• • •
I was bouncing up and down on my toes when Trevor opened the door. “Here comes trouble,” he said. It was something he often said. I stretched my mouth in case it was a joke and stood up very straight so he would know I was managing on my own.
“Seriously, love, I hope you haven’t come here with any more problems for Sylv.”
“Let the girl in, Trev,” Sylvia called.
Josh pushed past me at the living room door and went upstairs, taking the steps two at a time.
On the table was an opened package of Jaffa Cakes. Jaffa Cakes are made by McVitie’s. Their name makes them difficult to categorize. On the one hand, they have a layer of sponge cake, but on the other, their orange filling and chocolate coating make them more like cookies. Father had told me they were cookies, but were classified as cakes for tax purposes.
Father’s favorite cookie had been Shortbread because of his Scottish heritage. He also had what he called a guilty pleasure cookie, which was a Jammie Dodger.
“And that is your only one, is it, Gregory?” Mother had asked. She’d called Jammie Dodgers common and synthetic.
“I know, I know”—Father shook his head, eyes crinkling—“and all the more delicious for it.”
Jammie Dodgers, or a cookie very like them, were in Tea Time Assortments. Once, when Father was Away, I’d chosen a Jammie Dodger every Friday at teatime. I’d kept them in a red telephone money box with a slot in the top. I had twelve by the time Father returned. I’d had to dig my nails into my palms to stop myself from telling him until after dinner.
When he was drinking a cup of Lapsang souchong tea with Mother, I’d brought them in, wrapped in a handkerchief, a clean one.
“Vivi! What have you brought me? Oh! Lots of Jammie Dodgers! How yummy!”
“I saved them up for you in the money box.” I stood in front of him, my face pink.
“That’s for pennies, Elvira, not cookies,” Mother said. I knew this. I’d saved them in there because the box was the same size and shape as a cookie package. “They’ll be horribly soft,” she’d added, sipping her tea.
Father put one in his mouth, whole, and lifted me onto his knee. “I like them when they’re soft, darling,” he mumbled. Mother would have told me off if I’d spoken with my mouth full. “Saves me dunking them. Thank you, darling. What a thoughtful girl!”
“Well, Elvira”—Mother’s eyes had glittered above her teacup—“perhaps you, and your thoughtfulness, can prevent your father from straying, because I cannot.”
I’d chewed my lip. I wasn’t old enough or clever enough to keep Father from doing anything.
I focused on Sylvia’s packet of Jaffa Cakes again. She patted the space next to her on the cream leather sofa. “Tell us how it went.”
“Mother liked—” I began, but then Sylvia carried on talking. I’d have to excuse them for being preoccupied, but Shelbie, that minx, was seeing someone else, a property developer, and Josh was in bits, although I’d just seen him climb the stairs two at a time.
• • •
Now, when I visited Mother, she’d be leaning back in her chair, eyes shut, not saying anything at all. “We take away iPod to recharge battery at night. Only time mum shout now,” Maria said. Mother noticed me visiting because I said “Good morning, Mother” or “Good afternoon, Mother” in a loud voice. She’d look at me for a moment, as if she was waking up from a dream, and then sink back in her chair again, music flooding from the earphones.
There was no risk of Mother being excluded, because she no longer said anything, let alone shouted. Now it was only me who was at risk of being sent Away. “Why not just make the one daily visit?” Mrs. Hulme suggested, since Mother was settled now, and in a World of Her Own. “Not a bad way to spend your life is it, listening to your favorite music, looking at a lovely view, eating cookies? In fact”—she leaned forward to tap my arm—“it sounds like Paradise!”
8.
A computer’s your best mate.
—Micky Baines, computer buddy, Sandhaven Library
I pushed open the swinging doors of the Library. Now that I had more time, I could get a book out again, one on guinea pigs. Sand shifted beneath my feet because this was the first time I’d been back since Mother had her stroke.
Juliet Underwood, the librarian, asked how Mother was. I told her she was at Bay View Lodge and not reading now, not even the Daily Telegraph. Juliet took off her glasses. “Oh, I’m sorry. What a shame! Sad for both of you.” I had to think about that. I wasn’t sure if I felt sad, or if Mother did, because of her being in a World of Her Own, and because I wasn’t very good at understanding other people’s emotions.
