Sylvia said, with a little choking sound, that it was nice to hear some good news for a change. “Here we go.” Trevor leaned on his shopping cart, arms folded. “This’d be a good buy for you, Sylv.” He pointed to some boxes of tissues. “Buy one, get one free! We should stock up.” He reached four boxes down and put them in their shopping cart. “If you don’t use them, I will.” He leaned over Sylvia and put his arms over her shoulders.
Josh had had Shelbie tattooed over the top of his Venom tattoo, Sylvia said.
“They reused the e from Venom,” Trevor added, “which was appropriate.”
Sylvia got out a tissue and showed me a picture of Roxanna on her phone. She was lying on an inflatable crocodile in a swimming pool and laughing.
“Bless her,” said Sylvia. “Doesn’t she look like our Katie there, Trev?”
Trevor squinted. “Good of Shelbie too. Nice teeth.”
Shelbie wasn’t in the photo.
“He means the crocodile.” Sylvia shook her head. I didn’t know what they were talking about. People often exchanged jokes or smiles or catchphrases I didn’t understand. I would have liked to write a Rule for spotting them, but it wouldn’t have fit on a spreadsheet.
Sylvia waved a hand in front of her face, sniffing. “Sometimes I feel as if I won’t see Roxanna again till she’s grown up.”
“Cheer up,” I said, using a phrase from the spreadsheet. “You’d probably still recognize her then,” I added to comfort her.
Sylvia blinked. Walking home, I tried to think of what else I could do to help.
RULE 3
Conversation doesn’t just Exchange Facts—it Conveys how you’re Feeling.
Reason behind rule:
We are social animals. People bond through talking to each other, even if it’s just small talk. It’s a way of getting to know someone and finding out if you’ve got things in common.
Useful phrases:
“Would you like to talk about something else?”
“Sorry, my mind was elsewhere.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful!”
“I would be interested to hear your view.”
“Would you like to tell me more about…?”
“How does that make you feel?”
Hints and tips:
Ask some general questions first, rather than just jumping in.
Ask people questions about their lives. Nod to show you’re listening.
Don’t talk about money or sex or religion because they are private topics.
Smile when you see people.
Turn toward people when they talk to you. Look at them but don’t stare.
Don’t go on and on about your favorite topic—have a mental time limit.
Other people may have different points of view from you.
Don’t outstay your welcome.
Rule followed?
13.
Animals need to be with their own species.
—Rosemary McAlpine, HR manager, Animal Arcadia
I found it hard to swallow my porridge on the morning of the interview, and I was more than half an hour early for the bus. An interview was a Formal Occasion so I wore my smart coat. It was looser on me now. Underneath I wore a new T-shirt from Asda, purple with short sleeves, because it was hot. On the bus I held on to the hem of my coat without actually twisting it.
A long-haired dachshund was asleep in a basket under Rosemary McAlpine—HR Manager’s desk. I recognized it from my Dog Breeds of the World apron and Observer’s Book of Dogs. She said it was Animal Arcadia’s assistant security officer. I took my eyes from the blue carpet tiles. I might be taken on if even dogs were given jobs here.
I kept to at least three Rules during the Interview, possibly more, as some of them overlapped. I used a new phrase—“Thank you. I must be going now”—instead of just saying good-bye and walking off. Keeping to the Rules must have helped me pass the interview, because the last question Rosemary McAlpine asked me was if I was free next Friday for training!
• • •
When I got home, I rushed next door to tell Sylvia. Trevor answered the door with the chain on. When Sylvia came, peering from behind him, I listed the Rules I’d kept to and began to go through the details of what Rosemary McAlpine had said, but Sylvia couldn’t stop. “Ta-ra, chuck,” she said, using an expression from Coronation Street. She took off the door chain to give me a hug. “Out in the real world now!”
I didn’t like the chain, and out in the real world sounded like being an orphan in a thunderstorm. I was a kind of orphan, living in a social group of one, but it was something I tried not to think about.
