Remember Me

by Trezza Azzopardi

  Hey, Win! Cool hat, very chic, my dear! How’ve you been? he asked, sitting himself down beside me. I turned to face him.

  Christ! he went, screwing his eyes up at the sight of my cheek, You’ve been in the wars, haven’t you?

  Have I? I said, not giving anything away.

  What have you gone and done?

  Dog bit me, I said.

  Bugger. Let’s hope she don’t want a photograph, he said.

  A photograph of what? I asked. I wasn’t really paying attention. Robin was often on what he called a ‘mystery tour’; and he had the opposite problem to me when it came to words. He had busloads of them.

  Of you, he grinned, The big celebrity.

  The big what?

  He pursed his lips, drew hard on the roll-up between his fingers.

  There’s a lady been asking about you, he said, blowing out a ring of smoke, Asking all over.

  What sort of lady?

  He grinned again,

  A pretty sort of lady, now you ask. Quite professional-looking, I’d say. Maybe you’ve come into money, Win! Someone might’ve left you a fortune.

  That even made me smile, for a second. The lads used to like to talk about that, while they burned everything in sight, what they’d do if they came into money. The wind was circling our feet, swirling around us; in my chest, the tight feeling was creeping back. Like a bird’s wings, fluttering.

  What did she want? I asked.

  Wouldn’t say. Something about a long time ago. Trying to trace you. I tell you, Win, it’s money! She’ll be a private detective, wanting to reunite you with your great granny’s fortune.

  What ‘something a long time ago’? I asked, Did she say? The bird’s wings inside my ribcage, beating harder now.

  Only that it was personal. I’ve seen her again this morning. No joy, she said, so I told her she might catch you at that place on The Parade.

  I was never there.

  You were there last time I saw you, he said, giving me a funny look.

  I put my hand to my head, afraid the wind would take my beret.

  I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  The cobbler’s – you know, your old boyfriend’s place – what was he called? Hewson?

  I wouldn’t say his name, but Robin wasn’t giving up: clicking his fingers, tapping his tongue against his teeth. Grit in the wind, stinging my eyes.

  It was painted on the window, he was saying, Big gold letters, come on, Win. Howlett? I was willing him not to say it.

  He was never my boyfriend, I said, And I was never there. Robin put his hands up, laughing, clapped them in the blurt air.

  Hewitt, that was it! I see it now: big gold letters. Hewitt’s Shoe Repairs and Fittings!

  bespoke

  Hewitt sits in the room above his shop, working at what he describes as his Design Table. It’s a just a bench, the sort they have in church, with a long wooden table in front and drawers underneath. There’s a box at the end, full of tools, and a whetstone for sharpening them. His Patterning Device is simply a sewing machine, the exact same model as Jean’s. He likes the language of his trade – his Art, he calls it – but I like the objects. While he works, I sit and look at his tools, the awl blades different sizes and the handles worn; the wooden feet of his customers, each in their own compartment, going all the way up the wall. Some of them are shiny and new, others are covered with leather pieces, stuck here and there about the shape of the foot.

  Amendments, Hewitt says, when I ask him what the pieces are for, Never tell the customer that their foot has got bigger, and never mention bunions – just say that some small adjustment must be made.

  I’m in hiding. Hewitt is hiding me. I came to the shop on a Sunday; I knew he wouldn’t be going to any church. I was desperate. The clogs Noreen gave me had made my feet bleed, and despite wrapping them in paper, my toes were so sore and bloody and swollen, I couldn’t walk without crying. If he was delighted to see me, which is what he said when he finally opened the door, he didn’t let on; just took me upstairs to his workroom, sat me on the bench, and told me to remove my stockings. He left me alone while I pretended to do it. In truth, my legs were bare. He returned with an enamel basin of milky water, a towel slung over his shoulder.

  Feet in here, he said, Soak them. The blisters had broken, and the skin had rolled back in strips, sticky with blood and black with dirt from the road. They didn’t look as if they belonged to me. He was calm until he picked up my clogs.

