A Stitch in Time (11 page)

“My grandmother,” said Mrs Shand. “If you turn the
page you will see my mother as a small girl, and her younger sister Harriet.”

They sat upon one of those chairs from the drawing-room. Or rather, the older girl sat and Harriet stood beside it and leaned upon the arm. You could see that she had been told to stand thus, to make a nice picture. They were dressed alike in dresses of some dark material that came to below the knee, black boots which vanished into the dresses, buttoned with a multitude of tiny buttons, and white pinafores with an abundance of ruffle and frill. Their long hair, held back by bands, had just been brushed, by the look of it. They were alike – you could have known they were sisters – but the older girl was thinner and darker, and her expression the more solemn (or bored?). Harriet's face, on the other hand, which was fatter and, even in the brownish-yellow tones of the photograph, gave an impression of pink cheeks and blue eyes, had a clenched, stiff look about it which seemed somehow not at all natural. It came to Maria suddenly what this look suggested. She was going to start giggling, she thought. Something happened (the photographer, maybe – did he look funny, or make some funny remark?) and she giggled and they told her to stop it for the picture, or she was just going to giggle, and trying not to.

Maria stared intently at the picture, and Harriet, a hundred years and more away, suppressed unseemly laughter. In black ink, under the photograph, someone had written, “H.J.P. and S.M.P., aged 10 years and 12 years, February 1865.”

“There are some more family groups,” said Mrs Shand, “if you go on.”

There were indeed. Mother and children groups, with the baby (like a chrysalis swathed in white muslin) upon its mother's knee, and the other children ranged beside the chair in order of size; portraits of one person after another, head and shoulders emerging from a soft brown cloud; muzzy pictures of out-of-doors groups, playing croquet on some tree-fringed lawn, seated at tea round a table set beneath a tree, or, in one interesting case, sprawled on the beach amid a clutter of sunshades and tartan rugs. Behind them reared a most recognisable slice of cliff.

“That's here,” said Maria.

“Naturally,” said Mrs Shand, “since they lived here. You may each have a chocolate, if you care for one.”

“Thanks,” said Martin with alacrity.

Individuals emerged now from the various photographs, as Maria turned the pages over. Here was the bearded father (holding a new baby, with an expression of kindly
bewilderment upon his face), and here the plump mother again, festooned with small children. And here were Harriet and her sister. And here, a few pages on, was her sister, but taller, and alone this time. And here she was, again, with her hair piled upon her head and her skirt down to the ground, defined now by her dress as a grown-up person though her face looked much the same. She changed into something else, thought Maria, like butterflies. People don't do that now, you don't exactly know when they stop being children and are grown-up because everybody goes on wearing the same kind of things all the time. Martin's mother's jeans are just like mine. The old-fashioned arrangement seemed not at all a bad one. You'd know where you were, at least, she thought. And what you were.

She searched the pages for a grown-up, evolved Harriet, but could not find her. This was worrying. Here was Susan, looking fat and discontented, aged sixteen, and here she was again, wreathed in smiles, quite grown-up, with a baby in her arms. But no Harriet. Maria stared up at the sampler.

“She made the sampler, didn't she?” she said. “Harriet.”

“Not entirely,” said Mrs Shand. “Susan finished it. My mother.”

Maria opened her mouth to ask why but was interrupted by Martin, who had ignored the album and was still poring covetously over the fossils.

“Where did he find the fish?”

Dapedius colei,
it was called, glinting in its slab of lias, a perfectly orthodox and scaly fish, like some Jurassic bream.

“I bet we'll never find one of them…” said Martin, in envious gloom.

“On the West Cliff, I believe,” said Mrs Shand, “after a cliff-fall had exposed some fresh strata. That happens, you know, from time to time.”

