Three Things About Elsie Read online

  ‘I don’t know.’ The words left my mouth too quickly and she frowned at me.

  Jack was still studying the mantelpiece. ‘It’s breaking and entering, although there’s no sign of him doing either.’

  ‘That might be because he’s still in here.’ I stood, but my legs felt as though they hadn’t agreed to go along with it, and so I lowered myself back again. ‘Perhaps he hasn’t left yet. Check the other rooms. Make sure.’

  I could hear Jack walking around the flat and opening doors.

  Elsie was watching me. I tried to find something in her eyes, something my fear could lean on. The second thing about Elsie is that she always knows the right thing to say, and I waited for her to say it. ‘Everything’s going to be fine, Florence,’ she said. ‘If it is him, then at least he’s made his first move. We’ve been through worse, haven’t we?’

  I nodded. We had. Much, much worse.

  ‘But if it is him,’ I said, ‘there’s one thing that really bothers me.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  I waited for a moment before I answered. ‘Who on earth did they bury in 1953?’

  My question still sat between us when Jack reappeared. He said, ‘All clear,’ and pulled out one of the dining chairs.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll believe all the other things now,’ I said. ‘Perhaps instead of doubting me, you’ll help me find some evidence before they send me off to Greenbank.’

  ‘No one has ever doubted you.’ Elsie reached out, but I held my hands on my knee.

  ‘The sandwiches!’ I’d only just remembered. ‘Do you believe me about the sandwiches now? There are some in my bag,’ I said. ‘Get rid of them. Wrap them in something and put them in the dustbin, before they hurt someone.’

  Jack reached over for my bag, which sat at the far end of the dining table. ‘This?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You do it. Just get them out of there. I don’t want to touch them.’

  He opened the bag and stared inside.

  ‘Well, go on then,’ I said.

  He still stared. When he finally did reach in, he didn’t pull out any sandwiches. I knew what it was going to be; I knew what it was going to be before I even saw it.

  It was the elephant.

  I sat in the armchair with a cup of sweet tea Jack made before he left, and which had almost certainly grown cold, because I could see slivers of brown clinging to the sides and trying to escape the china. There was a brush of sweat on my forehead, and I knew there was the ladder in my tights from catching my leg against the sideboard, because I could feel it grow each time I moved. There was still an energy in the flat, though, wandering around and looking for somewhere to land. We were alone, Elsie and me, and the room had grown dark around us. My eyes struggled to find the edges of the furniture amongst all the shadows, and the shapes changed as the day disappeared.

  ‘Shall I put the light back on?’ I heard her say.

  I didn’t reply. I’d switched the lamp off the minute Jack went. I’ve no idea why, it just felt safer somehow. Less obvious.

  ‘How about the wireless, then?’ she said. ‘Do you fancy a bit of company?’

  I couldn’t turn my mouth into an answer.

  ‘You used to love music. The first time you came round for tea, we had a conversation about music. My mother was there, do you remember?’

  I looked at her.

  ‘My other sisters were with us, too. You remember Dot and Gwen?’

  ‘I remember their faces,’ I said.

  She smiled at me, and I smiled back.

  ‘That’s all that matters, Florence. Why don’t we try three things? Why don’t we start with Gwen?’

  After a little while of trying, I could feel my mind untether itself and drift back.

  ‘Spent all her time in the kitchen,’ I said. ‘Always knitting. She knitted you a scarf, didn’t she? And Gwen was the only one who could get through to your mother, most of the time.’

  ‘She was, she was. Now what about Dot?’

  ‘Never stopped moving. Always busy. Always involving herself in something. Didn’t she get married and move away?’

  ‘She did,’ Elsie said. ‘You’re doing really well, Florence.’

  ‘It’s the names.’ I frowned into my hands.

  ‘Names don’t really matter, do they?’

  ‘I don’t suppose so. I’ve just never been very good at them.’

  I haven’t. My mind has never enjoyed holding on to them. Even when I was younger, I would be told a name and straight away it would slip through the gaps and disappear. Elsie had so many sisters, it confused me right from the outset.

  Elsie, Gwen, Beryl and Dot.

  It sounded like Elsie’s mother had been working her way through a piano keyboard.

  Every Good Boy Deserves Favour.

