Elizabeth Is Missing (2 page)

“Are you sure this is what you’re after?” Reg asks. “Only you bought a lot of peach slices when you came in yesterday.”

I look down into the basket. Is that true? Did I really buy the same things yesterday? He coughs and I see a glint of amusement in his eyes.

“Quite sure, thank you,” I say, my voice firm. “If I want to buy peach slices, I can buy them.”

He raises his eyebrows and begins typing prices into his till. I keep my head high, watching the cans being put into the plastic carrying thing, for carrying, but my cheeks are hot. What
was
it I came for? I feel in my pocket and find a piece of blue paper with my writing on it:
Eggs. Milk? Chocolate
. I pick up a bar of Dairy Milk and slip it into the basket, so at least I will have something from the list. But I can’t put the peaches back now, Reg would laugh at me. I pay for my bag of cans and clank back down the road with them. It’s slow going, because the bag is heavy, and my shoulder and the back of my knee are hurting. I remember when the houses used to whiz by as I walked—nearly running—to and from home. Ma would ask me afterwards about what I’d seen, whether certain neighbours were out, what I thought about someone’s new garden wall. I’d never noticed; it had all gone past in a flash. Now I have plenty of time to look at everything, and no one to tell what I’ve seen.

Sometimes, when I’m having a sort-through or a clear-out, I find photos from my youth, and it’s a shock to see everything in black and white. I think my granddaughter believes we were actually grey-skinned, with dull hair, always posing in a shadowed landscape. But I remember the town as being almost too bright to look at when I was a girl. I remember the deep blue of the sky and the dark green of the pines cutting through it, the bright red of the local brick houses and the orange carpet of pine needles under our feet. Nowadays—though I’m sure the sky is still occasionally blue and most of the houses are still there, and the trees still drop their needles—nowadays, the colours seem faded, as if I live in an old photograph.

When I get home there’s an alarm clock ringing. I set it sometimes to remind myself of appointments. I drop my bag inside the front door and turn off the alarm. I can’t think what it’s for this time; I can’t see anything to tell me. Perhaps someone is coming.

“Did the estate agent turn up?” Helen calls, her voice broken by the scrape of her key in the front door. “He was supposed to arrive at twelve. Did he?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “What time is it now?”

She doesn’t answer. I can hear her clomping about in the hall.

“Mum!” she says. “Where have these cans come from? How many bloody peach slices do you need?”

I tell her I don’t know how many. I tell her Carla must have brought them. I say I’ve been at home the whole day, and then I look at the clock, wondering how I’ve managed to get through it all. Helen comes into the sitting room, breathing out sweet, cold air, and I’m a child again, in my warm bed, and my sister’s icy face presses against my cheek for a moment, and her chill breath whispers over me as she tells me about the Pavilion and the dancing and the soldiers. Sukey was always cold coming home from a dance, even in the summer. Helen is often cold, too, from so much time spent digging about in other people’s gardens.

She holds up a plastic bag. “Why would Carla leave tins of peach slices in the hall?” She doesn’t lower her voice, even though we’re in the same room, and she holds the bag high off the ground. “You have to stop going shopping. I’ve told you I can get anything you need. I come every day.”

I’m sure I don’t see her that often, but I’m not going to argue. Her arm drops and I watch the bag swing to a stop against her leg.

“So will you promise? Not to shop for food again?”

“I don’t see why I should. I told you, Carla must have brought them. And, anyway, if I want to buy peach slices, I can buy them.” The sentence has a familiar ring, but I can’t think why. “If I were to grow some summer squash,” I say, turning a shopping list to the light, “where would I best plant them?”

Helen sighs her way out of the room and I find I’ve got up to follow her. In the hall I stop: there’s a roaring noise coming from somewhere. I can’t think what it is, I can’t work out where it’s coming from. But I can hardly hear it once I’m in the kitchen. Everything is very clean in here: my dishes are on the rack, though I don’t think I put them there, and the knife and fork I like to use have been washed up. As I open a cupboard door, two scraps of paper flutter to the ground. One is a recipe for white sauce and the other has Helen’s name on it, a number underneath. I get a roll of sticking ribbon, long glue ribbon, out of a drawer to stick them back up again. Perhaps I will make a white sauce today. After I’ve had a cup of tea.

