‘What? What did your granddad always say?’
Simon coughed. ‘My granddad always said, who you are is the difference you make in the world.’
Miss Ambrose frowned at the computer screen.
She was still frowning when she heard Simon cough.
‘About this, then?’ He held up the notebook. ‘What do you think I should do?’
‘What does your …’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘… heart tell you, Simon? What do you think is going on?’
Simon took a very large breath. ‘I think Florence is frightened,’ he said. ‘She spends half her time sitting on the benches in the courtyard. She’s as white as a sheet. She doesn’t even argue with people any more.’
‘Old people get frightened. We did it on a course.’
‘I haven’t done any courses, Miss Ambrose, but even I know she’s terrified.’ Simon spoke very quietly, which wasn’t like Simon at all.
Miss Ambrose sighed. ‘She’s on probation, you know.’
‘What did she do wrong?’ Simon said.
‘It’s a figure of speech, Simon. That’s all. I gave her a month to prove she doesn’t need to be in Greenbank. It must be well over a week now, and all I’ve had proved to me is that the situation’s getting worse.’
Simon stared at the floor.
Miss Ambrose waited, but he didn’t look up at her again.
8.15 p.m.
The room smells of haddock.
Friday is haddock. Thursday usually involves some type of pasta, and Saturday is anybody’s guess. The smells knit themselves into the walls, and swing from the curtains. You can work out what day it is just by sniffing the air. Even the carpet smells of haddock. The smell seems to have become worse the longer I’ve been lying here, or perhaps it’s because there’s nothing else to think about, and so my nose has started making all my decisions for me.
It’s not as though I feel hungry, although I should do, by now. I blame the BBC. They need a letter, the BBC, and I’ve a good mind to send one off. Programmes about food, each time I turn the television on. You fill your eyes with so much of it, it’s no wonder your stomach loses interest. I thought the BBC was meant to cater for everybody, and you haven’t got much of an appetite when you turn eighty. I read about it. In a magazine. Miss Ambrose was supposed to get me the address. Director General, I said, no point messing about with secretaries. I’m still waiting, of course. Elsie said I shouldn’t get myself in a state about it if I don’t get a reply, but it’s a public service and I’m the public, so they’re obliged to. I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t even like the television. I only switch it on to fill up a room.
If I hadn’t turned the television off before I fell, perhaps they’d notice. No one at Cherry Tree makes any noise after ten o’clock, and someone might wonder what I’m up to. There isn’t any noise out there now, except the traffic, although I keep thinking I can hear music. My ears must be playing tricks on me. It can’t be that late, although the clock’s too far away to see, and so all I can do is listen to the ticking. Soothing, a clock ticking. Reassuring. It tells you nothing ever really changes. ‘Just listen to the clock,’ Elsie would say. ‘Don’t get yourself in a state, Florence. Someone will be here soon.’ She always knows what to say, Elsie does. To make me feel better.
Perhaps it will be Miss Ambrose who finds me. Perhaps she’ll come over early for our weekly chat, and she’ll worry when I don’t answer the door. She’ll knock a little harder, to make herself heard over the bypass, and she’ll glance over her shoulder at the cars while she waits for me to answer. She’ll have to use her keys in the end, but she’ll struggle with the lock, and the keys will drop to the floor, because she’s rushing so much. When she gets inside, she’ll say, ‘Florence, whatever have you been doing?’ I’ll put her mind at ease straight away. ‘Don’t worry about me, Miss Ambrose,’ I’ll say. ‘I just had a little tumble. I’m as right as rain.’ She’ll hold my hand whilst we wait for the ambulance. She’ll keep looking at the window, for the blue lights. She’ll say, ‘I hope you haven’t been cleaning again, Florence. Cleaning is our department,’ and I will tell her about all the nonsense under the sideboard. She’ll smile down at me and say how worried everyone will be when they hear what’s happened, and I will smile back and say how nice it is to be worried about.
Even though she’s busy, she’ll come with me to the hospital.
