Three Things About Elsie(21)

‘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.