Remember Me (15 page)

Here you are, she said, Can’t have you going out in the weather without something on your head. Which do you prefer?

I looked at them for a bit. One was a peaked cap with a squiggle on the front and a navy trim. Not me, I know when a hat looks ridiculous. The other one was a beret. A
berrett
.

That one.

She put it on my head.

Come on, time to face your public, she said, suddenly very brisk. She sounded odd, as if she was sharing a joke – but not with me. I wanted to thank her for everything, but the shop was
busy now, and Debs was spraying something in the air from a can, spraying behind me as I left, as if there was a trail to cover, as if I were a fly, a wasp, and the words I had formed to say to
Carol were running like rain on a window. She had her hand on my shoulder, pushing me, nearly pushing me, out of the door.

The list, I said, finding words.

Tomorrow, Winnie, all right? Another time, Win.

Win

Winnie

Winifred.

I didn’t know she knew my name.

I became Winifred Foy while I was standing on a chair. It comes back sharp as a knife; the chair with its wooden legs creaking under me, and Jean Foy moving round me in a
circle, her mouth full of pins. She was altering one of her dresses to fit, so that I could go with her to the meeting on Wednesday evening. Why should I care what I’m called? I thought,
after she’d told me what my new name would be. I’d had so many names already: Patsy, Lillian, Pikey, Princess, Beauty. I didn’t care about losing my old name. Didn’t care
about the new one.

As far as I could tell, I’d been back in the city a week. I’d come on a train, in disgrace, with my green case tucked between my legs, wearing Aunty Ena’s coat over Aunty
Ena’s dress. The dress was too short, and tight around my middle; the coat too long and too thick for the weather. It stank of mothballs. I didn’t want to sit in a carriage where I
might be noticed, so I stood at the window in the corridor and watched as the outside slipped away. Past the mud flats with the broken boats, the farms crouching low against the earth, and the
glittering river, cut by a figure making strides along the embankment. She waved as the train went by, and for a second I yearned to be her, down by the river, in the early summer sunshine: no
sickness, or shame, or Telltale hair. The train sped up and there were no more people I could wish to be, just fields and churches, more fields, more churches, all exactly like the ones I’d
left. So many of them, skimming into a muzzy blur. It made me think of all the other girls, just like me, all the other Joseph Dodds, and a hundred Aunty Enas, shrivelling to nothing in the middle
of the dead brown land. I stopped counting, looked the other way. I was going back to Chapelfield; there was nowhere else. My aunt had sent a telegram, she said, explaining the Matter. That’s
what she called it.

Your grandfather will have to deal with you now, she said, passing one long hand over the other as if she could wipe me away, It’s no business of mine.

All through the journey, I thought about what he would say, what kind of rule he might have to invent to deal with this Matter, so shameful, such a disgrace. I was hoping Mr Stadnik would be
there. He would know what to do.

It was a long walk from the station. The streets looked ordinary at first, just as I remembered them, and then I turned a corner, and there was a pile of smoking rubble, a spume of dust, as if
the earth had split its belly. More ordinary streets, then sky where there used to be a factory; a hole in the ground for a church; a tumble of bricks, burnt wood, bent wire where a row of shops
once stood. A cottage with its face peeled off and the furniture inside turned over and broken, like a ransacked doll’s house. On and on through the city; the same and different at every
turn.

Chapelfield was still standing. I knocked on the door and waited, thinking of a long time ago, a key and a watch hanging heavy on a chain round my neck. My grandfather worrying about me, always
worrying. I couldn’t understand what I found: I found nothing. I looked in through the letterbox, half expecting Billy the dog’s wet muzzle on the other side. I saw the cupboard door
under the stairs, slightly open, with an upturned bucket beside it in the hall. Of course, my grandfather would be in the garden on such a fine day. Around the back of the house, climbing the steps
and standing on the bridge where I didn’t want to be – where I first saw Joseph, all balances. But the garden below was overgrown, the wall crumbled down on the track, the glass panes
in the greenhouse smashed and winking in the sunlight. My grandfather was gone and by the look of it, had been for a while. He wouldn’t have known about the Matter, about me and my shame. I
had no idea where my father might be. There was no one to ask, nowhere else to go.