  Cheap rubbish! Vile! he shouted, throwing them into the wastebasket under the bench, Never wear cheap shoes, Winifred!

  Beggars can’t be Choosers, I said.

  You are no beggar. You could have come to me. I started to tell him about leaving Jean and Bernard, but he flapped his fingers at me.

  I know all that. Do you think I care? Do you think I – of all people – would believe what they’re saying about you? My mouth was dry. I could barely get the words out.

  What are they saying?

  Hewitt smiled, a small ducking of his head.

  That you are a thief, of course, he said, as if that would be a natural assumption. I could tell from the enjoyment on his face that being accused of theft wasn’t the worst of it.

  And that you made . . . improper, shall we say, yes, that would be a good word for it, improper suggestions to Bernard.

  I’m no thief.

  I would have denied the other part, too, but Hewitt was in full song.

  I know Mr Foy very well. He was in love with you. And Jean is a jealous woman.

  But she’s his sister!

  His smile was growing.

  And you’re their niece, that’s right, isn’t it? You’re their niece from the country, with a marvellous gift.

  Hewitt gave a little shake of the towel and laid it at my feet.

  Jean is Bernard’s Companion, he continued, His Spiritual Assistant. Bernard doesn’t need to say what else she is – people make assumptions, my dear. As they will about you. Not everything is as it seems in this world, Winifred. He went over to the bench, opened a drawer underneath the work table, pulled out a length of linen and wrapped it slowly round his hand.

  Life is full of assumptions. Take me, for instance, he said, narrowing the gap, whispering,

  I assumed that you despised me. And yet, where do you turn for help? You come here. Any port in a storm, isn’t that how it goes? Well, you’re safe enough with me. And you’re welcome to stay for as long as you like. He looked hard at me in the silence that followed. I wouldn’t answer him. I wouldn’t tell him that I wasn’t planning to stay. He knelt down, smoothing the towel out as if it were a prayer mat.

  I won’t take advantage, if that’s your concern, he said, And I won’t tell them. I won’t tell anyone. It’ll be our secret. Cupping his hand round my ankle, raising my foot in the air.

  It’ll have to be, he continued, Don’t want anyone finding out. It all counts against you. All of it. Looking up at me, blissful,

  Now. Let’s see if we can’t do something about these poor little creatures.

  ~ ~ ~

  I do stay; I have nowhere else, and Noreen’s gift has hobbled me. I hide away upstairs, sleep in the workroom on a low couch Hewitt has made up, with a bolster at one end to keep my legs raised. He’s left the blackout on the windows; he says that sunshine is bad for leather. The air is breathless. I have a few things to do: make tea, toast, sometimes sew a little by hand – pieces for him, a frayed cuff, a patch on a shirt where the elbow has worn. He doesn’t trust me with the machine, and never lets me work on the leather. Mostly, he just likes me to lie in the corner, while he cuts and stitches and hammers in nails. Occasionally he’ll tell me who owns the shoe, who needs something special for their wedding day, who has inherited a lovely pair of boots that need new soles, but often he hums tunelessly under his breath, the lamp above him turning his hair into a glowing frizz of copper wire. He works late into the night. I fall asleep, and when I wake again, it’s morning, a
nd he’s still there, working at the bench, the blade against the whetstone buzzing like a wasp.

  At first, Hewitt doesn’t touch me. But every day he creeps closer. Edging up to the couch, his tongue curling over his lip, his hands fondling the air around me. The nights are the worst, with the darkness so thick, the airless heat, the dead animal odour of leather. Even if I can’t see him, I can tell when he’s near. Like a hound disguising his scent, Hewitt covers himself in the smell of his trade: a leather tape hanging round his neck, a leather jerkin with laces at the front, a pouch slung low at his belly where he keeps his darning hooks, a chamois cloth, a sharp crescent blade. The creaking, stinking scent of him in the blackness.

