wondering if in fact this relationship is really going anywhere; she is meeting George Harrington for lunch next week—a potential business partner looks suddenly more interesting than a romantic fling. She too has been preoccupied by her accounts.