My face grew hot. Sylvia looked over and held up some plain dark jeans with elastic in them. Mother despised jeans. Even I knew they were fashionable, so wearing them would be a big step for me, but Sylvia said Mother would appreciate how hard-wearing denim was, if ever she stopped to think, and to remember Rule Two: If you Look Different, you won’t Fit In. When I paid for them at the register, Janice said, “Very snazzy, Elvira!” which Sylvia said was a compliment.
• • •
We headed to Marks & Spencer. This was Sylvia’s idea. I wasn’t used to its layout, and the grim-faced ladies swishing clothes along the rails reminded me of Mother. Sylvia gathered up some brightly colored T-shirts and sweaters, when what I felt comfortable in were dark colors, and the looser the better. I’d feel like a set of traffic lights wearing all that stuff. I had to keep shutting my eyes. Shopping with Sylvia was not so different from shopping with Mother, except that she called me “pet” and said how much she was enjoying herself.
She looked at me. “Bit of a change for you, pet, isn’t it?”
“Not a bit! A big change!” I held the hem of my sweater tightly with both hands. If I’d been at home, I would have run upstairs and slammed the door, and Mother would have called me rude and challenging. “People will stare more if I wear stuff like that.” I backed away from her armful of clothes. “They’ll notice me!”
“Pet,” said Sylvia, “look around. Can you see anyone else wearing baggy navy trousers with ragged hems and a sweater that’s so stretched it’s practically a dress?”
“No,” I admitted, “they’re wearing anoraks. Is that a kind of uniform?” I checked with Sylvia. “Do you have to wear one here?”
“No!” Sylvia laughed. “No, bless you. You’re right, though, pet. They are wearing similar things. That’s part of fitting in, I suppose. You can be a bit different—like me wearing my bright-pink coat or leopard-print heels, or both,” she added, glancing at her outfit in a mirror, “but not too much.”
I’d have to add another note to the spreadsheet. A complicated one. “That’s very strict.” I squeaked a trainer against a chrome post. “And mean.”
“Yes, but that’s the way of the world, I’m afraid, pet, and like it or not, we’re all part of the world.”
We were at the register by then so I paid, then Sylvia took hold of my arm and said how about having lunch in the café upstairs. My stomach lurched; it would be noisy and busy. When I said how tired I was, she said she was tired too and hungry, and we’d both feel better after a short rest. I knew I wouldn’t. It was my brain that was tired, not my feet.
• • •
The only place where I felt comfortable eating, besides home, was Ravel, the restaurant where Father used to take Mother for dinner on her birthday and their wedding anniversary. (Spending other people’s money was one of his skills, Mother said. His others included bridge building and Joining In at parties, but she didn’t mention those.) They’d stopped celebrating their wedding anniversary, I’m not sure exactly when; after their silver one, I think. Mother said it had become a sham. I had to look up the word: a person who pretends to be something other than he is. The root word it came from was shame, which was odd because that was something Mother said Father never felt.
Mother started taking me to Ravel instead. It was quiet, and we could sit in a corner in the back. There were black-and-white photos on the walls of people playing musical instruments, and the soup had cheese on toast floating in it. Jean Christophe, the waiter, called me Mademoiselle Elvira and asked me how I was. Mother told me to say, “I’m fine, thank you. How are you?” and he’d reply: “I’m very well, mademoiselle. Thank you for asking.” It was like a rally in the Wimbledon Championships when no one dropped the ball.
Here, in the Marks & Spencer café, it wasn’t quiet; there was an echoing clatter of cutlery and too many people talking.
“Isn’t this nice, pet?” Sylvia looked around her, smiling.
“Nice to take the weight off your feet,” a lady at the next table said.
Sylvia laughed and stuck out her feet in their leopard-print shoes. “Especially when you’re silly enough to wear these!”
Sylvia must have known the other lady at the table as well because they all joined in a pointless conversation about shoes. One asked if I was wearing a comfortable pair. It was difficult to give an accurate answer. They weren’t as comfortable as my slippers. I could feel them both staring at me.
