Ellen Dorrington is a 24-year-old writer living in east London. She is a recent graduate with a degree in Creative Writing with Publishing. Her work has been published in anthologies and magazines, including Litro, Mslexia, and the Royal Society of Literature’s website. She has also been listed as a special mention in the Spread The Word Life Writing Prize 2020. Ellen is currently working on a fiction novel focusing on the complicated relationships we have as young women.
Twitter: EllenDorrington
Website: www.ellendorrington.co.uk
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The Elsewhere
Mum had warned her, time and time again: don’t tell Uncle Ian you want anything, he’ll nick it for you.
But Beth wasn’t thinking too much about the warning; she was too busy trying to focus on the things that were there in Little Nanny’s house, around Uncle Ian’s figure, which blocked the view. Little Nanny’s rocking chair, the deep red carpet, the grey doors, stiff with layers and layers of paint. Bubbling, peeling in parts.
Uncle Ian was talking and talking, but Beth was ignoring him, looking at the rocking chair that was still. Usually, when Little Nanny got up from her chair, it continued her movement, rocking happily to and fro. It sat sulkily now. She wished someone would move it.
“She loved you, dahlin’,” Uncle Ian said. He had a gold tooth that shone when he spoke, and he was holding one of Little Nanny’s mugs. He positioned it upwards, shielding it from view, but Beth knew it had beer in it, even though it was eleven in the morning.
“She really did lave you. Laved you more than she laved mine. You were the favrit. Anythin’ you want, you or your mum, you let your uncle know, alrigh’ swee’art?”
Beth was starting to lose letters too. When she spoke, it was Little Nanny’s voice she heard, not her own. Together they sounded things out, widened their mouths. Words with multiple syllables became one long vowel sound. But when Little Nanny read aloud to her as a child, Beth could hear the strain in her voice to pronounce things proper, no consonants left behind. You won’t get clever without speaking posh, she had said, and Beth had listened, imagined her pink brain filling with words, with bits of Little Nanny herself.
“No thank you, Uncle Ian, we don’t need anythin,” Beth said. The K sounded a little aggressive in her throat as she emphasised it. She was embarrassed at how clipped her voice was.
“You’ve got to want summin.”
“I’m fine, thank you,” she said again.
“What about books? You like ‘em.”
“Okay. Thank you. Books would be nice.”
He smiled, satisfied with an answer. She could have answered bananas, and she knew Uncle Ian would nod seriously, drop them off the next day, without a word. Could he even steal books? She imagined a child awakening in a silky, leafy borough of London, peering through the dark to see Uncle Ian standing in the bedroom with his mucky shoes, leafing through their bookshelves.
“Funny gerl,” Uncle Ian said, and she feared he might ruffle her hair. “What kid wants books? It’s what Little Nanny used to say: that Beth, nose in a book all the time, what a weirdo.”
That sounded nothing like Little Nanny. She loved how much Beth read. She said it proudly, as an almost-insult, which is how her family showed their praise. Your eyes will stop working if you read any more!
Little Nanny liked to brag to the old ladies they ran into on the street, or on the bus to Asda. Bethany, (her Nan liked to use her full name, it sounded posher) my granddaughter, she reads loads and loads, you can’t get her to do anything else, not even watch the telly, and not kids books, mind, she’s on the classics now. Dickens and that.
She especially liked to say it to the Nans who had grandsons in gangs, or grandsons who sold drugs in cars outside her house. A kind of revenge for being forced to draw the curtains on the shiny black cars, when the sun was still out and shining.
What a trollop, she would say, as they wandered away, almost within earshot. Her husband used to batter her.
But Beth had learnt to like her Nan’s scathing stories, the inside look at women who could have been in her family, their sad stories out in the open and discussed, held against them cruelly. It was how Beth got slices of her Nan’s attention, listening brightly to her stories, being let inside a world where women had been hurt by men. It strengthened Beth’s sense of protection, their island, where men lurked in the shadows of the past. Never named. A family of women; a mother, a mother, and then the child.
She could have told Little Nanny what uncle Ian said, if she was there with them. She could have told her about her banana joke, and Little Nanny would cackle, her laugh turning into a cough. She liked Beth’s jokes, all of them, even the awkward ones that weren’t clever enough yet, or that didn’t land. Beth knew she was getting clever, because there was a gap between the things she knew and things she didn’t, and she was aware of the blank space, a chasm, that was yet to be filled.
