The Seven Rules of Elvira Carr

by Frances Maynard

  Roxanna shouted Snap much too often, without really looking at the cards. It was easy for me to win. Each time Roxanna said, “Oh!” in her long, drawn-out way.

  “Let her have a go at winning,” whispered Sylvia. “It’ll make her happy.”

  I had to press my lips together to stop myself from saying Snap first. It was hard, not keeping to the Rules. It was cheating, really. I let Roxanna win the next two games and then she climbed onto my lap, saying she was bored again.

  Before that, I’d only held a guinea pig, and Tosca when she was a puppy. My whole body stiffened, and I didn’t know where to put my hands. Roxanna put her arms around my neck and said to tell her a monkey story, now. Then Hello, sweetheart came from the hall, and Shelbie came in, her long, dark hair piled up on top of her head, her bare legs orange.

  “Oh,” she said. Her shiny mouth stayed in an O shape as she looked at me. “I didn’t know you had company,” she said to Sylvia. “You never said.”

  Sylvia got up from the sofa. “How did you get on?”

  Shelbie called the Bank Manager a prat and bent down, staggering, to take off her high heels. She darted about the living room picking up Roxanna’s coloring book and felt-tip pens. She went into the kitchen to get the tea ready, staring back at me from the doorway. Her expression was Anger.

  • • •

  Paul came with me to see the orangutans. He’d scratched his head when I’d asked him to walk with me around the whole enclosure. “I want to get used to it again,” I tried to explain, without telling him about Mark. When we got to the actual spot, it didn’t look any different from the other bushes. I winced when I saw the netting, but there was no mark or reminder of what had happened. I almost felt there should be. But it meant I could be with the orangutans again without thinking about creeps like Mark.

  It was a hot day, and they were sitting quietly on the grass, their deep-set eyes dark against their auburn fur. Rojo was eating a Popsicle. “Thank you,” I whispered, smiling at him, but he was concentrating on breaking the frozen fruit juice apart to get to the peanut, in its shell, in the middle. The keepers hid them there for enrichment purposes.

  “Why are you thanking Rojo?” Paul scratched his head again.

  It was hard to think quickly. “Because he’s very, very, um…protective.”

  “He’s got loads of girlfriends, well, wives, to protect,” said Paul. “It’s all right for some, eh, Rojo?” Then to me, his face red and glistening in the heat, “Are you used to the orangutans now? Only I’ve got to get back to the café in case they want me to lift anything. Yeah? I’m glad you’re back on Tuesdays, Ellie. High five!”

  • • •

  “I don’t want you filling my Roxie’s head with nonsense about monkeys wearing clothes. Josh said she was really disappointed at Animal Arcadia when they were just lounging about, being animals!” Shelbie stood by Sylvia’s fence, hands on hips, sunglasses pushed to the top of her head, dark eyebrows pulled together.

  “I didn’t,” I said. “Sometimes they do drape towels and sheets around themsel—”

  “Oh, yeah, and they’ve got duvets and electric blankets at night, I suppose.”

  “No.” I stopped to think, twisting the hem of my apron. “Just the towels and sheets but…”

  “I don’t want her getting any more weird ideas from you. I want you to stay away from her.” Shelbie’s jabbing finger seemed to give off a bolt of electricity.

  “Sometimes she comes to the fence to…”

  “Well, you don’t have to have a conversation, do you?” Shelbie’s mouth closed like a trap, then opened again. “Just tell her you’re busy.”

  “But I’m not busy, not all the time,” I said.

  “Well, you’ll just have to tell a lie then, won’t you, like everyone else. Like you did to Social Services,” she added, over her shoulder. She walked into the house very fast, arms swinging, flicking her hair back over her shoulders.

  27.

  Operas enrich the soul.

  —Mrs. Agnes Carr (Mother)

  From my bedroom, I could hear the ropes of next door’s swing creaking and the swish of leaves as Roxanna’s feet reached the lower branches.

  I never told lies. It was wrong. It was a Rule I found easy to follow. (The only advantage to your condition, Elvira, is that you always tell the truth.) It would be too complicated to make something up and then to keep having to pretend. I knew I wouldn’t be able to lie to Roxanna.

