Remember Me (11 page)

It’s a Saturday but I’m wearing my Sunday best. My grandfather polished my boots first thing, muttering to himself as his ridged yellow fingernails pinched at the
knots Mr Stadnik tied in them, muttering to himself as he spat, then rubbed, then spat at the leather. Now they’re on my feet, gleaming and straight out in front of me on the boards of the
wagon. I hardly dare let them touch the floor for all the muck and bits of straw on it. My dress is stiff at the collar and tight under the arms and on my head I’m wearing an unfamiliar brown
hat. It smells of must, and I don’t want it on because there’s no need to hide my telltale hair any more, but my grandfather issued me with some new rules before we set off: I must look
my best and must not fidget. I must always be a good girl.

Mr Stadnik has got me tight. The wagon is full of children and us. We’re going to the country. Billy the dog is coming too. He barks as more children load up behind us, so much that they
won’t get on; the girls clutch each other’s arms, their petticoats flirting in the breeze. It makes Billy worse, all the fuss. I’ve half a mind to tell them, but everyone’s
offering advice and some of the mothers are saying he shouldn’t be allowed up there. I think they mean the dog and not Mr Stadnik, but then a lady steps forward and pokes him on the arm.

You. What d’you think you’re up to?

Mr Stadnik says nothing, just grabs hold of Billy, hoiking him by the string and squashing him beneath the plank that we’re using as a seat. He still won’t stop
barking. Mr Stadnik clamps him round the muzzle, holding it fast, while the others climb up.

Coward, says a voice from the crowd.

Spy, shouts another.

Mr Stadnik still says nothing. A blob of spit lands on his cuff. He doesn’t look to see where it came from. He takes his handkerchief from his pocket and wipes it away. I
look for my grandfather to help, but he isn’t coming with us. He’s standing on the corner where the mothers and fathers have gathered, ready to wave us off. He’s easy to pick out:
he’s the one with the white hair. It occurs to me that I don’t know how old my grandfather is. I think he must be at least a hundred, with hair like that. But he’s not infirm. He
told us we were all going, but this morning he changed his mind. He says he has to stay home and look after everything. He’ll be all on his own, but it doesn’t bother him one bit.

Why would I want to go to the middle of nowhere just to stare at a load of cabbages, he said, When I’ve got the garden to think of?

Think of the child instead, said Mr Stadnik, meaning me. But he wouldn’t shift for anything.

Besides, he said, I might be needed.

That made Mr Stadnik laugh. A row followed. They did it in private; only the door slamming at the end of the hall told me it was happening.

Mr Stadnik doesn’t think
he’ll
be needed, because here he is, saying nothing, with me and our suitcases, mine with my name on it, and his battered and brown with peeling
stickers all over. We’ve got Billy the dog on a string, a parcel of sandwiches my grandfather gave us to eat on the way, and another one shaped like a box for Aunty Ena, who we’re going
to stay with until It’s all over. We’re loaded up where the sheep should be and we’re setting off to the country. I’m excited by the wagon, despite the crowd and the
spitting and the sight of my grandfather’s white hair. I’ve never ridden in a motor before. I look at the other children for faces I know, but there’s no one. Just as we’re
full to burst, up runs Alice Dodd, yelling. She hasn’t got a suitcase or anything. She wears a print dress just like mine with thick black stockings, and a hat stuck flat on her head. Under
the brim, her eyes are as pink as a pig’s. She doesn’t give me a second glance, even when I call to her. Mr Stadnik puts his hand on my arm.

Leave her be, now, he says, There is a time for words and a time for silence. This is the time for silence.

Billy the dog uncurls his purple tongue and snuffles up the sheep droppings on the floor of the wagon. I’m waiting for Alice’s brother to jump on next, but no one else comes and we
must be ready now because the driver shouts for us to mind out and pushes the gate up and bolts it. Everyone in the wagon is waving, and on the street, the mothers and fathers are waving back. But
not
my
father, who never comes. My grandfather raises his hand to the air, as if he’s testing the wind. His face is black in shadow and his hair glows silver on top where the sun
shines through it. But my father never comes. We’re pulling away from the market square, slowly so the wavers can wave, handkerchiefs flittering, mothers crying, the smoke of the engine
billowing behind us, passing the cinema on the left where the girls dance in patterns, and round the corner, waving, past The Flag where there were stories and ginger beer, and further on, past
Fisher’s the pawnbroker, and still my father never comes. It’s there I see it, quick, but no mistake. Hanging limp in the window, no body to fill it, is my father’s suit. Pulling
away from our past life like an arrow, like gunshot, I wave goodbye to his suit as we pass.

