Elizabeth Is Missing (26 page)

“Helen, where am I?” I ask. “This isn’t my house.
Is
it?” Somehow, I can’t be sure. It’s someone’s house. I have been here before. Perhaps it is mine—I can’t think of another house just now, I can’t think of any other rooms to compare this one to.

“This is my house,” Helen says, putting down a tray and holding a chair out for me to sit in. “Let’s have a cup of tea, shall we? I’ve made you some toast.”

I pick up my cup and she watches me drink.

“I might get some cake when I’m out,” she says. She has a crafty look. She’s trying to hide it behind a smile, but I can see it. “What kind of cake would you like?”

I ask for coffee cake. I don’t like coffee cake, so I can’t be tricked into eating it. She takes the tray away. She’s taken it somewhere, or to someone. To the Yanks in the NAAFI, is it? To serve them breakfasts of sausages and beans. I wonder if she’ll bring me any.

Her shield, her winged rain shield, is lying on the table. So I’m not the only one who forgets things. I put my hand through the loop of material on the handle and hold my arm up, watching the raining rain shield dangle as I drink my tea. There is a newspaper here, too, and I fold it into a tiny rectangle, making the creases as sharp as I can.

A girl walks past the door, collecting things from the shelves in the hall. She’s stealing them to give to the mad woman. I can see her from where I’m sitting, putting a coat on, stuffing her pockets. I stand and grab my bag. The front door slams, but I open it only moments later and follow her down the path. At the turn in the road she stops. I stop, too, and pretend to be looking at the heads of some dying sunflowers. They hang over a garden wall, the seeds falling on to the pavement. I gather some up and put them in my pocket. When the girl starts walking again I copy her. And then, as I get to the main road, I see her break into a run. A bus is waiting at the stop, she jumps on it and it pulls away. I’ve lost her. She’s gone. And she won’t come back, never never never. I turn towards home. There are bits of rubbish all down the middle of the street. A trail of banana skins and newspapers. There’s something I was going to do with newspapers: use them, read them, something. I bend to peel a bit from the tarmac, trying to read the words. But there are sludgy smears across the page and it doesn’t smell right. I drop it by my feet.

A miniature bottle lies against the curb. What’s that story about a little bottle? “Drink me,” it said. I can’t remember the rest. Anyway this bottle says
MACALLAN WHISKY
, and I don’t think it was whisky in the story. That’s something Frank used to drink. He had a bottle with him once when I met him. It wasn’t miniature, either.

He drank it sitting in the car at the end of our road while I told him everything I could remember about Sukey. He said he wanted to think of her the way I did, wanted to try and get her straight in his head so he’d never lose her. We sat close in the half-dark, a streetlamp breaking through the shadows, lighting up swirls of cigarette smoke. It was stuffy, but I didn’t mind: cars were wonderful. In a car you could just sit, you didn’t have to be getting on with anything, you didn’t have to prepare vegetables, or dig the garden or run sheets through the mangle.

In Frank’s car all I had to do was talk, to remember the details he’d forgotten: the name of Sukey’s perfume, the flowers she liked, the columns she always read in magazines, and, once again, what she’d said the night she met him. He liked that memory best. How Sukey had come home happy and dancing, how she’d taken off her blue dress and sung to herself as she put cold cream on. And how she’d lain in the dark, in the next bed, and told me she’d met this man, this handsome man, who’d winked at her and grinned. And how she’d known—right then she’d known—she’d met the man she was going to marry.

I told the story, studying the shape of the space between us, the gap between his thigh and mine, and he stared out at the street. And then he cried, not really with tears, but hunched over with his eyes shut. I touched his hair, at the back, where there wasn’t any Brylcreem, and he curled his fingers round my wrist and brought it to his mouth. I found I was trying not to breathe.

“This evening, Maud,” he said, “when I saw you coming towards the car, I thought for a minute it was her. You don’t know what that did to me.”

He held my wrist for a long time. When he let go it was to take a drink from the bottle of whisky which rested on the floor against his ankles. A crease had formed in the sleeve of my jacket—Sukey’s blue suit jacket—and I smoothed a hand along it, trying to make the material lie flat. And suddenly he leant over, pressing his face into my neck. I kept very still. I didn’t dislike it exactly, but I was in terror of what might happen next.