Alluring as the fossils were, Maria found that her attention had somehow strayed entirely now to the album. She turned the pages back, learning from each group more of the family structure – the C.R.P. who must be an aunt, and the Miss D. who hung upon the fringes of a group, here and there (governess, nurse?), and the graded F.S.P.s and B.M.P.s and T.J.P.s who were all the other brothers and sisters. Susan and Harriet seemed to come around the middle of the family. She went back to that early picture and studied them both again: it was the only good one of Harriet. Elsewhere she was an indistinct member of a group and after the middle of the album did not seem to appear at all.

“Would you like a chocolate, Mrs Shand?” said Martin with an air of sudden concern.

“Not just now, thank you.” Martin's hand hovered above the silver box, and there was a pause while Mrs Shand looked at him over her spectacles, saying nothing but apparently savouring the moment. Then she said, “Very well, young man. One more,” and Martin's hand foraged among the chocolates and Mrs Shand returned to her sewing.

Maria got up and went over to the sampler. She thought that it must have been very difficult to sew. The stitches were small and neat, with never a mistake, as far as you could see – it must have taken hours and hours. Hours and hours, perhaps, when the person sewing it would have much preferred to be doing something else. Because I wouldn't like to have to do that, thought Maria, not one little bit. Though I'd have put the tree in too, and its name underneath –
Quercus ilex
– and the fossils. And the little black dog. And the swing (the swing? what swing?), and the urns. And the house. Because of course it is the house, only for some reason she made it brown and not white, but otherwise it's much the same. Which, Maria thought, I find odd – it being there then and still here now but Harriet isn't. And, thinking
of Harriet with sudden intensity, she looked back to the sampler again.

She was looking sideways at it, and the sampler itself had become suddenly invisible, for the glass behind which it was framed reflected the window at the other side of the room, and the view out of the window, so that from this angle she saw only a reflected square of garden with lawn and trees swaying softly in the wind. And, suddenly, like a portrait in a frame – a photograph even, but coloured this time, and quite real, she felt sure – a face, a pink and white face with fair hair held back by a band, above a frilled white pinafore, staring at her out of the sampler.

But no, in at the window. Because it is back to front, she thought, a reflection… And she turned sharply round, to find herself looking at a window empty of anything save lawn, trees and sky…

She swung round to look at the sampler again – and it had become nothing now but canvas and stitching once more. And a reflection, if you found the right angle, but a reflection of nothing more surprising than window, trees…

“What a very fidgety person,” said Mrs Shand. “Round and round… You are making me dizzy.”

Maria sat down guiltily.

“Perhaps you would kindly put the album back in the cabinet. And the fossils, if you have seen enough of them.”

“Thank you for having us,” said Martin, when this was done.

Mrs Shand waved her needle with a gesture of gracious dismissal. “Please see that the door closes properly behind you.”

“Excuse me,” said Maria, “please, why did Susan…”

But the rest of the question was lost. Mrs Shand, looking up as she spoke, interrupted before she had finished.

“And perhaps you would kindly mention to your mother that the side gate into the garden is inclined to squeak. If the noise offends it should be oiled. Did you say something?”

“No,” said Maria.

“Super fossils,” said Martin, as they crossed the road back to their own side.

“Mmn.”

“That fish thing.
Dapedius
…”

“Yes.”

“I'm going to find one of those,” said Martin.

“Oh,” said Maria, without conviction.

“Don't you believe me?”

“Oh, yes,” said Maria hastily.

Martin went back to the hotel to watch television. Maria walked round the side of the house, across the lawn (the lawn upon which, possibly, in fact probably, a large noisy family had played croquet, and then lined up against the wall to have their photograph taken, smallest in front, mother and father and aunts and others in the middle). She climbed up to her favourite branch in the ilex, and for the next half-hour she sat in the tree and told it things (but silently, in her head). A very peculiar thing happened just now, she said to it, I thought I saw Harriet's face looking out of the sampler she made, as though she was still here.

And don't, she said to the tree with sudden passion, don't tell me it was all my imagination. Because I don't believe it. Like I don't believe in her being grown-up, like Martin said she was. I think… I think something happened to her, but I don't know what.

The thought trailed away into a whisper, among the whispering leaves of the tree.

