Three Things About Elsie: A Novel - Softcover

Joanna Cannon is a psychiatrist with a degree from Leicester Medical School. She lives in England’s Peak District with her family and her dog. She is the author of Three Things About Elsie and The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, a top ten bestseller in the UK.

Three Things About Elsie CHAPTER ONE

It all started a month ago. A Friday morning. I was glancing around the room, wondering what I’d done with my television magazine, when I noticed.

It was facing the wrong way. The elephant on the mantelpiece. It always points towards the window, because I read somewhere it brings you luck. Of course, I know it doesn’t. It’s like putting new shoes on a table, though, or crossing on the stairs. There’s a corner of your head feels uncomfortable if you don’t follow the rules. Normally, I would have blamed one of the uniforms, but I always go over everything with a duster after they’ve gone. There’s usually a need for it and it helps to pass the time. So I would have spotted it straightaway. I notice everything.

“Do you notice anything different?”

Miss Ambrose had arrived for our weekly chat. Fidgety. Smells of hair spray. A cousin in Truro. I decided to test her. She scanned the room, but any fool could tell she wasn’t concentrating.

“Look properly,” I said. “Give it your full attention.”

She unwound her scarf. “I am,” she said. “I am.”

I waited.

“The elephant. The elephant on the mantelpiece.” I prodded my finger. “It’s facing towards the television. It always faces towards the window. It’s moved.”

She said, Did I fancy a change? A change! I prodded my finger again and said, “I didn’t do it.”

She didn’t take me seriously. She never does. “It must have been one of the cleaners,” she said.

“It wasn’t the cleaners. When I went to bed last night, it was facing the right way. When I got up this morning, it was back to front.”

“You haven’t been dusting again, have you, Florence? Dusting is our department.”

I wouldn’t let her find my eyes. I looked at the radiator instead. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.

She sat on the armchair next to the fireplace and let out a little sigh. “Perhaps it fell?”

“And climbed back up all by itself?”

“We don’t always remember, do we? Some things we do automatically, without thinking. You must have put it back the wrong way round.”

I went over to the mantelpiece and turned the elephant to face the window again. I stared at her the whole time I was doing it.

“It’s only an ornament, Florence. No harm done. Shall I put the kettle on?”

I watched the elephant while she rummaged around in the kitchen, trying to locate a ginger nut.

“They’re in the pantry on the top shelf,” I shouted. “You can’t miss them.”

Miss Ambrose reappeared with a tray. “They were on the first shelf, actually. We don’t always know where everything is, do we?”

I studied her sweater. It had little pom-poms all around the bottom, in every color you could possibly wish for. “No,” I said. “We probably don’t.”

Miss Ambrose sat on the very edge of the armchair. She always wore cheerful clothes, it was just a shame her face never went along with it. Elsie and I once had a discussion about how old Miss Ambrose might be. Elsie plumped for late thirties, but I think that particular ship sailed a long time ago. She always looked like someone who hadn’t had quite enough sleep, but had put on another coat of lipstick and enthusiasm, in an effort to make sure the rest of the world didn’t ever find her out. I watched the radiator again, because Miss Ambrose had a habit of finding things in your eyes you didn’t think anyone else would ever notice.

“So, how have you been, Florence?”

There are twenty-five grooves on that radiator.

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“What did you get up to this week?”

They’re quite difficult to count, because if you stare at them for any length of time, your eyes start to play tricks on you.

“I’ve been quite busy.”

“We’ve not seen you in the dayroom very much. There are lots of activities going on, did you not fancy card making yesterday?”

I’ve got a drawer full of those cards. I could congratulate half a dozen people on the birth of their beautiful daughter with one pull of a handle.

“Perhaps next week,” I said.

I heard Miss Ambrose take a deep breath. I knew this meant trouble, because she only ever does it when she needs the extra oxygen for a debate about something.

“Florence,” she said.

I didn’t answer.

“Florence. I just want to be sure that you’re happy at Cherry Tree?”

Miss Ambrose was one of those people whose sentences always went up at the end. As though the world appeared so uncertain to her, it needed constant interrogation. I glanced out of the window. Everything was brick and concrete, straight lines and sharp corners, and tiny windows into small lives. There was no horizon. I never thought I would lose the horizon along with everything else, but when you get old you realize whichever direction you choose to face, you find yourself confronted with a landscape filled up with loss.

“Perhaps we should have a little rethink about whether Cherry Tree is still the right place for you?” she said. “Perhaps there’s somewhere else you’d enjoy more?”

