Elizabeth Is Missing (3 page)

The menu says “The Olive Grill.” It’s heavy, the cover leathery; I trace the indented letters with a finger, though the name means nothing to me, and the end of the spine slips on the tabletop. I pull it on to my lap and read the contents aloud: “French onion soup. Tomato-and-mozzarella salad. Garlic mushrooms. Parma ham and melon—”

“Yep, thanks, Mum,” Helen says. “I can read it myself.”

She doesn’t like me reading things out, it causes her to sigh and roll her eyes. Sometimes she makes gestures behind my back. I’ve seen her in mirrors, pretending to strangle me. “What are you going to have?” she asks now, lowering the menu but keeping her eyes on it.

“Chorizo-stuffed summer squash,” I read, unable to stop myself. “Is squash fashionable again then? I haven’t seen one on a menu for years.”

People used to grow summer squash more when I was young, and there were competitions for the best ones. That doesn’t seem to happen so much now. I got to know Elizabeth because of some summer squash. The first time I met her she told me her garden wall had pebbles cemented to the top and I knew exactly where she lived. It was the house with the garden where, more than sixty years ago, some squash had been dug up during the night. And, I don’t know why, but I wanted to have a look in that garden, so I got myself invited round for tea.

“You won’t like chorizo,” Helen says. “What about the soup?”

“I used to have soup with Elizabeth,” I say, feeling a sort of ticklishness at the thought. “After we’d finished at the charity shop. Soup and sandwiches. And the
Daily Echo
crossword. We haven’t done that in a long time.” And I still haven’t heard from her. Not a word. I can’t understand it. She never goes away; something must have happened.

“Mum? You’ve got to order.”

A waiter is standing by our table, notepad out ready. I wonder how long he’s been there. He bends right over to ask us what we want, his face unnecessarily close to mine. I lean away from him. “Helen, you haven’t heard anything about Elizabeth, have you?” I say. “You would tell me if you had?”

“Yes, Mum. What are you going to eat?”

“I mean, it’s not like she can go off on holiday.” I close the menu and look for somewhere to rest it, but I can’t find a space; there are things in the way. Shiny things, like Elizabeth has. I can’t think what they are. They stand on her table, alongside Branston Pickle and salad cream and bags of Maltesers. The bags are usually open and the chocolates roll out on to the floor like some sort of cartoonish trap. I often worry about her slipping on one. “If she’d had a fall I wouldn’t know,” I say. “I doubt her son would bother to tell me.”

The waiter straightens up and takes the menu from my hands. Helen smiles at him and orders for us both; I don’t know what. He nods and wanders off, still writing, past walls streaked with black paint. The side plates are black, too; I suppose that must be fashionable. The restaurant is like a sheet of smudged newsprint, one that’s been scrunched round an apple for the winter, unreadable except for the advertisements.

“There’s no way of finding anything out for yourself. That’s the problem,” I say, feeling a sudden lift as I unexpectedly catch hold of my subject. “
Families
are informed, but not friends. Not at our age, anyway.”

“This used to be the Chophouse, d’you remember, Mum?” Helen breaks in.

What was I saying? I can’t remember. Something. Something something something . . .

“Do you remember?”

I’m blank.

“You used to meet Dad here, didn’t you?”

I look around the room. There are two old women at a table by a paint-streaked wall; they peer at something lying flat on the table between them. “Elizabeth is missing,” I say.

“When it was the Chophouse. For lunch.”

“Her phone rings and rings.”

“The Chophouse. Remember? Oh, never mind.”

Helen sighs again. She’s doing a lot of that lately. She won’t listen, won’t take me seriously, imagines that I want to live in the past. I know what she’s thinking, that I’ve lost my marbles, that Elizabeth is perfectly well at home and I just don’t remember having seen her recently. But it’s not true. I forget things—I know that—but I’m not mad. Not yet. And I’m sick of being treated as if I am. I’m tired of the sympathetic smiles and the little pats people give you when you get things confused, and I’m bloody fed up with everyone deferring to Helen rather than listening to what I have to say. My heartbeat quickens and I clench my teeth. I have a terrible urge to kick Helen under the table. I kick the table leg instead. The shiny salt and pepper shakers rattle against each other and a wineglass starts to topple. Helen catches it.