“You like to get things right, don’t you, Ellie? So an answer can take a long time,” Sylvia said, smiling, and then all three ladies started talking about tops with low necks and short sleeves and how they didn’t like them.
• • •
At home, I sat in Mother’s armchair for a while with my eyes shut, and then I tried on the new clothes. I looked at my reflection. The jeans were slim-fitting and the T-shirts and sweaters went in at the waist. I’d never had one like that before. I felt exposed, almost naked. I parted my hair like Delia Smith did hers, and pushed it back from my face.
Sand shifted. I hardly recognized myself. I looked neat and tidy…almost efficient. I walked away from the mirror and then back again. Would people think I was like that inside—a bossy, chatty person, who knew which countries were where and what hip-hop music was? People didn’t expect much when you wore baggy clothes. No—I moved away from the mirror—they shouted at you instead.
I put my old clothes in the laundry basket, remembering a slow worm in David Attenborough’s Life in the Undergrowth that had shed its worn-out skin for a better-fitting one. On the way back upstairs, I caught sight of my reflection in the landing mirror and thought, for one heart-stopping moment, there was someone else in the house.
• • •
I called for Sylvia on Saturday for our Animal Arcadia trip. I kept my arms glued to my sides to control the flashes of color I was giving off and walked with a shuffle because the jeans seemed to resist my legs moving.
“You look lovely, pet.” She blinked. “A real transformation.”
I put my hands in my jeans’ pockets; there weren’t any folds of fabric to hold on to. We waited ten minutes at the bus station for Katie and the boys, but nobody stared or shouted.
The bus set off for Animal Arcadia, tree branches scraping against the bus windows as we got deeper into the countryside. I imagined being a jungle creature and hiding away, except that the vivid colors I was wearing would give away my location.
The boys scuffed their shoes and pushed each other, and Sylvia and Katie had to take them to the Adventure Playground. I was left alone in a place I didn’t know, wearing clothes I’d never worn before. They felt tight, especially the jeans, although Sylvia said they weren’t. Catching glimpses of a smaller, brighter-colored version of myself in the glass of the animal enclosure windows made me jump. I kept checking that my old black sweater and the Safety Kit—my earplugs and useful items such as a Tupperware box containing four cookies (McVitie’s, because these had accompanied Scott to the Antarctic)—were still inside my backpack.
I concentrated on noting down new Facts about the animals I saw. I had to turn over several pages of the Japanese notebook to get to a fresh page because of the questions that were still unanswered: Where had Father carried out his Secret Government Mission; who were the woman and baby in the photo from his wallet; what had been wrong with his financial situation; who had deceived Mother; where was her Lost Capacity; and what did Jane from Dunstable’s comments mean? Having so many gaps in my knowledge was unsettling. When I dwelt on them, it felt, again, like sand shifting beneath my feet.
While I waited for the orangutan talk to begin, I copied down their names from the information board. The orangutan in charge, Rojo (king in Indonesian), looked like the bronze Buddha Father had brought back from Japan, except that Rojo had auburn fur. The baby one, whose fur stuck out in untidy wisps, was called Pernama, which means ful
l moon.
The orangutans should have been left in the wild, but there wasn’t enough wild left, the keeper told us. It was being destroyed to plant Palm Trees whose oil went into Processed Foods. Mother must have known this already because she always said Processed Foods with a curl of her lip.
“Proper gingers, aren’t they?” A woman cackled. Other people peered through the fence, pointing and laughing. My heart began to beat very fast.
I reached into my backpack. I had letter-sized version of the Seven Rules with me for reference. After a moment’s thought I pulled it out. Sylvia had said most people could do with reading it and I’d seen Burger Shop people in the town center gave out leaflets all the time. People were pleased to get them. As soon as the talk had finished, I screwed up my toes, took a deep breath, and handed the cackling woman a copy of my spreadsheet.