I switch the kettle on. I know which plug it is, as someone has labelled it
KETTLE
. I get out cups and milk, and a teabag from a jar marked
TEA
. There’s a note by the sink:
Coffee helps memory
. That one’s in my handwriting. I take my cup through to the sitting room, pausing in the doorway. I’ve got this rumbling in my head. Or perhaps it’s coming from upstairs. I start up towards the landing, but I can’t do it without holding on to both banisters so I step back one and leave my tea on the shelf in the hall. I’ll only be a minute.

My room is quite sunny, and it’s peaceful here, except for a sort of growl somewhere in the house. I push the door shut and sit at my dressing table by the window. Bits of costume jewellery are strewn across the doilies and china dishes; I don’t wear proper jewellery now, except my wedding ring, of course. I’ve never had to have it altered, not in over fifty years. Patrick’s matching one seemed to burrow itself into his flesh so that the knuckle bulged above it; he refused to have it cut off, and it wouldn’t budge however much butter I greased it with. He used to say the ring being bound to him like that was proof of a strong marriage. I used to say it was proof he didn’t take care of himself properly. Patrick told me to be more worried about my own ring, too loose on my slender finger, but really it fitted perfectly and I never lost it.

Helen says I lose my jewellery now, though, and she and Katy have taken most of the good pieces for themselves to “keep them safe.” I don’t mind. At least they’re still in the family, and none of it was very valuable. The most expensive thing I had was a bizarre gold pendant in the shape of Queen Nefertiti’s head which Patrick brought back from some building project in Egypt.

I push my hand through a dingy sort of plastic bangle and look in the mirror. My reflection always gives me a shock. I never really believed I would age, and certainly not like this. The skin around my eyes and the bridge of my nose has wrinkled in a very unexpected way. It makes me look quite lizard-like. I can hardly remember my old face, except in flashes. A round-cheeked girl in front of the mirror taking out her curlers for the first time, a pale young woman in the Pleasure Gardens looking down into the green river, a tired mother with untidy hair, half turned from the dark window of a train as she tries to pull apart her fighting children. I’m always frowning in my memory, so no wonder my brow has set that way. My mother had smooth, peaches-and-cream skin right to her death, though she had good reason to be more wrinkled than most. Perhaps it was something to do with not wearing make-up; they say that about nuns, don’t they?

I don’t wear make-up either these days, and I’ve never worn lipstick, never liked it. The girls at the exchange teased me about it, and every now and then when I was young I’d try some out, borrow a friend’s or use one I’d been given for Christmas, but I could never stand to have it on for more than a few minutes. I’ve got a tube in the drawer from Helen or Katy and I take it out now, twisting the base and applying it very carefully, leaning close to the mirror, making sure not to get it on my teeth. You see these old women with flecked dentures and sooty eyelids and rouge smeared over their faces, their eyebrows drawn on too high. I’d rather die than be one of them. I blot my lips together. Nice and bright now, but slightly cracked, and I am quite thirsty. About time I made myself a cup of tea.

I drop the lipstick back in the drawer and slip a long pearl necklace over my head before getting up. Not real pearls, of course. When I open my door I can hear a roaring noise. I can’t think what it is. It gets louder the further down the stairs I go. I stop on the bottom step, but I can’t see anything. I look in the sitting room. The roaring is even louder. I wonder if it is in my head, if something is coming loose. The noise swells and vibrates. And then it stops.

“There. That’s your vacuuming done, anyway.” Helen stands by the dining room door, winding up the wire on the vacuum cleaner. Her mouth wavers into a smile. “Are you going out somewhere?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “I don’t think so.”

“What are the pearls for then? You’re all dolled up.”

“Am I?” I lay a hand against my collarbone. I’ve got a string of pearls on and a thing on my wrist, and I can taste lipstick. Lipstick, with its foetid waxen smell and its suffocating thickness. I wipe the back of my hand over my mouth, but that only smears it and makes it worse, so I begin to scrub at my face, pulling the sleeve of my cardigan down to act as a flannel, spitting on it and rubbing as if I were both mother and mucky child. It’s some minutes before I feel clean again, and I find Helen has been watching me.

“Give me your cardigan,” she says. “I’d better put it in the wash.” She asks if I want something to drink.

