The Seamstress Read online

  ‘Newton’s breakthrough on velocity was crucial to Rubens’s work,’ she says.

  ‘Oh, how?’

  ‘You know, working on the diagonal axis goes hand in glove with Newton’s ideas on the horizontal and the perpendicular. And those shafts of light in Rembrandt, even Caravaggio, come to that.’

  ‘What about Hawking and Davies? They’ve created new theories of chaos, haven’t they? Isn’t that happening in art?’

  But she gets melancholy, even agitated, when talking about the late twentieth century.

  ‘Oh, I think they’re just chipping away at the edges, I’m afraid nothing great will happen again in art until we get a new equation.’

  These are no ordinary octogenarians. They were hand-picked, like all my friends. They didn’t know they were among the elect.

  What I didn’t know, of course: it was they who had chosen me, in their seemingly passive way, for friendship.

  But to Mary. Slight of build, in fact thin at the moment. Was she well? I asked after the meeting.

  ‘Yes, just got over a bad cold.’

  ‘Ah, sorry to hear that.’

  Sly recent research revealed habits and work: well liked by colleagues; she’s clever; a widow, strong family loyalties; goes to art films; a wide-ranging reader. All welcome data, this, though if my sources had reported plodder, loner, watches sport on television, I would have been equally hooked, recalling the cleft chin, a mouth simply waiting to be ravished. What I want is to kiss Mary slowly, softly, thoroughly, inside her lips, until she is pleasured into a stupor. Her head will thrash from left to right until she shudders. Oh yes, indeed. What I need is one more bout of sexual ecstasy before I hang up my gloves. The nights are drawing in.

  Twice every day I shower meticulously for this woman. Wax my legs weekly. Wash and brush my hair till it shines, powder and adorn myself in Mary’s honour. Do other animals perform this elaborate grooming in the circumstances, I wonder, when the sought-after isn’t even in sight? Gorillas and hedgehogs and wombats, say? Peacocks, there’s no doubt of it, but peahens?

  The first day I saw Mary, saw that homely face transformed by a shy goodness, I was taken by storm. She helped me over a difficult encounter at the time, came to my rescue at the office when a bullying colleague usurped my authority. It was then I saw that this woman was, after all, beautiful. I’d go anywhere, do anything, to be near her. The entrancing smile looked to me then, and still does, like the hallmark of grace.

  It is, I think, this quality that has got to me, the inner life. Otherwise, it would have passed by now, fizzled out the way crushes do. I would be calling this state infatuation, silliness. But I’m in awe of her—this is probably the crux—her sense of purpose, her esoteric knowledge. Also I like her mouth, her breasts and her hands. Probably Aquarian.

  It’s not simple, love. Whoever said it was? I know from my past and that of my family that Love lies side by side with indifference, humiliation and disbelief. I know from Willa.

  ‘There is no love,’ she said once, to my great shock. ‘Only mother-love.’

  Nevertheless, I’m eager to take on Eros once more, nail my colours to his mast.

  She can be observed at work. Through tele-medicine I see her in conference with colleagues, demonstrating her skills to ascending specialists, to nurses. Quiet, adept.

  My obsession reduces me to speechlessness. And I can’t talk about it with anyone at all, can hardly strike a neutral tone on the phone when I have to call her. Mary’s replies, I notice, have become more polite, detached. The airwaves are becoming infected with my love mania. And as everybody knows, there is nothing less palatable than unasked-for devotion.

  Putting the phone down recently after a pretext call, ostensibly about Willa, I finally admitted it: she knows. Oh dear, oh heavens, oh shit; she knows and can’t imagine what to do with me. It was as if she knows my eyes are at every opportunity fixed on her dark hair, soft on her nape, noting the rounded bum in trousers. This is disgraceful, I think, only sadness can come out of this unconscionable attention.

  Years before, I lived in big cities, took risks, went out on blind dates, met men on street corners and danced to jazz bands in Notting Hill. That was another me, the risk-taker, the two-pot screamer.

