The Seven Rules of Elvira Carr

by Frances Maynard

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  Copyright © 2017 by Frances Maynard

  Cover and internal design © 2017 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Connie Gabbert

  Cover image by Tiffany L. Lausen/Red Owl Photography

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567–4410

  (630) 961–3900

  Fax: (630) 961–2168

  www.sourcebooks.com

  Published simultaneously as The Seven Imperfect Rules of Elvira Carr in 2017 in the United Kingdom by Mantle, an imprint of Pan Macmillan.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Maynard, Frances, author.

  Title: The seven rules of Elvira Carr : a novel / Frances Maynard.

  Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Landmark, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017001927 | (pbk. : alk. paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Women--Fiction. | Self-realization in women--Fiction. | Self-actualization (Psychology) in women--Fiction. | Domestic fiction.

  Classification: LCC PR6113.A9837 S48 2017 | DDC 823/.92--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017001927

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  26.

  27.

  28.

  29.

  30.

  31.

  32.

  33.

  34.

  35.

  36.

  37.

  38.

  39.

  40.

  41.

  42.

  43.

  44.

  45.

  The Seven Rules

  Reading Group Guide

  A Conversation with the Author

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  To Lorelei

  1.

  Preparation, Elvira, is the key.

  —Mrs. Agnes Carr (Mother)

  I was scrubbing potatoes when it happened.

  Mother liked them with the skins left on, because of Vitamins, but I had to make sure any little marks or green bits were cut out. My feet were aching, and I was just about to take off my slippers to rub them when there was a crash and a moan from the living room.

  My heart thudded. I knew this kind of thing happened because I’d seen it on Casualty. Old people often collapsed and fell, but I’d never thought it would happen to Mother. I was surprised she’d allowed it to.

  I wished she’d fallen in her Opera Class or on her Bridge Afternoon where there would be people who knew what to do. I went into the living room, my feet throbbing. She was lying on the floor beside her chair, trying to pull herself up.

  “Are you all right?” I asked. I’d never been in this situation before, so I didn’t know what else to say. I twisted the hem of my apron—it was the one with Dog Breeds of the World on it—and looked at her. Normally, whenever Mother saw me doing this, she’d shout Apron! or Sweater! depending on what I was wearing, but this time she wasn’t looking at me. She wasn’t saying anything either, which was unusual. The noises she was making sounded like the monkeys in David Attenborough’s Nature Documentary, The Life of Mammals. They weren’t proper words, but groans with gasps in between.

  I tried to pull her up. Mother was quite a thin person, not like me, but I couldn’t lift her. Her left hand was white as she hung on to the chair leg.

  I was struggling to get my words out. “Have you…broken your hip, Mother?” I asked. This was a common accident for old people. Older people. (No, just people, Mother would say, scowling. She said she was wrinkled before her time because of having to screw her face up into expressions clear enough for me to recognize.) My heart was still thudding, and I couldn’t think straight because of the suddenness.

  Mother groaned again, and I thought I heard a familiar word: useless.

  “Shall I call the doctor, Mother? Um…or go next door and fetch Sylvia and Trevor? What should I do?”

  Mother’s moaning got louder. She lifted her head slightly. Her hair hung over her face like the madwoman in a Classic Horror Film I’d watched with Father when she’d been Away. Her mouth was twisted. People who had strokes on TV fell and were paralyzed down one side, and their mouths were lopsided.

  “Have you had a stroke, Mother?” I asked, bending down. She snorted. Call an ambulance, I thought. That’s what people did.

  • • •

  It came very quickly with two men—paramedics was the correct word—who looked young and strong. They moved around as if they were used to people having strokes, and they told a lot of jokes. I knew they were jokes because the one telling the joke looked at the other one, and then they both laughed. I don’t like talking to Strangers, but I liked them coming. It made me feel safe. I think even Mother would have liked them if she’d been feeling better.

  They carried her into the back of their ambulance: Light as a feather you are, love. She clung to the sides of the stretcher and kept making the monkey noises even though no one could understand them.

  “Have you checked out soon, no worries,” one said, and then to me, “Are you coming with your mother, love?”

  My face went hot when he called me love.

  Coming with your mother? I hardly ever went anywhere. Father was dead, and Mother had sold his car. When I’d made trips on my own, there had been Incidents. I occasionally went to places, places such as the Dentist, on the bus with Mother, but that was a palaver and made her knees hurt.

  I would have enjoyed a trip out, but I knew ambulances were only for sick people.

  “No thank you.” I stared at his ear. “I’m not ill. And I haven’t finished getting lunch ready.”