‘Nothing is as important as you, Florence. Everything else can wait.’
She will sit with me in a cubicle that smells of hand-sanitiser and other people’s despair. When the doctor finally arrives, he will be unshaven and exhausted, and his eyes will be filled with all the other lives who have sat in front of him that day. But he will still care. He will still listen to what I have to say. After he has left, Miss Ambrose will get us cardboard teas from the machine. We will try to sip them without burning our lips, and as we do, I will look over at Miss Ambrose, and I will wonder if I can share my secret with her. I try to imagine the kindness in her eyes. I try to think what she might say. But lying here, choosing the cast to play out the end of my story, I’m not sure even Miss Ambrose would really understand.
FLORENCE
We were all sitting in the day room when Miss Ambrose told us. I didn’t have any desire whatsoever to be over there, but Elsie insisted and I wasn’t going to be left on my own staring at four walls. I knew Miss Ambrose had something to say for herself, because I could hear her throat clearing as she walked across the room. Simon was about three feet behind, but he left her to it and leaned against the wall.
‘A rather exciting announcement,’ she said, when she got to the middle of the carpet.
Not another one, I thought. I could have sworn I kept the words in my head, but I must have said them out loud, because when I looked around, Elsie’s gaze was on the ceiling and Jack was hiding his laugh in a chesty cough.
‘A rather exciting announcement,’ she said again, only she didn’t take her eyes off me this time, and said it a bit more quietly. ‘I know how you are all very enthusiastic fans of What’s It Worth?’
A few people glanced up, and even Mrs Honeyman looked interested for once. I’ve never been very big on it. People raiding their lofts to find out how much money they think they’re entitled to and pulling a face when it turns out to be a lot less than they expected. Although it’s more entertainment than the food programmes.
‘Well,’ said Miss Ambrose, ‘I’m delighted to announce that the makers of What’s It Worth? have decided to set one of their episodes here, at Cherry Tree. They’re rather taken with the ambience of the courtyards.’
Even I looked up then.
‘Well, that’s marvellous,’ said Jack. ‘There you go, Florence. That will take your mind off things. You’re going to be on the telly.’
‘Well …’ Miss Ambrose stretched out the word whilst her face rounded up some more to add to it. She also did a little bounce in her knees, just for good measure. ‘We think, perhaps, it would be best if the residents stayed out of the way. For a bit.’
‘For a bit?’ said Jack.
‘For the whole time, really,’ she said. ‘In their flats would be ideal. Of course, as soon as the television people have gone, you can all come back out again.’
‘Very kind of you,’ said Jack.
‘It’s just that there will be a lot of valuable antiques on the premises. Some very old items. We need to be careful with them. The last thing anyone wants is any of them getting damaged. It would be unforgivable.’
‘Of course,’ Jack said.
‘Some of them might even be priceless.’
‘Priceless indeed,’ he said.
I saw Simon look at the floor and push at the carpet with the edge of his training shoe.
Three days later, they arrived. I opened my curtains and the courtyard was full of people and vans. They were just like the vans you see criminals being taken to prison in, only they didn’t have the little bars on the side.
‘W
ould you look,’ I said to Elsie. ‘All that just for one television programme.’
The courtyard was unrecognisable. Lengths of cable twisted all over the grass and along the footpaths, and people marched up and down with clipboards and boxes, scattering gravel all over the place and treading mud everywhere. By eight o’clock, people had started to queue. There was a whole ribbon of them, stretching around the main building and on to the driveway. They were gripping all manner of things to their chests. Paintings and doll’s houses, Toby jugs and candlesticks. There was even a woman carrying something that looked suspiciously like a lavatory seat.
Jack had arrived, and he joined us at the window. ‘They’re all hoping they had a fortune hiding in the cupboard under the stairs.’ He leaned against the radiator with his arms folded.
‘I don’t even own stairs now,’ I said. ‘Let alone a cupboard underneath them.’
We stood in silence.
