Remember Me (19 page)

Here you are. Take these.

The girl slides her hands along the surface of the glass. It’s like watching her in slow motion: every move she makes is a grudge. She looks half asleep. She holds my coat
between her finger and thumb, at arm’s length.

Shall I go for my dinner? she asks, eyeing us both.

Half an hour, he says, glancing at his watch.

After she’s gone, Hewitt flips over the sign on the door and pushes the bolt. He turns to me, and at once the beaming smile fails him. He looks as if he’s about to
cry.

And how are you? he says, his face in a crease.

I tell him I’m well. I don’t tell him about the dreams, or the pain, or the blood, or the little boluses of – what did Jean call it? –
waste
matter.
I tell him I am well.

Mustn’t have you out in the rain, he says, You’ll get a chill. Take a cab next time, my dear. At my expense.

I sit on the bench, and Hewitt sits by my side. His leg is almost touching mine. It’s too warm now, inside the shop. He looks at me expectantly but I look at the fire.

Well well, he says, bending his head, catching my eye.

I tell him I’ve come to try on some shoes.

No, my dear, that’s not how we do it – he says, smartly, with a professional air – I must measure you up.

Leaning sideways into me, he holds his hands palms out, making a shape with his fingers,

You see, the foot is the most delicate instrument, he whispers, Imagine how much work it does, every single day of its life.

He jumps off the bench and springs over to the cabinet. Scanning beyond the glass, he opens the clasp and puts his arm inside, reaching around as if he’s hunting a ferret
in a sack. He turns his head and grins at me, like a magician, waiting to see my expression of delight. He comes back with a long brown foot made of wood. Sits closer.

See, this here, it’s called a last, he says, cupping the foot in his hand, It’s an exact replica of a real foot. This one belonged to a very special person.

He turns it over, cups it between his knees, strokes it like a pet. I can hear his breathing: short, uneven. He gets down on his knees, just like he did the first time, in front
of his mother’s spirit, and the second, in front of me. But he isn’t praying, he isn’t wounding; he’s crabbing around underneath the bench.

You’re a very special person too, he says, reaching behind my legs, And you’ll have your own little last, you’ll see. He hands me the wooden foot to hold as if it’s a
love token, his voice cloying, lollipop sweet, still reaching underneath me. He drags out a contraption, a shallow box with leather bands either side. To me, it looks like a tiny casket.

Boot off, he says, gesturing at the floor, Or – may I? – and begins to untie my laces. His fingers are quick, but it’s still a struggle: Mr Stadnik’s lesson has not been
wasted. The urge to strike him is raging. I have to check – no vibration in the room, no blue gaslit mother-fury sweeping around the back of my neck – it’s me, just me, wanting to
bring the last straight down on his thick head while he crouches there, fumbling with my boot. He’s muttering to himself, pulling on the heel until it slips off into his hand.

The foot must be treated with respect. Ah! Good shoes and a good bed, as my mother used to say—

A knock on the door stops him. Jean is peering through the glass, wiping the rain off with a gloved hand, as if she’s waving at someone very far away. Hewitt springs up
from the floor.

Your aunt, he says, in a dead voice, What a nice surprise. Jean isn’t pleased, either. I can see it in her face. Perhaps I was meant to wait for her outside. She grimaces at my stockinged
foot, raises her eyebrow when she sees the contraption with the leather straps.

Didn’t you used to have a machine for that? she says, throwing her gloves down on the bench.

Ah, Miss Foy, I did. Certainly, I did. An amazing device. But it was declared dangerous, you know, he says, And my clients, they much prefer the personal touch.

While Jean gives him her look, I’m slipping my boot back on.

Well, I suggest you do your
personal touching
in the back, she says, We don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea, do we?

Of course, he says, But not now, I think. My girl’s due back in ten minutes. We’ll measure you next time, my dear, he says, bowing to me, It’ll be my pleasure.