  • • •

  “Ellie! Ellie! I went to the Animal ark…”

  “Animal Arcadia,” I corrected, taking a clothes peg from between my teeth. A rush of heat swept over me. I wasn’t supposed to talk to Roxanna. I didn’t look at her again. “Good-bye, Roxanna,” I called out as I went inside.

  “Where are you going?” Roxanna wailed, her voice rising on the O.

  • • •

  “Fancy bumping into you, pet,” said Sylvia.

  She was with Trevor and Roxanna outside Marks & Spencer.

  “What are the chances, eh?” Trevor stuck his hands in his trouser pockets, his beard jutting. “We live in the same town, shop in the same shops, and live next door to each other.” Trevor may have found eye contact difficult too, because he had a habit of looking above my head, rather than at me, or staring at me from over his glasses in a way that reminded me of Mother. They had always agreed about politics. I shifted my feet on the pavement, wondering if not talking to Roxanna was child abuse.

  “Ellie, Granny and Granddad are taking me to Marks & Spencer to have a salad.” Roxanna beamed. She was wearing a bright-pink T-shirt with Princess written on it. “And if I eat it all, I can have ice cream afterward. Any ice cream I want!”

  I nodded, feeling hot and uncomfortable. It was difficult not to have a conversation with Roxanna.

  “Let’s just concentrate on the salad first, shall we, pet?” said Sylvia.

  “Takes a lot of concentration, does a salad,” said Trevor, frowning at his watch.

  “You OK, pet? On your way to Asda, are you? How’s your mum?”

  I nodded. I was just about to say Mother was About the same, thank you, because that’s what I always said when people asked, but actually, Mother hadn’t been the same. She’d had a cold. “They’re keeping her in bed today,” I said, “to rest.”

  “Still plugged in, is she?” asked Trevor, yawning without putting his hand to his mouth.

  “Not to the wall outlet. iPods have rechargeable batteries,” I explained.

  “Are you going to buy clothes in Asda?” asked Roxanna.

  I shook my head.

  “Is it a secret what you’re going to buy?” Roxanna swung her hand in Sylvia’s.

  I shook my head again.

  “Tell me then,” commanded Roxanna.

  “Ever considered a career in special services?” Trevor asked her, beginning to move away.

  “Don’t be so nosy, pet.” Sylvia tugged at Roxanna’s hand. “Ellie doesn’t have to answer all your questions.”

  “She does usually,” said Roxanna. “Ellie, why aren’t you—”

  “Come on, pet. We’ll look at the clothes in Marks while we’re there.”

  Trevor rolled his eyes. “Clothes shopping followed by a salad. Sometimes I think the excitement will kill me.”

  Neither Sylvia nor Roxanna seemed worried about Trevor dying from excitement. In fact, Roxanna smacked him on the arm as they moved off.

  • • •

  “Ellie,” Sylvia called over the fence a few days later, “Mum any better?”

  I propped the leaf rake against the wall. “She’s still in bed,” I said, “resting. They’re giving her antibiotics for her cough.”

  “Poor Agnes,” Sylvia shook her head, her dangly earrings swinging. “Still, she’s in the best place.” She leaned over the fence, lo
oking at me. “Try to have a little chat with Roxanna sometimes, pet. She likes you, you know. She loves hearing about Animal Arcadia.”

  “I can’t,” I said. I looked at the ground and moved some leaves I hadn’t swept up yet with the toe of my shoe. “I’m not allowed to talk to her.”

  There were many, many things I hadn’t been allowed to do when Mother was at home. I hadn’t been allowed to mix with people from my school, nor, after various Incidents, was I allowed to go anywhere unfamiliar on my own.

  Mother hadn’t allowed me to use, let alone buy, a computer, or to do the ironing in the living room, although there was more space, nor watch lowbrow television programs in there either. This meant Casualty and Coronation Street. I hadn’t been allowed to be rude or challenging because slamming doors made Mother’s head ache. I hadn’t been allowed to talk about cookie packaging because Mother said it was dull, or to beg her for another dog because I’d been far too attached to the last one (Tosca). I hadn’t been allowed to use slang or to disagree with what the Daily Telegraph said. I hadn’t been allowed to complain about the noise of Operas because they enriched the soul. And I’d been forbidden to discuss Father’s business trips.

