Three Things About Elsie: A Richard and Judy Book Club Pick 2018

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. (#ulink_693de64e-f38e-5972-8700-bb73575da6bd)

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.

I’m going to ask Gloria to help me write that letter. She’s a pleasant girl, Gloria. Always smiling. Kind eyes. And you couldn’t wish for nicer teeth. Everyone has bad days, don’t they, and I just met her in the middle of one. Gloria might be the one to find me, and if she does, I’m going to explain all about the rubbish again. When she knocks at the door, I’ll give her a shout. I don’t want to cause any alarm, so I’ll probably say something like, ‘I hate to be a bother, but I’ve got myself in a bit of a situation, Gloria.’ I won’t want her to ring for an ambulance, but she’ll insist, because she’s that kind of girl. When it gets here, she’ll sit in the back with me, and even though the ambulance sways along all the roads, and all the leads and the little boxes of equipment will sway along with it, she will never let go of my hand. Not once.

‘Don’t you worry, Florence. I’m not going to leave your side.’

The ambulance man will sit on the opposite seat. He will rest his hands on his knees, and I will look down at his boots and think how tired the leather looks, and I will ask him if his shift is nearly over.

He’ll say, ‘Not long to go now,’ and he’ll wink at me, and I will try to think of the last time someone winked at me, and I won’t be able to come up with anything.

‘That’s so typical of you, Florence. Always thinking about other people,’ Gloria will say, and she’ll squeeze my hand.

And I’ll tell her she can call me Flo, if she’d like.

I’m not sure when Gloria finishes work. Five, I think. It might be gone that by now, but there must be times when she stays late. Everybody does these days, don’t they?

FLORENCE (#ulink_5f5be485-3702-539a-959f-d9584e6c0ad8)

On Tuesday afternoons, I always go to the hairdresser, and Cheryl washes my hair and messes around with a comb for a while, until she finds me an entire head of it again. Not Cheryl with a cherry, but Cheryl with a shhhh. Although I’m always forgetting and I don’t see why it makes that much difference.

It’s not a real hairdressers, it’s a room at the back of the residents’ lounge, but they do their best, and put posters up of people no one could ever look like, and arrange the cans of hairspray on a little coffee table next to the door. She’s an odd girl, Cheryl. Short blonde hair. Always frowning. A tattoo on the inside of her wrist. It’s her little girl’s name, apparently, but no one ever mentions it. The last time I went, I didn’t realise Ronnie was in there as well until I closed the door, and by that time, I couldn’t find a way to get out again.

He was sitting in the other chair, and he smiled at me. But it wasn’t enough of a smile that you could give one back, even if you’d wanted to.

‘Miss Claybourne.’ Cheryl lifted herself off one of the counters and pulled out a seat. ‘What will it be today?’

She always said the same thing. What will it be today? I thought one week I might surprise her. I might say Rita Hayworth red or a fringe like Veronica Lake, but I knew it would only make Cheryl-with-a-shhhh frown even more than she does already, and so I said what I always said as well. Just the usual, Cheryl. And she got out her comb and put a little cape around my shoulders.

Another girl was cutting Ronnie’s hair. No one knew what her name was, and as there were only two of them, everybody always called her Not-Cheryl. ‘Who did your set and blow dry?’ and people would reply, ‘Not-Cheryl,’ and we all knew where we were because that’s who she was. She knew we did it, and she didn’t seem to mind. Not-Cheryl was taking pieces of Ronnie’s hair between her fingers and snipping at the ends. I watched through the mirrors.

‘You settling in all right, Mr Price?’ said Not-Cheryl.

‘Perfectly grand,’ he said. ‘I feel as though I’ve been here all my life.’

His voice. It hadn’t changed at all. I tried to close my ears to the sound, but it still crept in, and each word turned my stomach over. For someone so full of violence, his voice was almost soft and whispery, like a woman’s. If you listened very carefully, there was even a lisp.

‘Where did you say you were from originally?’ The girl took another pair of scissors from her pocket.

He didn’t answer for a moment, then he said, ‘Here and there,’ and I could hear the smiling. His words were still full of themselves, even after all these years.

‘That’s nice,’ she said.

Cheryl combed my hair out, and I looked in the mirror and wondered how long I’d looked this old. ‘There’s lots of activities go on in the day room, Mr Price,’ she said, ‘if you want to meet some more people,’ and I thought, I’m sitting in your seat and you should be talking to me, you shouldn’t be talking to him.

I heard Ronnie shift in his chair, and all the pretend leather creaked with his weight. ‘I’ve been rather too busy for that,’ he said, ‘of late.’

‘What have you been up to, then?’ said Not-Cheryl, who was young enough to fall into traps.

I heard the chair again. ‘I’ve been tracing my family tree, as it happens.’

I was sure his reflection was staring at me, but Cheryl and her overall kept getting in the way.

‘I’ve always wanted to do that.’ Cheryl pulled the ends of my hair over my ears. ‘It must be really fascinating.’