We see no one except each other; we leave off speaking, not even to remark on the weather. Aunty Ena’s words are few and carefully chosen:
God watches over us, she says, as if watching alone can make a difference to how hungry I am. Occasionally, when she senses that I’ve been out further than the bottom of the track, she’ll look me in the eye.
God sees everything.
Inside, we see nothing. But from the back door, I can make out people in the distance, horses in the field, and the scarecrow, hanging his head. But no one comes near, not even the vicar. After that one visit, he doesn’t trouble us again. I stand at the back door, I walk the lane, circle the yard in a perfect round – anywhere, just to be out of the house. I see sky and land, sky and land, until the sky becomes the land and I can no longer tell where one begins and the other ends. I see birds in that first black summer, and then not a single one, as if they too had abandoned us.
fourteen
God sees everything, but he mustn’t see me with Joseph Dodd. I’m down at the far end of the track, where I shouldn’t be, looking for berries. It’s the second summer without Mr Stadnik and Billy. They’re not in my dreams any more. I’ve been here forever, with my aunt, with not a single other person: no one to talk to, no one to tell me that I’ve grown as tall as my mother was, or that my red hair is Telltale. No one to call me by name.
He saunters up the dusty path, hidden most of the way by the cow parsley, grown wild with the sunshine. He could have dropped from the sky. He is as tall as a tree. He’s got no shoes on, his hair’s all sticking out. I don’t know what Aunty Ena will think if she sees him standing in the lane. He’s got a big wide mouth. Eyes glittering like flint. He greets me.
’Bor.
I’m wearing one of Aunty Ena’s summer dresses. It’s too short at the knee, or the fabric is too thin: whatever it is, the dress feels wrong on me now, as if it isn’t there at all. And I’ve got no hat; my hair’s stuck to my head with sweat and grease. I don’t recall the last time it was washed.
Found any? he says, eyeing the scratches on my hands. I shake my head at him. He smiles, scuffing the dirt with his naked toe.
Want to find any?
I shake my head again, and at this first meeting, he just moves away, slow, like a cart horse, kicking up the dust on the road behind him.
The second time he comes, he stands and looks. Saying nothing, standing there, one hand on his hip, his shoulders shiny and conker-brown against the white of his vest. Making the day even hotter than it is; unbearably hot, so I have to take off my shawl to stop the heat of his look on me. He smiles as I do it. Next time, I tell myself, I’ll do it again. And I’ll wash my hair.
But next time, he’s holding something. With the sun right above us, there’s nowhere to hide. Aunty Ena is lying down in the darkness, her head under the piano, having a headache. God is in his heaven. The giant boy has his fist held in front of him, heavy as a maul.
Can I come down? he says, nodding at the house, Got something for you.
No, you can’t.
My voice sounds faint in my ears. I’m not used to the sound. It can’t be loud enough, anyway, because he doesn’t stop. He walks steadily towards me, jumping the ditch, traipsing over the stones beneath his feet as if they’re chaff. He’s so near, I could tilt his chin, see Alice Dodd’s birthmark underneath it. Closer still, and he’s way tall, so I can see it anyway: a tea-stained clover.
My aunt doesn’t like visitors, I say, turning away.
That’s all right, he says, following close, I arn’t visiting her. I’m visiting you, Beauty. He goes ahead of me, sidelong around the corner of the barn.
It’s locked, I say.
I know that.
Round the back, over the stile into the church plantation, and down through the thicket where I never go. The scarecrow can’t see us, Aunty Ena can’t see us; no one can. This is the beginning. I follow him. He sits down on a stretch of moss, leans back, grins. I take off my shawl. He smiles again, opening his fist. It’s full of berries. This is the beginning of everything.
Have one, he says.
They are small and warm and sweet.
God can’t see us here.
