Elizabeth Is Missing (13 page)

“They’ve been through it already,” Dad said.

So that was why everything had been in such a mess. I imagined big policemen’s hands rooting through the underwear. It was a horrible thought. Perhaps Douglas was thinking that, too, because he looked sick for a moment.

“Find anything?” he asked.

Dad shook his head. “Nothing really. Except her ration book.”

“She left it in her suitcase.” Douglas made it sound like the answer to a riddle. “And the people at the hotel? What did they say?”

“They’ve no recollection of seeing her. Her name’s in the register—receptionist’s handwriting, not hers—but they didn’t recognize her photo.”

“So did she stay there or not?” I asked. My chest felt full of air and I thought my lungs might burst. Nobody answered. Ma didn’t move, didn’t say anything, but I saw tears fall on to silk, and watched as they made dark circles on the material. It was me who washed everything in the end.

I’m halfway along Elizabeth’s road before I know where I’m going. It’s full of children in dull, untidy uniforms, on their way to, or possibly from, school. I stumble through a knot of them; they smell of unwashed gym kits and cheap cologne and I find I’m staring at their rucksacks and record bags, expecting to see a brown leather suitcase with a brown leather handle. Even at Elizabeth’s door I’m still glancing back to check. I ring the bell, look through the front window, and peer in at the kitchen, but I can’t see anything. The house seems dark and unlived in.

“Look, it’s some geriatric burglar!” someone shouts.

A gang of children, teenagers I suppose you’d call them—Katy’s age—swagger about the pavement, slapping at their fellows and dragging their bags along the ground. The boy who shouted is grinning at me.

“How you gonna get in?” he calls. “Stannah stairlift?”

The others laugh, and I turn to see where he’s pointing: the landing window is open. How useful it would be if I really did have a stairlift to take me up there: I might just fit through that window. I wonder if it has been open before? I nearly missed it this time. I wonder if anything else is open. I try the side gate, but that’s wishful thinking. If only I could pull the outer wall away to see if Elizabeth is in there, take the front off like a doll’s house. Or like Douglas’s house after the bombs were dropped. Of course, I wouldn’t really want anything like that to happen, and I feel slightly ashamed of wishing for a bomb. But I do want to ask about the open window, so I step round to the next-door neighbour’s. There’s no bell, and when I knock, a dog starts barking. It gets louder and more aggressive-sounding as I wait, until it seems as if it’s right behind the door. I start to back away but, just as I reach the pavement, the door opens and the dog bounds out. It runs around me, whining and sniffing.

“Don’t worry,” the owner says. “He won’t bite or anything, he’s just curious. Did you knock?”

I stare at the owner. He’s young, just a boy, and has messy brown hair. Very messy. The dog starts to lick my hand, and I pat it on the head.

“You must give off good vibes,” the boy says. “He usually only does that to people he knows.”

I smile, glad to have been singled out. Glad to have found a friend. I always wanted a dog when I was young. My parents said we couldn’t afford it, and they were probably right, but I was haunted by a story about a dog that was found dead in someone’s yard. It had been tied up and left without food and water after the owner had gone away. Mrs. Winners told us about it to prove we shouldn’t give up hope, that people were moving “at the drop of a hat” nowadays, doing moonlight flits, that Sukey might have done the same. “No time to even consider their pets,” she said. “It’s the way of the world now.” But it was the other details that struck me at the time. The yard was one near Frank’s, and the dog was found only a few days after Dad and I had been to his house. “It must have barked and barked,” Mrs. Winners said. “Hoping someone would come and rescue it.” How I wished—for years, I wished—that I had been that someone, had followed the barking when I’d heard it, and saved the dog.

This dog in front of me whines as if it knows the turn of my thoughts. I pat him again, longing to be young and supple so I could crouch down and rub his coat properly.

“Shut up, Vincent,” the boy says. “He’s just going for the sympathy vote. Hoping you’ve got a biscuit on you.”

I begin to look through my bag.

“Oh, no,” he says. “Don’t. We’ve got plenty, he’s just greedy. You’re not a friend of Mum’s, are you? Did you want something?”

“No,” I say. “No. Thank you.”

“Wasn’t it you who knocked?”

