Things to Make and Mend

by Ruth Thomas

  ‘Hello,’ Sally says, walking towards him and giving him one of her smiles – the big, confident smile which, she knows, is one of her assets. (Her counsellor Mrs Bonniface said a big smile can do wonders. Over the years she has learned how to enhance her mouth and how to conceal her big ears, her fine hair, her (mother’s) nose. She has also acquired something she never thought she would have: a tough shell. Impenetrable as thimbles. She hides behind it at work: her Needlewoman face. Yes, of course we can fix that, no problem!)

  She is about to say to the taxi-driver, ‘It’s Tuttle, actually, not Tuckwell’ (I had a friend once, she thinks, whose surname was Cresswell), but then she doesn’t bother.

  ‘OK, hen?’ the man says, taking her rucksack and portfolio and opening the door of his waiting cab – it smells of vanilla and has a cluster of small plastic grapes hanging from the rear-view mirror.

  Sally gets in and sits quietly on the slippery leather seat.

  ‘Ken Embra?’ the driver asks over his shoulder as they begin to move. Incomprehension flits like a moth around Sally’s brain.

  ‘Do you know Edinburgh, like?’ the driver says, articulating slowly.

  ‘Oh. No. I’ve never been here before,’ Sally replies in her south-east English accent.

  She looks out of the window at the drab environs of Edinburgh airport. Bungalows – bungalows in Edinburgh? Roundabouts. Shopping malls. A large, purple shack calling itself PC World. It all looks like East Grinstead. Maybe everywhere these days looks like East Grinstead. An aeroplane takes off and crosses the frozen vapour-trail of an earlier one. A big kiss in the sky.

  ‘You staying at the Royal Burgh, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s a fine hotel, the Royal. A fine hotel. Better than all that Ibis nonsense.’

  ‘Oh good.’

  *

  This is the vocabulary of her new life: Conference. Delegate. Allocate. She has been allocated two conference delegates to talk to when she arrives. Their names are typed on her information sheet: Jeremy Bowes and Nora Wheeler. She is due to meet them at the hotel at six, for drinks followed by a dinner. She is intrigued about Jeremy Bowes. The world of embroidery and dressmaking is usually entirely bereft of men. She imagines sitting opposite him and Nora at an octagonal table. (‘And which embroidery stitch do you prefer, Ms. Tuttle?’ ‘Oh, satin stitch, Jeremy, every time.’)

  As they round a corner, Edinburgh Castle appears, dreamily, on the skyline. Now the bungalows begin to peter out and give way to tall grey tenements. The taxi passes a kebab shop, a stationer’s, a costume hire company and a bagpipe shop. There are seagulls in the sky. Maroon double-decker buses. Schoolgirls in blue blazers and kilts. A smell seeps slyly into the cab – a smell she can’t place, like overheated Weetabix.

  ‘That’s the brewery, like,’ the taxi driver says suddenly.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It’s the malt. But they’re pulling it all down.’

  ‘Pulling what down?’

  ‘The brewery, like.’

  ‘Oh. That’s a shame.’

  ‘End of an era.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The schoolgirls make her think of Pearl. She gets her mobile phone out of her handbag – a phone she has bought especially for the occasion, and on which she has only just got used to pressing the correct buttons. She wants to phone John to see if he has remembered to pick Pearl up from school; but the little screen just lights up, displays a picture of a rainbow and says Emergency Calls Only. Her phone does not appear to be able to connect to East Grinstead. The only person she can call is an emergency switchboard operator. She thinks of Pearl and a tiny electrical charge of anxiety fizzes inside her chest. She puts the phone back in her bag.

  ‘So,’ the taxi driver says, ‘are you here on business or pleasure?’

  ‘Business. I’m going to a conference. On embroidery. Which is what I …’

  ‘Come again?’

  The man’s left ear seems to move very slightly towards the open window.

  ‘Embroidery,’ she repeats loudly, and the word hangs in the cab, unaugmented, gaining too much significance. She looks at her portfolio and her rucksack and her handbag sitting beside her, like three long-suffering travelling companions. She imagines Mary and Martha staring crossly up from their canvas.

  ‘What aspect of embroidery is that, then?’ the taxi driver asks, making her jump.

