Three Things About Elsie

by Joanna Cannon

  ‘But I should tell someone. I should tell the police. I’m a bad person. I’m flawed. Damaged.’

  ‘Of course you are.’

  I looked at him.

  ‘We all are. Every one of us is damaged. We need the faults, the breaks, the fracture lines.’

  ‘We do?’ I said.

  ‘Of course we do. However else would all the light get in?’

  I could see Elsie smiling at us.

  ‘You can’t define yourself by a single moment.’ Jack held my hand very tightly. I could feel him shaking. ‘That moment doesn’t make you who you are.’

  ‘Then what does?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, Florence. Everything else,’ he said. ‘Everything else.’

  MISS AMBROSE

  Anthea Ambrose sat in the Japanese Garden, staring at her fingernails. They’d been much longer before her weekend in Whitby. Miss Ambrose had always imagined she’d have a job where there would be room for nice fingernails, where she would write with a fountain pen, instead of a crushed Biro. Where she would have an office made entirely of glass and chrome, and where she’d keep a spare pair of heels in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. The interview she’d missed was for a job like that. Perhaps she should call them. Perhaps they might have another vacancy right now.

  ‘Vacancy for what?’ said Jack.

  She hadn’t realised Jack was standing right in front of her, and she hadn’t realised the words had come out.

  ‘A job,’ she said. ‘I missed an interview a few years ago, because of an incident here, and I was just thinking it might not be too late to try again.’

  He sat on the bench next to her. ‘Do you want to try again? Perhaps you missed it for a reason.’

  ‘Do you really believe in all that fate nonsense?’

  ‘I believe in long seconds,’ he said. ‘Perhaps whoever stopped you from going to that interview was just helping you to write your story.’

  Her confusion seemed to amuse him. ‘It’s something Florence believes in,’ he said. ‘A long second is when the clock hesitates, just for a moment. Just long enough to give you the extra time you need to make the right decision.’

  ‘Have you seen these long seconds?’ she said.

  Jack sat back in the seat. His coat was worn at the sleeves and she could see a thread on one of the buttons. She must speak to Chris. Sort him out a new one. Old people didn’t always realise they needed these things. She’d done it. On a course.

  ‘There was a long second,’ he said. ‘During the war. I watched a soldier once, leaving the battlefield. Older man who’d reached the end of his tether. He turned and started walking, and he just didn’t stop.’

  ‘He was a deserter?’

  ‘There was a lot of it. More than people think. Men suffocated by fear. It’s hard to imagine terror like that, unless you’ve lived alongside it.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I followed. Ran until I caught up with him.’

  ‘Did you report him?’

  ‘No,’ said Jack. ‘I talked to him instead. He was terrified. The exhaustion and the lack of food, weather beating down on you. Killing everywhere. You couldn’t find a place to look where there wasn’t death in your eye-line. He missed his children. He called them his piano keyboard, although I’ve no idea why.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I persuaded him to return. You wouldn’t think I’d have managed it, a young whipper-snapper like me, but eventually we both walked back together, and neither of us ever said another word about it.’

  Miss Ambrose shook her head. ‘You were lucky to make it home,’ she said.

  ‘I nearly didn’t. There was one night …’

  He hesitated and Miss Ambrose looked away to build him an escape route, but after a moment, he carried on.

  ‘… one night, we’d been under fire for hours. We didn’t think it would ever end. It was the noise, more than anything. There was no space. No silence. We thought we could just stay put. Sit it out. But then we had instructions to move.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We had to do it, of course. No choice. But it was the landmines, the place was rife with them. Imagine walking across a field, not knowing if the next step you took would be your last, and all you can hear is the sound of your own breath and the shells rattling down on you. We were almost at the other side, nearly made it, when the chap to my left pushed me to one side. He must have seen it coming.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It got him,’ Jack said. ‘Blew him to pieces. He just vanished, Miss Ambrose. He just disappeared right there in front of me. It was as though he’d never existed.’