I was going to make us all a cup of tea, to pass the time a bit, but then Jack started talking about the bus that pulls up at the bottom of the drive every quarter to the hour, and how he thought we should all get on it and have a little day out instead.
‘Aren’t we supposed to tell someone we’re going?’ I said.
‘Florence, they won’t even notice we’re missing,’ he said. ‘They’re far too distracted trying to auction off the past.’
And his idea seemed so much more interesting than putting the kettle on.
The bus smelled of crisp packets and other people’s feet, although we weren’t really on it for very long. Elsie made a big fuss of brushing the seat down with her coat sleeve, but she was still in the middle of complaining when the bus tipped us out at the top of the high street.
‘Here we are,’ said Jack. ‘The big city.’
It wasn’t a city, and it wasn’t really very big, but it was more interesting than staring out of a window all day at the tops of other people’s heads.
We started to walk down the pavement, but that was a battle in itself, because of the crowds.
‘Where do they all come from?’ I said. ‘How do all these people have somewhere to go?’
‘It’s a Saturday.’ Elsie looked straight ahead as she spoke, because she said it was far too dangerous to take your eyes from the battlefield. ‘Everyone goes shopping on a Saturday. It’s what people do.’
There’s an unspoken contract to keep up when you’re on a busy pavement and we couldn’t stick to it. There were too many pushchairs and carrier bags, and people tutting and trying to edge past. Someone attacked Jack’s legs with a pram wheel, and so we decided to go into Marks & Spencer to get our breath back.
We walked into the men’s department, and it was coat-hanger quiet. Even though there were lots of people, they were orderly and silent, and rearranged themselves around you very politely on the carpet. People always behave in M&S, don’t they? There were different-coloured paths to walk along and mannequins dotted about every so often, and they all had vacant expressions and an absence of eyebrows.
‘That one looks like Simon,’ I said, as we walked past, but no one took any notice.
Jack bought several pairs of socks and a new pullover (which he said would see him out), and then we drifted into the ladies’ department, where Elsie tried on lots of hats, none of which suited her. I kept my thoughts to myself, but I think she picked up on it, because she moved on to scarves without saying a word.
‘You don’t need a scarf,’ I said. ‘You’ve got that lovely one Gwen knitted you.’
She said she hadn’t worn that in years. She said she didn’t even know where it was. Things go missing, she said. They are left on benches and in cinemas. They fall out of coat pockets. They are lent to people who fail to return them. She plumped for a tartan check in the end. She said it was with it, and I didn’t like to shatter her illusions by passing comment.
We travelled up the escalators to the top floor. I’ve always been a big fan of escalators. I wish they had them in more places, because they don’t just get you somewhere, they give you something to look at whilst you’re doing it. I wanted to have another go, but Elsie said if we didn’t get a move on, the restaurant would fill up, and so I saved it for another time. We chose what we wanted, and took our little melamine trays to a table in the corner and drank coffee out of thick white china. We didn’t talk about Ronnie. It was strange, because he didn’t even cross my mind once, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I wanted to think about something else. It was only when we’d left the department store, when we forced our way back into the crowds on the high street and turned the corner at the top of the road that he walked back into my mind. It was the church that did it. It stood at the top of the hill, staring at the town like a watchful parent.
‘Beryl’s buried in that churchyard,’ I said.
‘She’s just over there,’ Elsie said. ‘Behind that sycamore.’
We had walked towards the church gates without even agreeing to do it, and we stood by a little glass cabinet with service times and posters about toddler groups and youth clubs. St Eligius, it said, painted in gold along a damp wooden frame.
‘I remember the funeral,’ I said. ‘I remember it as though we’ve just walked out of the church.’
‘You see,’ Elsie said. ‘It was all there, it just needed to be found again.’
‘You don’t have to think about it, if you don’t want to.’ Jack tapped at the pavement with the tip of his walking stick. ‘There are some memories better left where they are.’
‘No, I want to.’ I pushed at the little gate, and it moved away all the leaves on the path for me. ‘I have to go back, because it’s the only way we’re ever going to get any answers.’
