Three Things About Elsie

by Joanna Cannon

  Simon’s offer, along with his shabby rucksack and his cheese and onion crisps, somehow made things worse, and Miss Ambrose felt her eyes begin to fill.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Simon.’ She took a tissue out of the packet. ‘But I don’t see how it would help.’

  ‘Are you all right, Miss Ambrose?’

  ‘It’s the sea air. All the salt,’ she said, blowing her nose. ‘It gets me every time.’

  Simon offered his arm, and they walked together up the twist of white steps to the crescent and back to the hotel. Past the unfamiliar faces and the crowds of families, all present and unmissing, and slotted neatly into their lives.

  FLORENCE

  ‘It’s that one. Right on the end.’ Jack pointed, with his finger this time, because the taxi couldn’t cope with his walking stick. ‘The one with a cat in the window.’

  We’d crawled our way along Church Street. It was a tangle of vehicles and tourists. The traffic came to a standstill outside holiday cottages, where visitors loaded and unloaded their lives and wandered into the road as if they had been gifted with some strange kind of holiday immortality, weaving around cars and annoying the seagulls. People stretched out their afternoons on the wooden benches outside pubs, and spent ice-cream hours sitting on walls, watching the boats, because being away from home means you can let go of the clock. You can eat when you’re hungry. You can sit because your legs are holiday-tired. You can stare at the view, because there isn’t anybody to tell you there are other things to do.

  We’d usually stretch out our afternoons as well, but it felt like less of a holiday and more of a game, and I had this funny feeling we were on our last roll of the dice. All through the taxi ride, I could hear Jack breathing through his mouth and Elsie talking to herself. When we finally pulled up outside the address I’m sure the taxi driver felt as relieved as we did.

  The house was flat and silent. I could have sworn there was no one at home. It’s odd how you know a house is empty, just by looking at the outside. If there are people in there, it seems to warm a building up. All the laughter and the conversation seems to leak into the bricks. I was wrong, though, because the noise of Jack’s walking stick on the front door had only just stopped ringing in my ears, when there was movement behind the bubbled glass, and the sound of someone turning a key.

  ‘Local history?’ The woman was so wrinkled, it looked as if her face was trying to fold itself up and disappear. ‘Who exactly are you trying to trace?’

  She only opened the door a fraction. I would have been the same, mind you. Three strangers standing on your front step with the most unlikely reason for being there.

  Jack explained to her. ‘We’d be so grateful for anything you can tell us,’ he said.

  I could see Jack’s charm finding its way into the house. It was a gentle charm. A harmless one. You could imagine what he had been like as a young man. A boy whose eyes creased when he smiled, with slightly stooped shoulders and a good heart. A boy who wasn’t as symmetrical, as obvious, as the others, but a boy who women would remember in years to come, when their lives became ironed out with middle age. A boy they’d wish they had given a chance to.

  ‘Francis sent us,’ I said. ‘He has very blue eyes.’

  The woman’s grip on the door relaxed just a little bit.

  ‘I suppose you’d better come in, then,’ she said. ‘But don’t be thinking you can con me out of anything. I might be old, but I’m not an idiot.’

  Jack smiled. ‘I wouldn’t, dear lady, imagine that for one second.’

  And for the first time, she smiled back. ‘You can call me Agnes,’ she said.

  The cat was still on the windowsill. It watched us with pencil-point eyes, as we shuffled ourselves around the lounge. It was a fisherman’s cottage and the room was very small. Perhaps because people had smaller lives in those days, and they filled their space up with thoughts and conversation, rather than with sideboards and coffee tables. Agnes didn’t offer us a drink. She told us that in exactly fifteen minutes, her television programme was starting and she had absolutely no intention of missing it, even if the Queen of England happened to knock on the door. She sat in a dining chair, and refused to be swapped, even when Jack stood up and made a big fuss of pointing out the settee.

  ‘So, who is this man you’re trying to trace?’

  We told her what we knew. We left Ronnie out, because he always complicated everything, and there didn’t seem a reason to bring him into it. I did think about it at one stage, but Elsie shot me a look from the other side of the room and it made me change my mind.