There’s not a lot of wisdom in age, despite what they say. Truth is, as you get older, things get further away. Objects, I mean, like telephone boxes and the shops and
that. Places you have to imagine walking to, or in the case of traffic, getting out of the way of. And near up, everything’s such a mist – you’re practically blind. Well, I am.
Can’t see my hands up close: they’re as blurred as a drunk. But I can feel them all right: my very own chicken claws, one in each pocket. Then there’s the other stuff, memories
for instance: now they really should be far away. But just one nudge and they’re right under your nose. And it is
all
in the nose. That innocent scent wafting out of the chemist?
That’s my father’s hands after he danced with my mother; and that particular, early morning winter air with a tang of spring in it? Joseph Dodd, waiting in the church plantation,
twirling a feather between finger and thumb. It all means something. Like the rusty railing you’ve touched, which in a second is the iron chain of the swing you gripped so tight when you were
five: fear and bliss, mixed. A pub with its door open to the world – any pub, anywhere, letting out the stink of beer and smoke – there’s the pictures on a Saturday morning, with
the close-up crush of my father’s suit. Fat frying? Mr Stadnik’s head, bent like a supplicant in front of Aunty Ena; and Aunty Ena herself can waft up at any time, in any corner of any
room. As long as there’s dust in it. My grandfather’s particular smell is a rarity: pipe smoke, as dead to the air these days as he is. They come at random, they come in droves,
reckless, unbiddable. Just like the spirits used to come. It’s enough to drive you mad.

Why don’t they warn you? Why don’t they say that there’s cruelty in the air? You go half blind, half deaf, your feet are so far away from you they might as well belong to
another person: a lame one, at that. Eating’s a burden. Sleep is a stranger. So many bits of your body stop working, you hardly care any more. It’s a joy to think you’ll soon be
dead. But not the nose: it does its job too well, it hoards your whole life. I can’t remember what I ate for supper, but fifty-odd years can be five minutes ago. Leather. Hewitt is, and
always will be, leather. I couldn’t pass a shoe shop without the dread of him ghosting up. My own shoes are pre-worn, Salvation Army. They were someone else’s first, and that someone
else wore plastic shoes. Synthetic won’t trouble me.

I didn’t want to get confused about what was stolen. It might only have been a day gone by, but I could tell it was leaving; so much else was filling up the space. That girl who stole from
me, she’d left the door open; the outside was pouring in like rain down a gutter. Write a list, Carol had said.

I sat in the Korna Kaf at the bus station and thought about it. I normally enjoyed sitting at the very corner table of the Korna Kaf, right in front of the curved window, because the whole world
goes by. You can watch but you don’t have to take part. I wasn’t enjoying it this time; I had a lot to think about. The lady in the pink check apron came over. She normally does.

Nice hat, she said, Here you are, love,

putting a cup of tea in front of me. She always did that, and she didn’t have to say what she said the first time she brought me a cup of tea, because me and her,
we’ve got an understanding. When I’ve finished it, I have to leave. That’s the understanding. I think she’s kind enough, but when I don’t dream of a room and fill it
full of things, I dream about walking in and ordering the

All-Day Breakfast Only £1.99!

It’s funny the way they think putting £1.99 will make you believe it’s not really two pounds. I’d have the All-Day Breakfast Bonanza: Bacon Sausage (2)
Kidneys stroke Black Pudding Egg Tomatoes stroke Beans Mushrooms Fried Bread stroke Toast.

I’d like my kidneys devilled, I’d say. No mushrooms.

You need money to do that. And to get money, you need a place. But if you have no money, it’s not easy. You try finding a Fixed Abode, as they call it, without any means
of fixing it. And if you have no fixed abode, you can’t get any money, not off the assistance, anyway. I went there once. I didn’t want help with a room; I had the notion of asking them
for a car. It seems a ridiculous thing now, but then, I just wanted to take my car to the end of land, and live in it. I didn’t even know you had to learn how to drive. You could say
I’d been very sheltered; it wouldn’t be a bad supposition. So I found the place where they’re supposed to give you assistance, and I waited. There were lots of other people,
waiting and smoking, and one man who wouldn’t sit down and went off now and again to kick a wall. I waited until someone – a woman with her baby – said I had to pull a piece of
paper from a box on the stand and they’d call my number. She went and got it for me, and I took the piece of paper and waited and twiddled my thumbs and waited and just before closing I spoke
to a boy behind a glass.

