When I looked back, Miss Ambrose had her face in her hands and Miss Bissell looked as though she had just been given a prize in a competition she had been expecting to win all along.
I made it all the way to the whalebones before Elsie caught up with me. I watched people move between them, eating ice cream and pushing buggies, a day’s worth of belongings swinging in carrier bags from the handles. People changed their path to pass beneath the arch, as if it was some magical doorway through which they needed to walk.
‘They’re still here,’ I said.
‘I told you they would be.’
‘It’s sad, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘For the whale, I mean.’
The sun escaped from behind a cloud, and Elsie shielded her eyes. ‘I suppose it’s a piece of history. A kind of remembrance.’
We walked to a bench. Across the water, ribbons of people climbed the abbey steps and below them, boats cut a wall of foam through the harbour, on their journey towards the North Sea. Whitby curves around the estuary, its east and west sides facing each other across the water, so as you stare over the bay, you see a reflection of people living an identical life, but on the opposite side of an ocean. As we sat, Cliff Street emptied out its contents. A cast of strangers, stretching across the pavements and littering the grass, sweeping up the remains of autumn before the coastline called time and wound down its shutters for winter. They wandered past, wrapped in conversation, their words catching on a breeze and drifting out towards the sea. No one noticed us. Two old ladies, buttoned into hats and raincoats, watching the rest of the world happen without them.
‘They’d never be allowed to do it now,’ Elsie said. ‘The whales, I mean. Times have changed.’
I loosened my scarf. ‘So Miss Ambrose was wrong. Some of us must leave more than a footprint, or everything would always stay the same.’
‘Of course she was wrong.’
We’d only been there a matter of minutes, but already the sea air had pulled away some of the worrying. The colours seemed brighter and other people’s laughter was more obvious, and my face fell into a smile so much more easily.
Elsie was watching me. ‘You like Whitby,’ she said.
‘You know I do. It reminds me of holidays gone by. Things I’d forgotten.’
‘Do you remember the last time?’ she said. ‘On the final day, looking for something to buy with our spending money?’
I laughed. ‘We always did that. We had to say goodbye to the sea, and take something home with us, just to prove to ourselves we were once here. Even if it was just a pebble from the beach.’
I was still laughing when I felt the past creep inside my head. It stole away the bright colours and the smell of the ocean, and the sound of other people’s voices. It’s strange how it always does that – appears without notice. It’s as though the past and the present shift against each other all the time, and when you’re distracted, you can slip through a gap between one and the other, without even realising you’re doing it.
‘I can hear a child crying,’ I said.
I could tell Elsie was trying to listen, over the simmer of conversation as it drifted past, and the shrieking of seagulls in the bay. ‘I can’t hear it,’ she said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not now – then. On that last day. There was a child crying.’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Yes there was.’
‘We walked by, didn’t we? Thinking someone else would help.’ Worry stumbled around in my head. ‘We didn’t do anything.’
‘Yes we did.’
‘He drowned. Fell from the harbour wall. It was in all the newspapers, don’t you remember? I said to you, that’s the little boy, that’s the little boy we didn’t help.’
When I glanced around, people were staring at us.
‘Florence, you must calm down. Listen to me.’
‘Why didn’t we do something?’ I began folding the scarf on my lap. ‘Why didn’t we stop?’
‘We did stop. The three of us waited on the steps until his mother came along. We even used up our spending money on ice cream for him.’
I stopped folding. ‘We did?’
‘We did,’ she said. ‘His name was Frankie. Don’t you remember?’
I shook my head.
‘He had really blue eyes. Like this.’ She pointed to a colour in my scarf. ‘It made us late setting off home. Your mother was furious, but when we told her what had happened, she just kissed the tops of our heads.’
I felt my whole face smile. ‘Did she?’
Elsie nodded.
‘I still miss her, you know,’ I whispered. ‘I know I’m not supposed to. Not after all this time.’