There’s a big park, a sort of heathland, on the edge of the city. The road cuts it into two. My father almost took me, once. He’d promised me a boating trip on a lake, but we never
got there; The Flag was on the way, and that was where we always used to stop. It was still there, and open for business. I went into the snug round the back, wanting a drink of water. The man who
brought it to me looked as if he’d rather put it in my face than in my hand. He had the same look Aunty Ena wore when she found out.

~ ~ ~

I’m in the yard, on my knees, holding my head under the tap. Aunty Ena’s voice sounds very far away.

What’s the matter with you?

I don’t know. Sick like never before. I lift my head to look at her and the ground comes up like a slap. Aunty Ena takes me inside and lies me down on the mattress. The
room jitters round my head.

Think I’m a fool, she says, pulling on her coat, Think I don’t know what’s going on – what you’ve been doing with that boy?

Only what
you
did, I say, You and Mr Stadnik. There’s no shame in it. We’re getting married.

She fetches her gloves, tucks them into her coat pockets as she bends close to my face. Her words are tart as bile,

Of course you are, she says.

She locks the door behind her.

~

I stood outside The Flag and drank the water. The heath on either side of me was a deep emerald green. Along the middle of the road, a man was dragging a cart. I moved over to
the corner of the yard, away from his eyes, and sat on the wall I used to sit on with my father. Ginger beer. The thought made me retch. The man hadn’t seen me. He laid down the handles and
went inside. A skinny dog leaped from the cart to follow him.

~

Aunty Ena still doesn’t speak, but it’s a new kind of not-speaking. It says everything. We’re expecting a visit from the vicar. She cleans the living room,
dragging the mattress into the kitchen and leaning it against the stove where the vicar can’t see it. I think he’s coming to talk about the wedding we’re going to have, Joseph and
me. Aunty Ena doesn’t say. She guards the house, she keeps close, so I haven’t been able to get out and see him. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to do anything except put
my head under the tap and feel the cold water rushing across my scalp. The vicar doesn’t come. Not the first day or the second. Just when she starts to give up, cursing him under her breath,
a boy knocks on the door with a message.

It’s over, he says, again and again. It’s over! It’s over!

She locks the door, running behind him, and as soon as she’s gone, I climb the stairs. From the high window, where Mr Stadnik could see the sky, I watch them as they race
down the back lane. The church floating in the mist. Birds in a black frenzy round the tower. A boomer’s wail from a far corner of the fen, sounding just like the boy on the step. It’s
over. It’s over.

The hair on my head is standing straight as corn, but there are no shooting stars this time, and it’s too late, now, to make a wish. I know without being told that Joseph is gone.

No need to run, I tell her.

~

When I finished the water, I left the glass on the wall. I couldn’t face the barman again. I made a choice – the heathland. It reminded me of Joseph and the church
plantation. I picked up my case and walked into the trees.

It was Jean’s brother, Bernard Foy, who found me there. His stroll on the heath took an unvarying route, not too far in, but away from the road; it was his habit to walk
alone before a meeting, to set himself up for the day ahead.

When you live a life as
extraordinary
as mine, he said, drolling out the long word, You want an ordinary start to the day.

His ordinary start began early on Friday morning. There was nothing in particular to attract his eye, nothing unusual to remark upon to Jean, he said, who didn’t get out much and liked to
hear of the world. Jean was not only Bernard’s sister, she was his housekeeper and assistant. He would describe the mist rising off the lake, a bird arrowing the sky, the zag of a rook,
calling in the distance. Bernard was thinking about the meeting that evening, about who would be in the congregation – and what he could find to say to them.

His flock are mostly women, with husbands recently dead, or Missing Presumed. They always think the worst, he said: his twice-weekly gatherings are packed. In the early days, when he still had
the Gift, he could see the spirits, rattling along behind the crowd like a string of tin-cans on a honeymoon carriage. The living want to picture their loved-ones in heaven, he said, but they
can’t stop imagining other things: a husband lying face down in a ditch, or a son, hanging on a wire. They read reports, and fear something worse than the worst. Bernard, in his Gift, saw
auras and haloes; the past rolled out in front of him like the Pathé Gazette. He was their conduit; conveying messages of utmost triviality. For him, he explained, there was only one real
message: the fact of everlasting life on the other side. He enjoyed this proof and the skill he had of convincing others. So, when the gift left him, Bernard didn’t stop. Instead, he
described himself as their filter, happy to provide relief wherever he could. He assured me he wasn’t a charlatan; he was merely Temporarily Blocked.