Where do you live? he asked, holding his pen above the form he was filling in for me. I could’ve said, I live in the present.

I couldn’t have, because the words were failing. And besides, I didn’t have it – the way to explain things – it had abandoned me. I’ve got it now, of course, now
everything’s coming back; the rats are piling on to this sinking ship. But at that time – the filling-in-a-form time – I was derelict. I was simple again. I was back before
Before. So I told him the truth: I didn’t live anywhere. I just wanted a car.

Where would we send the postal order? he said, placing his pen down on the form.

Why not put it in my hand?

It seemed a reasonable request. I wasn’t getting angry like some of the people in the waiting room were when it came round to their turn. That woman with the baby,
she’d been sitting there for hours. But he wrote my name on a piece of paper and pulled the shutter down, leaving me on the other side, staring at the slats.

It wasn’t a completely wasted journey. Someone had left the frame of an old pram outside, in the gutter. I took it with me; my case was so heavy, and I didn’t know how far I’d
be going. It was ideal, really, as if it had been left there just for me. My case fitted it perfectly, and it was easy to pull along. I enjoyed the sound of the wheels behind me, the grip of the
handle – white ridged plastic – feeling all the bumps coming up off the road. All that was good.

It wasn’t abandoned, the pram. I stole it, if I’m true.

It had a carry-case, and bedding and a small brown teddy. It had three coloured rings attached to the frame. Then there was someone behind me – a woman – calling out. I thought it
must be the owner of the pram, so I raced away as fast as I could with my lucky find. It’s not as if I stole a baby, just a bit of metal on wheels. It was such a long way to walk, such a
heavy case.

That was an age ago: thirty-odd years. I haven’t starved to death. Haven’t been arrested. It used to feel bad, the hunger, but one good thing about getting old is that you’re
not so bothered about food. I never gave a second thought to the woman in the waiting room, sitting with her baby on her lap and her pram outside with the tied-up dogs and bicycles. Not until I got
robbed: that’s given me more ideas than I care for. The menu in the Korna Kaf with all the breakfasts on, well, that was just another idea I had – I wasn’t the slightest bit
hungry for food – it was the
thought
I hungered after, of being able to have the thing I wanted most in the world. Imagine an empty room, and fill it. Imagine a plate, cover it in
food.

And then it came to me: it’s a menu, and a menu is only a list. A list of food to order, pay for, and eat. I could make one of those. While I drank my tea, and watched the world running
about under the rain, I did it, without any assistance at all.

Confound Expectation! See And Believe!
Winifred Foy Has a Gift – For You!

On page two of the newspaper, inside a thick black box, is a picture and some writing. The letters are bold and swirling and black. Winifred Foy is me,
but I can’t say I know her. Underneath the photograph, in dense script, it gives the time of the meetings and the new place, which Bernard calls a Venue. We had to move; the old church hall
was too crowded, the caretaker said, a risk to life and limb.

Too bloody popular, more like, said Jean, and to me, You’re too good for your own good.

It might have been one of Jean’s back-handed compliments, like saying I was a fine one when I did the wrong thing, but there was no mistaking her tone. At first, she seemed happy enough
that the benches were filled to bursting, people standing at the back, coming to see us from Fakenham, from Ipswich, even. It was when the clapping began that her mood changed. I don’t know
who started it; not a regular, not a face I knew. I’d just been bringing through a small boy for an elderly woman down at the front of the hall: her grandchild, who had died years back. He
had a terrible, draining cough, and looking at the colour of him made my eyes water – blue as a starling’s egg, the palest, translucent blue. There was nothing particular about the
meeting, apart from the little boy. The grandmother and the women on either side of her had a cry, but they do anyway, sometimes; Bernard calls it an Occupational Hazard, he says I must get used to
it. At the end of the session, when I’d sat down on the chair that Bernard said I should use these days – to give me An Air of Authority – someone at the back began to applaud.
Then more people clapping, and more, until everyone was on their feet and the sound was raised to the ceiling. To me it was a noise full of joy.

No one wants a repeat of that, said Jean, when we’d got back home, We’re not a circus act.

She looked to Bernard for agreement, but his face was closed, impossible to read.