Elizabeth Is Missing (14 page)

I’ve got a bit of a rhyme running through my brain, but it runs too fast to catch it all. There was an old woman who lived in a shell. That’s not quite right, but I can’t think what it was she did live in. Anyway, I feel as if I’m inside a shell, and I’m an old woman, so perhaps I’m allowed to change the rhyme a bit. There was an old woman. I used to read that to these children of mine. Tom and Helen. I used to read it to them.

Of course, we’re really in a sort of café, not a shell. It has a glass-domed ceiling and pearly walls and lots of those things for drinking, for putting drinks in, on the table. Katy is laughing with her cousins opposite me, and I’ve finished whatever it is I’ve been eating. Broth, perhaps, without any bread. That’s what the old woman gives the children.

“Shall we think about getting you home, Mum?” Helen stretches herself as she stands, showing off her long legs. She might be fifty but she’s as lithe as anything. Being a gardener must keep you fit.

My left side feels suddenly chilly where she was sitting against it. A current of cold water in a warm sea. “No, I’d rather stay a little longer,” I say, not getting up. “I’m having a nice time.”

Helen bites her top lip with her bottom teeth; they are tiny pearl squares against the flesh. “It will take an hour to get you home and settled,” she says. “I know you’re enjoying yourself but—”

“Oh, let her stay a bit longer.” Tom puts an arm round my shoulder. “Not often you get out, is it, Mum?”

“I take her out every week actually. I’m
here
for her, unlike some people.” Helen’s tone makes me wince, but Tom smiles.

“I know, dearest sister. You are a saint. No, really, I’m not being sarcastic.” He stands, too. “You know I appreciate everything you do for Mum, but I don’t see her that often, so it would be nice . . . Look, we’ll drop her home if you like. And you can get off.”

Helen tilts her face towards the sky; a cloud shaped like a shoe is visible through the glass in the domed ceiling. “You wouldn’t know what to do with her when you got her home,” she tells Tom. “She needs everything set out for her, otherwise she gets confused.”

“Britta can deal with that, just tell her what to do.”

There’s a silence. I wonder whether to shout that I’m not an imbecile.

“No, I’ll stay,” Helen says finally. “After all, Katy’s having a good time, too.”

“Just you who’s here on sufferance.” Tom sneaks in the last sentence, and gets a whack on the shoulder from his sister.

Katy
does
seem to be enjoying herself. I suppose she doesn’t get to see her cousins very often. They always take a while to warm to each other. A shame, because by the time they’re getting on it’s usually time to go. I watch them laughing and chatting. They look very different. Katy’s got her mother’s blondish curls, always a bit messy. She never listens when I tell her to run a brush through them. Not even when she was a little girl. “I’m not going to meet the Queen,” she used to say. Made me laugh to hear her. Anna and Frederick would never need to be told; they both have dark, glossy hair that lies very straight. Both children smile at me and call me Grandma, but I feel like they are strangers.

“I like your socks, Anna,” I say, though I hadn’t meant to break into her conversation. “They’re very smart.”

She looks at me, startled, and pulls the socks up higher, over her knees.

“You see?” Britta says. “I told you Grandma would like them. They’re your favourite ones, aren’t they, Anna?” She smiles at me the way parents do when their children aren’t being quite as polite as they’d like them to be.

Anna nods, but she seems to have forgotten what she was talking about before. My fault. I try to think of something to say, to help her out.

“I used to have socks like that. Good job, too. Girls wore skirts to the knee when I was young, and we had no tights. I remember walking along the front with my parents. And, oooh, it was freezing.”

We’d started at the top of the cliffs, making a zigzag down towards the beach. Dad didn’t want us going too far on to the sand, what with all the barbed wire still piled up and the who-knew-what which had been buried to keep the Nazis away. So I didn’t paddle, but I did get close enough to feel the spray of the sea and to find shells, like tiny pleated skirts, washed up and blown on to the path. We walked a long way that day, past the pier, watching the waves crash against the beach, and Dad held my arm as if I might vanish, same as Sukey. I hated being so closely held, especially with him and Ma arguing all the way. She’d said something about Frank when we were only yards from the house and Dad hadn’t let the subject drop since.

