Pugg's Portmanteau

by DM Bryan

  Meg emerges from the mouth of the tent and beckons to Sarah. Inside, the cloths lie unfolded and smoothed. Today, Sarah will inscribe and cut out twelve patterns for pockets for the charity girls to sew. With a smile and a nod, she sends Meg back to the house, and then, stooping to her work, Sarah chalks out the purses, taking up her scissors to cut out each shape. Twelve is a busy number of anything to have to cut so quick, and beyond the mouth of the tent, Sarah can see the shadows moving faster than she can. The girls will soon gather from the tumble-stone cottages or grubby town rooms where they live with their families. How disappointed they’d been that today was not to be bonnets, for the troublemakers among them had put about that they would begin their plain sewing with lipped caps. Sarah told them that pockets would be simpler and just as necessary. “But bonnets,” said little Tidy, “will fetch a better price.” The troublesome ones were always named Tidy—or Grace. And not because they are Dissenter’s daughters, thinks Sarah, but because such is the way of names: a Prudence rarely is and a Patience never. Marys and Margarets behave themselves. And Sarahs—Sarahs are always good girls.

  By the time the charity girls arrive, the sun on the tent makes the inside too hot, and Sarah determines they should work outside instead. Tidy is the fourth girl to appear. Already present are two Janes and an Ann. The girls stand neatly in a row, and Tidy brings up the scrag end. By now, Sarah has finished marking and cutting out the work for the girls to sew. She has Jane and Jane and Ann and Tidy come inside the tent, where she bids them to take up the corners so that they might carry the oilcloth out to the shade of a nearby tree.

  “But it has no corners,” says Tidy, describing a circle in the air with her hand. “It’s round as a pie.”

  “As close as you can to corners then,” says Sarah.

  “A room has corners,” Tidy tells a Jane, “but never this.”

  “Girls, imagine you are in a room,” says Sarah, “Imagine it has corners.”

  “I can imagine a room,” says the other Jane, “It has a huge bed with all the curtains drawn.”

  “Is there anyone inside?” says Tidy.

  “Yes!” says Jane, even as Sarah says, “Girls!”

  They all look at her, silently, eyes bright in the half-light of the tent. “Pick up a corner,” says Sarah, “I am certain you understand what I mean.”

  The girls shuffle into formation and each picks up an edge of the oilcloth. They are standing staring at her, waiting for her to tell them what next to do, when Mary enters and stands in the middle of the cloth. “Get out of the room,” says Tidy.

  “It’s not a room,” says Mary. “It’s only a tent.”

  “That’s not what mistress says,” says Tidy.

  “Please,” says Sarah, “Please, please, please.”

  In the end, she shoos them all out into the sunshine and drags out the oilcloth herself. Ten minutes later, a passing traveler would have to look carefully to find the twelve little girls and their instructress hidden from the sun. They sit tucked beneath drooping swathes of willow, each girl sewing her pocket with one of the twelve needles Sarah takes from a fish-shaped case from her kit. A skein of unbleached linen thread lies next to her thigh as she sits awkwardly on the ground. How long has it been since she sat in anything other than a chair in a parlour? Her own stiff skirt refuses to lie flat, and the hoops of her petticoat bow out over what should be her lap. How like the tent she is, her every movement provoking an answering shudder from the fabric that comprises her.

  One of the two Janes gives her a pocket to inspect, complaining that her thread knots of its own accord, and Sarah squints at the mess in her hands, remembering she has left her eye-glasses in the tent. She gives the tangled sewing back to Jane, telling her it will do her good to fix it herself. “Patience,” she tells the child, “is a virtue.” Then she sits, not sewing but feeling the little needle-case with the tips of her fingers. She touches the hard-carved edges of its scales. Bone white is the colour of her fish. Lady Barbara has a needle case made of horn, which is darkly variegated, but translucent in places.

  “Mistress?” says Tidy, her head bent industriously over her sewing.

  “Yes, my dear,” says Sarah, “how does your pocket do?”

  “I went to Bath with my father on a cart.”

