The Seven Rules of Elvira Carr
Page 19
We’d used it on our Lyme Regis vacations when I was young, and taken it to Stately Homes. Mother and Father had wandered around these, hands clasped behind their backs, examining paintings and antiques. I’d only liked the picnic food and the peacocks and the lawn-grazing sheep.
The picnic basket hadn’t been used for years because we’d stopped going out as a family and Mother and Father’s vacations had become separate ones. When I’d asked her where the picnic basket was, she’d snapped, In the attic with my ruined dreams. Her face had looked too cross for me to ask what the ruined dreams looked like, and if they were in a bag, although I’d wanted to. Whatever they were, they’d gone from the attic now, because apart from the Jack Snipe and the box of tiny furniture, there was very little left.
• • •
“High five!” said Paul, as I got into the car. “Cool basket! What’s inside?”
“Scrambled Egg Sandwiches and some peaches. Nearly the same as what I always have for lunch.”
“Hi, Ellie.” Paul’s dad turned around. “Nice basket.”
“Yes.” I looked at his ear. It was large with a fleshy lobe. “I’ve brought some cookies. McVitie’s Chocolate Digestives. They’re the most popular cookie in Britain. And in the space where the chilled wine goes, I’ve got Sparkling Apple Juice.” I showed Paul the insulated compartment. “It counts as a fruit portion.”
Paul opened his rucksack. “I’ve got Coca-Cola, ham sandwiches, chips, and a Mars bar. A big one.”
“No fruit?” I asked.
“We’re two men living on our own, Ellie,” Paul’s dad said as we drove off. “We don’t do fruit.”
“What about Vitamins?” I chewed my lip. Paul and his dad could become diseased.
“You’re right, Ellie. Add some fruit to the shopping list, son.”
Paul crossed his hands in front of him, like I’d seen heroines do in Classic Horror Films to ward off evil.
• • •
There were people walking along the beach, and dogs running in and out of the water, barking. The sand was white and stretched as far as I could see in front of me.
“It’s like being on vacation.” Paul threw his arms wide.
Paul’s dad locked the car. “Are you OK carrying that basket, Ellie?”
“Yes, thank you. I’m quite strong.” Not strong enough to escape Mark pinning me against the fence, though. My flesh chilled in spite of the sunshine.
Paul took a ball from his backpack and bounced it along the sand at the shoreline. Two Irish setter dogs ran over, wagging their tails.
“All right then.” His voice carried to us on the wind. “Fetch!”
“He’ll be happy now,” said Paul’s dad, shading his eyes from the sun. “He does love his animals.”
We strolled along the beach. I felt the sun warming my body. “I love animals too,” I said. Paul’s dad was easy to talk to because he was like Paul. He didn’t seem to mind pauses in conversations.
“Yes,” he said, gazing over the sea, “animals are reliable, aren’t they? Straightforward. Much easier than us humans.”
I nodded. “They’re always pleased to see you, and they don’t criticize. They don’t treat you like you’re nothing. And they don’t PRETEND.” Pretend came out of my mouth fiercely as if it were in capital letters and lit with neon lights. There was a pause.
“That’s why I was surprised when Paul said you’d left Animal Arcadia,” Paul’s dad said, his eyes on the horizon.
There were lots of seashells on the beach, half-buried in the white sand. I bent to pick one up, brushed it off, and kept it in my hand.
“Is that something you want to talk about?” Paul’s dad looked at me.
“No.” I shook my head.
“All right.” He gazed at the sea again. “I won’t ask you any more questions.” There was another pause. “Just remember, Ellie. People like you and Paul are very trusting.” He glanced down at me. “And, well, there are some cruel people about who don’t care about anybody else, just as long as they get what they want. And sometimes they pretend to be something they’re not, in order to get it.”
I turned the shell over and over in my hand. “You know that, and you haven’t even read the Rules.” I told him I’d gotten Rules Five (Not Everyone who is Nice to me is my Friend) and Seven (Rules change according to the Situation and the Person you’re speaking to) wrong.
