Elizabeth Is Missing (20 page)

I spent hours staring at our matching combs, holding them up to the light to see how the wings seemed to flutter, and I wondered at myself. She had been frightened by those birds in the glass dome, so why had I given her such a precise reminder? I wished more than anything to speak to her about that. To tell her I hadn’t meant any harm. I thought if there was a single chance of finding her it was worth trawling the streets. I usually arrived home pinched with cold and too tired to eat. It was soon after that I got ill. I’d stopped sleeping long ago, it seemed, and instead just lay in bed trying to think where Sukey might be. It’s not that I deliberately stayed awake, but my mind wouldn’t shut off and I went over and over that last meal, trying to remember everything she’d said. Things about Frank; things about Douglas. I was tired all the time, and I couldn’t concentrate at school. I struggled to pour the tea straight in the evenings.

“For goodness’ sake!” Ma shouted one Monday morning, throwing a skirt down at her feet. “More bits of rubbish.” She had been turning out my pockets to do the laundry. “Maud, you have to stop bringing this stuff home with you.” She waved an old Coty lipstick lid around in her hand. “You’re going to send me mad. D’you hear? What’s it all for? What are you planning to do with it?”

I felt limp and exhausted next to her show of energy. “I thought they might have been Sukey’s,” I said.

H
ave you moved?

“No,” I say. “I’ve been here ages.”

I’m sitting in a sitting thing, for sitting on, facing a computer screen with red writing running along it: “Please make sure your GP has your new address.” Every now and then there is a high-pitched beep and a name flashes across the screen. “Mrs. May Davison.” “Mr. Gregory Foot.” “Miss Laura Haywood.” Helen squeezes my wrist when I start to read them out loud. She is sucking on one of those strong mentholly lozenges you get for sore throats, so I suppose we must be here for her.

There’s a child bashing a plastic brick against a table of toys in the corner. He looks like a Ken doll whose head’s been squeezed. Helen tells me to keep my voice down and holds out a cardboard box of sweets. I take one and pop it in my mouth, wincing at the way the sweetness of it makes my jaw swell, and watching as the boy’s mother reaches to take his brick away. She isn’t quick enough and he’s off, scampering past other patients, who pull in their legs to make room but can’t avoid being bumped by the little body. He runs, staggering like a slapstick comedian, into the far wall, and then throws the brick back towards his mother with sudden violence. A man tuts, rolling his eyes and smiling at me. I smile back, and then, getting the sweet between my teeth, spit it out in the direction of the brick. Helen makes a squawking noise and starts to apologize, but I don’t hear what she says as the screaming laughter of the boy drowns out her words. He twists about in a sort of joyous dance, making his way almost gracefully now between the rows of people. And he comes to a rest against my knees, landing lightly, like a bird, no longer laughing but opening his hands to show me what he’s been carrying about with him.

Another plastic brick, like the one he was bashing, a little metal car missing a wheel, a chubby doll’s arm, and several other things. I can’t think what they are. He balances them all on my lap, and I pick them up one by one, turning them in my hands and describing them to him. “You see here, they’ve made semicircles in the plastic for fingernails,” I say.

He stares at me solemnly, not giving any sign of having understood, and so I put down the doll’s arm and balance a squat, splayed thing on my palm. I can’t work out what it is, I can’t think past its peculiar shape. I say nothing for several seconds.

“Fog,” the boy says finally.

“Fog,” I repeat, supposing that must be the word.

He presses a little tab at the back and the fog jumps, not very sharply, as my hand is too soft a surface, but enough to bring the toy to life for a second. The boy makes a gurgling sound and presses the tab again. This time the fog flips over, leaping with its own show of joy, and lands on the seat next to me. Serious again, the boy cradles it for a moment and then pushes the fog through an opening in my handbag.

There’s a beep and I look up to see my name in lights. I stand and the toys fall from my lap. The boy shrieks with laughter, throwing the car and the brick into the air. I hear them clatter to the floor a second time, but I don’t take my eyes off the computer screen.

“Sorry again,” Helen says to someone, picking up her coat and leading the way. “Come on, Mum.”

In a small room the doctor is staring at his own computer screen. “Hello, Mrs. Horsham. How’s your thumb? Won’t be a moment. Sit down.”