“If only Sukey had left him,” he said. “Every other couple in this country seems to be getting a divorce. Why couldn’t they have done that? Then she’d have been back living with us, safe.”

“You said last week you didn’t hold with divorce,” Ma said.

“Well, it depends on the character of the husband, doesn’t it?” He looked for a moment at Ma. “Or the behaviour of the wife.”

I held a shell to my ear, letting the hollow gush drown their voices, and then pulled away from Dad as we reached the dancing shack. It was a sort of wooden hut on the path, by a turning up towards town, where they’d sold drinks and things before the war. It was shut now, with boards nailed over the windows and the old awning just a tatty fringe. It smelled of the sea, salty and rotten, and of wood and damp. Grass had sewn itself on to the roof so that it seemed to have hair which waved in the wind. Sukey had called it the dancing shack because the grass made the hut look as if it was swaying to some unheard music. Salt had caused the grain of the wood to open and pucker and there were holes where knots had fallen out. We used to run our fingers over the walls and feed tiny stones and shells and even handfuls of sand through the holes. I had liked to think of it filling up a bit more every time we came to the beach. And one day the hut would be whipped away, leaving a densely moulded copy in its place. Like a giant sand castle.

Letting my parents walk on, I ran a hand over a weathered board, knocking my knuckles against it, and heard a sort of flapping shuffle somewhere close by. I looked up at the grass on the roof, but couldn’t see anything, so I walked round behind, wondering if there was a nest somewhere. My friend Audrey had had pigeons breeding in her family’s beach hut the spring before and she’d been terribly upset about her father smashing the eggs. I reached the far corner, still not able to see anything, and was about to poke a finger through a hole, when I saw the gleam of an eye.

I jumped back, nearly falling over the slope of a dune. This wasn’t a pigeon. It was a human eye. Someone was inside, looking out. I could hear a voice from within, whispering. Whispering about glass smashing and birds flying. Whispering about a van and soil and summer squash. Whispering until the whisper broke, and whoever it was inside the dancing shack was suddenly shouting.

“I’m watching. I’m watching you.”

I didn’t doubt it. The eye stared straight at me through the hole in the wood, and, desperate to get out of its line of vision, I ran after Dad, my heart thumping. When I looked back there was a figure coming away from the hut, an umbrella in her hand. It was the mad woman. She shouted after me, repeating in a yell the words she’d whispered, and then, just before I was out of earshot, I thought she said Sukey’s name. I stopped and nearly went back, but she was always shouting and I was frightened. So instead I caught up with Dad and let him hold my arm the rest of the way home.

I’m quite tipsy by the time Tom helps me into the car. Helen buckles me in and gives him a list of instructions for taking me home. She wants to make sure he doesn’t forget to lock me in the house. Tom drops the paper on to the dashboard and hugs her before she hurries away.

“Has she gone to tell the woman off and get our peach slices back?” I ask him.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I say. “It was nonsense.” I’m quite emotional, partly because I don’t know when he and the family will be over from Germany next, and partly because of the wine. I have a little sob in the car and the children shift about behind me.

We go home a funny way—Tom no longer remembers the roads—and we pass Elizabeth’s house. The side gate is open. I sit up and look back out of the window.

“Could you drop me here?” I say to Tom. “I’d rather walk the last bit.”

He looks unsure, but slows the car. Side gate, I say to myself. Side gate side gate side gate.

“Helen said to make sure she was in the house, Tom,” Britta says from the backseat. “I don’t think we should just let your mother out here.”

“I’m not an imbecile,” I say over my shoulder. “And I haven’t forgotten where I live, yet. I often walk back through the park, and I’d like to do that today.” I put cold hands to my hot face: lying makes me flush.

“Okay, Mum,” Tom says, pulling over. “If that’s what you want. But don’t tell Helen, or it’ll be curtains for me.”

I smile at the twinkle in his eye. He always was the more charming of my two children. I get out, untangling myself from the seat belt, and blow kisses at the grandchildren. Britta gets out, too, and gives me a hug.

“I only want to make sure you are safe,” she says.