  ‘The history of it,’ she replies, raising her voice above the noise of the engine. ‘And the connection of Scotland and France.’

  ‘Oh aye, the Auld Alliance,’ the taxi driver booms. ‘That old chestnut.’

  Outside the window a little girl is refusing to hold her mother’s hand. Crouching on the pavement while her mother walks away, pretending to abandon her.

  *

  The foyer of the Royal Burgh Hotel is pale and cool, with a smooth floor and a lot of glass surfaces. Sally emerges into it through the expensive doors – taa-daah! – carrying her portfolio, her handbag and her rucksack. She thinks she probably looks like a too-old student. A man with slicked-back hair is sitting behind the reception desk, his chair so low that his chin only just reaches above the counter.

  ‘Good afternoon, madam,’ he says.

  ‘Good afternoon.’

  ‘Would you like someone to take your luggage up?’

  ‘Oh, no, it’s OK, thanks. It’s very light.’

  It is light, her luggage, but she feels this was the wrong response. The man looks at her rucksack, her portfolio and her handbag. ‘OK,’ he says, handing her her room key and directing her towards the lift.

  *

  The corridors smell of bacon and lilies and Mr Sheen.

  She walks along the second floor, noticing the way all the doors swish against the carpets. It feels opulent, professional. And here she is, in it. She wants to phone Pearl just to tell her what colour the carpets are. To inform her that there is a large pewter bowl bearing pine cones, positioned on a wooden table at the end of the corridor, and three enormous white candles placed, like altar decor, on a window sill. She steps into a lift and notes that it is made by a company called Schindler. And that the piped music is ‘Annie’s Song’. She wants to tell her daughter all this. All the details of being away on business.

  Her room is just as she had hoped. Large and beige, with a double bed, a sofa, an en-suite bathroom and a number of innocuous flower-prints on the walls. It is excitingly bland. It makes her feel polished, elegant, important. She looks at the double bed with regret.

  She has been picturing this place for months, ever since she got the letter from the conference organisers. She goes into the bathroom. There are five white towels, a transparent shower curtain, a shower cap and a wrapped sachet of Lux soap. There are small sachets of shampoo and moisturising cream. There is a pink carnation in a vase and a matching toilet roll. She wonders about the chamber maid whose job it is to perform daily feats of origami with its top sheet.

  The wardrobe in the bedroom smells of citronella and contains eight wooden coat-hangers. There are packets in a lavender-lined drawer in the bedside cabinet, containing a shoeshine kit, complimentary mints and an emergency repair set (two buttons; one needle; four threads). Sally takes off her coat and looks out of the window at the view: the laundry chute and ventilation shafts emerging from the hotel kitchens.

  5:00 Arrive

  6.00 Meet Jeremy Bowes and Nora Wheeler

  7.00 Dinner with Jeremy Bowes and Nora Wheeler

  Outside a blackbird is singing – a beautiful silvery evening song – from the top of the laundry chute. She stays at the window to listen for a while, and to look up at the remnant of the moon – very pale and round up there, like a pod of honesty. Sometimes, at home, she can forget to look up for days – weeks even – and she doesn’t even know if the moon’s full or a crescent. Then, when she does glance up and see it, it’s so beautiful she feels ashamed for neglecting it.

  Thorn

  Late in the afternoon, feeling
in need of jollity, brightness, warmth, we walk to a pizzeria. It is not the kind of restaurant or time of day I envisaged. But it has a nice name – Amici’s – and Joe has, he tells us, been there several times before. It is up a long hill, on the south side of town. My legs ache.

  ‘It’ll work up an appetite,’ Kenneth says.

  Joe does not talk much on the way. He has been subdued all day. His walk is the same as it has always been: hands in his pockets, eyes on the pavement.

  ‘Anything wrong?’ I ask.

  ‘No, I’m OK,’ he says. ‘Just a bit tired.’

  He’s apprehensive, I think – about America and his new job – but he doesn’t want to show it. Typical man. I glance at him as I walk beside him. He is nearly a foot taller than me. Lanky. I try not to think of him walking lankily along a rubber gangway tomorrow, into a jumbo jet, and flying away.

  Kenneth is doing his best to buoy us up. He strides, breathing out clouds of warm air, relaxed in his shoes. He is talking about California in the Seventies, an era which he sometimes seems to regard as recent.