  I know it’s not your first time, he whispers, every time. In the mornings, he pretends nothing has happened, bringing me tea, or a piece of gossip from downstairs. I never show my face down there: Alice still serves in the front of the shop. Alice would betray me. Hewitt brings me gifts from his mother’s room: trinkets, old gazetteers showing distant places where there are purple mountains, violent sunsets, the aching space of a shoreline. Then he talks freely, about business, the beauty of his art. But mainly, about love.

  See these here, he says, pulling open his box of tools, Guess what we call them?

  He knows not to wait for a reply.

  We call them St Hugh’s Bones, he says, with a look of mock astonishment, Fancy that!

  I don’t want to see. When I think of bones, I picture a comb like the one my mother had, a thin hair hanging from it. But there are no bones inside his box, just tools – blades, little wheels, wooden handles.

  Who was St Hugh? I say, sensing a catch.

  Ah. Funny you should ask that. He was a shoemaker, too, says Hewitt, warming to his story, Who fell in love with a beautiful girl! And guess what her name was? I’m no good at this game; the look in his eye gives me a tight feeling in my stomach. Hewitt goes on, oblivious,

  Her name was Winifred! he says, triumphant, Now, what do you think of that?

  I could tell him that Winifred is not my name; I could tell him that I’m no one, not a beautiful girl, certainly not the sweetheart of a shoemaker. I speak very little, but I make noises, to try to seem impressed. It’s easier not to provoke a reaction. It’s easier to move out of reach, inch back to the window where there’s a little more daylight and a little less of him. He can suck the air away in a second. In equal measure, he oozes charm and rage; promise and threat come in one breath.

  I’ll make those shoes for you one day, he says, stroking a long strip of hide, When I’m sure you’re not going to run away in them!

  ~ ~ ~

  It was a close evening, summer on the way. I was in the workroom on my own, with nothing to do except look at the book Hewitt had given me; he said it once belonged to his mother. Inside were poems on glossy paper, and printed colour plates of wide skies, mounds of silver sand, wildlife. I didn’t care much for the poems, but I liked the pictures of the birds, their colours and their strange names. Avocet, bearded tit, shelduck, plover. I recited the words under my breath, as if I could cast a spell to take me away from the thoughts in my head, the smell of skinned beasts: oystercatcher, garganey, tern. Pinpricks of light through the blackout, falling like sparks on the floor; not a breath of air in the room. Shingle bank, sand sedge, grey-hair grass. Everything remained as it was.

  Sometimes I could put myself right inside the photographs, move through the salt air, hear gulls cry. Picture a room full of dead hide, and empty it. Fill it with a clear shorelight. I wished for a life that wasn’t mine. No Hewitt. No stink. Walk all day, with nowhere to get to and no one to think about. Turn round, walk back, as the night sank down at my feet. No hot, darkened room. No other time. No me.

  But the spell wasn’t working. I couldn’t stop the people in my head: Bernard and Jean; my mother and my father; my grandfather, bent like a scarecrow under the stairs. Mr Stadnik was worst, catching me when I least expected it, his bare arm in the rainlight and his eyes full of grief. And Joseph, always Joseph, winging his way across the fen sky, soaring like a plane above me.

  I rolled up the blackout, opened the sash, just a crack, to let the breeze in. The smell of leather was making me choke; it lingered on my skin last thing at night, it steamed off the tea Hewitt brought me in the mornings. The air outside was so sweet. I could hear people passing on the street below, a child laughing, one man talking to another.

  Hewitt was in his office, doing his accounts. I’d never been allowed in there, so it took me by surprise, him poking his head round the door and calling me inside. I thought he was going to be angry with me for opening the blackout.

  I think it’s about time, he said, his arm trailing in my wake, That we gave you something to occupy yourself. You seem quite rested, much better now.

  Inside, the room was cool. A chair and a leather-topped desk, a lamp, a blotter with tiny figures scribbled all over, and his pen, lying on the accounts book. A square of open window on the far side of the room with the sun angled across it.

