Remember Me (28 page)

I was thinking of stealing you, I said, offering each word up to the air, Because I am a thief. I don’t know any better. I’m not right in the head, you see. Her lip curled with
disgust.

That’s what my mother said,

holding the mittens between finger and thumb, turning them, inspecting them,

That you were a thief – and a liar.

She looked at me directly, a familiar, jutting chin.

You knew that woman in the welfare office, didn’t you? Alice Barrett was her married name. Alice Dodd to you. She said you were always weird, even as a kid. But she thought you were
harmless. She told you Joseph was still around. Married as well. You knew better, all right, Winnie.

Janice raised her chin. On the skin underneath, I expected a birthmark, a tea-stained clover. There was nothing.

You didn’t steal me because you couldn’t help it. You stole me out of spite.

The roaring was close again now, bubbling on my tongue.

Your mother was so spiteful, I said, And a liar. And a thief. She said Joseph knew about me, locked up all that time. She stole everything from me.

What? Like a baby, for instance? she said, her eyes full of loathing, What could she possibly want to take from
you
? I couldn’t say what. A bedraggled glove with the eyes sewn on
crooked? A chance to meet my lover again? It was a lifetime ago. Janice wouldn’t understand what was important then. A length of twine, a rotting beet tilled over in a field, a pair of
slippers in cornflower blue. Mr Stadnik understood, though. All the small things, he saved; to keep away despair.

My hope, I said, She wanted that.

So you stole hers.

For just one day, you were mine. One day, and then she got you back.

Janice looked round the room, glanced at Robin, perched like a cat in the window. She gave a little jink of the head.

Eventually. But not as I was, apparently. So, if you don’t mind, she said, and opened her hand.

I nodded at the mittens in her lap.

You can’t stop, can you? Even now. These, she said, throwing them down on the floor between us, Aren’t anything to do with me.

Robin bent over and picked them up, held them to the light. He let out a snort.

Bart Simpson!

Exactly, she said, not taking her eyes off me, But
she
wouldn’t know that. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll take what’s mine.

Holding her hand out flat in the space between us.

There’s nothing else, I lied, I have nothing that’s yours.

The local paper described me as a monster. Well, it would, wouldn’t it? Makes a good front page. They said I was a butcher’s daughter too, practised with a knife.
That was just false. He might’ve lived upstairs, but he was no father of mine.
My
father told stories, and lies, even, and might have pawned my mother’s slippers and brushes, but
he never cut up an animal. The
Telegraph
said I’d done it before, stole a baby, but the mother got to me in time and never reported it. Then they’d had reports of other
sightings. I’d been everywhere: Lincoln, Newmarket, Colchester, trying to steal a baby. All lies. The
Times
even ran a feature called Babysnatch Women, about kids that go missing from
hospitals, warning mothers not to leave their children alone in their pushchairs when they’re out shopping. The first time, the day I left Bethel Street House, I saw two babies side by side
in a pram. Neither of them was mine. All the articles missed the point: I wasn’t stealing Alice’s child, I wasn’t stealing anybody’s child. I was taking back my own.

The pictures were the worst. Some of the earlier papers had used the studio portrait, twenty-odd years before, but once they got hold of that one of me outside the court, it was that and only
that, time and again. I’m in black and white and looking blank, I’m like the Russian dummy; I wasn’t thinking of anything. There was no hope, no burning pain of hope, only the
reality of going back to Bethel Street, and the cool closed wing waiting to cover me. Evil, was how they described it. The face of Evil.

There was only one picture of Alice: Reunited, said the headline, in big letters above it. She’s holding the baby in her arms, smiling but haggard, starved of that spite at last. The baby
was wearing a little hat.

There was no mention, in any of them, about the Telltale hair. It wasn’t even reported at the hearing. Alice wouldn’t want to draw attention to it. But two and two, that’s what
she said, that day in the Assistance. I recognized her straight away.

The old fella’s put two and two together, she said, nodding down at the child, He’s upped and left me with this little lot, and now Hewitt’s done a flit. Good riddance, to both
of them.

She never changed her sly ways, looking at me from the corner of her eye.

