Remember Me (6 page)

The wedding section comes at the end, in between Videos and Weightlifting. Champagne Flutes. Engraved bride and groom. New. £10. And the dresses, you almost want to buy them out of pity:
Wedding Dress. Size 16. Pearl trim. Veil and tiara. Unused. Cost £700 will accept £200. It makes you wonder.

I passed the time. I read the freesheet. I waited. Me and the fluttering thing in my chest and the pain that was more like a shock, like being struck by lightning. A sharp streak of light.
That’s how I imagined it. Waiting for time to move. Paradise would open at nine o’clock. I always got my clothes from Paradise. It’s a boutique in Swan Lane. It’s got a good
name; the girls who work there are just like angels. Sometimes if they saw me going by they’d shout to me and take me through the back to have a rummage. They called them Freebies.

We’ve got some Freebies for you, they’d say, bustling me in, all smiles. I’d never just go in by myself, that would be brazen, but if they call me off the street – well,
it would be rude to refuse. I didn’t have to buy from a newspaper, not my shoes, not my clothes. I’ve got standards, and besides, you don’t know who’s died in them.

I’m lying, if I’m true: mostly I got my clothes from the Salvation Army Centre. And you can bet your life someone
has
died in them. Needs must, as my father would say. My
silver coat came from there. I didn’t have to pay – you don’t, as a rule: the Sally Army will give you things, clothes and blankets, and if you’ve got a place, they’ll
supply the furnishings. It’s terrible stuff. The shop’s fit to bust with dressing tables and mattresses, coffee tables perched on top of each other, radiograms and grey spin-dryers
smelling of nappies. Mirrors on everything, sucking the life from your skin. None of your antique cabinets or stuffed jays. I only went in because I saw the coat in the window. Before I knew it,
the assistant was turning me round in front of a vanity unit, saying,

Doesn’t that fit nicely, dear?

She had a patronizing tone; not like the angels in the boutique. I can’t tell you if it really
did
fit nicely, because I wouldn’t look. Never trust a mirror:
full of lies, just like the papers. But the coat was warm, and beautifully shiny. It felt like it had no memories in it; it felt space age.

I thought about putting my own advert in the paper, or maybe tying a notice to the lamp-posts in the city centre, like they do with a lost cat, only this would be more of a personal ad:

Wanted. Thief. Formerly red-head, now dark. Has stolen—

Well, has stolen everything. I could’ve given a full description. That white face and that horrible hair hanging like a caul over her eyes. She haunts me. Her fingers
haunt me. I could’ve given a description, all right; I could’ve done all sorts.

But I didn’t know
what
to do, if I’m true. I could talk to myself all day, tell myself it would be fine and not to worry and you’ll get sorted out. But I couldn’t
even begin to think straight, let alone tell anyone. And who cares about an old woman and a few bits of tat? No one, that’s who, no one in the world.

RULES

is written in thick black ink. There are Rules, then a wavy line, followed by
Things I Must Remember
.

It’s all down on a sheet of paper and pinned to the back of my door. The list is to make it easy for me in my new life, my grandfather says. I’m supposed to look at it every day. He
calls it an Aide-memoire, as if
that
makes it any easier.

Rules are – 1: Do Not Run On The Stairs, but On The Stairs has been crossed out and Anywhere In The House put in its place after I gave Mr Stadnik a shock one morning coming through the
passage. I was chasing Billy the dog, and Mr Stadnik came out just as I was passing his room: his tea tray went sky-high. Mr Stadnik is the lodger. He works shifts. The next rule is Do Not Chase
Billy. It was such a novelty, having a dog that I ran after instead of the other way round, but it’s a Rule now so I mustn’t do it. Rule 3 says Shoes. At All Times, but Rule 4 is a
puzzle: it says NO jewellery. It’s a mystery to me because I don’t have any jewellery, not a thing. I think my grandfather is confusing me with someone else.

Things I Must Remember
has my new name on it, Lillian Price, and my age, and my new address: 9 Chapelfield. Water The Plants, which is my main job in the house, comes next, along with Say
My Prayers. Saying my prayers won’t be easy, but at least there’s nothing in the rules about making a promise.

