The Little Black Book of Elenor Bambridge

Our story begins six months ago. I was crying. Silent tears slid down my face like minuscule rivulets and dropped onto my collar. I felt like I had stepped into a bucket of wet cement and it had dried, encasing my feet and calves in weights I was not strong enough to lift. My chest bucked hard against my controlled efforts to breathe slowly and deeply and I pressed my fingers to my lips. Jeanette caught sight of my pink and glistening eyes and rolled her own dry beady ones skywards and stalked out of the room. I felt some gentle pressure around my arms and knew without looking that it was Milly. “I know you were attached to this one Chloe”. Then she hugged me and backed out of the room, her ballet flats gently brushing against the carpet. I remember thinking it sounded like a bird rubbing its’ feathers together. Then I looked at the poor, wasted body of Elenor Bambridge and I wondered if she had wings of her own now, somewhere. I knew that she would be covered in a white sheet soon and taken away to a cold place. I had worked at Inara Springs Aged Care Facility for four years now and death was no stranger to these halls. I had still not managed to muster the professionalism of the other nurses, who more or less had adopted a detached manner. It wasn’t that they didn’t care, it was self preservation really. I looked back at sweet Elenor and I suddenly wanted to hold her hand one last time. Without thinking, and apparently forgetting about the weights rooting me to the spot at the foot of her bed; I was suddenly at her side. I nudged the starchy bone coloured sheet and overly-bleached waffle blankets back to reveal her hand. I unfurled her fingers and I realised she was clutching something in her cool, soft hand. It was a little black book. I knew this book. Over the time we had spent together, one of our favourite things to do was crosswords. She had written down answers to questions that stumped her, so that she could remember them for the next time they popped up. The crossword magazine we used had a habit of re-using the same riddles. This book was always by her side. It was worn and made of leather. The years and use had made the cover supple and soft. This book was her only possession. Before I knew it, I had gently taken it from her hand. I knew that it would just be discarded otherwise. Without any family, there was no one to give it to. I looked down at it and couldn’t bear the thought of it being tossed away. It was a part of Elenor, it was how she found meaning in the cryptic clues of her crosswords. The idea of this felt important to me then because this meant that perhaps I could find a meaning in all of this. Maybe her book would give me answers. Elenor was what you would call a closed book herself; and now that she had left us I felt like I had been sucker punched with the fact that I would never delve past the superficial layers of that enigma.

Elenor had been a resident at Inara Springs for only three months. She never had one visitor. Not once in all of our conversations had she let anything slip about her past. From what I could gather there was no lover, no kids, no friends. I had tried to pry stories from her past but her blue eyes would sparkle beneath her translucent tissue paper-thin eyelids and she would somehow always change the subject. There was something mysterious and magical about Elenor Bambridge. She appeared out of nowhere with no past and had now vanished as abruptly. Elenor was different. The other nurses, orderlies and even the canteen ladies avoided her. She was - well, there was no other word for it - unnerving. She knew things. Only a few weeks prior to her death, Elenor had grabbed a nursing students’ wrist and told her to call her estranged mother. She was almost aggressive in the way she had urged her. The girl had been visibly shaken by this encounter and had since refused to work in the block that Elenor was living in. Soon after, the ward was rife with the news that the students’ mother had been killed by a drunk driver a week following Elenors’ warning. There were other things, too. She knew secrets. She didn’t air peoples’ dirty laundry in public. She was subtle but she gave just enough away that her comments couldn’t be mistaken for coincidences. People talked, one gossipy nurse had started a rumour that she was a witch. People believed him.

