The Seven Rules of Elvira Carr

by Frances Maynard

  1. I didn’t know him.

  2. I didn’t know how to behave with relations. I might have to cook Christmas dinner for him and visit him on Sundays.

  3. He might try to make Arrangements for me.

  4. He might want to come and live with me.

  5. He might want me to come and live with him.

  6. He might take away some of Mother and Father’s possessions because he was family.

  7. He might be a cruel person, like Mark.

  8. He might want me to move near where he lived, and I didn’t want to move.

  On the other side, I listed the advantages:

  1. I would no longer be in a social group of one.

  2. I would be a member of a family again.

  3. I could add him to my contacts list on email.

  4. I would enjoy talking about owls and ecology.

  5. He might take me to shire horse centers.

  6. Mother had left him a bequest, so she must have approved of him.

  • • •

  Next morning, I sat at the kitchen table eating my porridge, the lists in front of me, no clearer as to what to do. I had to do something because the picture of the owl swooped into my brain every time I went into Father’s study. The spoon clattered as I pushed the bowl away. The light was on in Sylvia’s kitchen. She would know what to do. I was only asking for advice; it wasn’t evidence I wasn’t coping.

  • • •

  Sylvia slowly chewed a raspberry, her face puckering. I’d gone to Asda before popping in. A blood pressure website had recommended fruit rather than cookies. Shelbie had refused a raspberry. She’d popped in at the same time to run some salon design ideas past Sylvia and to tell her Josh had rejoined the Hells Angels, the New Forest Chapter. Neither of them had thought this was a good idea. Shelbie had turned her wedding ring around and around and told Sylvia she had an accountant now, and Sylvia had put her teacup down with a bang.

  When Shelbie left, I showed Sylvia Charlie Hargreaves’s card. She looked at me for a long time without saying anything. Then she said, “That’s a difficult one, pet.” Her lips and front teeth were stained a reddish-purple. After the long look, she seemed to find it difficult to maintain eye contact. “I just don’t know, pet.” She held her cup in both hands and looked out at the garden.

  “I don’t know how to advise you. On the one hand, this Charlie might be a lovely fellow who’d enrich your life. On the other hand…” She paused, shifting her weight from one buttock to another. “Well, you might find out something you wished you hadn’t.” She put the cup down and smiled without her eyes crinkling. “Now, did I tell you about Roxanna’s sc—?”

  “But I like finding out things,” I put in. “With Google, it’s easy. I don’t like not knowing the answer.”

  “I know, pet, but those are facts. People are more complicated.”

  I began to rub my forehead.

  After another silence, Sylvia leaned forward. “The thing is, pet, once you’ve found out something, you can’t unlearn it, can you? It might make you look at”—she hesitated—“well, things, in a different way. Maybe not in a good way either.”

  I nodded. I remembered the shocked, sinking feeling I’d experienced when I’d learned that orangutans weren’t completely vegetarian and sometimes ate small animals.

  “But then, you see”—Sylvia shifted in her chair again—“you are on your own. And this is”—she tapped the owl card—“a relation.”

  It was my turn to be silent. During the silence, Sylvia got up to put the kettle on again. “If I don’t contact him,” I said, when she sat down, “I’ll just keep thinking about his card and…wondering. When I go into the study, Mother’s documents file is sort of lit up and…signaling to me.”

  “Maybe you should go with your gut instinct then, pet, and do it. Hang on to your hat, though. It’s going to be a roller coaster of a ride.”

  I put my hand to my head and then put it down again.

  • • •

  Sylvia hadn’t explained what I should do like she had done when she’d given me the reasons behind the Rules. She’d just said about going with my gut instinct. While I was sitting in front of the computer, my stomach gave a loud rumble. I took this as a sign, breathed in deeply, and typed Charlie Hargreaves’s address into the email box.

  Dear Mr. Charles Hargreaves (Charlie),

  My name is Elvira Carr, and I live in Sandhaven. My father’s name was Gregory Carr, and my mother’s name was Agnes Carr. Who are you? Are you the same person who sent Mother a birthday card? Since Mother died, I am the only member of my family left because I am an only child. It is possible you are a distant relation, but I don’t want to move or to cook a Christmas dinner for anyone.