I tell her I know, I tell her I’m grateful. And I wave them off, watching until the car disappears around a corner. All the time I’m trying to cling to two words as they slip, easily, through the gaps in my brain. I am outside Elizabeth’s house, the sun is slanting on to the drive, and the side gate is open. I can see a sliver of garden through it, golden green. A figure comes down the path from the front door. Curly hair, check coat. She smiles at me. Elizabeth. It’s her. She’s been here all along. “Elizabeth,” I say. “How—”

It’s not her. It’s someone else. As she comes close I can see she’s much younger than Elizabeth. She smiles as she passes me and gets into one of those mobile-library vans. I nod and stroke the top of the pebbled wall as if I’m admiring it, and then walk on, along the park fence and past the acacia tree.
The slender acacia would not shake / One long milk-bloom on the tree
. The poem comes into my head unbidden. I was made to learn it at school. The teachers thought I ought to know it and I felt I ought to like it, what with it being called “Maud.” I did like it in a way, all the dewy flowers and things, but the meaning was completely obscure and it seemed to get very morbid at the end. Audrey was made to learn “The King’s Breakfast,” because her father owned the dairy, and that seemed much more fun:
I do like a little bit of butter to my bread!

I wait by one of those striped crossings, lima crossing, llama crossing, trying to remember more words. I wonder about milk-bloom, what exactly milk-bloom might be, and turn to look at the sun slanting across the pavement. Just a moment ago I had something to do. I watch a few cars go by, a lorry, a library van. Perhaps I was going to see Elizabeth, except that I can’t have been, because she isn’t there. I wander towards the house anyway, wishing I could see inside. That would be something. As I get close I find the side gate is open. There’s no one about so I walk up the path and slip through, into the garden.

The smell of honeysuckle is thick in the air and I run a hand up the side of the wall, where moss and ivy-leaved toadflax have gathered. There are several patches of raw earth in the lawn and I wonder if moles have moved in. I walk over to a little hill, finding the soil damp. The smell of it is fresh and sharp, and it makes me think of a song, but I can’t think of the name and I can’t find the record. I can’t find it, but I’m sure it was buried here. I put a hand against the apple tree and dip my fingers into the soil, pushing it aside to dig deeper into the ground. I want something smooth and round, silver and blue, but a stone catches the side of my nail and makes me pull away sharply. What on earth am I doing? I look at my hands, covered in dirt, and sigh. How often I seem to catch myself doing something stupid.

I wipe the soil on to my trousers and peer into the dining room through the French windows in case Elizabeth’s inside. But her chair by the window is empty. This is where she always sits, looking out and watching the birds. The chair I usually sit in has been pushed back against the wall. No one is expecting me. I let out a breath and leave a cloud on the window.

The greenhouse surrounds the kitchen door and I remember when it was full of tomato plants, seedlings, or wintering geraniums. It still smells of damp soil and wood stain, but almost everything has been replaced by cobwebs and boxes and old-people paraphernalia: a rusty wheelchair, two walking sticks, and an old bath seat. There are a few empty plant pots, chalky to the touch, lined up against the wall. I drag them across the concrete floor, but there is no key under any of them. The desiccated remains of roots cling to the bottoms and these break away nicely under my fingers, like tiny strips of old wallpaper, leaving white lines on the terra-cotta. I sit down in the wheelchair, putting my feet up on the footrests. My head is muzzy, as if I’ve been drinking.

There’s a key safe on the wall and I stare at it for a moment. I have one myself, for the carers. A tiny square box which requires four numbers to unlock it. If I was able to guess those numbers I could get into the house. I think through all the possible significant dates. But I can’t remember Elizabeth’s birthday, or her son’s. If I ever knew them. I take bits of paper out of my pockets. A lot of them are appointments. The dentist. The optician. A fête Helen said she would take me to. I can’t remember if we ever went.

Elizabeth’s anniversary. Go round for cheer up
. It’s on a bright yellow square. I read it several times, but I can’t remember what date that was. I shuffle through again. More old reminders: s
un hat in Helen’s car—leave it there
. Then, on a pink square, I see it:
5th July. Go round and cheer Elizabeth up. (Would have been diamond wedding anniversary.)
Diamond, that’s sixty years. Silver for twenty-five, gold for fifty. Patrick and I just made our golden anniversary. We had a big party in the garden, invited the family, and friends and neighbours. It was a lovely September day and after everyone had gone home he and I sat on the swing hammock until well after dark, watching a bat flit round and round the house. He died before our fifty-first.