  Perhaps there would have been an F next, but Elsie’s father left for the war and returned as a telegram on the mantelpiece. Her mother was convinced they’d made a mistake, and she would roll her eyes and tut at the telegram, as though it was deliberately trying to trick her into early widowhood.

  ‘How can they be sure it’s him?’ she said to her sister, and to us, and more often than not to an empty room. ‘How do they know?’

  No one had the answer, even though they looked very hard for it in the ceiling and the floor, and in each other’s eyes. No one ever looked straight at Elsie’s mother. It was too dangerous. It was like spinning a wheel and not knowing quite what you were going to get. And all the time, the telegram sat in the letter rack on the mantelpiece and watched. But whether Elsie’s father was dead or not, there would now only ever be four of them and they all had to accept the fact there was never going to be an F. At least, not until Elsie found me on the bus. The first time she brought me home for tea, we all sat around the kitchen table and she shouted, ‘We have an F! We have a Favour!’

  Everyone was silent. Even her mother.

  ‘We’re a keyboard now, don’t you see? Every good boy deserves favour.’ She pointed to each of us in turn.

  ‘What about me?’ said her mother. ‘Where do I fit in?’

  Her name was Isabel.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Elsie said. Beryl glared across the table. Even Gwen shook her head very slightly.

  ‘And Charlie. What about your father? What will he say when he hears about all this?’

  We all looked at the letter rack in silence. I didn’t dare swallow, because I knew the noise it made would be loud enough to wake the dead. Even her father (if her father was, in fact, actually dead).

  Instead, I pushed away the piece of Victoria sponge I was eating, dabbed at my mouth with a napkin and said, ‘Well, Mrs Colecliffe. Charlie is a C, and Middle C is the most important note on a keyboard. Without it, none of the other notes would even exist.’

  Her mother beamed across the kitchen table. And from that moment on, everyone was nice to me.

  I watched Elsie, now, as my mind told me the story.

  ‘Every good boy deserves favour,’ I said. ‘Your mother liked me, didn’t she?’

  ‘Of course she did. We all did.’

  ‘Dot and Gwen?’ I said. ‘They liked me?’

  ‘You know they did.’

  ‘Even Beryl?’

  There was a pause, and she knew I’d heard it. ‘As much as Beryl ever liked anyone,’ she said.

  I traced the pattern on the armchair with my finger. Backwards and forwards along the lines, always trying to find the place I started from. ‘I think about Beryl a lot,’ I said. ‘All the living we’ve done since. All that life she never got to have.’

  The air left Elsie’s chest, but no words left with it.

  My finger still followed the pattern, and I found my way back to the beginning.

  ‘We can’t let him get away with it,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to prove who he is, before it’s too late.’

  6.39 p.m.

  They need a letter, the council. There’s a new Basildon Bond in the sideboard, and as soon
as I’m back on my feet, I’m going to pull it out and write one.

  It’s the rubbish. There’s too much of it. People are getting tired of things and throwing them away, and we’re running out of space to put it all in. I read about it. In a magazine. When we’ve finished with something, we shouldn’t be putting it in the bin, we should be reusing it. The magazine said so. I’ve told enough people, but none of them listens.

  ‘Don’t you worry about the rubbish, Miss Claybourne. Worrying about the rubbish is our department,’ they say.

  Someone has to worry though, don’t they? No one else seems to. There are great skips of rubbish at the back of the kitchens. I’ve seen them. Full of waste. Food people would be grateful for. Clothes as well. All they need is a darn, but people won’t get a needle and thread out these days. I’d got quite a collection together before Gloria found me.

  ‘Don’t you go bothering yourself with all this, Florence,’ she said, and she lifted it out of my hands and put everything back.

  I didn’t kick up a fuss, because what she didn’t realise was that it was my second trip. I’ve already sewn up the anorak. And the socks. I’ve saved all the old newspapers for when the nights start drawing in, and I’m going to use the egg cartons for my bits and pieces. Elsie says they smell, but she’s always been over-particular. We get fed up of things too easily, I said to her. We shouldn’t be so quick to throw things away. There’s always a use for something if you look hard enough.