  I liked your owl card although I have never seen a real one. I have never seen a Great Bustard either, except for a stuffed one in Sandhaven Museum. I like all animals. I volunteer at an animal sanctuary, Animal Arcadia, every Tuesday. I am a vegetarian. I looked up “ecology” so I know it is about living organisms. How does studying it make you feel?

  Yours sincerely,

  Elvira Carr (Miss)

  There was a reply the next morning. Heart thumping, I opened it.

  Hi, Elvira.

  It was great to get your email and find there’s a fellow animal-lover in the family! It must be in our genes. Animal Arcadia sounds fascinating. And, yes, I really enjoy studying ecology.

  Strange that your dad’s name was exactly the same as mine—they could be quite closely related!

  Sadly, Dad died in 2010. The twelfth of November. He was only 70. We were gutted. Mum put it down to all the cigars he smoked and the stress he was under.

  You said you were an only child—me too!

  Looking forward to hearing from you. This family history thing is really interesting, isn’t it?

  Charlie

  P.S. Yes, your mum’s birthday card was from me. Guilty as charged!

  I pushed my chair back from the screen. My brain felt suddenly full. I shut my eyes to think, and then my fingers flashed over the keys.

  Dear Charlie,

  Thank you for your email. I am glad that you are an only child and that you love animals.

  Family history is quite interesting, but also puzzling. Father died the same year as yours did, and at the same age, and he smoked cigars. It almost sounds like they were the same person, except that Father couldn’t have been in two places at once. Do you think he could have had an identical twin brother who lived in Crawley? That would mean you were my first cousin. Although Father never mentioned a brother. He never mentioned any family. Mother said they were all dead. Well, she actually said, “Dead to him, anyway.” I don’t know the difference. I don’t know why Father would have kept an identical twin brother secret. I wondered if it could be connected with Government Missions, with spying? A spy with a natural double would be invaluable. I would be interested to hear your view.

  There is another puzzling thing… Why did you feel guilty about sending Mother a birthday card?

  Yours sincerely, Elvira Carr (Miss)

  Charlie replied thirty-six minutes later:

  No, Dad never mentioned an identical twin brother. He never mentioned any family either, except I knew he’d been married before. Mum said he was still in touch with his wife. It used to upset her, so I didn’t press her about it.

  Dad was away a lot for work. Engineering. I don’t think he was anything to do with spying. Liked reading about spies, yes, and he got through a lot of thrillers. He read the paper and did the crossword as well. Never finished one, though!

  His birthday was on October 23, 1940. How about your dad’s?

  This is all a bit of a mystery—exciting, though!

  Yours, Charlie

  P.S. “Guilty as charged” was just an expression—sorry, didn’t
mean to confuse you!

  32.

  Don’t build houses on shifting sand.

  —Reverend Basil Tipper, vicar, St. Anne’s Church (and, before him, the Bible)

  There was a small cold spot in my stomach. Father’s birthday was on October 23. Father was an engineer. Could they be the same person? But Father was Father, and Charlie’s father was Dad. I read the email aloud again, trying to make sense of it, and then I went upstairs to lie down. When I’d gotten up this morning, I’d been Father’s only child, but now…a whole sand dune slithered away beneath my feet. Could Father have been Charlie Hargreaves’s parent too? But how?

  I got up at twelve. The owl card was still on the kitchen table from when I’d shown it to Sylvia. Until I saw it again, a tiny part of me believed that I’d dreamed up the whole thing: distant relations, bequests, Crawley, dads, owls. I picked the card up between finger and thumb and, holding it as far away from me as my arm could reach, put it back into Mother’s Documents File. I pushed the file to the very back of the shelf with Mother’s Opera Notes and another file, Legal Matters, jammed in front of it. Then I went on the computer and deleted Charlie Hargreaves’s emails.

  • • •

  I closed the front door behind me.

