The Seven Rules of Elvira Carr

by Frances Maynard

  • • •

  At home, I printed out the note I’d written to her:

  Dear Sylvia,

  I wanted to help you because you have helped me a lot. I wanted your blood pressure to stop bubbling. I asked Social Services to get Roxanna to live with you because you missed her, but Miss Gail Dawson said there were other people’s feelings involved and they would feel hurt. I do not like hurting people. I am sorry that I have got things wrong and that I have not helped you. I would like to be your friend again.

  Love from Ellie

  I put the note in an airmail envelope and crept next door, where I weighted it down with a stone. I felt sorry for it lying there, alone and vulnerable, on Sylvia and Trevor’s doorstep. I tiptoed home, my fingers crossed that I hadn’t written something that would make Sylvia angrier.

  In bed, I crossed my first toe over my big toe as well. I could only do that with the left foot because, as Sylvia said, I wasn’t very flexible.

  18.

  It’s never a good idea to get involved in other people’s private business without checking first.

  —Mrs. Sylvia Grylls, neighbor

  I was lifting Mother’s African figurines by the slender legs to dust beneath each one when I heard a sound. Looking up, I saw Sylvia and Trevor coming out their front door. She bent down. There was a snail crawling over my envelope. Trevor made as if to throw the snail into my garden, but Sylvia stopped him. He swung his arm round and round and hurled it over their rear fence like a cricketer.

  Father had watched cricket on TV when he was At Home. When I was young, Mother had watched it with him, the Daily Telegraph crossword on her lap, shaking her head and saying, They just make up the rules as they go along. I felt that too, and not just with cricket.

  Father used to play cricket for the Sandhaven Second Eleven. He’d organized the Cricket Club Dances. Mother had worn her midnight-blue evening dress to them with her Je Reviens perfume. She’d had to go, even though, as she said to Father, the diamonds on her blue evening glasses flashing, the other people were boors and charlatans, like all your acolytes. I’d looked up all three words. I often had to use a dictionary to find out what Mother meant. None of the words had been nice things to say about Father’s friends, I thought now, thinking of Rule Six (It’s better to be too Diplomatic than too Honest).

  “They won’t want to speak to me,” Mother had continued, “and those who do will ask awkward questions. Especially if their checks have bounced.” I’d known checks were a safer alternative to cash, but I’d been surprised they had a rubbery quality, and that Mother was not looking forward to conversations. I hadn’t realized she found them difficult.

  Mother had sighed and rolled her eyes as she put on her dress, and talked of ostracism, which I also had to look up, and it all being Father’s fault, even though Father always looked forward to conversation. He’d been good at talking to people. Gift of the gab, someone said he had. A born salesman. Someone else—a woman—had called him a sweet-talker.

  • • •

  Sylvia put the letter in her leopard-skin handbag, and they drove off. I shook out the duster, wanting to run outside and shout to her to open it.

  • • •

  Welcome, Ellie, the computer flashed up. I was Googling Father’s birth date and name to keep myself busy. I needed to look for clues about his secret Government Missions and the other unanswered questions in my Japanese notebook. His lack of finances, and who the people were in his photo, and why his shoes had secret compartments, and what Jane from Dunstable had meant, and where Mother’s Lost Capacity was, were still mysteries.

  I found a Gregory Carr straightaway, an Irish professional soccer player, born in 1991, and another who was a Senior Attorney in America. When I added Father’s place of birth, Edinburgh, to narrow down the search, it brought up the footballer again with Edinburgh and Father’s birthday crossed out. No match found. No clues at all. But then Father had never used a computer, to my knowledge.

  I typed in Father’s birth date on its own and discovered it had been a Wednesday and a Mr. Roosevelt had been president of the United States. I did learn something about Father, though, because the film Rebecca had come out in the year he was born. It had starred Laurence Olivier and Father had looked just like him, except for having a thinner nose.

