by West Camel
‘Afterwards, I stood dripping naked on the flags, shivering a little, my scalp tingling from the cold water on the burns, my arms and knees twitching. I was alive. Which was still a huge puzzle to me.
‘I found the oil and relit the lamp. The pile of tapestries on the table had partially dried – cold, stiff mountains of cloth, coated with a layer of mud.
‘I took the corner of a piece and untangled it from the rest. A folded section was still relatively clean. I could see tiny stitches, making a pattern I’d never seen in the samplers and sewing I had done throughout my life – but at the same time, it seemed familiar. I spread the piece out in front of me and with a bowl of water and a piece of sponge, I began to remove the grime. Spots of brown water splashed over my naked body – my thin arms and thighs, my skinny hips. A trickle found its way down my leg. I gasped. Then stopped and sighed.
‘Then I continued with my new work.’
Chapter 28: Anne and Sam
Deborah left her fingers resting on the sheet and closed her eyes. For a moment, while the story still hung in the air, Anne could see both the old woman shrunken inside her thick layers of grey wool and the younger one, naked, her arrested body splashed with river mud.
When Deborah opened her eyes again they were small and bloodshot. ‘I think you know how it goes from there.’
She began to try to fold the sheet up, but seemed unable to grip the edges. Anne leaned across to do it for her. Deborah mouthed her thanks, sinking by the second.
‘Come on, you. Let’s get you back to bed.’ Anne said, standing by Deborah’s chair. ‘I knew you shouldn’t have got up – naughty girl.’ She tried to ease her up, but Deborah’s complete lack of strength made her delicate weight awkward to lift. Anne pulled at her for a second, and felt the word ‘Mum’ rising to her lips. Rita had always been able to hold Julie firmly – whether she was in a writhing tantrum or a deep cream sleep.
Anne snatched her hands away. She turned to Sam, hoping the lamp light obscured her blush. ‘Help me, Sam, please.’
Sam looked at the two women without focusing. He was still in the story, sinking with Jack and Digby through the cloudy water. With the ridiculous task ahead of him, the idea of being fixed in a hug forever seemed like the perfect dream.
‘Sam, come on.’ Anne’s voice was sharper. He came to and darted to Deborah’s other side.
Together, it was easy to guide her up the stairs and into the bed. Sam left them there; Anne was beginning to undress Deborah and, as he went back down the stairs, he heard the bed creak and Anne say, ‘There you go. Lie down and I’ll sort the blankets out.’ It was odd, but so normal, how mothers and daughters switched roles over time; and fathers and sons, too. He stared with drooping eyelids at the chairs, pushed back from the kitchen table, showing where the three of them had sat as Deborah told the story. He was sure it wouldn’t happen again. Soon, he would be with Derek, and this little house and all its battered relics would slip quietly to the bottom of the creek.
Anne made the bed around Deborah, smoothing the rough sheets and flicking the old blankets as Deborah slid quickly into sleep, her mouth still working, continuing to tell something, but without sounds. At last, though, she opened her eyes and lifted her hand.
‘Pass me the winding sheet, Anne. I’d like it near me. I can always add a stitch. Here and there.’
Anne fetched the sheet from the chair she had put it on and laid it out beside Deborah. She had to fold it, it was so long – almost twice Deborah’s length; and it was wider than her, too.
Deborah felt for the needle and thread that were still attached to the last few inches of the sheet. Finding them, her face smoothed out, she let a long sigh escape her mouth, a brief smile disturbed her lips and she was asleep.
Downstairs, Sam had cleared away the plates and cups and was waiting for Anne with the bag of torches and thread.
‘Is she OK?’ he asked.
Anne moved slowly, looking distant; or it could just have been the effect of the lamplight. She looked at him for a moment. ‘Should we stay here in case she needs us?’ Sam saw her pull at her hair.
He wanted to urge Anne to leave; he had already put his jacket on. Seeing Deborah fail at the end of the story, feeling her weak weight and seeing her soundless words as they lay her on the bed, he had resigned himself to her passing. Wasn’t this what she wanted? It wasn’t heartless to leave her to die quietly in her own bed, was it? And they had a reason to leave – they had a quest. He moved to the door and opened it onto the dark creek.
