Elizabeth Is Missing (24 page)

She keeps talking. She doesn’t stop when I ask her to. She stares at the things in her hands and recites something; it sounds like a list of some kind. I wonder if I should be writing it down and I reach for some paper. I write
Tom
, but it comes out funny. The paper isn’t flat and the pen slips over the ridges of whatever is underneath. I can’t think what the word means anyway. I take a hand mirror from a table and put it on another bit of newspaper. When I look at it closely I can see an eye staring back at me.

“Oh,” I say. “Is it something to do with the mad woman?”

Helen turns to me. “What?”

I point at the mirror, whispering. “Is she hiding in here?”

Helen stares but doesn’t answer. And I can’t think what I was asking her anyway, the questions have lost their definiteness, tangled amongst the cobwebs in my head. I yawn and put a newspaper package on the floor next to another, similar one; they are strange muffled shapes and I push them away. There is something frightening about their facelessness. That must be what my thoughts look like, masked and unrecognizable. I search for something else to wrap. “Helen, who are we giving these things to?”

She closes a suitcase and snaps the clasps shut. The noise, the sharp secret-breaking noise, makes me think of another case, and of my mother standing at the kitchen table, and of my father turning his face to the fire.

“We got her case back,” I say to Helen, though she’s already on the stairs. “But there was nothing in it. It was just full of newspaper.” Something tells me this is wrong, that I’m mixing it up, but I can see the bits of paper floating, rustling, out of Sukey’s case, covering the kitchen floor. “I remember it so clearly,” I say. “Getting the case back from the police and opening the lid, and there it was, full of newspaper. I’m sure that’s how it was.”

I follow Helen to the front door and stand, pushing a hand into the choisya bush, while she goes to the car and lifts in the suitcase. It’s a heavy thing, one of those hard ones for taking on planes. I only used it a few times, when I was still able to visit Tom in Germany. “Are we going on holiday?” I say.

Helen slams the boot shut and walks back to the house. When I get upstairs she is manoeuvring my matchbox chest out of the wardrobe. I made this when I was a child. A hundred tiny boxes, all joined together with glue, which has yellowed and crackles now between the cardboard. I used to store my collection of shells in the drawers, and bits of broken pottery, and insects and feathers. And useful things, too, like thread and pins. Sukey was always opening the wrong box, wanting a button or a needle, and she’d scream on seeing the furry body of a bumble bee or a tiger moth lying in its bed of newspaper. She complained, but I had a feeling she enjoyed the fright of it.

“I thought I’d thrown these away,” I say. “Are we going to go through them all?”

“I’d rather just chuck them,” she says, though her hands hover over the boxes as if she’s trying to decide which one to open first.

“But, Helen, what if there’s something I want in there? You know, I used to collect matchboxes when I was a child.”

“I know, Mum. And we used to find dead insects in them when
we
were children. Your secrets, we called them. Boxes full of disintegrating bees and wasps and beetles.”

“Yes, I collected those, too. Was that you?” I say. “Was it you who screamed?”

“It was probably Tom.”

She starts to pull out all the little drawers, leaning away as if something might spring at her. “D’you want these old feathers? This button?”

She tugs at a drawer near the bottom and I have a sudden tightening in my stomach.

“Piece of old wallpaper,” she says, shaking the little drawer. “And a bit of a fingernail. Ugh. What d’you have that for?”

She passes me the drawer, but it seems only half there. I can see the bottom of a tea chest more clearly, fluffy balls of dust gathered in the corners where the newspaper lining has wrinkled away. And the fingernail is nestled amongst the dust and odd bits of different-coloured thread, pearly and splintered like a broken shell. And when I look up, Frank is there.

I didn’t really expect to see him again after the time in the hotel. I’d tried to talk to Ma about him, but Dad said he didn’t want the name mentioned in his house. And that was that. Until nearly a week later, when I found him making another dent in the hedge at the end of our road.

“Been waiting near on an hour,” he said, as if I was late. “What time d’you finish school?” He looked smarter; his hair was slicked neatly into place under his hat like it used to be and he’d had a shave.

“I got held back,” I said. “Not concentrating in class.”

He walked to the edge of the pavement. “Which class was it?”

“Don’t know,” I said, making him laugh. I pulled the branches of the hedge through my fingers, careful not to knock any leaves off, and then took a step towards my house. “I’d ask you in,” I said.