“I don’t think so,” I say, walking away. The dog follows me to the end of the path and then runs off when its owner calls. I keep looking back towards Elizabeth’s house as I walk home. If only there were some way of getting in.

It starts to drizzle in the park, and it quickly becomes a downpour. I stand for a moment under some trees. I stood here once, long ago, with my mother. I remember it being dark like this, the sky glowering and the earth too sodden to give off that fresh smell of the outdoors. I’d followed her here, more or less, after a row with my father.

She’d been at the garden gate when I got home from Audrey’s, and I could see Dad silhouetted in the light of the kitchen door. “How could you, Lillian?” I heard him shout.

My first instinct was to run into the larder and cover my head, but instead I waited on the pavement, half hidden by Mrs. Winners’s hedge.

“What was I supposed to do?” Ma yelled back, pulling her mackintosh close against the rain. “There are still four mouths to feed in this house. And it’s not like I can ask Frank for help any more.”

“Frank! Again! You never stop talking about that man. Never mind he was the death of our daughter—”

“He never was! He just isn’t a sour-faced Methodist like all the people you admire. And don’t think I don’t know who’s put that idea in your head.”

I couldn’t hear what Dad said to that, but I heard Ma shout.

“Yes, I mean Douglas! He could never leave Sukey alone—of course he’d like to accuse Frank.”

I looked at the windows above, hoping Douglas wasn’t in, and then watched as Ma marched off down the road, raindrops making the brim of her hat sag sadly. When I finally moved I found Dad still standing by the kitchen door. He threw his hands up as he spotted me.

“You’re determined to get wet through, too, I see,” he said.

After a moment I followed him inside. Douglas was sitting at the table, concentrating on his food, and I wondered how much he’d heard. There was a towel hanging on the back of a chair by the fire—it smelled of gravy but I rubbed my face and hair with it while Dad told me I deserved to get pneumonia. I took my wet skirt off and hung it on the chair where the towel had been, and Douglas stared at me for a moment in my petticoat.

“What’s going on?” I asked, as no one had bothered to tell me.

“Frank’s back,” Douglas said. His eyes were narrowed, and he was holding a spoon as though he might try to stab someone with it. “They arrested him off the train from London.”

“Arrested him? Why? Have they found—I mean, is there any news on Sukey?”

“Nothing yet. Just the coupon fraud so far.” He shook chutney off his spoon fiercely; it spattered on to his pullover and he muttered something under his breath. Dad sat down to his own half-finished meal, frowning at the shredded cabbage.

“But you think there will be something?”

“No doubt. When they find out what sort of a man he is. A drunk, a criminal. The sort of man that should never have been allowed to marry Sukey. The sort of man no parent should ever allow near his daughters.”

Dad’s fork clattered against his plate. “Thank you for that, Douglas,” he said. “I’m sure you mean well, but you can keep your opinions to yourself in the future.”

I leant against the sink, watching Douglas’s face as it screwed tight before relaxing enough to chew. For a few minutes he looked like his old self, ducking his head and bending right over his food to eat. I almost expected him to sit back with a “This chutney sure is swell.” But he was staring at his leftover mutton gristle when he spoke again.

“Mr. Palmer,” he said, “you do think it was Frank, don’t you?”

Dad stared at him across the table.

“You do think it must have been him. You do want him to be locked away?”

“We don’t know if she’s dead,” I said.

“None of that will bring her back,” Dad said at the same time; then, turning to me, “Maud,” he said, “the police told us. The likelihood now is that she isn’t still living. You must understand that.”

I looked away at the rain-soaked garden, wondering where Ma was.

“Maud?” Dad said again. He reached a hand towards me.

“Yes, yes,” I said, pushing away from the sink and taking Dad’s old greatcoat from its hook. I was trying to be as mechanical as possible, trying not to let myself think.

“You’re going after your mother?” Dad got up as I made for the kitchen door. “Don’t, Maud. You should know: she’s been using Sukey’s ration book.”

“That’s what you’ve been arguing about,” I said, moving stiff and puppet-like.

Dad nodded, and Douglas behind him. I looked at them sitting together, a united front. No wonder Ma preferred the dismal night to the two of them, here like this, stony-faced and against her—still eating, I noted, the food they were so morally opposed to having. I felt something rush up through me and my breath rasped into my throat.

