Remember Me

by Trezza Azzopardi

  We lived near the lanes, in Bath House Yard. We’d always been there, so I knew all the faces round about: next door to us was a tiny woman called Mrs Moon, with no husband and four children all alike; and in the corner lived two brothers with a bulldog that bit your legs when you ran past. Across the yard was the knife-grinder. He did the rounds on his bike. When he came home, he’d leave it in the yard outside his window. There were cloths tied to the back, and a basket full of tools on the front. The dog never messed with him. He preferred the butcher, who lived in the rooms on top of us. I didn’t know the butcher’s name, and hardly saw him in the daytime, but I heard him, moving above my head in the morning, singing when he came home at night. Sometimes I looked out of my window to watch him staggering up the steps; he’d be hanging on to the railing like a man at sea, with the bulldog snipping at his boots, waiting for him to slip. It was easy to slip on the steps; the whole yard-end was leaning one way, as if any minute it would run off through the gutter and down into the city. My father said it was because of the quarrying underneath. We lived on lime, he said. My mother said it was the ghosts that made things tilt. If anything happened in our house, she blamed it on the ghosts.

  They made everything slant. Our front door turned out onto a path of cobbles made of flint. They looked like pigs’ knuckles laid out flat. Except they didn’t stay flat, they sloped, and when it rained, the water came in under the door. My father put up a low wall around our door to stop the water. Everyone in the yard admired it, but no one wanted one of their own.

  My grandfather came to see us just after I’d started at school. According to my father, it was because I didn’t go often enough. In truth, I hardly went at all. My father came to collect me at the end of the first week, and found me sitting at the back of the room at a little table, just me on my own. While all the rest of the children were doing the alphabet, I was sticking felt animals on a board.

  Call that learning? he asked the teacher, who could only say that the idea of learning was beyond some of us and it was nothing to be ashamed of.

  She’ll not be shoved in a corner, my father said, To be forgotten. After that, I didn’t go any more.

  My grandfather paid a visit to Talk Some Sense into us. My father wasn’t worried, he said the Moon children never got any bother, did they, and anyway, he wanted me at home. It wasn’t as if I missed going to school. I liked to play in the yard. I’d join in Ring-a-Roses with Josie and Pip Moon, but if the bulldog was out and about, I’d sit on the butcher’s steps with my legs tucked underneath me. The day it all changed, I was doing just that.

  A grey man came and stood at the wall. He had a hat in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. From where I was sitting, I could see the bald bit on the top of his head. He didn’t knock on the door, and he didn’t say anything, he just looked up at me. He reminded me of someone I knew.

  You must be Lillian, he said, after a bit. He sounded friendly, but I couldn’t answer back. My father has told me I must not speak to strangers, and I wasn’t sure whether he counted. So I just looked at him. After a minute, he tried again.

  You are Lillian, aren’t you?

  It’s a trick question, I thought. Then I thought, Maybe I am a Lillian? And ran down to ask my father. I’m always getting stuck with my name, but Lillian at that moment sounded important, and the way he said it, the grey-faced man, made it more familiar than my other name, which my father always calls me by. It’s Patsy, my other name. My father thought it was important too. When I told him what the man said, he ran like a rat from the bedroom where my mother was kept, straight through the living room, jumping the wall out the front. I’d never seen him run like that, pushing me aside as if he was fleeing the devil, not rushing to greet him. When I followed, he shouted.

  You stay there! Don’t move!

  I stayed right where he pointed, on the doorstep, and watched as the two of them had words. The piece of paper was exchanged. My father turned without looking back and grabbed me by the hand. He had a fierce grip. He was squeezing my fingers in one hand and the piece of paper in the other. He slammed the door on the man, unfurled the paper in front of the fire and burnt it straight away.

  Who was that man? I asked, watching the paper curling blue.

  That was your grandad,

  was all he said. Then he went in to my mother.

  It was the first time I’d seen my grandfather in colour. He did look like the photograph. I wanted to ask him why he called me by the wrong name and why my father thinks he is the devil.

  After a bit, I went into my mother’s room. She was lying on her side, with my father sitting on the stool next to the bed. They stopped talking and looked at me. The shutters were closed. I went to the window and opened them a crack to see out. The man who was my grandfather was still there, waiting, his hands hanging open at his sides. I thought he might wave, but if he saw me he didn’t show it. He was staring straight at the door, eyeing it just like the bulldog eyes me. I wanted to compare him to his picture. I glanced over to where my mother kept it, but the frame had been turned face down on the table.

  Come away from there, Pats, said my father.

  But he’s still there!

  Come away now, he said. My mother gave a slow blink. She didn’t talk much, but she didn’t need to; her blinking said it all. It said she wasn’t going to get up and let him in, and I really shouldn’t ask questions at a time like this, or stand near the window like that, for everyone in the yard to see our business.

  Why did he call me Lillian? I asked. No one spoke. I asked again.

  My mother’s eyes were shut now. My father took a breath,

  I’ll tell you in a bit. Go and put the kettle on for your mam.

  I did as I was told. But I knew if I looked out of the window I would see the man again, standing still and waiting like a dog.

