Three Things About Elsie Read online

  Elsie and I looked at the telegram on the mantelpiece, and just for a moment, I saw things through her mother’s eyes.

  After a while, we stopped going downstairs when Ronnie was in the house. We sat in Elsie’s room instead, and listened. Because all of Ronnie’s conversation seemed to find its way out when he was alone with Beryl. We could hear an army of words, marching through the floorboards. He’d pick at what she was wearing or how she spoke. Any little detail he’d decided was getting on his nerves that day. Beryl’s voice danced around the edges, but every so often, the snap of his was louder and Beryl became very silent.

  One morning, she came to the kitchen table with a black eye.

  Everyone fussed around her. They poked and prodded, and tried to prise the lid off a conversation, but the only thing she would say was, ‘I tripped.’

  And for someone who never stopped talking, she started to say nothing at all.

  Jack watched the floor, the whole time I was talking. His gaze didn’t leave. I wondered how many sadnesses he’d witnessed, yet there was still room in his eyes for a little more.

  ‘He made their mother worse as well,’ I said and glanced at Elsie. ‘Feeding her mind about all sorts. He said the government were listening in on people, encouraged her to tear at the wallpaper to look for microphones. I caught him once, pointing out which walls she hadn’t checked.’

  Once I found the first story, I realised there were so many more, and I couldn’t stop them spilling out. Ronnie hit Beryl all the time. It became a routine. And like most routines, she eventually seemed to accept it. She would appear most days with a black eye or a bloodied lip, and fold her face into her sleeve to make it unseen.

  So many women at the factory arrived at work exactly the same. No one thought anything of it. The bruises drifted from black to purple, green to yellow, without a word being said. It was like wearing a different headscarf or a new pair of gloves. Then one morning, ownership would be renewed, and they changed back to black.

  ‘The bruises weren’t the worst thing,’ I said. ‘The worst thing was waiting for them to happen.’

  We all tried to talk to Beryl. Even Dot came up for the day and did her very best, but love paper-aeroplanes where it pleases. I have found that it settles in the most unlikely of places, and once it has, you’re left with the burden of where it has landed for the rest of your life.

  ‘It went on for months,’ I said. ‘No one could stop it.’

  Even their mother tried. Their mother, whose world had become so small, it rarely reached further than the corners of her eiderdown. Ronnie walked through the door one evening, a cigarette fashioned to his bottom lip, and Elsie’s mother took the letter rack and threw it at his face. The telegram twisted and turned on its journey to the floor.

  ‘She needs locking up, your mother,’ said Ronnie. He wiped the blood from his mouth afterwards. ‘She needs to be in a funny farm. I’ve a good mind to report her.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Elsie said, but he just smiled at her.

  His face wouldn’t stop bleeding, and his mouth gaped at the corner, the flesh hanging by a thread.

  ‘He needs to go to hospital,’ I said. ‘He needs an X-ray. And stitches.’

  I could hear the clock eat away at the seconds.

  No one spoke.

  ‘My father will take him,’ I said.

  When they returned, my father said Ronnie was ‘an unusual young man’, which was probably the closest he ever came to a direct criticism.

  Ronnie lost a tooth. And gained a scar. Right in the corner of his mouth, where it disappeared each time he smiled.

  Jack still gazed at the floor.

  I started to fold a newspaper someone had left on the seat, because all of a sudden, it felt as though I had a lot of energy and nowhere to put it.

  Elsie said, ‘We all tried our best, Florence. Everyone did. She just wouldn’t listen.’

  Backwards and forwards the newspaper went, trying to find sense in my thoughts. ‘We should have done more to stop him.’

  ‘It wasn’t your job, Florence,’ Elsie said. ‘It wasn’t your job to stop him.’

  ‘If something upsets you, it upsets me. Even Beryl. I was part of your piano keyboard, remember? I was Favour. You said so.’

  I think I must have been shouting again, because Jack and Elsie both made a very big thing of looking around to see if anyone had heard.

  ‘That night never should have happened. It never should have been allowed to happen.’ My voice filled the courtyard.