Anne put her hand on her jacket. She could stay in this house forever; sitting beside Deborah’s bed while she slept, boiling kettles on the stove; washing cups. The cool air from the open door wound around the warm air from the range just where she stood. Such a limited existence could stretch only so far. There was something to be done away from this unlikely little house. She put her jacket on, picked up the tin – a new tin now; Deborah must have replaced the old one – and turned the lamp out.
They had to use a torch to find their way along the ledge to the ladder. The air of the spring evening was funnelled down the alley towards them, waking the skin on Anne’s face.
She let her lips free from her teeth. ‘She’ll be fine.’ She wasn’t exactly sure what this meant for Deborah; but out here, with a hint of pollen and fresh leaves on the wind, flashing a glimpse of summer, she knew that Deborah would be. That she herself would be fine too.
‘My place is just across the road,’ she said as they climbed the wall. ‘We can wait there for it to get late enough.’
Sam’s shoulders fell; he looked at his watch; they still had several hours before they could go to Albury Street.
‘Well, at least we’ve got the key to get in. And it’s very dark around the back of the house. We won’t be caught like Mel and Derek.’ He shivered a little saying Derek’s name.
They had reached the kink in the alley, and the well-lit street ahead, framed by the high brick walls, made a sharply defined picture. A car passed smoothly through it. Reality had continued while they had been away. They needed to catch up. Sam stopped and flicked the torch on.
‘What are you doing?’ Anne had walked ahead of him a few steps and had to turn back.
He cast the white beam around on the floor and against the wall. There they were, the spots of blood, still staining the concrete and brick.
‘This is where I met Derek the first time.’ He put a hand out to touch a spot; it fitted his fingertip perfectly. ‘I’d just left Deborah’s and was walking down here, and saw a crowd of blokes beating someone up.’ He turned the torch off and stood up. ‘It’s was Derek’s lot doing Nigel over.’
Anne couldn’t see Sam’s expression properly, but she could hear that his voice came from a tightened throat. Until recently – until just these past few days – she would have kept her hands in her pockets or by her sides. But now she put her arm through Sam’s and directed him to the end of the alley and across the road.
‘Derek’s a good bloke. This is Deptford. People around here get themselves involved in stuff like that – we’re brought up with it. Nigel was boasting about his scars a couple of days after. Derek wouldn’t hurt him seriously. And anyway, we’re going to let him out of this tunnel, aren’t we? We’re going to sort this mess out.’ She patted Sam’s hand.
She had never behaved like this; she had never believed things could be solved with babying words. But now, on the pavement, in the street light, the block opposite filled with families, she saw Sam fold his lips into a smile.
‘He said to me on Saturday, “I’m happy for Lia, even if she’s having a kid with that wanker.” And he meant it, I know he did. You two will be alright.’
They were at the bottom of the stairs leading to her floor. Doors and windows were open all over the block. A warm jumble of noises and smells descended in a slow cascade from the long balconies. Frying and spice and the shouts and cries from the Nigerian family. Dramatic music from TVs. A voice chat
ting on a phone – her neighbour leaning over the railing several floors up. Metal against china; pots placed on hobs. A bubbling hiss and splash. Anne paused as it all showered down on them, rinsing away the cruise ship, the wooden boat and its sail, the house washed up on some other shore. The old woman who could not die, dying in her vast bed.
A car pulled into the courtyard bringing someone home for his dinner.
Upstairs, Sam watched Anne unlock the door then put her foot on the lip at the bottom and twist her arm upwards. The door popped open and she fell into the hall, but seemed unruffled.
He stood in the living room as she turned lights on, removed her jacket and switched the kettle on in the kitchen.
‘Nice place,’ he said, looking around at the neat, bare walls and thinking about his narrow, messy bedsit.
