by West Camel
Deborah’s head popped out from behind a wall, her shawl shaking around her flat pale face.
‘Down here. I thought you were following me.’
Sam hesitated: she was beckoning him into an alley. A little rush of fear made him press his teeth into his tongue. But Deborah’s easy amble drew him on. She would know if this was safe or not. Unless she was a lure. Halfway down, the alley kinked and there was an orange light set in the wall. Sam passed it and looked back; because of the bend, he could no longer see the road or the estate. His heart picked up its tempo.
A spot of light appeared, making Deborah’s figure a silhouette. She had turned a torch on; it lit up a low wall that seemed to be the end of the alley. As Sam caught up with her he heard the slap of water and smelled the rich wet of mud. They were back at the creek again; dark shapes and new flats lined its banks.
‘Almost home,’ said Deborah, cosily, and she was already up on the wall, her legs dangling over the water. ‘Watch me, and do the same.’
He leaned over the parapet as she turned her body, one hand still holding the torch, and found with her foot a rung that stuck out below her. She quickly dropped away from him. Below, in the confusion of light from the railway shooting over the creek a few yards upstream and from the buildings surrounding them, he saw pools and streams amid stretches of thick silt. The tide was going out. One slip on these rungs and it would be a slow, sinking death.
‘Come on, dear,’ Deborah called up to him.
‘This is how you get to your house?’
She seemed to be floating above the creek bed, her face a featureless moon. ‘The only way, these days.’ He couldn’t see her lips move; the sound of her words was distorted by the acoustics of the deeply cut creek. Somehow, things had become untethered; without realising, he had strayed to the brink. He stood up straight, trying to reel himself in. Angular brick and steel boxes were heaped all around him. Deptford was on this bank; Greenwich was on the other. He knew where he was. He was safe, surely.
He was over the parapet, feeling for the cold metal rungs. There were just a few, and at the bottom was a ledge paved with smooth slabs, like a slim pavement. Deborah was walking along it, balancing expertly. He edged after her, digging his nails into the bricks and the stumps of slimy wood that protruded from the wall. He was determined not to slip, but could not help thinking that the soft mud would feel delicious against his skin.
‘Come on. You won’t fall.’ Deborah had stopped; she must be smiling back at him, but her face was dark, her torch pointing at his feet, guiding his way to where she stood, in front of a door in the wall. It opened straight onto the ledge and the water. Above was the sweep of a bow window, sitting out over the creek, and beside the door was another, regular window. It was a house, wedged in tightly between two blind gable ends.
‘Welcome,’ said Deborah, and opened the unlocked door.
Sam stood gaping on the threshold, gripping the doorframe to prevent himself tipping either back or forwards. The torch went out and another light appeared; it was a camping lamp, sitting on a table in a long kitchen.
‘Come in, then,’ said Deborah. ‘Take a seat, and I’ll get the kettle on.’
Pots, jars and boxes on shelves and in cupboards textured the room, and hooks and pans hung from the ceiling. Sam couldn’t see most of them clearly, just their shapes and glints from their surfaces. A vast stone sink stood under the window. At the back of the room a staircase rose to another floor.
He sat down at a table of pale unvarnished wood, surrounded by several unmatched chairs. Deborah was bending over a large range, waking up the fire with a poker. It was as if he had wandered into a re-creation – a set from a play or a TV show about the industrial past. But then she poured water into a kettle from a big plastic juice bottle.
She set two mugs down on the table. ‘It’s just this room and one upstairs.’
The London twang in her voice; her clothes; her scrubbed face – all seemed in perfect keeping with everything around her. He stretched his legs out and searched the crowded shelves. The taste of peril that had tempted him over the parapet was disappointed; now he was simply curious.
He pointed at the lamp hissing on the table. ‘You don’t have electricity?’
‘No – or gas or water.’ The kettle rumbled and she took it off the hot plate. ‘I’ve tried, but no one’s interested. What can I do?’ She snorted cheerfully.
Sam could feel the damp in the air, the pervasive smell of the creek; it was nowhere for an old woman to live.
‘Now, let’s take this tea upstairs.’ Deborah picked up her swollen bag. ‘You bring the lamp.’
Sam followed her obediently, holding the lamp high, as if they were on an expedition.
At the top of the stairs, Deborah tutted and tapped her foot at a small heap of sand on the step. ‘They’re building more flats on the other side of this wall. Sand and gravel and what have you comes through when they empty the trucks. I’ll sweep it up later.’
Sam’s feet crunched on the sand and his eyes were fixed for a moment on the long crack in the brick where it had trickled in. Did the people on the other side even know Deborah was here?
‘Bring the lamp over please, dear.’
The long room was more sparsely furnished than the kitchen and part of it was separated off by a screen, but what Sam could see was just as old and worn. Deborah was in the bow window, which took up the whole of the front wall. There were two armchairs on either side, with a large chest in between. She had opened the lid and was bent over it, rummaging around inside.
Sam placed the lamp on the window ledge and sat down. The seat of the chair felt a little damp.
