Remember Me (18 page)

Hewitt seems very satisfied. He says he’d like another reading. Says it makes him feel more at peace.

Can’t think why, I say, which makes Jean stop still on the pavement.

What did you say?

Can’t think why
he
should feel at peace.

I don’t know whether to tell Jean what his mother said. I’m not so certain now. It wasn’t really what she said; it was the smell. Murder in that room, the colour of iron. I
could taste it. We walk on, under the trees and round the side of the cathedral. I’ve never been in; people say it’s like the inside of a whale.

Was it interesting, then? says Jean, Did she tell you anything in particular?

Her voice is slight, casual, but her eyes are wide, fixed on the roof above us. In the late sunshine, a faint, greeny-blue light comes off it, nearly the colour of the sky itself. But it’s
a cold, dead sheen; to me, it’s the colour of restless souls. I don’t care what the inside looks like, I don’t care if it’s a palace; I don’t want to find out, if
that’s what’s waiting for me.

He’s a murderer.

There. I said it. Jean stops again.

Murderer? Who? she says.

Hewitt. I could smell it. And – I could see it, even. And taste it.

That’s just you, she says, You and your daft ways.

His mother said so too.

Jean let out another hoot.

Ha! And you believed her?

She’s in spirit, I say, Why shouldn’t I?

The light on the roof was dancing now. I wasn’t going in there. It was full of them.

Why should the spirits tell the truth in the afterlife, Jean says, When they don’t in this one? Bernard was right, Winnie. You’re a real find you are; you’re bloody
priceless.

Jean and Bernard were decent enough people. They gave me everything a body could want: food, shelter, new clothes, a new name. They took me in, and at that time no one wanted
another mouth to feed, and all on a whim Bernard had one fine morning during a walk in the woods. But it was Jean who fashioned me. It was Jean who Took the Trouble, she said, To Do What Was
Necessary. She invented a new me; a girl with an extraordinary gift, she said, who wasn’t stupid at all, she said, but who just needed Tuning. Just needed to know a bit more about life. A new
person in a new world. The trouble was, I couldn’t forget the old person in the old world. I had family. The old person in the old world couldn’t forget.

I tried, once, to tell her about Before. It had been snowing on and off all morning, not like real snow, but those bitter pips you get sometimes, freezing when it hit the ground into a knobbled
crust of ice. We were in the parlour, doing our coaching, drinking Jean’s herb tea, watching the light drain from the day. Something in the smell of the herb reminded me, so I tried to tell
her, about my mother, my father, my grandfather – Mr Stadnik – all the people I’d lost.

Look around you! said Jean, Everyone has lost someone. And they don’t moon about. They just get on with it. You should count yourself lucky: that’s your living, the dead. Your bread
and butter.

I don’t know if they’re dead – I said, thinking of my father’s suit, humming through my body that first time in the hall – I mean Passed Over. No one has risen.

Don’t think
you
choose who rises, snapped Jean, and then, in a cool voice, The door’s open, if you want to go. Go on, go and find them, your little family. Show how grateful
you are!

~

I didn’t go: of course I didn’t. I was only fifteen. Not like fifteen-year-olds now. I’ve met a few down at the Ark, and once, a desperate time just before I
went back to Hewitt’s, a couple of girls sleeping under the canopies in the open market took it into their heads to keep me company. They weren’t shy girls; not homeless, they said, but
Roofless. And they laughed together when they said it, as if it were all a joke. They were afraid of nothing and no one.

But at fifteen, I
was
afraid; I had no money, I was pregnant. All I had was a head full of buzzing sounds that I couldn’t make sense of. No one wanted me; my father never came, Mr
Stadnik slipped away in the night, Aunty Ena sent me back to town to a grandfather who had vanished. People said I was simple, but that would scare anyone, simple or not. But Bernard found me, and
he
said I was his Godsend. Bernard and Jean, they wanted me.