Her mum appeared by her side, and Uncle Ian skipped off sharpish. They weren’t talking much since Little Nanny went away. They disagreed on what happened now, at the party. Beth had spent nights trying to block out her Mum’s voice on the phone to her friends, voice note after voice note. He’s a prick, she said, he was barely there when – but the memory goes flat. She didn’t hear what happened next.
“What did he want?” she asked Beth.
“He wanted to get me something.”
“You better not–”
“I didn’t say nothing.”
She nodded, paused, and then she sighed. “I suppose it’s a funny, funny time. He means well. Do you want a little taste of my drink, babe?”
Beth shook her head. Ever since she turned twelve, her mum had started offering her little sips of alcohol. She had read about being drunk in teen books, and a little part of her, a betraying part, wanted to go back to school and tell them that she had drunk prosecco. But this day required concentration. The chasm, to be filled with thoughts of Little Nanny, to build a bridge, a way back, for Beth’s brain to be a scattering of crumbs. She knew the exact feeling she was looking for, a lit window inside a house, an orange rectangle, a feeling of warmth, a tended flame, bright enough for her to find her way.
“The flowers,” her mum said, and she squeezed her shoulder, and went to the door. Flowers growing in the chasm, Beth made them wilt, shrinking back to the darkness, back to the cold.
One taxi ride later, they were in the chapel. Beth had been given a booklet with Little Nanny’s real name on the front; Eileen Miller. There was a photo of her, her brown face, crinkled and soft, like skin on milk. Beth tried not to look at the words. She blurred her eyes deliberately, but she spent a long time looking at Little Nanny smiling. She was sitting in a deckchair outside the caravan, on holiday with Beth and her mum, just them three. Beth remembered the holiday as the one where they won the bingo, three nights in a row, and they spent the winnings in the bar, for the adults, and on the penny machines, for her.
The priest started speaking, and Beth started to cry almost immediately. It was harder in this room to not hear, to not feel the sadness thick in the air, with the silent pressure of held-in tears. Her mum grasped her hand, and Beth could gather strength through their clasped fingers, she was pretending for her mum’s sake, to protect her, pretending to hear the words, pretending to cry at them. Everyone was crying by the end. The priest stopped talking. Beth couldn’t remember, not one word, of what he said.
“Watch this,” her mum said, “watch the curtain go round.”
And Beth nodded. But she didn’t watch, she looked over at the wall, her eyes rolling as far as they could from the curtain, what lay behind it, hurting with the effort of looking away. The wall was the colour of semolina. Then there was music. Cliff Richard. People started to file outside and Beth followed, feeling woozy, at the effort of seeing what was there, what she wanted herself to see.
They went back to Little Nanny’s house. Everyone was sitting in all the chairs now. Her great aunty was sitting in Little Nanny’s rocking chair. It was as if the people in the house had multiplied. They were standing milling at the edges of rooms, peering at her, sometimes with curiosity, sometimes pityingly. She decided to go to the garden, into the winter air, and no one followed her. She found Max, Little Nanny’s cat, who she carried to the stone step at the back of the garden, by grandad’s shed. She sat down, letting the cold seep into the fabric of her black dress.
Max was coming to live with them. She looked directly into Max’s warm eyes. He pushed against her hand. He knew Beth the most because she came to see Little Nanny every day after school. Little Nanny often made her chicken nuggets and chips, or instant noodles, and sometimes as a treat, Beth went to get them fish and chips from round the corner. They would sit and watch all the quiz shows. Beth learned lots from them, but she learnt the most from Little Nanny herself. Knowledge that belonged to Little Nanny, knowledge that was her.
She especially liked going to Little Nanny’s since she had started a new school. She used her as an excuse, sorry, I have to go look after my nan, so she could avoid standing in the chicken shop and hoping that the bossman would give them free wings, in exchange for him looking at their legs. She didn’t like the boys fighting, the noise, the swearing. She liked Little Nanny’s handmade cushions, her handmade curtains, drawn to a close against the cold air. She liked the fuzzy noise of the TV, she liked snuggling up in her blazer and holding Max. Talking to Little Nanny about the programmes she had watched that day. I could’ve done better than that, adding a few rocks to a patch of grass? Load of tripe. The presenter, well, she was the stupidest tart they could find.
