Elizabeth Is Missing (9 page)

“Thank you, Polly,” I say, but she doesn’t seem to hear.

“The bath is filthy,” she says as I come into the kitchen. “And there’s a big lot of dirt on the lawn. What have you been doing?”

I wince at the question. Why is it I can remember the garden and the soil and the dew, but none of the reasons for being there? I work the sleeve of my cardigan down over my fingers, picturing the pale-gold sky, the sparkling grey of the leaves, colourless until the light hit them. I can see it all perfectly, I just can’t think when it was. One of those nights spent waiting for Sukey to come home? Some point in the past, anyway. I never wake up in time for the dawn now.

“Although it’s just as likely to be a son,” Carla says.

I’ve missed some earlier part of her speech, and I don’t know what she’s talking about.

“You’re lucky you have a daughter. They say sons steal from their old mothers. It was in a report I saw on the news.”

“But I do have a son,” I say.

“Millions of pounds, stolen every year.”

“I don’t have millions of pounds,” I say.

“And all kinds of antiques. Georgian, Victorian.”

“I don’t have any antiques, either.” Oh, this is no good. What sort of a conversation consists of people saying whether they have something or not? I stop listening, stop answering, but an image shimmers in the air, of bookcases and lamps and empty plant pots piled up at a window. Of deep-grained, solid furniture and dainty silver ornaments, of dark-glazed vases and plates made to look as if worms were wriggling across them. The sort of things Elizabeth is always looking for. They didn’t used to be so sought after, not when I was a girl and people sold them off for next to nothing. There were none of these dim, expensive shops or excitable TV programmes. The only place I ever saw real antiques was at Frank’s.

He had hundreds jumbled into his house, and they were always being moved so that just as you got used to swerving to avoid a chest of drawers it would disappear, to be replaced by a set of nesting tables put down exactly where you were likely to trip over them. Altogether, the house felt like some sort of nasty trick. A trap. Sukey didn’t like it either, and some of the things made her afraid, though she only admitted to that once.

I’d tripped over a revolving bookcase and bashed my knee on a grumpy-looking grandfather clock on my way to the sitting room. Sukey was curled up on a high-backed sofa, drawing a needle slowly through some delicate blueish material, strands of her hair catching on the sofa back, looking like creepers growing up a wall. Ma had sent me round with rags and darning wool, convinced that my sister wouldn’t be coping with all the housework, but Sukey never seemed to need much help, so I sat down by the fire and warmed one side of my face until it was burning hot.

Frank’s removal men were unloading a van in the yard, and they came through the sitting room on their way to the cellar, carrying boxes, spindly little tables, and heavy dining chairs. Sukey nodded at them as they emerged empty-handed, trying to rid their lungs of the dank cellar air.

“Old woman from the Avenue’s died,” she said. “So Frank’s bought more junk, much good it’ll do us. Though it might come in handy for firewood, I s’pose.”

She said the last bit loudly, and a soft-faced, sweating removal man stopped on his way to the cellar with one of the sharp-legged tables. “If that’s what you’re going to use it for, I’ll break it up now, save me a trip to yonder hell pit,” he said, putting the table down and leaning on it. Sukey smiled at her sewing, lifting one shoulder very carefully so as not to disturb the perfect line of stitches, and the man picked his table up again, chuckling to himself. She looked at me when he was gone.

“Oh, Mopps,” she said. “But just look on the mantelpiece. See what Frank’s keeping for himself from the house clearance. Ghoulish, I call it.”

Sukey often complained about the “junk” that Frank brought home. Paintings of boats all done in brownish paint, and ugly plates teeming with insects. This time it was a glass dome the size of a coal bucket full of stuffed birds. I got up, pressing a hand to the fiery side of my face, and peered in. The birds were brightly coloured, green and yellow and blue. Some had their wings spread out; some had beaks poking into flowers; others, as I moved round, pointed straight at me. Their glassy eyes seemed not to fit quite in their sockets, and their feathers had a dullness to them which made me think they’d been dyed. I couldn’t look away.

“Horrid, aren’t they? For some reason, Frank’s taken a liking to them and so we’re to have them here from now on. And, Mopps, no matter how many times I say to myself, ‘They’re stuffed and dead, Sukey, get a hold of yourself,’ I still can’t shake the idea that they’re going to fly out at me.” She pulled her row of stitches straight. “Silly, isn’t it?”