~ ~ ~
She’s counting the years. Ena lying down, so close to the pedals that if she turns her head she can see herself reflected. She longed to press them when she first learned to play. Too small to reach, her feet dangling in mid-air, and the piano teacher saying in his soft brown voice, No need just now, learn the span now, his hand making a starfish on the keys. What was his name? Something foreign, something like Stadnik. No, she’s getting confused. Small things betray her. She thought Henry was a romantic hero, because he spoke like a prince. Not a risk, not a threat. She couldn’t protect him, and would not be allowed to keep him. The villagers had made it clear enough: any foreigner was unwelcome. She thought they could brave it out. But the vicar’s words should have warned her.
You’re putting everyone in danger to sate your lust, he said, enjoying his moment. Think of the poor child, he said, spinning her round and staring at her hair. The girl’s hair. Extraordinary, platinum hair, like a starlet. And that wasn’t real either, tarnishing like cheap metal, growing out red as rust.
~ ~ ~
What is it?
Joseph puts his finger to his lips,
Shhh, he goes.
He creeps up to the edge of the field, ducking low to avoid being seen. Puts his hand round the far side of the post, pulling at the thing, twisting it, until he’s free again and running back breathless.
There you go, Beauty, he says, throwing the bundle of feathers at my feet.
What is it?
He cocks his head to one side,
Don’t you know a bird when you see one? That’s a crow. They nail ’em there, he says, pointing to the fence, Keep the pests off.
The smell was rotten: a green, retching stink.
What do I want that for? I say, through my fingers.
He frowns at me, turning the bird with his toe.
We’re going to bury him, he says, lifting the bent wing in a pinch, That’s no place for it. Birds ought to be flying, not nailed on a bit of wood. Not nailed up for everyone to see.
Where? I say, looking at the dry, cracked earth around us.
Over, he says, pointing to the high grass in the distance, It’s easy, everything sink in that. Sink in a minute. Cows, horses, wagons.
Aeroplanes, I say, watching his face.
Birds, he says, Men.
~
We’re fast, but the flies are faster. They thicken the air with the noise of heat, coming from nowhere to find the bird. Joseph runs to free himself from them; up ahead of me, the bird swings in his fist and the wings flap open like a wound. I can’t keep up. Over, Joseph had said, but it’s straight as an arrow, through the fields, into the reeds and tall grass bordering the edge of Middle Drain. Up close, the windmill stands massive on the skyline. Land turns to water under my feet, softening between my toes, sucking me in. I look up to find Joseph, and he’s gone. He can’t be gone; there’s nowhere to hide under this sky. Standing still, all I can hear is the blood rushing in my head. Everything can sink in the fen, he said, sink in a minute. I call his name. I call his name and I call God’s name and I call until I’m hoarse; I’m calling, I’m roaring. He’s all I have in the world. I make a wish, I promise, cross my heart and hope to die. I’m roaring in the stillness, turning around, listening for the haze of flies, anything, any sound: and then he comes out of the earth, hand over hand, sticky as the mud that nearly took him.
Careful, he says, backing me away. Close up, his face is ash, his skin shivering and dotted with black specks. The bird is gone.
Nearly buried us both, he says, trying to make a joke of it.
Don’t, I say, Don’t ever leave me again.
I make him promise that he won’t.
~
Joseph knows all the birds; some by name and some by call. He says F
ather Peter gave him a book when he was in hospital, full of pictures. I ask him what he was there for.
Broke a wing, he says, Couldn’t fly for a bit.
Mainly, he says, he learns by watching: from the tower, stalking the fen like a hunter, lying near the reed-beds, listening. I tell him about me, how I was called one thing, then another, and another.
A bird can have lots of names too, and with a knowing smile, And more than one colour. Doesn’t alter what they are, doesn’t stop ’em flying. They don’t care what other people call ’em.
He shows me a feather, golden brown. When I ask him where it’s from, he gives a slow cry, animal sounding, nearly pain.
That’s from a boomer, he says, turning the feather in the sunlight, A bittern, too, it’s called. They say the sound’s bad luck.