ONCE, WHEN MARIA was younger, she had imagined a burglar. She had imagined him on to the ledge outside her window, and clothed him in dark furtive clothes, and given him a stocking over his head that horribly blunted his features as in a picture she had once seen in a newspaper. And then somehow he had got out of control, this burglar, and instead of staying where he was or dissolving like a nightmare as you wake, he had tampered with the catch of the window so that lying in bed she distinctly heard it click, and the window lift, and then there he was climbing into the darkness of the room, and she had huddled there first quaking and then finally screaming at full pitch till people came, lights snapped on… And then, of course, the burglar picked his moment to vanish, leaving Maria hysterical in an empty room.

But I have grown out of that kind of thing now, she thought. I can deal with burglars, and the stairs creaking in the night, and thunderstorms. I can even go to the bathroom in the dark if I can't find the electric light switch. I am on the way to being grown-up and not having problems of that kind at all.

“That's what you think,” said the cat. “What about the time you lost your head in the supermarket and rushed about weeping?”

“That was different,” said Maria. “I couldn't find my mother. I thought she'd gone without me.”

“A pretty poor performance, all the same,” said the cat. “Grown-up, my foot…”

It was sitting at the foot of the ilex tree, grooming its belly in a contorted attitude that involved sticking one leg vertically above its head.

“You've missed a bit,” said Maria, “on your left side.”

The cat began a vigorous lathering of its ears. “I take it you won't be mentioning to that boy that you see faces in old samplers?”

“He's not all that interested in her, actually,” said Maria.

“Got some sense. Unlike you.”

“I don't see why it's not sensible to be interested in other people,” said Maria coldly.

“Well, what could be more silly than spending your time chuntering on about a girl you've never known and never will. You could be reading a good book. Improving your mind. Learning something.”

“Speak for yourself,” snapped Maria.

“Ah,” said the cat, “but I can't. Remember?” It flexed its claws, apparently admiring them. “What's so fascinating about her, anyway? A perfectly ordinary child, no doubt, like yourself.”

“I don't think she ever grew up.”

“Rubbish. Everyone does.”

“They don't have to,” said Maria stiffly. After a moment she went on, “There are no photographs of her any older than I am now. And her sister finished the sampler.”

“Plenty of explanations for that.”

“And funny things happen here, so that you can't be quite sure what's real and what isn't. There's a dog that barks but nobody seems to have a dog around here. And I hear this swing that squeaks.”

“The gate needs oiling,” said the cat. “Old Mrs Thing said. Remember?” It prowled away into the undergrowth, ears flattened, and Maria said to its back view angrily, You don't care, do you? You don't care what happened to her. Nobody does, except me. Because I think something
happened, and that's why she didn't grow up. And with this thought nagging at the back of her mind like a painful tooth, she slid down the last three feet of the tree and landed with a thump on the grass.

Uncle David and Aunt Ruth had arrived. In consequence, there was more lunch than usual and it was eaten in the dining-room. Maria was kissed, and obligingly kissed people back. She was told that she had grown, and could find nothing to say in response: her uncle and aunt had not visibly changed in any way, so that there was no comment she could make of that kind, unless she was to point out that Aunt Ruth's hair was untidy, or that Uncle David had cut himself shaving, which would have seemed rude. Only grown-ups, she had learned, are allowed to make remarks about what people look like: if children do so it is rude.

That being done, she found herself forgotten. She was talked over and around, which she did not mind since it allowed her to get on with various things she wanted to think about. At the end of lunch Uncle David remembered her suddenly and said, “Time Maria and I had a private word,” which he had said on every visit as far back as she could remember and which meant he was about to give her fifty pence. He rummaged in his pocket and for a
nasty moment she thought he was going to go on to say, “Dear me, now what can that be behind your right ear?”, which meant that he was going to conjure the fifty pence out of her hair, as he always used to do when she was younger. She stood there resignedly, waiting for this, and the resigned expression must have turned into her cold one, for Uncle David hastily handed over the fifty pence and began to talk to her father.