Three Things About Elsie(46)

We fired shells of questions at Cyril. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I keep telling you, I wasn’t close enough. If you want more than that, you’re better asking Mabel.’

‘Mabel?’ said Jack.

‘Mabel Fogg. She was walking to the dance. Said Ronnie nearly ran her over on his way out. She would have got a better look.’

The last admission was blown across his tea, in an attempt to cool it down.

We left, after Cyril had dug around a little more for our motives and found nothing of interest to him. We were just tucking in our scarves and buttoning our coats when Jack turned to him and said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of someone called Gabriel Price?’

‘Gabriel Price, you say?’

Jack nodded.

Cyril picked a little more at his teeth.

‘Can’t say as I have.’ He examined the fruits of his labour. ‘Friend of yours, was he?’

‘Someone just mentioned him to us,’ Jack said, ‘and we can’t quite place the name.’

‘It does sound familiar, I have to say.’ Cyril stared across the canal, as though his memories sat there on the water, waiting for him. ‘I knew everyone of course, so it would be most unusual for me not to remember.’

He had another try with his teeth. I wanted to turn him upside down and shake him, until something useful fell out.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Can’t place him either.’

But Cyril continued to frown and pick at his teeth, even as we were pushing back the deckchairs.

‘Are you sure I can’t talk you into a skirmish at the leisure centre car park this weekend?’ he said. ‘My daughter could soon run you up a costume.’

‘Is that what she does for a living?’ I said.

‘Oh no. Very high up in catering, she is. I couldn’t tell you the mouths she’s fed.’

‘Really?’ I said.

He tapped the side of his nose. ‘We’ll just say Philip and leave it at that.’

We walked back down the towpath, towards the car. The ducks had vanished, and in their place a breeze brushed at the surface of the water. Winter snaked towards us. You could feel it buried in the grass and hiding in the branches of the trees, waiting to make an appearance. I pulled my coat a little tighter and dug my hands into the pockets.

We were almost at the wooden bench, and Jack had begun to complain about the music we could hear drifting from the car window. Elsie was very quiet. We’d been given back a piece of the past, and I don’t think she really knew where to put it. Cyril only just managed to catch us in time.

‘I’ve remembered!’ he shouted.

I turned and he was trotting along the towpath, waving a piece of paper at us.

‘Here,’ he said, through a mouthful of breath. ‘I knew it sounded familiar. I was only looking at it last night, and the name stuck in my head. Although it’s probably nothing to do with your chap.’

He handed me the paper. It was sheet music. A page full of crotchets and quavers fluttering in the breeze. These things had always evaded me, how dots and tails and ticks could turn themselves into a sound. ‘Look.’ He jabbed his finger at the top of the page. ‘Gabriel Price. Unusual name, isn’t it? I knew I’d seen it before.’

There was the name, in copperplate pencil, written above the first line, from an age when we had so few possessions that we claimed ownership of each one, for fear it might become separated from us.

‘Gabriel Price (1953),’ I said. ‘Where did you get it from?’

‘My daughter found it on holiday in Whitby. In a charity shop. Great stack of music she got me from there, when I started the trumpet. Couldn’t tell you where it came from before that. You can keep it if you want. Never let it be said I haven’t still got my uses.’ Cyril started to walk back to his boat. ‘Leisure centre car park. Nine sharp. If you change your minds,’ he shouted.

The three of us walked along the towpath.

‘Do you think this Gabriel Price has anything to do with the name Ronnie chose for himself?’ said Jack.

‘I’m not sure.’ I held on to the music as we got back into the car and fastened our seatbelts.

I ran the tip of my finger over the notes. ‘It can’t just be a coincidence, though. The song.’

‘What song is it, anyway?’ said Jack from the front seat.

‘What song do you think it is?’ I said back.

Midnight, the Stars and You.

We sang it, all the way back to Cherry Tree. Although none of us really knew why.





MISS AMBROSE


Anthea stared at the computer screen. She had stared for so long, the white of the Word document had begun to shimmer, and the black letters danced and flickered on the page.

The problem with writing a CV was that everything you had ever done, or ever tried to do, looked small and unimportant. Years of effort and misery were condensed into one line, and appeared as if they had taken up just an afternoon of your life. A trivial few hours. It also involved seeing your date of birth nailed to a headline, which led you to peer at that date and wonder whatever happened to yourself. Miss Ambrose leaned back and tried to remember what she might have been doing in 1997. There were vast oceans of space in her life. Spaces she hadn’t realised existed, until she tried to explain herself in a single side of A4.