  ~

  Soon after that, the photograph of my grandfather disappeared entirely, and the frame was put on the sideboard with the glass cracked and nothing behind it but white. And then one morning, the frame was gone too. It was the time of the ghosts. It was the time, my father decided, that I should learn history.

  two

  It’s May 1930: a war has begun. Two men are standing in the shadow of a church inside which I’m about to be christened. Here is my mother’s father, thin-lipped under his furious moustache, and standing a foot away, black hair slicked and shining, is my father. He would rather stand somewhere else to argue; the wind is so low and bitter, even the headstones look as if they’re ducking out of the way. But there’s hardly any room, what with the graves and my pram and the bells. Eight colossal bells are lined up on the edge of the path, their dark skirts tilted to the sky. They are hulled and empty, apart from the largest one at the far end, which houses a small boy enjoying a cigarette. His legs, stretched out from the lip of the bell, are the only bits of him that are visible.

  It’s a fine spring day, despite the cold. I am wrapped in a shawl and covered with blankets to keep me warm. Underneath the layers, I’m wearing a white christening robe. My mother wore it when she was christened, and her father before her. In between times, it has been folded up in paper and stored in a trunk in my grandfather’s house. It has been handed down. I’m wearing a bonnet too, which has not been handed down: it’s new as mint. It’s a sop, according to my father, a sop to my grandfather. This bonnet covers my hair completely.

  The men don’t enter the church, they close in among the bells, as if in hiding from the world. This is a private conflict.

  Lillian! says my grandfather, It’s been decided.

  It’s Patricia, says my father, We agreed on Patricia!

  I agreed to nothing.

  Both men stand firm; they would like to fight, hands round each other’s necks, rolling over on the stubbled grass like a pair of urchins. But they are aware of the boy, his feet dabbling the path as they whisper at each other, and the two men keep their hands to themselves, pulling on their own suits, fingering
their cuffs. My father aims a kick at the nearest bell, half hoping it would let out a peal, some sound to break the silence. The bells look helpless lying down like this; unarmed, naked.

  He first saw them last spring, up in the belfry. He was one of the gang of men who climbed St Giles tower, and came quickly back to earth again, their hands stinging with fear, legs like water. My father tried to grip the wooden guide rail as he tumbled down and the whole piece came away, thin as splints. The beams had rotted to dust, but it wasn’t this that made the men afraid. They had been standing in a careful circle around the nest of bells. It was just a slight tremor to begin with, so that my father thought the foreman behind him was having a joke, jockeying the slats they stood on; and then a deep rumble which turned everything to jelly: the sky outside, the frantic bats, the bells swaying in the grit air. All to jelly. The bells didn’t seem so harmless then. A month later, people were still talking about the earthquake that shook the city. Another month, and the work to fix the beams was lost: the bells needed to come down, and it was not a job for a carpenter. My father had met my mother by then.

  A year on, and he’s staring at the bells once more, his hands are sweating, his legs are water.

  You’ve no right, he says, through his teeth.

  No more have you, my grandfather says.

  She’s my daughter, says my father, I have every right. My grandfather does not reply to this. He closes the discussion,

  Anyway. It’s been decided.

  They are back to the beginning, which to my father seems like no beginning at all, just a curve in the circle. He would let the matter drop; he is my father, after all: he can call me whatever he likes. But this is not his church, and not his parish, and the priest is not his priest. Watton was my father’s home. Once a week, knotted at the neck, he went to his own church. It had no crumbling tower, no beacon, and just one solitary bell with a desolate clang. When he left for the city, he thought that he had finally escaped the churches and priests and cold stone mornings. And apart from his wedding and the recce of the bell-tower, he hasn’t stepped inside St Giles once. But it wouldn’t matter if he was regular in his attendance, it wouldn’t matter if he was devout, the priest would not favour him. My father is an incomer, after all. The priest is perfectly civil; he gives all the appearance of benevolence, and a thin smile of welcome. But my father isn’t fooled; he knows how things can slip away and splinter, even if they look solid, even if you hold on tight.

  My father and grandfather are too busy arguing over a name to notice that someone is missing: my mother is nowhere to be seen. It’s not as if she hasn’t prepared for the day: she has a long satin dress, a new hat, a pair of handmade silk slippers in cornflower blue, worn just the once, on her wedding day. They’re all laid out and ready, but my mother is slow to get up and slow to get dressed; she makes my father impatient. He stalks about the room, then up and down outside the bedroom door until she bleats at him to go. She’ll meet him at the church; she promises, emphatically, that she’ll be there. My father leaves her; he has to attend to me, after all. I am the reason for everything. The arrangements are all to give me a name; the priest has been summoned to give me a name; my mother has to get out of her bed to witness me being given a name; the two men standing outside the church are arguing about my name. It has passed from simmering disagreement to bellowing rage.

  Lillian! shouts my mother’s father.

  Patricia! goes my father.