“Oh, yes,” I say, shrugging the wool from my skin and dropping on to my chair. “I’m terribly thirsty.”

“No wonder,” Helen says, turning to leave the room. “There was a line of cold cups of tea on the shelf in the hall.”

I say I can’t think how they got there, but I don’t think she hears me, because she’s already disappeared into the kitchen and, anyway, my head is lowered as I’m going through my handbag. I had some malted biscuits in here at some point. Was it yesterday? Did I eat them? I take out a comb and my purse and some scrunched-up tissues. I don’t find any biscuits, but there is a note in one of the bag’s pockets:
No more peach slices
. I don’t tell Helen. Instead I put it under the note with today’s date. My carer leaves me one like it every day. That’s how I know it’s Thursday. I usually visit my friend Elizabeth on a Thursday, but we don’t seem to have made any arrangement this week. She hasn’t called. I’d have written it down if she had. I’d have made a note of what she’d said, or some of it. I’d have written down what time to go and see her. I write everything down.

There are bits of paper all over the house, lying in piles or stuck up on different surfaces. Scribbled shopping lists and recipes, telephone numbers and appointments, notes about things that have already happened. My paper memory. It’s supposed to stop me forgetting things. But my daughter tells me I lose the notes. I have that written down, too. Still, if Elizabeth
had
called, I’d have a note. I can’t have lost every one. I write things down over and over. They can’t all have dropped off the table and the worktop and the mirror. And then I have this piece of paper tucked into my sleeve:
No word from Elizabeth
. It has an old date on one side. I have a horrible feeling something has happened to her. Anything could have. There was something on the news yesterday, I think. About an old woman. Something unpleasant. And now Elizabeth’s disappeared. What if she’s been mugged and left for dead? Or had a fall and can’t get to a phone? I think of her lying on the floor of her sitting room, unable to get up, still hoping for some treasure to leap from the carpet.

“Perhaps you’ve spoken to her and don’t remember, Mum. Do you think that might be possible?” Helen hands me a cup of tea. I had forgotten she was here.

She bends to kiss me on the top of my head. I feel her lips through the thin hair that puffs from my scalp. She smells of some sort of herb. Rosemary, perhaps. I suppose she was planting some. For remembrance.

“Because, well, you did forget that we’d been out on Saturday, didn’t you?”

I balance the cup on the arm of the chair, keeping a hand on it. I don’t look up when my daughter moves back. I suppose she must be right. I have no recollection of Saturday, but I have no recollection of not recalling it, either. The thought makes me breathe in sharply. These blanks are worrying. More than worrying. How can I not remember last Saturday? I feel the familiar skipping of my heartbeat, the flush of embarrassment, fear. Last Saturday. Can I even remember yesterday?

“So perhaps you have spoken to Elizabeth.”

I nod and take a sip of tea, already losing the train of the conversation. “You’re probably right.” I’m not quite sure what I’m agreeing to, but I like the feeling of falling into blankness, the end of anxiously trying to remember. Helen smiles. Is there a hint of triumph in it?

“All right then. I’d better get going.”

Helen is always going. I watch her through the front window as she gets into her car and drives off. I can never remember her arriving. Perhaps I should write it down. But these bits of paper on the table beside my chair, this system for remembering, it’s not perfect. So many of the notes are old, no longer relevant, and I get them muddled. And even the new ones don’t seem to contain the right information. There’s one here with writing still shiny:
Haven’t heard from Elizabeth
. I run my fingers over the words, smudging them slightly. Is that true? I must only just have written it. I certainly can’t remember having heard from her recently. I reach for the phone. Button number four is Elizabeth. It rings and rings. I make a note.

E
lizabeth is missing,” I say. “Did I tell you?” I am looking at Helen, but she isn’t looking at me.

“You said. What are you going to eat?”

I sit staring over the top of my menu. God knows where we are. I can see it’s a restaurant—waiters in black and white, marble-topped tables—but which one? I have an awful feeling I’m supposed to know, and that this is some kind of treat. I don’t think it’s my birthday, but perhaps an anniversary. Patrick’s death? It would be just like Helen to remember and make it a “special occasion.” But I can see from the bare trees out on the street that it’s the wrong time of year. Patrick died in the spring.