  ‘What night?’ said Jack. ‘What happened?’

  My hands stopped turning.

  It felt like reaching for something that had rolled under a settee. Something that brushed at your fingertips, but was always just out of reach.

  I stared at him.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ I whispered. ‘It’s gone.’

  I turned to Elsie and she looked back at me.

  ‘Where do they go,’ I said, ‘the words? What happens to them?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  The newspaper was still in my hands. All those headlines. Weather forecasts. Adverts. People telling you this and that, and the other. All those words.

  I looked back at Elsie. I needed her to find the story for me.

  ‘It’s not my story to tell, Flo,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t there.’

  ‘Can you remember anything? About this night you mentioned?’ Jack said.

  I studied the newspaper. There was a photograph on the front page. A group of people standing around a trestle table, laughing at nothing in particular. From the way they were standing, it was obvious they didn’t know each other and the photographer had just put them all there for convenience’s sake.

  ‘I remember there were other people,’ I said to the picture. ‘I wasn’t on my own.’

  ‘Who else?’ Jack says. ‘Do you know?’

  Elsie looked at me.

  ‘Clara was there,’ I said. ‘She didn’t hang herself, did she? She can’t have done, because she was there that night. I remember her now.’

  Elsie searched beyond me to somewhere I couldn’t see. I wasn’t sure if she was looking at a point in the future, or a point in the past, and from her eyes, it was obvious she couldn’t decide either.

  ‘Yes, Clara,’ she said eventually. ‘Clara was there.’

  ‘Well then,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we try asking her, see what she remembers? Do you know where she is now?’

  I didn’t need to ask Elsie. It came to me like switching on a light.

  I took a breath before I answered. ‘She’s in Greenbank,’ I said.

  HANDY SIMON

  Handy Simon tucked the pen into his clipboard. Since the potting-shed incident Miss Bissell had insisted on regular head counts, and he appeared to be the man for the job.

  ‘You’re dependable, Simon,’ she’d said. ‘You’re someone who can be relied upon to count.’

  Simon was a big fan of quantifying things, but he couldn’t understand the purpose of measuring old people.

  ‘So we know where they are,’ Miss Bissell had said, ‘so we can keep track of them. Otherwise no one knows what they’re up to. They do head counts everywhere these days.’

  ‘They do?’

  ‘Oh yes. The House of Lords. Tesco. They’re all at it.’

  Miss Ambrose had provided him with a clipboard and a large pen, which wrote in different-coloured ink, depending on which button you pressed. Red for names, green for location, she’d said, but Simon kept forgetting to press the buttons, so everyone was documented in a light brown. Twice a day, he had to go round, locating people, and when he found them, he could never remember who was who, and he had to ask everyone their name.

  Miss Ambrose pointed to his list. ‘I think some of them might be having you on,’ she said.

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Well, as far as I’m aware, we don’t have a Roy Rogers living here.’ She scanned the page. ‘Or a Desmond Tutu. We�
�ve got to take this seriously, Simon. Greenbank won’t take a referral without hard evidence.’

  They gave him a sheet of photographs, for ID purposes. The only problem was, the residents spent so long trying to find themselves, the whole escapade took twice as long as it had before. In the meantime, all the other jobs piled up.

  ‘I shan’t be responsible for the grouting,’ he said to Miss Bissell, as they met in the corridor, but she just sailed past in a cloud of indifference.

  He was getting the hang of it, though. They were creatures of habit, the elderly. They frequented the same rooms, and ate the same meals at the same times. They watched the world from an identical view each day, and had the same conversations in the same corridors, with the same people. He knew exactly where to find them. Some, however, were trickier than others. Florence Claybourne, for example, busied about so much, you never knew quite where she’d be.

  ‘I don’t know why you waste your time,’ she said, when he found her. ‘There are people missing off that photographic sheet, and my picture isn’t anything remotely like me at all.’ She jabbed at the ID page. ‘I look like someone dug me up.’

  Simon stayed quiet. He had learned, with Florence, that it was much easier to let everything come out in its own time, like drawing a boil.

