Marcia Talley - All Things Undying

‘Here we go!’ Janet returned, carrying a tray on which she’d arranged a teapot, two mugs, a sugar bowl and a jug of milk. Balanced on top of the milk jug was a plate of chocolate digestives, a kind of flat, round graham cracker frosted with chocolate. She set the tray carefully on the footstool in front of me. ‘Shall I be Mother?’ she asked.

‘Absolutely. I’m dangerous. Whenever I pour, the top of the teapot has a tendency to fall into the cup.’

Smiling, Janet filled my mug with tea. ‘Milk?’

‘No thanks,’ I replied. ‘A weird American thing, I know, but I like my tea plain. No sugar either.’

‘Black, then. Here you go.’

I accepted the steaming mug, wrapped both hands around it, and sipped carefully. ‘You wanted to show me something, Janet?’

‘Right!’ Janet groped about in the space between the sofa and the wall, retrieved a basket by its handles and set it on her knees. ‘Since you’re a knitter, too, I thought you’d be interested in this project I’ve just finished. It’s knit from the wool of a sheep I met up in Somerset.’ She lifted a sweater from the basket and spread it out on the sofa between us, smoothing it gently.

The sweater was an oatmeal-colored turtleneck; intricate cables snaked across the chest and down each sleeve. ‘Gorgeous!’ I set my mug on a coaster on the end table, picked up a sleeve and rubbed the wool appreciatively between my fingers. ‘I love how you can feel the lanolin.’

While I fondled the material, Janet rose, crossed the carpet to the fireplace and picked a snapshot off the mantle. ‘This is Sheila. She’s a North Ronaldsay.’ Janet handed the photograph to me. An animal – half sheep and half shaggy dog – gazed out of the frame with dark, soulful eyes. ‘It’s a fairly rare breed originally from Orkney,’ she explained. ‘A friend of mine keeps a small herd on her farm near Bradford on Avon.’

I looked up from the photo. ‘This is her wool?’

Janet chuckled. ‘The sheep’s, not my friend’s!’

‘I’d rather be working with Sheila’s wool than the synthetic crap you saw upstairs,’ I said. ‘But some people are allergic to wool, poor things. Not that I’m going to be working on anything in the immediate future, anyway. Some humorless Neanderthal confiscated my knitting needles at the security checkpoint at BWI.’

‘You’re joking! I thought they rescinded that rule.’

‘Maybe the agents at BWI didn’t get the email. I don’t suppose there’s a yarn shop nearby?’

‘Sorry.’ She returned the snapshot to its place on the mantle, propped up next to a framed photograph of her twins, Samantha and Victoria, age six. ‘What size needles do you need?’

‘Eleven.’

‘Eleven? For that shawl?’ Her forehead creased in puzzlement.

It took me a couple of seconds to figure out what the problem was. In the States, the fatter the needle, the higher the number. In the UK, the same rule applied, but they used metric numbers. I wondered if I was asking for a needle the size of a walking stick, useful if you’re knitting socks for Bigfoot, I suppose, but not much else. Fortunately, I remembered a second number that had been stamped into the steel of the knitting needles now likely resting under a ton of garbage at the bottom of some dumpster back at BWI. ‘Eight millimeters?’

‘Not a problem, then. I’m sure I have a pair around somewhere. I’ll leave them in your room, shall I?’

‘Would you? That would be very kind!’ I reached for one of the digestives. ‘Is Paul back yet? He went off to share a pint with two former colleagues. By my estimation, that was three pints ago.’

‘I haven’t seen him, but I went to fetch the girls from their piano lesson, so he may have slipped in while I was out.’ Janet sat down, picked up her mug and studied me over the top of a pair of pink plastic reading glasses, perched precariously near the tip of her nose. ‘You look worried. I’m sure he’s just fine.’

I managed a smile. ‘Paul’s a big boy. I let him cross the street by himself and everything now. It’s just… well, the craziest thing just happened to me.’ Setting my tea aside for a moment, I told her about my encounter with Susan Parker on Foss Street. ‘It so unnerved me that I don’t even remember walking back here. I hope nobody saw me,’ I added quickly. ‘I was probably reeling like a drunk.’

‘Susan Parker? I’m surprised you haven’t heard of her.’

‘Really, why?’

‘She’s rather famous. Even has a television show on ITV.’

‘Get out!’

Janet selected another digestive for herself and bit into it. ‘I haven’t seen every broadcast, of course, too much going on around here most times, but she can be jolly amazing.’ She licked a crumb from her lip. ‘Her program’s called Dead Reckoning .’

‘She talks to the dead for a living, then.’

Janet smothered a laugh with her hand.

‘What’d I say?’

‘Sorry. It just struck me as funny.’ She waggled a hand. ‘Dead. Living.’

I chuckled, too. After a moment I asked, ‘Do you really believe in that sort of thing, Janet?’

Janet shrugged. ‘Fake mediums are a dime a dozen. But Susan? She’s the genuine article.’ Before I could digest that remark, she hurried on. ‘You wouldn’t know she’s such a star, would you, when you see her in person?’

‘True. At first, I thought she was collecting for charity.’

Janet chuckled. ‘Susan is so down to earth. She lives on Ridge Hill Road. If you’re up and out early enough, you’ll meet her walking Bruce along the Embankment just like regular people.’

‘Bruce?’

‘Her dog. A border terrier.’

I’d always liked border terriers, ever since Puffy upstaged all the human actors in the movie There’s Something About Mary . ‘Bruce? What an odd name for a dog.’

‘He’s named after Bruce Springsteen,’ Janet explained. ‘You know, “Born in the USA”.’

I had to laugh. Naming a dog after The Boss would never have occurred to me. ‘You sound like you know her.’

‘Sorry? Oh, yes, I do. We volunteer for the Christian Aid Lunch at St Saviour’s Church. It’s at noon on Tuesday, by the way, if you’d like to come. Not much of a meal, if you want to know the truth. Sandwiches, veggies, tea and cakes, that sort of thing. Only a pound, but I like to chuck in another quid or two for the cause.’

‘I’d love to,’ I said. ‘Will Susan be there?’

‘I doubt it. She stopped coming a while back. Could have been her busy schedule, of course, but I know she found some of the parishioners a bit off-putting.’ Lifting the teapot with one hand and securing the lid with two fingers of the other, Janet topped off my mug. ‘Susan ruffled quite a few feathers when she bought St Anthony’s and converted it into flats.’

I remembered St Anthony’s, a solid, Victorian-era church near the intersection of Clarence Street and College Way, not far from the river. ‘It was made redundant?’

Janet drew quote marks in the air. ‘Surplus to requirements. Available for disposal. It just about broke my heart.’ She helped herself to another biscuit. ‘A pity, that, but what can you do?’ She shrugged. ‘St Anthony’s was down to a handful of parishioners. If they ever got double digits at a service, Christ himself would have climbed down from the cross to congratulate the vicar. A beautiful old building, really. Neo-Gothic. Forty-five hundred square feet, give or take, so Susan’s architect had a lot to work with. It’s four flats now.’ After a moment, she added, ‘Susan surprised us, didn’t she?’

‘How’s that?’

‘Everyone thought she’d be taking the flat with the rose window, the one that faces east over the Dart, not that you’d get much of a view out of it, but the sunrise would be spectacular. But, no. Her flat’s on the south side where the special windows are.’