“Frank,” I whispered.

He sat up then and I clambered, blindly, clumsily, from the car, hurrying when I realized he was getting out, too. But he only leant against the lamppost, watching as I walked home unaccompanied. It made me think of the time when he and Sukey were courting and I would see them huddled together there, under the dimmed streetlight, wrapped in his big tweed coat, kissing. That was another memory I saved up for Frank.

“Strange company you keep,” Douglas said as I came through the back door, the overhead light shining harshly on his face, making him look ill.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, struggling out of my jacket.

“I saw you. In the car,” he said. “With Frank.”

There was a newspaper, folded very small, lying by his clasped hands, and I looked at it carefully while I thought how to answer. The Grosvenor Hotel murderer had been caught and there seemed to be no doubt he’d be hanged, despite the fact that the trial wasn’t due to start for months. “Of course. Always waiting around outside, aren’t you, Doug?” I said. “I’d say you were the strange one.”

He looked down at the newspaper, too, and I caught a flash of the hurt my words had caused, the hard blink, the creep of a blush. I felt a sudden exasperation with him and batted the newspaper on to the floor. He didn’t react, but stared at the table where the paper had been before picking it up again and squeezing it.

“It’s not the first time you’ve been with him,” he said. “And wearing her clothes, too. What are you doing, Maud?”

I shrugged, the jacket still in my hands, I hadn’t even looked at the velvet bolero Sukey’d given me since Frank had let me have all her other things. It was wonderful to dress up, and to go out after dinner in new outfits, even if it did mean lying to my parents about where I was. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I wouldn’t feel guilty. I wouldn’t let him make me feel guilty. “She was
my
sister,” I said, but he wasn’t listening. His eyes weren’t on mine. They were running over me, narrowing over my body.

“They’re
her
clothes,” he said, standing. He took a step towards me. “Take them off. Give that here.”

He yanked at Sukey’s jacket, looking at me so fiercely that I backed away, letting go of the collar before it tore. “Doug,” I said. “It’s nothing to do with you.”

I got to the sink and he put his hands on it, trapping me.

“Playing at being her. That’s what you’re doing. Wearing her clothes. Going out with her husband. What does he do? Take you back to their house? To their bed?”

“Don’t be disgusting,” I said, cheeks burning. “We just talk, about Sukey, that’s all.” I looked away, trying to put some space between us, and he grabbed my chin with his fist, squeezing it the way he had squeezed the newspaper, shifting closer.

“You’re even wearing her lipstick,” he said, his face an inch from mine. “Get it off.”

The side of his hand rubbed over my mouth roughly, pulling at my skin and crushing my lips against my teeth. I could feel the make-up smear across my cheek and tried to turn my head away again, but he held my chin tightly.

“Stop it,” he said, his breath hot on my face. “Stop trying to replace her. You can’t ever replace her.”

“All right, no need to hiss at me,” I say.

“I wasn’t hissing,” the driver says. “But you do need to show me your pass.”

I’m on the bus, but it’s not moving and the doors are open behind me. An umbrella dangles from my wrist, and the weight of it, the movement as it swings about, is distracting. I can’t find my bus pass—I know it’s in my bag, I never take it out, but I can’t see it. I have a thing for hair, for dragging out the tangles, a packet of Polo mints, a photo of a black-and-white cat, and a thin plastic wallet. I push them all aside and put a hand in my pocket. There are lots of bits here. Lots of little bits. I can’t think what they are, but they make me think of flowers and gardens and something else. Something to do with the Bible, perhaps. A phrase from the Bible?

“‘Were it earth in an earthy bed,’” I say. That’s it. I remember it from school. I wish I could think where it’s from.

“What?” the driver asks, peering through his glass partition. “Come on, love, you’re keeping us all waiting.”

I turn to face the other passengers. They are sitting looking at me and I can hear their Helen-like sighs. My face feels suddenly hot. For some reason, they’re impatient to go, but I don’t know what I’m to do about it.

“Why don’t you let her on?” someone calls out. “You can see she’s old.”

