Elizabeth is Missing

Maud returns to the house she’d lived in for 80 years, thinking she is still a girl and her parents are out looking for Sukey. She’s surprised when a man she doesn’t recognize comes to the door. The man tells his young daughter that she’s the woman who used to live there.

Confused, Maud rummages through her pockets looking for notes and finds nothing: “I’ve no notes. The lack makes me feel sick; I’m cut loose and whirling about in the wind” (260). She finds one square in the lining of her coat that says, “Where is Elizabeth?” (260) and starts shouting “Elizabeth is missing!” (260) She observes, “I shout so that the part of my brain that forgets will stop forgetting” (260).

Moments later, Helen arrives. She tells Maud that Elizabeth is not missing and that Maud knows where she is. She apologizes to the man and hurries Maud to the car. As they are driving, Maud notices a bicyclist and accuses Helen of nearly hitting him.

Thinking about car accidents leads Maud to vividly remember the day the mad woman died. Maud was in Douglas’ room listening to the “Champagne Aria” when she heard brakes screeching. She went out to the street and saw that the mad woman had been hit by a car; Maud’s mother and a neighbor were kneeling over her.

As Maud held her hand before she died, the mad woman muttered something about birds and pressed a squash flower into Maud’s hand. The shape of the flower reminded Maud of an old gramophone horn. The flower leads Maud to remember the night she’d seen a man in his front garden yelling about someone stealing his squash plants. Maud told her mother and the neighbor that the mad woman had dug up the squash that night, and Frank had helped plant those squash plants. The mad woman also muttered to Maud’s mother about birds flying around her head and that they had both lost their daughters.

Helen leaves Maud at a nursing home for a long weekend. Helen feels guilty for leaving her, and Maud is not happy: “I know she’s lying. She’s going to leave me here for ever” (265). Maud is confused about time and thinks she’s already been there for weeks. A woman takes her into the living area, giving her a seat and a cup of tea. Maud recites a few verses of Tennyson’s “Maud,” a poem she memorized at school. When another old woman enters the room, she thrusts a bunch of droopy plastic flowers at Maud.

The flowers remind Maud of the night that Douglas came home late for dinner with a “bedraggled bunch” of flowers (269). He told Maud and her family that his mother died that day. He revealed that his mother was the mad woman and that he and Sukey had been sneaking her food. He explained that his mother lost her mind after losing her daughter and her husband. Douglas assumed that his mother died in the bombing, but eventually discovered that she was still living in the bombed-out house. He explained that she moved to the beach hut later and eventually to Frank’s abandoned stables.

The mad woman liked being near Sukey and Maud because they looked like her dead daughter. Douglas admitted that his mother had gotten into the house and stood over Maud’s bed with the umbrella when she was ill. He reveals that he smashed the records after a fight with Sukey; Sukey told him to send his mother to an institution. This upset Douglas terribly because he knew that all his mother “ever wanted was to go home, to touch the things my sister had touched” (272).

Maud is digging in a garden at the nursing home, repeating “I want to go home” (273) when Helen comes to pick her up. Helen knows that Maud is angry with her and wants to make it up to her. Maud says, “I was so angry I went home and smashed all her records and buried them in the garden” (274). Even as she says this, she knows that what she’s saying isn’t quite right.

Helen suggests they visit Elizabeth in the rehabilitation unit. Helen warns Maud that Elizabeth doesn’t look like herself, but Elizabeth wants to see Maud.

Maud observes that the woman speaking to her is “like one of those people you always mistake for someone else” (275). She wants this woman to be her daughter, “but it never seems to be her” (275). This reminds Maud of her endless searches for Sukey and that she “carried on seeing her in other people long after I was married and settled, and a mother” (275).

In the rehabilitation unit, Elizabeth looks small and frail in her hospital bed. When Maud says that Peter keeps Elizabeth on “starvation rations” (277) and that she’s going to dig up the broken records in the garden, Peter says, “It was digging in the garden that got her in this state” (277). Peter and Helen go outside to talk, and Maud overhears Peter telling Helen that “the shock of the fall caused the stroke” (278). Peter is angry and tells Helen that he knows Helen had snuck Maud in to visit Elizabeth before. In the hospital room, Elizabeth opens her eyes and tries to talk to Maud.

Maud thinks back to the night that the mad woman died; she stayed up all night with her mother and Douglas. The next morning, the three of them gathered all the blackberries in their yard. Watching Douglas eat the berries, Maud noticed the resemblance between Douglas and his mother. When Frank stopped by with “black market sugar” (282), Maud’s mother decided they should make jam. Maud told Frank that Douglas’ mother was killed by a car, and Frank was surprisingly upset at the news. Frank helped them make jam but was on “the verge of tears” (282).

Back in the present, Helen is driving Maud home from the rehabilitation center, furious with Peter for blaming her for everything that has gone wrong with Elizabeth. When Maud repeats, “Elizabeth is missing” (282), Helen reminds her that they’ve just visited her. When Maud says, “She was buried in the garden” (282), Helen wonders if there might be some meaning in Maud’s ramblings. Helen asks Maud if she means to say that Sukey is buried in Elizabeth’s garden. Maud says “Sukey’s things were in the garden, waiting for me, marking the place” (283).

Helen stops the car in front of Elizabeth’s house, takes her shovel out of the trunk, and starts digging up the garden. Helen, fed up and frustrated, exclaims, “I’ve bloody had it with missing people and with sick people and with dead people” (284). Maud is confused and wonders if Helen is planting vegetables. When Helen discovers a human skull, she rushes Maud to her car. In a moment of lucidity, Maud says, “Frank” (286).

Helen calls the police, and when they appear, the male officer recognizes Maud as the old woman who has made multiple missing persons reports. In the next scene, Maud is at the police station with another male officer who explains that Maud needs to give a witness statement. Maud tells the man a bit about Sukey and the stuffed birds that she was afraid of. She tells him that Frank “was a jealous man” (292) who helped someone plant summer squash in the garden. As Maud thinks through what must have happened, she concludes that Frank killed Sukey, put her “into a tea chest and buried her in garden of a house where he knew no one yet lived” (293). Even as she comes to these conclusions, she thinks “they can’t be true, they can’t possibly be true” (293).

Once the police question Helen and Maud, the next step is to verify their stories and see if Frank is still alive. Once Helen starts driving, Maud notices that Helen is breathing heavily and shaking. Helen asks Maud what happened to Douglas, and Maud tells her that he went to America, and she never heard from him again.

When they stop at the seaside to wash the dirt from their hands, Maud wonders what they’ve been doing all day and why their hands are dirty. Helen asks Maud what happened to Frank, and Maud tells her that he asked her to marry him. Helen is surprised, and Maud wonders for a moment if she would have accepted if she hadn’t already been engaged. Looking at the beach, Maud remembers how she and Sukey would take turns burying each other in the sand.