The Seven Rules of Elvira Carr

by Frances Maynard

  Sylvia clasped the dishcloth to her chest. “Oh, I would, pet! That’d be a real treat.”

  Shelbie pointed a silver-tipped finger at her. “You’re on then, Sylv. You can be a guinea pig.”

  This was a remark so bewildering that it must be a Figure of Speech. I would have loved to be made over as a guinea pig, but, they weren’t glamorous animals, so it couldn’t have been what Shelbie meant.

  “Right, ladies.” Trevor put his arm around Sylvia’s middle. “Me and Josh have earned a little drink, I think.” I stood up straight. I tried to look confident and capable when Trevor was around (and Josh too, because I was frightened of him), in case I made him think about Social Services.

  “What’s Josh been doing then, while you’ve been washing the dishes?” Shelbie put the photos back into a padded silver album with tissue paper between the pages.

  Trevor picked up the serving spoon Sylvia had dished up the apple pie with and pretended it was a microphone. “I’ve loved, I’ve laughed and cried,” he sang, throwing his head back, his beard vibrating. He stopped. “Josh took the rubbish out. I haven’t seen him since. He’s tinkering with the bike, probably. Thirsty work, bike tinkering.”

  Shelbie looked at him without saying anything, her jaw working.

  Trevor tried to hide his face behind the serving spoon. “I’ll make him stop and come out for a pint. There’s an open mike session on at the pub.”

  “Wish I could stop him,” Shelbie said, eyebrows raised.

  • • •

  I lay in bed, my brain whirring, going over, like I always did, the wrong things I’d nearly said. Or had said. Charlie Hargreaves also made my brain whir. I’d had days of looking at the advantages and disadvantages list without being able to make a decision. I threw back the duvet, fed up with it all. Contacting him might at least switch off part of the whirring. I ran downstairs and replied to his email. I gave him my phone number but told him I wasn’t good on the phone.

  As I replaced the tribal throw over the computer, I saw Trevor and Josh coming back from the pub. Trevor, staggering, had his arm around Josh’s shoulder, and both of them were laughing. Whatever Mike had opened must have been fun, whoever he was. Or were they laughing at me?

  • • •

  “What shall we play?” Roxanna hung onto my arm.

  “Play? I don’t really play.” I chewed my lip. “We could watch a nature documentary.”

  “I want to play a game.”

  I suggested Snap, but Roxanna said I’d win all the time. “I know!” She gave a little bounce. “Hide-and-seek!”

  I was looking after her while Shelbie and Josh were at work, Sylvia was being made over, and Trevor, at the last minute, was helping out behind the bar of the Club. “Granddad or I will pick you up later,” Sylvia had told Roxanna.

  “But how will I know it’s you if you’ve had a makeover?” Roxanna had gazed unblinkingly at her grandmother.

  Sylvia had laughed although Roxanna had not made a joke. It was a perfectly logical question. “We’ll have a code word then, shall we, pet? Fish cakes.”

  Hide-and-seek went on for a long time with Roxanna winning more often, in spite of not knowing my house, because she was smaller and could squeeze into places.

  My best place for hiding was in Mother’s wardrobe. I climbed in, smelling cigar smoke and the sweetness of her Je Reviens. I closed the door quietly and sat down, the swallowtails from Father’s evening jacket brushing against my face. The last time I’d hidden here was when Josh shouted at me, when I’d gotten things wrong. Thanks to the Rules and greater exposure to social situations, that was happening less often.

  In the darkness, my thoughts turned to Charlie. I’d posted another message on the website for women with my Condition: What did you say when a long-lost distant relation phoned? Again, Amy from America replied. We’d already discovered we had lots of things in common, such as caring for an elderly mother and being shouted at in bus stations (although, because of the jeans, that didn’t really happen to me anymore). Amy couldn’t wear jeans because of weight issues and was confined to her house for the same reason. She watched a lot of TV—Oprah Winfrey and Judge Judy—so she knew about life.