“Mum,” she says. “Be careful. You’ll break something.”

I don’t answer; my teeth are still tight together. I feel I might start screaming, but breaking something, that’s a good idea. That’s exactly what I want to do. I pick up my butter knife and stab it into the black side plate. The china breaks. Helen says something, swearing I think, and somebody rushes towards me. I keep looking at the plate. The middle has crumbled slightly and it looks like a broken record, a broken gramophone record.

I found some once in our back garden. They were in the vegetable patch, smashed to bits and jumbled together. Ma had sent me out to help Dad when I’d got back from school and he’d handed me his shovel for digging a runner-bean trench, before disappearing into the shed. The records were almost the same colour as the soil and I wouldn’t have found them, only I felt something snap as I dug and a few moments later the shards caught between the prongs of my garden fork.

When I realized what they were I scraped them out of the earth and dropped them into a sunny patch of grass to dry. I couldn’t think where they’d come from. Only Douglas, our lodger, had a gramophone and I thought he’d have said if any of his records had broken. Anyway, he was a nice boy and wasn’t the sort to dump things in the garden.

“What on earth are they?” Ma said as she came out to collect some washing and found me kneeling over the pieces.

I’d brushed the dirt off and begun to fit them back together. Not because I thought the records would ever play again, but because I wanted to see which ones they were. Ma rubbed at the dirty marks on my face where I’d tried to brush my hair away with soil-covered fingers and said she thought it must be the neighbours who’d chucked the records over the fence.

“There’s a new tenant every week next door. Heaven knows who they are at the moment,” she said. “It’s not the first time I’ve found rubbish out here.” She looked down at the black parodies of discs. “Fancy breaking all these. Good for nothing now. Hey, Maud, toss them in the bottom of the runner-bean trench. For drainage.”

“All right,” I said. “I just want to put them together first.”

“Why? You making stepping-stones for the lawn?”

“Could I?”

“Don’t be daft.”

She laughed and stepped daintily from one broken bit to another, the washing basket on her hip, till she was at the kitchen door. I watched her go in, the red of her hair dull against the bright red brick of our house.

It didn’t take me long to connect the pieces, and it was nice work in the winter sun, listening to the music of the pigeons as they cooed to one another. It was like doing a jigsaw puzzle, except that even when I’d finished there were still some bits missing. I could read the labels now, though: “Virginia,” “We Three,” and “I’m Nobody’s Baby.”

I sat back on my heels. These were my sister’s favourites, the ones she always asked Douglas to play. And now here they were, smashed up and buried amongst the remains of rhubarb and onions. I couldn’t think who would do it or why. I shuffled the bits together again, scattering them into the bean trench, and when I walked back to the house I saw Douglas standing at his window. I thought for a moment he was staring down at me, but then a flurry of birds dived from the dark of the hedge and I turned just in time to catch the shape of a woman scurrying away.

“I have to pick Katy up in less than half an hour,” Helen says, getting her coat on, despite the fact that I’m still finishing my ice cream.

It’s nice and cold against my tongue, but I can’t work out what flavour it’s meant to be. Strawberry, I suppose, from the colour. I’ll need the loo, too, before we go. I wonder where the Ladies’ is. I wonder if I’ve been to this restaurant before. It reminds me of the lovely old Chophouse that Patrick and I used to meet in when we were courting. It wasn’t expensive, didn’t have exotic food or white tablecloths, but everything was nicely cooked and well laid out. I used to walk down from the exchange at lunchtime and wait at a table by the window. Patrick would get a tram from the pier, where his firm were working on plans for rebuilding, and he’d come loping along, hair swept about and cheeks red, and he’d grin as soon as he saw me. No one grins at me like that now.

“Do you need the loo, Mum?” Helen’s holding my coat out for me.

“No, no, I don’t think so.”

“Okay then. Let’s go.”

She’s not very pleased with me. I’ve obviously done something. Was it embarrassing? Did I say something to the waiter? I don’t like to ask. I told a woman once that her teeth made her look like a horse. I remember Helen telling me I’d said it, but I don’t remember saying it.

“Are we going home?” I ask instead.

“Yes, Mum.”

