Remember Me... (25 page)

‘To maim your friends?'

‘We didn't think of it like that.'

‘I suppose you did bare-fist fighting?'

‘We did. I did. I wasn't very good at it. I didn't like it.'

‘Why did you do it?'

‘You did.' Joe slung another pebble at the water. A flash of memory, of the sickening fear of bare-fist fights came over him. ‘You just did.'

‘For honour?'

‘That's laying it on a bit thick.'

‘It was,' said Natasha, thoughtfully. ‘It was for honour. Wasn't it? Just as you were disappointed with yourself when you did not hit Robert after he had insulted you.'

‘I should have clocked him one, yes.'

‘Clocked?'

‘Hit.'

‘Why?'

He stopped. He did not want to be reminded of Robert. Even retrospective jealousy was disturbing.

‘We are in Sicily,' said Natasha. ‘Honour.'

‘Corsica!' Joe said. ‘
The Corsican Brothers.'

‘I begin to understand. There is no café in Caldbeck of course.'

‘Of course not.'

‘And if there were, women would be banned.'

‘Come on!'

‘Ceaseless childbearing and the church and enslaved to the house.'

‘Tradition.'

‘While the men drink in the pubs.'

‘Or work in the fields or work in the mines.'

‘But later they drink in the pubs.'

‘Some of them. There are many nonconformist teetotallers in these fells.'

‘I am trying,' said Natasha sternly, ‘to build up a picture of your background. This is important for our future.'

‘Then we'd best go to Wigton immediately!'

They laughed, and after Joe had made a quick survey, they kissed each other, in public, far too closely, Joe thought, and at far too great a length for a Caldbeck Sunday morning.

‘First we must pay the ducks,' said Natasha.

They went to Wigton three times.

Natasha's memories of Wigton from that visit were as of a triptych. The single figure of Joseph dominated one panel; the single figure of Sam the other; and between them, like a crowd moving in procession towards a shrine, the faces and voices of her new husband's old home. It was not unlike a Breughel, she thought.

Once in the town Joseph was like a hound off a leash. He took her into Church Street and pointed out the marvel of a street shaped like a crooked leg and little yards and even smaller alleys off; the pig market in the middle of it where they had stolen in to play hounds and hares and the runnels down to the High Street where they had hidden when the Chair-leg Gang swept down from Bridlefield, running hard and looking for a fight; the slaughterhouse where he had watched the sudden sickening buckle of knees as the gun to the head was fired, and the West Cumberland Farmers' Warehouse out of which came a smell of grain so thick it could have been eaten. And above Eddie Bell's father's shop Eddie had made a gym, he had weights and chest expanders and photographs of Mr Universe papering the wall; Blob lived in this house, Mazza in that, next to Mr Routledge who had led the union at the
factory and then notoriously, unforgivably, switched to the management, and Peter Donnelly who had to sleep with all the windows open because of his TB had set up as a photographer at the top of those stone stairs. This was just part of what he told her about one street.

He took her to the bottom of Meeting House Lane to see the Salvation Army Hall whose youth club he had patronised, as he had those of the Methodists, for the table tennis; the Roman Catholics, for the dances; and of course his own church, the Church of England, for the Anglican Young People's Association and the socials. Also in Meeting House Lane under one of the many arches that led off the two main streets was the Palace Picture House in which he had seen hundreds of films.

She was marched the length of slumland Water Street whose heroes and villains and crowded histories of war and peace were unrolled, a scroll of battle and survival. He took her along the Crofts which dated, he told her proudly, from the eighth century and squirrelled her around the wriggling tentacles which stretched out from Market Hill, Birdcage Walk, down Burnfoot, up Plaskett's Lane, and wove her back to the network behind the Parish Rooms. He did not go into the churches and the many chapels but pointed them out, insisting she be impressed by their number and variety.

It was something of a fever, she thought, and puzzled over its intensity. What she saw was a plain little town, not flattered by the drizzle, a place of little colour and animation, dead on the first day they visited, admittedly a Sunday, Natasha thought at first that the deadness revealed its true character.