  Sarah doubts this. Tidy has no father of which she is aware. “How very nice,” she says. Her own sewing lies beside her, but without her glasses she can do nothing, and she finds herself curiously unable to rise and fetch them from the tent. Her fingers move on their own, opening the needle case and closing it again.

  “I saw some ladies, and they were boxing.”

  “Oh, I doubt that, Tidy dear. Are you keeping your stitches all the same size?”

  “They were ladies. My father pushed me through to the front so I could see everything.”

  “The same size and as close as possible. Even if we can’t see the stitches, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing your pocket well made.”

  “They had a half-crown in each hand, and the first to drop a coin would lose.”

  Sarah is determined to ignore Tidy’s fantastical narration, but the detail of the coins gives her pause. From a distance Sarah has seen boxing matches on the peripheries of the fairs where she sometimes goes to purchase peas and gooseberries. She knows them from the peculiar cries they occasion and by the sight of the crowd, clustering around a rising cloud of dust. Coats, hats, men’s backs—who ever would allow a child, a girl, to scramble into the middle of such a scene? Women cannot fight in that manner; proprieties whisper in their ear, make them stop. “Small even stitches make seams secure against hard usage,” she says.

  “Mine are very neat,” says Tidy.

  Sarah looks down at the fish between her fingers, which are yellow beside the bone. She hears herself saying, “Are you certain it was a half-crown? Not a shilling piece?”

  “Drover told me. He saw.”

  Sarah looks up. All the girls listen and none work. “Sew,” she tells them. “Back to your pockets.”

  “What’s boxing?” says Ann, her hair coming out of her bonnet, each wisp finer than the thread with which she works.

  “Smacking,” says Tidy, “hitting as hard as you can.”

  “My sister boxes,” says Ann, “and sometimes she boxes me until I cry.”

  “Girls,” says Sarah, but this time the word is more sigh than meaningful speech. Sarah’s leg compressed against the boning of her skirt prickles, and her back begins to ache. Also, her head hurts, even in the shade.

  Mary sets down her sewing. The two parts of the pocket spread like a butterfly and demonstrate how little work the child has done. “What did they wear?” says Mary. “I would be afraid to box in my ruffles, even though they are already tattered. My sister has promised me hers when she gets new.”

  Tidy says, “No ruffles. Jackets, all plain. Their petticoats was tucked up into their drawers. They wore their white stockings.”

  All around Sarah, the girls shake their heads. Margaret clicks her tongue in disgust. “Best stockings,” she says, when she finds Sarah looking at her, “are for church.” The girls sit neatly on folded legs with their skirts puffed up around them, a field of tiny, creamy mushrooms. Nobody sees their stockings, but Sarah knows their colour. Along with their caps and aprons, she regularly inspects those stockings for neatness and cleanliness, and darning is one of their first lessons in plain sewing. They wear blue stockings, the lot of them—plain, homespun and dyed dark to hide the dirt. If a girl came in white stockings, Sarah would give her new, just as sober and practical as the others. Sarah keeps her own white stockings in a box at the end of her bed.

  “I’m finished, mistress,” says the other Jane, holding out her pocket to Sarah. Sarah takes it, and even without her eye-glasses can tell that the stitches are large and uneven, jagged around the edges of the linen form. Jane smiles,
her teeth an echo of her needlework.

  “And where, Jane,” says Sarah, “is the opening?”

  “Mistress?” says Jane.

  “It’s a pocket, child. A pocket. Where does your hand go?”

  Jane takes back her sewing and studies it. She has no answer.

  “Stop smiling, Tidy. You’ve not done a good day’s work either.” Sarah tries to rise to her feet, but her leg has grown so numb it gives her no support. She must lean toward the tree’s trunk where a branch of the willow hangs low. Holding the tree, she pulls herself upright until she stands next to the trunk. All around her head, green froth hangs from branches no thicker than the children’s arms. At her feet, their voices foam. Her leg prickles as the numbness worsens, and she imagines Tidy’s boxers, hands made strong by gleaning or washing or polishing someone else’s silver-plate. Each fist on the other’s flesh makes the sound of lard slapped against a cut of beef. Inside each palm, the coin, nestles carefully—like an egg in a nest—and then, as each fist finds its mark, it cuts like a knife edge, slicing into the only tender part of a drudge’s hand. Each palm, when opened, shows purple marks. Each face shows bruises, fluted like a pie-plate with the imprint of fingers. Sarah shifts her weight, and in her imagining the women shift also, moving side to side as they size up their opponent. Again and again, the fighters move together, swinging their fists so that they make contact with the other’s cheeks and shoulders. It wouldn’t do to hit directly, with fists clenched, for fear the pain might cause the fingers to release, dropping the precious half-crown. Instead, she’d hit with the flat of her fist, using the force of the blow to keep the coin in her palm. Sarah looks at her own hand. Thumb in or out? She tries both before catching herself. She’s forty, not ten—she should know better.