I looked at her and nodded, and that made her laugh.

“But I can just hear it, Mopps. The glass breaking and the blighters fluttering out, flapping their wings, coming to peck my eyes out.”

“Blimey, your missus has a mind on her,” one of the men said, coming into the room with Frank. They carried an old sofa between them. “You want to watch she doesn’t come up with too many ideas about you.”

“That’s just where I’m lucky, Alf,” Frank said. “She’s managed to get the idea into her head that I’m a catch. And I’m not complaining.”

They took the sofa into the cellar and Sukey watched them disappear down the steps before turning to me. “Get my shawl to cover those birds, will you?” she said. “I can joke all I like, but I really can’t bear to see them any longer.”

She looked quite desperate, and I went off to find the shawl which she thought she’d left on a chair in the kitchen, or on the coat stand in the hall, or possibly in the bedroom wardrobe, and if not there, then definitely on the towel rack in the bathroom. I walked through the kitchen, trying my hardest not to trip over or scrape my skin or knock my elbows, and had to hold the door open for two men carrying a large piece of furniture in from the yard. It was covered by a cloth, but I guessed it was a dressing table from the shape, with a mirror fixed to the top. The edges of the cloth rippled with the movement and made it seem as if the dressing table was floating between the men’s hands. One of them, a man with a face full of vertical lines, asked me to open the next door for them. I ran over to do it, but forgetting it opened outwards pulled instead of pushed, banging the door in its frame and making the plates on the nearest dresser clink together alarmingly. The men laughed.

“You ’aven’t quite got your sister’s delicate touch, ’ave you?” the line-faced one said.

They floated the furniture into the sitting room and I started up the stairs, stopping halfway and breathing quietly, listening to the house. There were creaks, deep and almost human, as if the house was straining under the weight of other people’s possessions. These were covered by the dissonant chiming of two clocks somewhere downstairs, and once I heard the cursing of a removal man as he walked into or fell over some piece of furniture. I hoped it was the line-faced one and looked out of the window.

There was no one in the yard now, and yet I could hear a faint rustling from outside, the sort of sound a blackbird makes when it’s foraging for worms under a hedge. A short, angry fizz of foliage followed by another. I couldn’t see anything, but the thicket near the lane bristled, and for some reason the sight of it made me shiver. There was no wind that day, and everything else was still, but I’d seen birds shake the hedgerows before, rearranging their wings inside them. Why should it frighten me now?

I carried on to the landing, nearly falling over an elephant-foot umbrella stand and squeezing through an army of old gramophones, their horns like summer squash flowers. None of these would play, but Frank kept them because if you stripped out the insides you could keep all sorts of things in them. Sukey told us that over dinner one evening, and Dad made muttered suggestions that the things wouldn’t be legal, guessing the contents based on the gifts Frank had given us: ham, nylons, marmalade, dried fruit, butter, eggs. The list had made Ma very cheerful indeed, though she’d been careful not to let Dad see.

Sukey’s shawl was on the towel rack, and as I pulled it free I caught sight of myself in the bathroom mirror. I was surprised to meet myself here, and surprised by the way I looked. My face wasn’t the barrier I thought it was, it seemed so unguarded, so easy to read, so open to misinterpretation. My eyes were ringed with darkish circles before I ever lost an hour of sleep and my lips were red as if I’d been biting them in agitation. My nose was shiny, too. Sukey had promised to teach me to use powder several months before, and I reminded her as I went back into the sitting room.

“I don’t know, Mopps,” she said. “Perhaps you’re too young. Perhaps I shouldn’t have promised. Dad’ll probably have a fit.”

I was about to protest when I hit the peak of my ankle on a low tea table and I squealed instead, lifting my foot. The line-faced man came in and laughed.

“Clumsy one, you, eh?”

Flustered and irritated, I tossed the shawl at Sukey, thinking she would catch it, but she wouldn’t take her hands from her sewing and it sailed on to her head, draping her, shroudlike. She cried out as she stabbed herself with her needle.

“It’s to cover the birds,” she said, drawing the material off and pushing her hair back from her face. “Not me.”