I’ve never heard it, I say, superstitious now.
Maybe you won’t, he says, They’re like us, they keep away from the world – trailing the feather along my arm.
Getting hot now, he says, leaning back to stare up through the trees, Take that shawl off, won’t you?
Joseph’s stories are about priests and bells and babies at the font. He talks all the time, of towers and earthquakes, hiding and secrets. Undoing the laces on my dress.
Look, he says, catching a strand of my hair and holding it up to the light, Them above us would want it for the angels. I can tell him anything; talking comes easy now. I confess to Mr Stadnik’s dye, now long grown out, about how my hair is Telltale. Joseph gives me a dark look.
My mother always say there’s no mistaking a Dodd, he scratches at the birthmark under his chin, We got our stamp, and you, Beauty – tangling my hair between his fingers – You got yours.
The birthmark under his chin is perfectly smooth. Between the talking and the stories, is bliss.
We must have a plan, he says, laying me down into the moss; and we do plan, afterwards, telling each other that we’ll run away. We’ll run away, we’ll do it tomorrow, to the end of the world.
Through the summer, and on through the year; into green, then russet, the brown stings of bracken, until the sky is ice blue through the naked trees above our heads. We lie down on the earth, and when it’s too cold, we lie on sacking. The year turns itself over, another summer comes. We promise each other, every day, we’ll run away tomorrow.
stones
Sometimes talking’s like being behind glass, the words can be hard to fathom. I couldn’t tell with Carol whether I was near or far in my talking. I took out my plastic bag with the face on it, and showed her the angel hair inside it. She pulled a face.
Ur. It looks very . . . musty, she said.
She didn’t want to touch it, I could tell. I put the bag away again. It wasn’t helping.
Why not make a list, she said, You know, of all the things you’ve lost.
Got stolen, I said, not liking her now.
All the things you’ve got stolen, she said, And then you could show it to the police.
She went away to get a piece of paper and a pen. I sat in the cubicle; I was thinking about the bag in my pocket when I heard them laughing, her and the other girl called Debs, and in the gap in the curtain Debs was waving her hand in front of her and bending double. Her face was still very pink.
A woman arrived with a heap of dresses to try on. Carol showed her into the other changing room and pulled the curtain on her. I could feel the heat of the woman as she squeezed herself into the clothes, zipping and breathing, her body smell leaking through the gaps, over the partition, filling my air. I’m glad I didn’t smell like that.
When Carol came back, she didn’t have any paper in her hand, or a pen; she had a hat. Two hats.
Here you are, she said, Can’t have you going out in the weather without something on your head. Which do you prefer?
I looked at them for a bit. One was a peaked cap with a squiggle on the front and a navy trim. Not me, I know when a hat looks ridiculous. The other one was a beret. A berrett.
That one.
She put it on my head.
Come on, time to face your public, she said, suddenly very brisk. She sounded odd, as if she was sharing a joke – but not with me. I wanted to thank her for everything, but the shop was busy now, and Debs was spraying something in the air from a can, spraying behind me as I left, as if there was a trail to cover, as if I were a fly, a wasp, and the words I had formed to say to Carol were running like rain on a window. She had her hand on my shoulder, pushing me, nearly pushing me, out of the door.
The list, I said, finding words.
Tomorrow, Winnie, all right? Another time, Win.
Win
Winnie
Winifred.
I didn’t know she knew my name.
part two: after
fifteen
I became Winifred Foy while I was standing on a chair. It comes back sharp as a knife; the chair with its wooden legs creaking under me, and Jean Foy moving round me in a circle, her mouth full of pins. She was altering one of her dresses to fit, so that I could go with her to the meeting on Wednesday evening. Why should I care what I’m called? I thought, after she’d told me what my new name would be. I’d had so many names already: Patsy, Lillian, Pikey, Princess, Beauty. I didn’t care about losing my old name. Didn’t care about the new one.
