Remember Me (10 page)

A fine head of hair, don’t you think?

It smelt of goose fat, but apart from that, it seemed normal. I said I thought it was very nice.

Us two, he said, waggling his finger at my grandfather and then at himself, We could be the exact same age! I didn’t know what to say to that.

But look how young I am.

My grandfather snorted. But he pushed his glasses further up his nose and held them in place with a yellow fingertip. He frowned at Mr Stadnik’s head.

Is it some sort of dye you use there, Henry?

I would call it Enhancement, he said, his lips spreading tight over his teeth.

Now, Henry, it’s all right for you, but our Lillian’s so fair-skinned. I don’t want her looking foreign.

Mr Stadnik made no reply, but he raised an eyebrow. He put a hand on top of my head.

Black is not the only colour, he said.

And turned to me with one of his winks.

A princess may be many colours. You, Princess, may be anything you like!

~

Mr Stadnik has dressed up for the occasion in a long white butcher’s apron, fed crossways round the back and tied with a bow at the front. Sleeves rolled up to the elbows.
He wears a leather cuff on his left arm, secured with a lace. I’ve never seen this before, but as I’ve never seen Mr Stadnik’s brown, hairy arms before, I think it’s all
part of the costume. My grandfather has not dressed up; he’s spent the last hour boiling something on the stove in the scullery, now and then butting his head into the doorway to ask Mr
Stadnik for advice. The windows are steamed white; the whole house reeks of jam.

When Mr Stadnik says it’s ready, we follow him into the yard where he’s taken the tin bath from its hook. He pours some water in, produces a slim white bottle out of his apron
pocket, and adds a thimbleful, swishing it round with a wooden spoon.

Secret ingredient, he whispers, pushing the stopper back. I kneel on the mat in front of the bath and stare into the water. Sunlight glints back at me; and through it I see the girl again,
floating below me like a ghost under water. I shut my eyes tight. There’s a smell of heat and steam, and the school outhouse in the morning. It’s bleach. My grandfather stands on the
doorstep with a bowl of something mashed, having second thoughts.

What about this, Henry, he says, holding up a dripping spoon, It looks . . . very
blue
.

It’s perfect, says Mr Stadnik, Trust me.

I hover over the bath as my grandfather pours jug after jug of water over my head. The girl is drowned beneath it. As it gets wet, the colour of my hair goes from gold to rust,
trailing in my eyes like smelter.

Eyes shut! Keep still! shouts Mr Stadnik, retreating. He’s standing well back, as if I’m a firework about to go off. The last thing I see before I close my eyes, through the steam
and the water and the running red, is Mr Stadnik’s boots: he’s already halfway up the path.

My grandfather starts in with the mash, pasting it on my head, then rubbing it with his fingers and making noises of disgust.

Keep still now, it will burn! Mr Stadnik yells. He’s confusing me with Billy the dog: when he gets wet, he shakes off the water in a frenzy. I will do as I’m told, and keep still. Mr
Stadnik is giving the orders. He’s so pleased with himself, he can’t help shouting, even though I’m not far away.

You must leave it set, he says. He comes back down the path, and, bending over the edge of the bath, says it again. His face is black against the sun.

It will feel quite hot, and in a few minutes, we will rinse you. Do you understand?

I try nodding, but my head is as heavy as the world. It makes him shout again.

Keep still, I say! And you – to my grandfather – Wash your hands!

~

There is no mirror in my room any more. For the first week, I put up with it being there. I didn’t tell a soul, but even at night, even though it was dark, I felt her
inside it, sitting in the frame, waiting for me to come and look. Watching me sleep. In the morning, when I’d forgotten about her, there she was again, staring straight at me. I’d try
to take her by surprise, edging into the corner of the glass, peeping round it with my eyes half shut, hoping to find her looking the other way, or gone entirely. But she was always there, too
quick for me: the girl I saw from the bridge, the girl with the orange hair. Looking at me with her empty eyes.

My grandfather seemed very pleased when I said I would rather the mirror was put somewhere else. He said, yes, they were full of sorrow.

But there
is
a mirror, hanging over the fireplace in the living room. It’s too high up for the girl to watch me in. Not unless she climbed on a stool, which is Against The Rules. Mr
Stadnik fetches it down off its hook. I don’t want to see.