  There was an email from Paul about a TV program, Whale Watching, that was on this Friday. Paul kept in touch with lots of people, school friends, and went to the cinema with them. I hadn’t kept in touch with anybody because of picking up more eccentric habits, and being safer at home. I would have liked to have met up with Poppy, who used to wait for me at break times. Sometimes we’d see who could make their cookie last the longest. She always wore a bracelet with little, round, wooden beads threaded on elastic, red ones because of her name.

  • • •

  I covered up the computer and began to cook dinner. I was watching Coronation Street when the doorbell rang. I gripped the sides of Mother’s chair, a prickle of sweat in my armpits. It couldn’t be Josh. He’d gone off to Spain. I crept to the door and opened it, the chain on, holding it ready to slam shut.

  A voice whispered, “Only me, pet. I don’t want Trev to know I’m over here.”

  Sylvia! I flung open the door.

  “Put the kettle on, pet, I’ve got lots to tell you.”

  • • •

  We sat on the sofa together like we’d done when Mother first had her stroke. Sylvia had brought some cookies I’d never heard of before: Wessex Wafers. They were in a cream-colored package with dark-brown lettering and a picture of a country scene with horses on the front.

  A royal connection. Sylvia tapped the side of her nose, a gesture I couldn’t interpret, one I’d seen Trevor make when I’d asked him who his favorite politician was. “All the profits go to horse welfare. I bought them at that giant Marks & Spencer in Southampton. Trev took me there today to cheer me up. Retail therapy, he said. Go wild with my credit card. Only I didn’t feel like it. I only bought a couple of bits. Anyway”—she reached out and touched my arm—“I had some much better therapy when I got home. You wait till I tell you.” She sipped her tea.

  I waited, examining the Wessex Wafer closely. I unwrapped its purple foil and took a bite. Dark chocolate covered a thin hazelnut cookie studded with—I checked the package—sun-dried blackberries from Wessex Hedgerows. It was the nicest and most attractively packaged cookie I’d ever seen. I smoothed out the foil and asked Sylvia for the empty box for my collection.

  She promised to keep it for me, then sat back, eyes sparkling. “My news! So there was Roxanna, waiting to Skype. She had something very exciting to say, I can tell you.”

  It was a relief that Sylvia could tell me. And that she hadn’t brought up me contacting Social Services. Or mentioned Sheltered Accommodation. “How does that make you feel?” I asked.

  Sylvia paused. “I’m just going to give you all the details. So Roxanna comes on. I could hardly see her because she’s got this huge sombrero over her face and a great big Spanish donkey on her lap. A toy one.” Sylvia put down her tea. “I rang Josh’s work, after he left. Soon as I found out he’d booked two weeks’ vacation, I felt much better.” She patted her plump chest. “It wasn’t your fault, pet, not really”—she reached out to touch my hand—“and you wrote a lovely note. I know you had the best of intentions, pet, but it’s never a good idea to get involved in other people’s private business. Not without checking first.”

  Me telling Social Services about Roxanna being imprisoned had broken Rule Seven (Rules change depending on the Situation), Sylvia told me. It wasn’t my place to be a policewoman. I should have talked it over with her first, but now we’ve put an end to it, pet, and you have to get things wrong before you can get them right.

  Josh had gone all the way to Spain on the bike. He’d brought Shelbie a gold pendant and showed her her name
tattooed over Venom. “Swept her off her feet all over again,” Sylvia said.

  I pictured Shelbie, tottering on high heels, then falling over, as Josh whisked around her, a broom in his tattooed arms. “It sounds like a Mills & Boon story I read last year, Spanish Sunset.”

  Sylvia nodded, smiling. “A proper happy ending. Josh is taking Shelbie to the poshest restaurant in Marbella tonight. Spending those savings of his! Remember when he was off out every evening and we thought he was drowning his sorrows?”

  I nodded, seeing Father wade toward me in the sea at Lyme Regis. “You thought he might have got himself a Lady Friend,” I remembered, “who’d Wipe the Smile off Shelbie’s Face.”