I don’t want my little girl facing trouble out in the big, wide world, Father used to say. He’d carried on saying it even after I was no longer a little girl. A picture came of Mother putting down her book (Ancient Civilizations: A User’s Guide), that I’d just collected from the Library, and saying For goodness’ sake, stop twisting that sweater. Then she’d drawn her own cardigan around her—an Aran one, chunky, with leather buttons, which had belonged to her father—and added Your father’s right, Elvira. And he is an expert on trouble. It has taken him years of practice, and me years of practice to recognize it. Sometimes the things Mother said were as baffling as her cryptic crossword clues.
I went into the kitchen now and filled the kettle far too full. The trouble that Father had been an expert on could be things he’d encountered on Secret Government Missions Abroad. He must have known all about spying or terrorism; people planting bombs like I saw on the News before I turned it off. I tipped some water out and switched on the kettle. Bombs were unexpected things, not the sort of trouble you could protect yourself against, although I could add a bandage and an antiseptic wipe to the Safety Kit, I supposed. I’d never heard of an Animal Sanctuary being blown up.
I got the milk out. Mother and Father had been experts on lots of things: Japan, Operas, engineering, bridges (card games and crossing structures), Adventurous Cookery, Financial Schemes, history, and travel. I stirred the mug of tea, my feet prickling. Experts whose advice I was now going against.
I leaned against the worktop for a moment, then I lined up the ingredients for Monday’s Spinach Gnocchi and began to chop an onion. I was only going out into the world one day a week. The earlier Incidents hadn’t taken place in an Animal Sanctuary. I scraped the onion into a saucepan. A place I’d been to three times now. I grated a small piece of mature cheddar. What was more likely would be me forgetting to smile, or saying the wrong thing, or taking too long to answer a question from the public.
• • •
Two other people were being trained as volunteers: Margot, an ex-teacher with a shriveled brown face, and Mark, balding, with round cheeks, who said Fantastic! after everything Rosemary McAlpine said.
When she asked us what we knew about Animal Arcadia, I unclenched my hand and put it up. I began to list the Facts I knew, but there wasn’t enough time to say them all, because Rosemary McAlpine held up her hand, palm out, in a gesture I recognized. It meant Stop. Margot had been coming to the park since it opened, so Vikram, the tiger, knew her voice and came to the netting when she called him.
Mark was more of a practical person, he said, and had a certification in Carpentry. Just give me a piece of wood, and I’ll make you anything you want. I looked around the meeting room for some loose wood because I needed another shelf for the Mills & Boons, but there wasn’t any. I wondered afterward if it had been a Figure of Speech. Mark sat with his legs wide apart and yawned when Margot told us about Vikram.
Rosemary McAlpine took us outside and pointed out where the bathrooms were because that was the question the public asked most often. I rehearsed the answer under my breath. She showed us where Mark would be building animal enrichment equipment—wooden structures to climb and hide in—and the zebra-striped cart that Margot, o
nce trained, would use to take groups of people around Animal Arcadia, educating them.
The Adoptions House, where I’d be working, was a kind of barn decorated in the style of a tropical hut, with palm tree fronds hanging from the rafters and branches of dried leaves above the door. Rosemary told me adoption didn’t mean taking an orphan monkey or wolf cub into your own home. This wouldn’t be practical because of their size and strength, or kind, because they needed to be with their own species. It was choosing an animal, paying some money, and then getting its photo and a newsletter. Mark asked if the photo was signed, and everybody, except me, laughed.
One of the things I’d be doing was sorting these photos into alphabetical order. I looked up from the ground; I’d already done this with my Mills & Boons. I’d done it quite often. I enjoyed doing it.
Afterward, I remembered to say good-bye to everyone, and Margot said, “Well done, Ellie!” although I hadn’t done anything yet, and Mark said, “Cheers,” then stared at me in the same way that some of the public had stared at the orangutans.
