by West Camel
‘“You live here alone?” He cast his eyes around at all the clutter, as if it was the reason he asked.
‘“Yes. Just me these days.” Did that suggest I’d lost someone? I wanted something to keep my hands busy. “And you – do you live alone?”
‘“I’m what they call a loner. I’ve been travelling so much these past few years, I haven’t had much choice.”
‘“Where have you been?”
‘“I spent most of last year in Turkey – on a dig, of course.”
‘I hesitated to ask what he dug for there; all I could bring to mind were baggy pantaloons and Turkey carpets. “It must be a whole other world.”
‘“Can you believe that not so long ago you could travel from here to there without ever setting foot on foreign ground?”
‘He was baffling me now – and I couldn’t help wondering whether he was doing it on purpose. He must have seen the discomfort in my face because he spread his arms in his actorly way and said, “You said you have some things I might be interested in.”
‘His grin made me giggle and scamper up the stairs like a silly child.
‘I took my time selecting the pieces I wanted to show him. Of course, my hand went first to the careful copies of the motif I had been making ever since the bombing. But then, as I thought of the tunnel and the rolling eye of the woman as she handed me the scrap of material, I tucked them away again at the bottom of the chest. I wouldn’t mention that. I couldn’t bear his laughter; his bare toes curling and uncurling. Even someone who’d travelled the world digging for who knows what would find it hard to believe that story – sometimes I found it difficult to believe myself. Since the bombing I had been back into the tunnel countless times, but I hadn’t found a trace of the woman; not unless you count the tapestries and needlework – the more I looked, the more of that I seemed to find.
‘I finally decided on a little pile of work; and at the last minute I included one of my copies of the motif that I had made into a much longer strip than the original, as an experiment for myself, I suppose. I couldn’t tell how well it had worked. I always felt a little giddy when I looked at it and couldn’t judge the quality like I could a shirt or a tablecloth.
‘The kitchen was filled with the smell of Mr Mellor’s socks – a mixture of his feet and the rubber of the waders, carried by the heat of the stove. I sat myself down opposite him, but kept my little collection of cloth on my lap.
‘“Don’t be so diffident, Deborah,” Mrs Clyffe used to tell me. I knew it was the doctor’s word, but she liked to use it about me. The night before I left the hospital, she took me into her office at the front of the house and said, “You must go out into the world and make your mark, Deborah. You’ve had the worst of starts, but now you have your chance. There’s many a girl of your age who doesn’t know her letters and can’t repeat her Bible stories half as well as you. And Lord knows, in all my years I’ve not come across anyone who’s as skilled with a needle. So no more diffident Deborah. Mind me, now.” She had tried to be stern, but her lips and high, round cheeks had twitched; and she gave me the longest, warmest hug – something she would never have done if we hadn’t been alone.
‘I sighed and placed the pile on the tabletop, keeping it covered with my hands. I had tried to mind her most of my life, but the world was not as Mrs Clyffe would have it. My mark had been rubbed out, it seemed, and I had little choice but to carry on, taking my chances as best I could. I pushed the first piece of cloth towards Mr Mellor with the tips of my fingers.
‘He took it up and held it close to his face, as if he were nearsighted, but then he dangled it at arm’s length, so the light from the window fell on it. It was a particularly ugly piece, I always thought, but at the same time fascinating – figures going about their business among animals and huts, all surrounded by clever stitchwork that was almost like writing.
‘He held out his hand for the next piece, a frown making his face hard to read. “Where did you say you found these?” Without looking up he stood, spread the piece neatly across the table and, reaching inside his jacket, took out a notebook and pencil.
‘I looked into my lap and touched my lips with my hand before saying, “In the basement of a house near here.”
‘“In Deptford?” His tone was sharp and all his jollity was gone.
‘I nodded.
‘“How near?”
‘I never thought what was above me on the street when I was down in the tunnel – it didn’t seem important. “No more than ten minutes’ walk, I suppose.”
‘He was quiet for a few moments, scribbling notes in his book and taking a piece up every now and then and studying it near the window.
‘I still had the copy of the motif in my lap. I fingered it, pleating it between my fingers, not really sure what was stopping me from showing it to him. I bit my lip at last and quietly placed the strip in the middle of the table, lining it up with the rest.
‘He didn’t notice it at first. When he did, he froze, as if he’d heard a scream outside. He picked it up and let it lie across his upturned palms, like a sleeping snake that might, he feared, wake up and bite him.
‘“But this is quite new.” He scowled at me, almost angry.
‘I felt scolded. “It is; it’s a copy I made. I’m a seamstress, you see.”
‘“And the original?”
‘I hadn’t felt so small since I was a girl. Maybe that’s why I didn’t tell him the truth. Maybe if I’d told him where it was, maybe if I had sailed him out into the middle of the river, the whole scandal wouldn’t have blown up; and maybe my long, long life would’ve taken a different turn. Who’s to say? But right then and there, I didn’t want him to have the motif – to even see it. So I lied.
‘“Lost,” I said. “It’s many years since I found it and I’ve moved several times. But that’s a faithful copy, you can be certain of that.” I raised my eyes and was sure to hold his angry stare. He looked away first, and I felt a brief rush of victory.