Until the next day when, shyly, he led her into a yard off Water Street. The cloud was high, light pearl grey, the yard small, empty and surely condemned, Natasha thought, as they emerged into it through a short tunnel. It was, she thought, a pitiful hovel. She felt love for the small boy who had lived in this awful place. Joseph had told her with some regret that it was about to be demolished.

‘Four houses,' he announced, looking at her proudly, she thought, and a little fiercely, ‘one up, one down, one wash house and one shared WC over there.' He let it sink in for a while. He had discovered that she was as impressed and intrigued by the context of his past as he had been with hers. This both moved and surprised him. Her sense of the
equality of their lives had never struck him so strongly and he was grateful. He had never been ashamed of his past but he had never thought he could boast about it. Natasha licensed him to do so and he leaped at the chance. And this hovel, as he saw it through her eyes, this sanctuary as he himself remembered it from the time his father had returned from the war, this place now abandoned was not to be hidden away.

‘There was a man called Kettler lived in that house,' he pointed. ‘He lived on tripe and beer and never did a day's work. He cadged and odd-jobbed at the cattle and pig auctions and once he drowned some kittens just there. I saved one!'

Natasha smiled.

‘There was a girl lived next to us who loved that kitten but I rationed her helpings with it. Why was I so mean? I went to see her with Mam and the cat just before she died. She was only about eight. In a sanatorium. She had TB. There was an epidemic of TB in Wigton just after the war. My mother had it. And though I didn't find this out until I had glandular fever, they told me at the hospital that I'd had it, in 1945. It can't have been much of a dose. My mother never told me and I can't remember a thing about it. But I can remember,' rather reluctantly, ‘that WC stank. My mother used to try to keep it fresh. But it stank. There was another girl . . . she went to Germany with her mother. The town was made up of yards like this. We thought they were just great.' He looked around and she lost him for a few moments. The eye of love, she thought.

‘I used to have a dream,' he said. ‘There was this girl buried in a field I used to play in. It was the girl with TB. I was convinced, in the dream, that I'd murdered her and one day she would be dug up.'

So much had happened here, she thought, so much had happened to Joseph here in this yard and in these mean streets and lanes and insignificant alleyways, so much that mattered so deeply to him . . .

He was infused by it, drunk on it, she thought. Yet it was not just this place, it was in Joseph himself. He had been just as swept up in France, she thought, though she had feared at first that he was merely over-impressed. He had been overwhelmed by the BBC, though that could
have been no more than that he was suffering from a kind of vertigo having been rocketed beyond all expectation. And here, in Wigton, though fiercer, it was the same and she saw that he had the energy and the capacity to embrace whatever appealed strongly to him, an unembarrassed love for what moved him, a love, she thought, unafraid to express itself. This she had never before encountered. His almost shameless, certainly reckless, but wholly genuine embrace of life both puzzled and beguiled her.

‘He's very loyal,' said Sam.

‘Why do you say that?'

Sam smiled and let it drift. Both of them knew the answer. Joe had gone to spend time with Alan, his oldest friend, to whom Natasha had already been introduced. Ellen was making afternoon tea – lunch was impossible with the pub's opening hours. She had shooed away Natasha's offer of help and Sam was taking her for a walk ‘around the Backs' – along Tenter's Row, over the hill called Stoneybanks to the Swimming Baths, and back up a small hill into Proctor's Row against St Mary's Church.

Sam strolled where Joseph had marched. Sam was thoughtful and measured in contrast to Joseph's gleam-eyed championing. Three times they were passed by men with dogs; on each occasion Sam was warmly greeted and Natasha was swiftly, slyly, appraised.

‘Is he like you?'

‘You ask some blunt questions, Natasha. Is he like me?'

‘Is he?'

‘We had very different “bringings-up”. Life was just harder in my time. Not that Joe – well, not that Joe didn't have his problems.'

‘What problems? Was it to do with being different?'

‘Do you think he is different?'

‘How else could he have come out of here?'

‘More hard-working, I'd say, than different. And determined.' He paused. ‘A bit different.'

‘What were these problems, Sam?'

