Chris carries on running. With the car gone, he can imagine it’s just the three of them out here beyond the last of the streetlights, the plain of the Moss stretching ahead, the steady turbining of the lads’ breath behind him. And for a moment, he is not sure whether he is running home or running away.
A TIME TO REND, AND A TIME TO SEW
Emma never planned to have a sewing room. When they looked around the house, she and Chris noted the downstairs bathroom and imagined they would eventually convert the smallest of the three upstairs rooms. But they grew used to the existing arrangement and as neither of the boys, though they occasionally moan about sharing, is prepared to downsize, Emma has, by degrees, adopted the third bedroom. It is not a patch on her grandmother’s sewing room – large and airy, it smelled of lavender and a brand of washing powder Emma, despite her best efforts, has been unable to locate. This room, like the other upstairs rooms, has sloped ceilings and a skylight. At the apex, a bookcase holds stacks of fabric neatly wrapped around magazine boards. Egg boxes cradle ovals of leftover wool. Recycled jars full of buttons float in a row, their lids screwed to the underside of a shelf. And a length of blue velvet dangles from a hanger. The room houses the ironing board and two tables; one is topped by rulers, tailor’s chalk, scissors, a ‘self-healing’ cutting mat and a rotary fabric cutter; the other is for sewing. The machine is her grandmother’s, the same 1975 Singer 533 Emma learned to use when she was seven years old and was staying with her grandparents in Cornwall for the first time.
Up until that summer, her grandparents had felt like strangers. They came north for occasional weekend visits, arriving wrapped, like a pair of presents, in quilted coats, scarves and pullovers. There were even two pairs of fluffy slipper-socks in Grandma’s handbag. ‘I know you like your carpets,’ she’d say while she and Grandad made a production of removing their outdoor shoes. As each layer came off, Emma knew she was getting closer to the prize, a paper bag of boiled sweets or liquorice torpedoes, hiding in one of their many pockets. The house struggled to contain them. Grandad longed to be useful and sought out jobs in the back garden. Once, he forgot to take off his shoes when he came indoors and got mud all over the cream carpet. Meals were followed by walks, in all weathers. The boot of their car contained jackets (with sleeves and without), wellies, golf umbrellas, hats, a pair of binoculars and other paraphernalia to aid them in their pursuit of fresh air. Their visits concluded with Emma’s mother muttering, ‘Thank goodness,’ as she waved them off, and the argument that always followed her father’s, ‘Oh, come on, they’re not so bad.’
Emma didn’t want to go away, but her mother needed a break. It was the school holidays and Emma thought they could have a break, at home, together. But it turned out that it wouldn’t be a break if she was there, so Grandma and Grandad drove up and packed her into their car, where she spent seven hours sitting between a pair of fold-up chairs, her legs balanced on a wicker picnic hamper.
Grandma and Grandad’s house was old. The windows had to be dragged up and sometimes they’d slide down again, as if staying open was far too much effort. The bare stairs were painted red and most of the rooms were carpet-less. Floorboards objected to feet with groans and occasional squeals. There was no central heating. Instead, on rainy, chilly days, which were plentiful during that first summer, there were open fires and hot-water bottles. Beds were made with sheets, blankets and floral bedspreads, and at night Emma lay with her feet in the toasty stamp of the hot water bottle, bedspread arranged so only the cold tip of her nose poked out. The bathroom window was perpetually unlatched, leaving the toilet seat so cold it stung the backs of her thighs when she sat down. No two dining chairs matched, and cushions, throws, curtains and rugs were a cacophony of colours and prints. The kitchen floor tiles were a kind Emma had previously only seen outdoors. There were peaks and troughs in that floor, matching the hilly landscape behind the house. Battered pots and pans hung from a rack on the ceiling. The cooker was fat and old-fashioned. Beside it was Aslan’s dog basket. Whole walls were covered in picture frames of all different shapes, colours and sizes. At the top of the stairs was an aerial photograph of the house. Grandad pressed his finger to the glass; ‘You are here,’ he said. Every time Emma passed the photograph, she stopped to look. Its very existence made her feel better about being away from home. To see the place she inhabited from above, to mark the back garden, to trace the curve of the road and the humps of the hills, was to better understand where she was.
Grandma and Grandad lived a different sort of life. At first, Emma didn’t know what to make of it. Her grandparents seemed careless, and her own, centrally heated, carpeted, always-tidy home stood in her mind, for a time, as a reproach to their creaky, well-worn shabbiness.
In between walks with Aslan, gardening and baking, Emma was taken up to the sewing room. She and Grandma were to make an owl. Emma chose material from a box of scraps. One shade of purple for the owl’s top and another for his bottom. They placed the pieces back to back and sewed around the outside, leaving a small opening. He was turned inside out and given a pair of solid plastic eyes with shanks – clip, clip. Grandma stuck a funnel in his opening, and they filled him with rice before sewing him up. Emma named him Fat Freddy. He had a comforting, just-right heft, and she carried him everywhere. At night, she placed him on her forehead, pretending she was ill and her mother, keeping watch at the bedside, was gauging her temperature. ‘I’m all right,’ Emma mouthed, bravely, the press of the imagined hand resting on her head like a blessing.
Emma returned home with three jars of blackberry jam, Fat Freddy and an inkling that, in the difference between her mother’s present and past lives, lay a message to her grandparents: by choosing her own way of living, her mother was effectively ruling out theirs. This was accompanied by the realisation that she wasn’t supposed to like Grandma. That love, like pie, was a finite resource and in loving Grandma, Emma was stealing a slice that belonged to her mother. She has since wondered how it might feel to be mothered by Grandma, a woman who never said, ‘You’re welcome,’ when she was thanked but rather responded with, ‘Yes. Well,’ as if she didn’t believe you, or wanted to discourage further pleasantries. But, at a distance of a generation, parenting failures are easily recast as foibles.
Emma’s parents moved to the Cornish house six years ago.
‘But you hate it there,’ Emma had exclaimed, at the time.
‘I never said that,’ her mother replied, which was true, but was, Emma felt, against the spirit, if not the letter, of her mother’s erstwhile sentiments.
Emma claimed the aerial photograph. It hangs on the wall of her sewing room and Fat Freddy lies on the top shelf of the bookcase, beside an almost heart-shaped stone which Chris found during a garden clearance. He sanded and polished it before using a point chisel and hammer to write ‘LOVE ME’ on its back. There should be a comma between the words, but instead his sign-off resembles a command which, like other injunctions, is written in stone.
Emma lifts a tissue-paper bundle from the cutting table. Inside is a knitted christening shawl. She’ll take it to the Post Office on Monday, after work. ‘How many hours’ labour?’ Chris will ask, if he sees it. ‘And the wool was how much?’ In the evenings, she often knits for a couple of hours while watching television or listening to an audiobook. It’s as much a way of relaxing as anything, like mediation or adult colouring. If she could be sure Chris wouldn’t take it as a criticism, she would inform him that this year her knitting and sewing has covered the cost of Christmas, both boys’ birthdays and new school shoes.