I told Juliet about the volunteer guinea pigs at Bay View Lodge. There was nothing about guinea pigs under Pets and Domestic Animals so we had to Google them, which was using a search engine on a computer. “It’ll tell you anything you want to know, and lots you didn’t want to,” Juliet said.
I remembered the layout of the screen from school. Website addresses came up, and I clicked on The Guild of British Guinea Pigs. Juliet Underwood said, laughing, that using a mouse was appropriate for researching rodents. I guessed it was a joke because of her laughing, but actually, I thought it was appropriate. The screen filled with pictures of different breeds.
“I’ll print those out for you.” She pushed up her glasses. “We’ve got a computer buddy here now, you know. Shows people the ropes. Why not come along?” The sessions were informal, and nobody would shout if I made mistakes, she said. She took off her glasses again. “I expect you had quite a lot of that at home. Our nearest and dearest aren’t always patient, are they?”
Nearest and dearest must mean Mother. I shook my head. The Library was empty save for a gray-haired couple browsing the Crime section. Juliet Underwood polished her glasses slowly with a little yellow cloth. “She always seemed rather an unhappy person, your mother.” She glanced at me, eyebrows raised.
Was Mother unhappy? I was surprised. She’d never said.
“I know her arthritis held her back”—Juliet went on polishing—“and she was lonely, after your father passed away. Perhaps before too. Some of the remarks she made—” Juliet Underwood stopped suddenly and examined her glasses. “I wonder,” she said, breathing on the lenses, “if there was a hint of bitterness too.”
I stood at the Library counter, blinking. I looked at the small pearl stud in Juliet Underwood’s ear. “Mother wasn’t lonely because I was always there.”
“Yes.” She held her glasses up to the light. “You were, are, very good to your mother.” She laughed. “Goodness knows how many books you’ve gotten out for her over the years.”
I nodded. I wished I’d counted them now.
“Anyway…” Juliet Underwood replaced her glasses. “Moving on… I shall look forward to you coming to grips with computers.”
I walked home thinking about Mother’s bitterness, remembering the bottles of fizzy bitter lemon I’d been allowed to drink on our vacations in Lyme Regis and the taste of cough medicine at the back of my throat. I couldn’t see the connection.
• • •
I read the printouts until I knew the different breeds of guinea pig and their color variations and characteristics by heart. Geraldine was an Abyssinian Dalmatian. I tore up Guinea Pigs as a Food Source without reading it, but found some interesting Facts elsewhere to tell Brenda at Pet Therapy: Queen Elizabeth the First of England had had a guinea pig as a pet, and Portrait of a Guinea Pig, dated 1580, was in the National Portrait Gallery in London.
I lay in bed thinking about the computer sessions. Juliet Underwood said I’d picked it up easily today. I twisted a corner of the sheet. Sylvia and Katie said owning a computer would give me greater independence and keep me up with the modern world. They’d said computers had the answers to things. Mother had said I’d never manage a computer, but it w
as possible she’d been wrong. She’d already been wrong about buses.
• • •
The computer buddy was called Micky. He had prominent ears and wore a baseball cap. He was doing Community Service. It was kind of him to serve the community without getting paid.
Micky showed us—there were only me and an older gentleman called Bill—the clever things a computer could do. “See these, like, professional-looking letters, yeah? A computer’ll underline your spelling mistakes, correct your grammar, practically wipe your ar…nose for you!” Micky and Bill laughed. I looked carefully at the computer. “Yeah, I’ve got mates inside who use ’em to write very convincing letters, but, hey, let’s not go there, eh? Happy?”
I was happy. The computer did the same things in the same way each time. I could do everything Micky showed us. I was quicker than Bill. If I owned a computer, I could create tables, spreadsheets even, to organize the different guinea pig breeds and put Geraldine in under Abyssinian Dalmatian. And I could find the answers to the questions in my Japanese notebook: Why are there no Japanese stamps in Father’s passport? What did Jane from Dunstable mean about Deceit, Lies, Forgiveness, and Shame? Why were there concerns about Father’s finances? Where is Mother’s Lost Capacity? Who are the woman and the baby (b. 7-29-1994) in the photo from Father’s wallet?