I walked on to the tiger enclosure. It was a strange sensation not having a T-shirt billowing around me or trouser hems flapping around my ankles. The three tigers were sprawled beside an ornamental pond. They had been rescued from circuses, where they’d been whipped to make them perform tricks. One of them—his name was Vikram, the tiger keeper told us—stood up and rubbed his head against the netting, purring in the keeper’s ear while he spoke. My eyes stung. I didn’t know why.
I met Sylvia, Katie, and the boys at the gate at four o’clock. The cackling woman was there with a shaven-headed man in a sleeveless T-shirt. They were talking to a woman in a yellow Animal Arcadia uniform.
“That’s her!” the cackling woman pointed at me. “Bloody cheek!” The man folded his arms and stared at me.
Sylvia put her head in her hands. She drew the uniformed lady aside, said something that involved shaking her head, and then we left very quickly.
On the bus, Sylvia made me write down why I shouldn’t have given the woman the spreadsheet. I had been rude, apparently, and undiplomatic. It was bewildering.
• • •
Afterward, Sylvia came with me to visit Mother. Her face was turned to the window, eyes closed. She wasn’t asleep because the fingers of her left hand were tapping the arm of her chair.
Her eyes didn’t open when I told her about Animal Arcadia, not even at there being two different types of wolf (red and gray) and two different types of orangutan (Bornean and Sumatran). She didn’t notice I was wearing brightly colored clothes and jeans, whereas before her brain was damaged, she’d have told me to Take those dreadful things off at once! The only sign she knew we were there was her eyelids flickering when Sylvia patted her shoulder to say good-bye.
“I know we wanted her to stop shouting but…” Sylvia unlocked the car door. She drove home in silence, as if Mother’s had been catching. I looked out the back window, watching Bay View Lodge disappear and remembering how Mother had behaved when she first arrived there. Her not speaking at all now was better, but it made me feel hollow inside.
I went to bed for a while, and then I clicked onto the Animal Arcadia website. I studied the page about rescuing animals and the section on volunteering, with the pictures of people smiling as they volunteered, and clicked an Application Form up on-screen. I could at least have a look at it.
RULE 2
If you Look or Sound Different, you won’t Fit In.
Reason behind rule:
We are herd animals. Other people are suspicious of those who look different.
Even though you might not care how you look, other people do.
People treat you better if you look neat and tidy.
Hints and tips:
Scruffiness and smelliness put people off.
Dress like everyone else if you don’t want to stand out. You can be a bit different, but not too much.
Stand an arm’s length away during conversation so you don’t invade people’s personal space.
Using very long words and formal language can intimidate other people.
Rule followed?
11.
Shiny shoes, a clean white shirt, and a good suit will take you far in life.
—Gregory Carr (Father)
I’d never had a job or done voluntary work before. When I left school, at eighteen, Mother had been sixty-three and Father sixty-six, because of having had me late in life. Mother’s knees were getting stiff and the lenses in her glasses thicker and thicker, so she’d needed me at home.
We used to have a cleaning lady, but she’d left when Mother went to the bank and found there was nothing left in their joint account. We’ll have to tighten our belts, she’d snapped. I’d thought she meant me, that I should lose weight, which is something she often mentioned, but she hadn’t looked at me. She’d looked at Father. He’d put down his book and taken a deep puff of his cigar, a long, breathed-out sigh of smoke hiding his facial expression. He was the only one of us who wore a belt, so he must have already been feeling the tightening.
One thing I will say for you, Elvira, is that you are a naturally tidy person, Mother had said. Being naturally tidy helped me to do the housework. We will stick to a routine, Elvira. It will make it easier for both of us. It was Mother’s routine, though, meant to fit around her. Mine would have involved more David Attenborough DVDs. (You must know them by heart now, surely? Yes, I did know them by heart. That was why I liked them.)