  ‘There are leaves gathering in that guttering,’ she was saying, ‘and if someone doesn’t top up the lavatory paper in the ladies’, we’ll have a mutiny on our hands.’

  ‘I’ll see to it later, Florence.’

  ‘Why don’t you see to it now? Instead of standing here gossiping with me?’

  ‘It’s one o’clock,’ Simon said. ‘I always go to the staff room and sit by the window at one o’clock, and eat my Pot Noodle.’

  The staff room wasn’t the best place to find sanctuary. It was an afterthought at the end of the main corridor and, like a giant fruit bowl, it had become a magnet for all the things nobody knew what to do with. There were piles of empty folders and coats people had stopped caring about enough to wear, and in the corner was a tower of back issues of Dementia Now! because no one knew how to cancel the subscription. Even the furniture was confused. It was a melting pot of leftover chairs and tired sofas, and Miss Ambrose had swathed everything in crocheted blankets, which various residents had constructed, usually on their deathbeds.

  ‘Heart failure,’ Miss Ambrose would say, as she held up a mixture of pinks and purples. And another. ‘Cellulitis of the left leg.’

  Simon sat back on a nasty case of pneumonia and waited for his Pot Noodle to take. The only other person in there was Gloria from the kitchens. She was perched on the sill blowing Lambert & Butler out of a narrow gap in the window.

  ‘Aren’t you a bit too old to be smoking behind the bike sheds?’ he said. He stirred his chicken and mushroom. ‘You’ll cop it if Miss Bissell catches you. She’ll have you on a disciplinary.’

  ‘I’m fifty-two, old enough to make decisions for myself, and she won’t catch me.’ Gloria flicked the end of the cigarette on to the gravel, where it joined its friends. ‘She’s halfway through tai chi in the car park.’

  ‘I don’t know where all that nonsense comes from.’ Simon prodded at his Pot Noodle.

  Gloria sank into one of the chairs. ‘China, mainly.’

  ‘No, I mean why do it here?’

  ‘Because it flushes your mind of toxins, Simon. It unburdens your soul. Does your soul not need unburdening?’

  ‘Not currently,’ he said. ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

  She tutted. ‘Everyone’s soul is clogged up with something. We collect it as we travel through life.’

  ‘It’s the residents who should be doing it then, not the staff. Most of them have got eighty-odd years’ worth of clogging.’

  ‘Health and safety, Simon. She’s worried someone will twist their knee warding off a monkey. You’ve got to be careful with energy flows. They’re not a laughing matter.’

  ‘So why aren’t you out there, keeping yourself young and unburdened?’

  ‘I was gagging for a smoke,’ she said, ‘and besides, my dad says ageing is all in the mind. We only age because we expect to.’

  ‘Your dad’s a proper loony tune.’ Simon brushed at his trousers, started to say something else, changed his mind and had another brush at his trousers instead.

  ‘Don’t go asking me out again, Simon. I’ve said it before: I’m too old for you.’

  ‘Only ten years, and I thought ageing was all in the mind.’

  ‘That’s not the point. There’s plenty of young ladies out there, why don’t you ask one of them instead?’

  Simon wandered Cherry Tree in his mind. There were lots of women, but they all seemed to be collected by husbands at the end of each shift, or drove themselves away to semi-detached houses and semi-detached lives. ‘There’s Denise on reception, I suppose,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t go there.’ Gloria heaved herself up, went over to the sink and rinsed her coffee cup. ‘Her back bedroom’s full of real-life dolls and her mother took a day off work to give them all a bath.’

  Simon gazed at the ceiling. ‘What about Lorraine in housekeeping?’

  Gloria turned from the sink with her mouth open. ‘You can’t ask Lorraine.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because chances are she’s a lesbian. And I can say that, Simon, because I used to be one.’

  He stared at her.

  ‘Don’t look so shocked. It’s a big world out there. You want to get yourself inside it and have a look around.’

  The thing is, he would. If only he could find the way in.

  ‘Do you fancy a drink after work?’ he said. ‘I mean as friends. People. People having a drink together after work?’

