So Many Ways to Begin

3 Local map, Whitechapel district, London, annotated, c.1950

It was his father’s idea to move to Coventry. He heard that from his mother, more than once, sitting around the kitchen table while his father read the evening paper and grumbled about some factory closure or rates increase. It was your father’s idea to move here, she’d say, to David and Susan, pretending that she thought he couldn’t hear. Or he heard it from their bedroom late at night, their tempered voices breaking through the thin walls and closed doors; this was your idea remember Albert, not mine. To which his father usually replied that they’d otherwise still be squatting in Julia’s bloody spare room and how would she like that then, eh?

Julia had been Dorothy’s closest friend at nursing college, despite being a few years older and more familiar with silver cutlery or linen tablecloths than anyone Dorothy knew. She’d been widowed early on in the war, and her young son Laurence was living with her brother in the country, so when she offered Dorothy lodgings in her house she claimed that it was as much to keep her from getting lonely as anything. You’ll be doing me a favour dear, she said, and she refused to let Dorothy even think of finding somewhere else to live once Susan was born, or David, or even when Albert came back from the war for good, and Laurence returned from the country, and there were six of them squeezed into the house and making do. It hadn’t always been easy, especially once Laurence came back and began to compete noisily for his mother’s attention. But the house was big enough, just, and Julia generous enough, that they could easily still have been living there had Albert not heard about the houses being offered in Coventry for building workers, or had Dorothy not secretly done all that she could to encourage him.

They went back to Auntie Julia’s house now and again, once a year if they could, using the postal orders she sent to pay the fares; David and Susan wearing their Sunday clothes and watching the train rattle past the newly built suburbs of Coventry, the long reaches of wasteground, the farms and woodlands and market towns which soon gave way to the smoke and noise of London. Look, that’s where I went to school, his father would say, as they walked from the underground station to Julia’s house, squeezing David’s hand to get his attention, pointing to a tall high-windowed Victorian building; and this is where I took my first job, a few moments later, as they passed a builder’s yard with a few small piles of bricks and sand and waste timber. This is where your grandparents lived, he’d add quickly, gesturing at an open scrap of wasteland between two houses; that’s where I grew up. And this is where we all used to live, his mother would say, as they rounded the last corner into Julia’s street, David and Susan both slipping out of their parents’ hands in a race to reach the house first, stretching up to reach the doorbell before Julia, who would always be looking out for them, swung open the door.

Their visits usually followed the same pattern. Julia would have lunch waiting for them – cucumber sandwiches, sliced meats, fruit pies, all laid out on the big table by the window, with Laurence hovering sullenly while he waited for permission to begin – and once they’d eaten Albert would make some excuse and slip out to see old friends in the pub, leaving the women to talk and the children to get down and play. It was a tall and narrow terraced house, with three floors and a cellar, and although the rooms were small and crammed full of Julia’s many possessions, there was plenty of space to explore. Sometimes Susan and David would play together, or with Laurence, while Julia and Dorothy did the washing up and chattered about grown-up things; playing hide and seek up and down the three flights of stairs, making handkerchief parachutes for Susan’s dolls and dropping them with a quick thud from the top landing, daring each other to creep down into the dark cellar. Sometimes they’d play apart, allocating each other a floor of the house and muttering their imaginary narratives around cars and teacups and soldiers and dolls. And sometimes they’d make so much noise, encroaching on each other’s games or flaring up over some half-imagined slight, that Auntie Julia or their mother would give them some money and some coupons to go to the sweet shop, telling them to run off some of their silliness in the park. Laurence never came to the park with them, and often ignored them altogether, barricading himself in his room to read comics or listen to the crystal radio set he’d built himself. He was five years older than David, so it almost didn’t seem strange that he would keep himself apart like that, although sometimes he heard his mother complain about it on the way home, saying well Laurence was a bit rude, a bit sulky, nothing like his mother, and didn’t Albert think Julia should be doing something about it?

Dorothy was up on her feet before he’d even opened the door, reaching for him, saying David David love, what happened? Lifting him into her arms, kissing the top of his head and wiping his eyes with a handkerchief, saying oh David, it’s okay, it’s alright, what’s happened to you? And by the time she’d sat him down on a chair to have a good look at him, Julia had taken a wad of cotton wool from her useful drawer, and a bottle of antiseptic from the cupboard, and set them on the table.