Deborah fell back into the other chair with a huff and flopped a pile of tawny fabric onto the floorboards between them. ‘Right: I just have to do a bit of work, while I remember what I’m about, then I’ll show you those.’ She took a sip of tea, then put her mug down and dragged her grey bag towards her, hoisting the pale cloth out of it and onto her lap.
It was a long, narrow sheet, emerging from the bag, crossing her legs and building up in a random mound on the floor. From somewhere she drew a needle and white thread, then adjusted the angle of the lamp, so its light fell on the stretch of sheet she had smoothed out on her lap. Her needle flashed minutely, making Sam wink. He looked away.
The lamp made the bay a small cave in which they sat together – outside the window it was dark, and the rest of the room was groups of dim shapes. He could just see the design on the screen at the far end – birds in bushes and huge, flat bees.
He looked down at the puddle of fabric and over at Deborah’s busy fingers. It seemed that she was embroidering the sheet, stitching white onto white, sewing at speed, occasionally pausing to reflect, her eyes glazed, then adding more. He was reminded of someone writing.
The soft sawing of the thread running through the cloth was soothing; he slid down a little in the chair and his feet disappeared into the heaps of fabric on the floor. He was surprised at how untroubled he was by the questions spinning and lengthening in his head.
‘How long have you lived here?’ he asked at last.
‘Since the war. Since I was bombed out of my place in the High Street. What’s that? More than seventy years?’
She stopped sewing and stared into the darkness at the other end of the room. ‘A long, long time to be alone.’
He tried to set his lips into something between a smile and a sympathetic pout, but she didn’t seem to see.
She took in a sharp breath and relocated the part of the sheet she had been working on. But after adding a couple more stitches she began to gather it up. ‘That’s enough for tonight,’ she said and folded and straightened the sheet, brushing specks and fluff off it before pushing it back into the bag.
‘Now, dear,’ she bent over and picked up the pile of yellowed fabric, ‘you’ve been wondering what I was doing behind that house in Albury Street, haven’t you?’ Her voice was breathy, as if she we
re speaking to a child.
Sam waited without replying.
She tipped her head towards him and raised her eyebrows, her mouth a little open. ‘Well, these are why I go there.’ And, with a little flourish of her wrist, she unfurled a length of embroidered cloth. It was bordered with a geometric design, the centre busy with triangles in rusts and browns. She laid it on the chest and held out another, paler piece, murmuring, ‘And this.’ Simple black designs danced across this one; it was stained, and the edges were badly frayed. The next piece she held up was scarred with streaks of light and dark. But the next was bright and glossy – red and blue shapes on a clean cream backing.
Sam searched her face as she presented each new piece. Perhaps it was the lack of light, or the fact that it was late, or just that he was sitting here with her in this decrepit house with the creek slipping by outside, but he wasn’t able to decide what her little performance was about: whether she was being completely honest, or whether she was mad – and whether he should make his excuses and get out. He touched the piece that she had just placed on the chest. Water stains bloomed over it; the colours must have been vivid once, but now they were muddy. The design was similar to the birds and bees on the screen.
He recalled the story she had told him as they had wandered through the dark. ‘So you’re saying these are the bits of cloth and stuff you found when you were a little girl?’
Deborah stopped moving; her blue irises were completely surrounded by white, shining in the lamplight.
She began folding and unfolding again. ‘Some of them are; some of them are copies I made of pieces that were falling apart.’ The smile had left her face, it was blank and serious. ‘But I didn’t take them that first time. I’ve been going back down there for years.’ She said this to the last piece that lay on her lap and remained with her head bowed for a few moments. ‘I suppose you could call me a sort of archaeologist.’
When she raised her head again, her voice had changed. ‘Now, another story?’
This was the time to thank her for the tea and leave. But he realised that if he moved anywhere it would be onto the floor, cross-legged. She had him gently pinned down.
Deborah raised her hands, pinching the corners of the last piece, so that it opened up. It was much larger than the others – a series of panels filled with shapes and figures. They were matchstick and child-like from close up, as he moved forwards to examine them; but when he sat back, they formed a single design – like an oriental carpet hung over a doorway. Deborah let the piece float flat onto the floor between them.
‘It tells a tale,’ she said.
His eyes felt heavy and he tucked a foot under him.
‘It’s taken me years to learn how to read it. Years of investigation and study. But here’s what it says.’ And making small, circular movements over each panel with her hand, she began.
In Anatolia, in the time when history was written as pictures, there was a woman living in a town on the edge of the plain.
This woman was all alone in the world. Her parents had died when she was young and she had never married, nor had any children of her own.
In the evenings, when the air was cool, she sat alone on the roof of her house and attended to her sewing and weaving. Her neighbours sat on the roofs around her, talking and singing into the night. Out on the plain were the tents of the nomads. And watching over it all was the mountain where Anana lived.
A plague came. Not fever or vomiting or sores; it was far more serious: years went by when no woman fell pregnant.
The people of the plain appealed to Anana. The nomads sacrificed goats and sheep, and the townspeople burned bread. But no children came.
Messengers arrived from far away asking for men to fight in a war. The men went with them, saying that, when they returned, they would become fathers.