As far as I could tell, I’d been back in the city a week. I’d come on a train, in disgrace, with my green case tucked between my legs, wearing Aunty Ena’s coat over Aunty Ena’s dress. The dress was too short, and tight around my middle; the coat too long and too thick for the weather. It stank of mothballs. I didn’t want to sit in a carriage where I might be noticed, so I stood at the window in the corridor and watched as the outside slipped away. Past the mud flats with the broken boats, the farms crouching low against the earth, and the glittering river, cut by a figure making strides along the embankment. She waved as the train went by, and for a second I yearned to be her, down by the river, in the early summer sunshine: no sickness, or shame, or Telltale hair. The train sped up and there were no more people I could wish to be, just fields and churches, more fields, more churches, all exactly like the ones I’d left. So many of them, skimming into a muzzy blur. It made me think of all the other girls, just like me, all the other Joseph Dodds, and a hundred Aunty Enas, shrivelling to nothing in the middle of the dead brown land. I stopped counting, looked the other way. I was going back to Chapelfield; there was nowhere else. My aunt had sent a telegram, she said, explaining the Matter. That’s what she called it.
Your grandfather will have to deal with you now, she said, passing one long hand over the other as if she could wipe me away, It’s no business of mine.
All through the journey, I thought about what he would say, what kind of rule he might have to invent to deal with this Matter, so shameful, such a disgrace. I was hoping Mr Stadnik would be there. He would know what to do.
It was a long walk from the station. The streets looked ordinary at first, just as I remembered them, and then I turned a corner, and there was a pile of smoking rubble, a spume of dust, as if the earth had split its belly. More ordinary streets, then sky where there used to be a factory; a hole in the ground for a church; a tumble of bricks, burnt wood, bent wire where a row of shops once stood. A cottage with its face peeled off and the furniture inside turned over and broken, like a ransacked doll’s house. On and on through the city; the same and different at every turn.
Chapelfield was still standing. I knocked on the door and waited, thinking of a long time ago, a key and a watch hanging heavy on a chain round my neck. My grandfather worrying about me, always worrying. I couldn’t understand what I found: I found nothing. I looked in through the letterbox, half expecting Billy the dog’s wet muzzle on the other side. I saw the cupboard door under the stairs, slightly open, with an upturned bucket beside it in the hall. Of course, my grandfather would be in the garden on such a fine day. Around the back of the house, climbing the steps and standing on the bridge where I didn�
��t want to be – where I first saw Joseph, all balances. But the garden below was overgrown, the wall crumbled down on the track, the glass panes in the greenhouse smashed and winking in the sunlight. My grandfather was gone and by the look of it, had been for a while. He wouldn’t have known about the Matter, about me and my shame. I had no idea where my father might be. There was no one to ask, nowhere else to go.
There’s a big park, a sort of heathland, on the edge of the city. The road cuts it into two. My father almost took me, once. He’d promised me a boating trip on a lake, but we never got there; The Flag was on the way, and that was where we always used to stop. It was still there, and open for business. I went into the snug round the back, wanting a drink of water. The man who brought it to me looked as if he’d rather put it in my face than in my hand. He had the same look Aunty Ena wore when she found out.
~ ~ ~
I’m in the yard, on my knees, holding my head under the tap. Aunty Ena’s voice sounds very far away.
What’s the matter with you?
I don’t know. Sick like never before. I lift my head to look at her and the ground comes up like a slap. Aunty Ena takes me inside and lies me down on the mattress. The room jitters round my head.
Think I’m a fool, she says, pulling on her coat, Think I don’t know what’s going on – what you’ve been doing with that boy?
Only what you did, I say, You and Mr Stadnik. There’s no shame in it. We’re getting married.
She fetches her gloves, tucks them into her coat pockets as she bends close to my face. Her words are tart as bile,
Of course you are, she says.
She locks the door behind her.
Remember Me Page 11