I live with my grandfather now. This is my new life. Needs Must decided it, my father said. My grandfather’s very different from him. He’s blunt. That’s what he says when
he’s going to tell me something bad.

To be blunt, Lillian, he says, It will not do, you’re eight years of age and you haven’t learnt a single thing. Now. I’ll show you just this once.

And then he shows me something I’m bound to forget.

On the very first day of my new life, it’s tying my laces. My grandfather is persistent; he tries to make me ‘get it’ one more time, and one more time becomes another one more
time. He lifts me up onto the breakfast table, muttering about how could I get to be my age and not know how to do such basic things. Mr Stadnik sits low in the armchair, skulking, with Billy
underneath it, poking his head out from between Mr Stadnik’s legs. They both watch. My hands on either side of my skirt are studded with breakfast crumbs.

Right over left, right one under, pull tight, loop on the right, left one curled, left loop through. Come on now, Lillian, you do the other one.

My grandfather isn’t like my father in another way: he isn’t very patient. Whenever I got things wrong, my father would make a joke of it. When I get things wrong
with my grandfather, he sniffs like a sergeant major, opens the back door and goes for a walk down the garden.

I’m sitting on the table with one boot done. I’m at a loss. My grandfather has gone down the garden. Mr Stadnik watches him go, then stretches his face like Mack Sennett and gives me
a wink.

Do like me, he says. He bends down and eases his boot off. He isn’t wearing any socks, and the tops of his toes are black. His bootlaces stay exactly where they are. Then he catches the
flap of the tongue, holds the boot in the air, and slips his foot back in.

There! he says, Done! Why would you want to do a thing every day, when you only need to do it once?

He gets out of his chair and ties my laces again, loose enough to slip my foot in and out, and then he knots the ends.

We live near Chapelfield, opposite the park, with the chocolate factory on the other side. The smell of it carries on the air all day, you can taste it just by breathing. My grandfather
doesn’t care for the smell, or the factory, or even the park, which is full of Ruffians, he says, and Types; but he’s very proud of his house.

It’s a proper home, Lillian, not like that slum you used to live in.

He says ‘slum’ so it sounds like an animal, a snail dragging its broken shell, and I see him in the garden, stamping on them, or throwing them over the wall onto the
tracks below where the trains will flatten them into gobs of glue. The wall runs all the way along the garden; if you pull yourself up, or stand on the bucket, you can see the footbridge over the
railway line with people passing along it. I’ve seen a boy standing there: he was hanging half over, balanced like a plank, spitting down onto the top of a passing train. That was before it
was forbidden for me to grip the wall with my fingers and haul myself up.

Just look at your boots, Lillian, all scraped. They don’t grow on trees, you know!

And then when my grandfather saw me standing on the bucket, that was forbidden too, on account of buckets not being for standing on but for mopping, which only Mr Stadnik is
allowed to do because of his agile hands.

I learn slowly. I learn that Rules are not just things written on my door, they are everywhere. Rules and forbidden things go together, but can be opposite too, like the holy ghost and the
devil. Some are spoken rules, like not climbing walls and not standing on buckets and not rescuing the snails; some of them have to be written down; and some are silent, like not asking about what
happened to my mother, and not mentioning the ghosts.

You can tell my grandfather has never had a visitation from the ghosts just by looking in the parlour. It’s full of things. Two china boys wearing turbans stand guard on either side of the
fireplace. One of them is holding a basket and the other one has his hands pressed together, as if he’s praying for Father Christmas to come. They’re nearly as tall as me. Above it is a
picture of a beautiful lady floating in the water, her long red hair covered in flowers. Then there’s a corner cupboard going up to the ceiling, full of plates we never eat off; a grandfather
clock with a glass door, and a flat brown cabinet with a row of medals and a letter in brown ink.

At night we sit round the fire in the living room. My grandfather might read to us, or have a conversation with Mr Stadnik. I’ve got my own chair, made entirely of wood. There’s a
name carved across the headrest: it says Lillian, which is my name now. But the chair’s quite old and the lettering is worn, as if someone has passed a hand over it and over it, wearing it
down. It wasn’t very comfortable. I didn’t complain, but one evening Mr Stadnik said, Try this for size, and spun a cushion through the air for me to sit on. Mr Stadnik knows things
without being told about them. One morning when he came back from his shift, he looked at me over the breakfast table. He placed his finger under one eye, then the other, then pointed it at my
face.