When I first met Elenor Bambridge, I was not paying attention. It was raining and I was looking out the window. I was thinking about my boyfriend. We had fought that morning and I had been late to work. Lately I had been feeling more and more insecure and he continued to assure me it was all in my head and that I was being crazy. That was the first day I met Elenor. It was three months before she departed me forever. I bent down to bring myself level with her wheelchair. I looked into her face and it was so kind and gentle, and knowing. She took my hand into her cool and soft ones. I had never experienced such a fierce vice like grip from hands that fragile before. That day she looked me dead in the eyes and without any preamble told me I was to go home immediately. “You have left the hair straighteners on, and you don’t own those fancy ones that turn themselves off after half an hour of no use. This is a fire risk”. She said this in an even voice, like she was mindlessly reciting a script. Then she broke character and winked at me. Normally I would have shrugged this off as yet another interaction I only half understood. After all, there were many dementia patients under my care. What nagged me was that I did have a very uneasy feeling and I, of course - being the minimum wage earner I was - most certainly did not have fancy hair straighteners that turned themselves off. I also wasn’t entirely sure that I had turned them off this morning as I had been so in my head about my boyfriend dramas. Making a decision on the spot, I turned to my supervisor and relayed the script Elenor had supplied and I trundled home through the sheets of rain. I was not surprised when I saw my boyfriends’ car in the driveway even though I knew he should have been at work. I was not surprised to see a car parked next to his. I was not surprised when the front door gave way without the turn of a key. I was not surprised when I saw them in our bed. I was however, surprised to find that what I was feeling was relief. It turned out I had also left my hair straighteners on so that day Elenor prevented a fire as well as rescued my sanity and self respect.

I now fell into the seat next to Elenors bed, my eyes still on her tiny frozen body and the worn pages of her parting gift heavy in my lap. As I sat, I felt the enormity of the day weighing down on me. It wasn’t even morning tea and already I felt a lifetime away from when I first opened my eyes that morning. I was utterly floored by the loss of Elenor. It was big enough in itself - her loss - but that wasn’t the only thing that had brought me to this almost-catatonic state I now found myself in. I had taken a pregnancy test that morning. Since finding my boyfriend in bed with my replacement, I had been crashing on Milly’s couch and all my worldly belongings were bundled into precisely three bags. I gained many things from my break up, but financial security and a house over my head were not included. The couch was springy and a loose wire had poked me in the ribs at three in the morning. I was having a dream about a baby, kicking at my insides. As I came to in the dusky gloom, I entertained the thought of pregnancy and as it dawned outside, a fog inside my head was lifted. I thought hard and realised I hadn’t purchased tampons since relocating to Milly’s couch. A pee on a stick confirmed my fears and I clutched it and fell apart.

I made it through the day somehow and that night I opened Elenor’s book. I rifled through pages of scribbles and came to the last page. I stared in shock. Her usual slanting script was taken over by a page of frenzied unconnected words and numbers. My eyes raced down the page as I took in what made no sense to me at the time.

CHLOE

Iss. 1264

32. Horse

24. Apple

24. Government

12. Placate

11. Jacket

10. Ireland

Draw 21133

Sleep evaded me that night as I tried to make sense of the ramblings. Elenor was lucid so it had to mean something. Crosswords were our thing and the reason the book existed and by morning I had pieced together the first clue. I waited outside the newsagent until the doors were begrudgingly opened by a tired looking employee. I located the brand of magazine we religiously decoded every month. A strange mix of excitement and calm descended on me and I knew before I looked that the issue number would be 1264. I took the day off and retreated to the couch, ignoring the loose spring cutting into my back. Arduously, I worked through the puzzles cover to cover. I worked out the second clue when I got to page ten and answered ‘6 Across - Natives refer to it as Eyre’ - Ireland. I wrote down the number 6 on a piece of paper. It followed that for each random number Elenor assigned a word to, one of the answers on that page matched the word. When I was finished I was left with six numbers, ending with ’12 Across - A donkey’s relative’. The last clue came to me almost immediately, it was like I knew all along where this was heading. That afternoon I returned to the news agency with my list of numbers in hand.

Three days later, I watched six coloured balls bearing the very same numbers flash up on Milly’s TV screen in procession.

Our story ends now, six months after I found Elenor Bambridge lifeless in her hospital bed. I too am in a hospital bed. Our story started with an ending and now it ends with a beginning. There is a new life and I hold her tiny pink pillowy hand just as I held Elenor’s on her last day. I’m not like Elenor and I do not know what the future will hold but I know that myself and my baby are safe. We will never have to spend another sleepless night on a moth eaten couch. A few months after my windfall, I leafed through the little black book that saved me. I hadn’t noticed at first the tiny scrawl at the bottom of the page addressed to me with the seemingly unconnected words and numbers. I think of Elenor’s last words as silent tears escaped down my cheeks. ‘For you and your baby, she will be beautiful’. She knew I was pregnant. A nurse bustles in and asks me if I’ve decided on a name. I gaze into brand new bright sparkling blue eyes and reply with a single word; ‘Elenor’.