“Yeah, I know. But I’m not welcome.” He followed me home anyway, glancing at the sitting-room windows before throwing his cigarette into the front garden. “Actually, I was going to ask you to come and see me. There’s something I want you to have.”

“Now?” I asked, not sure I wanted to go anywhere with him after last time.

He shrugged, nodded, and I looked at him for a moment. His gaze was very steady, and when he smiled at me, narrowing his eyes and adjusting his hat, I found I was smiling back without thinking.

“I’ll have to tell them something,” I said.

I ran down the path to the back door and waited in the kitchen for a few minutes, checking that Ma hadn’t left anything in the range for dinner. She and Dad had gone to London to find out if Sukey had been seen. Dad thought it was likely that Frank had taken her there and lied about it; Ma thought Sukey might have gone to find Frank and missed him somehow. Douglas had said he was going to the pictures, but he’d said that several times recently and then hadn’t seemed to be able to recall what it was he’d watched, so who knew where he really was. Either way, I didn’t want Frank to know that there was no one at home to miss me.

He was at the end of the street when I came out, looking into the park. It was only then that I realized how gloomy the evening was. The red of the bricks was fading, and the pine trees were black above our heads. It was dinnertime and we walked through empty streets, passing the laundry with its hot, clean scent, like a fierce cuddle. Frank stuck a cigarette in his mouth, taking a box of matches from his pocket and rattling it.

“Last one,” he said, sliding the tray out. He struck the match and flicked it into the street. “Want the box?” he asked. “Collect them, don’t you?”

“I did,” I said. “When I was younger.” I took the box and slipped it into the pocket of my skirt, feeling shy and irritated. I didn’t like being reminded of how recently I’d been a child. I felt he was mocking me.

“What d’you collect them for?” he asked.

“I don’t know. To put things in, I suppose. Like I say, it was just something I did when I was a kid.”

“To put things in, eh? Secret things, would they be?”

“No. Just bits and pieces, spare buttons. Nothing important.”

He looked down at me, and smiled, as if he knew better, and I blushed and felt guilty, asking myself if I was hiding something without knowing it.

“I wonder what sort of secrets a girl like you would have.”

“I don’t have any secrets,” I said.

“Don’t want to tell me, eh, Maudie? But p’raps you will, one day.”

He kept grinning, not noticing that I wasn’t smiling back. I didn’t know what to say. I was annoyed at not being believed, but also strangely pleased. I think I liked the idea of having secrets.

When we got to the house he waited so that I had to go up the front steps ahead of him, and he unlocked the door by reaching past me. I stared at the key in the lock as his breath lifted strands of my hair. The hallway, usually so full of furniture and other things to trip over, was nearly pitch black. It smelled of sawdust and stale cigarette smoke, and I walked forward slowly with my hands out, hearing the front-door bolt being thrust into place. I’d got about ten steps along, surprised that I’d managed to avoid hitting anything, when I felt Frank’s arm around my waist. I nearly screamed.

“Gone too far,” he said. “Here’s the front room.” He pushed me in and then went off down the hall himself.

I could see better in here, with the streetlight coming in through the window. Bars of yellow light lay over the bare floor, and I went to step on them, letting them shine over my shoes. A bare floor. My gaze shot over the rest of the room. There were no rugs, and most of the furniture was gone. No curtains, no sofa, no glass dome full of birds. There was nothing familiar to tell me where I was, and there wasn’t a trace of Sukey. It was strange and disorienting and reminded me of the way the town had felt on mornings after bombs had been dropped. All that was left were a few tea chests next to the fireplace and two armchairs with dustsheets over them. They’d been pushed opposite each other, and one was taken up with a worn rug and some army blankets.

“This where you’re sleeping?” I asked when Frank came back.

“Don’t look so shocked. It’s
my
house. And the rest of the furniture’s been sold, ’cept for a few bits in the attic I can’t get rid of. My old mum would have had an apoplexy if she’d seen how little I sold it for, but I had some debts that couldn’t wait. And I’m not going to be here long.”

He lit a candle and put it on the floor between us. The light made his face look almost ghoulish and I shrank back.