  Now I’m only slightly smarter. Today I go at a steady clip through the park and the red blaze of sunrise is shocking. It is semi-dark and a rhythmic expelling of breath over my left shoulder accompanied by a swift footfall could be an earnest jogger. Or a rapist. I walk ahead steadily. Nothing happens.

  Out from under the trees into the empty street, several black objects—dogs? no—in the middle of the road turn out to be three fat, huge crows in a stand-off. Something is at stake here among the sooty trio, their legs spread wide on the stage of survival. One looks extraordinarily like Judy Garland strutting her stuff, and I laugh as I pass them by, these theatrical creatures. I imagine my concerns are grander, though we’ll all end up as dust.

  Heading east, around the corner, I note how the Yesterdays shop squats, its windows full of local history brimming with past preoccupations. And in the pink cottage opposite the park there is the tiny old woman, as usual, vigorously sweeping the pavement. God, how she gets to that dust in the cracks. Now, she wouldn’t have death on her mind, or in her house; it’s much too untidy. What a little beauty she is, this whirling dervish, with her short-handled straw broom, giving the footpath a drastic going-over, giving it hell. It must make her happy.

  I cut down to the open reserve, considering this. We act as if all the pleasure we try to line up for ourselves is happiness. The Americans have even written it into their Constitution. But rather than worrying about the pursuit of happiness, wouldn’t we all be better off pursuing the point of living? More worthwhile, wouldn’t it be, to pursue something like justice or virtue? Some people do, of course.

  This is nothing new, this worrying about happiness, thinking of being within a short step of it. I’ve been pursuing it for years, all over the place.

  Years ago I laughed on the Manly ferry while a man sang me a pop song about riding on ferries that was outdated even then. And we made plans for Saturday night. I can see the lines of his face even now, an older man, somewhat amused by my naivety.

  Certain people etch themselves on our minds like a portrait that will never be removed from the inner gaze.

  My friend Mary, for instance, the beautiful ugly—the Italians call it a bruttina—would be appalled to know how often her face enters another woman’s daydreams.

  When I’m not walking I am waiting; life is composed of those two opposites. You’re walking or you’re standing still. Some people go around thinking about life; others walk around, or stand still, considering death. And nobody comes, nothing happens, it’s awful.

  An older, deeper and more honourable recollection comes to mind.

  There she is, lying on the bed, resting, when she’d rather be working. Willa would prefer to be scrubbing the floor, blacking the stove or totting up the accounts so she can send them out and subsequently put food into Joanna’s eight-year-old mouth. I’ll get to that darned stove today, she’d say, as if the stove were to blame for her lying there, out of action.

  The enforced regimen is one she’ll stick to, for she’s full of resolve to get better. The slender arms are still, for the time being: no longer the deft hand reaches up to adjust the kitchen blind that hangs down on one side. Jo performs these tasks now, standing on a chair, taking her orders from the quiet voice.

  ‘Let’s do your exercises, Mum?’

  ‘Soon. First I’d like to know the time.’

  Jo scoots down the passage to the poor kitchen where the ugly square clock hangs from a nail that Dad, in a moment of industry, installed high above the stove.

  ‘The little hand is on three and the big one on five,’ she pants, pleased to bring these tidings.

  ‘Then we might have a cup of tea, love.’

  ‘I’ll do it!’

  ‘Gently.’ C
arefully, Willa warns her hoyden. And the child makes another sortie down the hall, takes the heavy kettle and reaches up to the sink to fill it. As instructed, she places it with care on the wood stove, which she has set this morning and which will burn slowly all day. She’s wiry, this Jo, and becoming dexterous in her movements. In time she will even acquire some of the mother’s grace.

  But there she is, forty years ago, the makings of a doer.

  ‘After our cuppa will you teach me to tell the time?’

  ‘Yes.’ Willa looks at her little girl and considers. ‘Do you know your five times table?’

  ‘Yeah!’

  ‘Yes, you mean.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Oops, watch it, Joanna. ‘Yes, Mum.’ And she starts to sing-song her multiplication so well, Willa wonders why the heck she’s never taught her the clock until now. What a luxury time is. The woman, ever conscious of spending time, now considers she is squandering it. Until now there has always been a place of work to go to: both a yoke and a blessing.

