How It All Began by Penelope Lively Page B

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