  ‘… essentially the time of flower power …’ he is saying.

  ‘Yes,’ Joe replies.

  ‘… flea markets everywhere … bookstores …’

  Kenneth’s words drift into the cold air. It is freezing.

  ‘… but maybe it hasn’t really changed so much. What do you think, Ro? Do you think Berkeley’s changed a lot since then?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Lost in thought?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  My eyes are fixed on the gum-marked pavement.

  *

  The Amici’s waiter has a new-looking beard. He is twenty-two at most. Younger than Joe. His eyes are green and shiny like a kitten’s.

  ‘Would you like to order some drinks?’ he says, and I ask for three beers. It is five in the afternoon but I need a beer.

  We are given a table by the window, a rather small one with too much cutlery on it, a vase of red carnations and a large, glass candle-holder cluttering our view of each other.

  ‘Well,’ I say, ‘how nice.’

  ‘It’s not bad, this restaurant,’ Joe replies. ‘We used to come here quite a lot. We … It’s …’

  And he stops talking.

  Directly in line with us, on the other side of the window, is a bus stop. Three people are waiting at the bus stop and looking in: an elderly woman in a heavy coat, and two young girls in tracksuits. A man and a dog walk past. The dog also glances in, a wondering expression on its face.

  ‘So. I’ve got a bit of news,’ Joe says.

  ‘Oh yes?’ I say brightly, my heart clonking.

  Kenneth, who has been sawing away at a rather hard bread roll from the basket, stops and puts his knife down.

  ‘So,’ I say, beaming, ‘what is it?’

  And Joe blushes: something he hardly ever does. I watch the pink rising up his cheeks to his forehead. He looks through the window at the girls in tracksuits.

  It will be something about his girlfriend, I think. When someone says ‘I’ve got a bit of news’ doesn’t it usually mean that they, or someone else, is pregnant? Is she pregnant? Surely not. Not when people are so open about everything. Not with the pill. Not when …

  Joe is looking down at his elaborately-folded napkin. ‘It’s …’ he says.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Maybe now is not the right moment, actually. Maybe I should …’

  ‘Hey, go on, spit it out!’

  ‘No, it’s OK. I’ll tell you later.’

  ‘Joe, come on. It’ll –’

  ‘Can I take your order now?’ the young, bearded waiter says, suddenly appearing like a new set of ten-pins at our table.

  I don’t know what to say. The overcrowded table looms garishly up at me. Outside the window a bus arrives. The elderly woman and the young girls get on to it and are transported away.

  ‘Could we have a while longer, please?’ Kenneth says to the waiter.

  I look at my knees. I feel suddenly as cold as tap water.

  The waiter looks at me as if I might be ill, says ‘Sure’ and is just moving away when I hear myself bark, ‘No, it’s OK.’ And I grab the menu.

  ‘I’ll have the Pizza Capricciosa,’ I yell.

  ‘Oh,’ Kenneth says, startled, ‘OK, well …’ And, jolted into action, he snatches the menu from me. ‘I’ll have the … the Spaghetti Napoletana.’

  ‘And I’ll have the Linguine della Casa,’ Joe says quickly.

  The waiter writes down our order, sighs slightly, collects up our menus and walks away.

  ‘Well, that was super-efficient,’ Kenneth says.

  ‘Yes.’

  We sit around the flower vase. Kenneth looks moody. Joe looks staticky, as if he’s just touched an electric fence. I don’t know what to say. I think: My son is going to America tomorrow. And there’s something that he can’t even tell me.

  It is ridiculous.

  It is ridiculous and upsetting.

  Any minute now, I think, there are going to be tears.

  ‘So,’ I say with forced jocularity. ‘When are you going to tell us, darling? Over the main course or –’

  ‘I’ve been in touch with my dad,’ Joe says.

  ‘Oh.’ I grip on to the wallet in my lap.

  ‘He lives in the States now,’ Joe says. ‘In New York State.’

  ‘Really? Does he?’

  ‘So I’m going to meet him. For a coffee.’

  ‘Right, well, that’s … I’ve always thought it’s important you meet him,’ I lie. Because I never wanted them to meet. Ever. I just wanted it to be me and my baby. My beautiful boy in his babygro. His father has always been almost irrelevant.

