Knitting

by Anne Bartlett

  ON THEIR fourth night Kate said, “We’re going out to dinner.”

  “Good,” said Sandra. “Time for a change. Where shall we go?”

  “No, Sandra. ‘We’ as in Tony and me. We need time out.”

  “Oops. Sorry. Sure. Of course you do.” And off they went.

  Sandra and Martha waved them goodbye from the door like forlorn parents waving off a honeymoon couple.

  At eight o’clock the phone rang. It was Kate. They’d had a few drinks and didn’t want to drive. They were staying in a motel. Sandra, who had never known Kate to have more than two glasses of wine, found this hard to believe.

  She and Martha had a counterpoint dinner of baked beans on toast.

  “Beans, beans, they’re good for the heart, beans, beans, they make you fart,” said Martha.

  “I’m going for a walk on the beach,” said Sandra with an edge to her voice.

  “Shall I come?”

  “No, I’d rather go by myself if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure. No worries. Just like Kate and Tony,” said Martha. “But at least I asked.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we weren’t really invited on this holiday, were we? But here we are, cooped up together like a batch of new chickens. We need a bit of space, I reckon. I’m going for a walk too, but I’ll go the other way. All right?”

  Sandra would have preferred the whole beach to herself. As she walked, with Martha far in the distance, she tried to figure out whether Martha was right. Had she been invited on this week away, or had she presumed? She honestly couldn’t remember.

  Sandra went for a long walk, around the spit and back. When she returned to the house, Martha was working on her strange white garment. She packed it up when Sandra came in the door.

  “Don’t stop.”

  “No, it’s OK. I’ve had enough. Do you want to start looking at those patterns?”

  They got out Sandra’s filing box and the flat leather school case with the collection of wartime pattern books. Martha had also brought a few patterns of her own.

  “Shonger bonger, look at this,” said Martha. “Nineteen eighteen, Khaki Comforts! Soldiers’ stuff. Balaclava with cape pieces. Looks like it should be made of chain mail. What are those big flappy bits for? To protect his chest?”

  “Yes, you had to keep your chest warm. Flu epidemics, remember. And no proper heating.” Sandra turned the page. “Look, here’s another variety. It’s even called a chest protector.”

  “Looks like an undershirt,” said Martha. “Only too short. That would never keep his bum warm. What are those little tabs at the waist? Oh, I see,” she said, running her finger down the lines of pattern. “There’s no side seam. It’s like a tabard. Well, that wouldn’t be much good either, letting the drafts in like that.”

  “And here,” said Sandra, “we have knee caps, an abdominal band, a body belt, a naval jersey, and a lady’s cape.”

  “Is there a picture of the cape?”

  “No, just the pattern. I think it must have been on the cover, which has torn off.”

  “It’s a nice pattern,” said Martha, reading through it. “Flared from the shoulders, with hand holes, and a seam down the center so it keeps its shape. I wouldn’t mind making that one. What date is it?”

  “Nineteen twenty-one.”

  “Do you want that one?”

  “Yes,” said Sandra, grabbing the opportunity. “What about these war things that were sent to the soldiers in the trenches?”

  “They’re easy. Even you could knit them. Only take a night or two each.”

  “No, I’m the word person, you’re the knitter. I’d mess them up.”

  “You could learn. I’d teach you.”

  “No,” said Sandra. “Can’t do it.”

  “Won’t, you mean,” said Martha.

  “All right. Won’t. I know my limitations. And I don’t want to. Besides, I have to organize other things. I’ve been looking everywhere, and I still haven’t been able to find an exhibition space.”

  “You could use the church hall,” said Martha.

  “So we could! Those lovely polished floorboards. I wonder what it would cost.”

  “Not much. Ask Kate. She’ll probably get it for you for free.” Martha smoothed down the yellowing pattern in front of her and sighed. A hall full of garments. It was going to be a big job.

  ON THE coastal drive back to Adelaide, just before the town of Robe, the wind picked up. It was warm in the car, but the minute they stepped out in front of the bakery they knew they wanted hot food for lunch. They pushed aside the plastic strips hanging in the doorway and trooped in.