  I’m a busy man, he said, Busier all the time, now that things are picking up again. Only the dead and the dead poor have no need for shoes. He laughed, as if this fact was funny.

  I’ve been thinking of getting in help, anyway, but why look any further, he said, his eyes twinkling and his head on one side, When we’ve grown so fond of each other? Dark green flock paper, and all around the walls, gilt-framed pictures of people in various poses, crammed side by side, above and below. Faces everywhere, smiling, grim, staring out at me; a gallery of watchers.

  The Hewitts go back a long way, he said, following my gaze, This here is my grandfather, he set the business up. As you can see, the outside looked very much the same. He pointed to a fat man wearing a chain.

  And here he is as Lord Mayor.

  A band of light from the window cut the picture in two. Below was a long photograph, a line of people on the pavement in front of the shop.

  I’m thinking, Winifred, about a partnership. You and me, if you understand what I’m proposing.

  The long photograph was hard to make out, I had to bend, shield the glass from the sun.

  It’s been very difficult for me – to trust a girl again, he said, leaning in, trying to get my attention, But you’re very special. We’d make a good pair – he took a snort of air at this joke – And you would be accepted here, as my wife. The people in the photograph were standing in a row, one of them with his hand up, shielding his eyes from the glare. I could feel Hewitt waiting for my answer.

  That’s me, he said, stroking the line of hair across his head, Much younger then, of course. We’re going back – oh, must be eighteen years! So I understand that you might find me a little . . . mature.

  Next to him, a woman with her arms folded across her chest. Hewitt pointed his thumb at her.

  That’s my mother, he said, God rest her. At the end of the line, there was one more woman, almost edged out of the picture. She wore an intense look on her face, a high-necked blouse with a frill, and her crowning glory, a nest of thick black hair.

  And that, I said, putting my finger on the glass, Is my mother.

  ~

  Hewitt was quiet after that. He hummed a little to himself, as if there were a tally in his head he couldn’t quite make add up. He puffed his cheeks out. His face went pink, pale, pink again. We studied the photograph for a few more seconds, his eyes sidelong, looking at me in a new way.

  Of course, that’s not your real hair, he said, matter-of-fact, You don’t have your mother’s colouring.

  I told him it belonged to Bernard’s wife.

  And what is so awful about your real hair?

  My grandfather said it was Telltale.

  Albert Price. I remember him. Scary old devil. So – you stole the hair from a dead woman? he asked, getting close to his meaning.

  They gave it to me, Jean and Bernard. They said it made me look exotic.

  No, no. You stole it, he cried, triumphant, as if sol
ving the puzzle, So, Jean Foy was right after all! You’re nothing but a thief. You must understand, Winifred – whatever you call yourself – this alters everything.

  ~ ~ ~

  He said no more about a proposal, nothing about the picture in the office with my mother squeezed into the corner of the frame, nothing about my telltale hair; nothing about anything. He took me by the elbow and levered me out, finger and thumb, through the door of the office, as if I might infect him. Back to the workroom and the high stink of leather.

  He had me down as a thief: it suited Hewitt, all of a sudden, to leave me entirely alone. So stealing the bread, ripping out the colour plates of the birds; these were easy things. I stole the useful and useless, all thrown in my case: a pair of shoes a size too small, a square of muslin, a polished silver buckle, a cube of chalk. A handful of nails. A toothbrush. His mother’s beaded gown, loosed free from its sheath and smelling of stale perfume. I stole the small money Hewitt kept in a pot on the mantelpiece. I stole one of his bladed tools, and put it in my pocket. I stole his back-door key, threading it on a shoelace tied round my neck. If I laid a hand on a thing, I stole it: I was nothing but a thief, after all. When I had filled my case, I hid it under the couch and waited for a pause in his evening routine, calculating enough time to slip away without another confrontation. Hewitt spent an age on the telephone in the hallway. I couldn’t hear what he was taking so long to say, but I could feel his look, burning through the wood of the door.