It’s called a skullcap. I remembered it too late, half a mile from Paradise and on my way into the city. The skullcap is the thing that’s used to keep the real hair
down so that the wig-hair can sit nicely on the head. When you first put it on, it itches you, mad as maggots. It takes a while before you get used to it. First it feels mad, and you can’t
help but slide your finger up between the rubber and the hair, going for a good scratch. It’s like nail biting, or a nervous cough. Once you start, you don’t know you’re doing it.
You can’t stop.

You’ll get an infection, said Jean Foy, slapping at my fingers. Leave it be, now, she said, You must get used to it. At night, after we had washed and knelt and prayed, Jean Foy wrapped my
hands in bandages, bending the fingers over into a fist and winding the gauze over the knuckles, neat and closed and tight. To stop me scratching; to allow me to become the person I should be, in
order to suit her. In order to suit her and Bernard Foy, my saviour and saint. Not Jean Foy now, not Bernard Foy yet. First, there’s Aunty Ena surrounded by her sky.

Eventually, you stop feeling the itch. Then the other thing feels strange: the
not
wearing the hairpiece, as if you’ve got too much space around your head, or the air’s too
light. I never liked the sensation; if I’m true, I enjoyed the weight of hair on me. It made me feel nearer to the ground; a way to stop myself from floating off into space.

There’s a new method nowadays I expect, but back then, before my time, that was how you wore your hairpiece: comb the real hair flat, grease it down if necessary; ease on the cap and hold
it in place with two long pins, one behind each ear. Pull on the hairpiece, more pins to secure it. What Carol in Paradise was seeing was just the skullcap. I hadn’t taken it off since I
don’t know when. It was glued, nearly. She made a good job of removing it. At least it didn’t smell.

Cabbages as far as the eye can see: my grandfather was nearly right about that. Aunty Ena’s house is set bang in the middle of two long fields. It’s called Stow
Farm, but it doesn’t look like the farms in the films: there aren’t any animals on it, and from the back approach there’s nothing but ridges of caked earth, row upon rutted row of
dusty tracks, slivering into the distance. The only things growing are the stinging nettles, clumped up in gangs round the edge of the fence that borders the house. At the front, where other people
might have a garden, Aunty Ena has a field full of cabbages, rotting where they sit. At the far end, a scarecrow tilts in the wind. The sky’s very big here; it’s almost all the view
there is. That, and the fields full of stinking brown.

We arrived in the dark. Waiting at a turn in the road was Aunty Ena. She was holding a lantern on a stick, like Florence Nightingale come to greet the wounded. With the light at her shoulder,
her face glowed like a ghoul. Me and Mr Stadnik were the only ones left on the wagon. The driver asked Aunty Ena if maybe he could stay the night before setting back.

There is a Public House in Stradsett that will Meet your Needs, she said, very sharp and sounding a lot like my grandfather. I expected from her tone there would be more rules to follow. I was
wrong.

I got a proper look at her when we got inside. Tall, thin, with hands like paddles. There was just her in the house, the scent of recent polish and, underneath, lingering and stale, the smell of
dead cabbage on the air.

She showed us our rooms. Mr Stadnik’s was a dark square with a skylight over a narrow iron bed. There was a wardrobe with a sprig of rosemary on the middle shelf, and a washstand with a
jug and bowl, empty apart from a dead spider. Mr Stadnik peered up into the skylight and smiled.

How charming! he said, I shall see the stars shooting!

I immediately wanted this room. Mine was only a few steps along the corridor, but it had an ordinary window and an ordinary bed. No stars shooting.

Ah, but here now, said Mr Stadnik, calling me over to the window, Here, you can view the whole world.

That was true enough. The whole world as far as it went, right to the edge of the horizon; the whole world of mud-track yard and long brown field and the sky hanging like dirty
washing.

