The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell
The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell
The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell
X
t h at f i r s t
held mine
a novel
maggie o’farrell
auth o r o f Th e Va n i s h i n g A c t o f E s m e L e n n ox
The Hand
That First
Held Mine
Maggie O’Farrell
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Maggie O’Farrell
and stays, nappies and handkerchiefs snap and writhe in the breeze.
A radio can be heard from somewhere, one of the neighbouring
houses perhaps, and the muffled thwack of an axe falling on wood.
The garden waits. The trees wait. The seagull, balancing in the
sky above the washing, waits. And then, just as if this is a stage set
and there is an audience, watching from a hushed dark, there are
voices. Noises off. Somebody screams, another person shouts, some-
thing heavy hits the floor. The back door of the house is wrenched
open. ‘I can’t bear it! I tell you, I can’t!’ the someone shrieks. The
back door is slammed, resoundingly, and a person appears.
She is twenty-one, soon to be twenty-two. She is wearing a blue
cotton dress with red buttons. A yellow scarf holds back her hair.
She is marching across the patio and she is holding a book. In her
bare feet, she stamps down the steps and across the lawn. She doesn’t
notice the seagull, which has turned in the air to look down on her,
she doesn’t notice the trees, which are tossing their branches to herald
her arrival, she doesn’t even notice the baby as she sweeps past the
pram, heading for a tree stump at the bottom of the garden.
She sits herself down on this tree stump and, attempting to ignore
the rage fanning through her veins, she balances the book on her
lap and begins to read. Death be not proud, the words begin, though some
have called thee mighty and Dreadful.
She bends with tense concentration over the page, sighing and
flexing her shoulders. Then, without warning, she lets out a sudden
growl and flings the book away from her. It hits the grass with a
subdued thud, its pages fluttering closed. There it lies, surrounded
by grass.
She gets to her feet. She doesn’t do it as anybody else would,
gradually moving from sitting to standing. She leaps, she starts, she
bounds, she seems to stamp on the soil as she rises as if, like
Rumpelstiltskin, she would crack it open.
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The Hand That First Held Mine
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Maggie O’Farrell
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Maggie O’Farrell
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The Hand That First Held Mine
‘Ah.’ The man inclines his head sideways. ‘I’m not sure I would
categorise that as nothing to do with you.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘No. It must at least be acknowledged as your sibling.’
There is a slight pause. Alexandra tries, without success, not to
examine his clothes again. The shirt, that tie. Daffodils and eggs.
‘You’re from London, then?’ she asks.
‘I am.’
She sniffs. She adjusts the scarf across her forehead. She examines
the bristles on the man’s chin and wonders why he hasn’t shaved. And,
unfathomably, a half-formed plan of hers crystallises into a definite
desire. ‘I’m planning,’ she says, ‘on going to live in London myself.’
‘Is that so?’ The man starts to rummage animatedly in his pockets.
He brings out an enamelled green cigarette case, removes two cigarettes
and offers her one. She has to lean over the hedge to take it.
‘ Thank you,’ she says. He lights it for her, cupping the match in
his hands, then uses the same match on his own cigarette. Close up,
she thinks, he smells of hair-oil, cologne and something else. But he
moves back before she can identify it.
‘ Thanks,’ she says again, indicating the cigarette, and inhales.
‘And what,’ the man says, as he shakes out the match and tosses
it aside, ‘may I ask, is holding you back?’
She thinks about this. ‘Nothing,’ she answers, and laughs. Because
it’s true. Nothing stands in her way. She nods towards the house.
‘They don’t know yet. And they’ll be set against it. But they can’t
stop me.’
‘ That’s the spirit,’ he says, smoke curling from his mouth. ‘So,
you’re running away to the capital?’
‘Running,’ Alexandra replies, drawing herself up to her full height,
‘but not away. You can’t run away from home if you’ve already left.
I’ve been away at university.’ She takes a draw on her cigarette, glances
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Maggie O’Farrell
towards the house, then back at the man. ‘Actually, I was sent down
and—’
‘From university?’ the man cuts in, cigarette halfway to his mouth.
‘Yes.’
‘How very dramatic. For what crime?’
‘For no crime at all,’ she returns, rather more heatedly than neces-
sary because the injustice of it still stings. ‘I was walking out of an
exam and I came out of a door reserved for men. I’m not allowed to
graduate unless I apologise. They,’ she nods again at the house, ‘didn’t
even want me to go to university in the first place but now they’re
not speaking to me until I go back and apologise.’
The man is looking at her as if committing her to memory. The
stitching on his shirt is in blue cotton, she notices, the cuffs and the
collar. ‘And are you going to apologise?’
