How It All Began by Penelope Lively Page A

Charlotte. So I have always identified. Right—let’s get going. Have a try.”
    “‘Where’s . . . Papa . . . going . . . with . . . that . . . axe?’” read Anton . . .
    An hour later, they were still immersed. For Anton, the building site had receded entirely, along with his evening world of food out of tins and desultory chatter. He was exhilarated by a growing mastery of the words on the page, charmed by this simple, beguiling tale.
    “‘No, I . . . only . . . distribute . . . pigs . . . to . . . early . . . risers,’ Early risers—what is this?”
    “People who get up early,” said Charlotte. “We’ll have to stop—here’s Rose with the tea.”
    Rose picked up the book. “Oh—I used to love this. So did Lucy and James.”
    “Listen,” said Anton. “‘Fern . . . was . . . up . . . at . . . daylight . . . trying . . . to . . . rid . . . the . . . world . . . of . . .’ ”
    “Injustice.” Charlotte beamed. “Huge progress.”
    “Great!” said Rose. She held out a plate. “It’s chocolate brownies today. And Earl Grey, of course.” She smiled at Anton.
    He sat thinking that he could imagine a time when he would beginto feel at home in this country. When it could cease to be so impermeable, so tacitly hostile, so eternally other. When he could buy a newspaper and read it, laugh at the jokes on a TV program. Some of his younger compatriots already did this. But how long will this take? he wondered. And how long will I stay?
    “Your mother and I have been talking about story,” he told Rose. “Stories.”
    “Oh, well—she’s the expert. Her subject.”
    “And I am thinking—everything has to be story. On the TV—advertisements are little story, often. I watch, because these I can understand, sometimes.”
    “I used to like the one about the girl who walks out on her man but takes the car,” said Rose. “A year or two ago. Car advert, of course. Maybe you should have had a career in writing ads, Mum, and we’d all be rich.”
    “Oh, I could never make up stories. Only talk about them.”
    “When I was a small boy,” said Anton, “I make up stories very much, and I am in them. I have big adventure—I am very brave.”
    “Oh, I did that too.” Rose smiled. “I was amazingly beautiful, and pursued by rock stars. Duran Duran.”
    “Really? Who?” said Charlotte.
    “Exactly. You didn’t know about my inner life. And you wouldn’t have known who Duran Duran were.”
    “It’s sad you cannot do that when you are—grown,” said Anton. “You have just your own story, that you live. That you cannot choose.”
    Rose held out the plate. “Have the last brownie, Anton. And I don’t know about that—I’m doing some choosing right now. I’m going to propose to Gerry—no, tell Gerry—that we must have a new bathroom installed.”
    “That is small choosing,” said Anton. “I mean—big things that happen.”
    “Well, you chose to come here—to England,” said Rose.
    “Yes. But I did not choose to lose my job. At home.”
    “All right. I take your point. Sometimes we choose. And some big things too. You choose who you marry.”
    “I think my wife choose me,” said Anton. “I was very—shy. When young man. And later unfortunately she choose not me any more.”
    There was a pause. “Well, I’ll tell you what,” said Rose. “Why don’t I take you for a whole choosing opportunity next week? Shopping opportunity, that is. Things for your mother.”
    Later, in the Tube, on the way back to the communal house, Anton opened
Charlotte’s Web
. He sat there in the shuddering, hurtling London netherworld, his lips moving as he traveled from word to word, from line to line. Occasionally he copied a word into his notebook, for further inquiry. Sometimes he skipped a word, eager to move