Things to Make and Mend

by Ruth Thomas

  Now a man of about Sally’s age walks across the foyer. He looks a little like a man she dated for one night, a few years ago. A bank clerk called Peter. Peter was sound. Normal. Alarmed by Sally’s all-encompassing embroidery: the peacocks and the elephants. This man has the same mousily youthful hair, the same bouncy walk, the feet turned slightly inward –

  A woman’s voice says quietly, ‘Sally?’

  And she jumps, readjust her limbs, turns in her seat and smiles.

  ‘Nora?’

  ‘Yes,’ the woman says, doubtfully.

  ‘Nice to meet you.’

  Sally is oddly annoyed that she missed the direction Nora Wheeler appeared from. She stands up and Nora Wheeler puts out her hand. ‘Oh!’ Sally says, before she can stop herself. It feels odd, shaking another woman’s hand. There is not the air of dominance that men indulge in. The smothering male palm. Nora and she just stand, holding hands for a moment, like small girls. Nora’s hand is slightly warmer than Sally’s.

  ‘I thought I’d be the last to arrive,’ Nora says shyly, peering around. She is shorter than Sally. She has pale, round eyes and the sort of hairstyle that appears in 1940s films: neat, shiny, with a side parting. Her suit is double-breasted, blue-flecked, belted.

  ‘Mr Bowes is quite late, isn’t he?’ she says, looking at her watch.

  ‘Male prerogative,’ Sally replies.

  Nora has that effect that some petite women have, of making Sally feel too loud. Too prominent, like some building jutting out from a flat landscape.

  ‘Maybe he’s got held up,’ Nora suggests. ‘The traffic’s not good.’

  ‘Well. It’ll give us a chance to …’ Sally begins, trailing off. It’ll give us a chance to what? The journey has wearied her, and the anticipation, and the oddness of being here. She just wants to go back up to her room: she wants to get out her embroidery and work on another section of Mary’s sleeve. She doesn’t want to be sitting here with Nora Wheeler, shy woodland creature.

  ‘Let’s sit here,’ she says. ‘Hopefully he won’t be much longer.’

  So they sit on the sofa again, knees almost touching. Nora hangs on to her yellow folder and smiles.

  ‘They’re pretty fish,’ she says, looking at the aquarium. Then she looks at her watch again. ‘Come on, Mr Bowes,’ she urges, as if he is the slowest person at school sports day.

  They are just debating whether to go on without him, to go to the dining room and hope to see him later, when suddenly there he is – Sally knows instantly it is him – behind the glass of the revolving doors. A man in his late forties with a determined expression and dark hair that flops, cunningly haphazard, across his temples. A decisive man with a leather portfolio and cuban-heeled boots. He looks as if he has never had anything to do with embroidery in his life. How can he have arrived here, in their feminine midst?

  They introduce themselves, then stand back for a moment. Sally’s smile is too big.

  ‘OK. So shall we find a table?’ Jeremy Bowes says.

  ‘Yes,’ Nora and Sally reply. Jeremy sets off and they follow.

  ‘This is a good table,’ Jeremy states, selecting one by the window and holding chairs out chivalrously, first for Nora and then for Sally.

  ‘Thank you,’ Sally says, sitting down and wondering why she is allowing this man to fluster her. She thought she had given up being flustered by handsome men. She looks down at her knobbly knees and then out, through the window. She can’t think of anything to say. She can feel her heart beating. ‘So,’ she says, looking with increasing interest at the very ordinary street beyond the glass. If she cranes her neck, she can just make out the edge of Edinburgh Castle on top of its misty, craggy hill. She clears her throat and holds on to the stem of her empty wine glass. Nora says, ‘A-haah!’. Apart from that, nobody speaks. The people of Edinburgh progress, in their anoraks and raincoats, up Lothian Road. You’d never find a beautiful castle in East Grinstead, but you would find people like this. People with expressions like this, in the same kind of anoraks, with those kinds of plastic bags …

  And then all three of them begin to speak at once.

  ‘I –’

  ‘When –’

  ‘It’s –’

  Jeremy’s observation eventually prevails.

  ‘It’s much colder here than in Paris,’ he says.

  ‘Paris?’ replies Nora, twisting the silver chain around her neck.