  When I’d asked Mother why, she’d been silent for a moment, and then she’d said, What you don’t know can’t hurt you. Her face had puckered up as if she was eating something very sour, or perhaps bitter, and I remembered what Juliet Underwood had said in the Library about Mother being bitter. She must have seen the same facial expression. Mother had been wrong, though, because not knowing things—answers to the questions I’d written in my Japanese notebook about Father’s empty passport, his lack of finances, the secret compartments in his shoes, who the woman and the baby were in the photo, where Mother's Lost Capacity had gone, and what Jane from Dunstable’s comments meant—made me feel unsettled and confused.

  “What do you mean, not allowed to talk to Roxanna?” Sylvia had stopped smiling. “Who said?”

  I didn’t like telling on people. At school, people had pinched me when I’d done it.

  “Shelbie,” I said very, very quietly, hoping it wouldn’t count. “In case I give Roxanna weird ideas and fill her head with nonsense,” I whispered. “But I don’t make things up and I don’t tell lies.” I wanted to bang the rake, hard, on the path.

  “I know you don’t, pet.” Sylvia patted my arm. “I don’t think you’d know how to. You’re not that type of girl.”

  I looked at Sylvia’s dyed-blond hair, which didn’t move around much, her dangly earrings, her purple top with its design of black flowers, her small jeans and red-painted toenails, and thought she was very different from Mother.

  She sighed. “Shelbie’s got a lot on her mind with the salon. But telling you not to speak to Roxanna was being a bit overprotective. I’ll have to have a word.” She leaned closer. “Do you know I sometimes wish Josh didn’t worship the ground Shelbie walks on.” She stood up straight. “But that’s Josh for you. Loyal and loving.” “And blind,” I thought I heard her add as she went back inside, but I couldn’t be sure, and in any case, Josh didn’t even wear glasses.

  • • •

  “Susan Hulme here. Bay View Lodge.” We were both panting. Mrs. Hulme’s size made her short of breath, and I’d run in from sweeping up the leaves.

  I asked her how she was first, before she’d even had a chance to ask me. If I’d been in the kitchen, I would have ticked the Rules checklist column.

  She lowered her voice. “Elvira, I’m phoning about your mother.”

  I clutched the phone. Something clamped around my heart.

  “What has she done?” I asked. My mind flashed back to Mother’s first weeks at Bay View Lodge and the shouting.

  “No, no, she’s been fine, a different lady altogether. No, Elvira, I’m phoning to say she’s rather poorly, I’m afraid.”

  “But she’s had antibiotics and she’s been resting.” Mother hadn’t been in the lounge for weeks. She’d been tucked up in bed, quietly listening to her iPods.

  “Yes, three courses of antibiotics. They haven’t touched the chest infection, I’m afraid.”

  “What medicines would touch it?” I asked. Small pieces of leaf were stuck to my sweater sleeve from where I’d been sweeping. I brushed them off, swapping the phone to my other ear.

  “There isn’t anything else, I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Hulme. There was a pause and a wheeze from her end. “We’ll just make her as comfortable as we can.”

  It was my turn to pause. I wasn’t sure why Mrs. Hulme was ringing me. “She will get better in the end, though, won’t she?” I asked her. “When she’s rested enough?”

  “No, dear, I’m afraid she won’t.” Mrs. Hulme had never called me dear before. “She’s got pneumonia. Had a very bad night with her breathing.” Mrs. Hulme wheezed on the word breathing. Her voice softened. “She could go at any time.”

  There was a landslide of sand beneath my feet. I gripped the phone. “Go? Go back to the hospital?” I asked.

  “No, dear. They won’t be able to do anything more for her there than we can here. No, dear. I’m afraid your mother could pass away at any time. That’s why I’m ringing.”