  Sylvia frowned. “Yes, I did think that, briefly. Of course,” she went on, “he’s only ever had eyes for Shelbie. Anyway, he was moonlighting. Had two jobs, would you believe. Did all the plumbing for that block of posh new flats on the seafront. And do you know, pet”—she put down her mug—“he saved every single penny of it. Remember Trev opening a letter for Josh by mistake? About savings?”

  I nodded. Josh plumbing by moonlight to the sound of waves, and being paid in sacks of pennies, sounded like another fairy tale.

  Sylvia said Josh had saved thousands while he was living with them. Enough, she clapped her hands together, to put down a deposit on a hair salon for Shelbie in the New Forest. Nearly thirty miles away, I thought. I leaned back against the sofa.

  Sylvia held her mug without drinking from it. “I had a very nice chat with Shelbie last week. In a funny way, it was because of you, because of you contacting that social worker.”

  I hesitated. “So, I did help you, in a way then?”

  Sylvia wagged her finger. “Yes. But don’t do it again!” She offered me another Wessex Wafer. At that moment, I knew what Mrs. Hulme had meant when she said Mother listening to an Opera while looking at a view and eating a cookie was the closest most people got to Paradise. For me it was here, now: eating a Wessex Wafer, enriching my collection with its rare wrapper, and with Sylvia, my friend again, next to me on the sofa. All it needed to be truly perfect was her to be listening to me relating the history of McVitie’s, and not talking about Josh, Shelbie, or Roxanna.

  Sylvia put down her mug. “Better get back. Trev thinks I’m looking for bin bags in the garage. He’d have a few words to say if…”

  I flinched. If what…? I didn’t think his few words would be nice ones. His beard would jut at me as he said them. One more mistake, and Trevor would be on the phone to someone official about me. Trevor or Josh.

  Sylvia hugged me, and I put my arms a little way around her middle. “Josh and Shelbie, eh?” She blinked, her eyes moist, even though making someone a cup of tea was supposed to stop them from crying. Sylvia had had two cups. “I’m praying they’ll come back here together, and I can hug my Roxanna till her pips squeak!” I was going to ask where Roxanna’s pips were and what their squeak would sound like, but then I guessed it was another Figure of Speech. Sylvia said they took too long to explain, and it was better to just accept them and move on.

  Come back here together. Gang up on me, I thought. My stomach tightened. Josh might shout, Shelbie could swish her hair and point a clawed fingernail, scratch me, even. A girl at school had scratched me once. Her name was Ruth Pengelly, and she’d launched herself at me, snarling, teeth bared, hands clawed, because I’d knocked a waterpot over onto her painting, and green had run into her sky. She’d drawn blood before the teacher took her outside. I’d cried, but Mother had been cross at having to pick me up from school for a storm in a teacup, and she’d got even crosser when I’d cried that it was a waterpot, not a teacup.

  • • •

  I stretched up to dust the top of the bookcase, my eyes meeting the beady gaze of the stuffed bird whose glass case rested on top of the encyclopedias. He looked down his long bill at me, the stripes around his eyes like war paint. He was called Jack Snipe. Mother’s grandfather had shot him in the Highlands, but I tried not to think about this. We stared at each other, unblinking. “Mother isn’t coming back,” I whispered to myself. “She would never know.”

  I climbed onto a chair and lifted the glass case down, avoiding the bird’s glittering eyes. I let down the folding staircase to the attic and climbed up, squeezing through the narrow hatch. I faced Jack Snipe’s case to a chink of light coming through the roof tiles so he still had a sense of outside.

  I turned around, dusting off my hands. The attic was nearly empty. I’d thought it would be full of boxes and trunks handed down through generations of Mother’s family.

  There were some large, dreary-looking pictures of children with ponies, a set of golf clubs, a pair of tennis rackets, the wicker hamper that had contained the shortbread, our old picnic basket, and two cardboard boxes. I had no idea what these contained. I hesitated, then: “Mother isn’t coming back,” I said again. I crouched on the wooden floor and peeled off the parcel tape.