‘In the end, we were ages getting home anyway, because an hour earlier there’d been a big accident near York.’
She waited to see if my eyes would find the memory, but sometimes I’m just too tired to search any more.
‘Try to remember, Flo. It’s important. Really important.’
‘Why is it so important?’
She took my hand. ‘It just is,’ she said.
When we stood to leave, I looked back at the bench. There was a plaque, fixed to the wood.
In memory of Arthur and Clarice – they loved this place, it said. They’re all over the West Cliff, benches with small brass plates. Lines of people made unforgotten, staring out to sea for the rest of time.
‘I think I should quite like a bench,’ I said.
‘Why on earth would you want one of those?’
‘To prove to myself I was once here,’ I said.
‘Oh, Florence. All you really need to do is remember.’ She took my arm and we walked back to the hotel, past the crazy golf and the ice-cream vans, past the conversations and the pushchairs, and the days of other people.
As we walked, I turned to her and said, ‘Thank you.’
‘Whatever for?’
I smiled. ‘You reminded me that my mother kissed the tops of our heads. It was a memory I’d lost, and you found it and you gave it back to me again.’
That was the second thing about Elsie.
She always knew exactly the right thing to say to make me feel better.
The hotel bedroom was adequate, although the bathroom floor could have done with a going-over and there was a fine layer of dust on the pelmet. I wasn’t sure about the carpet, because it involved so many different colours that any stain would have quite happily slid right into it unnoticed. Elsie and I shared a room, because it seemed sensible, and I was worried about getting confused in the middle of the night and not being able to find the lavatory.
I stood in the doorway, the toes of my shoes resting on a little silver line. ‘Ronnie can’t get in here, can he?’ I said. ‘It’s safe, isn’t it?’
‘Of course it’s safe.’ Elsie went over to the window. ‘We’re on the first floor, and look, you can lock the door from the inside. No one can get in.’
‘Where’s the lavatory?’ I said.
‘It’s just through here. It’s en-suite.’
I hesitated.
‘It’s just for us,’ she said, and we spent the next ten minutes saying how wonderful it all was.
There were twin beds, covered in shiny pink eiderdowns. Comfortable, but not like being at home. The mattress was left wanting. Boxed springs. Saggy in the middle. Vague sensation of static each time you moved. Elsie went for the one nearest the door, because she knew I liked watching the seagulls. Above the writing desk there was a notice telling people not to pinch anything.
I read it out loud. ‘Well, I never did,’ I said.
I wasn’t sure what anyone could find to steal. There was a picture of a zebra above the bed and a pot dog on the windowsill, but in all honesty, I would have paid somebody to take them away. I began unpacking my things. Elsie told me it wasn’t worth it, because we were only going to be here for two nights, but I like to turn wherever I am into a home from home.
‘It would take more than a tube of Poligrip in a plastic beaker to make me feel tha
t way,’ she said, but she let me get on with it.
Miss Ambrose asked us all to be in reception for three o’clock. We walked down the stairs at five past, but half of us was still missing. Ronnie was there, of course, leaning against the telephone table, talking to Mrs Honeyman, and Handy Simon stood on a little velvet stool with his clipboard, but he kept losing count and having to start again. Miss Bissell had gone for a lie-down with one of her stomachs. As soon as I spotted Ronnie, I reached for Elsie’s hand. Jack arrived a few minutes after we did, and Miss Ambrose clapped and coughed, and tried her best to lure people away from the television lounge.
‘We can watch the television at Cherry Tree, can’t we? No need to put ourselves through four hours on a motorway.’ She did a little laugh in the middle but no one joined in. We were told what to do if there was a fire or if anyone had a gluten allergy. I did start to ask a question about that, but Elsie put her finger against her lips, and so I decided to save it until later. Miss Ambrose told us what time the front door was locked, and how to request extra pillows, and then she handed us all an itinerary, which Jack used to clean his glasses, and I think I put mine in a plant pot for safekeeping.
