“Remember charm bracelets?” said Big Sue. “I used to wear one that rattled, it was so full. I got sick of it in the end. I had a tiny glass box on it. It had an emergency five-pound note folded up inside.”
“That’s a good idea, that. In case you’re caught short.”
“I can’t remember if I ever pulled it out when I stopped wearing the bracelet. Are you buying that?”
“Why not? He’s got his birthday coming up.”
Full of gusto Elsie took on this new phase. She was taking care of her man’s body and mind, conscious of all his differences. It was like tending to him; a cautious botany. She was down the chemist’s, buying him pills to keep him pepped up, vitamins for his blood and joints, fish oils for his heart and bones. Even this silver health bangle to put on his wrist, to act upon his pressure points and keep him well.
Keep him well, pray God, keep him right in the head. And in one piece. Elsie’s man had been restored to her and she wasn’t about to let him go again.
Here, take this, she’d chivvy him earnestly and pop him a pill, a chewable something-or-other from over the counter at Boots. He would submit to this, to her nervy care. In his own way, Tom was glad to be back.
The cynical part of Elsie’s mind was telling her, Of course he’s glad, he knows which side his bread is buttered on. Your man is one who, in his time, has been among the lowest of the low. He’s drank, he’s lived on the streets of London, several times they’ve locked him in a mental home. He can see that past lives like those are something you can go back to. Any time, any day, you can wake up and you’ll be back the way things were. You should never lose sight of the bad old days, they’re never gone for good.
This was the awful side of Elsie, which tried to trip her up at every turn and whispered speculation at her: Does he really mean that? Is he laughing behind your back? What is he really trying to say? It was the voice that would suggest, rationally and quite out of the blue, that she throw herself down the stairs in the morning. Or in the path of a bus on Woodham Way.
The good part of Elsie — the part she hoped she listened to most — was saying she should count her lucky stars. Elsie at her most optimistic let herself think chances came round like the painted horses on a merry-go-round.
She wouldn’t let herself take Tom for granted. It became summer and she started to take pride in her garden again. She made her lawn neat as a billiard table. She would urge Tom to sit out in his deck chair; she rigged up a table for him and encouraged him to start drawing again. From their garden he could see all of Phoenix Court. Surely a man of his obvious, if neglected, talents could find a lot to divert him.
Pale, long-faced, tired-eyed Tom sat invalid-snug in his deck chair in those weeks of early summer. The sunlight gained strength and soon he asked Elsie to stop putting a tartan blanket over his shoulders when he sat outside.
For a long time he stared at the cartridge paper Elsie had taped to his worn drawing board. He remembered how he used to love taping down the paper. Unrolling a creamy sheet, stretching it out; the muted squawk of the masking tape when he ripped off four strips to stick down the paper’s corners. In a studied, ritualistic way Elsie aped the way she had seen Tom do it, and that touched his heart as she fussed about. Her elbows jabbed into his stringy body as she worked, and he put up with it. He tasted her scent on the warm air, of talcum powder and dry sweat.
It was a week or so before he took up his pencils and started to draw Phoenix Court. The cars, the houses, the play-park climbing frame, the sapling trees and the people passing by. “Why don’t you start drawing me again?” Elsie suggested, bringing him out a pot of tea on a tray. But he didn’t draw Elsie again. He concentrated on the square box houses with their roofs of isosceles triangles. He perfected them in crisp isometric projection and his drawings were clean, almost clinical, and each of them similar to the last. Outside each house, he’d put a small figure. Just a few lines, the finest of sketches. Elsie pointed out they looked like the free toy in a box of cornflakes. He ignored her and did his figures with eloquent dashes, as from a Chinese brush. Each one, you could tell who it was meant to be. Somehow Tom always caught them. Elsie saw how he would grab up his pencil as a neighbour came in sight for a few seconds. He got them with a minimum of perfect strokes. “The way you all flit around,” he said, “I’ve got to be quick.”
When he said this, Elsie had worn herself out shopping. “Some of us have to flit around,” she said. “We have to keep ourselves busy.” Then she wished she hadn’t snapped like this, and she praised his neat stack of drawings. They lay in the grass and she sat beside Tom, both of them laughing as she went through the pile. Here was Nesta, slump-shouldered, glaring at the ground. This one Fran, galloping in slippers, looking for a misplaced child. Penny slopping artistically about, Big Sue hugging her handbag to her bosom.
“Can I show everyone these drawings?” she asked him.
Tom shrugged and smiled. She could tell he was pleased.
Things were getting better. They didn’t talk about the things that pained them. They never forced themselves to have difficult scenes. In the evenings they listened to their records and