  “Pass away. That means ‘die,’ doesn’t it?” The sand shifted so much my legs gave way, and I sank to the carpet. Tosca had Passed Away. So had Father, but I’d never thought Mother would. She’d always been there. And where exactly was Away? My brain buzzed so much that I had to put the phone down and cover my ears. After a moment, I picked it up again to ask Mrs. Hulme how long it would take for Mother to Pass Away, but she couldn’t say.

  28.

  It very sad when your mum dies.

  —Maria Esposito, caregiver, Bay View Lodge Nursing Home

  I washed my hands and face and brushed my hair and put on a clean T-shirt, the red one for First Aid, and rushed out of the house. I walked as fast as I could up the hill, but every few minutes I had to shut my eyes and put my hands over my ears because of the words Pass Away and Die jangling through my brain.

  • • •

  Maria came upstairs with me to Mother’s room. At first I thought Mother looked the same as usual. Her gray hair was neat and tidy. Her eyes were shut. I could see the white earphones of the iPod leading under the bedclothes. But, when I leaned over her, her breathing sounded scratchy and painful. Her face was white and her nose blue at the tip.

  Maria stroked Mother’s hand. “Mum very poorly now. Poor Mum. We keep iPod switched on. Still playing music but turned down low.” She looked at me. “You want cup of tea?”

  “Yes, please,” I said automatically.

  I didn’t like it when Maria went to get the tea. I didn’t like being alone with Mother who was Passing Away. I could see her thin chest, under her nightie, moving up and down with the effort of breathing. I put my hand to my own chest to feel it not struggling.

  “Mother,” I whispered. “Are you all right?” I thought I saw a faint flicker from her eyelids, but it might have been a moving shadow from the half-drawn curtains. I thought about stroking her hand, like Maria had done, but I wasn’t sure if Mother would like it. I’d never done it before. If she hadn’t been weak from Passing Away, she might have brushed my hand off as if it were a mosquito.

  “Here we are,” Maria said as she came in with the tray. There was a plate of Rich Tea cookies but only one cup and saucer. There’d always been two cups before, although for the last few months, Mother’s had been replaced by a feeding cup with a spout. Now there was just a plastic container with some little sponges on sticks. Maria leaned over Mother, her uniform rustling. “I wet your lips, Agnes”—she moistened them with one of the little sponges—“so you not get thirsty.”

  “Why can’t she have a cup of tea?”

  “She too poorly. She choke.” She patted Mother’s hand. “No more tea for you, Agnes, poor lady.”

  Mother wou
ld never have a cup of tea again, nor, I thought, looking at the Rich Teas with their pattern of fourteen holes, any kind of cookie. My eyes prickled.

  Maria put her arm around my waist. She couldn’t reach any higher because she was short. “It very sad when your mum dies.” She gave me a tissue and pushed the little chair from Father’s study next to Mother’s bed. “You sit down and drink tea,” she said. “I come back in few minutes.”

  I sat there drinking the tea almost as if it was a normal visit, except that my face was wet and every few minutes I had to put the cup of tea down to put my hands over my ears and shut my eyes to keep Mother’s Passing Away from overwhelming me.

  At lunchtime, Mrs. Hulme came upstairs. I heard the clatter of the lift and her wheezing as she walked down the corridor. She made some notes on a chart and moistened Mother’s lips again. She tucked Mother in, although the bedclothes were still tidy because Mother hadn’t moved at all, except for her chest heaving and an occasional twitch of her hand and her eyelids.

  “I don’t think it will be long now,” Mrs. Hulme whispered.

  I wiped my face with the back of my hand.

  “It might be a good idea if I phone your neighbor, dear. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s a good idea,” I said.

  • • •

  I heard Sylvia’s clickety footsteps on the stairs and the jingle of her car keys.

  “Hello, pet,” she whispered. “This is a shock, isn’t it? You said the cold had gone to her chest, but even so, you don’t expect…”

  There was a smudge of red lipstick on one of her front teeth. She drew up Mother’s armchair, and we sat by her bed together. It was very quiet, apart from the rasp of Mother’s breathing and a faint soar of Opera music from the iPod. The light was dim because of the half-drawn curtains. Sylvia reached out and took Mother’s hand.

  “Hello, Agnes, love. It’s Sylvia, come to see you. You look very snug in that bed, I must say.”