  Lillian Patricia Lillian Patricia. The boy in the bell listens, dabbles his feet, flicks the dog-end of his smoke onto the path. He’d go for Patricia, but they won’t ask him for an opinion, nor anyone else. No one will come to save the day, to offer a compromise, to make a show of peace, despite the sending of the lace-edged invitation cards. The acquaintances will stay away. This family is tight as a fist. I can’t say I’d rather be one thing or the other: I would tell my father, if I could, that in the end it will make no difference to me what I am to be called, because my fate, which no one knows yet – even if they can dress me and christen me and take me from my mother – is that I won’t stay with a name at all. This war will be for nothing.

  ~ ~ ~

  I present the facts, all the same; names are to be Learned; they are to be Remembered. My grandfather’s name is Albert Price. My father re-christened him That Old Devil. My mother is called Lillian; she was a Price first and then a Richards. My father also has a name: he’s Richard Richards, so, clearly (according to my grandfather), from that sort of idiot family he cannot be trusted to name a turnip, let alone his first child. The bells lying in the churchyard have names too: Baxter, Brend, Brasyer; their makers have inscribed themselves on their creations. This is all my father wants to do. The boy in the bell is not nameless: he is called Joseph Dodd.

  The girl who stole from me is not nameless: someone will know what she calls herself.

  ~ ~ ~

  The boy traces the name cut in the curved inner of the bell; he knows the feel of it well enough, but not what it says. If he had a blade, he would scrape his own initials on the iron. But Joseph has nothing in his pockets; he has smoked the cigarette he stole from the vestry and now he’s bored with waiting; he would like a coin to buy his breakfast. When the men and the baby go inside the church, Joseph takes his place, hand open ready, at the door.

  Above the rows of empty pews, the saints in the window shine like jewels; the angels vault the ceiling, a bell is sounded from a recess. Watched by my father and grandfather, the priest moves towards the font like a man in mud. My father longs for the sound of footsteps behind him. He’s willing my mother to come. He turns around once, twice, sees only the square door of daylight and the outline of the boy framed within it, hopping like a goblin from one foot to the other. If she were to come now, she could change it; she could tell the priest there’s been a mistake.

  ~

  Where is my mother? She’s waiting. She lies straight as a poker underneath the bedclothes, and stares at the clock on the dresser. She’s waiting for the hands to move up to ten. When the hands reach ten, she tells herself, she will get up and get dressed and go. There will still be time. She fixes on St Giles with its ceiling of angels, the rainbow window of saints, the wisteria hanging in beaded clusters over the walls. But then the noise of the bells begins, ringing people to mass. She will not hear the eight bells of St Giles, but she listens to the rest. The sound is layered, cacophonous: tolling and pleating in her head; there are six churches within a mile of Bath House Yard. It’s a bright sound on a bright morning, but not to my mother. She listens to what they’re saying, a language of tongue on metal only she can understand. The sounds are different but the meaning is the same: Lillian, Lillian, Lillian, rolling over each other, calling louder and darker and longer, until her angels are cracked and crumbling and the saints are shredded glass. Lillian, Lillian, Lillian. She thinks they’re calling her name: they’re calling mine. I am Lillian Patricia Richards. But not forever.

  three

  And she never came?

  My father shakes his head. He echoes me,

  She never came.

  We’re in the kitchen, with the back door open, because my father is making a soup. Mrs Moon has given him a remedy for a calming broth, to help my mother get well. She’s been worse since my grandfather came and stood at the wall; since I’ve started going to school again. She tries to tell me what’s wrong, but it doesn’t make sense.

  It’s a thing inside, is all she will say.

  I try to get her to point to it but the thing keeps moving. It’s never in the same place twice.

  Oh, here, she says, passing her fingers over her eyes. Another time, she’ll put a hand on her chest, or tap her throat just where the dent is.

  Is it the ghosts? I ask, because I know they’re responsible for everything.

  Yes, that’s right, she’ll say, Silly ghosts, eh? Never giving me a minute’s peace.

  My father doesn’t tell Mrs Moon about the ghosts. He tells her it’
s the meddling that makes my mother so ill.

  That meddling Old Devil, my father says, Doesn’t know when to leave well alone. He wants to make sure she goes to school, to sit in the dunce’s corner and learn nothing!

  He points at me like I’m a culprit in the meddling. Mrs Moon makes a sympathetic face and comes back with a recipe. She says it’s for my mother’s Disposition.

  My father’s good at things like tea and toast and potted beef on bread, but he doesn’t know how to make soup; he has burnt two pans already. The back door is open to let out the smoke: he doesn’t want my mother to smell things going wrong. He hands me one of the burnt pans and a scrunch of newspaper.

  See if you can get that off for us, Pats – he says, turning again and looking hard at Mrs Moon’s writing – I shall have to . . . Keep Stirring, he reads.

  He stops immediately, scoops up a mound of leaves and dashes them into the pan. A cloud blooms up. I’m thinking this through, her not coming to my christening.

  Da-ad?

  Yes.

  Dad, why didn’t she come? My father prods at the leaves with a spoon, his head parting the steam as he stares into the pan. He’s sorry he told me now.

  It wasn’t anything to do with you, Pats. It wasn’t your fault or anything.