Read Online How It All Began by Penelope Lively - Free Book Online

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 likestudent. 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 inspecting 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.
    Thus have various lives collided, the human version of a motorway shunt, and the rogue white van that slammed on the brakes is miles away now, impervious, offstage, enjoying a fry-up at the next services. Just as our mugger does not come into this story, not now, anyway—job done, damage complete, he (or she) is now superfluous.

CHAPTER FOUR
    S tella Dalton is distraught, she is in a state of nervous prostration—her sister fears for her mental stability—but she is also curiously focused. Deep within, she is experiencing an unusual calm, a strange sense of acceptance and of purpose. Now that it has happened, the catastrophe that she has always expected, and she knows its nature, she can grab hold of the lifebelt and swim for shore. Jeremy has betrayed her, he is a liar and an adulterer; but the girls are not under a car, the house is still standing. In between