  Neither of them spoke. Miss Ambrose watched a robin feeding on the bird table. Soft brown feathers with a brush of red. Eyes like coal. She wasn’t even sure how long she watched it for, and afterwards, when she thought back, she wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t just imagined it.

  ‘That must have been your long second, then?’ she said eventually.

  Jack shook his head. ‘Oh no, it was when I persuaded the deserter to come back.’

  ‘Surely not? Surely the long second would be the man who saved your life?’

  Jack smiled. ‘And who do you think that was?’ he said.

  Miss Ambrose felt her throat tighten.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘This is the best place to do your remembering, when you need to.’

  ‘The Japanese Garden? I thought no one ever bothered with it?’

  ‘Oh, you’d be surprised. Mrs Honeyman used to visit all the time, and Florence loves it in here. She likes watching the birds, and walking backwards and forwards across that fancy little bridge. You did a fine job, Miss Ambrose.’

  Miss Ambrose’s throat tightened a little more. ‘Jack?’ she said.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘What time is it?’

  He patted her arm. ‘Time I was gone.’ He smiled, and you couldn’t help but smile back, even though his smile was soft and unsure, and it trembled at the edges.

  She watched him shuffle down the path, tapping his walking stick at the gravel, in a coat worn at the sleeves. Although perhaps she wouldn’t have a word with Chris after all. On second thoughts, perhaps Jack was completely fine just as he was.

  FLORENCE

  We sat in the day room, in front of a television programme. I said I’d stay, as long as it wasn’t anything to do with cookery, and so they found me something to watch where people were trying to push little counters over an edge and win money. My gaze wandered all over the room, although it wasn’t as bad as when it sits in the middle distance doing nothing.

  ‘Isn’t it exciting?’ Elsie pointed. ‘The postwoman from Leighton Buzzard is on the verge of winning a hundred and fifty pounds.’

  ‘I’m not really interested,’ I said.

  Jack reached down the side of the settee, and pulled out a carrier bag. ‘In that case, I have just the thing to cheer us all up.’

  I glanced over. ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘Miss Ambrose bought them for me from the jumble sale in Whitby. Don’t say I never keep my promises. Now, which one shall we watch?’

  It was a stack of Harry Potter DVDs. The covers were shiny and filled with swirls and swords, and a boy in glasses who grew older with each progressive image.

  ‘I think we should perhaps see them in order.’ I began sorting through, trying to guess the boy’s age on each one.

  ‘That’s so typical of you,’ Elsie said. ‘Life always has to have rules.’

  Jack picked up the one on the top of the pile. ‘I think there comes an age,’ he said, ‘when you have to worry less about following the rules, and more about living in the moment.’

  And so we found Handy Simon, who put a disc in the little slot and sorted out the television, and we all watched the film together. Even Simon, who leaned against the wall for a while, before giving in to himself and sitting on one of the armchairs. Even Miss Ambrose came out of her office. She didn
’t tell Simon off, but sat alongside him instead and opened a box of Terry’s All Gold. We escaped from the day room and from Cherry Tree, and into a world of wizards and broomsticks, and ordinary people who were not ordinary, but who were people who turned out, in the end, to be quite extraordinary after all. Because sometimes you need to run away. You need to believe in something without looking for proof. You need to enjoy a thing without finding a need to measure its value. You need to run away from a familiar life, into something quite unfamiliar. Even if you are so old, the only running away you will ever do again is in your mind.

  I watched the film from the corner of the room. My eyes following the story, and my mouth following the words. I could remember a time when our whole lives felt like that. Unread chapters. Waiting stories. I didn’t want the film to end. I wanted it to keep on running, because I knew as soon as the credits began to roll, all my thoughts would return to Ronnie, and if I could just hold us all in this room forever, we could unremember everything that lay waiting for us on the other side of the door.