“Wooooo!” he said, raising his eyebrows and laughing. “Like one of them Karloff films, in’t it? Oh, don’t worry, I’m not going to slit your throat.” He dragged one of the tea chests over towards him. “This is what I wanted to show you.”

I had a sudden panic that it would be something improper. I wasn’t really sure what that might be, but I had an idea that I wouldn’t be able to talk to my parents about it. I shifted my feet, remembering the heavy clunk of the front-door bolt as it had been drawn into its fitting.

“I can’t keep these things here much longer,” he said. “You can take anything you like.”

I was ready with my refusal before he’d got the lid of the chest off, but then he pulled out a fur stole, holding it in front of the candle. Its magnified shadow scurried over the blank space above the mantelpiece.

“She only had that one suitcase with her in the hotel,” he said. “All the rest of her clothes are still here. Thought you might know what to do with them. She liked giving you things to wear and that. And you’ve got the figure for them.”

His eyes slid over me, starting somewhere towards my middle, and I couldn’t help covering the place with my hands, convinced I could feel an ache there.

“Frank,” I said then. “Is Sukey dead?”

I saw him wince, his hand tightening on the fur. He stared at the candle flame. “I shouldn’t have gone to London after that bloody lunatic had got into the house.”

“What?”

“That mad woman. She got in somehow when I was out one night, months ago. Scared the living daylights out of Sukey.”

“Did she run out? Screaming? Sukey, I mean. Did she run out on to the street?”

“Yeah. Neighbour complained. Fussing woman across the road. Was it her that told you? Anyway, the night I had to go to London, Sukey found the mad woman inside again. Gave her a fright. She seemed all right when she went off to yours for dinner, but when she came back she said she couldn’t stay in the house. Her idea was to stay at your mum and dad’s, and, well, we had a bit of a row on account of Douglas being there and I don’t like him. In the end I got her to take a room at the Station Hotel instead. They owe me a few favours. We decided she’d stay there until the weekend, until I’d sorted out my bit of business, and then get the train up to London and meet me on Saturday afternoon. I was worried after she didn’t turn up, but when I couldn’t get hold of her at the hotel I assumed she’d run home to your lot and didn’t want to tell me.”

But she hadn’t run home. She’d left the hotel, left her case full of clothes, and vanished. I dropped on to my knees and gazed into the chest. Here were the things she’d decided not to pack. The green-and-white day dress, with scalloped shoulders, and the red sailor suit with its pleated skirt. And here was the cocktail sweater, with the pearl button at the back, which she had knitted herself from a Hollywood pattern. All her beautiful clothes. All the things she’d collected and worked on.

Frank went to get something to drink and I laid the things over the arm of his chair as I dug through them. Soon I’d emptied the whole chest and there was just dust at the bottom. Dust and something else, something shell-like. I picked it up and held it to the candle.

I nearly dropped it when I realized what it was—part of a broken fingernail, painted pink. I could see the white marks on the inside where it must have folded before it snapped, and I curled my fingers into my fists against the ghost feeling of breaking a nail. I didn’t know if it was Sukey’s, but there was something odd about it, something sinister. I slipped it into the matchbox in my pocket as Frank came through the door.

“What you got there?” he asked, frowning, with a quick movement like an animal catching a scent.

“Nothing,” I said, pushing the box deeper into my pocket and pulling a blue princess-line dress from the chair. “D’you recognize this?”

He said he didn’t, and when I told him it was Sukey’s favourite for dancing, that she’d been wearing it the night she met him, he looked bewildered.

“I didn’t remember that,” he said, reaching to squeeze the fabric in his hand. “Tell me about something else. Tell me about when she wore all these other things.”

I pull a shirt with grey stripes from a twist of clothes, stroking the front of it over my knees and smoothing out the wrinkles. I don’t remember Sukey wearing this. It’s soft and nicely cut, but it’s far too big. I look back into the case. A hard case like you take on planes. There’s an elastic band over the clothes and a pair of trousers is tangled in it. Fawn-coloured trousers. But these aren’t Sukey’s, either. I’m sure I’m dreaming. This room is the wrong shape and my furniture is in the wrong place: wardrobe, chest of drawers, dressing table. They loom darkly in their mistaken corners. And lots of things are wrapped in newspaper, so I can’t see what they are. I put on the shirt, wondering when I’ll wake up, and a woman comes in. My mother, it must be, though she doesn’t look quite like herself.