  “Mm,” said Tony, “steak and kidney pie. I’ll have one of those, and a sausage roll, and a buttered finger bun, thanks.”

  Kate patted him on the tummy.

  “Not good for you, Tony.”

  “Holidays,” he said. “And a carton of chocolate milk, please.”

  Kate shook her head. She and Sandra each chose an oversize samosa.

  “What are you having, Martha?” said Sandra, watching her count coins.

  “Don’t know yet.”

  “Another samosa, please,” said Sandra to the woman taking the orders. “Put your purse away, Martha, my treat.”

  Tony paid for himself and Kate, Sandra paid the rest. She bought Martha an orange juice as well.

  They went down to the wharf for lunch. A flock of seagulls squawked and squabbled.

  “Look,” said Martha, “that one has only one leg.”

  “Must have been bitten by a shark,” said Tony.

  Martha threw a large chunk of samosa to the maimed gull, which caught it deftly and flew off.

  “Nothing wrong with its wings, at any rate,” said Tony.

  Sandra’s attention was on another gull, at the far edge of the crowd, darting in for food but never quite getting it. Martha also saw it and threw another large piece of samosa in its direction. Again the gull missed out.

  “Are you eating any of that?” asked Sandra sharply.

  “Not much,” Martha said. “Don’t like curry. And I’m allergic to orange juice. Do you want it?”

  “You should have said.”

  “You didn’t give me a chance,” said Martha. “I wanted a pasty.”

  “You should stick up for yourself,” said Sandra crossly. “How am I supposed to know these things?”

  There was not much talking on the last leg home. A week together had been long enough.

  BACK in her study Sandra tenderly took the 1945 baby’s pattern book out of its plastic sleeve. It was printed on wartime paper, fraying at the edges, the pages bound together with thread, and faint pencil marks in a margin showed where someone had kept track of the pattern. The price was two shillings.

  On the front cover was a black-and-white photo of a seated baby that looked like the life-size doll Sandra had had as a child, with its legs stuck out in front and a round, chubby, expressionless face under a bonnet that hid its hair and its personality. The unsmiling baby was dressed in layers: a dress, a longish matinee jacket, matching bootees, and mittens. An insert in the corner showed what it was wearing underneath: a ribbed undershirt with a gathering ribbon at the neck and a pair of knitted pants with a similar drawstring at the waist. The set of patterns on the cover was called starfish and was knitted in a shell pattern, with scallops at the hem.

  At the beginning of the pattern was a list of the notions necessary to make the layette: eight 1-ounce balls of two-ply wool, a pair each of number 12 and 14 needles, a darning needle, six buttons, half a yard of narrow ribbon, one size-12 crochet hook. The pattern instructions read like some kind of code. Sandra looked for the legend and translated the abbreviations, but there were no diagrams, and she couldn’t make proper sense of it. Too hard. This wasn’t her field anyway.

  This was one of Martha’s books. She put it in her own brand of plastic sleeve, then in the ring binder, numbering the corner with a small self-stick label and updat
ing the filing page with Martha’s name and address and a brief description.

  After putting it on the shelf, she remembered that Martha would need a copy, so she took it out again to run through the photocopier. She folded the copied pages into an envelope—much bulkier than the original—and addressed it to Martha. She didn’t want to call on her again. She’d had enough of Martha for a couple of weeks. Besides, Martha probably just wanted to get on with the job.

  MARTHA saw the yellow envelope sticking up out of the mailbox and went out to see what it was. It had the university logo on it. Inside was a copy of her pattern, from Sandra, with a brief note.

  Dear Martha, I’d like to keep this for a while, but I know you need the instructions. Here’s a copy to keep you going. Yours, Sandra.

  No please, no would you mind, no love, either. Martha had not expected Sandra to keep the pattern—she hadn’t said she would. The photocopy paper was not the same. It was brazenly white, and thick, with a hard edge, and printed on only one side, so it wasted paper. And it was new, as though nobody had ever used this pattern before, when in fact that pattern book had been used to dress three generations of McKenzies, the last being Malcolm’s grandson.