  Amy advised me to tell Charlie about my Condition straightaway and to explain how it made social situations difficult. Then, if he didn’t even try to understand, I’d know it would be pointless meeting up. Anybody, she wrote, even a NeuroTypical, would find a telephone chat with an unknown half brother difficult. She suggested writing down some ideas about what to talk about first. I’d printed out her message.

  I heard Roxanna downstairs, counting up to fifty. She hesitated over thirty-seven and said thirty-five twice. I nearly shouted she’d made two mistakes, but that would have led to her finding me.

  “Where are you, Ellie?” she called, running up the stairs.

  I put my hand over my mouth to stop myself from saying, “I’m here. I’ve won!” I heard her open the door of the shower cubicle. My foot touched a shoe. It was one of the evening shoes I’d once thought Father spied in. I wanted to knock my head against the wardrobe door for thinking Father was spying when he was actually with Katharine and Charlie Hargreaves, but Roxanna would have heard me. I tapped the shoe’s hollow inside. Why would you have needed secret compartments in Crawley anyway? How had they helped Father with his other life and other woman? And other child. My fingers recoiled, and the shoe fell.

  “I heard something, Ellie. I know you’re up here!” Roxanna’s voice traveled from bedroom to bedroom.

  The wardrobe door was yanked open, and I heard her rapid breathing. I kept completely still. She ran off again, her shout becoming a wail. “Where are you, Ellie? I’ve looked in every single place!” The wail disappeared downstairs.

  I hugged my knees, smiling. I’d won. Roxanna had spent ages looking but hadn’t found me. Then there was a thud from downstairs and sobbing. “I want my mummy. Mummy!”

  I stepped out of the wardrobe. “Roxanna!” I called. “It doesn’t matter that I won. You won nearly all the other times.”

  Roxanna, lying on the hall carpet, sobbed louder.

  “You haven’t fallen over, have you?” I ran downstairs and bent over her. I knew she was too young to have had a stroke.

  “No!” She sat up, her face red and puffy, her blond eyebrows drawn together. She looked like Josh. “Where were you? Your house is creepy. I couldn’t find you!”

  “Behind the clothes in the big wardrobe in Mother’s bedroom. I’ve hidden there before.”

  “That’s cheating then! You practiced!” Roxanna drew her eyebrows together again. She got up, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her pink cardigan. She pushed a blond wisp of hair away from her face and smoothed down her dress. Apart from her face being red and her mouth turning down at the corners, she looked as if she was going to a party, like she always did. “Can I have my fish cakes now?” she asked.

  • • •

  Trevor smelled of beer and cigarettes. He was in a hurry. Whenever I saw him, he was in a hurry. I had just successfully (well, nearly successfully) looked after his granddaughter for two hours and fifty-three minutes. Looking after a small child must count as managing. I nearly pointed this out, but his spiky beard, thin legs, and sharp comments always made me feel nervous. I could record it in my Japanese notebook as evidence against being sent Away, though.

  “Got everything you came with, love?” he asked Roxanna.

  “No.” She smiled up at him.

  “Run and fetch whatever it is then. Quick! Quick!”

  “I can’t ’cause it’s my fish cakes, and I’ve eaten them!” Her body shook with laughter. For once I understood the joke and laughed loudly too.

  “Oh no!” Trevor clapped his hand to his forehead. “Not another comedian in the family.” I wondered how many other comedians there were. “You should be at the open mi
ke night. Die laughing? I thought I’d never start! Come on then, love. I’ve got a steak pie to put in the oven. Save your gran cooking. Mind you, she might be too posh for pies now.”

  • • •

  I heard Sylvia’s car pull in as I was draining the pasta. I left it in the colander and rushed into the living room to peer from the window. A lady—it must have been Sylvia, because it was her car—got out and teetered toward the front door. Her hair cascaded over her bare shoulders. The evening sunlight reflected from earrings that hung like bunches of grapes. Even from this distance, I could see black fringing around her eyes. Sylvia fumbled in her bag, but the front door was flung open. I leaned close to the window.

  “No callers, please.” Trevor held up his hand in the Stop! gesture we’d learned at school. Behind him Roxanna was bent over, giggling.