  “Hello, pet,” Sylvia called out, a Marks & Spencer shopping bag dangling from each hand. “How are you getting on? Did you, you know, make that contact in the end?”

  I turned away. “Yes, but I’m not going to carry on with it.” My head ached.

  Sylvia put the shopping bags down. “Why’s that, pet? He wasn’t rude, was he?”

  “No.” I squeezed my hands tight to stop myself from twisting my sweater, something I’d been doing less frequently. Until Charlie Hargreaves, that is. I’d had to put on my old black sweater and roll its hem between my fingers only last night, while I was watching Coronation Street. “Not rude. Friendly. But what he said can’t be true.” I shook my head vigorously. “It’s not possible.”

  Sylvia looked at me, pressing her lips together. Her lipstick was a reddish-purple, or it might still have been the stain from the raspberries. “Come in for a bit, pet. You can do your shopping after.”

  Sylvia took her shopping bags upstairs so Trevor wouldn’t see how much she’d been spending. I’d bought something that wasn’t on my shopping list only last week. An Extra Special Exotic Fruit Platter. And a new Asda sweater. A red one. Would that be something Trevor would criticize me for? Beard bristling, eyes staring over his glasses, would he phone Social Services to report me? I had enough on my plate at the moment.

  I’d just thought in another Figure of Speech, I realized, but it failed to cheer me up. I stared at the picture of thatched cottages around a duck pond that hung above the fireplace in Sylvia’s living room. There was a large tree behind the cottages, and I peered into its branches, imagining an owl swooping down from them at night. I saw owls everywhere now.

  Sylvia’s voice disturbed the owl. “So, what is it he’s been saying, pet?”

  Words rushed out. “He said—well, he wrote—that his dad had the same name as Father and the same birthday. His dad smoked cigars too, and he was an engineer. And”—I held the sweater’s hem tightly—“they both died on the same day! He made it sound like they were the same person!”

  My throat was suddenly tight. My eyelids prickled. “I’ve tried to stop thinking about it, because each time I do, my brain gets tangled and I feel like crying.” I was crying now, I realized. “I’ve spent hours lying down with the curtains drawn trying not to think about it. But it doesn’t work.” I heard the word work rise to a wail.

  “Pet.” Sylvia put both arms around me. “Come on, come and sit down. Let’s get you a tissue. That’s it. Now, sit there and don’t move while I put the kettle on.”

  It was impossible to mop my eyes without moving; I had to wait until I heard the kettle switch itself off. When Sylvia returned with the tray, there was a plate of cookies on it. “Viennese Whirls,” I noticed dully, probably McVitie’s, because of the cherry halves on their tops.

  “I’m not supposed to be eating these but I weakened,” Sylvia admitted. “They’re from a tin Trevor keeps in his shed. Under lock and key. But, I told myself, in a situation like this, cookies are medicinal.” She offered me the plate and took one herself. “I’m afraid what I’ve got to tell you needs a bit of sweetening, pet.”

  • • •

  After she’d told me, Sylvia squeezed my hand, “I’m sorry, pet.”

  “Why, what have you done?” I looked up, my eyes blurred.

  “No, pet.” Sylvia took hold of my other hand. “I mean I’m sorry you’ve had to find this out. I know how much you looked up to your dad. He was a charmer.” She smiled and looked away for a moment. “I’m only telling you because it’s better you find out from me rather than a stranger, even though he is family.”

  I released one of my hands to wipe my eyes and nose. “How could Father have been two different people at the same time? How could he have been this Charlie’s dad? Why did he do it?”

  Sylvia smiled sadly. “He did it because he could, I suppose. That’s men for you. Some men.” She sighed.

  “Mother must have known. She must have known to tell you.”

  “Oh yes, pet. She was a clever woman. Your dad couldn’t get much past her. Well, perhaps at the beginning. When she was young.” Sylvia reached for her tea, sighing. “She had a lot to put up with, your mum.”

  Jane had used the same words. Words I’d thought referred to me. “Why did she then?” A wave of heat rose in my face. I put my hands over my face to keep the suddenness out and sobbed. Sylvia heaved herself up from the sofa and brought over the whole box of tissues.