I turned to her. “You’re not sending me to Greenbank.”

“Greenbank has a far higher staff-to-resident ratio.” Miss Ambrose tilted her head. I could see all the little lines in her neck helping it along. “You’d have much more one-to-one attention.”

“I don’t want one-to-one attention. I don’t want any attention. I just want to be left in peace.”

“Florence, as we get older, we lose the ability to judge what’s best for us. It happens to everyone. You might enjoy Greenbank. It might be fun.”

“It’s not much fun when no one listens to what you say.” I spoke to the radiator.

“Pardon?”

“I’m not going. You can’t make me.”

Miss Ambrose started to say something, but she swallowed it back instead. “Why don’t we try for a compromise? Shall we see how things go over the next . . . month, say? Then we can reassess.”

“A month?”

“A reevaluation. For all of us. A probationary period.”

“Probation? What crime did I commit?”

“It’s a figure of speech, Florence. That’s all.” Miss Ambrose’s shoes tapped out a little beige tune on the carpet. She pulled out a silence, like they always do, hoping you’ll fill it up with something they can get their teeth into, but I was wise to it now.

“It’s Gone with the Wind tomorrow afternoon,” she said eventually, when the silence didn’t work out for her.

“I’ve seen it,” I said.

“The whole world’s seen it. That’s not the point.”

“I was never very big on Clark Gable.”

I was still looking at the radiator, but I could hear Miss Ambrose lean forward. “You can’t just bury yourself in here, Florence. A month’s probation, remember? You’ve got to meet me halfway.”

I wanted to say, “Why have I got to meet anybody halfway to anywhere?” but I didn’t. I concentrated on the radiator instead, and I didn’t stop concentrating on it until I heard the front door shut to.

“He had bad breath, you know, Clark Gable,” I shouted. “I read about it. In a magazine.”

* * *

There are three things you should know about Elsie, and the first thing is that she’s my best friend.

People chop and change best friends, first one and then another depending what kind of mood they happen to find themselves in and who they’re talking to, but mine has always been Elsie and it always will be. That’s what a best friend is all about, isn’t it? Someone who stands by you, no matter what. I can’t say we haven’t had our arguments over the years, but that’s because we’re so opposite. We even look opposite. Elsie’s short and I’m tall. Elsie’s tiny and I have big feet. Size eleven. I tell everybody. Because Elsie says there comes a point when feet are so large, the only thing left to do is to boast about them.

We spend most of our time with each other, me and Elsie. We even opted to eat our meals together, because it makes it easier for the uniforms. It’s nice to have a bit of company, because nothing in this world sounds more lonely than one knife and fork rattling on a dinner plate.

It was later that day, the day Miss Ambrose gave me my ultimatum, and Elsie and I were sitting by the window in my flat, having our lunch.

“They’ve still not shown their face,” I said.

I knew she’d heard me, the woman in the pink uniform. She was dishing up my meal on a wheel three feet away, and I’m a clear speaker, even at the worst of times. Elsie says I shout, but I don’t shout. I just like to make sure people have understood. I even tapped on the glass to be certain.

“Number twelve.” I tapped. “I said they’ve still not shown their face. They’ve been in there a few days now, because I’ve seen lights go on and off.”

The woman in the pink uniform spooned out a puddle of baked beans. She didn’t even flinch.

Elsie looked up.

“Don’t shout, Flo,” she said.

“I’m not shouting,” I said. “I’m making a point. I’m not allowed to do very much anymore, but I’m still allowed to make a point. And that Dumpster hasn’t been collected yet. They need to be told.”

“So why don’t you write a letter?” said Elsie.

I looked at her and looked away again. “I can’t write a letter, because I’ve been given an ultimatum.”

“What do you mean?”

“Miss Ambrose has put me on probation.” I spoke into the glass.

“What crime did you commit?”

“It’s a figure of speech,” I said. “That’s all.”

“They’ll clear it all away soon, Miss Claybourne,” said the woman.

I turned to her. “They shouldn’t be allowed to just leave her things out like that, someone ought to be told.”

“They can do whatever they want when you’re dead,” said Elsie. “Your world is their oyster, Florence.”

In the courtyard, a tumble of leaves gathered at the edge of the grass, and oranges and reds turned over and over on the concrete. “I only saw her last week. Walking along that path with a shopping bag.”

The woman in the pink uniform looked up. “It should make a difference,” I said. “That I saw her. Now everything she ever was is lying in that skip.”

“They had to clear the flat,” she said, “for the next person.”