  “Girls,” she says, and this time they all look in her direction. Twelve pairs of eyes, and Sarah has a mad wish to sort them by colour: Margaret in the pale sky, Ann and both Janes between the hedgerows where the fields show dark, and Tidy here under the willow leaves. Instead, Sarah says, “Finish off your threads. Return your needles to me. Tidy, bring me my sewing box.”

  “Are we finished then, mistress?” says Margaret. She holds out her pocket, seeking Sarah’s approval. Ann, both Janes seek to show her their work. She wants to say she is pleased with them, but cannot—will not. The girls must learn not to expect praise; they must discover the satisfaction of the work itself. Whims and dangerous enthusiasms have marred their mothers’ lives, and Sarah would replace all that with a quiet satisfaction in their own useful labour.

  “We are finished for today,” says Sarah. She collects the half-done pockets and the needles, counting each one as she places it in her needle-case.

  e

  Lady Barbara sits beside her curtained bed in the back parlour on the ground floor of the farmhouse. As always, she has work in her hands, sewing a shift for the newest of the girls. She shows it to Sarah, holding up the thin cloth to the light from the mullioned window. Across the work, two crossed bars of shadow fall. Sarah takes the work from Lady Barbara and moves closer to the window. Her glasses now sit on her nose where they belong, and Sarah can see the excellence of the stitches. She hands it back to Lady Barbara, who only nods her head as she takes back her work. Sarah thinks of Margaret, of the upturned face, of the need.

  Beside Sarah’s accustomed chair sits a pile of knitted items: dark stockings, fingerless gloves, men’s caps. This is work come from the village—from the old women she and Barbara patronize. A few of the pieces are neatly constructed, with tight seams and the woollen loops exactly sized, but most of the pieces are lumpy and ill-formed. She spreads out a cap so large it might fit two men. She unrolls a pair of stockings as different in disposition as badly matched spouses. She pulls on a glove and counts holes for six fingers. Sarah Scott begins to laugh—she cannot help herself.

  Sarah says, “It will be a charitable act indeed to buy these.”

  Lady Barbara says nothing but sews with a regular motion of the hand, in and out, in and out. Sarah sets the knitting in her lap and lowers her glasses. Beyond her, the farmhouse window shows a quarter of green field and a quarter of blue sky. The other half of the frame features a stone outbuilding. “Doubtless,” says Sarah, the rim of her glasses under her fingertips, “the old ladies’ eyes betray them. They could knit well enough once.”

  She remembers the day she and Elizabeth went to the shop in Charing Cross. So many pairs of eyeglasses she tried on, Elizabeth yawning as the young man brought more. “Old,” says Sarah Scott’s sister, telling the young man his business. “She has old sight by now. You may suit her thus.”

  The young man politely explains he has all manner of optic glasses and no longer divides his stock into old eyes and young. “See here,” and he holds out to Elizabeth the very pair for which Sarah reaches, “the focus of the glass is marked upon the frame.”

  Elizabeth looks, although Sarah wants to believe she will be unable to see the minute markings. How can a younger sister’s eyes fail and an elder sister’s function so perfectly?

  “Yes,” says Elizabeth, examining the inside of the tortoiseshell frame, “I do see. How exact everything is these days.” She smiles at the young man, and Sarah takes the glasses away from her, trying them on. Instantly, her sister blurs as if plunged underwater, but her own hands leap into view, veined and big-knuckled, the skin so rough she might be scaled.

  “These,” says Sarah, “I’ll take these.” But she does not want them.

