“I believe there are no other claims?” Mr. Watson looked at Sylvia. She adjusted the strap of her leopard-skin shoe, not answering. “No?” His eyebrows rose, then he turned to me. “Elvira, have you any questions?”
I’d been prepared for this. I looked at his ear, which had a tuft of hair coming from it, and asked why there were no Japanese stamps in Father’s passport.
Sylvia and Mr. Watson laughed, and she said Mr. Watson had meant legal questions, pet. My face grew hot. He had not specified this. I told him Father had brought me back something Japanese each time he’d gone Away and held up the notebook as an example.
“Ah,” he said. “How interesting.” There was a moment’s silence, then he leaned forward: “One word of advice, dear young lady. Never rely on assumptions.”
• • •
I shut the front door and slumped against it. Everything was going to stay the same. Except for Mother not coming home again. I went upstairs and plumped up the comforter on Mother’s bed and checked that the silver-framed black-and-white photos on her chest of drawers were in the right order. One of Father, young and wearing a tropical hat, one of Tosca, lying on her back, paws in the air, on the Persian rug in the study, and one of me when I was a child, standing in front of the British Museum where Father had taken me to see a mummified cat. There was one of Mother and Father’s wedding too. They were smiling, standing on a long flight of steps, surrounded by a crowd of guests all wearing hats. I stared at it, wondering why Mother’s financial interests had needed protecting.
There had been a postcard recently from Spain that had mentioned the word finances. From a Stranger and addressed to Father, even though he was dead.
My Dear Gregory,
I haven’t heard from you in the last five years. You may have moved—did your wife come to her senses?—or been ill, or the other. I’ve been very patient, but that scheme you recommended came to nothing, old chap. There must be some sort of compensation, surely? Let me know details soonest—finances are running short.
Yours, Teddy
There was no address, so I couldn’t let Teddy know Father was dead. His card didn’t make any sense, but I put it inside the cover of the Japanese notebook, in case it contained a clue about Father’s spying or his own finances.
• • •
Sylvia’s shiny red fingernail pointed to a nursing home in the directory. “Trev’s mum, bless her, was in this one, Everdene. Homey sort of place.” She turned a page. “This new one, Woodside, got a good report. And this one, Bay View Lodge. A bit more expensive, but it’s small, with sea views. They’re all near here, pet. You’ll be able to just pop in.” She patted my arm. “In a month or so’s time, we’ll be laughing.”
Laughing. No sense of humor. That’s your trouble, Elvira, Mother used to say. She’d try to explain why something in the Daily Telegraph was funny, but then the tone of her voice would change, and she’d roll her eyes and put the paper down with a thud. Sometimes this had led to things getting to be Too Much. Then she’d ring Jane in Dunstable, even though it wasn’t her normal time to phone, and keep the study door shut.
I didn’t feel like laughing now. “Mother won’t like any nursing home. She’ll want me to look after her. She always said she’d cared for me all my life, and one day it would be my turn.”
Sylvia pushed her hair back from her face and said it was different now, and nobody could care for Mother on their own. “Better for all of us to get things sorted out.”
I heard Trevor slamming the front door, or it might have been Josh.
Sylvia and Trevor’s son, Josh, had moved back in with them four months ago when his marriage broke up and his wife, Shelbie, ran off to Spain with their little girl. Sylvia was sad about not seeing Roxanna because she was her favorite granddaughter. Actually, Roxanna was her only granddaughter; her other two grandchildren were boys.
Sylvia worried about Josh even though he was forty years old and owned a giant motorbike and had big tattooed arms with words I couldn’t make sense of: Living Dead and Thrash Metal.
There were a lot of things I couldn’t make sense of.
4.
You’ve got to keep up with the modern world.
—Mrs. Sylvia Grylls, neighbor
Sylvia drove us to Everdene. She picked up her leopard-skin handbag and slammed shut the car door. “Let’s do it then. Get it over with.”
I followed Sylvia, my sneakers dragging a path through the gravel. Then I remembered the vision I’d had of Mother—at home, shouting the only three words she had left—and hurried to catch up.