‘Thanks,’ called Anne from the kitchen. ‘You know it’s the first place I’ve ever lived that I could really call my own home. And I’m forty-five.’
Sam looked at her opening and shutting cupboards, and wondered about those forty-five years, the last few hours of which she had spent with him. Was there a flash of that past in the cut of her hair, the hang of her shoulders?
‘Sit down.’ She turned to him. ‘Take your coat off. We’ve got hours to wait before we can go out.’
He sat on the new-looking sofa and pulled the bag towards him. He took out the tin and opened it on his lap, spraying himself with a little shower of river water. Laying aside a yellowed piece of newspaper that had peeled off from inside the lid, he removed the two keys and turned them over several times. Then, he carefully unfolded the crisp paper that preserved the strip of cloth.
He held it up. Anne brought tea and biscuits in and sat beside him in silence, joining him in staring at the motif. In the light of the table lamp it looked different from how it had out on the river. There, it had trapped a warm glow from the last extending rays of the sunset. Now it looked dirty and dull. But he couldn’t resist following its meandering maze; it seemed to keep him from speaking.
Finally, he laid it on the sofa cushion between them and pulled his eyes away from it to Anne’s face. ‘So what do you think?’
‘About what?’ Anne touched the fabric; Sam’s fingers were still on its other end.
‘About this thing. Do you believe her?’ He felt safe to say it. Within the smooth cream walls of the flat, on this comfortable sofa, with Anne’s quiet, careful confidence, he didn’t worry that she would think him strange.
‘I believe that she believes it all. I don’t think she’s having a laugh with us.’ Anne moved one finger over a section of the motif. The stitching felt brittle, not at all like the tickling softness of Deborah’s sheet. ‘But it doesn’t matter, does it? We’re in the middle of something real now, aren’t we? I mean, this isn’t a fairy tale.’
She held Sam’s gaze for an expanded moment. His mouth was a little open and she realised hers was too.
‘What’s this, then?’ Anne moved her hand to the oblong of tawny newsprint and immediately felt how delicate it was, a creased corner crumbling off under her finger.
‘I don’t know; it was in the tin. I thought it was just for lining.’
She laid it on her palm and proffered it to him. ‘No, she’s obviously kept it in there for a reason. Read the headline: Eminent Archaeologist Jacob Mellor Discovers Clear Evidence of Early Textile Technology in South London.’
Anne felt Sam’s shoulder touching hers and caught a trace of the outside air and the tang of his sweat; this distracted her momentarily from the tiny print lying on her hand. She pushed her hair back behind her ear and began to read the article out loud.
The destructive effects of war are clear to anyone travelling across our great city. But the scars left by the bombing are also an opportunity; hidden for centuries, the relics of past lives can now be found with just a little careful digging.
Anne paused and glanced at Sam; he had returned to his examination of the motif, slumped a little in his seat.
However, at Deptford Creek it was not a bomb that cleared our site, but the closure of the Tide Mill. No longer is the flow of the Ravensbourne regulated in order to keep the mill wheels turning; now the sluices are open and the water levels permitted to fall, revealing a muddy landscape that begs the close attention of any archaeologist, historian or curious person.
Digging through the centuries, we found many interesting artefacts; but like a bird drawn thousands of miles back to the land of its birth, I found myself urging my team to go deeper, pressing on through the layers, until at last I found the evidence I almost didn’t realise I had been looking for.
Our Deptford Creek finds mean the skins and furs with which our imaginations have clothed our prehistoric ancestors must be replaced by very different garb: carefully woven fabric, decorated with patterns carrying symbolic power to its manufacturers and wearers. The primitive, hirsute tribe of half-men must now be considered a myth: the inhabitants of and travellers through this marshy river plain were sophisticates: industrious, artistic and philosophical, they worshipped goddesses, traded with their neighbours and had friends and enemies stretching across Europe to the Mediterranean and the Near East.
The piece of woven and stitched fabric illustrated below predates any example of the Greek key or meander of Asia Minor and is of far greater complexity – for its maker, it must have represented a powerful natural charm. It was discovered close to the causeway across Deptford Creek that was excavated by my team in the spring of 1948.