  ‘We’ll sit on the couch in the kitchen and use that clock,’ says Willa.

  ‘Because it’s the only one in the house,’ Jo reminds her, flinging her head round like a little drama queen and mouthing it the way they do on the wireless, so that Willa has to laugh.

  The mother goes into a reverie while she sips her tea. Will he remember to bring home some fish for tonight’s tea? Will he remember to come home? Willa was of the opinion that everyone should have not only one more chance, but two, or more. She had lost count with him.

  Odd that she had fallen for Ben, rather than someone like Jock, who felt like her brother. The dearest man with the part-broken face that showed so little. Why do we love and marry the wrong people?

  ‘We could do the exercises now?’ Jo needs a plan of action.

  ‘All right. Left hand over the shoulder.’ Willa pulls herself up—slowly, slowly does it—and sits on the edge of her bed.

  ‘Right arm behind the back.’ Jo takes up the drill.

  ‘Keep a straight back,’ says Willa.

  ‘Join fingers!’ She is overjoyed at her own childish suppleness, the strong little frame, while her mother gives a grunt of exertion. Sweat appears on Willa’s lip.

  ‘Can I look at your scars, Mum?’

  ‘Later on.’ Willa is taking deep breaths with the effort.

  The child has a replica curly head on top of a slim neck and straight shoulders. Willa’s shoulders are wide and held erect—those of a young swimmer, or dancer—despite the recent surgery. They will never slump into failure or resignation; both mother and daughter know this.

  ‘What does consumption mean?’

  ‘It means something wrong with your lungs.’

  ‘Are yours OK now?’

  ‘One of them is, and I can make do with that.’

  Her breathing will sometimes let her down from now on, when she is cleaning, digging her garden, pruning trees. The feminine labours of sewing and knitting that come naturally are more easily taken on. But it all has to be done.

  The house’s broken lino and threadbare hope are vivid. Pale-green walls in the kitchen, which was the main room, the one we lived in. But no, I’m not lost in nostalgia; I am still on the move. As for making any progress, that’s another matter. My taking up of household tasks today, any day, can never be done without thinking of Willa. Perhaps this is so because as her spirit and strength are ebbing, I am taking them on.

  It’s a working day, and the parade of humankind reveals itself. Pedestrians just emerged from the train are obediently going to work with heads bowed—or is it my imagination?—trudging. And the motorists: old and shrunken folk, some of them, their best times past, bent on an early appointment, going at tortoise pace, crouched low at the wheel, peering through the thick spokes. Exasperated young turks belt along like Formula One contestants, zigzagging and passing too close. Gung-ho, male, Caucasian. Tsk. Public enemy number one. And young mothers with children aboard, making careful progress, though one suspects with an arm ready to fling into the back seat to curb hostilities.

  Hostilities bring to mind my own job. Tittle-tattle and gossip reign supreme; it appears to be a necessity to keep up an interest in living. I got caught up in someone else’s quarrel this morning and spoke out of turn.

  Generally I try to pay heed to life, to spend more time listening than talking. This can be irritating to others, even seen as laziness, so I attempt to pay back good deeds and generous speech in equal measure.

  Small talk is, of course, often derided by intellectuals, or those who would be. But someone I loved, now dead yet popping into my head at odd times, once told me how useful a bit of chat can be to keep oiling life along, the workaday patter to gloss over dispiriting moments.

  It’s always easy to find parking in this part of town, so down-at-heel it’s a miracle any business happens here at all. The place I’m headed for is Ant Industries Inc. and the building turns out to be, like most of its surroundings, tired and tatty. A dilapidated old door swings open half-heartedly, and there stands a Vietnamese-looking man, tiny, nicely dressed, all neat and contained. He looks like the manager and I rapidly spell out the position because this job, I’ve been told, is urgent.

  ‘Now: there are eight boxes in my car—documents that have to be collated into six hundred envelopes by tomorrow. A sample is enclosed and the sticky labels are in this box. I need a trolley, please.’