  Inside one box were some objects wrapped in tattered sheets of the Daily Telegraph. I thought of the mummies in the British Museum. I stopped. I was alone in the attic; nobody knew I was here. I got up to check that the ladder was still in place, then knelt down and unwrapped one of the parcels. I let out a long, disappointed breath.

  Underneath the wrapping was a crystal decanter. It looked as if it had never been used. Next to it were some crystal wineglasses, and underneath them, in flat, velvet-lined boxes, sets of tarnished silver cutlery, with swirling letters I couldn’t read on their handles. There were more glasses, of different sizes, all with stems, and boxes of cocktail sticks and napkins. I rewrapped it all, sighing.

  Inside the second cardboard box was a smaller wooden one. I took it out, weighing it in my hands. But suddenly I knew what it was, and it was like the security light outside switching itself on, illuminating a sudden bright memory of a Christmas more than twenty years ago. I remembered Father taking the wrapped box from under the Christmas tree and handing it to me.

  Now I slid open the lid, holding my breath, and gently removed the contents, arranging them on top of the cardboard box. Perfect little items of furniture.

  “Made for fairies,” he’d said, smiling down at me. A little kitchen table with matching chairs and a cupboard with drawers that opened. A bed with a carved headboard and a little blanket box with a hinged lid. A rocking chair that really rocked and two miniature armchairs. There were no people, or fairies, but that didn’t matter. I gazed at them, my toes tingling in my slippers, and then a hollowness came over me when I remembered what had happened next.

  Where did you get these, Gregory? Mother had asked, frowning. Or can I guess?

  I called in a favor, darling. Someone made them in the workshop. Especially for Elvira. Father had put his arm around her. Isn’t that enough?

  Knowing where they’ve come from, I can’t bear to look at them. Mother had pulled away and bent down.

  For a moment I’d thought she was going to play with me, something she’d never done, not that I could remember, but instead, she’d piled the little pieces back into their box.

  No! I’d wailed.

  Now see what you’ve done, Gregory, she’d said, but it was her making me cry, not Father. She’d snatched up the box, stowed it away in the attic, and told me to forget about it. But I couldn’t, not for a long time.

  Why had she taken them away? What had been wrong with them? Afterward, she’d read to me from The Thousand and One Nights, her present, and let me eat as much chocolate as I wanted. She’d even let me choose three chocolates from a pink-and-gold velvet box from Harrods, her present from Father. She’d turned the chocolate box upside down before opening it and peered at the label, even asked Father where he’d gotten it, although Harrods had been written in big gold lettering!

  Now, more than twenty years later, I could examine each individual piece of furniture properly for the first time. I stroked the smoot
h, pale wood, imagining what it would have been like to play with them as a child before replacing them in their box. On the side was written the name of the man who’d made them. His surname was Gloucester and his initials were H and then two others that had faded too much for me to read.

  I held on to the box, hesitating, then “Mother isn’t coming back,” I said—out loud this time—and carried it down the ladder. I put it on top of the bookcase where the stuffed Jack Snipe had been. One day, I might get the little pieces out and display them. I might even put them on the mantel. I might push back the crowd of Mother’s African figures, with their spears and animal skins, and put the tiny fairy furniture in front.

  RULE 4

  You learn by making Mistakes.

  Reason behind rule:

  A mistake is just a step in the learning process. Everyone makes them sometimes.

  Useful phrases:

  “I’m sorry.”

  Hints and tips:

  If you’re not sure what you’ve done, or what you should do, ask. You are allowed to ask people to explain and to repeat things.

  People are more accepting of your shortcomings if you’re honest about them.

  Don’t be a perfectionist—settle for good enough. Nobody can get things right all the time.

  Rule followed?

  19.

  Feel free.

  —Karen Hutchinson, adoptions administrator, Animal Arcadia

  “Hello-o-o.” Karen drew out the o sound, winking. Karen made a lot of jokes. I knew they were jokes because she said, “That’s a joke, by the way.” I wished everyone signposted their jokes.

  I placed the newsletters in a neat pile with the envelopes alongside and the address labels next to them, ready to stick.