Max was sitting looking at her. She could tell him; he wouldn’t tell the adults. But putting it into words, so irresistible, so dangerous, she felt stupid, and couldn’t work out why.
“Don’t worry Max,” she said. She whispered onto his head, in the space between his furry ears. She breathed him in. His smell was Little Nanny’s.
“It won’t be for long.”
She held Max in the cold for a little bit. She felt numb inside. All the feeling was drained out of her. Her mum appeared, pushing the beaded curtains out the way, her high heels clicking on the stone.
“God, I’m desperate for a fag.”
“Little Nanny wouldn’t want you smoking here,” Beth said.
Her mum sat down beside her, snaking her arm around Beth’s waist.
“No. She was always uptight about that. Good families don’t smoke. Well, she didn’t tell you that her and grandad started smoking at your age.”
“She did tell me.” Beth started shivering in the cold. “She told me not to start smoking because I was goin’ to a new school.”
Her mum nodded. She looked like she was going to cry; Beth could feel the huge space in her mum for sadness, a big feeling that could overtake her. Beth could feel herself wobbling at the feeling – but she rebalanced. She leant into her mum so her mum could lean on her – she smelt her perfume, one too many spritz of it, the scent of home, of the warm-blooded body of her family.
Her mum started crying.
“I want to look after you,” she said, “But you’re so calm, so put together, I don’t know where to start.”
“It’s alright.”
“You can cry too, Beth, you don’t have to be so strong. It’s alright to cry.”
But why would she cry, hot tears on her cold face, when nothing had happened to cry about? She holds her warmth in her body, she holds knowledge her mum doesn’t. Once she does cry, it’s all over, she will never be able to stop.
Her mum convinced her to go inside. She stepped into the kitchen, heating on full blast. The kettle was gurgling electrically. Ten mugs were lined up, tea bags in them. Tracey from down the road was standing watching over them. An old lady stood holding onto the counter. She looked frail, like she could fall over at any moment; Beth recognised her as Doreen, someone Little Nanny used to look in on when she did her shopping.
“That’s her Beth,” Tracey said to Doreen. Beth had listened to Little Nanny complain about Tracey. She had bright gold jewellery round her wrists, hoops dangling in her ears.
“Oh, ‘ello darlin’,” Doreen said to her. She turned; her hands were shaking. “Your Nan was so kind to me. She would always bring me bits of shopping.”
Beth nodded, she smiled at them kindly. She thought back to Little Nanny complaining about Tracey, the lazy tart, who never looked in on her own mum. Who would bring Doreen her shopping now? Who would stop her hands from shaking? She couldn’t think about it.
Tracey asked her about school. She had the answers rehearsed, I’m at secondary school now, yes my Nan was proud of me. I do miss her; she did love me.
It shifted in her head; she does love me. I am loved. It was a constant feeling, an alive feeling. One that doesn’t stop. So, if love doesn’t stop, the bodies that contain that love also don’t stop, the love goes elsewhere. It’s an energy, that cannot be destroyed or contained. She had learnt it in science. Little Nanny was elsewhere.
What else had she learnt in science? How to collate evidence, lots of things that happened here, in the house, which was coloured red and grey, which was bustlingly hot and full of hot bodies, and voices, and at some points, laughter. She knew about non-falsifiable theories, and she worried about them, secretly: non falsifiable things didn’t exist and yet couldn’t be proved to not exist.
She knew that the presence of a Little Nanny indicated a different, bigger Nanny: yet there was no other Nanny. Her mum had never spoken about her other Nan, just like she spoke little of her Dad. So if there was only one Nanny to consider, and if everyone had a Nanny, somewhere in the world, then her Nanny couldn’t have gone. She was elsewhere. Elsewhere, she liked the sound of it. It sounded like it belonged to her stories. She wanted to be there.
Other questions, for science: why was everyone wearing black? Why were there so many sad looks? Why were people talking about Little Nanny in the past, even Beth herself?