Look, he says, Look, how – transformed!

I open one eye. The girl with the orange halo is gone; there’s just me. My hair all blonde and shiny like Binkie Stuart’s. Hair white as snow. Mr Stadnik dances
round the room like he’s on elastic. He claps his hands with joy.

Who is the fairest? he cries.

A single sound will betray me: the click of a bone in my foot, the shush of my fingertips on the wall as I feel my way downstairs; breathing alone will do it. This house is my
enemy. I am my enemy.

Billy the dog lies flat as a cut-out in front of Mr Stadnik’s door. He doesn’t raise his head, but I see his open eye, liquid in the moonlight. He thuds his tail once, twice, as I
pass. I go careful and blind, my tongue stuck in my mouth, holding my breath. I have to make sure.

The living room is washed with a pale blue shine; everything looks unreal in this light, like in the films. My grandfather’s high-back chair, Mr Stadnik’s armchair with the spring
poking out, my own wooden one with the cushion on it and the name carved in the back. They look as if they’re waiting for the three bears to come and try them for size. The fire is out. Above
it is the mirror, dead as the fire. I have to make sure. I have to climb up and look in and make sure. I take the chair, slide it, drag it, rucking the mat in front of the hearth, scraping the
flagstones into a screech. It’s too late now to stop myself. Not edging up into the glass. Not going sideways like a thief, stealing in from the corner of the frame. I will face her, straight
on, wide-eyed, as wide as my eyes will go, wider and wider to let in the light from the darkness, wider and wider so that I can be sure. I have to be sure she wasn’t just hiding, trying to
trick me. But I can’t see a single thing. It’s black as a hole. No one looks back at me, there is no one on the inside. I get as close as I can, trying to see through the mirror, to see
through it and beyond it, beyond the glass sheet, and the silver, through the wooden back of the frame and the rose wallpaper and the chimney and out through the brick and into the night. Trailing
specks of mortar, black ash, dust, flying in the darkness to seek her out, find the girl, show her that I am me.

~

Mr Stadnik called it my nocturnal adventure. He said the fright could’ve killed him, seeing me standing up there in front of the mirror, all alone in the dark. Just like a
ghost, he said. He had to lift me off the chair and carry me back to my room. He made me get back under the covers. The cold of the sheets set me shivering. He didn’t say anything for a
while, just sat on the end of my bed and looked at me, in that way he had, a bit like Gloria the Glove, head cocked to the left so one eye appeared higher than the other; as if he’d swallowed
a fishbone and was waiting for it to go down.

My soul is young, he said, But this – resting his hand flat over his heart – Is a poor weak thing. Broken many times. It fears a fright.

And then he was silent again, dawn-lit, like Valentino in a pose. Except he was more like Wee Willie Winkie, with his long white nightgown and the net covering his hair. He wasn’t wearing
the leather cuff. At last, just when I thought he might be angry, he smiled.

You were like the Statue of Liberty, he said, Like so – raising his arm above his head – Stiff like a stick! So I carry you, thus:

And showed me how he caught me under his arm, marching up and down the narrowness of my room like a clockwork soldier. When he reached the door, he clicked his feet together and
turned on his heel to face me. Under his nightgown were his boots. But it wasn’t that I was noticing: it was his arm. When he held it up to show me how I was, I saw the marks, two short fat
streaks of white, raised up along his wrist. From the leather cuff, I thought.

No more sleepwalks, he said, Or we must tie your leg to the bed. Like a prisoner.

He let out a little laugh. I wanted to tell him how free I felt. I wanted to take him back downstairs and show him there was no one in the mirror, that we’d got rid of her
at last. But my grandfather’s waking cough halted us both. Mr Stadnik bowed at the door and saluted me.

Like the Statue of Liberty, I said, raising my arm.

Yes. Very good, he said, But no more walking about. Sleep must be completed lying down.

Mr Stadnik, why do you wear it if it rubs so much? I pointed at where the cuff would be. He gave a quick look at his wrist, a slow one back at me. He folded like a leaf.

A heart can be broken in many places, he said, shutting the door.

~ ~ ~

What you doing?

A long grey shape pulls itself away from the shadow of the bridge and comes towards me.