  They looked at each other. I screwed up a fold of my apron and held it tight. The apron ties cut into my waist. I could do with losing a few pounds. (More than a few, Mother used to say, looking at me and sniffing.) We ate a Healthy Diet, because Mother decided what we ate, but I had an interest in cookies. I did the shopping—I was used to our local grocery store Asda and could manage going there on my own—so I bought them then, sometimes without Mother knowing. I liked trying out different brands and varieties and comparing them. It added another dimension to my life.

  “We’ll be off then.” The ambulance man was looking at me. “Queen’s College Hospital. Give us an hour or so before you ring.”

  “Why do you want me to ring you?” I asked, chewing my lip.

  “Not us, love,” he said very slowly. People often talked slowly to me. Mother didn’t. She talked fast and loudly and didn’t leave room for replying. “Ring the hospital to find out how your mum is. All right?”

  “I’m all right, thank you.” I wasn’t ill, but my feet ached and my heart was still pounding, and there was a new hollowness inside me that was like the feeling I got when I looked down from the top of the escalator in the Shopping Center.

  • • •

  The house felt strange without Mother there. It was very quiet. I like quietness, usually, but this time there was too much of it. I liked Mother going out, but that was because I knew when she was coming back. She taught a U3A Appreciating Opera class on Tuesday mornings, which was unpaid but rewarding in other ways. I’d thought U3A was a code, or even a type of glue, but Mother said it stood for the University of the Third Age, which meant older people exercising their brains. She liked Operas. She played CDs of them in the living room, and the noise vibrated through my head.

  Mother knew the stories behind Operas. She’d gotten my name, Elvira, from an Opera by a famous composer named Mozart. Mother was the only person who called me Elvira. At school, they’d called me Ellie—at least, the teachers had. And Poppy, the friend I sat next to at lunchtime. Sylvia-next-door called me Ellie too.

  Mother belonged to the Civic Society. They met every other Wednesday at three o’clock on the next road. She only went to their meetings when she approved of the building they were trying to protect. I didn’t like not knowing if she was going to go. I prefer a routine.

  She went to the Bridge Club at the Church Hall too (Bridge is a card game, but far too complicated for you, Elvira) and organized the refreshment schedule there. Father had once been chairman and treasurer of the Bridge Club, but he’d had to resign suddenly because of commitments abroad. Mother had left at the same time, but after three weeks, she’d said, Why should I hide away? and gone back.

  She enjoyed Bridge, even though there was sometimes unpleasantness. Once a man had accused her of hiding a card, and there was often what she called an inquest from her partner. When I was younger, she used to get cross when I said Snap! at the wrong time, so I supposed it was the same sort of thing. Cards must bring that out in people.

  When Mother went out, I could take off my slippers and read a Mills & Boon. I like Mills & Boons because I know what’s going to happen in the end. I don’t like surprises. Mother collapsing had been a big surprise. Having no idea when she’d be coming back felt like sand shifting away beneath my toes.

  Her cane—black with a silver handle in the shape of a lion—was lying on the floor now, next to where she’d been sitting. I picked it up and propped it against the arm of her chair to make it feel as if she was still there. I put my feet up on Mother’s red velvet footstool and shut my eyes to try to get used to the situation.

  I still wasn’t used to it when I opened them again. What I found calming was sameness, and there wasn’t any. I cooked my lunch—scrambled eggs and two slices of toast and a cup of tea, which was what I always had—but even that was different because I normally had it at one o’clock. Because of Mother’s collapse, it was now after three o’clock.

  I ate it at the kitchen table with my Mills & Boon, Affairs of the Heart, open beside me. Strangely enough, it was set in a hospital, in the Intensive Care Ward. I usually like reading, but today my brain kept getting stuck on the word hospital, and then my heart would start thudding again and I’d have to put the book down.

  • • •

  When I was small, Mother used to read to me at bedtime. They were Mother’s choice of books: children’s books set in Roman times (At least you will be learning something, Elvira) or the stories of Operas, or true-life accounts of famous women explorers. I only liked the children’s books, except that Mother read the bits about fighting or slavery in them very fast, and kept stopping at Historical Details to explain things. Things I didn’t really want to know.

  My eyes would start to close, but I had to stay awake because sometimes, the next day, she’d ask me the name of a country a particular woman had explored, or what the Romans had eaten for breakfast. Sometimes she’d sit down with me while I looked up a word I hadn’t known in a dictionary and wrote it down. I’d liked Mother sitting and reading to me, and her saying Well done if I remembered the word the next day.

