Elizabeth Is Missing (4 page)

I face the door, wondering how long I’ve waited here. Five minutes? Ten? I check my watch, but it doesn’t give me any clues. Time is so elastic now. I ring the bell again, carefully making a note of the time, and then watch the second hand as it moves round. After five minutes I write:
No sign of Elizabeth
, and begin to walk away. Perhaps she
is
on holiday, as someone suggested. Or is staying with her son? But I would have written that down, I’m sure of it. I keep old notes like that. These little snippets of news are things to talk about, as well as information for myself. “Do you know, Elizabeth’s gone off to the South of France?” I might say to Helen, or “Elizabeth’s staying with that son of hers,” I could tell Carla. News of that kind is valuable. Helen has been known to stay an extra thirty seconds for it in the past.

So I know I’m not forgetting this time. Elizabeth must be missing. But all I’ve established so far—all I’ve proved—is that she is not at home this minute.

At the gate I have a thought, and I turn back to look in through the front window. Pressing my nose against the cool glass and cupping my hands round the top of my head, I can just see through the net curtains. They give the dark room a misty quality, but I can make out the empty chairs and plumped cushions. Her books have been pushed neatly into their shelves and her collection of majolica pots and vases and tureens stand in a line on the mantelpiece. “You never know,” Elizabeth always says, after she’s done laughing at my reaction to the veiny ugliness of a moulded leaf or the sick-makingly intricate scales of a fish, “one of them might be worth a fortune.” She can’t see the things properly, of course, only a vague brightness of the colours, but she likes the feel. The animals and insects in relief. She can trace the contours where they rise from the surface of the pottery, the glaze almost as smooth as a frog’s skin, almost as slippery as an eel’s. She lives in hope of discovering one that’s really rare. And the promise of money is the only reason her son allows her to keep them. Otherwise they’d be in the wheelie bin without a word.

I take out a thick pen and a bright yellow square of paper ready to articulate my meagre findings:
Very tidy
.
No Elizabeth, no lights on
. Backing away, I stumble into a flower bed, and my foot sinks into the soil, leaving a perfect print of my shoe. Good thing I’m not planning anything criminal. I walk carefully around the edge of the bed, to the side of the house, and look in through the kitchen window. There are no net curtains here and I can clearly see the bare wooden worktops and gleaming sink.
No food out in kitchen
, I write.
No bread, no apples
.
No washing up
. It’s not much, but it’s something.

I walk back home through the park. It’s not raining, so I may as well get some fresh air. The grass is slightly frosty and I enjoy feeling it crunch under my feet. Somewhere on the other side of the bandstand is a dip, like a meteor crater, filled with flowers and benches. Helen did that. It was one of her first big commissions, and though I don’t recall all the details, I do remember they had to move tons of soil. It’s a deliberate suntrap, and even tropical flowers thrive there. She was always good at making things grow. And she would know the best place to plant summer squash: I must remember to ask her when I see her next.

I’ve been walking past this bandstand for seventy-odd years. My sister and I used to come this way when we went to the pictures. They often had music on here during the war. To cheer everyone up. The deck chairs would be out and filled with men in khaki uniforms, hardly camouflaged against the bright grass. Sukey would slow down to hear the band and smile at the soldiers; she always knew one or two from dances at the Pavilion. I’d run back and forth between her and the gates, wanting to get into town, impatient to see whichever film it was we were heading for. I wish I could run like that now, but I wouldn’t have the breath.

At the steps out of the park I pause to look back; the sky has darkened and a figure kneels on the grass. The sound of a boy calling to someone from the bandstand makes me hurry, shivering, towards the street. On the third step down there’s a shiny bit of stone. My foot slips. I try to grab at the handrail, but miss it. My nails scrape along the brick wall and my handbag swings wide, pulling me with it. I land, heavily, on my side, clenching my jaw muscles at the pain in my arm. Blood rushes about my body as if it doesn’t know where it should be, and I find I am staring and staring, eyelids stretched wide, eyes drying.