  I’m going to ask Gloria to help me write that letter. She’s a pleasant girl, Gloria. Always smiling. Kind eyes. And you couldn’t wish for nicer teeth. Everyone has bad days, don’t they, and I just met her in the middle of one. Gloria might be the one to find me, and if she does, I’m going to explain all about the rubbish again. When she knocks at the door, I’ll give her a shout. I don’t want to cause any alarm, so I’ll probably say something like, ‘I hate to be a bother, but I’ve got myself in a bit of a situation, Gloria.’ I won’t want her to ring for an ambulance, but she’ll insist, because she’s that kind of girl. When it gets here, she’ll sit in the back with me, and even though the ambulance sways along all the roads, and all the leads and the little boxes of equipment will sway along with it, she will never let go of my hand. Not once.

  ‘Don’t you worry, Florence. I’m not going to leave your side.’

  The ambulance man will sit on the opposite seat. He will rest his hands on his knees, and I will look down at his boots and think how tired the leather looks, and I will ask him if his shift is nearly over.

  He’ll say, ‘Not long to go now,’ and he’ll wink at me, and I will try to think of the last time someone winked at me, and I won’t be able to come up with anything.

  ‘That’s so typical of you, Florence. Always thinking about other people,’ Gloria will say, and she’ll squeeze my hand.

  And I’ll tell her she can call me Flo, if she’d like.

  I’m not sure when Gloria finishes work. Five, I think. It might be gone that by now, but there must be times when she stays late. Everybody does these days, don’t they?

  FLORENCE

  On Tuesday afternoons, I always go to the hairdresser, and Cheryl washes my hair and messes around with a comb for a while, until she finds me an entire head of it again. Not Cheryl with a cherry, but Cheryl with a shhhh. Although I’m always forgetting and I don’t see why it makes that much difference.

  It’s not a real hairdressers, it’s a room at the back of the residents’ lounge, but they do their best, and put posters up of people no one could ever look like, and arrange the cans of hairspray on a little coffee table next to the door. She’s an odd girl, Cheryl. Short blonde hair. Always frowning. A tattoo on the inside of her wrist. It’s her little girl’s name, apparently, but no one ever mentions it. The last time I went, I didn’t realise Ronnie was in there as well until I closed the door, and by that time, I couldn’t find a way to get out again.

  He was sitting in the other chair, and he smiled at me. But it wasn’t enough of a smile that you could give one back, even if you’d wanted to.

  ‘Miss Claybourne.’ Cheryl lifted herself off one of the counters and pulled out a seat. ‘What will it be today?’

  She always said the same thing. What will it be today? I thought one week I might surprise her. I might say Rita Hayworth red or a fringe like Veronica Lake, but I knew it would only make Cheryl-with-a-shhhh frown even more than she does already, and so I said what I always said as well. Just the usual, Cheryl. And she got out her comb and put a little cape around my shoulders.

  Another girl was cutting Ronnie’s hair. No one knew what her name was, and as there were only two of them, everybody always called her Not-Cheryl. ‘Who did your set and blow dry?’ and people would reply, ‘Not-Cheryl,’ and we all knew where we were because that’s who she was. She knew we did it, and she didn’t seem to mind. Not-Cheryl was taking pieces of Ronnie’s hair between her fingers and snipping at the ends. I watched through the mirrors.

  ‘You settling in all right, Mr Price?’ said Not-Cheryl.

  ‘Perfectly grand,’ he said. ‘I feel as though I’ve been here all my life.’

  His voice. It hadn’t changed at all. I tried to close my ears to the sound, but it still crept in, and each word turned my stomach over. For someone so full of violence, his voice was almost soft and whispery, like a woman’s. If you listened very carefully, there was even a lisp.

  ‘Where did you say you were from originally?’ The girl took another pair of scissors from her pocket.

  He didn’t answer for a moment, then he said, ‘Here and there,’ and I could hear the smiling. His words were still full of themselves, even after all these years.

  ‘That’s nice,’ she said.

  Cheryl combed my hair out, and I looked in the mirror and wondered how long I’d looked this old. ‘There’s lots of activities go on in the day room, Mr Price,’ she said, ‘if you want to meet some more people,’ and I thought, I’m sitting in your seat and you should be talking to me, you shouldn’t be talking to him.

  I heard Ronnie shift in his chair, and all the pretend leather creaked with his weight. ‘I’ve been rather too busy for that,’ he said, ‘of late.’