“Sorry,” I said, stepping quickly over an empty iron plant-pot holder, wanting just to get out of the house.

“Mopps?” Sukey called after me. “Mopps!”

I carried on to the yard, the clear path and the cooler air already making me feel better. I got to the side of the house and stopped, stretching my limbs in the uncluttered space, and heard that rustling in the hedge, that blackbirdish noise, and again felt the inexplicable shiver of dread. Sukey had drawn up a window, and I turned away as she leant out.

“Oh, get away. Get away. Why are you always here? I can’t bear it!”

I thought for a moment she meant me, and had told her to go and boil her head before I saw she was facing the hedge. As I looked, I was able to make out a woman, standing, her lower body pressed to the other side of the fence, one arm deep in the foliage. The other was bent at the elbow so that she could press something against her mouth. Or into her mouth, I thought, as I saw her jaw work. The thicket was made of small hawthorn trees, and the woman seemed to have a fistful of leaves, which she was chewing. She stared at Sukey as she chewed, not in the least bothered by her discovery, and Sukey stared back, horrified. Of course I knew who it was. Everyone knew the mad woman.

“We need Doug,” Sukey said.

“Doug? You mean Frank,” I said, and called for him.

When he came out, shouting and threatening and raising his fist, I went back inside to Sukey. She laughed off her fright, saying the woman must be some sort of gourmet. “I mean, I don’t blame her,” she said. “Hawthorn’s delicious, isn’t it, Mopps? Remember we used to call it bread and cheese?”

I nodded, but I didn’t like the brittle tone to her voice.

“We used to prefer it to Ma’s sandwiches, remember? Better than meat paste. Better than carrot simmered in beef tea.” She paused, like a moment in a film, one hand on her hip. And then she suddenly sagged against the mantelpiece. “But, Mopps, there must be hawthorns enough in the park. So why here? Why does she have to come here?”

She looked at herself in the mirror above the fireplace, her eyes studiously avoiding the newly veiled glass dome of birds, and then she raised her hand up until it covered her mouth, reminding me for one awful moment of the position of the mad woman.

Carla has suggested I try church. She’s a Catholic and thinks it might be a comfort in some way. I’ve surrendered and let her give me a lift to a service this morning, on her way to another old crone. I insisted on an Anglican church, though I don’t really believe in any particular god and I’m not sure what to expect. Ma stopped going to Holy Communion after Sukey went missing, and I never restarted the habit. Patrick didn’t believe in anything, either, and Helen’s quite a determined atheist. But lots of old people go to church. Elizabeth goes.

The church she goes to is an ancient stony building with comically serene-faced martyrs in the stained glass. Everyone in the congregation is a bit dressed up. Or they’ve made some effort, anyway, winding silk scarves around their necks or sliding sparkly things into their hair. I feel rather drab and shy for a few minutes. But then I remember that I am old and nobody is looking at me.

I take my hymn book and sit down. “Hymns Ancient and Modern,” I read. A couple of people turn to look at me. There can’t be more than a dozen people here. The smell of wood and polish reminds me of school. It’s quite comforting, as is all the shined brass and flower arrangements. I start to understand why the elderly go to church.

There are flowers on the end of each pew and I reach a hand out to brush the petals in the nearest arrangement. One of the flower heads comes away and I close my fist around it. The action is familiar and I repeat it, opening my hand before crushing the flower again. But I can’t think what it means, and, anyway, it’s the wrong sort of flower. It should be a yellow summer squash flower, and these ones are white, as if left over from a wedding. Perhaps someone got married yesterday. Young people still do that in church, I’m told. I squeeze my fist while the vicar clears his throat and people on other benches bow their heads in prayer. The petals of the flower are soft and crushable. I like it like this, mangled and real rather than stiffly sitting in its arrangement. These bunches on the pews are too much like those you find preserved under Victorian glass domes, crisp and dry and slightly unnerving.

We stand and sing, and sit and pray. I’d forgotten how tiring these services could be. I can’t keep up, and I lose track of where we are, so I just mime along with everything. The vicar looks puzzled when he sees me moving my mouth during his talk, his speech, from the pulpit. Finally it’s time for tea. There’s a huge metal urn on a trolley at the back of the church and lots of greenish cups. Far too many for the number of people.