The Forgotten Seamstress (18 page)

‘Poor you,’ she said. ‘You’re not the only one to have fallen in love with the wrong person. But how come that landed you in here?’

We were alone in the room, I could hear the birds singing outside as it was nearly spring, my speech had returned to nearly normal, and I felt saner than I had in years. It was time to tell her the rest of my story.

‘I was a poor foolish girl,’ I said, quietly, ‘and I got pregnant. They told me I would be taken care of when I had my baby and they brought me here.’ I could feel her go stiff and still beside me and assumed she disapproved of my morals but when she spoke, her voice was gentle. ‘They locked you up for getting pregnant?’

I nodded.

‘And what happened to the baby?’ I could hear the sympathy in her voice, the sweet lady.

‘It was a long labour, I thought I would die,’ I said, the howls of that night replaying themselves in my head. ‘In some ways I wish that I had.’ I paused and took some breaths to steady meself. ‘The baby died. I wasn’t mad before, but it was that night what properly unhinged me.’

She seemed to stop breathing. ‘How long ago was all this?’

‘A long time ago … a long time,’ I said, gulping back the tears. ‘What year is it now?’

‘Nineteen thirty-six,’ she said, ‘We have a new king, have you heard?’ Of course I hadn’t heard; we didn’t get to read newspapers or listen to the radio. I suppose they thought that knowing what was happening on the outside would unsettle us, show us what we were missing.

‘The old king, George the Fifth? Has he died?’ My heart did a little somersault. I knew what this meant, of course: David, my David, would now be King of England.

‘Yes, it’s now King Edward,’ she said, confusing me for an instant, until I remembered that was to become his official name. It all seemed so long ago. In my head I knew, of course, there was no chance that I would ever see him again, but we had been lovers, I’d had his baby, and though in my heart I knew that I’d been just a passing plaything for him I still held onto a foolish woman’s fancy that one day he might come to reclaim me. Now that he was king, all chance of that had definitely disappeared.

David, the shy, golden boy who was now King of England, smiled at me that day. How would my life be now, I wondered, had I never set eyes on him, nor he on me? What could I have made of myself, do you think, dearie?

‘What would you
like
to have made of yourself?’

I’d like to have been able to change the world, to make it a fairer place and give women an equal say in things. A politician, perhaps? Or the queen?

They laugh together.

I’ve forgotten where we’d got to, dearie. Where was I?

‘Margaret told you that Edward – David – had become king. But it wasn’t for long, was it, because he resigned to marry Wallis Simpson?’

Yes, that came later, but I wasn’t bothered no more. No, the terrible thing what happened to me around then was that just a few days after this conversation Margaret disappeared.

I thought we had become friends, and over the weeks as my talking got better she seemed to enjoy my company, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever find out why she never come back to Helena Hall. I’ve run it over and over in me mind, again and again. Was it something I said, out of turn as usual, what offended her? Or perhaps she got unwell, or something else in her life went wrong?

At least she could have sent a message, I thought. But there was nothing, just silence, and it laid me low for weeks. That last day I saw her we’d both been working together on my quilt, as had become our habit, with her doing the plain stitching and me working on the design for the baby’s panel. She looked over at what I was drawing and asked me what it was:

‘The date of his birthday, do you see?’ I’d decided to embroider the date as part of a border of wild flowers, so that the numbers were woven into the stems and flower heads. The shape of the numbers, all uprights and circles, made this quite easy.

She peered at it more closely then. ‘Eleven, eleven, one eight?’ she said, running her finger over the shapes. ‘Your baby’s birthday was the eleventh of November, nineteen eighteen?’ She quizzed me as if there was something wrong with my numbers. ‘Are you sure?’

I should know, surely? ‘I’ll never forget it,’ I said. ‘He was too big to come out without nearly killing me.’

She went quiet then, and a bit pale. Perhaps she was remembering her own labour, or maybe there had been a tragedy. I realised I’d never asked her whether she had any children of her own.