  ‘What have you been up to, then?’ said Not-Cheryl, who was young enough to fall into traps.

  I heard the chair again. ‘I’ve been tracing my family tree, as it happens.’

  I was sure his reflection was staring at me, but Cheryl and her overall kept getting in the way.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to do that.’ Cheryl pulled the ends of my hair over my ears. ‘It must be really fascinating.’

  ‘Oh, it is,’ said Ronnie. ‘Fascinating.’

  ‘How far back did you go?’ Cheryl gave up on my ears and searched for a parting instead.

  Ronnie took a while to answer. He always did. It was as though he needed to enjoy the taste of his own opinion for a while, before he was willing to let it go. ‘As far back as I needed to,’ he said.

  ‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’ Not-Cheryl spoke to the mirror. ‘I know my great-grandma used to live in Prestatyn, but everyone lost touch.’

  I was certain Ronnie moved again, because when I looked up, his reflection seemed closer. ‘It’s amazing what you can find out with a little research. You can trace anyone you like if you’re determined enough.’ He smiled. ‘Even great-grandmas who used to live in Prestatyn.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ said the girl.

  ‘Anyone is traceable.’ He stood and brushed down his jacket. ‘I think you’ll find there are no hiding places left in this world any more.’

  As he spoke, he looked at me. I was worried they could hear me breathing. I was worried Cheryl would ask if I was all right, and why I’d gone so pale, and if I’d like a glass of water. But no one said anything. Ronnie slipped through the door and back into the lounge, the girl swept away all traces of him from the floor, and Cheryl pulled a towel from a shelf and wrapped it around my shoulders and said, ‘Sha
ll we get you sorted out, then?’

  I didn’t say anything. I sat there and tried to concentrate on the radio, but it wasn’t playing a song I wanted to hear. I listened to Not-Cheryl talking about her great-grandma in Prestatyn, and Cheryl pretending to be interested. I listened to the click of the scissors and the whir of the hairdryer, and the sound of water running in a sink. I tried to make these noises cover up my thinking, but all they did was make it louder.

  When I went to pay, I tried to take my mind off things, and I looked at the tattoo on Cheryl’s wrist whilst she was searching for change in the till.

  ‘It’s a lovely name,’ I said. ‘Alice. I had an aunt called Alice a long time ago.’

  When I spoke, she dropped the coins on the floor. It took her an age to collect them all, but when she had, she stood back up again and looked me right in the eye for the first time.

  ‘Thank you so much, Miss Claybourne,’ she said.

  ‘You’re very welcome, Cheryl,’ I said back. Although I wasn’t even sure what it was she was welcome to.

  After I’d left the hairdressers, I went to the little shop near the main gates. I thought I might have a look around. Treat myself. I knew Ronnie wouldn’t be in there, because Miss Bissell allowed him to go to the supermarket all by himself. I’d seen him. Walking across the courtyard, weighed down by carrier bags. Although what he finds to buy in there, I couldn’t tell you. I thought perhaps Jack or Elsie might be around, though, and we’d all be able to walk back to my flat together.

  It was empty, as it happened. Just the man behind the counter, who doesn’t look up when he’s serving you, let alone when you walk in. I used to try and pass the time of day, but then I noticed he wears those little headphones in his ears, and half the time he isn’t even listening.

  ‘I’m just having a browse,’ I shouted, when I walked in. ‘Don’t mind me.’

  And he didn’t.

  I did my best, but it’s difficult to browse in a shop that small. There’s only so long you can stare at a loaf of bread. Qwick Stop, it’s called. I’ve had it out with Miss Bissell on many an occasion, but she says it’s out of her remit. I don’t really know what a remit is exactly, but you can guarantee if Miss Bissell has one, it stretches as far as she damn well wants it to. The shop is all primary colours and bright lights, although it still looks tired, like it needs a good bottoming. It sells basics. Aisles full of milk and bread, and lavatory paper. They have a freezer packed with ready meals and ice cream, and a little display of cakes and biscuits. I studied the display for as long as I could, before the man started peering round the till. In the end, I plumped for the Battenberg. It’s nice to have a bit of cake in, just in case you have an unexpected visitor, and you can’t go wrong with a Battenberg. Although I did think I might still have one unopened in a tin somewhere.