• • •
Inside there was a smell of fries and air freshener, and the matron wore a pink crackly uniform. A big TV was blaring in the lounge, with two old ladies asleep in front of it. They woke with a start when we came in because the matron clapped her hands.
The vacant room was small and bare, and the bed had an orange nylon bedspread with a ruffle.
We gave Everdene two stars out of five. Sylvia said it had gone downhill, and she couldn’t see Mother playing bingo, even now.
• • •
Woodside was a low, modern building with State-of-the-Art Facilities. Its glass doors slid open like they did at Asda. It was white and muffled inside.
“Quiet in here, isn’t it?” Sylvia said to the manager. “Like being onboard a spaceship!” I walked close behind her, on tiptoe, wondering how she knew what being onboard a spaceship was like.
The lounge smelled of lemons. The fragrance was piped through, the manager said. Music was also piped in, the same breathy music I’d heard groups of South American musicians play on their panpipes in the town center. When she could still Get Out and About under Her Own Steam, Mother had tutted as we passed them.
The manager showed us a vacant room decorated in white. He ran to the window as something gray and furry flashed across it. “Blasted squirrels!” He banged on the glass.
A bird feeder, half-full of seed, was attached to the outside of the window with a suction cup. The manager surveyed the garden and made a shooing motion at a squirrel sitting in a nearby tree. The squirrel watched him but didn’t move.
I gave Woodside three stars because of the squirrel and the bird feeder.
• • •
Bay View Lodge was up a steep path, and Sylvia had to stop to get her breath back.
A small, smiling lady with golden skin—Maria—answered the door. Inside, a group of ladies and one gentleman were sitting around a table making Easter cards and eating cookies. (McVitie’s, I noticed.)
Maria showed us upstairs. The room we saw belonged to one of the old ladies in the lounge. It didn’t look like a nursing-home room. It had flowery wallpaper and a brightly colored bedspread made of little knitted squares. There were paintings of country scenes with horses, and a stuffy smell of lavender.
“Most residents have sea views,” Maria said, pointing to the window. Beneath the pine trees was the sea and, in the distance, the cross-channel ferry.
Maria opened a door. “Here is the bathroom.”
There were a pink sink with pink soap and a pink toilet with a knitted white poodle sitting on the tank. Sylvia turned the poodle upside down, and inside were two rolls of pink toilet paper.
Downstairs, a fat lady with puffy cheeks—Susan Hulme, the matron—came out of an office. She was sorry, but there weren’t any vacancies. “Have to go on the list,” she said, wheezing. All her sentences ended in a wheeze.
Back in the car, I gave Bay View Lodge four stars.
A collapsed feeling that Sylvia had explained was grief or sadness swept over me when she said there’d only be a vacancy when someone went into the hospital or died, but she snapped her leopard-skin handbag shut and said it was the way of the world and would come to all of us in the end. She put Mother’s name down and said it would be a relief to get it sorted out.
We drove off. I watched the blur of buildings while Sylvia talked about Josh. “Says I’m doing too much. Mind you, he’s a fine one to talk! We never see him. We see less of him now than when he was living with Shelbie and Roxanna! I do miss them, you know…”
My mind drifted to Mother in her own room at Bay View Lodge, looking out the window at the sea view, the cross-channel ferry reminding her of Opera Cruises, and Maria, smiling, bringing her a cup of milky coffee and a plate of Extra Special Asda Assorted Biscuits, and then Mother going into the pink toilet and using pink paper from the poodle toilet-roll holder.
• • •
Sylvia blew air out with an explosive sound. “Let’s get telling your mum over and done with.” I trailed behind as she marched down the hospital corridor.
I’d worn today’s clothes in bed last night, ready for telling Mother I wouldn’t be looking after her. I’d woken in the dark, my heart racing, and stumbled into Mother’s room. I’d buried my face in the Japanese kimono and stroked its silky fabric, trying not to let tears stain the material. The label had caught on my fingernail. John Lewis: Hand Wash Only. John Lewis was a reliable upmarket shop, Mother’s favorite. I hadn’t known they had branches in Japan.
“Well, here we are, Agnes.” Sylvia sat down heavily. She gave Mother a wide, lipsticked smile.