Aunty Ena’s tour was brief, a hand flung out to this room or that, and so quick that all I could get was a glimpse of half-light, the bare reflection of a window on a wall.

There’s nothing in them, not a thing. Everything is sold. She put a hand to her throat, as if she’d said something rude. Mr Stadnik made a little cooing noise.

Times are difficult, he whispered.

Yes they are – her voice went high – Especially out here. People like Albert don’t realize. It’s harder out here. There’s nothing, you see, nothing and no one. And
he sends the child! Mr Stadnik just rested his hand on my head and kept it there.

He has sent me too, he said at last, To help you. I would be glad to do it.

The tour ended in the kitchen. Everything was set out in a heap on the table, cups with broken handles and saucers piled up on each other, a silver toast rack with no toast in
it and a pitcher half-full with dusty water and a small can of jam with a tarnished spoon stood up in its crusted centre.

You’ll see I don’t have visitors, she said, her hands splashing at the space in front of her, So you won’t mind helping yourselves. But he – she said, pointing at Billy
the dog – Must fend for himself in the barn. No food for animals here.

She left us alone. Whatever Aunty Ena had received in the parcel from my grandfather, which we decided must be food, she wasn’t sharing with us. Mr Stadnik set about opening the cupboards.
Each one smelled worse than the last, as if the cabbages had invaded every gap with their own ruinous scent.

No food for people here also, he said, lifting the lid off the empty bread barrel. He found some crackers in a wrap of paper on the dresser, took the rime off the jam with a knife, sniffed it
then held it out for me to do the same. We ate the crackers dry, straight from the paper, Mr Stadnik chewing slowly and making a face every time he swallowed.

Very good, he said, when we’d finished, Tomorrow, we buy food, and after tomorrow, we make it. He spread out the crinkled wrap, blowing off the crumbs and pressing it flat with the palm of
his hand, and began to make a list.

In the morning, we walked the mile to the village, down the track we rode up the night before. The sky was pearl, heavy as a shroud. The birds weren’t singing, there was no wind. Only the
sound, growing fainter as we walked, of a piano being played.

~ ~ ~

Ena leans forward, rising off the piano stool in order to watch them go. They are both too short, increasingly so, she thinks, craning her long neck to follow their path into
the village. He is older than she imagined, fifty at least; he wears ridiculous clothes. But his eyes are full of light. He’s from somewhere else; he speaks like a hero in a romance. She
imagines where somewhere else might be, and how a hero in a romance might speak, even if he’s far too short to be a proper hero. The child is peculiar. Ena sings the word. That hair, that
white hair, like a starlet. Like a child star. The child star and the romantic hero are holding hands as they negotiate the wide ditch at the bottom of the track that separates Ena’s land
from everywhere else in the world.

~ ~ ~

The shop has no name above it, nothing in the window but a sheen of white steam. The only reason we know it’s a shop is because the man that’s been trudging in front
of us along the lane turns abruptly into the doorway and we hear the bell. Mr Stadnik holds his finger in the air and smiles at me. He often does this when he makes a discovery.

Inside, there’s a counter with a grey cat spread along it, and a woman behind the cat with her hands folded under her pinny. She’s talking to the man. She looks at us, but
doesn’t say hello. At the back of the shop, behind a second counter, another woman in small round glasses is weighing a pile of parcels. She writes on the corner of each one before putting it
aside.

Look like ’er gonna spit, Doris, the man says, nodding at the darkening sky outside.

’Bout time ’n’all, she says.

We wait our turn in the darking gloom. It gets so dim in the shop, the cat on the counter goes invisible, nearly, except for its burning eyes. The woman with the parcels has to
squint to write on them. The rain falls in a rush against the glass.

Stay steady till it pass, Doris says. The man sits down on a stool next to the counter, running his hand over his face and grinning now at Mr Stadnik.

You take a turn, ’bor, he says, Ise on a promise!

Doris makes no move. It’s the other woman who serves us. She stops her parcel writing, and comes to inspect Mr Stadnik, so close she’s practically standing on his
toes. She looks him up and down. Her eyes behind her glasses are as big as the cat’s.

Can we help you? she says, in a voice that says she can’t. Mr Stadnik would take off his hat if he hadn’t forgotten it. He bows his head a little instead, smiles at the woman, and
produces our list from the pocket of his overcoat.