This is my bridge, the boy says. He bends over the railing, lets out a long swinging spit, wipes his mouth along the edge of his sleeve. As if to prove his boast, he vaults onto the ledge, arms
out, placing one boot carefully in front of the other, as if he’s treading air. He walks a dead straight line towards me. I know him now. He’s the one that see-saws like a plank.
He’s the one I wasn’t allowed to stand on the bucket and look at when I was in my grandfather’s garden. He’s Against The Rules.

I’m just looking, I say, not telling him who it is I’m looking for. He’s tall close up, an older boy. Not in my school. Twelve. Thirteen, even. Not even going to school
maybe.

You must pay a toll if you want to cross.

Standing on one foot, the boy holds out his hand. He’s all balances.

I don’t want to cross, I say, I’m just looking.

He follows my gaze down into the back garden where I saw the girl. I’m looking for a halo of hair.

Can’t see nothing, he says.

She’s gone, that’s why.

Saying it will make it real. The boy studies the space for a while. Then he smiles, as if he’s thinking something funny. Bronze-coloured eyes, wet-coloured,
flint-coloured.

I know ’er, he says, She look like you, ’bor! Only ginger. She your sister?

I couldn’t tell him she was a ghost, or what Mr Stadnik did to make her go away.

She’s gone, I tell you. There’s just me now.

~

The boy’s name is Joseph Dodd. His eyes are bronze and his hair is rust and there’s a birthmark under his chin. Just like his sister Alice. He lets me cross the
bridge, he even walks with me, although there’s nowhere I particularly want to go. My father always says Never look a gift horse in the mouth, and this boy I’m walking with has let me
pass over the bridge for free. I can’t refuse. I only wanted to stand there and make sure, and now I’m going somewhere. I’m crossing the bridge, which I’m not supposed to do
unless it’s with my father, when we pretend to go to the cemetery. He hasn’t been to visit me for ten whole Saturdays. I don’t know what’s on at the Regent. I don’t
know where he is. When my father does come back, he might not even recognize me.

Do you go to the films? I ask the boy.

He looks at me quickly and away again, like a bird sensing movement, sticking his chin out just like Alice.

I
can
go, he says, almost as if I was picking a fight, If I mind to, I can go.

It wasn’t what I meant. I wanted to ask him if he liked the musicals. We could’ve sang a tune. We walked a bit further, Joseph hitching up his trousers every few
steps, so that if I didn’t look straight ahead or up at his face, I had to see the state of his boots. Scuffed and laceless, one tongue flapping and the other ripped completely away.

I get in sometimes, see the cowboys, he says at last.

That’s at The Ranch, I say, I’ve only been once. My father won’t take me again.

I don’t tell Joseph it’s because I don’t like the arrows, the whooshing of them as they travel across the screen, their sharp tips puncturing the sky, a tree
trunk, a cowboy’s arm. I tell him what my father always said; that
he
didn’t like the shooting and everyone going bangbang in the seats behind us.

He won’t be joining up then, says the boy, If he can’t abide a bit of noise.

I think of joining up words. My father taught me to read from his American songsheets. Joining up meant only that to me, but the way Joseph said it, I knew it wasn’t about
reading.

What’s joining up?

Joseph stops dead. He looks into the far distance, like Errol Flynn in
Captain Blood
.

Joining up for the fighting, he says, We’re going to a war. I knew what that was. My father had told me about the first one, when he fought my grandfather over a name. Now there was going
to be another. Perhaps that’s why my father had stopped coming. There’d be guns going off. Screaming. Joseph was staring at me now.

That don’t mean you. Not you, ’bor! You’re a girl and too young. Me as well, never mind if I’m tall enough. That include your dad, though, even if he don’t much
like a bang.

He was shouting this last bit, because by then I was running. I had to get home and stop the fighting. I could feel the before times shooting past me like arrows: the ghosts and
the red girl in the mirror; my father’s eyes lighting up in the cinema dark as he searched out my mother; a locket open like a butterfly in his hand; my grandfather’s own hand, his
fingers grabbing the skinny neck of a wilting dahlia that mustn’t be crooked. I go fast, back along the bridge into Chapelfield and through the gate and up to the door and fumbling for the
key dragging its weight around my neck and swinging the door bang against the wall. But there were no bodies. No fighting. Inside, everything was peaceful.