“Not that way.” Mother lifted her head to stare at us. I handed her half a banana, its skin peeled back.
“I’m not sure how much fresh fruit you get in hospitals,” said Sylvia, “but I expect there’ll be plenty at Bay View Lodge.” She raised her eyebrows at me, her voice louder than usual as she continued. “Ellie…I mean, Elvira…and I have been looking at nursing homes for you, Agnes.”
Mother dropped her banana skin on the floor—or threw it; it was difficult to say which.
“Whoops-a-daisy! You’ll have your own room. Ellie—Elvira—and I will make it nice for you, and it’s got a lovely view of the sea. And it’s near your old house. Only ten minutes’ walk away…”
Mother shook her head, a thread of dribble whipping from cheek to cheek. “Not that way.”
“The thing is, Agnes”—Sylvia shifted in her chair—“you can’t stay here because they need the bed. And you can’t go home. How would Ellie cope with you in a wheelchair?”
Mother looked down with a little jolt of surprise. She attempted to move her legs. There was a faint tremor in the left one. She tried to lift her arms, but only the left one worked.
“Not that way, not that way!” she screamed.
“Shh, shh.” Sylvia patted Mother’s right arm, the paralyzed one. “I know it’s dreadful for you, pet, with you being such a bright lady and always in charge, but there’s no other way, Agnes. Believe me. I’ve kept Trevor awake at nights, going over it all.”
I put my fingers in my ears while Mother shouted. She had always been in charge. In charge of the students in her Opera Classes, the Bridge Club Refreshment Schedule, the household bills, me, even Father. I pictured him, his arm around her waist, saying, Your mother’s a wonderful organizer, Elvira. Where would we be without her? and her leaning away from him, her lips thin. I know where you’d be, Gregory. What we need is a settled life, but what you seek is extravagance. And look at the consequences.
• • •
In the car, Sylvia said, “It’s done, pet. The worst bit’s over. No secrets… Well”—there was a moment’s silence—“no secrets there, anyway.” She didn’t say anything else until “Good night, pet. Sleep tight” when I got out of the car.
The collapsed feeling swept over me as soon as I was alone. That night, I kept my clothes on again—and the reading lamp, to stop myself from dwelling on the image of Mother, crumpled in her wheelchair, attempting to lift her legs.
• • •
In the morning I went to Mother’s dressing-table drawer and took out the hundred and twenty pounds’ weekly cash allowance—arranged by Mr. Watson—that I stored in Father’s wallet. I used this for food and for what Mother had called sundries—any item that wasn’t food, such as a new Mills & Boon. I had a bus pass because of having a Condition, and Sylvia and Mr. Watson paid all my utility bills by direct debit from Mother’s Fund. If I needed a large item—for example, a new wardrobe, Mr. Watson had said, leaning toward me, his eyebrows leaping—I would have to apply to him for extra money. I didn’t need a new wardrobe. Mother’s carved antique one had been handed down through generations of her family, and I wanted to keep it.
Father’s wallet had lots of little pockets and zipped-up compartments, all empty now except for the space for bank notes. I turned it over and felt the outline of something small and square. Stamps, I thought, but it was a photograph. A photo of Mother with me as a baby. The house behind her was large, like the house where we used to live, which had had a pony, I remembered, in the paddock behind. When I looked at it closely, though, it wasn’t a house but a hotel, and the woman holding me wasn’t Mother. I turned the photo over. Paris, K with C b. July 29, 1994. Father’s looped handwriting.
It looked like a date of birth. Mine was November 7, 1988. I knew lots of birth dates by heart because I was good at remembering Facts. Mother’s was August 4, 1943, and Father’s was October 23, 1940.
But, since this wasn’t my birth date, this baby wasn’t me. Why had Father kept it? It wasn’t a nephew or a niece because, like Mother and myself, Father was an only child. The woman in the photo had what Mother would have called—with a sniff and a toss of her head—a lot of shape. She wore a top with flowers on it and jeans. Her long, blond hair was blowing across her face, and she was laughing. I went downstairs to get Mother’s magnifying glass. There was a gap between her teeth, and the baby wore a stretchy orange suit with black stripes and a hood with little rounded ears like a tiger cub’s.