  ‘So,’ I say regarding the table with too much cutlery on it, too much stuff – candle-holder, wine list, dinner menu, lunch menu, flowers – I want to put my arm out and sweep all of it on to the floor. ‘So what’s he doing out there?’

  ‘Married with kids. My half-sisters, of course. Ella and Gretel. They’re sixteen and twelve. My dad’s playing the oboe. In one of the orchestras.’

  ‘Really?’

  My voice is over-loud and shaking. Waiters walk noiselessly to and fro.

  ‘So. You have half-sisters?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Ella and Gretel.’

  ‘Yep.’

  I nearly say something about their names, something to do with pantomimes. The existence of Ella and Gretel makes me feel obscurely jealous.

  I look at Kenneth, who looks back at me. His face is sad with sympathy. The smell of pizza skulks around our table. At the table beside ours some women, about my age, are having a Friday lunch out. They are wearing pretty things: pretty, happy things with straps.

  ‘I’d like the chance to get to know him,’ Joe says, looking down at the few inches of uncovered tablecloth. He looks angry. And I never wanted this to be something he’d be angry about, the circumstances of his birth: two teenagers who made a mistake one autumn evening. I told him years ago all I knew about his father, which was not very much. Not enough, evidently.

  ‘I found him on the internet,’ Joe says as Kenneth stands up quietly, places his napkin on his chair and makes his way with weary inevitability towards the toilets. ‘I looked up Malone and East Grinstead.’

  ‘How …’ I begin, searching for the appropriate word, ‘easy.’

  ‘Yes. It was.’

  I look up to see Kenneth open the door of the Signores, knock it against an umbrella stand and a potted fig tree, and disappear.

  It is not quite five-thirty.

  ‘That’s Amore’ finishes. ‘O Sole Mio’ begins.

  Joe says, ‘I’m not blaming you or anything, Mum.’

  ‘No. I know you’re not.’

  ‘I mean, I know you were young and everything when you had me. I know I was’ – he pauses – ‘a mistake.’

  I look into his eyes. ‘You weren’t.’

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘OK. At the time. But
my best ever mistake.’

  ‘I just …’

  ‘I was very young,’ I continue. ‘I was fifteen. I was very much left to my own … devices.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I was fifteen.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I didn’t have you adopted.’

  I turn my head. In front of the bus stop, the picture stencilled on the window is of an enormous Italian mamma wearing a chef’s hat and holding a wooden spoon. And I wish I had been like that: I wish I had been a comforting mamma with an enormous bosom and an appropriate set of motherly rules. But I was too young. I didn’t know what I was doing. ‘There was no one to help me,’ I said. I suppose I did my best.

  Battlemented Couching

  Every so often, a vision of the green dress enters her head and she feels a little sense of panic. What have I done? Why did she leave something so precious in that horrible shop, then get on a plane and fly to Scotland? Her dress, with that woman’s patronising note attached to it? Green silk, good condition. Why hadn’t she just whisked it back into her bag and left? Too hasty: she has always been too hasty in leaving things behind.

  She has made these decisions in her life: really quite small decisions about whether to take up Needlework, say, or whether to ignore someone’s phone calls, and they have opened out into enormity. And now here she is, with the life she has constructed for herself. She is Sally Tuttle, forty-three, embroidery expert, sitting on a small leather sofa in a Scottish hotel foyer, beside an arrangement of potted plants and a tankful of goldfish.

  *

  It is nearly six o’clock. She is waiting for her fellow conference delegates. She keeps looking up at people passing, but they are not the people she is supposed to meet: they walk on and out, into the evening.

  After a while she is joined on the sofa by an elderly English couple. The woman sits down beside her, and the man stands and hovers.

  ‘Goldfish,’ says the woman.

  ‘Yes,’ says the man.

  Sally shifts as unobtrusively as possible to give the woman more space: she is a big person, with a spreading lap. She and her husband are wearing almost identical brown corduroy trousers. And they are both unhurried, careful, conscientious, with neat suitcases. They remind Sally of tortoises. They have built a whole life together, secure in their shells, and have they ever been out of love? Possibly not. Sally tries to imagine herself with a man, thirty years hence, looking dignified and old in a hotel lobby. Looking as if she has spent the larger part of her life with him.