She asked him again what had happened. There were some big boys, he said, in the park, and he didn’t manage to say much more through his sniffs and juddering tears. He didn’t say that they’d asked him what he was doing in their park, that they’d told him he wasn’t from round there and to get lost, that one of them had pushed him off the swing and that another had thrown stones while he was running away, that he’d tripped and fallen and they’d all laughed. He was already learning that some things were easier not to say.

This is going to hurt a little now David, his mother said, as she dabbed antiseptic on to his broken skin. He nodded, wincing, sucking the breath in between his teeth, and when she was done he said are we going home soon? and his mother said yes love, we are, we’ll go soon, but why don’t you have a lie down first, have a little rest, okay?

And while David lay in the bed in one of Julia’s spare rooms, a cool damp cloth folded across his forehead, and while Susan went up to see him, to offer him something from her thruppenny bag of sweets and say are you alright? I’m sorry I left you in the park, and while David thought about it for a moment and said that’s okay, Dorothy was wiping at tears of her own with the same handkerchief she’d offered David a few moments before, sitting down on the chair and smiling up at Julia, saying well, you can’t always be there with them, can you?

No dear, Julia said, sitting down next to her. You can’t.

It’s a good job I wasn’t there, Dorothy said, smoothing her handkerchief. I probably would have belted them.

I daresay you would have done Dotty, Julia said, shaking her head, and where do you think that would have left us? A long line of upset mothers knocking on my door I’d imagine. Dorothy smiled, wiping her eyes again and folding the handkerchief away.

But where does it come from, this? she said, looking down at her clenching and unclenching fist. I mean, Julia, you know, from the first moment I set eyes on him, I—He was such a beautiful child, wasn’t he?

They always are, said Julia, smiling.

No, but Julia, he was; I couldn’t, I couldn’t take my eyes off him; I couldn’t put him down for more than a minute. I used to watch anyone who came near him like a hawk, you know I did. Julia nodded.

I know Dot, she said. Of course I do.

I would have stepped in front of a bus for him, Dorothy said. I still would. Where does that come from? she asked again. Julia shrugged.

It’s only natural, she said.

Dorothy looked up, almost startled.

But this was different, she said, this is different. I’d never felt like that before, she said fearfully. Don’t you remember me telling you that? Julia nodded, smiling, squeezing Dorothy’s hand and then letting go as they both heard Susan stepping carefully down the stairs.

4 Tobacco tin, cigarettes, Christmas card, 1914

He pushed open the door of the room at the end of Auntie Julia’s top landing, and stared. He’d never seen so many things in one room before. There were piles of books and magazines, dresses on hangers and dresses spread out across chairs, hats balanced on top of each other, photo albums still halfway through being filled from shoeboxes of loose snapshots, bunches of flowers hanging to dry, posters for West End productions, jewellery boxes spilling over with tangled necklaces and earrings. He edged into the room, his hands hovering over it all, not knowing where to begin. His parents kept a much tidier and more ordered house; clothes were kept in wardrobes, toys went straight back under the bed when they’d been played with, and the few photographs they had were neatly filed away into albums and rarely taken out. This was something very new. Later, once he’d been taken to the British Museum, and been patiently waited for while he tried to read every last caption, he would think of comparing this room to the collection halls of the Egyptian Pharaohs, where the many possessions they needed to accompany them to the next world were held for safekeeping, and he would shyly tell Julia this and be shocked by the volume of her laughter, by the ferocity with which she would gather him into her arms and kiss the top of his head.

Without thinking about it, he picked up a tobacco tin from the bookshelf, half hidden amongst the jewellery boxes and polished stones. It was lighter than he’d expected, and rough where the metal had rusted, and there were pictures of battleships around the edge of the lid. You can open it if you like, Julia said quietly, and although he hadn’t realised she was standing behind him, he was too absorbed to be surprised. She came into the room, swept a pile of magazines from the bed to the floor and sat down. He looked at her and he looked at the tin in his hands.

