Three Things About Elsie: A Richard and Judy Book Club Pick 2018. Joanna Cannon
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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 that 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 colour of mahogany. It did her no favours. ‘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 on to 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 that 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 remained 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. ‘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. It just is. 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 has a much better view, and the afternoon wandered past in front of us. More often than not, there’s something happening in that courtyard. Whenever I’m at a loose end, I always look out of the window. It’s the best thing since sliced bread. Much more entertaining than the television. Gardeners and cleaners, and postmen. No one ever taking any notice whatsoever of anyone else. All those separate little lives, and everyone hurrying through them to get to the other side, although I’m not entirely sure they’ll like what they find when they get here. I doubt it was anything to do with the woman who dished up our baked beans, but a short while later, they arrived to collect the skip. I watched them. They loaded someone’s whole life into a lorry and drove it away. There wasn’t even a mark on the pavement to say where it had been.
I watched someone walk through the space where it had stood. Everything carried on as it always did. People rushed from place to place to keep out of the rain, uniforms travelled along stairwells, pigeons measured out their time along the lengths of guttering and waited for the right moment to fly away to somewhere else. It felt as though the impression this woman had made on the world was so unimportant, so insignificant, it dissolved away the very minute she left.
‘You’re very maudlin this afternoon, Florence.’
‘I’m just commenting,’ I said. ‘I’m not allowed to do very much any more, but I’m still allowed to comment.’
I was fairly sure she was smiling, but I couldn’t tell you for definite, because I wouldn’t give in to looking.
I kept my eye on number twelve, but nothing happened of any interest. About three o’clock, Miss Bissell marched up the communal stairwell with a clipboard and an air of urgency.
‘Miss Bissell,’ I said, pointing.
‘Indeed,’ Elsie said.
‘She has a clipboard, Elsie. She must be doing his levels.’
‘So it would seem,’ she said.
We measured out our afternoon with pots of tea, but the rinse of a September light seemed to push at the hours, spreading the day to its very edges. I always thought September was an odd month. All you were really doing was waiting for the cold weather to arrive, the back end, and we seemed to waste most of our time just staring at the sky, waiting to be reassured it was happening. The stretch of summer had long since disappeared, but we hadn’t quite reached the frost yet, the skate of icy pavements and the prickly breath of a winter’s morning. Instead, we were paused in a pavement-grey life with porridge skies. Each afternoon was the same. Around four o’clock, one of us would say the nights were drawing in, and we would nod and agree with each other. Between us, we would work out how many days it was until Christmas, and we would say how quickly the time passes, and saying how quickly the time passes would help to pass the time a little more.
The winters at Cherry Tree always took longer, and this would be my fifth. It was called sheltered accommodation, but I’d never quite been able to work out what it was we were being sheltered from. The world was still out there. It crept in through the newspapers and the television. It slid between the cracks of other people’s conversation and sang out from their mobile telephones. We were the ones hidden away, collected up and ushered out of sight, and I often wondered