Remember Me (16 page)

No bags? she said.

Bernard offered up my case. I understood that I was meant to be staying. Like my name, staying made no difference to me. It was just another place.

~

She let me know how she saw through me. Next morning in the kitchen, I sat at the table while Bernard went about his preparations. Jean Foy peeling potatoes, me with the carrots
from the garden, claggy with earth; both of us unused to company.

Just pull the tops off for me, the green bits, give them a twist. What was the big attraction down there at the lake, then? Twist and pull, girl. They won’t bite,

looking at me out of the corner of her eye, and me the same at her. She was framed in the window, so all I saw against the light was a sharp silhouette, like a cameo brooch. The
back of her was closed, the ties of her pinny criss-crossed and knotted tight. A potato mooned in her hand,

He thinks you have something,

scrubbing the potato under the tap; and in the silence that came back,

He thinks he will make something out of you. He thinks you are a
find
.

She said it sharp,
find
, as if it were a knife. I smoothed the green fronds of the carrots, trying not to think of angel hair, or smell the earth, like a slow ache,
rising off them. There were lilies on the water, and a face peering over a fern. I didn’t know how long Bernard had been watching, what he had seen.

Jean filled a saucepan and carried it to the table. She set it down heavy in front of me, the water spilling over the sides, and went back to the sink to say the rest.

God knows what. Slip of a girl with not a pot to piss in. How old
are
you? Sixteen?

Nearly, I said.

But he thinks you can help him, you know.

A pause. I was supposed to ask a question so that she could tell me how. But she wouldn’t look at me and I didn’t care. She had to ask, because I didn’t care
at all about helping. I didn’t care about anything. Joseph had flown, my grandfather had gone; my father could be anywhere. I was no one to anyone; that was all that mattered. Curiosity got
the best of her.

What was it then, what you did?

The water in a pool on the table, like a lake. What did I do? The water holding itself to the surface, shivering, then soaking away into the grain.

What impressed him, I mean.

As if reading my mind.

We counted boats, I said, rubbing green between my fingers.

And?

And there was one missing that I thought was there. Number Nine. I must have counted them wrong, I said.

Wrong, she said, You counted them
wrongly.
But Bernard counted them rightly? Right?

She turned at last from the window and smiled. It was a lit smile, to show me the joke. I nodded. She took the carrots from my lap, and began twisting the heads, pulling out
their hair.

We’ll find out then, shall we? Go into the parlour. Come back and tell me everything you see.

~

I knew only three rooms in Bernard’s house: the kitchen where Jean gave me supper the night before, and where the next morning I watched and tried not to ruin the
vegetables and was told not to touch anything and to make myself useful; the bedroom which was off her own bedroom, where her instructions to me to

Be quiet no tossing about

had me sleepless and desperate for the lavatory; and the bathroom, with its monstrous bath and giant basin ringed with black specks.

I couldn’t find the parlour for doors. Jean made a funny face, then laughed.

My master’s house has many rooms, she said, opening the furthest one and nodding me inside,

Everything you see, child, five minutes.

I came back and told her.

Marble fireplace, a photograph on top in a black frame, a settle under the window, a pair of fire dogs—

Tell me what you saw in the photograph, she said.

Mr Foy sitting in a chair with a beautiful woman behind him.

She looked at me steadily now.

A beautiful woman, that’s what you see? With dark eyes and long dark hair?

Yes, I said, Very dark hair. Just like my mother’s. Very beautiful.

Quite sure?

Yes.

Go and look again.

I was mistaken. There was no one behind Bernard Foy. I held it to the light. There was no one. Jean came to find me in the parlour, took the frame and placed it carefully back
on the mantelpiece.

That was Bernard’s wife. She’s dead. And they don’t have a Number Nine on the lake any more, she said, The boat sank. The boy drowned.

~

That night, she came into my room.

You don’t need the Gift to see what’s up with you, she said, When is it due?

I couldn’t say. I didn’t even know I was due anything until my aunt told me, and then I was on the train, and in disgrace. Jean spanned her hand across my stomach
and stared at her fingers, as if they would give her the answer.

Not so far gone, she whispered, Not too late. That why you ran away?

I wanted to tell her then about being at the lake, stepping in to drown myself. How the water lapped my shoes. When it stilled, I saw inside it: the girl, looking back at me
from underneath, like a premonition of what was to come. But Jean wasn’t the kind of woman who understood about future ghosts; she knew only about the ones that were already dead. I told her
I didn’t run from anywhere; that I was sent away, in shame, for loving a boy, for wanting him to love me.