• • •
My head ached from stretching my mouth and trying to understand people’s conversations. Once I was at home, I closed the curtains and got the box file of cookie packaging out from under the bed. I sorted through its familiar contents: the smoothed-out foils from unusual Continental Assortments, the labels I’d cut out from new or unfamiliar brands, and the flattened boxes of regional, rare, and Christmas Special cookies.
I put it all back neatly and leaned out of bed to retrieve the shoe box of special things that reminded me of Father. The Observer’s Book of Dogs fell open at Airedale, because of Tosca. I knew the description by heart. I looked up dachshund, because of Rosemary McAlpine’s dog, and read that too.
I tried on the yellow Animal Arcadia T-shirt with its blue badge, and narrowed my eyes at my reflection. I didn’t really look like me anymore. No wonder Mother didn’t seem to know who I was nowadays.
I hung the T-shirt up on the back of the bedroom door where I could look at it. I fetched the Japanese notebook, sat down on the bed, and wrote down everything I could remember Rosemary McAlpine saying, then tested myself to check I’d gotten it right.
14.
Manners grease the wheels of social interaction.
—Mrs. Agnes Carr (Mother)
I waited outside the Adoptions House, counting. When I got to a hundred, I was going to walk through the door. There wasn’t anywhere you could knock because of the palm fronds.
Inside, the walls were covered with animal photos. I was just going to check that all two hundred and sixty-three animals were there, when a female voice spoke. “You the new volunteer then? Rosemary said you’d be starting today.”
I hadn’t seen the girl sitting behind the Information Counter. I nodded, glancing around quickly. She was thin with short, black hair that stuck up at the front, and something that glinted at the side of her nose. When I looked again, it wasn’t that she had a cold; it was a nose stud, a sparkly one.
“I’m Karen,” she said. Her sticking-up hair and round eyes made her look like the facial expression recognition card for Surprise.
“I’m Elvira…Ellie,” I stammered. I should have smiled, but there was so much to take in that by the time I’d remembered to stretch my mouth, Karen was looking at her computer again.
“You’ve come at the right time, Ellie. Backlog of newsletters waiting to go out.”
I had to put these in envelopes and stick on address labels. My hand shook as Karen watched me. She went back to her desk and took down people’s details on the phone. The public wandered around, looking at the pictures. I was concentrating so hard on folding the newsletters exactly in half that I forgot to say hello until it was too late. This meant the Rules checklist would not be perfectly ticked. I let a deep breath out slowly.
• • •
At eleven o’clock, the same time I had a break at home—only then I would be sitting down with a Mills & Boon, rather than a person—I had to fetch coffees for myself and Karen. Behind the café counter was the young man with glasses who’d brought over my lunch when I came to Animal Arcadia on my own. His polo shirt was tight over his stomach, and it had a small red stain down the front. He started talking as soon as he saw me, telling me he worked at Animal Arcadia on Tuesdays and Thursdays, had worked here for thirteen and a half months, and had done loads of different volunteer duties.
“What’s your favorite species?” he went on. “Mine’s wolves. They’re endangered. We’ve got…”
“Paul!” came a voice from the kitchen. “Are you getting that poor girl her drink?”
“Oh. Yes. What would you like? What’s your name, by the way?”
“Ellie,” I said without stammering.
I didn’t usually like giving my name, in case people shouted it out afterward. Once, I’d had to pick up a parcel from the Post Office, a book on African cookery, which Mother had not been able to get to the door quickly enough to sign for. I’d had to give my surname. The assistant said, “Carr? Now why does that ring a bell?” I didn’t know why, but she went on. “Oh yes, my sister was on the jury for… Oh. Well, let’s get this sorted out, shall we?” I nodded. She seemed a bit distracted—Mother would have said inefficient—and what her sister had done was irrelevant.
Karen drank her coffee while looking at her screen and grumbling about other people’s exciting social lives. She didn’t look at me much when she spoke, but her upright crest of hair quivered, which made it hard to concentrate on what she was saying.