It would have meant visiting museums and places with animals, and not going shopping every other day, or up and down stairs every half hour. It would have involved learning how to use a computer and going to the cinema with Poppy, who I used to sit next to at school and who’d shared my interests in cookies and Coronation Street.
Mother had said there wasn’t enough time for all that; she needed me. I was ungrateful after all she’d done, and I needed to be kept safe at home for my own protection. I was far too trusting, she’d said, and a target for predators, and she reminded me of the various Incidents that had happened when I’d ventured out and done things on my own.
Staying at home meant I’d gotten a Caregiver’s Allowance because of Mother’s Limited Mobility. Mother had spat out the c in caregiver as if she was saying cut or kill. And who exactly is caring for whom, might I ask? she’d asked, but I wasn’t sure of the answer. Father had told me, when we were on our own, that caregiving was a proper job. “Goodness knows,” he’d said, “you earn the money.” I didn’t have to care for Father because he was often Away and his knees were flexible. We didn’t know that, inside, his arteries were furring up. On the twelfth of November 2010, when he was seventy, one of them got blocked. His blood couldn’t reach his heart and it had an attack and then he died.
• • •
Father had been Away when he died, on an engineering trip to Kenya, which I remembered Mother saying now had been a cover story—practically evidence for spying! After the police had told us, and she’d made me a cup of tea, Mother’s face had gotten red and swollen, and she’d taken off her glasses.
Well, it was Crawley, not Kenya—reality is far more prosaic—and it didn’t have much to do with engineering. I told him this would happen! She’d slammed a document file shut. He was too old to be leading a young man’s life, but there’s no fool like an old fool. I should know. Her face had crumpled, and she’d put her head in her hands.
I’d stood next to her. When I’d asked her if I should make her a cup of tea now, she’d said no. I’d asked her if she wanted a cookie, but there’d been no reply. So I’d told her, to cheer her up, that McVitie’s had been making Jaffa Cakes for ninety years and that each one traveled more than a mile down the production line in the factory, but she didn’t respond. She just limped upstairs and banged the bedroom door shut.
• • •
Because Father’s death had been sudden and while he was Away, it didn’t seem as if he was dead, at first, but only Abroad on a long trip. That’s what I was thinking when I’d asked Mother if Father would be coming to the funeral.
Of course he’ll be coming to it! she’d snapped. It’s his funeral, you stupid girl. She’d shouted about it meaning she’d never be able to get Away again, and went upstairs, stumbling because of her stiff knees. From the landing, she’d asked if I realized I’d never be able to watch those dreadful films with him again, and then, before I could realize, there’d been a creak as she lay down on the bed.
• • •
The next day, Mother and I had gone to the Funeral Parlor in a taxi. We were shown into a room with white flowers in it, and there, in a coffin, was Father. He’d looked shrunken and old, and when Mother told me to kiss his cheek, he was as cold as the shoulder of lamb I’d bought the week before in the Frozen Meat Aisle in Asda. That was when I’d realized he was dead.
Mother had packed up his clothes and given them to a charity shop. Apart from his dinner suit that hung in her wardrobe with the blue evening dress. Father had worn it when he proposed to her at the Ritz and for Special Occasions afterward because he’d always been the same weight and height he’d been at twenty-one. Father had taken pride in looking smart: Shiny shoes, a clean white shirt, and a good suit will take you far in life, he used to say. Mother had stared at him and raised her eyebrows. Sometimes to places where you have no choice but to stay. They’d often spoken to each other in this sort of code.
I’d kept the special things Father had given me in a shoe box lined with one of his silk ties: an ammonite from Lyme Regis; some colorful stamps with animals he’d brought back from Japan and Kenya, and his old Observer’s Book of Dogs with the Airedale page marked with a cigar wrapper. Later, Mother had bought me a boxed set of Classic Horror Films, which I also kept in the box; I never watched them. I would have been frightened without Father being there. I kept the box under my bed and got it out when I couldn’t sleep.
The Seven Rules of Elvira Carr Page 9