‘When he turned his eyes back to me, he had softened them and uncreased his forehead. “I’m sorry to have been abrupt. It’s my way when I make an exciting find.”
‘“Politeness costs nothing”, would have been Mrs Clyffe’s reply; and I doubt she would have had much more to do with Mr Mellor after his little display. But I was won over more easily. “Exciting? How?”
‘“The selection of pieces; their age. Textiles often don’t survive, you see. They tend to rot. So any examples are always of interest. This, however” – he still held the strip I had made in his hands, like a priest about to kiss his stole – “if you had the original of this, and were able to say where it was found, well, that would be a most extraordinary thing.”
‘I kept my hands in my lap, and tried to remain perfectly still. “Why is that?”
‘He stared at me; he was choosing his words carefully. “If it were genuine, it would suggest that textile technology arrived in Britain much earlier than has been thought. This kind of design has really only been seen in the Near East.”
‘Trying to look innocent must have made me look blank, because he shook his hands so the head and tail of the strip flicked about. “In Turkey. I’ve only ever seen this type of design in Turkey.” He was sweating now in a kind of feverish excitement.
‘“You can have that if you like.”
‘“Are you sure? The rest I can leave with you, but if I can have this, it would be…” He looked up, as if to heaven.
‘I felt myself smiling broadly. My life since the bomb had been so small – nothing to do and no one to talk to, no matter what I tried. I felt like a little girl, pleased to be so helpful.
‘“Now, if you don’t mind, Miss Wybrow, I’d like to get going.” He was pushing his damp socks into his pockets. “There’s a lot I have to do.”
‘“Well, if there’s anything I can help with, let me know.” But still I couldn’t tell him that the original strip was tucked away, dirty and faded, in a tin at the bottom of t
he river.
‘Maybe if I had fetched it, he would have stayed – or would have come back. Perhaps if I’d told him about the tunnel, or even have taken him down there – thirty-six Albury Street was an empty shell in those days – perhaps then I wouldn’t have had to wait so long; year upon year of just me and my work and the motif. Perhaps then things would have turned out differently. But even as I tell you this now, I can’t see how they would. It’s as if it was all decided a long time before, way back when I took it upon myself to disobey Mrs Clyffe and go wandering about in the tunnel. You’ll never be seen again, she used to tell us. And I almost never was. Almost.
‘I showed Mr Mellor through the wreckage of the back room and out the door into the yard.
‘“They certainly made a job of Deptford,” he said, as he began to pick his way across to the gate.
‘I stood and waved him off, still expecting then that I would hear from him within days. But it was weeks, maybe months later, when a team of men arrived to clear the yard, waking me every morning with their shouts and the noise of their pickaxes, that I began to doubt I’d ever see him again.
‘I suppose it was at least two years after that that I read the article in a copy of the Illustrated London News, which found its way into my bag at the library on Lewisham Way. I nearly missed it. I had flicked through the issue once already, picking out “suitable” stories, and it was only when I was laying out some paper to scrape the scales from a fish – the first I had managed to catch alone – that my eye was caught by the sketch at the bottom of the page. It was clearly drawn by hand, but there was no mistaking it – it was my motif.
‘I couldn’t read the article quickly enough. But I was so flustered, before I could sit down and read it again, I had to put the page aside and clean and gut the fish. I’m sure I made a terrible job, and it was such a sick little thing as it was.
‘Reading the article through once more, with Mrs Clyffe’s south London tones slowly and carefully pronouncing each word, I still found no mention of a Miss Wybrow. Nothing among the descriptions of “reverse keys” and “glyphic devices” about a middle-aged Deptford seamstress. I told myself not to be so vain. Why would Mr Mellor talk about me? I was no scientist or historian, no part of his team.
‘But all that was just a niggle. It was the lie that really bit:
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. We discovered it close to the causeway across Deptford Creek that was excavated by my team in the spring of 1948.
‘I had to read this last sentence several times over, and stare hard at the line drawing underneath to swallow what I was seeing without choking. Because of course the illustration was not drawn from anything Mr Mellor had found, but from the long copy I had made and given him.
‘I suppose it was then that I realised the beginning of the truth. Just like when the train pulled out of Deptford station all those years before and Mrs Clyffe folded her hands across her middle, tucked her chin in to stop her tears and kept nodding and waving all the while I leaned out of the window; and I began to understand that I would never see her again.
‘It was the stupidest thing, but I couldn’t finish that scrap of fish I had for tea that evening and I lay awake half the night.
‘In the morning, I sat with my cup of tea in the upstairs window. It had been a full moon the previous night and the spring tide had emptied the creek to a trickle, which meandered through the smooth banks of mud. The moon had never done anything for me. It was like I’d slipped her attention. I knew what monthlies were, of course, but I’d never experienced one.
