He handed Peter a photocopied, typed sheet, and then shut the satchel and fastened the buckles, as if to say, that’s all you’re going to get for the moment. Peter read a document that could have been written in code.
Sure now I know who it is who’s haunting me. I can’t bear it, Lover, I can’t.
There’s 2 of them.
Better be buried before anyone knows.
Wait a week before contacting Thos Noble @ L Inn Fields. (tel no on list, over.) Speak to Peter Friel re anything psonal. More dogged, might write the book, good at guessing.
All in transcript, one copy anyway. Can’t remember which one. I put the reasons in my own transcript.
U don’t want to know why. Only I know I’ve never done anything good, bt as bad things go, this takes the ticket.
The Storage place (no is on list) will wait for instructions from you to send things on where they belong. Quote ref QCANl/609, they had address. Do this 10th.
Bye, Lover. It was never yrs, but I was. Only one I can trust, because you’ve been as cruel as me.
Sorry, fgt you don’t do text. It gets into spelling.
PS. Don’t let man called R Boyd in. A life trasher. Give other parcel to PF, no, R wld kill him. Tell him to find good journalist? Tell the truth about Boyd. Get the bastard. Tell someone it wasn’t all my fault.
While Peter was reading, the Lover turned up the music. Peggy Lee, belting out I’m a WOMAN, W-O-M-A-N, Say it again. Say it AGAIN.
‘What other parcel?’ Peter shouted into the sudden volume of noise. He was looking for the bulky case out of which that single sheet had appeared, but it had vanished, and the Lover was waltzing all by himself, across the floor, his polished shoes gleaming.
‘It’s on the way to you,’ he said, with an over-the-shoulder smile. ‘Second class post. That’s all for now, dear lady, goodnight.’
To Peter’s embarrassment, the Lover bowed like a courtier. ‘Go away,’ he said, ‘and let me dream of her. Let me do a little cross-examination of myself to music.’
On that note, Peter left. He felt as if he was running away.
Henrietta Joyce was where she needed to be. Safe at home, doing what she wanted to do best. Making something out of nothing. Sewing, cleaning and mending, the most absorbing activities she had ever found, herself her mother’s daughter. She had let herself in through the front door, raced up to the top of the house, tearing off her grubby coat. She stashed the bag back in the kitchen. In the tiny bathroom, she scrubbed her whole body clean, found her favourite warm bathrobe, the one in Liberty print with a soft towel lining which made her feel dressed, descended the stairs to the dressing room with a bottle of wine. She locked the door to the room behind her. Hen hated locking doors. It was against nature, but natural this evening. Once she was seated at the table in her warm room, insulated by the comfort of colourful cloth, she breathed easier. She displaced the taste of whisky with a mouthful of warm red wine.
A failed errand, a mugging. A feeling of having escaped something which energised her. Hen wanted to work. If she did not get back to work soon, she would be bankrupt. A forgiving bank manager would only go so far. She had no money for stock, even the cheapest kind. Work was the panacea for all ills. Work with her hands gave permission for the thoughts in her mind to percolate and assemble themselves into something like order, possibly even to the extent of forming conclusions. Work cleared the mind and let it fill again at its own speed. Like draining dirty water out of a bath to fill it with clean, the equivalent of draining the solvent out of the tank downstairs to see what residue remained, discovering that it had done the work and given up the information about what had made the stain. The solvent was working, the dead moth eggs would drop out. Pacing up and down had the opposite effect. She was seriously sorry for anyone who could not take refuge in work. Get busy.
Nothing came clean unless she was busy.
She was yearning to make something new, starting from scratch. She was a self-taught, mother-taught dressmaker, good at cobbling together something from nothing, not a trained designer, but she could try. She was a craftsperson who belonged in the back room, messing about. This time she was going to start at the beginning. Hen was imagining a garment that might have suited Marianne Shearer.
Supposing she was sitting over there, next to the tailor’s dummy, saying make me something. Make me a dress to die for, sorry, die in.
I would ask her what she wanted, Hen thought. That’s what I always do. Ask, and find out what they don’t want, in order to discover what they really do. Marianne Shearer was refusing to speak. Just something gorgeous then. Vintage cloth, definitely no frills, streamlined. Not a shroud. You know the colours. Fit for a Scorpio. Do you have a picture of what you want, a photograph, perhaps? You’ve been looking and admiring all your life, haven’t you? You dressed up as a child and spent all your adult life wearing a uniform. Hen jotted down the rough measurements she was guessing and then quickly started to cut the pattern of a bodice from brown paper. It would be simple, with all the detail round the neck. Not a costume, something dramatic to go with the skirt.
She laid the paper pattern on a flattened roll of lightweight cambric. Ideal for cutting a template for the customer to try for size. A pound a metre, different weights, Hen always had muslin for wrapping and cambric for cutting. The material was clean and stiff, like paper; it would hold line and shape without drooping, crisp enough to show errors in the shape which a drape would disguise. She dressed the dummy with one half of the cambric bodice and started to fashion a collar. The collar would be like a fan, which stood up at the back of the head, making a frame. It would be a foil for the pleated fabric of the bloodstained skirt, almost like the ruff framing the head of a medieval queen, but not white; red, purple, even black. Yes, a black ruff would work. She liked moulage, making something on the dummy rather than on a flat surface. The real designers would have a series of dummies tailor-made for each rich client. She was not a designer; she was messing about. By the early hours of the morning, she had a cambric pattern for Ms Shearer’s jacket. The line was severe, the upstanding collar a piece of sheer frivolity. She would stiffen the cambric with starch.
Always make it in cambric, try it for size, make another paper pattern, do it again and again, fitting it to the body, the dummy, the body, long before taking scissors to cut into a priceless piece of cloth. A stiff satin would do well; a tight-fitting bodice above a free-flowing skirt. The customer would have to walk tall and hold her breath. A jacket for standing in rather than sitting, or eating. Hen had often thought there was a breed of designers who actually hated women and wished to punish them via the discomfort of their clothes. This garment was not designed for comfort, but then neither was the client who would want to wear it. It might never get further than cambric or paper.
She looked at the time, refreshed and weary. No thoughts had assembled themselves, but at least she was functioning. The ghost of Marianne Shearer melted away. Hen let herself out of the room and went downstairs. Soak the collar template in starch down there, check the place over the way she always did before sleep, even when she was aching for sleep. Wishing sometimes that moral dilemmas were soluble in chemical solvents and only presented the same problems as stains.