Ronnie was at Beryl’s funeral.
I remembered. He walked up the aisle and took a seat in the front row, and nobody dared stop him. The church was full, but it was full of people who were too young to be there. Elsie and I sat at the back, because I was worried Elsie might need some fresh air. She was pale and tiny, and she was shaking so much, I had to hold on to her hands to stop the hymn book from falling to the floor. I don’t remember what we sang. It’s the worst time, isn’t it, to expect a person to sing? When their throat is filled with so much grief, they can barely find a voice to speak with.
After it was all over, Ronnie walked past us on his way out. That’s when it happened. That’s when I knew I had to do something. Because he smiled at Elsie. A long, slow, deliberate smile. A smile that said, whatever else might happen in life, he would always win at it. I looked at Elsie. Tiny and frail, and broken, and I knew then that I had to do something. I had to protect her. And I realised in that moment, Beryl dying wasn’t the end. It was only the beginning.
When I looked up, we were standing right by the church. I glanced back at the path, because I didn’t remember walking it, and I wasn’t even sure it was there.
Elsie put her hands on the giant wooden doors. All the fancy iron hinges and the black studding, and the way the very top curved into a point.
‘Do you want to go inside?’ said Jack.
It looked like a magical door. A door into another world.
‘No, not again,’ I said. ‘I think I’d just quite like to go home.’
The bus dropped us off at the bottom of the drive, and we walked up to Cherry Tree in silence. I didn’t look up until we’d almost reached the main buildings, and when I did, I realised most of the television vans had disappeared, but they’d been replaced by a very large police car, and Miss Ambrose standing in the middle of the courtyard with her arms folded. No one gave us a second glance.
We walked past Simon, who was leaning against a wall, chewing gum.
‘There’s been an incident,’ he said. I think he was quite put out, because we walked past without even asking what it was. ‘Quite a big one,’ he shouted.
‘Incident?’ said Jack.
Elsie looked back. ‘What kind of incident?’
‘Something’s g
one missing,’ he said. ‘One of the antiques. Miss Ambrose is beside herself.’
I looked across at Miss Ambrose, and I thought it was a fair comment.
‘What is it?’ said Jack. ‘This missing antique?’
Simon did a little more chewing on his gum. ‘A watch,’ he said. ‘I think.’
It was a watch. I knew it was a watch, because when we got back to my flat it was sitting in the middle of the dining table, waiting for us.
Elsie had unwound her new scarf, which she had chosen to wear even though it wasn’t really scarf weather. Jack had hung his cap on the little peg by the front door, and said, ‘Are we going to have that kettle on, then?’ and I’d followed them both into the sitting room, where we all stood and stared at it.
The policeman patted my arm and said, ‘Everybody gets confused,’ and put away his notebook. He was very understanding, although I would rather, somehow, that he hadn’t been. Miss Ambrose, for once, was lost for words. I didn’t say anything either. I didn’t say we’d been out all day, or it wasn’t me, or why don’t you ask Ronnie about it, because I knew none of them would listen. I realised I’d run right out of arguing, and so I just kept my eyes on the watch instead.
It was one of those where you can see the insides. All the little wheels, moving behind the glass, counting each second. I’d never thought about it before, how time works. It’s quite beautiful when you see it being made in front of you. All the cogs turned, one against the next, even though some of them seemed so far away from the others, you wondered how it was even possible. Once you’d realised how everything was connected, though, you couldn’t help yourself seeing it.
‘Why didn’t you say something?’ Jack closed the front door. ‘Why didn’t you say we were out all day? No one would have minded that we didn’t get permission.’
‘Because nobody ever believes me.’ I looked at both of them. ‘You don’t for a start.’
‘Of course we do,’ said Elsie. ‘Neither of us doubts you for a second.’
‘I know it wasn’t you.’ Jack sat in front of me. ‘I know with absolute certainty.’
Three Things About Elsie Page 15