Looking over the water, Bernard prepared for the meeting: he considered names. Harry, Arthur, George.

Who is the George outside of life? he’d ask, putting his head a little on one side, squinting into the distance.

That’s
my
Georgy!

Hmm. Yes, I think it
is
your Georgy. Be patient, my love . . . he’s moving close. Rise please, sir. Yes. Georgy’s here with you now.

If the name was not forthcoming, Bernard employed other methods; nothing too strange, no jewels secreted under a floorboard, no dark secrets, and certainly no pain. Flowers would often solve the
problem.

Why do I see roses? he’d say, to a swoon of raincoats and hats. Or, staring blankly above their heads,

I can see the letters BB – or is it RR? Show again please, sir. Do show again.

Bernard used his gift wisely; it’s just that, these days, nothing would come. So many dead, and no one moving across. He imagined a waiting room filled with men, patiently
standing in line.

The threshold is treacherous at the best of times, he said, narrowing his hands into a small gap, as if I would see them there, in the space between. He lived with the hope that the backlog
would clear.

And then Bernard had a vision. He saw an apparition across the still water, floating on the mist. He told me how he saw me raised up from the ground. I tell you, I was standing there, on a patch
of muddy grass, the water at my feet. He said I spoke unearthly sounds. I tell you, I was counting. To a hundred, and back down again from a hundred to one. Mr Stadnik taught me that: how a heart
can be broken in many places. I was counting the places.

I would have carried on with my plan, if I hadn’t spotted him, the fat man peering over a frond. I’d been living on the heath for a week. I had seen only one other person in that
time, an old man collecting sticks. I avoided him.

Bernard found me before I had the chance to drop myself in. I was going to float like a girl in a painting, through the lilies and into the black; float away to the end of the world. He said he
studied me from a distance. Standing there with Aunty Ena’s coat on, and shoes with the toes cut out, and a little green case at my feet. We walked the path together; me dragging my case
until Bernard took it, hooking it under his arm. His small talk was easy and soft. Bernard didn’t tell me then about his work. He pointed out the ducks, the clock tower, the numbered pedalos
moored up on the far side of the water. They dipped up and down of their own accord, as if an invisible man was stepping from boat to boat.

Someone has disturbed the water, he said, Would that be you?

The reeds were tranquil, the water would not tell.

Each boat was numbered.

Why don’t they have names? I asked.

It’s easier for the man in the tower to call them in, he said, cupping his hands and making a voice, ‘Come in Number Seven, Your Time’s Up!’

He was funny. In another time, not this one, it would have made me smile. I counted the boats. I was shy of him.

Thirteen, I said, for something to say, That’s unlucky.

No, no, my dear, you’ll find there are only twelve.

When we rounded the tower where the boats were moored, we counted again.

You see, he said, Only twelve.

Number Nine was here! I put my toe against the empty mooring to show him the space. The lake was still now, no boats out. Bernard smiled.

You are a Godsend, he said.

~

His hall was brown. There was a clock in a box, and a gilt mirror above an elephant’s foot filled with umbrellas. The light was sucked into the flock wallpaper, the
patterned runner, mahogany banister.

Wait here and I’ll get Jean, he said, turning to the deep end of the hall. He cast no shadow; there was too much gloom. He came back with a woman in a patterned pinny. She had her hair cut
short like a man, and carefully pencilled eyebrows, which she raised and kept there. She didn’t say, Call me Jean, she said, What now? as if he had brought a dog home. From the sharp corner
of her eye, she took me in. She showed me she was taking me in; beginning at my blistered toes with the dirt ingrained, my bare legs, the grass stains on my dress. She stopped at the third button
down, as if she could already see a baby nuzzled. Not for nothing was she the Spiritualist’s Assistant. Up and down again, her eyes in the corner of her head.