You’re out, then? she said, leaning into me through the fog of smoke, a little grin playing on her mouth,

How long for?

For good, I said, trying the words.

Must be over it by now.

Over what, I said back.

Our Joseph. They say it sent you round the bend, him jilting you like that.

So nonchalant, as if I would know all of this, as if I were just another person to gossip with; tell the story of some poor woman, some poor fool. She shifted her baby from one
knee to the other, grinned wider.

Of course,
he’s
got a different story. Said in those days, you were anybody’s. Trying to trick him into marriage. But that’s men for you, isn’t it, love? she said,
eyeing the baby on her lap,

They’re all the same. Say anything to get out of trouble.

The time for words had come.

I called you Daisy. That’s what we’d planned, Joseph and me, a little boy and a little girl: Daisy after his mother, and Albert after my grandfather. I brought you back here; there
was nowhere else. Hewitt was gone – done a flit, Alice had said, and the key to the back door went sweet into the lock. Just me and you. I took you upstairs, through the workroom, to his
office. I wanted to show you your grandmother, but all the pictures were gone.

Once I’d settled you into the pram, I went to change. We were off to meet Joseph in half an hour, on the bridge. He was taking us to the Regent to see the
Ziegfeld Follies
, then to
the fair for the dancing. As I washed myself, it came to me that somewhere, I’d lost my shoes. The gown in my case had a smell of Hewitt’s dead mother, but it was long, down to my
ankles: it would cover my feet nicely. My mother used to say she would dance barefoot. Well, I would do the same.

We waited all night, on the bridge, watching the sky sink over Chapelfield, the houses going yellow, grey, stone black. No lights in the windows, no grandfather in the garden below. It
wasn’t a garden any more. It was a concrete square, with a pair of gates on the far side and yellow boxes painted on the ground. Joseph would have seen us. Once I’d had the thought, it
wouldn’t go away. He would have seen us waiting there, he would’ve seen your hair. It was Telltale. A child should have the father’s stamp, I knew that. That’s what he used
to say – we’ve all got our stamp. It’s not like a name; you can’t just change it when the fancy takes you.

The skin on a baby’s head is so soft, isn’t it? Loose-fitting, as if the bone underneath is too small for it. It feels like a little skullcap all its own, the skin, moving like
velvet under your fingers. Cut the scalp, and it bleeds forever.

I was careful, mind. In the workroom, the whetstone was hard to turn, but I hadn’t forgotten. Many long hours I’d spent, watching Hewitt sharpening his blades, listening to the buzz
of steel on stone. Hold the edge here, and watch the sparks fly off in a shower, red and white, like the light through the trees when you were made. An edge so fine, Hewitt used to say, travelling
the blade along the down on my arm, it could split a hair.

You were very still. I was careful with you, really, supremely careful. And I took it all off, every single last hair on your head. You didn’t make a sound.

It was Telltale, you see. I had been a long time in hiding at Hewitt’s; I recognized his stamp. It had to be removed.

~

Janice was staring at me. It was hard to know, with that look on her face, whether it made sense to her.

He didn’t show up, I said, trying to get her to understand, We waited on the bridge, oh for hours. You could’ve caught pneumonia. And me. No shoes! What was I doing?

You panicked, didn’t you? she said, in a small voice, All that blood.

I took you to the hospital.

You
left me
outside the police station. Waited until someone came along and claimed you found me on the steps. It’s all here, she said, tossing over the file with the newspaper
cuttings, In black and white.

It was just a scratch, I said, feeling Robin’s eyes on me, It was nothing much.

She put her hands up, scraping her fringe back off her face, the skin pale and freckled in the light. To show me the long white scar, running like a frown along her
hairline.

What did you do with the hair? she asked. It had sat against my breast like a second skin. For over thirty years, I’d hidden it away. A memento of a lost child, hope in a spool of copper
red, proof of life.

It’s never left me, I said, handing it over. Janice stared at the bag with the softness inside it, drew out the ringlets and feathery wisps, stuck together, flattened by time into a solid
red mat.

She looked like she might cry, but she didn’t. She laughed, high-pitched, mocking.