  ‘And why are you so keen to find him?’ As Agnes spoke, the cat leaped from the windowsill and landed on her lap. They’re so clever, cats. They always seem to know exactly where they want to go, and the easiest way to get there.

  ‘Well?’ said Agnes.

  Even Jack’s charm was thrown. ‘We just wanted a chat with him.’ The words stumbled out of his mouth. ‘There’s something we think he could help us with.’

  ‘Is it about money?’

  ‘Oh, gracious no. Nothing like that,’ he said.

  ‘Because if it is, I want no part in it.’

  I couldn’t say for definite, but I thought I heard the cat hiss at the back of its throat.

  ‘I can assure you it’s nothing to do with money.’ Jack cleared his throat. ‘It’s more of a personal matter.’

  ‘Because there are plenty of people who’d want a word with Gabriel Honeyman about money,’ said Agnes.

  ‘So you knew him?’ I said.

  ‘You couldn’t live in Whitby in those days and not know him. Especially around the racetracks.’

  ‘He was a gambler?’ said Jack.

  ‘The biggest gambler I’ve ever known.’ Agnes stroked the cat’s head, and it started to knead its claws into her skirt. ‘All the money he made playing that piano, he threw at the horses.’

  ‘So he was poor?’ I leaned forward. I was in the kind of armchair that seemed to have straw for stuffing, and it felt a bit like sitting on an upholstered hay bale.

  ‘Perhaps he made a killing and no one knew,’ said Jack.

  ‘Win big, lose big. Although whenever Gabriel did win, he’d give it away. He gave money to people he didn’t even know, just because they told him some sob story. He’d write all his money-making schemes down on the back of his sheet music. He was famous for it. There were more ideas on there than words to the song. I heard tell one of his investments finally paid up recently. Just a pity he’s not around to reap the benefits.’

  Jack looked over at us. ‘The music shop,’ he said. ‘That’s why Ronnie was so interested. He wanted to check Gabriel hadn’t written anything useful on the back of one of his songs.’

  I could tell Agnes was taking all this in. She followed the conversation, back and forth, but she didn’t comment. ‘He was always giving money to strangers and their hare-brained schemes,’ she said. ‘They won him over so easily. He was one of those people who seemed to walk around advertising what a soft touch they were.’

  ‘He saw the long second.’

  Agnes just frowned at me. ‘He was a mug,’ she said, ‘but you couldn’t help but like him.’

  I was right about Gabriel’s eyes being kind, and I spent a good few minutes looking quite smug about it.

  ‘Did he have any brothers?’ said Jack. ‘Cousins?’

  Agnes looked up from the cat. ‘Not that I know of. Why?’

  ‘It’s just …’ Jack hesitated. He looked across at Elsie and me, and we nodded him on. ‘There’s a Mrs Honeyman. Somewhere.’ He picked out his words slowly. ‘A little bit younger. And we can’t quite work out how they’re related.’

  Agnes kissed the top of the cat’s head. She lifted him up and put him on the floor before she answered.

  ‘That’ll just be his wife,’ she said.

  MISS AMBROSE

  ‘Do you ever hear voices?’

  Anthea Ambrose put down her magazine. She hadn’t
really been reading it, just glancing at the fashion pictures and trying to distract herself. It had worked, because for the last five minutes, she’d found herself seriously considering a jumpsuit.

  ‘Do I ever what?’ she said.

  ‘Hear voices. You know. Inside your head.’

  They had been sitting together in silence for the past hour. The last time she’d glanced up, Handy Simon was studying the ceiling, but there was clearly more going on in the far corner of the residents’ lounge than she had first imagined.

  ‘Are you trying to tell me something, Simon?’

  ‘Oh, no. Not me. I don’t hear anything.’ He did a little sigh. ‘Well, apart from my own voice. But your own voice doesn’t count, does it?’

  ‘I don’t suppose so. Although I think it would depend very largely on what you happen to be saying to yourself.’

  ‘I was thinking of Gypsy Rosa,’ he said. ‘Hearing the spirits.’

  ‘If she actually does.’

  ‘She reckoned she could hear my mam. Said she was talking about a dog barking.’