I’m reasoning now – it’s easy to do, years later, when the fluttering doesn’t frighten you so much; easy to bring up ideas which you claim make you do one thing or
another. Really, if I’m true, I simply let it slide. I allowed Jean to do whatever she wanted. I was her project; and in the end, I was glad to be useful. Not glad. Just aware sometimes that
I was afloat when I would’ve sunk. Today there’d be a pill for it, whatever I had, a treatment, or a place to help you with all the hard edges in the world. I was only fifteen.
It’s not easy to explain, how bendable I was. Soft as butter. Not all there, they said. In those times, they’d just lock you up. Yes they would. I’d end up as one of those women
in Bethel Street, walking round the rose bushes and counting birds in the sky. And Jean made me see I wasn’t soft at all. I was a real find, she said, I was learning fast. I was definitely
all there, and if others couldn’t see it, then they were the fools.

I didn’t know any better. I did what I was told, whatever the price.

I think we’d like a little look out here first, Jean says, surveying the shelves. She glances around for a second, catching my hand tight, as if I’m planning to run
away. It’s a week later, we’re back in the shoe shop and today Jean has made no special effort with my hair; she avoids my eye.

Not much in, is there?

No need for quantity when you have quality, Hewitt says, in his sing-song voice.

That’ll be it then, she replies.

High up, at the top of the display, snug between a lace-up boot and a clumpy shoe, is a fawn-coloured slipper.

What about that? she says.

Hewitt takes a breath in.

Ah, Miss Foy. Very lovely. Very expensive. Kid, you see. Rare materials.

Jean’s voice is sharp,

We’ll
pay
for them, then, she says, If you’ll be kind enough to measure her up. Something for afterwards, to take her mind off it.

Ah, of course, he says, as if he understands her.

I don’t like the look of them anyway; they remind me of my mother’s wedding slippers. I turn to tell Jean, but her face is set hard, her fingers locked in mine, bone
to bone.

Let’s get on, she says, moving the curtain aside.

~

It’s dim in the room, and colder than the first time. Hewitt invites me to sit on the daybed, while behind me, Jean rummages in her bag. She takes out a little bottle,
sniffs it, holds it out.

Go on, she says, It’ll do you good.

The smell is of long ago: a scent of my father, and another, sharper odour underneath; acrid, biting; reminding me of something else I can’t quite place. Jean tells me to
drink. The liquid tastes black, like dry earth.

And again, she says, Get it down you.

Hewitt is in the kitchen. He runs his hands under the tap, wipes them on a little square of cloth. The noise of his breath hums from an age away, like a wasp in a shutter.
It’s colder still, with a whiteness all around me now, as if it’s snowing behind my eyes. A pleasant feeling; numb.

What’s he going to do? I say, the words high in my ears.

Just a fitting, says Jean, Now be quiet. Try to relax.

Hewitt sets to work. His fingers on my stockinged feet are damp. He straddles the end of the bed, placing his palms against my calves.

Just relax, says Jean, her hand cupping my face.

Hewitt is speaking. He squats like a goblin, and the words float up like bubbles, quivering above his head. Latest Device, one says, Best Methods, says another. In the soft
light, his ginger hair turns frosty. Snow falls in the room, coating the bed with glittering flakes. Hewitt lets out a long white breath of air, as if in pain.

Aah, the words say, Not so far. Not
too
far.

His hand on the bloom of my stomach, pressing down, ice cold. A sharp point of light in his hand, shiny, metal; a shooting star.

A fine new pair of shoes, I hear, and, That’s it. Good girl. Perhaps the slippers. So soft. So dainty.

~

Don’t, don’t!

The words are very far away, then closer, then inside my ear. I think it’s Hewitt but the sounds is me. I’m sweating in my bed. The Russian virgin is on the dresser, she’s
wearing my hair and a smug smile. The pain is thick as tar. Jean sits at my side. We’re in the back of Hewitt’s shop. Snow falling from the ceiling. His mother is laughing at me.

Have that
off
you in a second,
she says,
Serves you right for getting carried away!

It’ll be over soon, love, says Jean, then a cry above my head, What’s taking so long?

She’s stitching me into her dress; the needle goes in and out, tacking the flannel to the soft skin on my stomach. The Russian dummy goads her on.

Nearly done, says Jean, Keep still.

Hewitt floats above me like a zeppelin, pink, shiny, hissing breath. My father’s here too, standing in his blue suit and smiling; he has something caught in his fist. He opens it, and a
beetle zigzags up into the light. The horses, impaled on their poles, gallop over my head. Their saddles are jewelled with sweat. I’m flying now, I’m falling. My mother’s bare
feet are dancing on glass. Over the fields to the scarecrow, to Joseph with his arms wide, balanced like a trapeze artist on the edge of the tower.