Whenever she said his name, Sam felt a weakening. The more so in this case as she accompanied it by slipping her arm through his. She was a little taller than he was, but the reach of their stride was in perfect unison. There was that about her which touched Sam to a tenderness he must once have felt for Ellen, he told himself, but perhaps not even for her. There was some mixture of frailty and boldness in Natasha, as if there were no defences but no fear either and yet she called out for protection. She was a woman you could gladly spend a lifetime getting to know.

‘He found things a bit of a strain,' he said, ‘at times.'

‘The examination work?'

‘Not so much that, more what it was leading to.'

‘Or leading from?'

Sam nodded. She was always onto it.

‘He was a good swimmer,' Sam said, as they passed by the Public Baths, built, she noticed, in the warm sandstone which was, she thought, the best feature of the town's architecture.

‘Have I married a hero?'

‘You don't have to tackle anybody when you swim.'

‘I have not seen him confrontational.'

‘Both of you took a lot on trust.'

The drizzle strengthened. As if to shield her from it, he held her arm a little more tightly.

‘He often tells me that you could have done what he has done.'

‘Does he?' Sam was almost stopped in his tracks. ‘Does he now?'

‘He says he thinks you're cleverer than him. He also admires you for fighting in the war in the Far East. But he says you can't talk about it.'

‘Does he?'

‘You seem amazed.'

Sam said nothing but pressed her arm gently; to stop.

‘Were you scarred by the war, Sam?'

‘Very likely.' He paused. ‘Sometimes I think Ellen and Joe had the worst of it.'

‘Why was that?'

‘You can probably work it out better than I can, Natasha. I haven't got the psychology.'

‘You mean you don't want to . . . He's very confident,' Natasha said, and waited to be challenged.

‘I'm glad you find him so,' he said. ‘I can't give him any maps for where he is or where he's going. Mine ran out long ago. But he'll need all the help going.'

‘Why?'

‘You know why, Natasha. He's finding places he's no idea of and . . .'

‘Yes?' He's about to say, ‘He's weak,' she thought.

‘He's very lucky, to my mind,' Sam said, most deliberately, eyes straight ahead, ‘to have you by his side.'

Natasha was moved. I have found another father, she said to herself. Or rather, I have found Sam, my father-in-law. Joe had to be rooted in Sam, hadn't he? ‘Will you tell me about – Burma? It was terrible, wasn't it?'

And Sam told her, freely, as he had never told Joe who, when he learned of it, was both proud of his wife's drawing blood from that stone and envious of her closeness to his father.

A few days later on his people tour, Joe took Natasha to the cattle auction to witness the Tuesday Sale. They sat at the back of the crowded arena, a wooden structure, roof, walls and bare-board seats, a circular central sand-floored space for the display of the cattle. Here beasts turned into money following the chant of the high priest, Josh Benson, auctioneer. His rapid half-sung drone from the altar of his desk summoned the faithful to buy. ‘I have ten bid, ten bid, ten bid, ten bid ten, bid ten, eleven, twelve, twelve bid twelve and thirteen, I have thirteen bid, thirteen bid, thirteen bid, fourteen, fourteen bid, fourteen bid, over there fifteen, I have fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, I have seventeen bid, seventeen bid, seventeen, I have . . .'

Natasha was entranced by the sound and Joe directed her to the faces, all topped by a flat cap, real Cumbrian faces, Joseph whispered, some concentrated, some cunning, some nursing pain, but strong faces, he pointed out to her afterwards, faces you saw again and again in the district, careful, world-worn, Northern, Norse, faces of farming men
whose way of life had changed so little and stretched back unbroken beyond biblical years. Joseph, she thought, you are a fathomless romantic about your own past.

‘I'm his Uncle Colin.' They were outside the Co-op: Joseph had paused there and for a moment Natasha had feared he might take her in to face more introductions. Instead Colin, to whom he had referred a little and guardedly, popped out, clad in black motorcycling leather. ‘I expect he's been trying to avoid you and me meeting up.'

‘No I haven't!'

Colin did not take his eyes off Natasha. Always hit them right between the eyes, that was his tactic. He transferred the brown carrier bag to his left hand. ‘Stores,' he explained, and held out his right.
‘Bonjour
, anyway.
Parlez-vous.
I expect you think Wigton's a dump.'