‘And now we’re going on a ghost walk!’ Miss Ambrose said.
We all stared at her.
‘Ghosts are very popular in Whitby,’ she said. ‘The place is riddled with them.’
Our tour guide was called Barry. He had a bowler hat and very melodramatic arms. In fact, everything about him was melodramatic. He carried a silver-topped cane, which he held aloft as we followed him down the street. Jack copied with his walking stick, until Miss Ambrose told him off outside the Army & Navy. She was right, though. Whitby is full of ghosts. There are crinolined ladies tumbling from cliffs, several runaway coaches, and endless women running down cobbled yards with their hair on fire. We found ourselves standing on a street corner, listening to a story about a screaming cat, but my mind kept wandering. I was trying to keep one eye on Ronnie, but he would insist on moving around and I was always having to turn and check whereabouts he was. I had to ask Barry to repeat what he’d said a few times. Elsie reassured me she’d go through it later, but I said to her, what’s the point in going on a ghost walk, if you have to have it all explained to you afterwards?
When we walked on to the main street, Jack nudged me in the ribs and nodded across the road.
‘There’s your music shop,’ he said.
Barry was being very theatrical about a vampire, and we crossed over unnoticed. It wasn’t what I expected. Although we’d seen a picture on a computer screen, it seemed different in real life. It was sandwiched between a charity shop and an estate agent, and it sat there as though someone had lifted it out of the past and forgotten to put it back again. The window was filled with clarinets and trombones, and giant saxophones tilted towards the ceiling. There were polished violin bows, ready to be tightened, and a row of guitars waiting to be tuned. There were instruments I didn’t even know the name of.
‘Look at all the sheet music,’ said Jack.
There was far more than we’d been able to see in the photograph. It stretched across the window. It crept from behind the violin cases and made a lake of crotchets and quavers on the floor. Songs from the past, all waiting to be played again, and right in the middle, looking down at us from a wartime dancehall, was Al Bowlly.
‘“Midnight, the Stars and You”,’ I said. ‘Of course.’
‘There he is again.’ Jack pointed to the other side of the display. ‘Goodnight Sweetheart.’
‘My father used to sing that every evening,’ I said. ‘Goodnight sweetheart, I’ll be watching o’er you.’ Then I sang the next line: ‘Sleep will banish sorrow.’
I looked at Elsie. ‘If only that were true,’ I said.
‘Let’s go inside.’ Jack reached for the door.
‘What, now?’ I looked over at the ghost walk, which had moved a little down the pavement. Barry was pointing to a church spire, and everyone was looking up with their mouths open.
‘Won’t they miss us?’ said Elsie.
‘No time like the present,’ Jack said.
I linked my arm through his. ‘Isn’t there?’
HANDY SIMON
Handy Simon had never been big on ghosts. He couldn’t understand the point of them. His parents had been firm believers, ever since they’d gone to see a medium in the town hall one Saturday afternoon, and she told them someone called John was trying to speak to them from the other side.
‘It must be your granddad’s cousin,’ said his mother.
‘Once removed,’ said his father, and no matter how much Simon tried to reason with them, they wouldn’t be persuaded on the matter. The medium told them dead people are so keen on making contact, they insist on leaving things for you to find all over the place. Feathers, leaves, very small pebbles.
‘They make you hear noises too. Bells ring and music plays,’ his mother said, ‘and sometimes, you can even smell them.’
Simon sighed. ‘Why do they bother?’
‘It’s their way of communicating.’ His mother breathed in very deeply. She had taken to sniffing the air several times a day, just in case there was anyone around who had something to say to her.
‘Why?’ Simon asked her. ‘Why didn’t they just communicate when they were alive?’
‘It’s not that straightforward, Simon. You think you’ve got all the time in the world to speak up. It’s only when you’re dead you realise there was something you forgot to mention.’
‘Could it really be that important?’ he said.