I must have said some of this out loud because Micky pushed up his baseball cap. “Yeah! A computer’s gonna be your best mate.” He finished his hour’s service time then and had to dash off, although later I saw him outside, smoking.
• • •
I popped around to Sylvia’s with a packet of Foxes Favorites to tell her about the computer sessions. I thought I saw Trevor going out the kitchen door when I came in, but I might have been mistaken. Roxanna was Skyping from Spain, bouncing up and down on the chair. When she tucked her hands under her knees, there was a long scratch on one of her bare arms. I wondered if Shelbie had done it with her claws.
Roxanna soon slid off her chair altogether because she didn’t want to miss the rest of her CBeebies cartoon. Sylvia ended the call, her half-moon eyebrows sloping downward, expressing Concern, Worry, or Sadness. Shelbie hadn’t been in the flat with Roxanna. She’d been brushing up her skills in a hairdressing salon.
“Got it through that property developer she’s seeing.” Sylvia’s lip curled. “Did this hairdressing course at college, you see, when she was sixteen. In the New Forest. Never finished it. All at sixes and sevens then with her mum dying. Always been into hair and makeup. I wonder if I was a bit of an influence there. You know what I’m like about my appearance.”
I knew Sylvia spent a lot of time on her appearance. On using a hair dryer to make her hair stick out. My toes clenched with the effort of not talking about the computer.
“Now she wants her own salon, wants to be independent,” Sylvia was saying, “What married woman wants to be independent?” and “Left alone in a flat. It’s not right. Shelbie could bring Roxanna over here for me to look after while she gets this training done.”
Quickly I got in, “I’m training on computers at the Library.”
“Are you, pet?” Sylvia turned from the screen, her eyebrows arched again. “You fixed it up yourself? Well, you definitely need one of your own now.” Sylvia hunted through a tray of papers to find the phone number of the man who’d got hers wholesale.
I shut my eyes. I might not be able to work it at home and on my own. I might turn into a robot, like Mother said.
“Stuff and nonsense,” Sylvia said, and five days later, the new computer sat on Father’s desk, covered with a Kenyan tribal throw of Mother’s. (Mother hadn’t reacted to me telling her about it at all, not even to say, “Not that way,” but Juliet Underwood had punched the air, saying, “Yay! Computer whiz!” and my face and ears had gone pink.)
I sniffed the computer’s plasticky fragrance. Father would have been good at computers if he’d had the time to learn. He could have used one to organize the Foreign Investments he’d encouraged the people at the Cricket Club to buy. Even Mother might have approved of computers, eventually. She could have watched people singing on YouTube, like Micky had shown us. He’d shown us gambling websites, where you could play cards for money too, glancing over his shoulder before he clicked on to them. Mother could have played Bridge online, by herself, without any unpleasantness being involved.
• • •
At the next computer session, Bill offered me a Rich Tea cookie from a package he kept in his briefcase. I took it, checked the number of holes (fourteen), then handed it back because, as Father said, Where’s the fun in a Rich Tea? The most exciting thing about it was the fourteen holes. Bill started telling me about his grandson who’d been to a Special School. I’d been to one too. When you went to one, you didn’t feel special; you felt the opposite. I chewed my lip and poked at a carpet tile with the toe of my shoe.
“A natural with computers is Paul, rather like yourself. Keen on animals too,” Bill added. “Very keen. Always rescuing things and bringing them home. Always got something in a cardboard box in his bedroom. Something recovering. Drives his dad mad. My son, Paul’s dad, he’s a single parent, you know.”
I shook my head. I didn’t know.
“Paul does voluntary work at Animal Arcadia. Heard of that?”
I shook my head again. It was an animal conservation center out in the country that might suit me too. “They’re always glad of another pair of hands.” I looked at my hands. “Paul,” Bill went on, “works in the café. Moves sacks of food and that. My goodness, those animals get through a lot of cabbage, even the tigers!” He nudged me in the ribs and laughed. I smiled too because I liked cabbage, and it was full of Vitamins.