Slowly the shock of it recedes and I can blink again, but I’m too tired to get up at once, so I roll over and rest where I am for a minute. I can see the rusty underside of the railing, and beneath that some gritty-looking paint which has been stencilled into the shape of a fox. There’s soil in the creases of my palm, though I can’t think where it’s from, and the sharp juts of the steps dig into my back. At least I have finally fallen. These steps have always been a worry. And I haven’t hit my head, though I’ve bashed my side and my elbow and will have bruises tomorrow. I can feel them spreading under my skin, staining me like blackberry juice. I remember the pleasure of studying my bruises as a child, the black and navy of them, the cloudlike shapes they made. I was always finding blotches on my hips from knocking into furniture, or purplish fingernails from getting my fingers caught in the laundry mangle. Once, my friend Audrey slipped while she was mucking about hanging over the edge of the East Cliff, and I got a dark line across my chest from smashing into the railings when I grabbed at her. And then there were the marks left by the mad woman after she’d chased me home.

I’d been sent out for groceries, and I found her at the counter. She was mumbling something to the grocer as I asked for a tin of peaches and Ma’s ration of cooking fat, and I stood away from her while the things were being weighed and wrapped, looking into a high corner of the shop. There was a strange aniseed smell, and somehow I felt it was coming from the mad woman, though perhaps it was just the jars of liquorice which stood along the windowsill. I paid and left and was holding the groceries against my chest, waiting for a tram to pass, when suddenly there was a great bang! on my shoulder. My heart jumped and my breath whistled in my throat.

It was her. She had followed me out and hit me with her umbrella. She always carried an umbrella, a shabby inky thing, half unfurled in a way that made it look like an injured bird. She used to stop the buses by standing in front of them and waving the umbrella, and then she would lift her dress and show her knickers. They said it was because her daughter had been knocked down and killed by a bus, before the war. People talked about it in whispers, or they made sly jokes, but if you asked a question you’d be told to be quiet, not to pry, just to keep away from her, as if she had something catching.

The end of the tram was trundling away at last, when bang! she hit me again. I leapt across the road. She followed. I ran up my street, dropping the tin of peaches in panic, and she chased me, shouting something I couldn’t catch. I got through the kitchen door, calling for my mother, and she rushed out to see the woman off and retrieve the peach slices.

“I’ve always told you, don’t look at her, don’t talk to her, keep your distance,” Ma said when she came back in.

I told her I’d done all that and she’d still chased me.

“Well, I’ve never seen her in the grocer’s before. We should probably fetch a policeman, but I can’t help feeling sorry for her. I suppose she doesn’t like seeing young girls about the place,” Ma said, peering out of the window, in case the woman was still about. “Because of her daughter being killed by that bus.”

My fault for being a young girl, I thought. But I wondered later if she’d just been hungry and had wanted my rations. There was a bruise on my shoulder for weeks after that, dark against my pale skin. It was the same colour as the mad woman’s umbrella, as if it had left a piece of itself on me, a feather from a broken wing.

I
’ve rung the doctor. Carla told me not to, but I’ve got a very sore arm. I think it might be a symptom of something more worrying. She says it’s just the way old people are in the morning. She doesn’t use the words “old people,” but I know that’s what she means. When she realizes I have rung the doctor anyway she calls my daughter to come and tell me off.

“For God’s sake, Mum, you’ve been asked to leave the poor man alone,” Helen says, sitting on the window seat, looking out for him.

“But, Helen, I’m ill,” I say. “I think I’m ill.”

“That’s what you said last time, but there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just not young any more; the doctor can’t do anything about that. Oh, here he is now.” She leaps up from the seat and goes to open the front door.

They talk in the hall, but I can’t catch what they say.

“Well, Mrs. Horsham,” he says, coming into the room, winding up the earphones to a Walkman, or whatever they are now. “I’m rather hard-pressed this morning. What did you want to see me about?”

He’s young, my doctor. Very young and very handsome, with dark hair falling over his forehead. I smile at him, but he doesn’t smile back. “I’m all right,” I say. “What’s the fuss?”

He breathes out through his nose, an impatient sound, like a foraging animal.

“You called the surgery, Mrs. Horsham. You said you were in urgent need of a house call.” He looks at Helen, then sits down, holds my wrist in his hand and presses it, looking at his watch. “Can you remember what it was about?” he says. “You’ve been ringing fairly frequently of late. And people don’t usually ask for house calls when they are
all right
.”

Helen shakes her head at me behind him.

“I haven’t been calling frequently,” I say, still looking at Helen.

