Three Things About Elsie(39)

There was a touchpaper silence.

Clara clapped her hands and a happiness filled all the spaces in the room. ‘Flo!’ she said. ‘Have you come to take me home? I’ve been waiting ever such a long time.’

Clara moved between the past and the present, like slipping a coat on and off. We struggled to follow her. Jack was completely lost. She stole between the two, taking what she needed from each. Cherry-picking the past, until it became one that kept her warm and secure, in the room with a blank ceiling and pictureless walls. We tried to manage a conversation. We tried to guide it past anything dark and unsafe.

The woman in beige looked at her watch.

‘Do you remember Beryl?’ I said.

Clara repeated the name.

‘Elsie’s sister.’ I searched for an explanation. I looked at Elsie and said, ‘How would you describe her?’

‘Try three things,’ Elsie said. ‘You’re good at three things.’

‘Dark hair.’ I hesitated. ‘Bit of a temper. Always looked like she’d rather be somewhere else. She died, do you remember?’

Clara looked up at us, and her eyes began to fill. ‘Beryl died?’ she said.

‘She did,’ I said, ‘but it was a very long time ago. She used to dance with Ronnie. Do you remember him?’

We waited. A search was clearly being conducted in the corners of Clara’s mind.

‘Drowned,’ she said eventually. ‘Washed up on Langley Beach. The fish ate most of him.’ She smiled. ‘My Fred would have been so proud.’

‘Do you remember the night Beryl died?’

My words fell into a silence, and in the silence, I could hear my own breathing. The shift of Jack’s walking stick. The woman in beige turning a page in her folder.

‘At the dance?’ Clara said.

I nodded, and held on to my breath.

‘I’d love to hear Al Bowlly again.’ Clara looked up at the ceiling, as though Al Bowlly himself were floating right above her head.

I turned back to Elsie and Jack.

‘I don’t suppose you remember anyone called Gabriel Price?’ said Jack. ‘Was he at the dance with you?’

Clara thought for a moment, and then she began to sing.

Midnight, with the stars and you …

‘The night Beryl died,’ I said. ‘Can you remember anything?’

Midnight, and a rendezvous …

The woman in beige closed the folder. ‘You’ve lost her now. Once she starts singing, she can go on for days.’

But as we turned to leave, Clara stopped singing and she called out: ‘What did you say your name was again?’

‘It’s Florence, Clara. From the factory. Flo.’

When we reached the door, she shouted, ‘You’ll come back for me, won’t you, Flo? You won’t forget?’

Her words followed us all the way down the corridor.

We returned in silence. Just the shuffle of Elsie’s shoes and the tap of Jack’s walking stick on linoleum. When we reached the ground floor, the feel of carpet beneath her feet seemed to give the woman in beige a newly found optimism, and she began to hum.

‘What’s the difference between humming and singing?’ I asked Elsie, but she didn’t have an answer.

The woman in beige opened the front door and stepped on to the porch. ‘Well, that went splendidly,’ she said.

‘Did it?’ I took a bodyful of September air.

‘Much better than the last visitor. She was very calm this time.’

I’d just reached the last step when I heard Jack’s voice. ‘The last visitor? Who was that, then?’

I waited.

‘Elderly chap. Healthcare assistant said he whispered something in Clara’s ear and Clara became quite hysterical. No idea what it was, although it never needs much. Took us days to calm her down.’

‘What did he look like, this elderly chap?’ said Jack.

I turned to listen. Although I don’t know why, because I already knew what she was going to say.

We walked back to the car in a knot of thinking. When we got inside, Chris wiped mayonnaise from his mouth with the back of a hand.

‘Get what you want, then?’

Jack looked straight ahead, somewhere into the distance. ‘Oh, I think we got a little more than that,’ he said.

I pushed at the condensation on the window with the sleeve of my coat.

‘Let’s just get back home,’ Elsie said.

I spoke through the smear of breath on the glass. ‘Wherever that may be.’

The journey was quiet. I’d given up reading road signs, and Jack decided Chris was trustworthy enough to drive the car all by himself. The rain started again, but it was slight and indecisive, and every so often, the windscreen wipers shouted out in frustration, as they ran out of things to wipe.





HANDY SIMON


Handy Simon chewed the end of his pen and frowned at the form. Miss Bissell had handed it to him right at the end of his lunch break. He’d frowned at it then, and his eyebrows hadn’t really had a minute to themselves since.

‘Everyone has one, Simon,’ she’d said, when she saw his expression. ‘I’m not just singling you out.’

Personal Development Plan, it said at the top of the first sheet. There were several pages, but he hadn’t ventured further than the first for now.