Three Things About Elsie

by Joanna Cannon

  ‘I could get the Sellotape,’ said Simon.

  Miss Ambrose stared at him. ‘I meant passing away so young.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Yes. Although.’ Simon hesitated, but once he’d grown a thought, he felt it was wrong to let it go to waste. ‘There isn’t really a good age to die, is there?’

  Miss Ambrose folded her arms. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll be ready for it, when I’m old.’

  ‘But when you’re old, you probably won’t agree. You’ll probably feel just like you do now.’

  Simon wondered if he should have shared that particular thought, because he saw fear sail through Miss Ambrose’s eyes.

  ‘You might not, though,’ he said. ‘You might be completely up for it.’

  An edge of bunting escaped from its drawing pin and floated on to the windowsill.

  ‘Pin that back up,’ said Miss Ambrose. ‘I’m going for a snowball and a lie-down.’

  Simon tested the stepladder. You could never be too careful, especially on holiday. After he’d pushed it a few times for good measure, he made his way to the top and reached over for the bunting. That’s when he saw them. Sitting on one of the benches on the promenade, looking out across the sand. They were having some kind of animated discussion and every so often, Jack waved his arms about and pointed towards the North Sea.

  Simon tried to remember where he’d put his notebook.

  FLORENCE

  ‘Terrible way to die. Drowning,’ Elsie said.

  I looked at her.

  ‘I would imagine it’s terrible,’ she added. ‘Although I suppose it might be quite peaceful. Once you’ve accepted it.’

  ‘Every death is peaceful, according to the local newspaper.’ I tightened the belt on my coat. I had to listen very hard to hear Elsie’s voice, because the wind skated across the water and stole it away. ‘But I don’t see how any death can be peaceful. Although I don’t suppose you really know until you get there. It’s not as though we’ve got anyone to ask.’

  Elsie sighed. ‘Perhaps that’s just as well.’

  ‘It must have been Gabriel Price who drowned and not Ronnie. Yet I was so certain.’ My scarf was wound tight around my chin, and when I spoke, I could feel all the warm air fall back into my face. When I looked up, Elsie was staring at me. ‘We all were,’ I said.

  Jack had gone to get us a takeaway tea from one of the kiosks. I’d watched him walk across the grass. I wasn’t sure if it was the light, or if it was the visit to the fisherman’s cottage, but he’d looked smaller somehow. Not as significant. As though he was taking up so much less space in the world.

  ‘I’d quite like to go in my sleep,’ I said. ‘The woman from number sixteen died in her sleep. She did very well.’

  ‘You make it sound as though she should be awarded some kind of certificate.’

  ‘Just to close your eyes, to do what you do every night, but the next time you open them, it’s all done and dusted. I think that’s what I’d plump for.’

  ‘It’s not a travel agents, Florence. We’re not choosing a holiday.’

  We sat in silence for a while, and watched the sea. The tide had gone out, and it left behind fresh sand, smooth and unspoiled. It always amazed me to see that happen. How a wash of the ocean took away a day’s worth of footsteps and conversations, and arguments. How it made everything new again. When I was a child, I liked to walk the unmarked sand with Seth. He would bark his lopsided bark at the waves and we would make the first footprints on the beach, but then I would look behind and feel sad that I had broken it, but my father would laugh at me and say, ‘How do you think sand is made in the first place?’ I wondered if Seth’s footprints were still there, somewhere underneath all those days of other people.

  The bench was cold and hard, and unkind to old bones. The wind was getting up too, and the waves made knots of white, flickering in the distance as we watched. Below us, a woman walked along the beach with her dog. I tried to think what breed it might be. It was one of those excitable, energetic dogs that crash through the waves with no fear, chasing sticks and finding joy in the unlikeliest of places.

  ‘Try to think, Florence,’ Elsie said. ‘What kind of dog is it?’

  I followed the marks they made in the sand.

  ‘It’s not a Labrador,’ I said. ‘Or a Dalmatian. I can tell you all the things it’s not. I just can’t decide exactly what it is. Perhaps we could do that and just see what’s left?’