  One page was crooked and the page number missing. The photo of the baby was a gray blur, so you couldn’t see how the shell pattern was supposed to look. Poor little starfish baby, dressed in those hot clothes under the photographer’s bright lights. She had a blank look on her face. Perhaps she was thirsty and wanting a drink.

  Martha read easily through the pattern Sandra wanted, noting a discrepancy here and there where the pattern maker had made a mistake. The eleventh row of the pattern repeat would need counting: Martha hadn’t done anything quite like it before, though it was easy enough to read and shouldn’t be a problem. If she’d had the original she could have had a good look at the photo to see just what the effect of that row would be, but now she’d have to knit it to find out. Although she preferred to see it, there was a certain pleasure in working without the photo, like doing a jigsaw without the picture on the box. Two-ply wool was very fine. Did Sandra want it in wool? Nylon might be better; it didn’t irritate soft baby skin, although that new machine-washable baby wool might be all right. No, you’d never get it in two-ply, not these days. Martha didn’t fancy splitting several balls of four-ply either. That would take hours, and it probably wouldn’t work.

  But Sandra would want wool for it, to be authentic 1945, and indeed Martha had several bags of suitable two-ply white wool. But that was special, the wool she was using for the roseheart dress.

  She had a few odd balls of cream that she and Sandra had picked up on their thrift-shop crawl. That was fairly old—perhaps it would do. Martha went to look. Yes, there was enough, though it was the wrong ply. She rang Sandra.

  “You know that baby’s layette, the old one? Do you mind if it’s in three-ply?”

  “What’s it supposed to be?”

  “Two.”

  “It would be better to have what the pattern calls for.” Silence.

  “Sure you haven’t got an old bag of two-ply stashed away somewhere?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Well, I have, but it’s spoken for.”

  More silence. Martha could hear Sandra gathering herself for a push, and got in first.

  “You’ll hardly notice the difference.” Martha braced herself for the assault.

  “Could you get some more somewhere?”

  “Maybe, but it’s hard to come by, that stuff. It’s special.” No, Sandra, please don’t insist. Please don’t. You’ll spoil everything.

  “Can’t be that hard. It’s a big country.”

  Martha stayed miserably silent. She knew she wasn’t strong enough to hold out against Sandra; if Sandra kept on about it, Martha would blow over like grass in the wind, and that would spoil everything. Help me, somebody, don’t let Sandra spoil things for herself.

  Sandra, listening, was too impatient to wait and abruptly changed her mind.

  “All right, then, if you think the three-ply won’t matter and you can adjust the pattern. I don’t suppose anyone will know except you. But Martha, I thought you liked everything exactly right. It doesn’t seem consistent—you, of all people, using the wrong ply.”

  “I do like everything right, that’s true. I like the pattern to be absolutely perfect. But every knitter is different. You always have to do a tension square. The things you work with, the size needles and the wool, and any adjustments you have to make, that’s up to you. You make up your mind what it’s supposed to be, and then you do it. Perfectly.”

  Sandra’s mind was racing ahead beyond these technicalities. “OK, Martha, I’ll leave it to you. You’re the expert.”

  “At least I’ll be able to get on with it, because I’ve got it here already. And we need to do that order. The new sample cards from the yarn suppliers have all arrived.”

  It had not occurred to Sandra that wool might have to be ordered.

  “Can’t we get it locally?”

  “No, there’s only a couple of decent wool shops around here, and the woolen mill up in the hills, but they don’t always have what you want. Ordering direct is the quickest way. You don’t have to wait until the shop puts in an order. You can find the wholesalers on the Internet and ring direct.”

  So Martha was Net savvy, even though she didn’t have a computer. Another surprise. They arranged a time to look at the sample cards and hung up.

  Martha needed a cup of tea. She stirred the sugar in slowly, listening to the clinking spoon change pitch as the sugar dissolved. That had been a close shave. The white wool was spoken for, but Sandra, like a child, wanted everything now.

