Three Things About Elsie(96)

He sat on the bench next to her. ‘Do you want to try again? Perhaps you missed it for a reason.’

‘Do you really believe in all that fate nonsense?’

‘I believe in long seconds,’ he said. ‘Perhaps whoever stopped you from going to that interview was just helping you to write your story.’

Her confusion seemed to amuse him. ‘It’s something Florence believes in,’ he said. ‘A long second is when the clock hesitates, just for a moment. Just long enough to give you the extra time you need to make the right decision.’

‘Have you seen these long seconds?’ she said.

Jack sat back in the seat. His coat was worn at the sleeves and she could see a thread on one of the buttons. She must speak to Chris. Sort him out a new one. Old people didn’t always realise they needed these things. She’d done it. On a course.

‘There was a long second,’ he said. ‘During the war. I watched a soldier once, leaving the battlefield. Older man who’d reached the end of his tether. He turned and started walking, and he just didn’t stop.’

‘He was a deserter?’

‘There was a lot of it. More than people think. Men suffocated by fear. It’s hard to imagine terror like that, unless you’ve lived alongside it.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I followed. Ran until I caught up with him.’

‘Did you report him?’

‘No,’ said Jack. ‘I talked to him instead. He was terrified. The exhaustion and the lack of food, weather beating down on you. Killing everywhere. You couldn’t find a place to look where there wasn’t death in your eye-line. He missed his children. He called them his piano keyboard, although I’ve no idea why.’

‘What happened?’

‘I persuaded him to return. You wouldn’t think I’d have managed it, a young whipper-snapper like me, but eventually we both walked back together, and neither of us ever said another word about it.’

Miss Ambrose shook her head. ‘You were lucky to make it home,’ she said.

‘I nearly didn’t. There was one night …’

He hesitated and Miss Ambrose looked away to build him an escape route, but after a moment, he carried on.

‘… one night, we’d been under fire for hours. We didn’t think it would ever end. It was the noise, more than anything. There was no space. No silence. We thought we could just stay put. Sit it out. But then we had instructions to move.’

‘What happened?’

‘We had to do it, of course. No choice. But it was the landmines, the place was rife with them. Imagine walking across a field, not knowing if the next step you took would be your last, and all you can hear is the sound of your own breath and the shells rattling down on you. We were almost at the other side, nearly made it, when the chap to my left pushed me to one side. He must have seen it coming.’

‘And?’

‘It got him,’ Jack said. ‘Blew him to pieces. He just vanished, Miss Ambrose. He just disappeared right there in front of me. It was as though he’d never existed.’

Neither of them spoke. Miss Ambrose watched a robin feeding on the bird table. Soft brown feathers with a brush of red. Eyes like coal. She wasn’t even sure how long she watched it for, and afterwards, when she thought back, she wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t just imagined it.

‘That must have been your long second, then?’ she said eventually.

Jack shook his head. ‘Oh no, it was when I persuaded the deserter to come back.’

‘Surely not? Surely the long second would be the man who saved your life?’

Jack smiled. ‘And who do you think that was?’ he said.

Miss Ambrose felt her throat tighten.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘This is the best place to do your remembering, when you need to.’

‘The Japanese Garden? I thought no one ever bothered with it?’

‘Oh, you’d be surprised. Mrs Honeyman used to visit all the time, and Florence loves it in here. She likes watching the birds, and walking backwards and forwards across that fancy little bridge. You did a fine job, Miss Ambrose.’

Miss Ambrose’s throat tightened a little more. ‘Jack?’ she said.

‘Hmm?’

‘What time is it?’

He patted her arm. ‘Time I was gone.’ He smiled, and you couldn’t help but smile back, even though his smile was soft and unsure, and it trembled at the edges.

She watched him shuffle down the path, tapping his walking stick at the gravel, in a coat worn at the sleeves. Although perhaps she wouldn’t have a word with Chris after all. On second thoughts, perhaps Jack was completely fine just as he was.





FLORENCE


We sat in the day room, in front of a television programme. I said I’d stay, as long as it wasn’t anything to do with cookery, and so they found me something to watch where people were trying to push little counters over an edge and win money. My gaze wandered all over the room, although it wasn’t as bad as when it sits in the middle distance doing nothing.

‘Isn’t it exciting?’ Elsie pointed. ‘The postwoman from Leighton Buzzard is on the verge of winning a hundred and fifty pounds.’

‘I’m not really interested,’ I said.