  ‘It’s a Border collie, Florence. Do you think you can remember that?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘You know, the only problem with dying in your sleep is that you die alone.’

  ‘You’re never alone, Florence,’ she said. ‘Just because you can’t see someone, doesn’t mean they’re not there with you.’

  I looked at her, but Elsie’s gaze rested on the sea.

  ‘Milk, no sugar.’ Jack handed me a cardboard cup. It had a little corrugated waistband and a lid.

  ‘Put your hands around it, keep yourself warm.’ Jack sat at the end of the bench. This seat wasn’t dedicated to anyone. I checked before we chose it. Perhaps they made sure there were spares, in case they thought of someone who needed remembering right at the last moment.

  I wrapped my fingers around the cardboard. ‘It’s strange Mrs Honeyman didn’t say anything. About someone turning up with her husband’s name.’

  ‘Mrs Honeyman slept through most things,’ Jack said. ‘And when she wasn’t sleeping, she was in a little world of her own.’

  Elsie said, ‘Best place to be, if you ask me,’ and sniffed away the cold air.

  ‘And I don’t suppose she’d think anything of it.’ Jack swallowed a mouthful of tea. ‘Someone turns up with a name your husband used occasionally. A husband who disappeared sixty years ago. In a different place and a different time.’

  ‘Who looked nothing like him,’ I said.

  The woman and her dog were far in the distance now. Little specks of people, like biscuit crumbs near the pier. I thought I could still spot her, but I might have been wrong.

  Jack rested his tea on the arm of the seat. ‘What are you thinking about, Florence?’

  ‘Do you think,’ I said, ‘we could go for a walk on the beach?’

  Sand is surprisingly difficult to walk on. You wouldn’t think so, would you? From a distance, it looks like it would be a piece of cake, but once you’re there, your legs become heavy and tired so much more quickly and it doesn’t take many minutes before each step feels like an enormous achievement.

  Jack didn’t last very long before he found a rock to lean on.

  ‘I think I’ll stay here for a bit.’ He waved his stick about. ‘You carry on, if you want to.’

  I was a little ahead of Elsie. I made slow, deliberate footprints, and every few minutes, I looked behind me and checked on them, and made sure she was still following.

  ‘Whatever are you doing?’ she shouted, but the sea stole her words again and carried them away. As I walked, I watched the waves. The tide had changed and it pulled at the beach, as if the water was trying to persuade the sand to go along with something. Each time a little closer, a little more successful. It must be an instinct that makes us always stare at the ocean. Perhaps because we realise how important it is, and so we need to keep an eye on it to make sure it hasn’t left.

  I stopped to look at my footprints again, and Elsie caught up.

  ‘Aren’t you tired?’ she said, but I said, no, no, I’m fine. I want to keep walking, I told her. To make more footprints.

  She asked why, but I carried on further up the beach, and she shouted, ‘Why do you keep marching off, Flo? What’s got into you?’

  If we’d stopped to think when we were younger, that one day we would be back here, stooped and grey, if we’d given a moment to think how we would struggle against the wind to stay upright, and how our feet would feel afraid and uncertain; perhaps, then, we would have taken a little more time over things. We would have enjoyed the soft, easy da
ys of childhood a little more. Arms and legs full of confidence and energy. Minds free from hesitation. Perhaps we would have danced through our youth a little more slowly.

  It was cold on the sand, much more so than on the cliff-top, and I fastened the top button of my coat. Elsie saw me do it. ‘It’s freezing, Florence,’ she called out. ‘We need to go back.’

  ‘You should have worn your scarf,’ I shouted back. ‘The one Gwen knitted for you. The red one.’

  I slowed down.

  I could feel a memory making a path from the back of my mind, trying to find its way. I wasn’t even sure what it was at first, but I knew it was important. It was like waking in the morning knowing a terrible thing happened the day before, but at first, you can’t quite reach the thought and work out what it is. I knew it would only be a moment before it arrived. Before everything was changed.