  • • •

  I blinked myself back to the present and closed Affairs of the Heart. Mother didn’t approve of Mills & Boons. Or any made-up stories. Most of the books in the study had belonged to Father. He’d read a lot. Thrillers he’d liked, and spy stories. (Mother would sniff and say it was because he’d had plenty of time to read, with nothing else to do, which always surprised me because Father had been a busy and energetic person.)

  Mother especially didn’t like fiction if I read it during meals because sharing food means sharing conversation. She read out snippets from the Daily Telegraph instead. Bits about violent teenagers or welfare cheats or vegetarians. Or she read out crossword clues. Often she got the answer while she was reading out the clue and wrote it in. I wasn’t very good at crosswords, not the cryptic ones.

  That’s good, Mother, I’d say as she leaned back, smiling and putting the top on her pen with its gold-plated nib.

  Not bad for seventy-two. Do you see, Elvira, why the answer was…?

  I’d nod because if I said I didn’t understand, she’d sigh in a tired sort of way and go through it all again, and it took a long time.

  When I’d finished my cup of tea, I phoned the hospital. Mother kept useful numbers, like the Bridge Club and the Library, in the front of an address book by the phone. The numbers for the Hospital and the Doctor and the Dentist were written in extra-large writing.

  I held on to my apron while I listened to the ringing at the other end. I hardly ever made phone calls.

  “Which department?”

  “Um. My mother. They took her away in an ambulance. They…”

  “Accident and Emergency. Putting you through.”

  “Hello. A and E. Sister James speaking.”

  “My mother. She came to you just before lunch. Mrs. Agnes Carr.” The phone was slippery in my hand. My heart began to thump again. I wasn’t sure what to say.

  “And you are?”

  “I am Elvira Carr. I live at 41…” I began to tell Sister James my address, but she stopped me. I knew it by heart, including the post code, and my telephone number and its area code. Mother used to make me repeat them to her.

  “You are her daughter?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m an only child. She…”

  “Your mother has had some tests.”

  “Oh. Did she pass?” Mother was clever. She’d be good at tests.

  There was a pause. “We don’t have the results yet. Do you know if your mother takes any medication?”

  “Yes, I do know. One digoxin at breakfast time. A blue one.” I remembered the digoxin because it was made from foxgloves and because Tosca, our Airedale, had had it too, when she was old. It was good for the heart. An Airedale was a kind of terrier. There were fifty-one different breed
s of terrier. Airedales were second, alphabetically, after Aberdeens.

  “Thank you. What is your mother’s speech like normally?”

  I screwed up the hem of my apron. Speech? She’d often made speeches about Operas on cruise ships, but…

  “Miss Carr?”

  “Yes?”

  “Does your mother talk in a normal way?”

  This was another difficult question to answer because I didn’t know what “normal” was. Only that Mother said I wasn’t.

  “She talks a lot. And she’s learning Italian from a CD. So she’ll understand all the words in Operas.”

  There was another pause. “Once we’ve finished the tests, we’ll be sending your mother to Jersey Ward, in our older people’s unit.” Another pause. “Jersey Ward,” she repeated.

  I knew Mother wouldn’t be happy about that because of not being old. Or older.

  “How long will she be there for?” I bunched up my apron again.

  “I really can’t say. If you want to visit, visiting hours are from two to four and from seven to eight. Do you need to write that down?” Before I could answer, though, she said “Thank you” and hung up.

  “Thank you,” I echoed. I put the phone down and leaned against Father’s desk with my eyes shut, waiting for my heartbeat to slow.

  • • •

  Back in the living room (Not the lounge, Mother said. I never lounge.), Mother’s ornaments, crowds of African figures in dark wood, were huddled together on the mantelpiece. She’d bought them in Nairobi, before I was born, when Father was in the Army, the engineering part of it. She’d had staff to help her in the house there, and they’d called her Madam. She and Father had had to come back when Kenya had gotten too hot for him. Africa is a very hot country, I know, but I don’t think it was any less hot when they first lived there.

  In the middle of the African ornaments was a large golden clock under a glass dome. It was French and had fat, little winged babies (cherubs, Mother said) flying around under the glass. It had been a wedding present from Mother’s parents. I’d never met them because they’d died before I was born, but Father said they’d lived in a castle.

  Mother had never minded the clock chiming, even when it interrupted an Opera she was listening to, but she said me talking to her during one was an interruption. If I asked her a question, or told her a Fact I’d learned, she’d rustle the Daily Telegraph without replying. Sometimes the Daily Telegraph went up in front of her face as I came into the room.