Remember Me

by Trezza Azzopardi

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.

  Gloria is born! he said. Mr Stadnik said she had come to protect me. She would keep the ghosts away, watch me while I slept. She was my very own. I wanted me and Gloria to wave at my father when he came.

  My grandfather says my father won’t be here until the afternoon, so I have to help him in the garden. He is obsessed with things that grow. There’s a glasshouse thick with tomato plants, neat rows of vegetables tied up on sticks, and at the far end of the garden he has fenced off a perfect square. It’s full of flowers. They’re tied on sticks too. All along the wall, my grandfather has hung a line of broken mirror pieces, twinkling like diamonds in the sunlight. A huge one hangs from the roof of the glasshouse. He says they’re to keep the birds off, although Mr Stadnik secretly feeds them in the mornings, so it doesn’t always work. In between the jitter and shunt of the trains below, my grandfather enlists me in a duty.

  Here, take this twine for me, Lillian, and watch where you’re putting your feet. The twine is rough, dark brown, coiled upon itself. I hold it close in my hand, feeling the spring of it in my grip. He leads me a cautious path, past the glasshouse and the rockery to the fenced-off perfect square. The heads of a hundred flowers are drooping on their necks: white and pink and creamy orange and velvet brown. They have all got their own names: Roses, Dahlias, Chrysanthemums. I must learn which is which; I must learn to tell the difference between things by their names.

  They should be straight, he says, lifting the head of a chocolate dahlia, So we’ll give them a bit of help. We have to wrap the twine around their stems. I don’t want to do it; their necks are so skinny and their heads so heavy and full I’m afraid I might choke them. The first one I touch falls to bits; the petals go everywhere. My grandfather takes no notice.

  A young thing has to grow straight and tall, he says, wrapping a caught neck to a stake, You don’t want to grow up all crooked, do you?

  I don’t want his flowers to droop, but the question has nothing to do with me. Except, it feels like it does have something to do with me, and I’m being forced to agree with him. He takes the twine from between my fingers and shows me how to wrap it, going round near the head, careful and silent.

  No prizes this year, he says, That storm nearly did for them,

  and then he gives me a quick look, as if he’s said something wrong; as if he has rules he must obey too, and he’s just broken one. He’s right about the dahlias; they’re almost gone. From the house they look perfect, but up close they are weary and bedraggled; the weight of the rain must have been too much to bear. We go along the rows, putting their heads to rights with bits of twine. I’m careful where I put my feet.

  My grandfather’s so pleased with my progress, he’s smiling. He’s funny when he does it, as if his teeth are causing him pain. He says can he trust me to do the bulbs. I don’t know what they’re for, the bulbs, but all I have to do is watch him and copy. I want him to trust me, but I’m not going to promise.

  Watch me now, Lillian, he says.

  He takes a bulb and puts it in the centre of a pot, pressing it down with his finger. It’s the same jabbing action he uses when filling his pipe. The finger on his right hand is yellow. When I ask him why, he says it’s the tamping that does it. I tamp the bulbs all morning; he says I do a grand job.

  ~

  There’s no wall outside my grandfather’s house; he’s got a gate. It hangs a bit to one side and the hinge needs oiling; on the path is a long scar from where it’s been opened and shut again. You can hear if someone’s trying to come in: the gate bangs against the post when it’s pushed. I’m waiting in the parlour for my father to come. I’m allowed, because I’ve done so well in the garden. I must sit quietly and not touch anything. I’m used to that; that’s one rule I can remember. I’ve got Gloria for company, and the two boys in their turbans, and the clock plays a bong every so often to let you know how much time is going past. I’m waiting for my father to come. I’ll hear the gate, and then I’ll wave.