While they were gone, the women wove cloth on looms they stretched out on the ground. And as they wove, they sang spells.
When the men returned the women lay down with them on the cloth. But still no children came.
One night the woman was on the roof of her house when she saw Anana coming down from the mountain and walking across the plain towards her. When Anana was on the mountain she was huge, but the closer she came, the smaller she grew, until she was a normal woman standing on out on the plain.
Anana spoke, and her voice was both deafening and a whisper: ‘Come,’ she told the woman. ‘I have a gift for you.’
The woman climbed down the ladder from her roof and ran towards Anana. When she reached her she saw that in one hand she held a strip of embroidered cloth, and in the other a needle and thread.
‘Study this motif,’ Anana said. ‘Learn how to stitch it and you will be saved.’ Then she turned and walked back across the plain, growing larger as she went.
The woman sat down in the grass, and though it was dark on the plain, her eyes were able to see the cloth, the needle and thread.
The woman wasn’t sure how long she stayed out on the plain. It may have been days. She learned the motif Anana had given her. Then she made her way back to the town.
When she arrived, though, she saw that all the ladders were pulled up and the gate was barred.
She called to her neighbours: ‘I have a gift from Anana,’ she said. ‘It will save us from the plague.’
At last the town elders appeared on the roofs, spitting and knocking on the outer wall with sticks. ‘You are no longer welcome here,’ they said. ‘Your parents died; you never married and you have never borne a child. It is because of you Anana is angry; it is because of you that she has stopped giving us children.’
The woman sat down in the dung heap beside the gate, and when the boys came out with the animals, they drove her onto the plain, beating her back as if she was one of the goats.
The woman wandered the plain for many days, begging food and shelter from the nomads. But no one would take her in and she had to steal what she could. She looked up at the mountain and asked Anana why she had done this. But Anana did not answer.
For years, the woman searched the plain for Anana. Then she looked in the towns and cities on the coast. She crossed the sea and searched the islands. But she could not find Anana.
Wherever the woman went, she carried her needle with her, and when she was tired of searching, she sat on the ground and sewed. At first, her needlework filled a sack. Then it was enough to fill a chest she carried upon her back.
Every night, wherever in the world she found herself, she took from the bottom of the chest the strip of cloth on which she had stitched the motif. She cursed the day she had learned it, and tried to undo it again. But the stitches always knotted tighter. And still she could not find Anana.
And still she searches, to this day.
Chapter 6: Deborah, 1913
‘When Mrs Clyffe was in church, her face changed. Not when she was chatting to the vicar or herding us in and out of the pews, or when she was keeping her eye on us during the sermon. But during the liturgy – when the priest did his bit of business with the host, said the holy words, kissed the stole and placed it around his neck – she seemed in a sort of waking dream. Her sharp eyes, which could spot a soot mark on an apron from the top of the stairs, and see what you were doing almost before you were doing it, would narrow a little, as if what she was seeing was bright, but she couldn’t look away. Her forehead, forever pinched into a frown, would become completely smooth, and her cheeks, which usually pulsed as she chewed over what should and should not be done, became still and plump.
‘I think my face must have changed like that when I first examined the motif. Must still change whenever I look at it. Not that I do that often. No one likes a knot in their stomach.
‘Mr Mellor’s face looked something similar when he first saw it – or the copy I allowed him to see. Because, of course, by the time I met him I had made many, many versions. And even though he was an archaeologist, I wasn’t about to show him the real one. The first one. The one I had
been given in the tunnel.
‘When I reached the door to the cellar, I blew out the little thumb of candle and stood in the tunnel in the dark, the scrap of material the woman had given me balled up in my fist. Looking at the straight white lines of light around the door, I couldn’t quite believe that I had seen her, trapped there in the mud, gaping and gabbling at me.
‘I couldn’t hear anyone in the cellar, so I slipped through the door and bolted it behind me. I pulled off my filthy pinny, pushed it into the laundry pile under a set of cot sheets, then marked it down in the laundry book that hung from a nail in the scullery. If I wore my fresh one for two more days, I thought, and took special care to keep it clean, no one would be any the wiser. But on my way upstairs to the attic, I met Sally coming down, her arms full of soiled linen. I thought I knew exactly the words she was about to scold me with: “Where’s your pinny, Deborah Wybrow? As if I don’t have enough to do without reminding you to keep your dress clean.” But all she did was swivel her head to see her feet around the stack of cloth. And then, when she reached the next landing, she called back up, without looking at me. “I shall be putting a wash on directly. So I’ll need you to grate the soap and watch the boil.”
‘“I’ll be down once I’ve put my sewing away,” I replied. But she was already out of sight.
‘I opened my hand and, squinting at the strip of cloth, caught a glimpse of its delicate pattern. My sewing, I said to myself. Perhaps it was then that it began – when I first felt my heart trip in excitement and fear about the thing that had been given just to me.
‘Sally didn’t speak a word to me all the time we worked on the laundry. She didn’t keep quiet, of course – that was never her way. But everything she said was directed at the copper, or the yellowed linen or the coal shovel. And I knew my tasks well, even at my young age, so she had no call to tell me off or to chivvy me along.