  “Get on with you.” Sylvia gave him a push.

  “A strange woman has assaulted me on my own doorstep,” Trevor shouted. “Officer!”

  “Don’t make me laugh, Trev. I don’t want to smudge anything.” She bent down to Roxanna. “Boo! Fish cakes!”

  “I almost knew it was you, Granny,” said Roxanna.

  I went back to the kitchen and began arranging slices of peppers and eggplant in a line of red, green, black, red, green, black on the pasta. I was grating some cheese when the phone rang. I dashed to pick it up and was just about to say No, thank you very much, because of it being insurance or double glazing, when the person at the other end said my name.

  “Elvira? Are you there? It’s Charlie. Charlie Hargreaves. How are you? Is this a good time to talk?”

  35.

  It’s disappointing when someone you look up to lets you down.

  —Charlie Hargreaves (Carr), half brother

  “Oh!” I gasped.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “I’m not good on the phone,” I managed to get out. I sat down, the walls of the study closing in. “And I don’t like sudden things.” I scrabbled around on Father’s desk for Amy’s advice message. I’d added useful phrases at the bottom, including Tell me more about…because apparently everybody liked talking about themselves. Tell me more about ecology, I’d written, and If you were stranded on a desert island, which ten cookie varieties would you take? I hadn’t included any questions about Father because whenever I’d talked about him, I’d learned something unpleasant. Something I hadn’t wanted to know. His photo still lay facedown on the bedroom floor. When I vacuumed around it, I jabbed at it with the hose.

  “Easily startled…” Charlie laughed. “Like a wild animal.”

  I paused and took a deep breath. Charlie didn’t fill the pause. “Father said he was raised by Scottish wildcats,” I told him, “so it might be in my genes.” Then I remembered this had been a story.

  Charlie laughed. “Yeah, right!”

  “No, it wasn’t right. Father made it up.”

  “OK. I don’t think that was the only thing he made up, was it?”

  I shook my head. “He kept a lot of things secret. You, you were a secret.”

  “And now here I am, making you talk to me. You’re doing fine on the phone, Elvira.”

  I was silent for a moment. “You can call me Ellie, if you like.” I breathed out a long breath. “It’s difficult when there aren’t any set rules for this sort of thing.”

  “Well, we’ll make our own,” Charlie said, his voice sounded as if he was smiling.

  I took another deep breath. “Charlie,” I began, “I’ve got a condition.” I spread out the fingers of my hand, palm up, although he couldn’t see me.

  “Is it serious?” he asked.

  “It means I don’t always understand things. Jokes. Figures of speech. How people signal with their eyes. And I can go on about things without noticing I’m being boring. And sometimes things get to be too much.”

  “I see,” he said. There was a silence, and I waited for him to sneer or lose interest. “So, should I explain things, like why I’m saying something?”

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  “Cool! An original way of looking at things!”

  He was phoning from home without his mother knowing. It was a sore point between them, he said, which I think was a Figure of Speech.

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even want to think about Ms. Katharine Hargreaves, who’d made Mother share and whose blond hair blew untidily over her face. Because of her, I didn’t really want to talk about Father.

  Charlie seemed to pick up on this. “I need time to get my head around Dad. I expect you do too. There’ll be plenty of time for that in the future.”

  There was a pause, which neither of us filled. Charlie asked how I felt about meeting up. He gave me a little time to think about it. I smoothed out the crease between my eyebrows, and when he asked me again, I took a deep breath and said I’d give it a go. My heart was hammering because of him being a Stranger but also a half brother, and because of there not being any rules.

  He suggested us meeting somewhere before Christmas—universities broke up early, he said—and I said the Shire Horse Center in the New Forest, because of Long-Lost Love, the Mills & Boon story about the long-lost adopted brother. It was the only guidance I had.

  • • •

  I lay down after the phone call, my dinner untouched on the kitchen table. I hadn’t thought I’d be able to talk to Charlie at all. Suddenly, like that, with him being two different and difficult things—someone I didn’t know, but also a relation—at once.

