Three Things About Elsie(12)

‘But he couldn’t,’ I turned to her. ‘Norman was short and skinny, and he hadn’t got anyone else to stand up for him. He said he was going to run away to London. London would have swallowed him up.’

‘It was a long time ago.’

‘It feels like yesterday,’ I said. ‘Sometimes, I think there must be a shortcut between the past and the present, but no one bothers to tell you about it until you get old.’

‘You spent so long in and out of other people’s lives back then, you barely had time for your own.’

I carried on looking through the window, but I could hear her fingers, tapping out her thoughts on the tablecloth.

‘Do you remember? It’s how we first met. You were trying to do the right thing.’ She leaned forward and interrupted my viewing.

‘I’ve got too much on my mind to be concerned with that,’ I said.

‘The girl on the school bus with the twisted ankle?’ She leaned a little more. ‘You gave up your seat, didn’t you?’

I noticed her glance at my hands. They were folding backwards and forwards in my lap. Sometimes, I don’t even know I’m doing these things until someone points it out to me. ‘No, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘I don’t remember any girl with a twisted ankle. You’re getting me mixed up with somebody else.’

‘It was you, Florence. She hobbled on to the school bus and no one stood up. No one except you. That’s how you found yourself sitting next to me a few stops later. That’s how we met.’

‘You’re making it up.’ My lips closed very tightly, and I could feel all the little lines stitch them together.

‘I’m not making it up. It was a long second, don’t you remember?’

I stopped turning my hands. ‘What’s a long second?’ I said.

She explained it to me. Even though she said she’d explained it very many times before. I always seem to forget. It’s when you catch the clock, holding on to a second so it lasts just a fraction longer than it should. When the world gives you just a little bit more time to make the right decision. There are long seconds all over the place. We just don’t always notice them. ‘But you noticed this one, Florence. You made your decision. You gave up your seat. And that’s how we met.’

‘I don’t remember my life without you in it,’ I said.

‘We were just at the age when you start to notice other children. When you pick out who you might be friends with. I chose you long before you chose me.’ She smiled. ‘There was a kindness about you, even then. As if someone took all the kindness other people discard and ignore, and leave lying about, and stuffed it into you for safekeeping.’

I tried to find the memory and pull it back in, but it felt very far away, and the elastic was too loose.

She found my eyes with hers. ‘Try to think. There are things in the past you need to find again, Florence. It’s important.’

‘Is it?’

‘We laughed, because the seat you gave up was the one next to that boy who was in the scouts, and he did nothing but talk the girl’s ear off about first aid. She hung on his every word. I can’t remember her name. Tall. Dark hair. Her parents owned the little shoe shop on the high street.’

I felt the elastic tighten. ‘They emigrated, that family, all of them.’ I let the words go very slowly, just in case they were the wrong ones. ‘To Australia.’

‘Yes, they did.’ Elsie was pleased with me. I can always tell when she’s pleased with me, because she gets a glitter about her eyes. ‘But the girl stayed here. She didn’t go with them.’

‘Men for the land, women for the home. Guaranteed employment. Ten pounds, it cost. Ten pounds for a brand new life.’

I turned back to the window.

‘Ronnie Butler was on that bus,’ I said.





HANDY SIMON


Handy Simon wore a St Christopher around his neck, although he’d never travelled further than Sutton Coldfield. His father gave it to him when Simon turned eighteen, and the only time he’d removed it was when they took his appendix out in 1995. ‘Keep you safe,’ his father said. ‘Out of harm’s way.’ Generally, it had. Although whether the last twenty-five years was the work of St Christopher, or because Simon was naturally cautious, remained to be seen. He touched the medallion and stared at the guttering. He might only be travelling up a ladder, but surely the principle remained the same.

Handy Simon was not a fan of heights. All of life’s bad experiences had occurred when his feet were off the ground. Even his mother died on an aeroplane. A heart attack at thirty thousand feet on the way back from Spain (‘At least it was on the way home,’ his father had said, over the ham tea). It was their first foreign holiday. Simon often wondered whether, if they’d chosen Margate over Malaga, she might still be alive now. Although she was very fond of sweet sherry and never held back at a buffet table, so quite possibly not. That was the problem when your parents were so much older than everyone else’s. You ran the risk of losing them before you’d really got to know each other.

‘Was I planned?’ he once asked his mother.

‘You were a surprise,’ she told him. ‘A miracle.’

‘Like Jesus?’

‘Not quite like Jesus,’ she said.