  They found Jack the following morning. I was with Elsie when they told me. Simon said he looked really quite peaceful, and Miss Ambrose said dying in your sleep was the very best way to go.

  ‘But I never got a chance to say cheerio.’ I sat in Miss Ambrose’s office with a glass of water. ‘He never said goodbye.’

  Although when I thought about it, perhaps he had. I just didn’t manage to hear it.

  I looked for Jack over the next few days. I listened for the tap of his walking stick and the sound of his voice, interfering in other people’s conversations. It felt as though there had been a terrible mistake and someone would come running up to me and say it hadn’t really happened and it was all just a false alarm. The world seemed so incomplete without him there. So unlikely. I think the hardest part of losing anyone is that you still have to live with the same scenery. It’s just that the person you are used to isn’t a part of it any more, and all you notice are the gaps where they used to be. It feels as though, if you concentrated hard enough, you could find them again in those empty spaces. Waiting for you.

  I thought the funeral might help us accept Jack had gone, but it all passed by in a moment. Elsie and I sat right at the back, because Elsie was worried I might need some fresh air. Miss Ambrose and Miss Bissell took it in turns to look over their shoulders at us, and when Chris left the church, he stopped and squeezed my arm.

  We stood at the graveside afterwards, Elsie and me. The minibus waited in the car park, and for once, Miss Ambrose didn’t try and hurry us along.

  I could smell the earth, resting against the October air, and the rain, gathered into pools on the plastic. It was the kind of cemetery where everything was tidy and careful. All the flowers were in vases and the edge of the grass was clipped. Even the dead waited in neat lines, as if even the afterlife required you to form some kind of orderly queue and take your turn.

  After a while of silence, we walked along the path towards the car park, past rows of unremembered people, carved into stone and left behind.

  ‘Do you believe in life after death?’ I said.

  Elsie answered without even looking at me. ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ‘How can you be so certain?’

  She smiled. ‘Doesn’t it make so much more sense, Florence?’

  At least Ronnie had the decency not to show his face. We didn’t see him on the morning of the funeral, or even at the tea Gloria put on in the residents’ lounge afterwards. I didn’t have much of an appetite, and I stood in the corner for most of it, watching people move through the space where Jack used to be.

  ‘Are you sure we can’t tempt you?’ said Miss Ambrose. ‘A small plate of something?’

  I shook my head. ‘I think I might go back to the flat,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll just go and find Elsie.’

  Miss Ambrose took my hand. ‘Stay here for a while longer,’ she said. ‘Just until I’m sure you’ll be all right.’

  After everyone had eaten, they drifted into the day room and sat around a television, searching each other for clues as to how they should behave. Miss Ambrose decided the best approach was to take our minds off it all. I heard her use those words to Simon, when she asked him to get the Activity Box down from the cupboard in the day room.

  ‘Give them something else to think about,’ she said. As though any thought in our minds could be taken out and immediately replaced with another.

  I saw Simon frown, but he didn’t say anything.

  Scrabble, they decided on, in the end. Elsie wasn’t there, and I don’t think for one second she’d be particularly disappointed to have missed out. There were four of us, people I didn’t know or had never spoken to, all sitting round the big table, staring at letters spread out in front of us on a little rack. Simon and Miss Ambrose and Gloria all walked around the table, leaning over our shoulders and rearranging the letters and making suggestions. I didn’t know why they couldn’t just play the game themselves, and let us go back to staring into a television set.

  They had arguments about which words were allowed and which weren’t, and when the woman from number seven asked why some letters were worth more than others, it led to a debate that went on for fifteen minutes. I just looked across at the chair Jack used to sit in. No one had used it since. It felt like trespassing, even though we all knew he’d never sit there again. I suppose when someone finally did, it would be the end of a chapter, because it would mean we’d all moved on, and he had been left behind in the past.

  ‘You’ve got some good letters there, Florence.’ Simon looked over my shoulder. ‘Have you found any words, yet?’