That’s enough of that talk, she said, the hard edge back in her voice, Best keep it to yourself. And Bernard doesn’t know, mind – pointing a warning finger – So
don’t go telling anyone. It’ll be our secret.

Sometimes, over the years, you come back. It can be anywhere. You like to take me by surprise, you like to lie in wait. I’m standing on the edge of the pavement, watching
for the man to go green, or I’m listening to that woman in the doorway of the bingo singing a song, or I’m simply walking, as I do, thinking of nothing, and you’ll appear. You
come on the air. A branch of a tree making ribbons of the light. Early rain, washing you clean from the brick of a church wall. A particular bar of soap that people are keen on holds a residue of
your scent. I follow them; I lose you. I can’t tell what the smell is: something warm. Earth is in it. Sleep is in it. Love hides in the gap between finding and losing. I don’t know why
you keep coming back. It makes me broken.

I am born standing on a chair! I am in a new life, with new people. I am new as a sapling, and like a new thing, I must put the pain behind me. No. I have no pain; that was
someone else, some other person’s life. Winifred Foy is their niece, just arrived from the country. Winifred Foy is who I am. I have a marvellous talent. I am their Godsend in a grey flannel
dress. I’m going with them tonight, to the Meeting. I am learning a new set of rules. And a language.

You stay close by while we greet them, says Jean, pulling back my hair. She flattens it against my scalp, smoothing it down with her hand. I’m sitting on the chair now, in front of
Bernard’s desk, which is covered in what Jean calls her Beautifiers: a mottled tin with grease marks round the lip, a hairbrush and hand mirror made of horn, a comb with a pointed end, a grey
rubber cap, a dish of dusting powder.

Keep still! she says, pulling again, She used to love it when I did it for her, she says, with a backward nod at the mantelpiece, She used to say she was in Heaven!

She means Bernard’s dead wife, the one I saw in the photograph, with the long black hair. The one who wasn’t there.

Mine’s too red, isn’t it? I say, remembering Mr Stadnik’s remark to my grandfather, It’s Telltale.

It’s red all right. But that’s the least of your worries.
That’ll
be telltale in a couple of months, she says, prodding my lap with the end of the comb, And
what’ll you do then?

Do? About what? I say, trying not to think.

You can’t pretend it’s not there, she says, Girls get put away for less.

Like the girls in Bethel Street House all those years ago. Brown pinafores, grey-faced, wandering aimlessly round the rose bushes. Jean bends sideways, looks at me.

Don’t worry. We’ll get you sorted out, she says quietly, sliding the comb between her lips.

How?

She lifts the wig, places it like a crown on my head,

Be careful with this, now, she says, ignoring my question, It belonged to her, you know. There. Want to take a look? Standing back to survey her work, Jean holds up the hand mirror for me to
inspect myself. Inside the oval, Snow White looks back at me.

That’s better, she says, Got rid of the pikey in you, that has. Look like any of us now.

What’s a pikey? I ask.

The word is sharp in my mouth. I’ve never said it before, but I’ve heard it often enough.

Never you mind that, says Jean. Now remember to watch everything I do tonight – prodding me again – And I mean
everything,
she says.

Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to. Be polite. If anyone asks, you’re my niece. You’re Winifred Foy And don’t scratch!

~

In Jean Foy’s dress and a cardigan smelling of parma violets, I’m shivering in the shade of St Giles’ church. We’re early, the caretaker has yet to bring
the keys. When he comes, he jangles them in front of him, but says nothing. He doesn’t even look at me.

It’s a lovely evening, says Jean, to no reply. We follow the caretaker, not into the church itself but to a corrugated hut down the far end of the churchyard. There’s no sign on the
door; nothing to give away what happens. The man makes a show of unlocking the door, sighing and swearing under his breath. Disapproval comes off him like steam off a drayhorse. He speaks not one
word.

The inside smells of mildew and stale smoke. Busying himself, the caretaker scrapes the benches across the floor, lining them up anyhow to face the front of the stage. He works like a man
against his toil. I don’t know why I expected a church. Jean crosses the floor and I follow her into a back room. It’s very cold in here, even though outside it’s mild still. On a
hook on the wall is a cassock, with shoes hanging off a pair of trouser legs beneath it, as if a vicar has been hung up to dry.

Will Bernard be wearing that?

Tch, she says, hiding a laugh, Here, take these. And stop scratching!