  • • •

  The doorbell rang the next morning. It was Sylvia, come to thank me for looking after Roxanna. There were smudges at the outside corners of her eyes where the wings of eyeliner had been.

  “Any chance of a cuppa, pet?” she asked, coming in.

  When I returned with the tray, Sylvia patted her rigid hair. “So what do you think of these extensions then? Shelbie’s idea. Ever so expensive, apparently.” She took a sip of tea, her fingernails longer and a brighter shade of scarlet than usual. “Yes, I couldn’t fault her there. Proper pampered, I was. Manicure, facial, makeup, hair, the stylist. The photo session with Lewis.” She pursed her lips. “Bit of a ladies’ man is Lewis. Old school friend of Shelbie’s. Got in touch on Facebook, apparently. All teeth and tight trousers.”

  I wondered if Charlie would be like that. I wasn’t sure what a ladies’ man was, except that Sylvia and the lady who’d done our cleaning had both said the same thing about Father. I squeezed my knees together. I wanted to tell Sylvia about Charlie’s phone call, but it was hard to change the subject.

  She leaned forward. “Shelbie and Josh had a bit of a row. Josh tripped over Lewis’s tripod. He’s never been keen on the makeovers. Says there’s no profit in them. Then Shelbie started hissing it was her salon and her ideas, and Josh went straight out the door.” Sylvia drained the last of her tea. “I’m worried about their marriage. I really am.” She heaved herself up. “Well, Trevor’s waiting for his lunch. I promised him I’d only stay five minutes.”

  “Sylvia, I had a…” I began.

  Sylvia moving toward the door. She turned, not hearing, “Did I tell you, pet, Josh has joined something to do with Vikings? Where they act out battles. Not really the way to a woman’s heart, is it, though?”

  I closed the door, considering. No man in any Mills & Boon I’d read had ever tried it. I washed and dried up the tea things. Sylvia hadn’t kept to Rule Three (Conversation doesn’t just Exchange Facts—it Conveys how you’re Feeling) because she’d gone on and on about her family and hadn’t noticed I had one now too. And she’d broken her promise to Trevor. He might think that was my fault. I slammed the cutlery drawer shut.

  36.

  A half brother might be a lovely thing.

  —Mrs. Sylvia Grylls, neighbor

  Charlie phoned me again. He sa
id he’d keep the call short. He needed to keep it short anyway because of his mother not knowing.

  He’d pick me up next Friday. I put the date down on the calendar, under this month’s picture of a Bedlington terrier, and added another conversational topic to Amy’s advice message: What is your favorite breed of horse?

  I knew we could talk about dogs because Charlie had one, Akira, not a definite breed but a bit of an assortment. He’d mentioned him on the phone, and my mind had flown to Peek Freans Family Assortment with its pink-and-gold packaging. He’d told me that Dad had named him after a Japanese film director he was keen on.

  My heart had lurched at Charlie calling Father Dad—and at the mention of Japan. Just saying the word Japan made me feel stupid, now that I knew it stood for Crawley. Upstairs, I’d turned around all the little netsuke animals—back on our landing after months of looking out to sea at Bay View Lodge—so I didn’t have to see their faces and feel stupid all over again.

  What would I do with Charlie when we met? I wouldn’t be good at any of the things I’d seen other people do with their brothers: bossing them about, making them do up their shoelaces, playing football with them, wrestling.

  Preparation, Elvira, is the key, I heard Mother say, although it was doubtful she would have approved of me meeting Charlie. I packed my backpack, because there were only five days to go, and checked that the Safety Kit, with its earplugs and sunglasses and cookies, was inside. I put my Japanese notebook in too and a copy of the spreadsheet in case I needed to refer to it.

  • • •

  “Off to Asda, pet?” Sylvia called. “Want a lift?”

  She was too busy driving to talk about Josh, Shelbie, or Roxanna, so I was able to tell her about Charlie. She turned to me, her eyes wide, freshly painted wings at their outside corners. The car swerved. Sylvia jerked the steering wheel.

  “You’re actually meeting him, pet! I knew you’d been emailing each other, but…” She shook her head. “My goodness, you have come a long way! What would your mum say?”