  “Here, good thing Trevor made me stock up, eh? Let it all out, pet. It’s an awful shock, I know, especially for someone like you.” I looked up sharply, tears running down my face, but Sylvia went on. “Someone who’s never told a lie in her life.”

  I listened, blowing my nose. Sylvia was telling me the truth. At least, I think she was. Now that I knew both my parents were liars, it was hard to believe that NeuroTypicals ever did tell the truth. I was trying my hardest to keep to my seven Rules, but Father had broken Rules all over the place. He’d lied, been unfaithful, been selfish. How could I trust anything he’d said now? He might even have lied to me about the Moon Landings.

  Sylvia shook her head, sighing. “You idolized him, didn’t you?” she said. “Bless him. Yes, pet, bless him, in spite of what he put your mum through. And you, now. Because your dad wasn’t a monster, was he, pet?” She sighed again, a small smile appearing, “He had that… What do you call it? Carry…charisma, that’s it. Had a lot of that. Always a smile on his face, and well…he could get away with murder.” She leaned toward me with the box of tissues. “In a way, it was good of your mum not to tell you. It would have spoiled the image you had of him.”

  I shook my head, tears wetting my hair. “I’ve got lots of photos of him. They’re in good condition.”

  “I meant if you’d known about your dad’s other life, you might have had a different idea about him.”

  I nodded. But at least it would have been true. My eyes filled again. When he was with us, was he thinking about his other “wife” and child? His NeuroTypical child, his university student child. Why did he want another set when he had one of each already? Why weren’t Mother and I enough? He’d called us my darlings. He’d tried to put his arm around Mother’s waist; he’d hugged me, and not just when he came back from Away. He’d called me Vivi. He’d never been cross with me, even when I didn’t know things. Tears spilled over and ran down my face. It was because I didn’t know things. He’d really wanted a normal child. A clever one.

  • • •

  When I got home, I picked up things that had belonged to Father: the ashtray in the shape of a woman’s hand and his special mug, with the text of the
Rosetta Stone from the British Museum on it, and put them down again. I banged them down actually, but not hard enough to break them.

  Father had sometimes read the Rosetta Stone text aloud, translating as he went, because he could read Ancient Languages. It was the story of Noah’s Ark, and each time he read it, the words were slightly different. Father said this was because translation was an art that involved free license. Now I wondered if even that was true.

  • • •

  I lay in bed staring at the ceiling. My eyes were swollen and sore. In the corner of the room lay the photo of Father in his tropical hat, the glass cracked in two places from where I’d hurled it. A collapsed feeling, grief, washed over me in waves. I was the daughter of a liar. Father had lied to me all his life.

  • • •

  I cleaned the bathroom, although it was Thursday, and not my usual day for cleaning, because lying down in the dark only worked for a little while and then the jumble of thoughts came back and all the questions I would have asked Mother—had I known about Father—rattled around in my brain. I scrubbed the toilet bowl, my sore eyes smarting from the bleach fumes. Mother wouldn’t have given me the answers anyway. She’d have said, Mind your own business or Don’t be ridiculous, Elvira or Never you mind. I stood up and pulled the chain, the toilet bowl gleaming a brilliant white. She’d have said, she often did say, Your father is away, and don’t ask me where, in a cross, frowning voice that made me not want to ask anything else.

  I used an old toothbrush and some Ajax on the bathroom taps, concentrating on removing every speck of lime scale. Mother had thought I was stupid, with my questions and my not understanding, when what she and Father had been doing was lying. My family, my childhood, everything they’d ever told me had been lies! I was drowning in them, all the breath knocked out of me by waves of them, and I had to crouch on the floor, my head between my knees.

  The Vicar at St. Anne’s, who came to my school for special occasions such as Harvest Festival, had told us not to build our houses on shifting sand. I stood up and leaned against the sink, still holding the toothbrush. Since Mother’s stroke, I’d sometimes felt sand shifting under my feet, but, actually, it had always been shifting. I just hadn’t known about it before.