  The first night of my new life, in my new room in my grandfather’s house, I couldn’t sleep for the gate and the noise it made. I kept seeing my mother on the floor, the black spill around her, and the horses galloping, the lights of the carousel turning, the flame my father held, dancing then spinning down to my mother on the floor. I wanted the doctor to make her well again. He came with my grandfather, and they looked like brothers; they were both wearing round glasses and they carried cases. The doctor’s case was small and brown; my grandfather had a green one with a label stuck on the front. It said Lillian Price. I didn’t know it was going to be mine. I was still Patsy then. No one looked at me but I felt in the way, as if I was a hole they had to step round and not fall into. They went in different directions. The doctor disappeared into my mother’s room, and my grandfather went into my room at the back. My father sat out the front on the wall. The bottle was in his pocket by then. He took swigs from it, and when he wasn’t doing that he was smoking a cigarette. I wanted to be next to him, so I got as close as I could, sidling along the edge of the wall until we were nearly side by side. He smoked one cigarette after the other, lighting a new one off the old one, flicking the stub away into the yard, watching it spin in the swirl. The rain was blowing in gusts, soaking his head and vest. I thought he must be angry with me.

  You have to go away for a bit, Pats, he said. Then he said something else which was taken by the rain, something about my grandfather, and Don’t worry, twice, Don’t worry, Patsy, promise me you won’t worry. Promise me.

  Cross my heart and hope to die.

  ~

  I tried not to worry but the gate kept me awake, swinging open and shut in the wind: bang, nothing, bang, nothing, bang, nothing; so in the end the silence had its own sound too, and it was a huge heart I heard, beating through the dark. In the morning, my grandfather brought me tea. He opened the curtains and stood at the window, chatting about the weather and his flowers and what needed doing in the garden as if he always did this, as ifit was an ordinary day, and I had always lived here.

  six

  My father won’t come into the house when he visits; he leans his elbows on the gate, swinging it and staring at the crescent scrape in the path, while my grandfather helps me into my coat and beret. When I’m ready to go, I have my father in front of me and my grandfather at my back. They look but they don’t speak. Around my neck I wear a do
orkey on a long piece of string, which my grandfather has given me in case he’s in the garden and won’t be able to hear me knock, and his silver watch so I’ll know the time. The watch is heavy and cold, then warm, against my chest. I’m ticking like a bomb. My father looks smart in his blue suit. He leaves it hanging in Fisher’s window all week and fetches it out on weekends, just to visit me. I’m not allowed to mention the watch; my grandfather says my father would hock that too, given the chance. I don’t know how to tell the time, anyway. I just wear it to please him. I don’t even have to use the key because my grandfather’s always there when I come back, waiting behind the curtain in the parlour.

  You never know what might happen, my grandfather says. But nothing ever does happen. So the key I don’t use and the time I can’t tell stay on the string around my neck. I come home, I knock and I wait, while my grandfather makes sure my father is far enough down the path, then it’s my grandfather in front of me, and my father at my back. This is the pattern of Saturdays.

  My father tells lies all the time. He told my grandfather that we go to visit my mother’s grave. I think we almost did go there once, but then he changed his mind and took me to the pictures instead. We always leave the same way – over the bridge and towards St Giles – so even though my father doesn’t say so, my grandfather thinks we’re heading for the churchyard. He cuts flowers from his garden for me to put on the grave.

  That one there, he says, pointing to one bloom or another, That one’s a beauty. Not the dahlias, Lillian, they’re just about finished, they are.

  On the draining board in the scullery, he slices their stems with a quick strike of his knife, wraps them tenderly in newspaper. He breathes through his mouth as he does it, short, anxious sips of air, as if inhaling the scent of the flowers would use it all up.

  My father takes me up the steps at the end of Chapelfield and along the bridge. It’s the same bridge I saw on my first day in the garden, when I stood on the bucket and watched the boy balancing his body over the tracks below. I’m looking at things from the other side. That first time we crossed it, my father and me, I got a strange feeling, a cold water rush on my skin. I saw what the boy would have seen: the railway lines streaking off past the mill, and the crooked terrace with my grandfather’s house tilting a bit at the end; the dark tangle of elderberries hanging in clusters over the wall at the far side of the garden, and the garden itself, neat as a stitch, with the mirror pieces twirling in the wind. Something was wrong with the picture. Then I saw, exactly, what the boy would have seen. In front of the glasshouse, I spotted her. She was very still, her red hair fuzzed like a halo in the sunshine. She was watching.