‘Margaret?’ I said, after a moment. ‘Did I say something wrong?’

She shook herself and sighed. ‘It just reminded me of something – I’m sure it’s nothing to be worried about. Now I need to finish this last seam before I go.’

She bent her head over the work and made a few stitches, then she put it down again. ‘I’m sorry to ask you this again, but did you say your baby died that night?’

‘That’s what they told me,’ I said, ‘they never gave me him to hold.’ I kept my face to the stitching and pinched my lips tight together to stop meself from saying it, the thing I had been trying to hide from myself all these years. But the words came out anyway.

A long pause, and a prompt. ‘What words did you say?’

‘I’m sure I heard him cry.’

More silence, a few sniffs and throat clearings.

‘Can I get you a glass of water?’

That would be nice, dearie, thank you.

Who knows what those words meant to Margaret? I’m sure I’ll never know. She was sat there, stock still, hardly breathing, and her face white like she’d seen a ghost. Then she stood up suddenly, scattering the fabric, threads and needles onto the floor, grabbed her handbag and said, ‘Sorry, I have to go now.’ Everyone else in the room looked up at the kerfuffle, as she rushed out of the door.

‘Bye, Margaret, see you tomorrow,’ the supervisor called. And that was the last I ever saw of her.

The tape clicks off.

Miss M.R. patient progress review, May 1935

Somniphine treatment (two-week narcosis, repeated monthly over six months) applied successfully resulting in significant improvement in patient’s mental state. Patient still refuses to speak, but seems otherwise well. There appears to be no further agitation or paranoia, and she no longer expresses the delusions which hitherto have obsessed her, although this may be the result of her aphasia (see note
¹
).

No further bouts of aggression towards staff or patients have been recorded, and no further attempts at suicide or self-harm have been noted for the past three years.

Now that Miss R is considered to be low risk, she has been moved to Belstead Villa, where she continues to improve. She is employed on a regular basis in the Ladies’ Sewing Room where she has demonstrated excellent needlework skills and is considered to be making a significant contribution.

London, 2008

There were just two more days before my appointment for what the clinic called ‘the procedure’; forty-eight hours in which I needed to keep every moment fully occupied to stop my resolve from weakening.

The worry over whether to tell Russ played over and over in my head lik
e a catchy pop song. Did I have a moral duty to tell him of his potential fatherhood? I was afraid he might go all soft and suggest that we could co-parent, but it would only be out of kindness and loyalty to me, and the last thing I wanted was to feel indebted to him. And what if he insisted that I keep the baby?

In the end I decided that it was
my
body, and a moral duty only applied if someone knew about it, so it was best all round to leave Russ in blissful ignorance. The only person I’d shared the news with was Jo, and I knew I could trust her.

Also weighing on my mind was the cottage, which I had neglected since the fire. Cleaners had been in but the paintwork, both inside and out, was badly in need of a touch up. I’d sent Ben Sweetman a polite ‘thank you’ email and at the same time asked whether he could recommend a trustworthy local decorator, but so far he hadn’t responded. A little part of me worried that he was grumpy with me for wasting his time but I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t really bothered, either way.

There was much to do: put on the central heating to dry out the living room, clean up the kitchen and make a start on sorting out the boxes in the spare bedroom. On my way home I would call in at Holmfield. Mum had been there just over a week and, although the matron assured me all was going well, I was anxious to hear her say for herself that she was happy there.

Next morning, dawn never quite seemed to arrive and, as I set off, the sky had taken on a leaden sheen. Last night’s forecast had threatened snowfalls in some areas but it wasn’t expected for London and East Anglia. A little adverse weather was not going to deter me from today’s mission, and anyway I needed positive activities to take my mind off the impending appointment.

The journey to North Essex was straightforward – the traffic seemed lighter than usual – and I was soon off the A12 and driving carefully down the narrow lanes leading to Rowan Cottage. As I climbed out of the car, breathing the cold country air and stretching to relieve tense shoulder muscles, a few light flakes of snow circled slowly to earth, melting as they fell.