“It’s great you’ve drawn up some guidelines, Ellie.” A breeze fluttered the hem of his shirt and outlined the rounded bulk of his tummy. It was big because he didn’t eat fruit. “You see, my brain works a bit differently from yours, and I’ve seen a bit more of life. And, more importantly, I’ve learned things from being Paul’s dad.” He stopped. “What is he doing with those dogs?”
A collie was chasing after the Irish setters. There was frenzied barking as each dog tried to get the ball. Paul held on to it, dodging in different directions. He stretched up, laughing, and hurled it across the water, the dogs plunging in after it.
“Bella! Beatrice!” A woman ran up, holding a leash in each hand. “I told you not to go in the sea. You know salt water mats your coats. Come here!”
“Whoops,” said Paul’s dad.
The Irish setters approached their owner, thin and apologetic in their wet fur. They shook themselves vigorously.
“Now I’m soaked,” said the lady.
“Double whoops,” said Paul’s dad.
The collie raced away down the beach, the ball between its teeth.
“That’s another one gone, son.”
“I don’t mind.” Paul’s cheeks were blotched pink and white from running, and the hems of his jeans were wet. His eyes were sparkling behind his glasses. Paul’s dad put his arms around our shoulders.
“Come on. Time for lunch. There’s a stretch of beach over there that’s sheltered from the sun. I’m looking forward to one of Ellie’s plain chocolate cookies.”
“They were invented in 1925,” I told him. “Quite a long time ago for a chocolate cookie.”
• • •
Next morning, I put on clean clothes from top to bottom. For the first time in days, I added a Fact to the animal notes in my Japanese notebook. It was about baby orangutans being dependent on their mothers for longer than any other species, except humans. I had to flick through the unanswered questions first, though, which was always unsettling. It was frustrating still not knowing where Father had been and what had happened to his money and why his shoes had secret compartments and who the woman with the baby in his photo were and what Jane from Dunstable’s comments had meant.
I closed the notebook and made a mug of tea, humming. Paul’s dad said I knew more about cookies and their history and packaging than anyone he’d ever met. I hugged myself at the memory. Mother had never thought I could be an expert at anything.
When I’d got back from the picnic, I could hardly squeeze in the ticks on the spreadsheet’s checklist, there were so many: “Would you like to talk about something else?” I’d asked Paul’s dad, realizing I’d spoken for a lot longer than two minutes. (He didn’t.) On the way home I’d apologized—“Sorry, my mind was elsewhere”—when he had to repeat a question about Coronation Street. Then I’d asked him what his favorite TV program was, and, when he said Newsnight, remembered to say That’s wonderful, although it wasn’t my cup of tea. I blinked. I had thought in a Figure of Speech. Without even trying.
I took some gulps of tea. Mark must be one of those cruel people Paul’s dad had talked about because he’d tried to get what he wanted from me by force, without asking, as if I didn’t exist. Karen was right too; he was a creep. It hadn’t been my fault. I’d only been stupid in believing he was nice. No, not stupid. The website said it was part of my Condition to believe people were what they pretended to be. If NeuroTypicals were more like us, there wouldn’t be these sorts of
Incidents. Or any of the others that still made me screw up my face when I remembered them.
I wrapped my fingers around the mug and thought about Animal Arcadia. I loved Pernama and Vikram, with his engine-like purr and whiskers like broom bristles. But I couldn’t go back there. Mark had dragged me away without anybody noticing. In broad daylight. I put down the mug of tea. I hadn’t realized Mark was dangerous. The same thing could happen to me again. How would I feel safe anywhere?
RULE 5
Not Everyone who is Nice to me is my Friend.
Reason behind rule:
Be wary of strangers in case they lie and take advantage of you.
They may get pleasure from hurting people more vulnerable than themselves because they feel inadequate inside.
Hints and tips:
Don’t be too trusting and eager to please.
Relationships take time to develop.
When you meet someone new, ask someone you already know and trust if they think that new person is trustworthy.