  I wait. A smile and a hand movement from him show he has barely followed. This is because he is either foreign or what my paternal grandmother used to call simple. He could be both. But he ushers me inside to speak with Ada.

  Ada in fact is a lot like Granny, my father’s mother: polite and tough as dried chamois, I’d say, and so tiny that anyone would feel like a brontosaurus beside her. She understands perfectly what has to be done for the mail-out and looks just a little bit amused at my slight huffing and puffing about deadlines.

  While she counts the boxes and checks the sample envelope I look around at this ant industry. Slow-moving individuals, some moon-faced, sit at benches, putting things together, while from concealed corners a voice from circa 1950 croons a song about dreaming. It’s a song my father taught me. What a wizard blower of smoke rings he was. Craven A, the smoo-ooth cigarette. He had scores of pop numbers, fast and slow.

  There is no sign from the workers that they are taking in the song’s words or detect the exquisite aptness of them. I return Ada’s attention and say, as I put Dad aside until later, ‘Yes, the order number is in there.’ Then continue to regard the folk at their benches, faces of every description. Unaware of my presence, they steadily toil at their own pace. There is nothing else to do here but I don’t seem to want to leave their dreamy workplace. ‘Thank you,’ I say to Ada.

  On the way back to the car, memories tumble around, mingled with old refrains: ruminations on childhood, the puzzle of living at all and, naturally, the anguish of death, from everyone’s standpoint.

  My appointment with the dead is due. This is my second task: to visit the tombstone to see if restoration has taken place.

  With the graveyard plan on the seat beside me, I drive in a respectful manner through the cemetery. Some of the inscriptions nearby tell much; others are sparing with their sentiments. It’s impossible to know whether relatives were determined not to be seen publicly mourning, so economic are the epitaphs. A crop of people it seems died just after the war: 1946 was a year many would never forget.

  Erected in loving memory of my darling wife Ivy Jenkins, aged 26, on 14th June 1946, and our baby daughter born and died 13th June 1946. One can only guess at their ordeal. This is the Catholic part of the cemetery.

  Another looks jaunty in its message, at first blush, as though they’re hedging their bets, but more careful reading shows it to be decent enough: A grand surprise or a beautiful oblivion. This was a husband and wife who died nine years apart, remembered by their son. />
  An Italian grave with a splendid angel on top, proclaims: Volava al cielo 19/2/46, a nove anni—flown to heaven at nine years of age, leaving her dear parents Giuseppe and Cecilia and sister, in the most profound sorrow—nel più profondo dolore. Why it should sound more tragic in Italian could be due to the unapologetic, lyrical and heartfelt words that we usually save up for Art. The stuff of an operatic libretto.

  And then there’s one written by the parents of three children, with photographs set into the marble, who all died at different ages before the parents, the ultimate taking-back by an uncaring Indian-giver. Oh thank you, God.

  Vandals have had their way here, with vases of flowers thrown around, and the odd piece of granite kicked about. Curious and sorrowful in itself that we don’t want to leave them in peace, the dead.

  I come to my father’s newly discovered grave, near a large tree and right beside a tap, of all things. He’d have preferred beer on tap for that whopping thirst. I can see him as if he’s heard my thought, throwing his head back, showing snaggled but clean teeth as he laughs in that gusty, side-splitting way.

  The freshly inscribed black text on a gleaming white marble page bears all necessary information. Father of J. died in ignominy, I might have had written, for this is what I have learned. Departed in a state of delusion, believing he was right and everyone else wrong. Shuffled off no doubt wearing shoes with no socks, with his hair unkempt and needing a shave. Well, you should have taken better care of me, I continue my miserable reverie, in the early stages, when I needed you. Then I’d not have defected, would have stuck around to return the favour later on, when I was thirty and you were sixty and in straits, in need of forgiveness. I could easily have been there, you rascal, you poor old sod.

  Unforeseen tears roll down my face onto the map I’m holding. Regret and sorrow, expressed in salty tears, nothing new in that. It wasn’t my fault that you died alone, my feckless father. The booze sucked away at your brain while you were racketing around, being a larrikin, everyone’s friend except ours.