Ann’s face was puzzled. Cleaning as fun did not figure. She would not last, but it did not matter. She wanted to sew.
‘Here,’ Hen said. ‘Unpick this bodice. Doesn’t matter how long it takes.’
A nice silence, with a cup of tea, while Hen thought about what she had said and went into a dream with the material in her lap. She was trying to tease off the surviving lace from the wrecked, moth-eaten border of the skirt of a bridesmaid’s dress, circa 1950, so that she could use it. It’s gros point de Venise, Jake had said, developed in seventeenth-century Italy, but I reckon this is another, nineteenth-century version. Guipure lace to you, doll. There was a bloke called Doucet who made evening gowns out of ribbons, flowers, braid, beadwork and embroidery, and wedding dresses out of this lace. Fantastic stuff, as delicate-looking as cobwebs from a distance, tough as old boots close to, and heavy. Take off the rotten backing and keep it.
Oh hell, memory lane. It was the dressing-up box, that trunk in the corridor outside her childhood bedroom that did it. Donations of unwanted stuff for the amateur dramatics society in a small seaside town, way before car boot sales and everything having a price. The dressing-up box, repository of grandmother’s knee-length knickers in pink silk, shawls in lockknit silk, taffeta frocks and petticoats made out of tired net, underskirts, nineteen-fifties gathered skirts in jazzy cotton, faded velvet curtains fit for something else, pre-war homemade dance frocks sewed with sequins, cotton nighties. All fit for make-believe on endless rainy days playing with the relics of difficult-to-keep-clean clothes abandoned as soon as polyester and nylon took the stage. Those heavier, shiny, sparkling materials never otherwise seen acting as a contrast to dull school uniform; a way to become a princess in a minute and act the role for the rest of the day. How to discover what it felt like to dress like a boy and walk like a duchess and wonder, why can’t I be like this all the time? What’s this made of, Mummy? That feels soft, while this stuff prickles. Then the market stall on Saturdays where thrifty Mrs Joyce bought material to make curtains and Hen purloined leftovers for a shift frock with big red poppies all over. The glamour of the dressing-up box fading in the desire for jeans and big shoes just like everyone else, but never disappearing. She always collected buttons; couldn’t throw a thing away without removing the buttons.
Then the ideal student job in the back rooms of that theatre where they staged opera, ballet, musicals, pantomimes, extravaganzas and where she was nothing as grand as a dresser or seamstress, simply an errand girl for the frightening people in the wardrobe room. Collecting damp costumes worn by ballet dancers and opera singers and pantomime queens; chasing down cramped corridors to dressing rooms to deliver the newly mended and collect the burst and torn, noting how perspiration could rot cloth more than anything else; it was as if they were sweating acid. She had watched the speed with which the ball gown was altered for the understudy, standing in the wings and seeing it was still not right; learned how no performer ever owned what they wore on stage. Costumes belonged to everyone. The prevailing scents in the mad sanctuary of the wardrobe room were body musk, perfume and anxiety, and the wardrobe people were the only ones who cared more about the clothes than the song, the dance or the play. Where cleanliness was akin to godliness, not for hygiene but preservation.
Wish they wouldn’t wear deodorant, Jake would mutter. At least sweat shows. Sweat plus chemicals is sweat hidden. There’s nothing stops sweat or moths. They love sweat, see? Was it there it began? Or Jake getting old? Hen ignored the lure of the theatre but loved those durable, hard worn, handmade clothes and watched how they transformed those who wore them. She had dressed herself on wardrobe remnants; she was a walking patchwork.
Was that where it all really began? No, it was all earlier than that. It came into focus on that fateful day when she had gone into her parents’ storage business, to help a customer collect the clothes stored in a container for two years and found them eaten to death. A whole wardrobe infested with live moths, chewing into ugly lace and still moving. She never forgot it. Cloth was only food for mice and moth; unwashed clothes, all natural material, carried nourishment for its own verminous predators.
She unpicked the end bit of lace and laid it aside. It was pleasant to be doing something for which technology had few short cuts. There was no machine substitute for this.
‘I’ve got to warn you,’ she told Ann. ‘In this line of work you only ever to get to meet older women and gay men. Shall we go and look at the basement? Cup of tea first.’
She was dreaming again.
How absolutely stupid, to go to that inquest, only to see him, sitting there in an old-fashioned coat she had noticed first, then clocked who it was, felt his presence from twelve feet, registered it and ran. Not because she was afraid of Rick Boyd, but because she might have scratched his eyes out. Hen let the moment of remembered panic fade. She favoured redbush tea, iced in summer, to be followed by a pint of wine in the evening. She might live without the wine, but never the tea.
Peter Friel had phoned in the morning. It was afternoon now and he was due in two hours’ time. She would take him to the basement.
‘My mother says you’re too kind for your own good,’ Ann said. ‘She says you really try to make people feel good about themselves. She says you’re the kindest person in the world.’
‘Well, well,’ Hen murmured, touched to the point of blushing. ‘She must know the other part of the saying. You have to be cruel to be kind. Let’s skip the basement, for now. Next time, I’d like you to help me sort out buttons and braid. I’ve forgotten what I’ve got.’
All of a sudden she wanted her out of here. Ann reminded her of Angel, not pretty, not secure, vulnerable. Angel could sew; they had both been taught to sew. Angel was quicker and defter; she had better eyesight; sewing could have redeemed her. She could sew, but she had no eye for colours or shapes, no feeling for texture, no patience. All the same, she could stitch, embroider, embellish and make perfect buttonholes. Hen turned her head away, so she could not see the shadow of Angel sitting there in the dark, dressed in that black corset and stockings, her lips and her nipples painted red, waiting for him, a mad, corrupted Angel.
Ann said goodbye, and yes, she would come back, but not until the weekend, was that all right? Hen hoped she would and hoped she wouldn’t and said yes, any time. As soon as the door shut, she was going over that conversation with Peter Friel on the phone this morning. How ironic that he should think of her as an expert. Ah well, in the country of the blind, the one-eyed woman is queen. Half an expert was better than none.
It’s Peter Friel. I need your help. I got your website. What do you mean, dry cleaner, you’re an expert.
No, I’m not, I’m a cleaner. Whenever you like. Five would be fine. I’ll be waiting. Ring the bell. She was intrigued and reluctant at the same time.
Peter Friel was waiting at the door of the house with a suitcase, looking as if he was coming to stay and for a brief moment she wished he was. Hers was a narrow Pimlico street of tall houses and her door was the small red one between two shops. He had remembered instructions. He was looking into the next shop window as if he was waiting for it to open and he felt a little shifty, as well he might, Hen thought, with a suitcase containing a dead woman’s clothes. Hen had been oddly unsurprised by his call and his request. Nothing surprised her much these days and of course she had been wanting to know what Marianne Shearer had been wearing at the moment of her death ever since she had seen that photograph. She was also relieved that this might be the real and only reason why it wasn’t all over.