Watch me fly, Beauty!

He’s flying and falling, just like me.

Look! A shooting star, Mr Stadnik says, marching smartly up and down the room.

Let’s make a wish, I say, but I’m as tiny as a bead. No one can hear me. Mr Stadnik marches. In his cupped hands, he carries a glistening lump of flesh.

Who broke it? he shouts, I must know who broke it!

~

When I wake up, Jean’s sitting in the chair next to my bed. The dummy head is on the dresser; they’re watching me.

You’ll be better now, Jean says.

She feeds me soup from a spoon, blowing on it before she holds it to my lips. The spoon goes tiny and huge and tiny again, in and out. Jean’s puckered mouth close up is
whiskery, like the muzzle of an animal. The soup tastes of salt. I hear the voice again, floating above my head. It sounds like my mother.

Pain, it says.

Pain is only an opinion, snaps Jean, The worst is over, believe me. Now, have some more of this.

Her words go strange and soft then, seeping like oil into my ear,

We’ll just put it behind us, she whispers, It wasn’t meant to be. And as soon as you’re up and about again, we’ll get you those lovely new shoes.

~ ~ ~

I had an hour before my next meeting with Hewitt. It had been two weeks of Jean’s soup, Jean’s cajoling, her bedside talk. I took the tram to the terminus, but when
it passed by the cathedral, I got off. I didn’t want to go back to the shoe shop, even though Jean said I must. I was being foolish, as usual, she said; I shouldn’t trust my instincts.
She said I had plenty of uncommon sense but not enough of the other kind.

Hewitt’s not a bad sort. And he’s good to have on our side.

Why is he? I complained, not seeing any good in him at all.

Well, for starters, people always need shoes, she said, And what does Hewitt provide?

Shoes? I asked, sensing one of Jean’s trick questions.

Free advertising, she said, with a smack of triumph in her voice, You’ll see, he’ll be telling everyone about you. He might even let us put up a poster in the shop. And some would
say he’s quite a catch . . .

But she read the look on my face. The little, squeaky man with his Devices and his Methods. Not a chance, my look said.

I’ll meet you, she said at last, Once I’ve finished in the post office. I’ll be there before you. All right? You won’t have to be alone with him.

But I got off the bus anyway, to be slightly late by the time I got to the shop. The cathedral roof was glowing. I stood and watched as it changed colour in the light: grey-blue in the rain,
greenish-white when the sun broke through the clouds. No one else noticed, they were rushing about their business, hiding under umbrellas. They simply weren’t looking up.

It hadn’t occurred to me, before Bernard, that I might have a gift of any kind. I couldn’t tie my shoelaces, didn’t know what a clock said. He said that learning would see to
that, simple enough stuff, and that I wasn’t stupid, just unschooled. But a gift could not be learnt like an alphabet, he said. It can be brought on suddenly, by shock, by grief, by rage
– even fear can do it.

I think when he found me, I had all of them. But since that time, I’d passed churches and graveyards and low houses – all kinds of places – and never seen a light like the one
on the cathedral. There was a crowd of spirits up there; they must have pressed themselves right up to the rafters. They were clamouring to be let out.

I didn’t go in. I walked down St Giles to Hewitt’s shop, slowly, despite the rain, and stood outside. The lettering on the window was fresh gold: Hewitt’s Shoe Repairs and
Fittings, in an arc, with Bespoke underneath. I looked in, hoping to see Jean. A person looked back at me through the glass; it wore my mother’s face.

Miss Foy! Winifred, my dear, do come in out of the weather! Hewitt stood at the door, beckoning with his small white hand. When I didn’t move, he came towards me, following my eye to the
glass with his name on it and my mother inside.

They’ve made a very nice job of it. Expensive, but then quality never comes cheap. Miss Foy?

He stood beside me, bending in. I put out my finger. His eyes followed, and he laughed. A small laughing man appeared in the space next to my mother.

Ah, Winifred. Do come out of the rain, your hair’s getting wet. We have a mirror inside you could use, if you wish.

~

Hewitt’s arm is round my shoulder.

Let’s get these wet things off you, he says, motioning to the girl behind the counter. His face is smiling but his words to her are taut as wire.