She could feel her nan on the other side of the elsewhere, the other side of an open door, waiting, her held breath. There had been a lot of listening to Little Nanny’s breathing in the past few months, as she was asleep, holding Beth’s hand, smooth, the pinkie finger gnarled and bent, (too poor to get it fixed, Little Nanny told her sadly). What was there now, not in the elsewhere? The release, the rush of happiness, to know she was behind the door, that somewhere else she breathed in and out, and to know, certainly, that Little Nanny would come back.
She wandered from room to room, to get away from conversations that tried to tangle her up, people who wanted a witness to their stories of Little Nanny, in the face of her favourite. A lot of people knew her but she only knew them as figures in stories, often not very favourable accounts. They’re rough, her mum would say, really rough. But the rough ones looked pretty normal to Beth, and she stood and chatted best she could, knowing it would make her mum and her nan happy if she could answer their questions and brag. I’m in all top sets, she said. They want me to do Mandarin and French.
She was floating above them all, not connecting, not feeling the house at all. She tried to look for Max. He had hidden himself in the house. Smart move. He too waited for Little Nanny’s return. He knew of the immeasurable power of loving someone. After all, he had followed Little Nanny down five different streets as she walked home, waiting to be picked up and taken in.
Little Nanny had told the story again, twice in an hour. She said that Max had picked her. He was born to follow her on his furry feet. She was on the earth to look after him. She said when Beth was born, after grandad had died, she understood then what it had all been for: I was put on earth to love you.
People were going home. She sat on the top of the stairs, Little Nanny’s bedroom door open beside her; she didn’t dare go in, but she could see a stretch of white wallpaper, of perfume bottles, of a commode, of the built-in wardrobes, the gold shiny handles.
Uncle Ian climbed up the stairs. He sat beside her, once again, blocking the view. Beth was annoyed. She sat a little away from him.
“What do you think she’s doing nah?” He asked her.
“What?”
“What you think Little Nanny’s doing in heaven?”
Beth didn’t believe in heaven, but her family did; mentions of heaven had been used a lot today, especially on Facebook. Little Nanny was with the angels.
She didn’t want to talk.
“I dunno.”
“Come on. Try. Thought you was clever.”
She didn’t want to be clever. Didn’t want to know – she knew someone would shut the bedroom door, and after that, it would never be opened by her again, never look like that, with Little Nanny’s things so carefully put away. What happens to those things? Having them meant believing something else, not having them meant they would be lost.
“I don’t believe in heaven.”
“She’s not in the other place!”
“No, I don’t think she’s – she’s elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright. What is she doing, elsewhere?”
Beth’s throat was tight. “Drinking her tea.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he laughed, his voice rough. “Maybe she’s at the caravan.”
“On the penny machines. And she’s won one of those keychains.”
“She’s rich enough to play on the ten pence machines.”
“No! She would never do that. They’re a waste of money.”
“Alright, alright,” he concedes, “and now she’s playing bingo.”
“And she wins that too.”
“And spends it on sherry.”
They paused, as another set of guests left. The door opened and closed, they stayed hidden on the stairs.
“I saw you in the garden with Max,” he said.
Beth didn’t say anything.
“It must be hard being the cleverest one,” he said, “and loving Little Nanny the most.”
She didn’t feel like it needed an answer.
“It’s like she’s on holiday,” he said. A pause. “Not really gone at all.”
Beth nodded. She waited for the lecture, for him to say it was wrong, that she should feel something else, that she should open up. But he didn’t. He swallowed; he wiped his eyes.
That was it. She wasn’t really gone at all.
“If you need anything at all,” he said, and she nodded once more, and they both stood up together, and walked down the stairs in silence.
Seeing Uncle Ian on the stairs in the same suit he wore for his wedding stirred something in Beth, something that couldn’t be undone. She saw what was there and what it meant. She pulled at a piece of peeling paint. It came off in her hand, a rubbery flake of grey. She held it tight. She was holding onto it because she knew it would be lost. The room would be changed; she knew this, and yet she knew Little Nanny would once again walk in the room, her slippered feet treading softly over the carpet. She knew her mum had taken home her slippers, that she wore them in their kitchen, so Beth could listen to the sounds of their feet. The slap on the floor, the same sounds. Same body, same woman. She felt the urge to take, to preserve, to lay in her bed with Little Nanny’s things around her. But how could she do this, and hold them tight, and miss them, and know that they were going to be worn again by Little Nanny herself?