She hands me two pewter jugs. I’m to rinse them under the tap and fill them with clean water. In the huge sink which she calls a trough, I rinse the glasses piled up on
the draining board. We put the jugs and cups and glasses on the trestle table. Jean pours a thimbleful of cordial into each jug,

Makes it taste like barley water, she says, pulling a face. She opens a little bag of crackers and tumbles them onto a tin plate, centres it, and stands back.

Refreshments, she says, with nothing in her voice. We both stare at the spread; it looks mean.

That’s all there is, she says, Nothing to be had in those bloody shops.

She takes an envelope from her handbag and waves it at me.

I’ll give this to Happy out there, she says, And you – handing me a silver bowl – Put this on the table at the front door. And stay there with it. You never can tell with this
lot.

What will Bernard say? I ask.

Bernard has yet to see me in his wife’s wig. Jean pauses. She’s about to say one thing – I can read it in her face – but she stops herself.

He’ll say stop that bloody scratching! Now get to that door before they can sneak in.

The women, when they arrive – and it is
all
women, apart from a boy clutching the arm of his mother, and a very elderly man on his own – have to pay. I try not to show my
surprise. I stand quite still in the doorway with my body in someone else’s dress and my feet in someone else’s boots, and an itching, heavy head of someone else’s hair, watching
the money fill the tray.

You fool, you fool, you fool. I say it in my head as they file through, watching the money mount up, until there’s just me at the door, standing there with a tray full of coins. But then,
as the evening begins, I think again: No, I am the fool.

Bernard steps up on the stage while they’re still finding their seats. There’s rummaging and coughing, and people fiddling with umbrellas. I can see them all. Row upon row of
melancholy faces, waiting for the start of something extraordinary.

The usual, says Jean, from the corner of her mouth.

It doesn’t feel usual to me. Underneath the wig, I’m getting more than an itch, more than a burn; a crawl of ants all over my head, and static heat, like an electric
current, lifting me with a jump off the floor. Something pulling me up from the skin of my neck. I’m on tiptoe. Bernard, from the stage, looks at me. His arm held out straight to one side,
introducing his new, special niece, showing me to the packed hall,
presenting
me to the gathering. I’m not ready.

It isn’t like seeing a ghost, Bernard said, before we went on – as if that was a common enough thing to happen. He was looking a bit like he’d seen one himself, staring at me
with his big, heavy eyes. He took my hands between his; they were ice.

You must be ready for whatever comes through. Don’t be alarmed if it happens. Be calm, and whatever else you might forget, remember: it’s not the messages that are important, but the
message
.

That’s what Bernard said to me. But I’m not prepared for this at all.

You can tell them that you think your life’s a tragedy even though you’re only fifteen and you’ve been stuck in the middle of a field for years on end because
you were left there by a strange little man who could have been a circus act in another time, left there to live with a skinny old woman who looked like the woman on the clock in the city centre,
and just like her, she only gets to go outdoors when it’s Fair. Which is never if you’ve got blackout on the windows and no one comes to visit and you’re afraid to put a foot
through the door. And how if that doesn’t drive you mad, then the first other person you see for years on end turns out to be the most lovely-looking creature you’ve ever set your eyes
on, and what’s more, he thinks
you’re
lovely too. He calls you Beauty. And you’ll both have a beautiful life together. Oh yes, you plan it and describe it and rehearse it,
lying in each other’s arms and breathing him in and breathing in the scent of the moss at his shoulder and not feeling the same kind of hunger any more, but a new one, sharper and more acid
and more sweet. This hunger will boil your blood. Thinking, this is it for me, we’ll have a place to stay but we won’t have roses round the door because we live in the country and are
sick to death of it; the stinging grass and the leaden sky and the animals and the insects, the flying things that drop in your ear in the middle of the night. What we want is a
car
. We want
a car to take us to sea, where we can swim and lie naked in the soft dunes and see the birds fly over our heads and the waves coming in and out like a breath. We’ll go really fast, all over,
and further than that,
really
fast,
really
far, just me and you, down to the coast, to the end of the world. But the baggy old aunt discovers your secret, and if she can’t have
the little man then you sure as hell can’t have that flint-eyed giant. Then he’s gone, dropping from the sky like a hawk. You’re sent back to your grandfather – because
you’re a child, really, just a child. That boy had no right to be meddling with you, even though he’s not much more than that himself, because you’re not right in the head, are
you? You’re not right in the head.