They can’t harm you, you know, he said, The dead are the dead. Only the living can harm you. So sleep tonight. He knew even without me saying how I feared the ghosts. But Mr Stadnik
wasn’t right about everything. They can harm you. He didn’t know what they did to my mother.

~ ~ ~

I’m not allowed to see her. My father shuts the door to my mother’s room. He puts the candle on the sideboard, fetches a match from his pocket and relights the
flame. He moves me to the window, pressing down on my shoulders to make me sit. His hands are cracked with wax. He takes his good shirt off the back of the chair and rips it down the middle. His
cracked hands are shaking. He rips it again, lengthways, tearing at the cotton with his teeth, and goes back into my mother’s room. He leaves a trail of broken threads across the floor. I
could tidy them up before my mother gets to see them, but I’ve been told to sit. I can’t even do that properly. My legs are jumping up and down, it’s as if they don’t
belong. They remind me of the wasp on the sill. I wonder if it’s still there, banging its head against the glass.

When my father comes back, he’s out of breath. He smells of iron and sweat.

Patricia. Listen to me. I want you to stay right here. He doesn’t make me promise. My legs are jittering, my mother is lying next door, spilling ghosts.

What about Mam, I say, but he’s running from me now, out through the door and leaping the front wall.

Stay there! he shouts, and is gone. I sit at the window and watch. The yard is blue in the moonlight. A dim light cuts a square on the cobbles. I’m in it. I bend forward and back, watching
my shadow follow on the flints. There’s a light falling out, and I’m inside it: I’m the shadow. I picture my mother, bending like a hairpin as my father tried to hold her. The two
of them like puppets, putting on their show in the window. Only not dancing.

Bonnie Moon runs into the yard, followed by my father, followed by Mrs Moon, flapping her hands. He sends her straight back in.

Is the doctor being fetched? I ask. It was normal for Bonnie to be sent for the doctor when my mother felt unwell. I would like normal things to happen again. My father doesn’t speak. He
goes into the scullery and comes back with a bottle. He takes a drink from it, budging me along the sill, staring beyond me into the yard. He holds the bottle an inch from his lips. When I turn to
look, our shadows have melted together: a two-headed monster fills the cut of light.

Your grandfather’s on his way, he says, nodding at the window.

My knees start jumping again. He puts out his hand to still them; it is scrubbed clean. He smells different now, of night air and carbolic. He takes another sip from the
bottle,

This weather’s got to break. As if he has summoned them, a few specks of rain fall on the glass. The moon hides itself behind a bank of cloud. We stay in the window and watch the change,
from soft drops to thick, drumming splotches, the sky going acid yellow, the smell of dust rising. We wait for my grandfather to come.

~ ~ ~

We don’t have shutters, Lillian, we have curtains. What do we have?

Curtains, I say. So can I?

It was a slip of the tongue, that’s all. I had asked my grandfather if I could go and open the shutters – meaning the curtains – in the parlour. It’s
Saturday, and my father is coming to visit me; I want to sit at the window and watch for him. I want him to see Gloria. Mr Stadnik made her out of one of his gloves. He’s put buttons on for
her eyes, one just higher than the other so she looks like she’s staring at someone just over my shoulder, or having a think. Her hair’s atrocious: stringy, the colour of an old
blanket. He was wearing Gloria when I first saw her, terrifying Billy. He was shouting,

Put your Dukes up! C’mon, fight like a man!

Billy was twitching out little barks from under the couch, licking his chops and barking again.

All rightee, fight like a dog! When he saw me, Mr Stadnik smiled. He got up off his knees and saluted me.

What would you like to call her? he said, waggling the glove.

I couldn’t think of anything except what she was.

Glove, I said, and he seemed happy enough with that, but then I offered ‘Patsy’, because I knew ‘Glove’ didn’t sound like a girl’s name. Mr Stadnik went quiet
for a second. He held the glove to his ear, pulled a face, finally nodded his head.

She says her name is Gloria. What do you think? I nodded too.