  When it did, I realised I had stopped walking and I was staring at the sand. I turned to look at Elsie; we were both still. Just the breeze, catching the edge of a coat, a strand of hair.

  She moved towards me.

  I said nothing. I pushed my hands into my pockets and looked for clues on her face, because when the memory appeared, it brought all the others along with it.

  ‘It was you,’ I said.

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘It was you,’ I said again. ‘You were in the car with Ronnie that night. The red. The red that Mabel saw. It was your scarf.’

  ‘Yes, it was my scarf,’ she said.

  The air was cruel and salted. It made my eyes and my lips smart. It buried itself into my skin, and filled my mouth with the taste of nothing else.

  ‘Why didn’t you admit it? Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘We said everything we had to say back then. We talked about nothing else for days.’

  ‘Did we? I don’t remember. I don’t remember any of this.’

  ‘You’ve just forgotten, Florence, that’s all.’

  ‘Remind me, then. Help me to remember, like you always do.’

  She hesitated and her face searched for an explanation.

  ‘My mother,’ she said eventually. ‘Ronnie threatened to report her. Don’t you remember?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘He said he’d shop her to the authorities if anyone went to the police. Get her sent to an asylum if we ever whispered a word about how Beryl died. We decided, the two of us,’ she said. ‘No one could help Beryl any more, so we protected my mother instead. She wouldn’t have lasted a minute locked away. It would have ended her.’

  I looked at her across the sand, trying to find the words I needed. ‘He wouldn’t have been able to do that. How could Ronnie have got your mother committed?’

  ‘Florence, everyone knew she’d lost her mind. Everyone. But people turned a blind eye. If Ronnie reported her for the assault, and made it official, they would have had to do something. The people at the hospital were suspicious enough already with the injuries he had.’

  ‘But you let him get away with it,’ I said. ‘He should have been punished.’

  ‘Our word against his, you mean? You know what kind of places asylums were then. Filled with stink and misery. It was the right decision. It kept her with us, it kept her safe.’

  ‘How could you watch your own sister killed and keep quiet about it? How could you?’

  ‘I couldn’t lose them both,’ she shouted. ‘If I’d opened my mouth, I would have sacrificed my mother as well.’

  We stood in silence, and the wind disappeared across the water, leaving us in a pocket of quiet.

  ‘I need you to find a forgiveness,’ she said. ‘And when you do, I need you to hold on to it, no matter what happens.’

  ‘I can’t remember any of this. Why do I always need you to remind me who I was?’

  She started to answer, but the words disappeared back into her throat. Instead, she said, ‘What do you remember?’

  ‘I remember being at the dance,’ I said. ‘I remember the music, but we stopped listening to it.’

  ‘Why? Why did we stop?’

  I tried to find my way back. ‘Because we were watching Beryl and Ronnie. They were arguing in the car park, and we were trying to listen through the glass.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She stormed off. Beryl. Didn’t she? Off into the night.’

  She nodded.

  I turned to Elsie. ‘And I decided to go after her.’

  ‘I tried to stop you. I said it wasn’t your place to go.’

  ‘We were in the cloakroom. You said I’d freeze to death out there, but I wrapped myself up and I told you I’d be fine.’

  ‘You did.’ Elsie’s voice was a whisper, and it slipped into the sound of the sea and disappeared.

  ‘I can’t remember any more,’ I said. ‘You must have got into his car whilst I was out looking for her. You must have been the one who hammered on the car window and persuaded Ronnie to let you inside, thinking you’d find Beryl more quickly if you got Ronnie to take you.’

  Elsie creased her eyes against the salt and the wind.

  ‘He would have had a drink, wouldn’t he?’ I said. ‘Careless, angry. Fast. Casual hands resting too lightly on the wheel. Eyes on the argument instead of the road. You would have said, “Watch what you’re doing, you’ll get us both killed,” but he’d have been too busy spitting out hate to take any notice. When you looked up and saw Beryl standing in the road, you’d have reached for the steering wheel. I know you’d have tried to swerve the car, because Ronnie hadn’t even seen her. I know you tried to save her, Elsie. I know you did.’