  ‘Did you have a dog?’ Miss Ambrose thought about using a head-tilt, but Simon didn’t seem upset, just slightly confused. Although, to be fair, Simon’s natural expression always looked more than a little bewildered.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘They always brought out her chest.’

  ‘Well there you are then. The fortune teller is probably inventing things, just to get your fifteen pounds.’ Miss Ambrose cleared her throat. ‘Or whatever she charges.’

  She reached for her magazine again, but left it just a moment too late.

  ‘Imagine if you did, though. Hear voices, I mean, or see dead people. I wonder what would happen?’

  ‘They’d put you on a section and prescribe anti-psychotics, I would imagine.’

  ‘Joan of Arc saw visions of angels,’ Simon said. He was on a roll now, she could tell. ‘They told her to drive the English out of France.’

  ‘Now there’s a surprise.’

  ‘If that happened today, I wonder if they’d give her diazepam and schedule an outpatient’s appointment?’

  ‘Religious visions are different though, aren’t they? History is filled with people who saw God and angels, and whatnot. They weren’t psychotic, they were just devout.’

  ‘What’s the difference, though?’ Handy Simon shifted his gaze from the ceiling and looked straight at her. ‘When does somebody stop being religious or psychic, and start being mentally ill?’

  ‘Simon, you ask the strangest questions. I have absolutely no idea.’ Miss Ambrose picked up her magazine, but she didn’t read it. Instead, she stared out of the window and tried to find an opinion for herself.

  FLORENCE

  ‘He had a wife?’ Jack’s voice was a bit louder, and this time I really did hear the cat hiss.

  ‘Only briefly,’ said Agnes. ‘And only by necessity. He got her in the family way before they were wed, by all accounts. The whole marriage was kept under wraps. Those days were very different.’

  ‘We’re not that much younger than you,’ Jack said.

  ‘When you get older, the years become heavier, though, don’t you think?’ The cat prowled and twisted its tail around her ankles. ‘Some decades weigh more than others.’

  Jack thought for a moment and then agreed with her.

  ‘She was a bit of a one, his wife. Liked a drink. Liked a party.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like Mrs Honeyman,’ I said.

  ‘It doesn’t sound like any of us,’ said Elsie. ‘Although it must have been some of us. At one point.’

  ‘Miss Ambrose told us Mrs Honeyman didn’t have any family,’ I said. ‘Don’t you remember?’

  I was quite proud of myself, and when I looked over at Elsie, her eyebrows were filled with surprise.

  ‘Our Mrs Honeyman doesn’t have any children,’ Jack explained, ‘so it can’t be her.’

  ‘In the end, Gabriel’s wife didn’t either. She lost it. Fell on the abbey steps.’ Agnes watched the street through lace curtains. ‘Dreadful business. They had a little memorial service at Saltwick Bay. Very unusual in those days. They normally wrapped the baby in brown paper and took it away. I don’t think she ever recovered. In her mind, you know?’

  Mrs Honeyman. The woman from number four. Round face. Never speaks. Not very good with stairs. For a few minutes, none of us spoke.

  ‘So what happened to Gabriel?’ said Jack.

  Agnes sat back and her gaze returned to the window. ‘Vanished,’ she said. ‘Not long after they were married. She lost the baby, and he just disappeared on one of his tours. Never came back.’

  ‘What happened?’ said Elsie.

  ‘Did he never come back?’ I thought of the man with the gentle eyes. ‘No one ever heard from him again?’

  ‘He never came back,’ she said. ‘People thought he must have had a big win on the horses, or met another girl in another town.’

  ‘And what do you think?’ said Jack.

  ‘Gabriel Honeyman might have been a fool and a gambler, but he wasn’t a bad man. He may have disappeared, but I don’t for one second think he had any choice in the matter.’

  The room waited for us in silence, but no one spoke. The only sound was the cat, washing at its paws. I looked at Jack, but he didn’t look back.

  ‘What did the police say?’ I was getting quite good at ignoring silences, but I couldn’t stand this one.

  ‘That he was a grown man,’ said Agnes. ‘That it was his decision.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Jack said, but his wondering didn’t find itself any words.

  Agnes looked at each of us in turn. ‘Is there some other part of the puzzle I’ve yet to hear?’