Julia’s mother had been an actress, and although Julia had never quite made it onto the stage herself, she had inherited something of that same gift for inhabiting a story; and that was what she did that day, as she told him about a long-gone Christmas. She told him about her father, a young school-teacher with round glasses and a thin moustache, spending the Christmas of 1914 in a muddy hole somewhere in France. She said that even though it was a war they’d found the time for a celebration, and that by the light of a smoky paraffin lamp and a few stubby candles they’d drunk from small mugs filled with brandy, sung carols, and worn party hats made from sheets of old newspaper. It can’t have been all that cheery, she said, what with men not there who should have been there, and all of them anyway wishing they were home with their families, but they did their best, and made jokes, and drank to the health of every last man they could think of. And then, she said, leaning in close as though it were a secret, their commanding officer gave them these: a Christmas present from the young Princess Mary herself. She reached across and helped him ease the lid off the tin. Inside, there was a Christmas card, a full pouch of tobacco, and twenty cigarettes. She smiled. He kept his, she said. He thought it would be worth hanging on to, he thought it might be worth something one day. She laughed. He could be very dull and sensible sometimes, she said. My mother was forever on at him to liven up a little. He looked at the unsmoked cigarettes and a strange excitement shook through him. It was a dangerous, thrilling feeling.

The thing in his hands felt at once indestructible and hopelessly fragile. He was terrified of dropping it, or of spoiling it in some way, of holding it out in the air for too long. It felt as though he had only to put one of the cigarettes to his lips and he would be suddenly transported to that foxhole in 1914, crowded around a mess table singing carols with his fellow soldiers. He wanted to put the lid back on, to have Julia take it out of his hands, but he couldn’t move and he couldn’t bring himself to look away.

Later, Julia took him to the Imperial War Museum and showed him soldiers’ uniforms like the one her father had worn, and the type of rifle he would have used, and letters sent home from the front. She took him to the British Museum and showed him the treasures of Sutton Hoo, the Egyptian Mummies, the jewellery and weapons and costumes smuggled home from around the world. She took him to the Natural History Museum, the V&A, the Horniman, and each time he felt the same breathless excitement he’d felt when he’d first held her father’s tobacco tin, the same thrill of old stories made new.

And it was this that he had spent most of his life looking for: these physical traces of history, these objects which could weigh his hands down with their density of memory and time. Something he could hold on to and say, look, this belonged to my fathers and forefathers, this is some small piece of who they were. This is some small piece of where I began.

5 Shoebox of assorted domestic goods, bullets, shrapnel, 1953–1960

Soon after those first museum visits with Julia, he started collecting things for himself: broken crockery, an alarm clock with the face smashed in, the trailing wires of an old radio set, an empty picture frame; the cracked and rusting remains of other lives which he found on the bombsites where he wasn’t allowed to play. He brought them home, brushing the dried mud from them with an old toothbrush, looking for maker’s marks or other inscriptions, looking for something which would give these objects a story, attaching small labels with the date and the place where they were found and lining them up along his windowsill and his desk.

What are you doing? Susan asked him one afternoon, not for the first time, standing in his open doorway with her arms folded across her chest.

Nothing, he replied, turning away from her, trying to shield his latest find with his body, waiting for her to go away.

Why don’t you just collect cigarette cards like normal boys do? she said.

Why don’t you mind your own business? he said.

It is my business, I’m older than you and I’m your sister, so there, she said, picking up a dented water flask from the floor and lifting it quickly out of his reach. Where did you get this from? she asked, looking at it, reading the label which hung from its neck by a piece of white thread. Have you been on the bombsites again?

David stood up, reaching for it.

Give us it back, he said. Colin’s brother found it, he gave it to me.

Don’t believe you, Susan said. You’ll be in trouble if they find out.

Give us it back, David said again, jumping for it now, Susan lifting it higher and stepping back, turning towards the door.

Maybe I’ll keep it, she said, smiling.

It’s not yours, David said, his voice rising indignantly.

It’s not yours either, she snapped back. You don’t even know whose it is, it could be anyone’s.

Finders keepers, said David, and Susan stepped out on to the landing, smiling again.

Well, I’ve just found this so I’m keeping it, she said. David grabbed at it, Susan shrieked, and their mother yelled up at them both to stop it whatever it was they were doing. She pulled a face and gave him back the water flask, whispering for good measure that he was a smelly stinker.

If she’d asked, if she’d sat down and said that she really honestly wanted to know, he would have told her that he collected these things because he was fascinated by them, because he couldn’t take his eyes off them, because it was almost as good as having a real museum all to himself.