If the situation or person makes you feel uneasy or afraid, then it is best to avoid being friends with that person.
Rule followed?
26.
A trouble shared is a trouble halved.
—Mrs. Sylvia Grylls, neighbor
“Ellie! My little leaflet stuffer! How are you doing?”
Karen! I blinked. I’d never seen her away from Animal Arcadia before. I’d almost thought she lived there, except for her mentioning her boyfriend and his surfboard. I swallowed a feeling of shame and nausea. “I’m all right.” I kept my eyes on the concrete floor of the bus station, at the marked white lines that kept the buses in their allotted spaces.
“I miss you helping me out, you know.” Karen’s round eyes searched my face. “And don’t talk to me about backlogs.”
“I won’t,” I promised. I shifted the backpack, full of Asda shopping, from one shoulder to the other. Around us, people jostled, steering mobility scooters and dragging toddlers.
“Ellie.” Karen spoke softly. “That Tuesday. I think I missed something. You were very quiet when you came back from lunch, quieter than usual. And”—her eyebrows sloped—“you seemed a bit rumpled.” She paused. “You had leaves in your hair.”
“It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t want it to happen.” I held up my hands ready to clap them to my ears when she told me I’d been stupid.
But her voice was still soft. “Hey, I’m sure it wasn’t. Come on.” She lowered my hands. Then her eyes got even wider. “Oh! You hadn’t just fallen over, had you? I think I know what happened to you.”
How could she know? I hadn’t told her anything. I hadn’t told anyone. I felt a thump, thump, thump from my heart.
Karen looked around. “Let’s go and sit on one of those benches.”
I trailed after her to a little grassed area beyond the bus station where a group of seagulls and pigeons had surrounded a woman eating a sandwich. We sat on a vacant bench. Close up, in the bright daylight, Karen’s eyes were very green, like seaweed. Her voice was breathy.
“It was that creepy guy, wasn’t it? That what’s-his-name, Mark, the one that was doing the carpentry in Wolf Wilderness? Fancied himself as a bit of a smooth operator, didn’t he?” Karen put two fingers in her mouth and mimed being sick. I remembered the green swirls of broccoli vanishing down the toilet. “Did he…did he…” Her nose wrinkled, its stud shifting upward. “Did he attack you?”
I stared at a crushed cigarette packet in front of the bench. Smoking Kills, it said. I couldn’t answer her question. Not without looking up the meaning of the word attack to get it absolutely right. I knew Father’s heart had been attacked when he died and that some animals attacked smaller animals to eat them, but neither of those sounded like what Mark had done to me. I was still alive.
“I bet he did. If I ever see him again…” She touched my arm. “Hey, you know he’s in trouble, don’t you?”
“No.” I stiffened. “I didn’t tell anyone.”
Karen’s eyebrows shot into her hair. “No, not for what he did to you. Should have been, but no, this is something else. Two things, actually.” She lowered her voice, like Sylvia did when she was about to tell me something Private. “I don’t know if you know her, but there’s a biggish girl, brown curly hair, Gemma, works in the café…?”
I nodded. Paul knew her.
“Well, she complained about Mark to Rosemary. Said he attacked her, groped her in the storeroom… Well, tried to. She kneed him in the balls. Like I said, she’s a biggish girl.”
I felt a rush of hatred. So Mark had forced himself on another girl. Tried to. Why couldn’t I have kneed him in the…? I should have made a complaint, but I hadn’t known what I was supposed to do. I felt a stupid, stupid pang of disappointment at there being another girl. I’d thought I was the only one. Special. Especially stupid, more like.
Karen leaned forward. “And there’s something else. One of the keepers saw him shouting at the wolf cubs ’cause they were chewing the wood of that lookout post he’d built. Yeah, shouted and swore, apparently. Looked like he was going to throw something at them. Bastard!”
I felt another rush of hatred toward Mark.
“Yeah, poor little things were cowering.”
A seagull flew past us with a piece of tomato in its beak. I bent forward, my head in my hands, trying to process what Karen had said.