  ‘Apparently this is a “haar”,’ Sally says, suddenly inspired, accepting an enormous menu from an arriving waiter. ‘This mist. So the girl at reception told me. A sea haar. It rolls in from the sea.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nora says, ‘That’s what I was saying. A haar.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Nora and Sally look at each other and for a second nearly laugh. Nora’s eyes are bright blue and turn up at the corners.

  Nora looks back at Jeremy. ‘Anyway. How wonderful,’ she says. ‘To live in Paris.’

  ‘It is,’ Jeremy Bowes confirms crossly.

  ‘Edinburgh’s beautiful too, though, isn’t it?’ says Nora. ‘Almost Parisian, really.’

  Jeremy purses his lips and says nothing. ‘Let’s order a bottle of wine,’ he says after a moment.

  ‘French, of course.’

  ‘Oui, oui, bien entendu.’

  Now Sally feels irrationally annoyed, as if some very small object, possibly not even hers, has been taken away from her. As Nora and Jeremy speak, she continues to gaze out through the glass at the beautiful misty city.

  A red-faced man reels past the window, very close, clutching a packet of fish and chips. This, indeed, does not seem very Parisian. In Paris he would at least be holding a baguette.

  *

  It happened, now she comes to think of it, as soon as Jeremy made his way out of the revolving door. There was something in the way he looked at them, some kind of recognition. As if he had been stumbling around in a big, perilous forest and suddenly, in the nick of time, found two damsels in a clearing. ‘You’re here at last! Thank God!’ And he was saved from being submerged in the brackeny undergrowth.

  Nora had peered shyly back at him from the bracken. Sally was like the Girl Guide leader, up ahead, with her torch and practical rucksack. A girl who had somehow become cynical with the passing years; lost all her naivety about love.

  ‘The traffic was quite bad this evening,’ Nora whispers to Jeremy.

  ‘Was it?’ he replies, looking into her round blue eyes.

  Nora smiles and plays again with the pendant around her neck. She has no wedding ring, no engagement ring. Sally wonders how old she is. At least her age. ‘I noticed –’ she begins, but she doesn’t continue with what she noticed, because Nora interrupts. ‘I speak some French,’ she says to Jeremy. ‘Some schoolgirl French. Malheureusement, pas très bien.’

  ‘Mais c’est merveilleux!’ exclaims Jeremy. Then he adds, in English, ‘Believe me, it takes a lifetime to sound like a native.’

  ‘Well, your accent sounds pretty good to me!’ Sally quips – Sally, the third member of the party, behind the flowers.

  ‘Ha ha ha,’ Nora laughs. Jeremy does not reply. He does not seem particularly pleased with her last comment. He smiles rather alarmingly, then says, ‘So. Are you looking forward to the conference, Sally?’

  ‘Oh yes. Yes, very much.’

  ‘And I understand you won a prize?’

  ‘Yes. Last year,’ she says, her confidence suddenly plummeting. How infantile, to have won a prize. Like being back at school. She thinks of all those embarrassing headlines. ‘That’s what I’m going to be talking about,’ she says.

  ‘I’m particularly interested in French crewelwork techniques,’ Nora says, politely.

  Sally beams brightly at them, so brightly that her jaw aches. She wants to say, I don’t know a thing about French crewelwork techniques. I was a school drop-out. I went to evening classes.

  Out of the corner of her eye she can see their three hors d’oeuvres in the serving hatch, illuminated i
n the pretty yellow light. A man is sprinkling parsley over them and wiping the edges of the plates with a large tea towel.

  ‘There are our starters,’ she says, childishly.

  ‘J’ai faim,’ Nora replies.

  ‘Me too. All I’ve had all day is plane food. A strange chicken thing and a slab of cake. Both tasting remarkably similar to each other.’

  Jeremy looks at her. ‘Plain food?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘–?’

  ‘Food that you –’ she begins.

  ‘– eat on a plane,’ concludes Nora.

  ‘Of course,’ says Jeremy. Then he looks at Nora. He sweeps his left hand through his thick brown hair.

  *

  The starters are on their way now: a waiter has picked up all three of them and is progressing, butler-like, across the room towards them.

  Sally has chosen mussels. Now she regrets ordering them. The waiter places them in front of her and says ‘Enjoy.’ She looks down at them.

  ‘Everything OK?’ Nora asks.

