Liz Trenow - The Forgotten Seamstress

‘Thank you so much for coming over. I feel a lot better.’

‘You’ll be fine, you know,’ she said, sweetly. ‘This could really be the start of something exciting.’

‘Finding the quilt, you mean?’ I said, momentarily misunderstanding her.

‘That too,’ she laughed. ‘What I really meant was you could have a whole new career ahead of you. Move over Moschino and Stefanidis, Meadows is on your tail.’

‘I’m more excited about your new venture.’ I gestured towards her stomach.

‘Don’t hold your breath. It’s early days,’ she said, as we hugged goodnight.

My sleep was threadbare that night, like cheap curtains letting in too much light, as my mind tried to make sense of the events of the past couple of days. Despite the shock of being made redundant, I couldn’t help feeling a sense of anticipation and elation. Jo was right: this could be the start of an exciting new phase of my life, an opportunity to do something completely different.

I dozed briefly and then, in my half-awake state, from the deepest part of my subconscious, came a powerful memory. I must have been about four years old, staying the night at Granny’s house and sleeping in the spare room in the big bed with the shiny brass bobbles at each corner. It was so wide that I could easily fit into it sideways, and so high off the floor that I needed a stool to help me clamber onto it, like a miniature mountaineer. Her house always seemed enormous, especially in contrast with the low ceilings and doorways of my parents’ cottage.

The quilt was spread across the bed and, that night, instead of reading a bedtime story, she told me all about how patchwork was made from scraps of material sewn together in many different ways to make beautiful patterns, sometimes by people so poor they couldn’t afford proper blankets or, more often, by people who just enjoyed sewing something beautiful. She told me that some quilts were made to mark an occasion, like the birth of a baby, a wedding or a coronation (I wasn’t sure what that was, but didn’t like to interrupt), or in memory of friends.

As she talked, I traced my finger over strips and squares and triangles of fabric. Some were so smooth to the touch it was like brushing my own skin, but others were rough and catchy. Some seemed to glitter like jewels, the patterns pulsing almost as though they were alive, the threads shimmering as they caught the light.

She showed me how the quilt had been designed as a series of squares, each one larger than the last, like a painting within a painting within yet another painting, each one framing the one inside, and each one so different from the next, in the complexity of its patterns and colours, and the types of fabrics used. We wondered, together, how many tiny scraps of material had been used to make the quilt and I tried counting them, but gave up at twenty, the limit of my numbers. Then she suggested that we play a game of ‘match the scraps’, discovering that a section of triangles near the head of the bed was repeated at the other end, and the row of printed cottons sewn into squares were in the same order in the opposite corner.

The design of the outer panels was just shapes and colours, as far as I could see, sometimes in patterns like sticks or steps, with what looked like rising suns along the sides and ends. I liked to run my fingers along the curly pattern of embroidered stitches in the central panel, imagining myself to be in a maze of tall hedges.

But it was the panel of appliqué figures that most intrigued me. In a row along the top was a duck, an apple, a violin, a green leaf and a dragon with fiery flames coming out of its mouth and, at the bottom, another row with a mouse, an acorn, a rabbit, a lily-like flower, and an anchor.

‘Why is the duck trying to eat the apple?’ I asked.

Granny chuckled in that easy way that always made me feel safe. ‘Have you ever watched a duck trying to eat an apple? They can’t pierce the skin with their round beaks, so the apple keeps running away.’ She mimicked the action with her hands, the fingers of one bent over the thumb like a bird’s bill, the other a round fist in the shape of an apple. ‘They have to wait until another bird with a sharp beak has cut into the apple, then they can eat it.’

I pointed to the dragon at the end of the row. ‘Why’s he got flames coming out of his mouth?’

‘Perhaps he’s trying to scare away the duck so he can eat the apple.’

I’d chattered on brightly, desperate to prolong the conversation and postpone the inevitable lights out: ‘Mummy says I can have a real-life rabbit, like this one, when I am a bit older.’

‘That’s for her to decide, my little Caroline,’ she said. ‘Now it is time for sleep. Tomorrow’s a big day. Someone special is coming to meet you.’

In the middle of the night I sat up in bed and tried to write down as much of that memory as I could. Some details were still clear as a spring day, but there was something else I couldn’t quite grasp, a foggy incompleteness, as if my mind associated something important with that moment, but which was long since too deeply buried to bring back to the surface.

Cassette 2, side 1

Is that thingy working again?

The clink of a cup being placed into its saucer.

That was a nice cuppa, thank you dearie. Much needed. So where was I?

‘You were going to alter the prince’s breeches …’

That smoky chuckle again, rattling in her chest and catching her throat till it becomes a full-blown coughing fit. She struggles to regain her breath.

It do sound a bit unlikely, don’t it, when you say it out loud like that? It’s no wonder they thought I was making it up. Most of ’em didn’t believe me, you see. And why would they, when they was surrounded by crazy women with all kinds of weird imaginings? There was Ada, for example, who believed she was the pregnant Virgin Mary and used to stick a pillow up her dress whenever she got the chance. They’d tell her off too, just like they did with me. ‘Stop putting on airs,’ they’d say. The psychiatrist was the worst, sitting there like a pudding with that question-mark face on him. ‘This is in your imagination, dear,’ he’d say to me. ‘None of it is real and the sooner you understand that the sooner we’ll be able to release you.’

Then there was poor old Winnie, who got locked up that many times for climbing into bed with other women and stealing food off other people’s plates. She always claimed it was the voices telling her to do it, but they never believed her, neither. Well, I’d try to argue back like Winnie, of course, but after a while I gave up trying to prove that what I was telling them was the truth. What was the point? In the end I figured it was best to keep quiet and let them think it’d had all been in my imagination.

But if you are happy to hear me out, I’ll carry on.

‘Please do. That’s what I am here for. When you’re ready. The prince’s breeches …’

Ah yes. Hrrrm. Well, I don’t know what I imagined a royal bedchamber to be like, but that room was so enormous if there hadn’t been a carpet on the floor I’d have taken it for a ballroom. Besides, there was no bed – must be next door, I thought to meself. On the far side was a person preening himself in front of a long mirror dressed in what I took to be a pantomime outfit – not that I’d seen a pantomime in me life, you understand, but I’d seen the posters outside the music halls. He had white satin breeches with great rosettes at each knee, with a doublet which barely came down to his thighs, and a coat and cape in purple velvet with furry trimmings – I later found out it was called ermine – and a floppy velvet hat on his head.