‘To the person left behind it could,’ she said. ‘It could make all the difference in the world.’
After his mother died, his father saw an empty crisp packet in Sainsbury’s car park.
‘Cheese and onion,’ he said. ‘Your mother’s favourite.’ He pointed to the packet. ‘That’ll be Barbara, telling us to move on with our lives.’
Simon looked up at the church spire. Barry was saying something about a witch and several people were fanning themselves with their itineraries. Miss Ambrose was looking up too, and biting into her bottom lip.
‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ he said to her.
She didn’t answer, and then after a while she said, ‘I’m not entirely sure.’
He told her about the feathers and the pebbles, and the crisp packet.
‘It would be nice to think so, wouldn’t it?’ she said. ‘It would be nice to think you could affect things, even from the grave. That your roll of the dice went on for a little longer than you imagined.’
‘I suppose.’ Simon stopped looking up at the church tower. It was making him light-headed. ‘Although I don’t think I’m important enough to affect anything when I’m alive, let alone when I’m dead and buried.’
‘Are any of us, when you think about it?’ They watched a crowd emerge from one of the pubs, and the street filled with a spill of lager and shouting. ‘Most of us are just secondary characters. We take up all the space between the few people who manage to make a mark.’
‘Like who?’
‘I don’t know.’ The men disappeared into another pub doorway, and for a moment, Simon felt the warmth of a Friday-night bar. ‘Politicians? World leaders? The Pope?’
‘If we’re going to start judging ourselves by the Pope, everyone’s going to fall a bit short, aren’t they?’
‘Your dad, then,’ said Miss Ambrose. ‘Look at all the lives he saved. He’s made a difference.’
‘Except he only ever thinks about the life he let go. The one he missed.’
‘But that’s human nature.’ Miss Ambrose tightened the belt on her coat. ‘We only ever think about the differences we didn’t make, the chances we allowed to drift past, until you start asking yourself, what was the bloody point of it all in the first place?’
And Simon realised she had stopped talking to him and had begun having a conversation with herself. Barry lifted his cane and started to walk up the hill t
o a set of park gates, where he told them they would be hearing a ghost story so terrifying, no one would be able to sleep that night. He was right, as it happened, but the reason they all lost sleep would be nothing to do with the afterlife.
‘Perhaps that’s why we like to believe in spirits,’ said Miss Ambrose, as she started walking. ‘Perhaps it reassures us to think we’ll have a second chance at being somebody significant.’
‘Or at least send everyone a crisp packet to let them know we’re still thinking of them.’
Miss Ambrose turned to him. ‘What would you send?’ she said.
‘How do you mean?’
‘What would you send to make someone know absolutely without doubt it was you who was trying to speak to them?’
Handy Simon thought about it all evening. He thought about it for the rest of the ghost walk, and all the way through the drama that unfolded afterwards, and he was even thinking about it as he went to sleep that night, yet he still couldn’t come up with a single thing.
FLORENCE
We walked in, and a little bell above the door signalled our arrival. It was the only noise. For a room filled with the sound of a thousand waiting notes, it was peculiarly silent. I took a breath. The counter was polished, and all around us cabinets shone and glass sparkled, but the shop was still heavy with the scent of dust. It must have been held within the pages of the music and trapped against the frets of the violins, because it smelled as if the past had found a hiding place, safe and sheltered, where no one could be rid of it ever again.
I raised my eyebrows at Jack. ‘Bit old-fashioned, isn’t it?’ I whispered, because it seemed wrong to intrude on the quiet. It felt like a library, but the words were crochets and quavers, and the stories had all jumped ship and written themselves into songs.
We looked up at a wall of photographs, and the past gazed back at us. Black-and-white ballrooms. A hundred foxtrots, captured forever within a lens. Stages crowded with musicians, hardwood floors crowded with dancers. There were band leaders, their batons poised into a smile, and singers leaning their songs into chrome microphones.
Three Things About Elsie Page 19