• • •
I took the photo to the hospital to ask Mother. I didn’t have much hope that she would know anything about it, or that she’d be able to tell me, and I was right. She spluttered, “Not that way,” spraying the photo with a mouthful of tea and knocking it out of my hand with surprising strength.
• • •
I called on Sylvia afterward to show her the photo. She looked at it carefully, taking it over to her living room window and telling Trevor—who, for some reason, was saying, “Uh-oh”—to be quiet. But she couldn’t help either. They were people she’d never seen before. She began to polish the window because the sunlight was showing up all the smears. At least I had the Japanese notebook to keep track of things that puzzled me. I’d have to add Who are the woman and the baby (b. 7-29-1994) in the photo from Father’s wallet? to the other unanswered questions.
As I came out of the bathroom, Trevor was telling Sylvia that getting involved in other people’s problems would raise her blood pressure. Blood pressure was a serious thing to do with hearts. In her cooking days, Mother had used a pressure cooker that hissed and rattled. Touching it was Strictly Forbidden. Once, without me touching it, it had exploded, its lid crashing to the floor and jets of lentils and barley and stewing beef spraying across the ceiling. I worried about the same sort of thing happening to Sylvia.
Trevor obviously meant Josh’s problems. “Poor lad,” Sylvia was always saying. “What kind of life is that for a man, back home with his parents while his wife’s off living the dream in Spain?” Shelbie, Josh’s wife, was working at a resort where English people went on vacation. “Goodness knows who’s looking after that poor little mite.” The mite was Sylvia’s granddaughter, Roxanna. I’d looked up the word. Parasitic arachnid, Father’s dictionary said, which didn’t sound as nice as pet or love.
Sylvia’s eyes filled with tears when she talked about Roxanna, but if I tried to change the subject or offered to make her a cup of tea, she immediately went back to talking about her again. They’d told us at school that it wasn’t a good idea to tell someone you were bored with what they were
saying, even if you were, so I switched my mind to other things.
I thought about the town of Reading, home of Huntley & Palmer’s, and how the factories there would vary the color of their packaging according to the brand. I imagined the constant, soothing hum of the machines and the scent of baking cookies filling the air. I tried to explain all the different ways a cookie could be packaged to Sylvia, but she was talking too fast to interrupt.
Josh had met Shelbie when he was thirty-four and she was eighteen: “a lovely-looking girl, all legs and long hair,” according to Sylvia. He’d come to install new pipes in the shower block of her trailer park in the New Forest. “First time he’d ever brought a girl home, although he’d had plenty of girlfriends before, of course. With his looks, he’s always had to fight them off.”
I wondered if Josh had hurt the unwanted girlfriends when he’d fought them. I thought about his looks. He had shaggy hair that fell over his face, and he wore tight black T-shirts with things like Cannibal Corpse written on them.
Then my mind strayed to the differences between Shortcake cookies and Shortbread. Shortcake cookies were always rectangles, but Shortbread came in fingers and in triangle shapes called petticoat tails. One Christmas, a client, in appreciation of Father’s engineering, had given him a hamper of Gourmet Foods that included a large tin of Shortbread. They were in unusual shapes I’d never seen before: clubs, squares, even castles!
Shelbie had lost her mother to breast cancer when she was fifteen. Sylvia had taken to the girl: “Felt sorry for her, poor motherless scrap. Butter wouldn’t melt.” Shelbie had set her sights on Josh because he was a plumber and she knew which side her bread was buttered on. “Got her claws into him, poor lamb.” They’d had a fairy-tale wedding, with Shelbie’s dad providing not a white horse, but one that was all-over brown splotches, like something out of a circus.
In Sylvia’s living room there was a photo of Shelbie at a family celebration. You wouldn’t know from looking at her that she came from a forest, or that she had claws. Or that she was obsessed with butter. My mind drifted back to Shortbread. Strictly speaking, Shortbread should be made with butter, but Shortcake didn’t have to be. That was another difference.
The Seven Rules of Elvira Carr Page 4