Three Things About Elsie(57)

‘Mr Price?’ The three of us repeated back, in a chorus.

‘Yes.’ She nodded over to the corner of the courtyard, where Ronnie Butler was shaking hands with a high-visibility jacket. ‘He was the one who smelled the burning and alerted us.’

Jack reached for my arm again.

‘What was he doing sniffing around my flat?’ I said, but Miss Ambrose ignored me and beamed her smile across the gravel.

‘He’s our Resident of the Month.’

‘What’s a Resident of the Month?’ said Elsie.

‘We don’t have a Resident of the Month,’ I said.

‘We do now,’ said Miss Ambrose. ‘I’ve made a decision.’





8.41 p.m.


That pigeon’s back.

Miss Ambrose says they’re all the same, but that’s only because she doesn’t look properly. The shade of their wings, the songs they sing. Each one is quite different. Miss Ambrose just glances over, sees a pigeon and colours the rest in with her mind. This is the evening pigeon. Its tail is darker, and its chest is a beautiful purple-mauve. It’s much more softly spoken than the morning pigeon, although they both always have a lot to say for themselves. I pass the time of day with them sometimes. Just for a bit of fun. Of course, I’d never let on, or Miss Ambrose would send me off to the funny farm in the blink of an eye. But it isn’t a crime, is it, to speak with a pigeon? In the same way it isn’t a crime to climb the stairs one by one? Or to sometimes forget to draw the curtains? People can be so judgemental. The woman from social services, for a start. Round, pale, far too much to say just for one side of A4 paper. The one that set the ball rolling to put me in here.

‘You’re not coping with your ADLs, Miss Claybourne,’ she said. ‘Your activities of daily living.’

She didn’t know what my activities of daily living were. She didn’t daily live with me. She just barged into my front room one morning and accused me of all sorts.

‘You can’t reach your feet,’ she said.

‘And what business would I have down there?’

‘You can’t do up your buttons.’

‘Marks & Spencer do a perfectly good range of clothes without a button in sight,’ I said.

The clock ticked in the corner of the room, and grew the distance between us. The woman glanced at the clock and glanced away again.

She blinked a few times and then she said, ‘That’s not the point, Miss Claybourne. We need to make sure you’re being looked after. We only want what’s best for you.’

‘Do we?’ I said.

It didn’t take them long to undo my life. I had spent eighty years building it, but within weeks, they made it small enough to fit into a manila envelope and take along to meetings. They kidnapped it. They hurried it away from me when I least expected, when I thought I could coat myself in old age and be left to it. A door doesn’t sound the same when you close it for the last time, and a room doesn’t look the same when you know you’ll never see it again.

‘I’ve left something behind,’ I said to them. ‘I need to go back and get it.’

And so I walked around an empty house for one last goodbye, because I was afraid there might be a day when I’d forget what it looked like, and there would be no one left to remember it except for me.

When I got into the car, they said, ‘We’ve only got a short drive to Cherry Tree – we’ll be there before you know it.’

It was the longest journey of my life. When we stopped at a set of traffic lights, I opened the door and tried to leave.

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I said. ‘I’m going home.’

They chased me across the high street, and I realised for the first time in my life that I no longer had a mind of my own to change.

I have always lived alone, but this was a stairless, hand-railed alone. The rooms smelled of paint and someone else. It took me ages to work out where to put all my things, and even now I keep changing my mind.

Elsie wasn’t here then, of course. She moved in a few weeks later. I spotted her walking through the grounds, in a coat that had seen better days, talking to herself and looking up at the sky. I shouted across the courtyard, and she turned to me and waved.

‘I didn’t know you were here too,’ I said. ‘When did you arrive?’

‘This morning,’ she said. ‘You can show me the ropes. It’s going to be fine, Florence. It’ll be just like the good old days. You don’t have to worry any more.’

And she was right. I didn’t.





FLORENCE


We’d cornered Simon in the corridor. As soon as we asked him to help, he said, ‘Yes.’ It threw Jack a bit, because I think he was expecting an argument, and he ended up with all these words and nowhere to put them. Simon took us into the staff room. The staff room! I’d never been in the staff room before, although it was a bit of a disappointment, if I’m honest. Lots of tired furniture and piles of magazines that had clearly never been read.

‘We don’t know how to cancel the subscription,’ Simon said.

He pulled out two chairs. Jack sat on the settee, and Elsie and I settled ourselves down next to a big screen on a desk. It jumped to life the minute Simon pressed a button. He took the piece of paper from me and said, ‘Let’s have a look on the internet.’