We both watched her. She gave nothing away.

“I wonder who that is,” I said.

Still nothing.

“I wonder as well,” said Elsie.

The woman in the pink uniform frowned at herself. “I’ve been off. And anyway, Miss Bissell deals with all of that.”

I raised my eyebrow at Elsie, but Elsie went back to her fish finger. Elsie gave up far too easily, in my opinion. There was a badge on the front of the woman’s uniform that said HERE TO HELP.

“It would be quite helpful,” I said to the badge, “to share any rumors you might have heard.”

The words hovered for a while in midair.

“All I know is it’s a man,” she said.

“A man?” I said.

Elsie looked up. “A man?”

“Are you certain?” I said.

Yes, she said, yes, she was quite certain.

Elsie and I exchanged a glance over the tablecloth. There were very few men at Cherry Tree. You spotted them from time to time, planted in the corner of the communal lounge or wandering the grounds, along paths which led nowhere except back to where they’d started. But most of the residents were women. Women who had long since lost their men. Although I always thought the word “lost” sounded quite peculiar, as though they had left their husbands on a railway platform by mistake.

“I wonder how many people went to her funeral,” I said. “The woman from number twelve. Perhaps we should have made the effort.”

“There’s never a particularly good turnout these days.” Elsie pulled her cardigan a little tighter. It was the color of mahogany. It did her no favors. “That’s the trouble with a funeral when you’re old. Most of the guest list have already pipped you to the post.”

“She wasn’t here very long,” I said.

Elsie pushed mashed potato onto her fork. “What was her name again?”

“Brenda, I think. Or it might have been Barbara. Or perhaps Betty.”

The skip was filled with her life—Brenda’s, or Barbara’s, or perhaps Betty’s. There were ornaments she had loved and paintings she had chosen. Books she’d read, or would never finish, photographs which had smashed from their frames as they’d hit against the metal. Photographs she had dusted and cared for, of people who were clearly no longer here to claim themselves from the debris. It was so quickly disposed of, so easily dismantled. A small existence, disappeared. There was nothing left to say she’d even been there. Everything was exactly as it was before. As if someone had put a bookmark in her life and slammed it shut.

“I wonder who’ll dust my photograph after I’m gone,” I said.

I heard Elsie rest her cutlery on the edge of the plate. “How do you mean?”

I studied the pavement through the window. “I wonder if I made any difference to the world at all.”

“Does it matter, Flo?” she said.

My thoughts escaped in a whisper. “Oh yes, it matters. It matters very much.”

When I turned around, Elsie was smiling at me.

* * *

“Which one was that, then?” I said.

The pink uniform had left us with a Tunnock’s tea cake and the Light Programme. Elsie insisted it was called Radio 2 now, but perhaps she’d given up correcting me.

“The one with a boyfriend called Daryl and acid reflux,” said Elsie. We watched the uniform make its way up the stairwell of the flats opposite, flashes of pink against a beige landscape. “Enjoys making mountains out of molehills.”

“Is she the one with a wise head on her shoulders?” I said.

“No.” Elsie stirred her tea. “That’s Saturday. Blue uniform. Small ears. You must try to remember. It’s important.”

“Why is it important?”

“It just is, Florence. I might not always be here to remind you, and you’ll need to remember for yourself.”

“I always get them mixed up,” I said. “There are so many of them.”

There were so many of them. Miss Bissell’s “army of helpers.” They marched through Cherry Tree, feeding and bathing and shuffling old people around like playing cards. Some residents needed more help than others, but Elsie and I were lucky. We were level ones. We were fed and watered, but apart from that, they usually left us to our own devices. Miss Bissell said she kept her north eye on the level ones, which made it sound like she had a wide range of other eyes she could choose from, to keep everybody else in line. After level three, you were moved on, an unwanted audience to other people’s lives. Most residents were sent to Greenbank when they had outstayed their welcome, which was neither green, nor on a bank, but a place where people waited for God in numbered rooms, shouting out for the past, as if the past might somehow reappear and rescue them.

“I wonder what level he’s on.” I peered out at number twelve. “The new chap.”

“Oh, at least a two,” Elsie said. “Probably a three. You know how men are. They’re not especially resilient.”

“I hope he’s not a three, we’ll never see him.”

“Why in heaven’s name would you want to see him, Florence?” Elsie sat back, and her cardigan blended in with the sideboard.

“It helps to pass the time,” I said. “Like the Light Programme.”

* * *

We sat by the window in my flat, because Elsie says it ...