She flicks ash from her cigarette and shakes her head. ‘I don’t see
why I should. I didn’t even know it was only for men. There was no
sign. And I said to them, “Well, where’s the door for women?” and
they said there wasn’t one. So why should I say sorry?’
‘Quite. Never say sorry unless you are sorry.’ They smoke for a
moment, not looking at each other. ‘So,’ the man says, eventually,
‘what are you going to do in London?’
‘I’m going to work of course. Though I might not get a job,’ she
says, suddenly despondent. ‘Someone told me that for secretarial
work you need a typing speed of sixty words per minute and I’m
currently up to about three.’
He smiles. ‘And where will you be living?’
‘You ask a lot of questions.’
‘Force of habit.’ He shrugs unapologetically. ‘I’m a journalist, among
other things. So. Your digs. Where will they be?’
‘I don’t know if I want to tell you.’
‘Why ever not? I shan’t tell a soul. I’m very good about secrets.’
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The Hand That First Held Mine
She throws her cigarette butt into the green, unfurling leaves of
the hedge. ‘Well, a friend gave me the address of a house for single
women in Kentish Town. She said—’
His face betrays only the slightest twitch of amusement. ‘A house
for single women?’
‘Yes. What’s funny about that?’
‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It sounds . . .’ he gestures
‘. . . marvellous. Kentish Town. We’ll be practically neighbours. I’m
in Haverstock Hill. You should come and visit, if they allow you
out.’
Alexandra arches her brows, as if pretending to think about it.
Part of her doesn’t want to give in to this man. There is something
about him that suggests he is used to getting his way. For some reason
she thinks thwarting him would do him good. ‘ That might be possible,
I really don’t know. Perhaps—’
Unfortunately for everyone, Dorothy chooses that moment to
make her entrance. Some signal on her maternal radar has informed
her of a male predator in the vicinity of her eldest daughter. ‘May I
help you?’ she calls, in a tone that contradicts the sentence.
Alexandra whirls around to see her mother advancing down the
lawn, baby’s bottle held out like a pistol. She watches as Dorothy
takes in the man, all the way from his light grey shoes to his collar-
less suit. By the sour turn to her mouth, Alexandra can tell at once
that she does not like what she sees.
The man gives Dorothy a dazzling smile and his teeth appear very
white against his tanned skin. ‘Thank you, but this lady,’ he gestures
towards Alexandra, ‘was assisting me.’
‘My daughter,’ Dorothy stresses the word, ‘is rather busy this
morning. Sandra, I thought you would be keeping an eye on the
baby. Now, what can we—’
‘Alexandra!’ Alexandra shouts at her mother. ‘My name is Alexandra!’
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Maggie O’Farrell
She is aware that she is behaving like a cross child but she cannot
bear this man to think her name is Sandra.
But her mother is adept at two things: ignoring her daughter’s
tantrums and extracting information from people. Dorothy listens to
the story about the broken-down car and, within seconds, has
dispatched the man off down the road with directions to a mechanic.
He looks back once, raises his hand and waves.
Alexandra feels something close to rage, to grief, as she hears his
footsteps recede down the lane towards the village. To have been so
close to someone like him and then for him to be snatched away. She
kicks the tree stump, then the baby’s pram wheel. It is a particular
brand of fury, peculiar to youth, that stifling, oppressive sensation of
your elders outmanoeuvring you.
‘What on earth is wrong with you?’ Dorothy hisses, jiggling the
pram handle because the baby has woken up, squawking and tussling.
‘I come down here to find you flirting with some – some gypsy over
the hedge. In broad daylight! For all to see. Where is your sense of
decorum? What kind of an example are you setting for your brothers
and sisters?’
‘And, speaking of them,’ Alexandra pauses before adding, ‘all of
them, where’s your sense of decorum?’ She sets off up the garden. She
cannot spend another second in her mother’s company.
Dorothy stops jiggling the handle of the pram and stares after her,
open-mouthed. ‘What do you mean?’ she shouts, forgetting moment-
arily the proximity of the neighbours. ‘How dare you? How dare you
address me in such a fashion? I’ll be speaking to your father about
this, I will, as soon as he—’
‘Speak! Speak away!’ Alexandra hurls over her shoulder as she
sprints up the garden and crashes her way into the house surprising,
as she does so, a patient of her father’s who is waiting in the hallway.
As she reaches the bedroom she is forced to share with three of
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The Hand That First Held Mine
her younger siblings, she can still hear her mother’s voice, screeching
from the garden: ‘Am I the only one in this house to demand stand-
ards? I don’t know where you think you’re going. You’re supposed to
be helping me today. You’re meant to be minding the baby. And the
silver needs doing and the china. Who do you think is going to do
it? The ghosts?’
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