Devil's Workshop

“Oh, I know,” Claire said. “It’s just, I have no energy for it. We already know how hopeless it all is.” She took a long drink of water. Some of it dribbled down her chin and soaked into the coverlet.

They had had miserable luck in trying to find someone appropriate to help around the house. For some reason, the only women to apply for any position were horrible. On two separate occasions, they had hired a woman despite their misgivings, and both women had failed to return after their first days’ work. It really did seem like they were doomed to make do without help.

“So,” Claire said, “tell me about Sergeant Hammersmith. You seem terribly attached to the idea of him.”

Fiona felt herself blush. Her gaze fell on the coverlet, and she noticed a long squiggly seam of red thread. She bent and focused on it. In the shivering light of the candle, the red threads looked like letters and words, like a long sentence that progressed down the side of the coverlet from top to bottom and around its corner.

“What’s this?”

Claire set the water cup on the bedside table and pulled the coverlet down, bunched the side of it in her hands, and pulled it closer to her face. She smiled.

“Those,” she said, “are the names of everybody-of every woman, at least-in my family, going back for, oh, simply generations. More than a hundred years. Perhaps even more than two hundred years.”

“Their names? You mean your grandmother’s name?”

“And her grandmother. Look, here’s my mother’s name stitched in there.”

Claire pulled her feet up and Fiona sat on the edge of the bed.

“And, look, beside it there. .” Fiona said.

“My name,” Claire said. “My mother added my name to this when I was born. It’s a sort of record of the family, passed down from daughter to daughter.”

Fiona could see the pride in Claire’s face as she read the names of her ancestors, all marching side by side down the sturdy white fabric. How many generations of housekeepers had carefully washed the heirloom? And how long since it had been cleaned? A thought occurred to Fiona, and she smiled at Claire, her eyes wide.

“If your baby is a girl. .”

“It can’t happen.”

“Mr Day wants a boy?”

“No, no, I mean I’m rubbish at sewing. I could never ruin this old thing by stitching it up with some illegible clump of a name. Future generations would look at it and say, ‘What went wrong over here?’ And my great-great-great-granddaughter would say, ‘Oh, well, that’s where Claire Day, the infamously bad seamstress, destroyed everything.’ And besides, you’re avoiding the question about our dear Mr Hammersmith. I suppose he is rather handsome, isn’t he? Or he would be if you could somehow get him in a clean shirt every once in a while.”

“But you could hire someone to sew in the name,” Fiona said. “If it’s a girl, I mean. You mustn’t let the tradition die out.”

“Do you know that my mother has asked for it back? The coverlet, I mean. She’s decided I shouldn’t be the one to have it after all, and she’s going to give it to my cousin.”

“Oh, no.”

“But I won’t give it back. She gave it to me and it’s mine.”

“But why? Why would she take it back?”

“We differ in our opinions about Walter.”

“She doesn’t care for Mr Day?”

“It’s really my father, I suppose. She’s simply echoing his opinions like one of those nasty birds that speak.”

“A mynah bird, you mean.”

“One of those, with its croaking voice. Very like my mother, actually.”

“Oh, dear. But Mr Day is wonderful, isn’t he?”

“Yes. And therein lies the difference of our opinions on the matter. They had another boy all picked out for me, and I went and married a valet’s son.”

“I adore Mr Day, of course, but why did you choose him, if there was someone else?”

“Because he’s the kindest person I’ve ever known. Had I married the boy my father picked for me, I would have become tough and bitter and a little bit dead inside. But with Walter I can be the person I would like to be. He thinks I am already that person, that ideal person of my imagination. That is why I love him. He is gentle and good and thoughtful and he loves me for who he thinks I am. I would so like to be that person. And when he looks at me, I am.”

“How old were you? When you married?”

“Not much older than you, I suppose. But a handful of years makes all the difference at your age. You must be patient.”

“Have you noticed Mr Hammersmith’s hands? His fingers?”

“They’re long.”

“They’re delicate. I imagine him at a piano sometimes in a beautiful shiny black suit, and he’s playing something wonderful and moving, his fingers dancing to and fro over the keys.”

“I can’t imagine Mr Hammersmith playing a piano or wearing anything but a soiled police uniform.”

“You must use your imagination,” Fiona said.

“And you must be more careful about your imaginings. Men are not strong enough to endure our ideas. They are what and who they are, and they will always be that. Our imaginations betray us.”

“Do you feel betrayed?”

“Not in the least. But Mr Day is exactly what I thought he was and would be.”