  ON PENSION day Cliff stood in line at the newsagent and waited. There was a new girl behind the counter in a tight red T-shirt. Martha never wore T-shirts, she always wore button-up blouses. Cliff didn’t know which he liked better, the clinging stretch of bright red or the tease of buttons. Not that Martha ever gave him a chance, but she couldn’t stop him from thinking about it, no harm in that. She’s beautiful, and therefore to be woo’d; She is a woman, therefore to be won. Now Sandra was another matter. If you even thought about stretching out a finger to Sandra, she would bite it off. Besides, she probably wore a bloody bulletproof vest. Not that she had anything to show. Unlike Martha, who was nice and round and soft.

  Cliff always prayed on pension day. He prayed three times. The first prayer was at the newsagent’s, that he would pick the best scratchy. The second was in the food line, where he had a choice of pie, hot dogs, or hamburger, that he’d get a big serving. The third prayer was the grace remembered from some obscure corner of childhood: For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful.

  That way, if you didn’t win the scratchy, you kept your options open with The Bloke Upstairs. The big win would come when it was meant.

  January

  MARTHA TOOK ADVANTAGE of the air conditioning in Sandra’s car and worked on the lady’s cape all the way to the woolen mill. Normally she didn’t knit wool in the heat of summer, but Sandra wanted the exhibition in May, only seventeen weeks away. Martha was feeling pushed before she had barely begun. She didn’t understand Sandra’s urgency, why the exhibition had to fill every nook and cranny of Sandra’s life, and now every nook and cranny of her own. Why couldn’t it be later in the year? But when she had suggested a postponement Sandra had said no, that later on her students would be more stressed, and she’d be busy with marking, and organizing some conference, and finishing a collaborative book. Martha had nothing to offer in the face of such argument except a sense of dread, so she said nothing. The exhibition would be in May. That was that.

  As they entered the car park she unclipped her seat belt. Before Sandra had turned off the engine, Martha had grabbed her handbag from the floor and was getting out. She leaned back inside briefly.

  “I’ll see you in there.” And she was off, almost running, toward the blue door under
the big square letters of WOOL SALES.

  Martha had not been to the mill for several years, as it was not accessible by public transport. Instead she had relied on the sample cards that came each quarter, tufted with that season’s range of colors and textures. Martha’s delight in a new card had been a revelation to Sandra—she had seen how Martha’s eyes lit up when she took it from the mailbox, and how, during their shared coffee in Martha’s tidy kitchen, she had opened and reopened the card, running her finger down the samples, bending the card a little to juxtapose particular colors.

  “Look at those sea colors,” she had said. “They’re new this year. They are so beautiful! See, this dark one for the deep water, and that pale greeny one for the sandbars. I’d use those, and that one called driftwood, but then I’d get this other one as well.” She turned the card over. “That soft one there—mulberry—because it’s like a stormy sunset. You know, when you have a big purple cloud, right at that golden time before the sun sets.” Sandra did know, and could see how well the colors looked together, though such a mix would never have occurred to her.

  As Sandra entered the store, Martha looked up and gave her an open-faced, happy smile. She was like a child in a toy shop. She turned back to inspect a bank of greens: olive, jade, leaf, kiwi, lime, a silver-green like the back of birch leaves, a bright pistachio. Martha couldn’t look without touching. She picked up the huge hanks one by one, feeling their weight, inspecting the degree of twist, testing the strength.

  Then another sign caught her eye.

  “Oh, the bargain room!” and she was off to the back, burrowing through tea chests and wire baskets.

  “What are you looking for, exactly?” asked Sandra, coming alongside, the list of necessities she and Martha had compiled fluttering feebly from one hand.

  “Nothing,” said Martha cheerfully. “Just seeing what’s here. Just having a big fat look. Oh, Sandra!” She straightened suddenly and grabbed Sandra in a big bear hug. “Thank you for bringing me here! Thank you! Thank you! You are so kind to me.”