  ‘Can’t.’ She pulled the tabard over her head and the static pulled at her hair. ‘I’ve got to go round to my dad’s. He’s re-enacting the Civil War on Saturday afternoon and I promised I’d sew his doublet.’

  ‘He’s eighty-two, Gloria.’

  ‘All in the mind,’ she mouthed, and tapped the top of his head as she squeezed past. ‘And your Pot Noodle’s going cold.’

  The door slammed behind her and Simon looked out into the gardens. One of the residents sat alone on a bench in the courtyard, and he watched as they had a small conversation with themselves. And Simon wondered where his life ended and their life began, and how we could all be stitched so tightly together, yet the threads between everybody still go unnoticed.

  FLORENCE

  ‘It hasn’t changed, has it?’ I said. ‘It looks just as unpleasant as it always has.’

  I hadn’t seen Greenbank for years, and yet as we turned into the driveway, it felt as though I’d just looked back at it after glancing away. It’s the kind of stout, Georgian house that never seems to change. Whilst the rest of the world decays and rebuilds and reinvents itself, places like Greenbank watch and wait, and gather up memories.

  There were four of us. Me, Elsie, General Jack and Jack’s son, Chris, who’d been persuaded by his father to chauffeur us on our little outing. Chris underwent deep interrogation by Miss Bissell. She walked around him a full three hundred and sixty degrees with her clipboard, and asked enough questions to satisfy two sides of A4. We watched through the chessboard glass, Jack leaning on his walking stick as though we were at a sheepdog trial.

  Chris was the only hope we had. Miss Bissell would never let us escape into the world on our own.

  When he left the office, Chris had acquired a layer of sweat and a new set of creases in his forehead, but he gave us a sideways thumbs-up and bobbed his knees.

  ‘He’s a maths teacher,’ said Jack.

  We sat in the back of the car, Elsie and I. Chris was driving and Jack shouted instructions from the passenger seat at the top of his voice. I became a child on a seaside holiday, and read out all the road signs as we passed by.

  ‘Give way, two hundred yards,’ I said. ‘It’s a red triangle.’

  ‘Shall we just let Chris do th
e driving?’ Elsie pointed through the gap between the front seats. ‘I’m sure he’s more than capable.’

  ‘Toilets, two hundred metres. Ladies and gentlemen.’

  She lowered her voice. ‘Do you want the toilet?’

  ‘Not especially, thank you,’ I shouted.

  We passed retail parks, sprouting like broccoli at the edge of towns. Empty high streets with injured shops, boarded and bruised, shouting their red messages at no one in particular. People who pulled their world behind them in a trolley, and waited whilst pelican crossings counted down their lives in orange seconds. Groups of teenagers, who stretched their afternoons out on street corners. All those small lives, acting out their purpose in a strange solitude. I passed the time by describing everything in detail, and Elsie stopped ignoring me after a while and joined in. Every so often, Chris looked at us in the rear-view mirror and frowned.

  We passed a sports shop. Plastic people in green and orange stared out from the window. ‘I don’t recognise anything,’ I said. ‘Where’s the little place that sells sweets in paper bags?’

  Elsie looked over. ‘I’m not sure people buy sweets in paper bags any more.’

  ‘And every other shop is a hairdressers. I never realised people had so much hair.’

  We stopped at a set of traffic lights and I craned around Elsie to see the churchyard. The gravestones waited in rows, and they watched Marks & Spencer through a gap between a bank and a building society.

  ‘I’ll end up in there,’ I said. ‘As sure as eggs is eggs.’

  ‘Have another sucky sweet and don’t be so morbid.’

  I reached into the bag. ‘I’m only being realistic.’

  She took the empty wrapper and put it in her pocket. ‘Well if you want to be completely realistic, you won’t end up in there at all. You’ll end up in the cemetery at the other end of town.’

  ‘They’ve built a cemetery?’

  ‘They have,’ she said. ‘Too many old people, so they had to make an overspill. Like a car park.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’ I looked out of the back window as we drove away.

  ‘It is,’ she said. ‘I was hoping we could both have a corner spot, near the chancel.’