Helen puts me in the chair next to his desk. I can’t remember why we’re here. “
You
sit next to the doctor,” I say to Helen, getting up.

“No, Mum. We’re here for you.”

I sit down again and ask for one of her sweets. “You’re eating one,” I say when she says no. “Why can’t
I
?”

The doctor swivels round to face us. He says he’s going to ask me some questions, and then he asks me what day it is today. I look at Helen. She looks back but doesn’t help. He asks me the date, the season, the year. He asks if I know which country this is, which town, which street. Some questions I know the answers to, some I make a guess at. He seems amazed when I get it right, but it’s not very difficult, this quiz. It reminds me of the one they had at the day centre. Elizabeth and I went there once, to see what it was like. They asked things like: “Can you think of a colour beginning with B?” Elizabeth was outraged. “What sort of a quiz is that for adults?” she said.

“A lot of bloody stupid questions,” I say.

“There’s no need to get agitated, Mrs. Horsham,” the doctor says, adjusting his neck-cloth thing, not a scarf, not a cravat. “I have to assess you, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“Yes. As I explained, that’s what I’m doing now. So. What’s this building?”

I look around at the walls. There are lots of notices about washing hands and sterilizing things. “Washing hands can prevent: Diarrhoea, M-R-S-A, Noro-virus,” I read. The doctor turns and looks at the poster. He makes a closed-lip smile at Helen.

“Do you know what floor we’re on?”

I think for a moment. Did we come up stairs? A lift? I look at the window, but the blind is drawn down. What makes a Roman blind? “Poke him in the eyes,” I say. No one laughs. Well, I never liked that joke, either. There is some throat-clearing from the doctor and from Helen. She pats my leg and the doctor pats his desk as if it were my leg.

“I’m going to name three items,” he says. “And I want you to repeat them back to me, okay? Train, pineapple, hammer.”

“Hammer,” I say. “Hammer.” What were the other ones? “Hammer . . .” My notes are in my handbag and I have to reach under the chair. I start to shuffle through them, but I can’t find the answer. I find a little plastic frog instead.

“It’s best if you don’t use memory aids,” the doctor says.

That’s all right, it’s no good anyway. I can’t find anything helpful. There is a note here about Elizabeth, though. It says she’s missing. It says:
Where is she?
That’s the real question. Why isn’t the doctor asking that?

“Now I’d like you to count backwards from one hundred by sevens. D’you understand?”

I stare at him.

“Mrs. Horsham? So it would be one hundred, ninety-three, eighty-six, and so on. D’you see?”

“I see, Doctor, but I don’t think I could have done that even at your age.”

“Please try.”

He’s already looking down at his papers and making notes. There’s something else I have to remember; all this nonsense is interfering. “One hundred,” I say. “Ninety-three . . . ninety-two, ninety-one?” I know I’ve gone wrong, but I can’t think where.

“Thank you. Can you repeat back to me the three items I mentioned a moment ago?”

“Three items,” I repeat, not quite sure what the words mean because I’m scrabbling in my brain for the other thing, the important thing.

“Never mind. What do we call this?” He points at the telephone.

“A phone,” I say. “That’s it. Elizabeth hasn’t phoned. It’s been a long time. I don’t know how long.”

“I’m sorry about that,” the doctor says. “What about this?” He holds something up; he doesn’t even say Elizabeth’s name.

The thing is thin, made of wood. He waggles it between his fingers, the way we used to in school, a trick to make it look as though it’s floppy. I can’t think what it’s called, though. Not a pen. “A tray,” I say. That’s not right but I can’t find the word. “A tray, a
tray
.”

“Okay, not to worry.” He puts the thing down and picks up a piece of paper. “Take this in your right hand,” he says. “Fold it in half and put it on the floor.”

I reach out to take the paper. I look at it, and look at the doctor. I check both sides of the paper. There’s nothing on it. No writing. I let it lie on my lap. He leans over and takes it off me, putting it back on a pile. Then he holds up a card with the words “CLOSE YOUR EYES” written on it. I’m beginning to think he’s bonkers and I’m glad Helen is here. The doctor puts the card down and hands me some more paper and a thing. A thin thing made of wood.