The driver puffs out a breath and tells me to go and sit down. There’s a moment before the bus can pull into the traffic and through the window I see a man on the pavement, standing ripping the plastic from a pack of those things, little sticks, not whistles. The things you light up. He breaks the plastic and then goes on biting. First the cardboard and then the contents of the packet, bits of tobacco sticking to his teeth. His face is like a grin and he looks at me as he bites, and his quick, sharp movements are frightening. I think of the man running down the hill after his hat and my father telling me not to stare and I wish suddenly that someone was with me. Anyone. I’m grateful when the bus moves on.

We drive past the park and Elizabeth’s house. Past the acacia tree. With its long milk-bloom. There. That’s the same bit of something from school. I’m not sure it
is
the Bible. I can’t remember any more, though. The bus vibrates whenever it stops and I feel as if my bones are turning to jelly. There’s a newspaper on the seat next to me and I hold the edge of it, fluttering the pages in my fingers. You can put advertisements in this newspaper and all you have to do is go to the office and ask. I smile and read the shop signs and road signs aloud. It’s starting to spit out there. Tiny drops of rain appear on the windows, like flecks of toothpaste on a mirror. An old couple get off by the supermarket and I find I have a sudden longing for Patrick. He would always hold my hand when we took the bus together. Just for a few minutes getting on, and the same getting off. Then we would break apart naturally and sit or walk side by side. He would do the same in a crowd, putting a hand out behind him, reaching for me. I miss that.

I see the building I want too late. By the time I’ve got up and pressed the bell we’re two stops past, and I have to walk back. The
Echo
’s office looks nearly the same as when I was a girl. It makes me think of the pictures. Very glamorous, it is. Very modern. But in a nice way. Not like the modern buildings they put up now.

Inside, there’s a woman behind the counter; she has fat cheeks like a baby and they bunch when she smiles.

“How can I help you?” she says, and I think it sounds like there is a word missing at the end of her sentence, like she wanted to say “love” or “dear” and stopped herself.

We look at each other and I try to think of something to say, but the word “baby” just goes round and round in my head. I rummage in my bag and find a photo of a cat lying in a bed of nasturtiums. I can’t think where it’s from.

“Was it a competition entry?” The woman bends slightly and her arms disappear from view; I can hear her leafing through papers under the desk. “I think all the winners for this month have been notified. I’m sorry. But you haven’t lost. Just give it another try next month.”

“Lost,” I say, dropping the photo on to the counter. “I’ve lost Elizabeth.”

She pauses a moment and straightens to look at the photo. “Oh, was it an advert you wanted?”

Breath floods into my lungs. “Yes. Yes, that’s it. I wanted to place an advert.”

“I’ll get you a form. Awful, cats, aren’t they?”

I nod, feeling as though I’ve missed some part of the conversation. I nod, but I quite like cats, and I wonder what this woman has against them.

“I remember when my auntie lost her Oscar. She was frantic. Missing for weeks, he was. Found him in a beach hut in the end. Have you asked your neighbours to look in their sheds?”

I stare at the woman. I can’t imagine finding Elizabeth in a shed. But perhaps it is a good suggestion. Perhaps it’s just me it doesn’t make sense to. I borrow a pen and write
beach hut
on a scrap of paper. The woman slides me a form with lots of boxes and spaces for writing. I look at it, and I must look at it for some time because she leans over and puts her head close to mine.

“Write what you can. I’ll help if you’re struggling.”

“Right,” I say, lifting my pen and pointing it at the form as if it were a wand and could think up the sentences for me.

“People do love their animals in this country, don’t they? Makes me proud, actually. Not like that in Turkey. My brother’s got a place there and you wouldn’t believe the number of skinny cats wandering around with no one to look after them.”

I look at her and then back at the page. I’ve written
Turkey
for some reason. I cross it out.

“Here,” she says. “Let me.” She spins the paper towards her and rests against the counter.

She asks when I last saw Elizabeth and where. I’m not sure about that. I look through my notes and find my name and address and telephone number. I give her those in case they’re important. She asks what colour I’d say Elizabeth is, and I’m surprised for a moment, but I suppose she could have been black, or Indian. She asks if Elizabeth has a collar, and it seems like an odd question. I look at my notes, but I can’t find an answer. I do have my name and address and telephone number, though, so I give her those.