But she didn’t ask, and he rarely talked about it to anyone. He found it hard to explain, when anyone did ask, why he liked museums so much, why he spent so many of his weekends catching buses to museums in other towns, or gazing frustratedly at the building site which would one day become the museum Coventry was so painfully lacking. I just like looking at all the things, he would say, and imagining how old they are and finding out about them and everything; muttering as he spoke, knowing that the person asking wouldn’t understand.

He liked the smell of museums, the musty scent of things dug from the earth and buried in heavy wooden store cupboards. He liked the smell of the polish on the marbled floors, and the way his shoes squeaked as he walked across them. He liked the way that people’s voices would drift up and be lost in the hush of the high-ceilinged rooms. He liked the coldness of the glass cases when he pressed his face against them. He liked looking at the dates of the objects, and trying not to get dizzy as he added up how long ago that was. He didn’t understand why people had to ask, why they didn’t enjoy museums as much as he did, and why some of the other boys at school started to call him a swot and a teacher’s pet. It seemed perfectly natural to him, to be amazed by the physical presence of history, to be able to stand in front of an ancient object and be awed by its reach across time. A thumbprint in a piece of prehistoric pottery. The chipped edge of a Viking battle-axe, and the shattered remains of a human skull. The scribbled designs for the world’s first steam engine, spotted with candlewax and stained with jam. It seemed like some kind of miracle to him that these traces of distant lives had survived, and that he was able to stand in front of them and stare for as long as he liked.

When he ran out of display space in his room he started keeping the collection in cardboard shoeboxes under his bed, and it was from underneath his bed that he retrieved one of those same boxes some fifty years later, lifting the crinkled lid and sifting through the contents a few days before his journey, trying to remember where all these things had come from. A brooch, a set of keys, a bullet, a handful of blank-faced coins, a lumpen twist of rusted shrapnel: they could have come from any number of the sites he’d explored as a boy – the cratered fields he took as a shortcut across to school; the motor-works which still hadn’t been rebuilt; the numerous acres of cleared land which had been marked out with foundations for the housing his father would build to replace what had been there before the war. Coventry was a city of building sites when he was a child, great unmapped territories for him to explore, piecing together stories around the objects he found, guessing which buildings had once been where, or what might be coming, watching the way the city changed as all his favourite places were gradually rebuilt upon.

But the small leather shoe, in the bottom of the box, had come from his own back garden, not from a rubble-strewn bombsite. He’d dug it up with a handful of potatoes one evening after school and taken it to show his father, who was sitting on the back step with the paper. It fitted easily into his father’s broad hand, and they’d both looked at it for a moment, cradled there, plastered with mud.

Well that’s something, his father had said.

How old do you think it is Dad? David said, leaning over it with his hands on his knees. His father looked up.

I’d say it’s probably been in the ground there since ’44, he said, so it’s older than you at least. He looked over towards the potato patch, David’s spade still sticking out of the ground, the pale potatoes lying in a bunch beside the small hole he’d made. I wouldn’t tell your mother about this one though, he added. She might be upset. She might not let you hang on to it, he said. He looked at David, solemnly, and winked, and David tried to wink back. Now, you going to finish digging up the spuds? he asked, passing him the shoe and turning back to his paper.

In the summer, if the weather was fine, his father liked to sit out on the back step when he got home from work. His mother would look out for him coming down the road and have the kettle and the pot ready so that by the time he got to the house there’d be a mug of tea there waiting. Sometimes she would meet him at the door, holding a damp handkerchief up to his face to wipe the dust and dirt from his mouth before kissing him hello. He would sit on the step and spread the evening paper out across his lap, steam rising from his mug, smoke curling from his cigarette, and he didn’t like anyone speaking to him until he’d put the paper to one side and looked up again. He was always covered in dust when he got home, his face and hands coated with brick dust and powdered cement, his clothes scattered with woodshavings from the joiners working overhead, his hair threaded with thin white fibres from the panels they used in the roof and around the pipes. When he’d finished the paper, and got washed and changed before tea, he shifted back to being their at-home dad again, softer and more human seeming, but while he was sitting on that step, covered in the debris of work, waiting for his body to recover, he almost seemed to be someone else, some mythological character who built houses and schools and hospitals with his own bare and calloused hands.