Is this it? she cried, Is this what it’s all about? A dirty bag of dirty stinking hair?

Telltale, I said, They were all ashamed.

Robin shifted from the window.

I’ve had enough of this, he said, Are you coming? He bent over, put his hand out, just like Prince Charming, and she took it, pulling herself off the floor. She whispered in my ear.

My mother always taught me to feel sorry for people like you. But I don’t. I really don’t. Here, she said, tossing the bag into my lap, Keep your telltale hair, if it means so much
to you. I hope you rot in Hell.

I will, I said, to the empty room, Thank you.

I took my things out of the case and settled them on the floor, item by item. It was hard to see in the dimness. I’d been without my case for just two days: it felt like a
lifetime. The heart-shaped locket, Joseph’s feather, the opal brooch that Aunty Ena wore, all still there. A greasy black wig, like a dead bird, which I wouldn’t be wearing again. The
divine wooden foot lay in my lap, its brass plate blackened from the touching. I could feel the imprint of the words engraved: Lillian Price. My mother’s name first, and then my own. Hewitt
once held her foot as he had mine, in a darkened room behind this one. All my things over the floor, where men had scuffed their feet in a long line, eager to be measured by an amazing machine;
where the man who wanted to be my father had met the woman who was my mother. They looked so small, my things, and desolate: a brooch with the opal missing, a feather, a little bag of angel
hair.

Cold coming down, and a soft light. I’m waiting for the blue. They’ll all be here soon, all except Hewitt. He’s not invited to this party.

Here she is now, standing in the doorway with her arms folded and her hair all piled up on her head, her crowning glory. My mother, looking down on me.

Who is the fairest, she says, and before I can say, You are, my Queen, my father bows and takes her by the waist, turning her round the floor. He’s wearing his blue suit, she’s
barefoot, with just her nightgown on. They don’t seem to care. He lifts a candle high in the air; their shadows fall away like silk.

Over at the window, Mr Stadnik is surrounded by a ring of dogs, with Aunty Ena at his side, tranquil as the Virgin in a peacock-coloured frock. He holds her hand. My grandfather is tamping his
pipe, saying,

I don’t know what to think of this, Henry, it’s all a bit sudden.

Ena twists her long neck to face me.

We’re waiting for a shooting star, she says, We’re going to make a wish!

The night slides into the room, fading the colours: we are gentian, now. Outside, a last flurry of birdsong, like falling silver. Through it strolls Joseph, nonchalant,
grinning. He’s come on the air. A branch of a tree making ribbons of the light; a sudden rain, a residue of scent. I can’t tell what the smell is; something warm. Earth is in it. Sleep
is in it. Love, hiding in the gap.

Hello, Beauty, he whispers, sitting close beside me, And what do you wish for?

I wish for nothing. The bird in my chest has flown; the words are no longer needed, and I have no more accounting to do. I can be anyone I choose, now: a woman on a riverbank
walking in the sunshine, an ordinary person sitting in a tearoom. Anybody, or nobody. I have all I could possibly want, here with me, at the end of this world.

I collect the bundle of scarves, the lost gloves, the wooden foot, everything, pile it all in a heap, and put the candle to it. The flames when they catch are as boundless as the sea. We gather
round them, peering through the smoke at each other, like children at a bonfire. Across the thickening room, Mr Stadnik smiles at me and shrugs,

We live in hope, he says, turning back to look at the stars.

remember me

T
REZZA
A
ZZOPARDI
was born in Cardiff and lives in Norwich.
The Hiding Place
, her first novel, was shortlisted for the Booker
Prize in 2000.

In memory of

Francis Xavier Azzopardi
and
Mark Derbyshire

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Derek Johns, Linda Shaughnessy and Anjali Pratap at A.P. Watt; Ursula Doyle, Candice Voysey and everyone at Picador; and Elisabeth Schmitz and everyone at Grove
Atlantic.

For advice on everything from blue rinses to rare birds, but also for their friendship: George Szirtes, Clarissa Upchurch, Benedict Keane, Clair Myhill, Graham Etherington, Andrew Smith, Marion
Catlin, Penny Williams, Karen Fisk (Shovelhead), John Kemp, David Hill.