“If Sukey’s dead,” I shouted, “what does it matter?”

I banged out of the house and took the route I’d seen Ma take, down the street and into the park. It was still raining heavily. The grass was waterlogged and the air was cold. I wished I had better shoes on and realized I didn’t know where I was going, or how far Ma might have walked. But I was too angry to stop and go back home. Angry with Dad’s petty worries in the face of Sukey’s disappearance, angry at his weak acceptance of Douglas’s interpretation, and angry at having been made to take sides. I kept going, past the bandstand and on to the North Gate, before turning back towards the wilder bit of the park.

It was there I found Ma. She had stopped under the trees, where it was still wet but not so exposed. The park seemed like a flat sea, and Ma, standing, looking out, was a ship’s captain, surveying the water, the tall dark trees behind her a huge wave about to engulf the ship. I thought she might have been crying on the walk there, but it could just have been the rain. She saw me and held her head up so I could see her eyes under her hat.

“If you’re going to weigh in about that book, then you can cook your own meals, same as they can from now on,” she said, but then she opened her arms and I went straight to her.

“She wasn’t with him,” she said into my hair, which the rain had plastered to my scalp. “Frank’s come back, but she wasn’t with him.”

I pressed my face into her shoulder and she stroked my wet head.

“I thought. I’d hoped. You know what I’d hoped. But she wasn’t with him. And do
you
believe it, Maud?” she asked, holding me away from her for a moment. “Do you believe Frank could have done it? Douglas said he was a nasty drunk. Was he?”

A copy of the
Daily Echo
blew past and I watched it flapping like a fish as it came to rest against the nearest tree. “I did see Frank drunk once,” I said, feeling I had to say something. “But he wasn’t nasty to Sukey. Not exactly. Sort of the opposite. Sort of.”

Ma nodded, smiled a bit. “Thought so,” she said.

“And he probably didn’t like Doug very much because of the amount of time he spent there.”

“What?” Ma said, turning my face up to hers and smoothing my hair back.

I felt a drop of rain splash on to my face. “Doug,” I said. “One of Sukey’s neighbours said he was there all the time, and I s’pose Frank didn’t much like that.”

“Douglas was there all the time? Why?”

I shrugged. “The woman thought he was Sukey’s fancy man. But that’s stupid, isn’t it, Ma? Isn’t it?”

She let go of me and began to walk back across the park. I followed, avoiding the puddles which her feet found and trying to draw a dry breath in through the rain. As we got to the darkly covered bandstand a shadow slipped beyond the trees.

“Come on, just come out of the rain,” someone said from the blackness of the bandstand, and Ma and I stopped as one, straining to see into the gloom.

“It’s pelting down. You’ll catch your death.” It was Douglas’s voice, and then his face, shining down at us like an owl’s. He started at the sight of us and his skin seemed unnaturally white.

“Who were you talking to?” Ma said, looking round.

“You,” he said, though he looked over our heads, at the expanse of inky turf. “I thought you should come out of the rain. Who else would I be talking to?”

Ma stared at him for several seconds and then turned very deliberately towards the trees. There was nothing there. “Well, I don’t want to huddle under a bandstand for the rest of the night,” she said. “Let’s get home.”

Our footsteps on the path held a liquid ring and I was glad to be heading for our kitchen and a hot fire, but before we reached the steps down to the street I looked back. It only took a moment to recognize the figure of the mad woman. She was crouched on the open grass, pinned by the rain, her umbrella propped against her side, unopened. And I suddenly knew that it was she Douglas had been speaking to, she he had been pleading with to come out of the rain.

S
nake and kidney pie,’ that was one of Dad’s. And ‘Nosmo King sits here,’ d’you remember, Helen? He’d put the
NO SMOKING
sign on your place mat. Used to drive waitresses mad with his nonsense.”

My son is over from Germany with his wife and children. They’re talking and laughing, their voices echoing over each other the way they do underwater. I can hear what they say—making jokes of some kind—but somehow I can’t make the sentences fit together. I lose track. Still, I laugh along with the others; it doesn’t matter what the joke is, it’s nice to laugh. My face aches from smiling. And I am so warm. My daughter’s on one side, my son on the other.