  ‘Nothing we can prove. Some things sit so far back in time, it’s impossible to see them clearly any more.’ Jack picked up his cap and his walking stick. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of a Ronnie Butler?’

  Agnes said the name back and shook her head. ‘No. I can’t say as I have.’

  ‘Just a shot in the dark.’ Jack moved towards the door, although the room was so small, he didn’t really have to move very far. ‘We’d probably better leave you in peace to your television programme.’

  I stood up as well, but I must have done it a bit too quickly because I felt the room sway to one side, and all the blood rush from my head. I reached out for the back of a chair.

  ‘Are you all right, Florence?’ said Jack.

  ‘Sit down again,’ Agnes said. ‘Before you fall.’

  I said that I was fine, absolutely fine. I let go of the chair, but I knew I was as pale as paper, even without looking at myself. ‘I just stood too quickly,’ I said. ‘And I can’t stop thinking about Mrs Honeyman losing her baby. I can’t imagine anything more awful.’

  Agnes shook her head. ‘I don’t think there can be,’ she said. ‘My Frankie went missing when he was little, and it was the worst few hours of my life. Thank God someone kept him safe until I found him again.’

  I looked back at the room. The photographs on the mantelpiece. Weddings, grandchildren, holidays. All those moments of happiness, held behind glass, like treasure. Elsie seemed to know I was looking because she turned back when she got to the door. And we smiled at each other, over the ticking of a mantelpiece clock.

  HANDY SIMON

  ‘I’m not sure this is a good idea.’ Handy Simon looked through the box of cassettes. They were all people he’d never heard of. Sing-Along-a-Wartime, one of them said. Twenty Songs That Made Britain Great. ‘It feels too much like a celebration.’

  ‘It’s not a celebration.’ Anthea Ambrose was up a stepladder with a string of bunting. ‘It’s called carrying on as normal. Old people like routine. It makes them feel safe.’ She wobbled on the ladder and held on to a pelmet for support. ‘I did it. On a course.’

  Handy Simon didn’t say anything, because he was certain he’d ended up in Miss Ambrose’s notebook over the Joan of Arc conversation, but he wasn’t entirely sure what nor
mal was any more. He didn’t think it would ever be possible to feel homesick for Cherry Tree, but he felt as though he actually wanted to be back there in the staff room with his Pot Noodle, and not a glimpse of a seagull in sight.

  ‘Does Miss Bissell think it’s a good idea?’ said Simon.

  Miss Ambrose drove a drawing pin very violently into the wallpaper. ‘The hotel always has a dance on a Saturday night, so we might as well make the most of it. Who knows, Simon, you might actually enjoy yourself.’

  It was something his mother always used to say to him when he was younger. ‘Who knows, Simon, you might like it if you give it a try.’ He didn’t, usually. Like it. He’d tried lots of things. Spanish guitar. Judo. Chess. Once, he spent a whole afternoon trying to get on a horse, but the horse was having none of it. His father suggested rugby, but just being in the changing room made him clammy. ‘Bell-ringing?’ said his mother, but Simon just shook his head. Nothing he had a go at seemed to fit. Life sometimes felt like trying on the entire contents of a shoe shop, but all of them pinched your toes.

  ‘Perhaps I’m just not good at anything,’ he said to his mother. ‘Perhaps I’m not a hobby person.’

  ‘Nonsense. Everyone is good at something. You just haven’t found yourself yet.’

  She died whilst he was still searching.

  Simon put the cassette back.

  ‘Unless …’ He sniffed the air and did a little finger wave at the ceiling.

  ‘Did you say something, Simon?’ Miss Ambrose looked down from her stepladder. ‘Only if you didn’t, make yourself useful and pass me the end of that Union Jack.’

  The room looked quite pleasant when it was finished. Someone had pushed all the furniture back to make a dance floor, and there was a drinks table set up at the far end. Miss Ambrose’s bunting stretched all the way around the room, except for a small gap in the corner due to an oversize painting of the Princess of Wales. Simon and Miss Ambrose both stood with their hands on their hips, admiring their efforts.

  ‘Shame about Diana.’ Miss Ambrose looked over at the corner.