‘If I leaned a little to one side, so my temple was almost resting on the windowpane, I could see the tops of Mr Mellor’s waders sticking out of the mud just upstream by the opposite bank, among all the other junk that found a final resting place in the creek bed. I wondered how long they’d stay there, or whether anyone would notice them – someone passing by on a slow train over the bridge, perhaps. One day, enough silt would be laid down to cover them completely, and no one but me would have any idea they were there. Mr Mellor would never come back for them – that much I felt sure of now. Somehow I’d slipped his attention too.
‘I read the article through a few more times, making notes about the things that I didn’t understand, then took them to the library. I felt like quite the scholar, looking up this or that word and piling up the volumes on the long tables. It kept me going for months, that study.
‘And when I’d exhausted Lewisham Way, I took myself up to the West End, to the round Reading Room in the British Museum. At first, I had an idea that I might see Mr Mellor up there, bent over one of the long, curved desks, laid out like a clock under the dome. But once I started to follow the lead he’d handed me, Mr Mellor himself was put out of my mind. It was the work that I was thinking of. What could be done with a needle and thread. What could be told. What could be caused.
‘To think I’d sewed and worked with cloth all my life without knowing the first thing about how and when it all started. But now, with all my reading and research, each time I took up my needle, or pilfered a length of fabric off a market stall, it was like I was wearing the strongest of spectacles. I could see deep into every stitch and fibre. Every twist and knot was special.
‘I felt sure I would be caught out by the library guard. Up there they wore a uniform – brass buttons and a wide cap. But, no, I managed to slip in and out without anyone bothering about me. In the end, I became quite brazen, wandering into the stacks to find what I wanted to look at, while all the other readers had to fill out request cards and wait for their items to be brought to them.
‘And that’s how I learned – I suppose you’d call it the language of stitches. That’s how I can read the stories on all those tapestries I find thick with mud in the tunnel. That’s how I can write my own – on this sheet that I dragged from the wreckage of the draper’s, that I’m reading from right now.
‘And that’s how I know what the motif does. The spell it writes. It’s not words; and it’s never spoken. But it still has power. It still makes me live. On and on and on.
‘I did come across Mr Mellor’s name. Many times, in fact: he’d been published in that many journals and books he had a whole section in one of the long drawers of catalogue cards. But I didn’t need to make any effort to find his name when the scandal finally broke. It was in every paper in Lewisham Library, with a photograph of his scowling face. Even I could see that this time he was definitely angry. And no wonder:
Discredited Archaeologist Loses Licence to Dig.
‘Discredited. My throat felt sticky and tight when I repeated the word in my head, and my mind seemed to follow two roads as I read on, so that I couldn’t pay full attention either to my thoughts or the words on the page. I shuffled through the other papers, looking for the same story, and, for the first time in many years, I felt like shouting out loud – shouting and banging my fist on the leather tabletop.
‘I nearly got locked in the library that night. It was only when the lights went out above me that I realised the time and hurried out of the door. It was raining outside and I stood under the porch, watching the traffic on the Lewisham Way – all those faces in the yellow lights of the buses, on their way home.
‘Discredited. Every article had said the same thing, and I felt like I had known it all along.
‘The librarian came out, locked the door behind her, tutted at the rain and fiddled about with her umbrella. I was sure that she glanced at me for a moment; or was it that for a moment I was sure she glanced at me? I was so wrung out right then – and I’m still so confused now – I don’t know as there is a difference. Whichever it was, she turned away as if she hadn’t seen me and trotted off into the rain.
‘No academic journal would publish Mr Mellor’s findings from his dig in the creek. Only the Illus
trated London News, which was “known for requiring but the flimsiest scraps of evidence”, was prepared to print his paper, and, more importantly, his drawings. “Mr Mellor has ignored the rigorous standards of peer review that characterise his discipline and form its foundations, proving his methods questionable, the provenance of his finds unsecure and himself untrustworthy.” All the papers took that tone; and while I didn’t understand everything that was written, I knew what lay behind their words.
‘I stepped out into the rain; I almost didn’t feel it, even though it was pelting down. I turned down Tanner’s Hill, where half the houses were empty – bomb wrecks or just abandoned, looking like they might slip into the railway cutting at any moment. I could hear the water pouring through the roofs and streaming down the walls where the gutters had come away.
‘Some clever don had seen right away that my copy of the motif was only a few years old and “a search for the original” had turned up nothing.
‘“Who is the source of Mellor’s material?” one paper said.
‘A source – where things come from. Mrs Clyffe would have said the source was God himself: from Him all things flow. I can hear her saying it, then checking the nickel watch pinned to her apron front.
‘Mr Mellor could produce nothing other than my long reworked piece of stitching, and even the address in Deptford he claimed to have visited could not be found.
‘But no one had even tried to find me. Unless I’d been out when they called. But they could have left a note. Why not leave a note? Why had Mr Mellor not left a note? Why had he not climbed over the wall, knocked on my door and asked me for my help?
‘Tanner’s Hill flattened out into the mess of streets around Deptford Broadway, clogged with traffic pushing through the rain out towards Blackheath. I picked my way between the cars and vans and buses, learning to be careful these days – not expecting to be seen.
‘What Mr Mellor had drawn, they said, could only be items of great value – and whoever was in possession of them was clearly avoiding the attentions of the academic community and more importantly, the police.