  The words made me shake and I didn’t really know why.

  ‘The noise,’ I said. ‘It was the noise you couldn’t forget. I remember you telling me.’

  ‘You do?’ she said.

  ‘Afterwards,’ I said. ‘All of us in your kitchen. You, me and Ronnie, building the story between us, piece by piece. We were at the table, trying to work out what to do.’ I looked at her. ‘The scarf was there too, sitting in the middle. I could see where Gwen had dropped a stitch and rescued it again. Row after row of flawless work. You could only spot the mistakes if you knew where to look, but once you knew, it felt as though you would never be able to see anything else.’

  ‘You don’t have to remember, Florence. Some things are better left still.’

  ‘Oh, but I do.’ The memories were tumbling around, and I tried to catch them, before they all disappeared again. ‘You told me Ronnie stopped the car further up the road, he ran back to where Beryl lay on the verge. You stayed in the car. You couldn’t face it. It was fine, though, to stay in the car. It doesn’t make you any less of a person, does it?’

  ‘No, Florence. No it doesn’t,’ Elsie said.

  ‘The road was straight and measured. When you looked back, Ronnie was in the distance, caught in a smear of light from a winter moon. She’s gone. She’s definitely gone. That’s what Ronnie said, when he got back in the car. You would have found a phone box, otherwise. You would never have let her down if there was still a chance. You would have called an ambulance. The police.’

  ‘Ronnie never would have allowed that,’ Elsie said.

  ‘And when Ronnie got back to the car, the lights of another vehicle stopped in the distance. Beryl had been found, and you both watched from the back window as someone crouched by the side of the road.

  ‘And Ronnie took off the handbrake and moved away. He didn’t switch on the engine. He didn’t turn on the lights.

  ‘I knew then,’ I said. ‘I knew he had no intention of telling anyone. No matter what we did.’

  ‘You fought him, Florence. You put up a good fight.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Elsie watched me across the sand. ‘Because I can still see the battle on your face,’ she said.

  ‘It wasn’t too late. Even then, when we sat in your kitchen, we could have told the police. Explained to them. They would have understood it was the shock. No one did anything because of
the shock.’

  ‘And that’s when Ronnie threatened us. He said he’d make sure my mother was locked away forever.’ Elsie turned away and watched the ocean. ‘I remember looking at the ceiling when he said it. My mother was fixated on the idea that people were listening to her through the walls, that there were microphones and cameras hidden all around the house, and she had pulled away at the plaster with her bare hands to try and prove it to us. Do you remember?’

  I nodded.

  ‘How easy it would have been to let her go and be free again. How very simple it would have been to walk through the door Ronnie had just opened. It was so obvious, so easy, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  We looked at each other, and I knew it was exactly the same way we’d looked at each other before, sixty years earlier. As if the person you thought you were had fallen away right in front of your eyes. We’d agreed then, never to talk of it. To tissue-paper it away in the past and never take it out. Yet here they were, exactly the same words, waiting in the air for sixty years, waiting for the chance to be spoken again.

  The sun had fallen towards the horizon as we talked, and the day disappeared from the sky, and was out of reach. The light was so frail, so weak, I could barely see Elsie’s face as I spoke.

  ‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t your fault. You did what you thought was right.’

  ‘You forgive me?’ she said.

  ‘Of course I do. I will always forgive you.’

  She reached out her hand, and I reached back, and it felt as though we’d been carrying around a piece of the past for all this time, and we’d finally found a place to put it.

  ‘I just wish I could find the rest of the memories,’ I said. ‘It still feels as though things are missing.’

  ‘If you ever do …’ Elsie hesitated. ‘Just remember you forgave me.’ Her voice knitted into the wind. ‘Remember you said I wasn’t to blame.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She waited before she spoke, and when she finally did, I could barely hear her. ‘If you ever open a drawer, Florence. If you ever open a drawer and find something there you weren’t expecting, just remember there is so very much more to us than the worst thing we have ever done. Remember that, Florence. Please remember, even when I’m not here to remind you.’