After coffee, she dragged over a box of sheets, towels, and duvet covers. I had to shake these out and refold them, to check they were clean and there were no loose threads to catch on an animal’s claws. These were also Enrichment Items: the apes made “nests” from them to sleep in, or draped them around themselves, and the wolves ripped them to shreds in tugs of war.
I sat outside the orangutans’ enclosure at lunchtime. It was a relief to be with quiet creatures who didn’t speak. Rojo lay in a rope hammock, scratching the fur on his chest. Pernama’s mother, Cinta, was playing with a pink-and-purple bedsheet, like the ones I’d been checking. She dragged it along the ground, scaled their climbing tower, and stood at the top, the sheet streaming out behind her, rippling in the wind like a cloak, its vivid colors bright against her auburn fur. She looked like a fairy princess, or—because she had mated and had a child—a fairy queen.
• • •
At four, Karen called out, “Quitting time now. See you next week then, Ellie, same time, same place, same mission.” Her voice deepened, and she made a pointing, flung-out gesture with her arm.
I headed for the staff exit, passing the orangutan enclosure. Pernama was skittering across the netting like a spider. She stopped and clung to the fence, her small toes as pink and flexible as fingers. Her pale-lidded eyes blinked. She scampered again, then swung upside down to look back at me. It was like chatting, only easier. There were no Rules to remember in a conversation with an orangutan, except for being polite and respectful.
• • •
I walked to Bay View Lodge from the bus station. Mother didn’t take any notice of my uniform, even when I showed her Animal Arcadia written on the back. She yawned and put her left hand to her mouth. She hadn’t forgotten her manners. She would have approved of the Seven Rules. Some of them. Manners grease the wheels of social interaction, she used to say—then snap Oh, for goodness’ sake, Elvira! when I asked her what that meant. Now, she stared out to sea, or kept her eyes shut, hardly interacting at all.
Maria noticed my uniform. “You got job!” She stroked my yellow sleeve.
I explained I was a volunteer.
“You good girl. You help Mum, you help animals. What this place, Animal Arcadia?”
When I told her it was a Rescue Center for Endangered and Abused Animals she laughed. “In England, you hav
e refuge for beaten wives, you have refuge for asylum seekers, and even you have refuge for animals!” I might have spent too long pondering if the beaten wives and asylum seekers’ refuges had Adoptions Centers, because Maria smiled and tapped her watch and put her hand to her ear.
• • •
I shut the front door and stood in the silence of the hallway for a moment. I took some slow breaths and stretched my arms wide to loosen my shoulders. On the doormat was another postcard addressed to Father. It had a British stamp. My skin prickled as I picked it up because of him being dead but still getting mail. Only yesterday, a Fine Wines catalog had arrived.
The message was very short. The date, last Thursday, was underlined and then there was just:
Still remembering Brighton. Today especially. X, D.
The picture on the back was of Lake Windermere in the Lake District, not somewhere Father had ever mentioned. As he had no family, it couldn’t have been from a relation. It might have been from one of his secretaries, perhaps someone who’d retired now but wanted to keep in touch. Mother had said they never stayed long. I wonder why, she’d said, staring at Father, who was pulling at his shirt cuffs and looking in a different direction. I’d wondered why as well but hadn’t ever come up with an answer.
I fetched the Japanese notebook where I’d kept the first postcard—from Teddy, whose finances were running short—made a note of both of them on a fresh page with a question mark after each, and tucked them inside the back cover. Along with Father’s empty passport and his lack of finances, Jane from Dunstable’s comments, the mysterious woman and baby in the photo, and where Mother’s Lost Capacity was, they created yet more unanswered questions. I didn’t like uncertain things. I liked answers. Information. I liked things to be organized and definite.
I put on the kettle, sprinkled some cheese over the Cauliflower and Broccoli Gratin I’d prepared earlier, and put it in the oven. I added the Facts I’d learned today to the pages of my notes on Animal Arcadia. Orangutans weren’t always quiet. They made lots of sounds, including a loud cry, one Karen had never heard, a fast, long call that males made when rivals tried to muscle in on their territory.
The Seven Rules of Elvira Carr Page 11