  Once home, Sarah’s eyeglasses bring no abatement of the pain that plagues her, but with them on she can sew and read again; she can work at night by candle or lamp-light, decorating fire screens and the lids of lady’s toilette boxes. Sarah Scott regards her eyeglasses with an attachment she fears might not be acceptable to God. And yet, she suffers still from her headaches, each arrival foretold by the tightening of the skin of her temples. Sarah massages her head, hoping she is mistaken. To Lady Barbara she says, “Do you suppose it might be an acceptable act of charity to outfit the old ladies with eyeglasses?”

  In and out goes Lady Barbara’s needle. She sits nearer to the window, Sarah notices, and she sews more slowly by lamplight, but the volume of finished pieces never diminishes. Shifts, petticoats, tuckers for the girls; needlework screens and seat-covers for the house; fine embroidered waistcoats for Sarah’s brothers: these are the product of Lady Barbara’s needle.

  At last, Lady Barbara stops sewing and nods. “Perhaps,” says she, “your sister might make a collection among the ladies of her acquaintance—cast-off spectacles, no longer used, might suit the dignity of our old women.”

  Sarah nods. Picking up the village knitting, she takes the cloth and wraps it all into a bundle to send to Elizabeth in London. Payment for the knitting comes back by a Montagu serving man, with a note of gratitude on behalf of Elizabeth’s charitably inclined friends. But then what becomes of the hats and gloves? Are they passed to servants? Given to the parish for distribution to the poor? Will there soon be a beggar on Gin Lane, befuddled by old Mrs. Banforth’s mismatched stockings? Sarah binds the package about with string, pulling the cords tight and knotting them fast. The package bulges, confined within a girdle of small, tight half-hitches. Sarah Scott ties one more, pulling hard.

  The headache sprouts, grows. Sarah says, “You may have been right about the unwisdom of working outside. I fear I have taken too much sun.”

  No answer.

  “Although, the girls and I sat under a willow.”

  No answer.

  Sarah says, “And the shade was quite complete.”

  No answer.

  “It is still a beautiful day.”

  The quality of Barbara’s silence changes. Then, the rasp of cloth on cloth. Even before Sarah turns back from the window she knows Lady Barbara has resumed her sewing. The needle dips in and out, with a sharp, piercing regularity. A measured rhyt
hm. A breath. And another. One more.

  e

  That evening, Sarah chooses a practical project: a peach-coloured, silk-embroidered gown she must rework into a more suitable shape. The alteration is complicated, for with age she grows stouter, while her gowns keep their girlish figures. Sarah tugs and considers. The fabric of the bodice must be made capacious enough to allow her to pin in the stomacher without unseemly gaps. In this, she is aided by fashion, which dictates that she might narrow her skirts without causing offense. The fabric slides between her fingers, a sickly hue unflattering to her sallowness, but the only calculation that matters is the amount of expansion and contraction, or she will have nothing respectable to wear. She can no longer pay the purchase price of so much brocaded silk, and but for the cost of the fabric, she might be persuaded to abandon the dress altogether. Sarah knows no servant or farm girl might wear fabric so fine. Those ladies of fashion she still knows—her sister’s friends—would scorn such an unfashionable stuff as this. No, she must make use of it, slicing peach cloth from the satiny hips to suture to the waist. If only her head didn’t hurt so much. She does not begrudge Lady Barbara her fire, even on such a warm evening, but the heat worsens the tightness in the sinews around her eyes, making each temple the seat of a tugging, tearing pain.

  Sarah Scott leaves off rubbing her forehead and takes up her workbox. The little bone fish lies on top, and her scissors nestle just below. She will look absurd in rich brocade altered for farmhouse life, but knowledge of her own oddity arrives as a familiar ache. Even in youth, she was never considered a beauty. Her only admirer was a man who never praised her looks or intelligence or wit, and when he’d proposed marriage, she accepted, mistaking his diffidence for respect. On their wedding day, she’d been presentable in this gown, this peach-coloured silk, but upon seeing her in it for the first time, Mr. George Scott, her future husband, said nothing. He merely glanced at her, as if to satisfy himself that she was present, and then they walked together to the place where the minister waited.