“So,” she said after a moment, “Mark’s gone. Sacked. Good riddance.”
An avalanche of information. “They don’t want him to volunteer anymore? Not even with his carpentry?”
“Bugger the carpentry. They don’t want nasty, bullying perverts like him working for them, do they?”
I shook my head. Nasty, bullying pervert, I repeated silently. Mark had behaved badly to Gemma, a NeuroTypical, and to baby animals. He’d probably behave badly to anyone if he could get away with it. It wasn’t because I’d gotten things wrong. It really wasn’t my fault. I sat up and took some deep breaths.
“So, will that affect you coming back?” Karen looked at me, her head on one side. “Those towels have reached my eyeballs, you know, without you there to sort them out.”
“Have they?” That would affect Karen’s breathing. If her airways were blocked, it could lead to suffocation. I glanced up and saw her smile. Figure of Speech. “I don’t know.” I thought of Animal Arcadia without Mark there, just with animals. Inside me was a tiny flicker of joy.
• • •
At home, I checked the meaning of attack. It meant: to injure or affect adversely, to corrode or corrupt. Adversely meant hostile, unfavorable to one’s interests. My heart pounded. Mark had definitely affected me in a way that had been unfavorable to my interests. I’d felt sick for days afterward and shaky, and I’d cried and I’d had to leave a volunteer’s job I loved. Gemma from the café, the wolf cubs, and I had all suffered at Mark’s hands. He’d attacked all of us. My fingers suddenly itched to claw and scratch him.
I tore a piece of paper from the printer and wrote Mark’s name all over it in block capitals, pressing so hard the pencil broke. I threw the paper on the kitchen floor and stamped on it, my feet scuffing and smudging his name. Then I ripped the paper into tiny pieces. I’d once seen Mother do the same with a letter on pink notepaper with a picture of a kitten in one corner, and then stomp out, not to the recycling bin, which she should have used, but to the ordinary black waste bin. She’d thrown the pieces in, and they’d gotten mixed up with some used tea bags.
I tried to burn my torn paper on the stove, but there was a lot of smoke and ash, and the kitchen tongs got too hot for me to hold. I flushed the bits down the toilet instead and stabbed at the ones still floating with the toilet brush. I looked around. I took the half-used toilet roll, unrolled it, scrawled Mark on every sheet, rolled it up again, and put it back by the toilet, ready.
• • •
Sylvia invited me over for a cuppa. Josh and Shelbie were out, being interviewed by a Bank Manager. She asked why I hadn’t been doing my volunteering. I held on to a fold of my sweater behind my back. I’d have to say about Mark. I didn’t want to go into details. It might make Trevor think I wasn’t coping. It might make him think about Social Services. For my own protection.
“Someone was nasty to me there,” I told Sylvia.
Her face softened. “You should have come and told me, pet. A trouble shared is a trouble halved.”
“I felt too stupid,” I said, letting go of my sweater. “I got Rule Five wrong: Not Everyone who is Nice to me is my Friend.”
“Ah, pet.” She gave me a hug. “That’s a hard one to learn. Painful. We’ve all been there.” She nodded at my surprised face. “Oh yes, even me.”
She handed me my tea. “That’s the real world, pet, I’m afraid. You’ve just got to pick yourself up and learn from the experience. Ask me, ask someone you trust, if you’re not sure about someone, pet,” she was saying when Trevor came in from the garden. He looked at us over the top of his glasses without saying anything, and then I heard him on the phone. It reminded me of Mother’s Sunday night chats to Jane. I racked my brain for anything that might make him phone Social Services. I wasn’t always aware of what I’d done wrong. The way Trevor’s beard had bristled at me gave me an uneasy feeling. Thank goodness he didn’t know about Mark.
Sylvia gave me a very wide smile, and then Roxanna came over and demanded we played Snap. I liked Snap. I liked games with Rules. I’d played Snap when I was young, with Father. It wasn’t challenging enough for Mother, and she didn’t like it when I made mistakes. We’d played it at school, though, with the facial expression cards.