As Anne read on, Sam found himself listening less to the details of types of stitch and weave, of places in the Middle East with thick walls and refuse trenches, and more to the walking pace of Anne’s reading voice. It wasn’t too many notes away from Deborah’s and it crossed his mind that the two of them could be related. Both were born and raised in Deptford; it wasn’t impossible.
‘Look, there’s a sketch of the motif.’ Anne placed the strip of paper delicately onto the sofa cushion between his hand and the cloth.
‘Does it match?’ Sam examined the two pieces for a moment.
‘Pretty much.’ Anne twisted her body towards him a little. ‘It’s wrong here, though – isn’t it?’ And with a little finger she showed him where on the illustration two border lines ended in neat crosses, and on the piece of fabric they converged on the central run of stitches, and seemed to climb back up it towards the other end of the strip.
‘But what more does that tell us?’
Anne sat back and looked at the blank wall opposite them. ‘I’m not sure, really. That she did really find the piece? That she’s not making it up?’
Sam picked up the cutting and another corner crumbled off it. He scanned the text, searching for Deborah’s name. ‘She’s not mentioned. But Jacob Mellor – she’s spoken about him before.’
‘Loads of times. She did just now, when she was talking about those two blokes that died. She’s kind of fixated on him, I think.’
‘Maybe that means she is making it up. He’s where she got the idea from – Jacob Mellor.’
‘The idea for what?’
‘For this.’ Sam put the cutting down and picked the motif up again. ‘She’s good at sewing. She could easily have read the paper and copied the picture.’
‘She said she made loads of copies of it. Maybe she did find it and over the years, making the copies sort of became a story for her. She ended up believing something she made up.’
‘So is this a copy or the one she originally found?’
The question seemed unanswerable. Sam stared at Anne. He noticed the tracery of lines around her eyes.
‘And all the rest of her stories?’ Anne finally replied. ‘I’m guessing she’s told you those too?’
‘Oh yes,’ Sam smiled. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time listening to her.’ He brought the motif close to his face. ‘And now she wants it undone, does she?’
‘It’s what she said to me.’
‘Looks easy enough, just take a pair of
scissors to it.’
‘That’s what I thought. But it sounds a bit too obvious for Deborah.’
Sam scraped at one end of the strip with his fingernail. The stitching was extraordinarily tight, embedded deep in the fabric. He turned the strip over and over, searching for a place where he could start to unpick.
‘She seems to think it’s dangerous,’ said Anne.
Sam didn’t reply. Somehow he had managed to pull a piece of stitching away from the fabric. He wasn’t sure it was an end he’d got hold of, but there were clear tufts appearing. He bent his head down closer.
‘For her though, I suppose it has been,’ continued Anne. ‘She’s been obsessing over that thing for years. Whatever we believe, in her mind the whole story she tells about it has kind of become true. Maybe she did find it, but all the rest of the tapestries – she’s made them. She’s never found them down some tunnel.’
Sam stopped and looked up. ‘But when I was down there on Saturday, there was a piece of cloth stuck in the mud. She got me to pull it out.’
‘I think I saw her with that. She put it there herself, though, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t know. It was really buried. But then, if she’s as old as she says, she could have put it there years ago.’
Anne’s eyes drifted past him, out of the window at his back. ‘It’s impossible to know what’s the truth and what isn’t with her. Especially when she’s got that bloody sheet with her all the time. And that’s definitely her work – I’ve seen her doing it.’
‘I wish I could read it like she seems to be able to.’ Sam felt something come away under his fingers and a short length of thread came out from its bed under the other layers. It hung crookedly over his hand. He showed it to Anne for a second, then continued.
‘Why?’ said Anne. ‘Do you think it would say something different? What would be the point?’
‘Everyone makes stuff up about themselves, don’t they?’ He had managed to pull out more threads now. The fabric was gathering together and was looking messy, and his fingernails were sore – from undoing the knotted ropes in the cold water earlier, and now from the tightness of the stitching.