• • •
I found a lot of comfort in creating spreadsheets. Getting things in order. Spreadsheets helped Micky to keep track of his secondhand cars. “How much I sell ’em on for. And”—he winked—“what I have to pay out for disguising a bit of damage. Know what I mean?” He winked again and screwed his mouth to one side. It wasn’t a facial expression I recognized. I didn’t always know what Micky meant, although he was always asking us if we did. I did understand spreadsheets, though. In fact, in the end I had to show Bill how to do them because a policeman came to the Library and asked to speak to Micky and he had to leave suddenly to help him with something. Micky was a helpful person.
• • •
I showed Sylvia the computer—I wanted to talk about it all the time—and told her about Bill and his grandson.
She looked at me, then said, “Maybe at school break me and you and Katie and the boys could take a trip to Animal Arcadia. Have a look around.” I could Google it first and tell her what it was all about.
• • •
The computer knew a lot about Animal Arcadia. I’d thought it would be a kind of zoo and that seeing animals in cages would give me the collapsed feeling inside, but they’d all been rescued from cages and were now living a Life of Freedom in the Heart of the Countryside.
Animal Arcadia’s website displayed each animal’s name, species, photo, and background. There was a section on volunteering with people wearing yellow T-shirts, shuffling information sheets, and working behind the scenes. They were smiling, but apart from that, there was nothing special about them. I chewed my lip, picturing myself helping there, mixing with abused animals and telling people Facts. I heard Mother’s voice, You wouldn’t be able to cope, Elvira, and then Sylvia’s chiming in, You’re doing so well, pet. Their voices clashed inside my head, and I had to lie down with the curtains drawn for a while.
I came downstairs with the Japanese notebook. I was finding it hard to stay away from the computer. I typed in my unanswered questions and sat back, waiting for everything to be clarified. Not knowing why Father’s passport was empty, and what was wrong with his finances, and where his Secret Government Missions had taken him, and who the pe
ople were in the photo from his wallet, and what Jane had meant by her comments, played on my mind.
But Google didn’t give me any proper answers. It got bogged down in irrelevant details like “Is vegan breastfeeding enough?” and went off at a complete tangent about the photo. It knew nothing at all about Father’s finances. In fact—I banged the mouse down on the desk—it made the same mess of things that Mother said I did when I tried to answer something difficult. I shut the notebook with a snap, unable to tick any of my questions off, no nearer to understanding things than when I’d started.
I made a cup of tea and then switched on the computer again, hoping I wasn’t wearing out its insides. Since Bill had mentioned Special Schools, I must have had them on the brain. Without thinking what I was doing, I typed: “Are Special Schools Special?” I waited, blinking, but Google’s answers were unlikely and useless, just as before. No, wait, here was a link to Learning Difficulties.
I clicked on it, the familiar hot feeling of being different, slow, of having an inactive brain, sweeping over me. And there, on the screen, was my Condition. My Condition, mentioned under Mother’s breath to strangers, and loudly (You and your blasted condition!) to me. Here it was in public, without shame, with its own website! Actually—I scrolled down to check—it had lots of websites! I clicked on one specifically for girls and women. It had news, fact sheets, links to information, and a message board.
I stared. I hadn’t known such things existed. I read about other women finding it difficult to fit in and how their brains got overloaded. I leaned forward, absorbing information. They’d all felt like outsiders at coffee mornings and said the wrong things about people’s hairstyles. I couldn’t be as odd as I’d thought, because here were lots of other people, women, feeling exactly the same things that I did.
I wasn’t alone.
They wrote conversations to one another. Supportive conversations. I read all of them and every message, life story, and piece of advice. When I looked up, it was dark outside. I went to put the kettle on. In the hall mirror, my eyes looked bloodshot from staring at the screen. I hurried back to click on Fact Sheets. If I’d had a computer earlier, I could have read these before. I could have shown Mother. She might even have read bits out at mealtimes.
The Seven Rules of Elvira Carr Page 7