The sun went down while we were eating and the sky is an inky colour, but I can still see the road signs through the car’s windscreen and am reading them aloud before I know it: “Give Way.” “Level Crossing.” “Reduce Your Speed.” Helen’s hands go white on the steering wheel. She doesn’t speak to me. I shift in my seat, suddenly aware of my full bladder.

“Are we going home?”

Helen sighs. This means I’ve asked before. As we turn on to my street I realize how urgent my need to go is. I can’t wait any longer. “Drop me here,” I say to Helen, scrabbling at the door handle.

“Don’t be silly, we’re nearly there now.”

I open the door anyway and Helen stops the car with a jerk.

“What the hell d’you think you’re doing?” she says.

I scramble out of the car and make off down the road.

“Mum?” Helen calls, but I don’t turn round.

I hurry towards my door, body bent forward. Every few seconds an extra-hard squeeze of the muscles is required. The pressure in my bladder seems greater the closer I come to home, and I unbutton my coat as I walk, groping desperately for my key. At the door I shift from foot to foot, frantically twisting the key in the lock. Something is stopping it from turning properly.

“Oh, no, oh, no,” I moan aloud.

Finally I feel it catch and turn. I fall through the door and slam it behind me, handbag thudding to the floor. Clawing at the banister, I rush up the stairs, coat sailing away as I shrug it off. But I get to the bathroom too late. Hand on my waistband, I start to wee. I tear down my trousers, but have no time for the rest, and so sit on the loo, urinating through my cotton knickers. For a few moments I let myself slump forward, head on hands, elbows on knees, the sodden trousers clinging round my ankles. Then, slowly and awkwardly, I kick off my shoes and pull the thick wet fabric over my feet, dropping it into the bath.

There are no lights on in the house—I couldn’t stop to switch any on—and so I sit in the dark. And begin to cry.

The thing is to be systematic, try to write everything down. Elizabeth is missing and I must do something to find out what’s happened. But I’m so muddled. I can’t be sure about when I last saw her or what I’ve discovered. I’ve phoned and there’s no answer. I haven’t seen her. I think. She hasn’t been here and I haven’t been there. What next? I suppose I should go to the house. Search for clues. And whatever I find I will write it down. I must put pens into my handbag now. The thing is to be systematic. I’ve written that down, too.

I check that I have my key three times before I move off the doorstep. The pale sunlight slants on to the lawn beside me as I shuffle along the path, and the smell of the pine trees makes me feel optimistic. I don’t think I’ve been out for a few days. Something happened and Helen has been fussing. But it’s all a blank, which makes me feel dizzy.

I’ve wrapped up warm in a suede duffle coat, over a knitted sweater, over a wool dress, but I’m still chilly. I go past Carrow’s and catch sight of myself in the window. Back hunched, I look like a tortoise ambling along without a racing hare to spur me on. As I walk I check the pens in my bag and the paper in my pockets. Another quick check every few steps. The most important thing is to write everything down. For a moment, I’m hazy about just what it is I have to write, but the route I’m following reminds me. Past the last of the prefabs, which has been painted a sickly green and yellow by its owner. (Elizabeth laughs at its ugliness and says if she could find a ceramic replica it would be worth a fortune.) Then the back of a hotel, where the road is slick with a murky liquid (Elizabeth says it’s the tea dregs that are thrown out after breakfast), and under the beautiful acacia tree, stretching from a snail-covered front garden (Elizabeth’s taken cuttings every year, but they always fail).

Elizabeth’s house is white-painted, with double-glazed windows. The net curtains give it away as being the home of a pensioner, though of course I can hardly criticize, having them myself. It was built just after the war, finished in 1946 as part of a street of new homes, and the garden wall has never been changed. The first owner cemented coloured pebbles to the top and no one has ever removed them. Elizabeth wouldn’t dream of having them chipped off now. I was always curious about these new houses as a girl, and I remembered this one especially, because of the pebbled wall.

I ring the bell. “It echoed through the empty house.” The phrase bubbles up from somewhere, but bells always echo through houses, surely? Empty or not. I wait, and work a hand deep into one of the earth-filled barrels by the front step. These are usually crammed with flowers, but not even a green shoot breaks the surface now. Elizabeth must have forgotten to plant any bulbs this year. I pull my hand out quickly. I can’t think what it was doing in the soil. Was I just feeling for bulbs, or am I supposed to be looking for something else?