  I hadn’t even looked at the tiles.

  ‘Car, star, acts,’ he said.

  He reached over and moved all the tiles around. ‘You’ve got a six, look: tiaras.’

  Simon seemed very pleased with himself.

  ‘Oh, I think we can do even better than that, young man.’

  It was Ronnie. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. I wanted to turn around, but I couldn’t, because if I did, he’d see the fear in my eyes and then he’d know straight away that the game was over.

  ‘I can’t see a seven,’ said Simon. ‘Is there a seven?’

  I could hear Ronnie smiling. ‘There is, but I think it’s best if we let Florence find it for herself, don’t you?’

  I felt Ronnie’s hand rest on my shoulder.

  ‘Don’t think I’m going to help you,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I spoke without turning. ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘I said,’ his breath was a little closer, his voice just short of a whisper, ‘don’t think I’m going to help you.’

  The room felt very far away. Miss Ambrose talking to someone, and the scream of the television set in the corner, and Jack’s empty chair, waiting to be used again. It was as if I was watching it from the ceiling, or the next room, or somewhere in the future. A tangle of colour and light, and confusion, that didn’t seem to belong to me any more, and so I stood.

  ‘I don’t want to play this game now,’ I said. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  ‘But you’ve only just started,’ I heard Ronnie say. ‘Don’t give up before it’s over.’

  ‘Sit down, Flo.’ Simon straightened the tiles. ‘You’re doing really well.’

  ‘I don’t have to play. I can do whatever I want, and I want to leave now.’ When I turned, I caught the edge of the board, and all the letters scattered to the floor.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done.’ Simon crouched down and started collecting them up. ‘They’ve gone everywhere.’

  When I looked up, I was staring right into Ronnie’s eyes.

  ‘It was you,’ I said. ‘Wasn’t it?’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘I knew it was. I knew it was you.’ I think I was shouting, because Simon stood and frowned at us both.

  ‘You’re right, Florence. It was me,’ Ronnie said. He glanced at Simon, who was frowning at
us even more. ‘I caught the edge of the table, I was the one who upset the board.’

  ‘Right.’ Simon put the tiles back on to the table. ‘I see. Although I think you’ll find it was actually Florence.’

  ‘It might look that way.’ Ronnie reached out and patted my shoulder. ‘But it’s just a case of mistaken identity,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it, Florence?’

  ‘I really wish you’d stay, Florence.’ Miss Ambrose had picked up the last of the tiles from the carpet. ‘I’d feel much more comfortable if you were over here, with us.’

  ‘I want to go back. I don’t want to be in this place any more.’ I pulled the coat around my shoulders. ‘I’ve had enough.’

  ‘I can’t force you,’ she said. ‘But we’re all here, if you change your mind.’

  I wasn’t going to change my mind. I’d had a bellyful of small conversations and side plates, and games of Scrabble. I looked for Elsie on my way out, but she was nowhere to be seen, and so I left Miss Ambrose and the sound of people carrying on with their lives, and I started walking down the corridor towards the courtyard.

  I knew he was behind me.

  I knew before I even looked.

  ‘Haven’t you got time for one more game?’ he shouted.

  I stopped. I turned. I walked back until I was so close to him, I couldn’t take even one step more.

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘All of it.’

  He smiled, and the scar at the corner of his mouth disappeared. ‘Was it?’

  ‘The binoculars. The Battenberg. Even ordering the pizzas and the taxis. All of it was you.’

  ‘Don’t forget the elephant, Florence. Imagine the irony of forgetting an elephant.’

  ‘You killed Gabriel Price, didn’t you? You were the one who pushed him in the water.’

  ‘You were the last person I expected to see on that riverbank, Florence. I was waiting for Gabriel. I had it all planned. I needed an identity to borrow, a name I could steal without too much fuss being made.’ His expression never changed, even as he said the words. ‘Things were getting a little too complicated.’

  ‘You were waiting for him?’