“Now, I wonder if you could write a sentence for me, please. It can say anything at all, but it has to be a full sentence.”

My friend Elizabeth is missing
, I write. Helen sighs next to me. “Pencil,” I say when I give it back to him.

“Yes. Great. Actually, you need to keep that, because I’d like you to draw something. I’d like you to draw a clock face. Can you do that?”

He hands me a board to rest on. I start to draw, but my hand shakes slightly and I don’t make a very good job of it. Somehow the lines go the wrong way, like when you try to draw something while looking in a mirror. I forget what the drawing is supposed to be, but the shaky circles remind me of a frog, and so I turn it into that, adding big round eyes and a jaunty smile, and, when the pencil slips, wild hair and a beard. I put the drawing on his desk. The doctor can make of that what he likes.

He writes something on his notepad. He writes and writes. He doesn’t look up and he doesn’t speak. I wonder if he is trying to get something down before he forgets it. There are little beanlike things lying on the desk, round and soft, their shoots curling off under a box of tissues. I can’t think what you call them, but I know what they’re for. I pick one up and hold it to my ear, but I can’t hear anything.

“Not even as good as a shell,” I say.

“I haven’t got the player on at the moment,” the doctor says, still scribbling. “Would you like to hear some music? Do you think that would help you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Perhaps your daughter could find something you like. What did you use to listen to as a girl?”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,” I say.

The doctor looks up from his writing. Helen goes very still.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”

“Mum? Mum? What’s happening?” She reaches out and grips my arm, her face white beneath her weather-beaten skin.

And now I’m really laughing. “It’s the ‘Champagne Aria,’” I say. “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”

It was Douglas’s record, the “Champagne Aria,” sung by Ezio Pinza. I liked his name and I liked the song, but I liked the laughing at the end best. It was one of the first records Douglas played to us, long before Sukey was married. The very first was John McCormack singing “Come into the Garden, Maud,” and it amused me because it had my name in it, but I’d already been forced to memorize the words to the poem at school and I was keener on discovering less familiar songs.

We had seen Douglas’s gramophone amongst his belongings when he was moving in, and, after a lot of pestering from me, Sukey finally asked if we could come into his room and hear it. It seemed a completely different room with Douglas living there. We’d always had a lodger, but they’d been old ladies for the most part, kind enough, but somehow hardly leaving an impression on the place. Douglas had few possessions, but they were more solid than the old ladies’ things had been. A set of books, a set of tools, and at least two dozen records. The gramophone was just a little portable machine, like a deep attaché case, but I thought it was quite fantastic. I particularly liked the little tin of needles and the round sort of brush for the records and the way the handle fitted into a clip in the lid. We sat in his room to listen, the sunlight lining the floorboards and soaking the rug. Once I’d heard it I made him play the “Champagne Aria” several times in a row, and I lay on the rug laughing along with the end, hands on my stomach, feeling my diaphragm jerk. I remember the smell of the warm dust and the vinegar which Ma had used to wash the floorboards.

I still have the record somewhere, Douglas left it for me, but I haven’t heard it in a long time. We don’t have a gramophone, so there’s nothing to play it on.

After that first private concert I used to sneak into Douglas’s room occasionally to listen to records. I knew his rounds as well as I knew Dad’s and I had the route by heart—from the dairy on Sutton Road, down past the station to the clifftop hotels. I knew when he was furthest away and when he wouldn’t be able to pop back unexpectedly. I used to push bundled pairs of woollen socks into the horn to muffle the volume, play the aria again, and feel my diaphragm jump under my hands. I did that often while I was still recovering from my illness, after Sukey disappeared, and I used to search through his other belongings, too, opening drawers and rifling through his things. Having seen him search Sukey’s case, I thought it was only fair. But his clothes were neatly folded, the books carefully ordered with nothing slipped between the pages, and I couldn’t find anything peculiar.

Once, though, on the way out of the room, after I’d brushed my fingers over the gramophone and poked in the little needle tin and gone through the set of Dickens, I saw an umbrella propped up in the corner of the room. A shabby black umbrella. It was so much like the one the mad woman had, and the memory of her chasing me was still so vivid, that I screamed. I felt very stupid immediately afterwards and left the room, glad that no one was at home to catch me.