  ‘Yes,’ Sally says. ‘Fine.’

  ‘Ah, les moules,’ observes Jeremy Bowes.

  ‘They look nice,’ says Nora, unsurely.

  ‘Yes.’

  This is not what I embroider for, she thinks. I do not embroider so I can sit at a table with two strangers and talk about how nice mussels look. She is missing Pearl: she should be with Pearl. In ten minutes, she thinks, I will excuse myself and phone her.

  She clears her throat and places her napkin on her knees.

  ‘So. Do you’ – she begins, turning to Nora and realising too late what an undiplomatic question she is about to ask – ‘Are you married?’

  ‘No,’ Nora replies quickly. ‘That never … It wasn’t …’ She trails off. She looks down at her plate.

  ‘Ah, but it’s not too late, surely?’ Jeremy says chivalrously.

  Dutifully, Nora laughs. But she looks crestfallen. Sally picks up her spoon and feel tactless. Too caught up with her own life to know how to conduct herself. She looks down at her mussels again. Mussels are not a quiet little dish, to be eaten unobtrusively. Mussels are an event. They make her feel exhausted just looking at them.

  ‘Right!’ she says out loud. And she wonders what a really practical woman would do. Her mother, for instance. Or Sue. Her mother or Sue would just get on with it. So she picks up her knife and begins to lever the shells open. They make a cracking noise. Fish-scented steam rises melodramatically.

  ‘You’re brave,’ Nora exclaims.

  ‘Why? Haven’t you ever eaten mussels?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They’re wonderful. You should try them, Nora.’

  ‘Yes, you really should,’ Jeremy adds.

  But this evening she finds she doesn’t have the panache required to eat shellfish. She feels inadequate and working-class. Exposed. The words fall out of her mouth. The mussels sit on the dish in front of her, aghast, affronted.

  Now Nora and Jeremy are toying with their starters and discussing their childhoods – and moving gradually closer and closer towards each other. How can she not see through him? Sally thinks. He is probably married. He is evidently one of those serial flirts. A married flirt: the worst kind. Although he has not flirted with Sally.

  Nora and Jeremy have discovered, through a combination of stumbling sentences and something else – telepathy? intuition? – that they both went to boarding schools. And that they both endured horse-riding lessons on mean-minded horses called Stardust. What an extraordinary twist of fate! Quelle coincidence! Two horses called Stardust! The subject of embroidery has been pushed aside.

  ‘I absolutely detested school,’ Jeremy spits. ‘I had an absolute horror of school.’ He is eating, very fast, a goat’s cheese tart with a side serving of ‘wild leaves’.

  ‘Yes, yes, me too,’ Nora agrees over her big bowl of vichyssoisse. Something has really happened to her now, some unmistakable, undeniable excitement. Sally recognises the early signs of infatuation. Nora’s face is bright pink, and she laughs and peers, enraptured, at Jeremy. Now she removes her tweed jacket and is down to a surprisingly low-cut and clinging top, its neckline prettily picked out with lace. Damart, possibly. The pendant on Nora’s necklace is in the shape of a sea horse. The skin on her chest is blotchy with emotion. She is one of those mousey women who is daring underneath.

  Jeremy has removed his beige corduroy jacket too, and his cream turtle-neck sweater. He is sitting there in a pale blue shirt, the top button undone to reveal a little chest-hair, far up, like a high Plimsoll line. (‘And did they force you outside in the rain to play hockey?’ he is saying charmingly to Nora. ‘Yes, yes,’ Nora is saying.)

  This abandoning of clothes is beginning to be a bit like strip poker. There is something subconscious going on here. Sally is the only person who continues to wear all the clothes she arrived in.

  *

  At the far end of the restaurant, a woman in a white halter-neck dress appears in the doorway and goes to stand by the piano. A pianist, already poised on the seat, looks up at her. She pauses for a second, smiles back at him, then launches into a song. ‘Every Time We Say Goodbye’. Sally sits on the edge of her chair and listens. The pianist is good. The singer does not quite hit all the notes.