“That’s not quite true, is it?” he says, scribbling something on a notepad. “In fact you’ve phoned us twelve times in the last fortnight.”

Twelve times? He must have me confused with somebody else: the wires must have been crossed, or perhaps the telephonist put the wrong person through.

“Now, I’m not suggesting you’re making things up, really I’m not, but I wonder whether there isn’t something else going on here.” He takes out a little flashlight. “Perhaps it’s not something strictly medical.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, turning from the light, which is like a fly buzzing in my face. “But I really don’t think it can have been me who phoned all those times. I usually have very good health.”

“I know you do,” he says, putting a hand on my forehead so I can’t move away and pointing the flashlight at one of my eyes. “Which is why it’s a little frustrating to be called out by you when I have genuinely ill people to see.”

I don’t know what to think, I can’t concentrate with this light flicking, flicking over my skin, but he tells me I must open my eyes. “I don’t understand it,” I say. “I’m not like my friend Elizabeth. She can barely leave the house. Her sight’s poor and she’s unsteady on her feet. Whereas I—”

“Whereas you are in great shape for your age. I know.”

He puts the flashlight away and I frown at him. For a minute I can’t think what he’s here for. “But I meant to tell you, Doctor,” I say. “My friend Elizabeth. She’s missing.”

“Oh, Mum. Don’t start that again,” Helen jumps in. “Sorry, it’s a bit of an obsession of hers at the moment. I’ve told her I’ll find out what’s happened.”

“It’s not an obsession. I don’t know how long she’s been gone—”

“I’m sure your friend will be in touch. You must relax and let her family take care of her. Okay? Relaxing is the key. Right. I must get to my other patients.” He picks up his bag and turns to Helen. “I see she’s had a blood test this week, too.” There is a brief look at me. “You might want to arrange for a faculties assessment. At some point.”

He is already inserting the little plugs, the wire shells, back into his ears, while he talks on to Helen, and I wonder briefly what it is he listens to. I cup my hands over my own ears, straining to hear the sealike music of my circulation, the singing of my blood. But hands don’t work as well as shells; they don’t create the right echo, or whatever it is. Helen comes back after letting the doctor out and sits on the arm of my chair.

“You didn’t have to cover your ears, Mum,” she says. “He wasn’t shouting. But now will you promise not to phone the surgery again? And to stop all this nonsense about Elizabeth?”

I don’t answer.

“Mum?” She grabs my arm and I cry out. “What’s the matter?” she says, pulling back my sleeve. There are bruises, staining my skin, spreading round the elbow, fanning out like wings. “My God. Why didn’t you tell the doctor about this? I’ll call him and ask him to come back.”

“No, don’t,” I say. “I can’t stand that fly in my face. I don’t want him here again.”

“I’m sorry.” Helen slides down into a crouching position in front of me. She holds my hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell the doctor to look at you properly. How did you get these bruises, Mum?”

“It was an umbrella,” I say, but really I can’t remember.

She sits, stroking my hand for a few minutes, and I close my fingers over hers, feeling the skin around her nails where it’s pink and raw from scrubbing soil away. This is the closest we’ve been in a long time.

“I sat and held my mother’s hand when she was dying,” I say, though I had meant to keep the thought to myself.

“You’re not dying.”

“I know. But it reminded me, that’s all. She died never knowing. I don’t want to die like that.”

Helen sits up a little. “Never knowing what, Mum?”

“About Sukey.” I clutch at her fingertips. “So that’s why I want to find Elizabeth.”

Helen sighs and drops my hand. “I’d better go soon. Can I get you anything?’

I tell her there’s nothing I need, and then change my mind. “I’d like a new sweater.”

One of the last times Elizabeth went shopping, before her sight got too bad, before she stopped going out of the house, she bought me a silk glasses case. I notice it whenever I open my handbag. The pale silk catches the light, and the coolness of the material reminds me of its presence whenever I get out my money or feel for my bus pass. I keep my spare pair of glasses in it. I only really need glasses for reading, but they make you wear them all the time once you reach a certain age. It’s part of the uniform. How would they know you were an old duffer otherwise? They want you to have the right props so they can tell you apart from people who have the decency to be under seventy. False teeth, hearing aid, glasses. I’ve been given them all.