Then, startling in that still waiting room, come Fran, Craig, Mark and Penny.
There hadn’t been time for anything lately. The ordinary
running of Elsie’s house had gone to pot. She liked to get her messages in every morning. That way, she didn’t have too much to carry back from the town centre. Just enough each day to fill her tartan pully-basket. Every time she walked down town she thought, if I had a car and drove myself, I could do all my shopping at once, on a Saturday, and fill the boot with everything I needed for a week. But what then? Where would I go on the weekday mornings?
With all the hospital visiting and the drama, things had got out of hand. On the night Liz woke up, Elsie and Tom came back to their house and found a scabby crust of bread and half a carton of rancid milk. Nothing at all to make a meal of. The middle of the night and they were starving, disappointed, dulled by the end of the drama. Elsie went off to bed and dreamed of owning a deep chest freezer, stocked to the icy brim with chicken Kievs, vegetable pies, toads-in-the-hole.
Before they left the hospital Elsie had snatched a few words with her son. She was breathless and overeager and thought perhaps she would scare him away.
“Are you coming home with us, pet?”
He smiled, not wanting to hurt her feelings. They were by the sliding automatic doors, the midnight winds whipping through. “I might follow on,” he said and let his mam go.
Elsie took this for an answer. She was glad just to have him back in her sight. And she was cross with Tom for virtually ignoring her son. Tom was back in that world of his own as he climbed unsteadily into their cab. Here we go again, Elsie thought glumly. He’s going to get all morbid because of the way they treated him. They shoved his nose out of joint. Once the others arrived Tom hardly said a word. The atmosphere in the waiting room, although tense, became less sepulchral. Some of Tom’s magic and mystery vanished. The others had been laughing and joking with a slight hysterical edge. They were tense with laughter, anticipation, fear. Elsie had stared at them almost jealously, and tried hard not to want to be part of that little gang. Fran, Penny and Mark and the way they had apparently taken in her son.
Elsie’s cab drove away and she watched the hospital entrance vanish. She watched the blue of Craig’s tracksuit until they were gone.
Next morning she got up, bustled about, and went downtown early to stock up the larder. When Craig came back she wouldn’t want him thinking she’d run the home into the ground. He wasn’t back yet. She wondered if he’d stayed all night in the waiting room. Elsie pulled on her thick winter socks. Winter drawers on, she thought ruefully, and found the first, early frost of the year lying across the street when she left the house. Her pully-basket wheels creaked and squeaked on clean frost.
In the supermarket she moved thoughtlessly between aisles, knowing where everything was. She caught a glimpse of herself and thought, I’m not looking my best. But what did that mean, anyway? Who looked their best when shopping? And who’d be looking at her? It was true she knew everyone, but that didn’t mean she had to put on a show. And this morning she was determined, tossing things into her wire trolley.
She thought how much Craig had changed. How carefree he once was, how cavalier before, when he used to play out with the Forsythe gang, the rough lads over the road. Even though they were up to bad things, perhaps, Elsie still knew where he was when he was with them. If she wanted him, she still knew how to get hold. And those lads were always polite with her. Fellers seemed to know by instinct to treat her like a lady. She was pleased with this thought.
When Craig was in another town, it was a different story. How could she know what was going on? He wasn’t a sensible lad, really. He was too trusting. Didn’t know the ways the world worked. How nasty people could be. He needed her there. There were things he couldn’t do. And! This was the clincher! The reason he should never leave. His father had left for a different town and Elsie had thought of him, ever since, as dead.
Here in Red Spot they were branching out. Food was more exotic. She stared at racks and shelves of cook-in sauces. You just tipped these on top of your meat or your veg. She wondered if it was economical. She never liked those meals that came all in one pan. It didn’t seem nice. Saved on washing up. But she didn’t like all the spices. When Penny was in the house, she’d been cooking all sorts of extravagant things for Elsie and Craig. This was one: chicken korma. Sort of yellow. That had been all right.
There was something boyish and easy and uncomplicated about Craig. Now he seemed to be more serious and sorted out. It was something in the way he held himself. His common sense took her by surprise. Last night she’d let him just about dismiss her. She listened to