Things had gotten hard again. She could tell Uncle Ian was watching her, she needed to get away from him.
“That’s my Beth,” her mum was saying. She turned her head. She was talking to Tracey.
“Come ‘ere,” her mum said, and Beth went into her mum’s arms.
Tracey clucked at Beth, a cooing, pigeon sound, tilting her head to one side.
“She’s lavly.”
“She’s good as gold.”
“I bet.”
“She’s going to universiti’; all ‘er teachers say so.”
“I am,” Beth said. “I want to study English.”
“Oh, bless her.”
Beth wanted to say to this woman with gold dangling from her in drips, go away, bless nothing, you know nothing about me, about us, about our life. She was trapped and forced to smile. She could feel Little Nanny elsewhere, hovering above the room. Come in now, she thought, come now, show them how much more I know than them.
“My mum always spoke about her future,” Beth’s mum said, “she always wan’ed to go to her gradua’on, I mean, none of her kids even finished school, you know?”
“She’ll be there,” Tracey said, and then she looked at Beth, intensely, “in spirit.”
You’re stupid, Beth wanted to say. She knew it furiously. She knew it like she knew she had arms; a total, body belief, not one that relied on science or evidence, a knowing feeling, like knowing you’re loved, knowing you’re safe.
Little Nanny would be at her graduation. She wanted to say it; it was right there in her throat and urgent.
“All the things she’ll miss,” Tracey said, “her great grandkids even.” She clucked, “such a shame.”
“But Beth being so clever,” her mum dragged her back into it, “that was so impor’ant to her. Going to a graduation – it was like a dream for her. Her family had made it.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Tracey said, but Beth could tell she didn’t understand, that no one could understand what happened between her and Little Nanny.
Uncle Ian was still watching her; she felt he had given her something of weight. She wanted to unburden herself from his confession, from all of their expectation.
“You’ll have to look after Doreen yourself now,” Beth said suddenly. She looked at Tracey with a meanness in her eyes that she had learnt from the girls at school.
Tracey laughed uneasily.
“That’s rude,” her mum said to her, but Beth shook her off, disengaged herself, left the two women standing there. She heard Uncle Ian laugh.
“She’s right, Tracey,” he jumped in.
“You keep aut of it!”
She went away from the argument that ensued.
She ran up the stairs, straight into Little Nanny’s bed, breathing the scent of her laundry liquid, the smell of her, fresh cotton, and the sweet old person musk underneath it. She closed her eyes. She could hear Max purring under the bed. Beth imagined herself, ten years from now, taller, smiling, and happy. She had done it. She had got a degree, she was a master of English, knew everything there was to know. Her mum had a ticket and sat in her seat, craning forward, eager to watch her walk across the stage. Her name was called by the announcer. She thinks that’s what happened. She walked on the stage and collected the scroll thing, and she looked out into the crowd, raising it into the air. She looked into the faces, blurred and nondescript, a smudge of colours, bright, cheering ovals.
She heard someone call her name from downstairs. She closed her eyes harder, squeezed them shut, back to her imagining.
She looked harder into the crowd. She could see Little Nanny in them, clapping wildly, her bingo wings flapping, false teeth on display, her smile wide. She would see Beth walk across the stage. She would see her do what no one had done before. She would have a degree, she would be off now, in the world, limitless. And Little Nanny would see it all. The crowd, all the faces Little Nanny, Little Nanny everywhere.
Footsteps on the stairs then. The door opens; she knew it was her mum, she could tell by the sound of her steps. She crawled into the bed beside Beth. She jingled with jewellery as she moved. She found Beth and wrapped her tightly in her arms. Her red nails scraped Beth’s skin softly, an accident.
Beth snuggled in closer, listening to the sound of her mother’s beating heart. On and on and on. She tried not to cry.
She knew Little Nanny was watching them. Max crept out from under the bed. She put her hand down to stroke him, but he moved away from her. He went to the door. He didn’t understand, stupid cat, that Little Nanny would not be stroking him no more.