  ‘She’s confident,’ Sally observes, but Jeremy and Nora do not hear. She lets the comment float in the air, to die gracefully. Then she picks up her soup spoon and takes a sip of bouillabaisse from her dish of mussels. It goes down the wrong way. She splutters and coughs, tears springing into her eyes. Nora and Jeremy are still discussing the two horses called Stardust. Sally blinks and can’t see or breathe properly. Nora and Jeremy smile at each other. Sally gasps for air. She begins to be frightened. Then Jeremy, breaking off from his bittersweet equine reminiscences, glances across at her and finally looks concerned.

  ‘OK there, Sally?’

  He leans across the table.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Sally rasps, her eyes bulging, the tears warm and painful. ‘Why do gods above me,’ the woman at the piano is singing, ‘who must be in the know …’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she croaks, attempting to smile. But she feels explosive, like an over-blown balloon. She cannot swallow, cannot breathe. Other diners have begun to turn surreptitiously in their seats, to observe the spectacle. How awful, how awful to die eating mussels in a faraway hotel. Everything unresolved, everything unsaid. My daughter, my work, my loves …

  ‘Oh dear,’ Jeremy is saying, ineffectually.

  And now Nora Wheeler is taking charge. She has come round to Sally’s side of the table and has begun to slap her on the back. ‘It’s OK,’ she says. She slaps Sally’s back again. Something gives. Sally gasps and breathes. Jeremy hands her a glass of cool water and she takes a sip. She swallows, clears her throat, holds her hand up to her neck and sits, not speaking. The earrings swing warmly from her earlobes. Nora sits down again, even closer to Jeremy. United in the drama of the moment.

  ‘I’m OK now,’ Sally says, wiping her eyes.

  ‘It’s awful when that happens, isn’t it?’ Nora says, referring, Sally knows, not to the fear of dying but to the social embarrassment of it.

  She looks at the two of them. ‘I’m feeling quite tired, actually,’ she says, ‘and I’ve got a bit of a headache. I’m wondering if … I don’t suppose …’

  ‘Why don’t you go and have a rest in your room?’ Nora suggests, with enthusiasm.

  ‘Yes,’ Jeremy adds. ‘You’ll probably feel …’

  ‘Yes, a rest would probably do me the world of good,’ Sally says, trying to regain some semblance of dignity. But she feels too tired, and too upset. And tomorrow she will have to get up early, sit in an enormous room full of strangers and talk about embroidery. I should never have agreed to do this. I should be in East Grinstead, hemming up a trouser leg.

  ‘I’ll go up for a little while,’ she says. ‘Go and compose myself. But I’ll probably come down again for a coffee later. So we can discuss the
agenda for tomorrow?’

  ‘Allez vous coucher, Mrs Tuttle,’ Jeremy Bowes commands. ‘Si, si. Allez. Bonne nuit.’

  ‘Do you think if we tell the waiters, they’ll …’

  ‘Don’t worry about the waiters,’ Nora almost shouts, newly boisterous in her eagerness for Sally to leave her and Jeremy alone. ‘We’ll explain you’re not feeling too well. I’m sure they’ll –’

  ‘Well, if you really don’t mind …’

  And she gets up from the table and walks away, up the carpeted length of the restaurant, up the stairs, past the framed pictures of Edinburgh (the Castle; St Andrew’s Square; Greyfriar’s Bobby; the Grassmarket), and along the corridor to her room. She opens the door with the credit-card contraption she was given by the man with slicked-back hair, and pushes her way in. There are all her things. Thank God. Her material possessions. Her coat, her sponge bag, her handbag, her sensible shoes. Her portfolio, her rucksack, her canvas. Her Martha and Mary – who seem, at that moment, to be her only friends.

  Four-legged Knot

  No matter how difficult a time you are having, there are always thousands of people going about having a perfectly nice day. It is almost unbelievable. Some days are so difficult, so full of angst and awkwardness that you can’t imagine that other people are not affected. But they are not. They do not even know who you are.

  I am looking down at the street through our hotel window. It is ten thirty at night and freezing, the moon hiding behind a pale gauze of cloud. On the street below walks a girl in a black dress, progressing beneath the streetlamps to the bus stop, to begin work probably – some job in a bar or restaurant. Or maybe she is off to a party where she is hoping to meet him: the love of her life. She has nearly all her life ahead of her. She waits as a bus driver navigates a maroon bus down the dim green bus lane at exactly the same time as he did the night before. Watching the girl climb aboard is a man sitting on the pavement with his dog and his blanket and his empty polystyrene cup.