The house was cold as a tomb, and the living room carpet still very damp. I investigated the central heating controls; their sixties technology had always been a mystery to me, but I did my best to decode them, without success. The radiators remained resolutely frigid and, when I checked the ‘monster’ – Mum’s name for the enormous oil-fired boiler that lived in its own little outhouse – there was no reassuring roar of the burners, no fragrant smell of warm oil.

Oil? I went outside to check the gauge, a ‘Heath Robinson’ contraption created by my father that had worked surprisingly effectively for decades. A couple of heavy metal nuts acted as a weight tied to a piece of string which in turn went through a small pulley and was attached to a float inside the tank. The metal nuts were riding high, a sure sign that the oil level was low, and when I hammered on the tank with my fist, it resounded emptily. That’d be it then, no bloody oil. Swearing out loud, I grabbed a handful of kindling from the box in the boiler house, and an armful of logs from the pile, and headed indoors.

The ritual of lighting the fire calmed me down. I’ve always loved the craft of building a fire: those screws of newspaper, not too loose and not too tight, on top of which you lay a nest of delicately placed kindling topped with the smallest of logs, preferably the split kind, so that they catch light more easily. The reward for all this careful work is applying the match and sitting back with satisfaction as the kindling starts to catch, then the logs, and the whole thing bursts into flames and becomes a furnace, transforming the room with beams of heat and light. The rosy flicker of a log fire, with its ever-changing colours and aromatic smells, never fails to cheer me up.

I could have spent all day snuggled on the sofa with a mug of tea, but I’d set myself a task. I went upstairs and started to tackle the pyramid of boxes and cases Mum and I had piled high in my old bedroom.

There was no time for sentimentality: I worked quickly and decisively, opening boxes and judging their importance. Charity, tip, keep. Charity, tip, keep. I hefted at least twenty boxes and black sacks outside into the garage ready for a tip run and stacked a similar number next to the front door for the charity shop. I got especially excited when I discovered a suitcase of old curtains and furnishing fabrics in abstract patterns and bold colours, which looked to me like the work of sixties designers like Marianne Straub and Eddie Squires. Definitely for keeping: not only might they be valuable but they would certainly be inspirational for my future design work.

The rest – still a large pile – needed more careful investigation.

It was time to take a break. Although the fire had helped to lift the chill, I had neglected it in my fervour of efficiency, and needed more logs from the pile outside the back door. It had stopped snowing but towards the west the sky was slate grey, the wind had dropped and the birds were strangely silent, as if the world was holding its breath. I stacked the basket high – it would be a while before I could organise a delivery of oil – and went to lift it. As I did so, a sudden pain stabbed in my lower stomach so fiercely that for a moment it took my breath away. Must have pulled a muscle, I cursed, putting the basket down and stretching, taking a few deep breaths to see if the pain would go away.

It didn’t help. The pain was getting worse, coming in waves now, as if my stomach was being squeezed by huge clamps. My breath came in ragged rasps and I began to whimper involuntarily, light-headed with the effort of trying to breathe through it. For a moment I was afraid that I’d faint. I had to get inside and sit down, get warm, take some painkillers. My legs felt like lead weights, but I forced them to move and somehow made it back indoors.

As I collapsed onto the sofa there was a warm gush between my legs. I put my hand there and my fingers came up red. Everything now was starkly, frighteningly clear: I was having a miscarriage. I hobbled out to the hall and ripped open one of the bags to pull out some old towels, grabbing whatever came to hand. My first thought was that I should drive myself to the hospital, but the waves of agony were so intense I knew it wouldn’t be safe. I dialled 999 and asked for an ambulance.

Tension exacerbates pain, I’d read somewhere, so I closed my eyes and tried to relax. A few minutes later, my phone rang. Thank God, I thought, answering without checking the number, it’ll be the ambulance crew to tell me they’re on the way.

It wasn’t. ‘Caroline?’ At first I didn’t recognise the voice, but then I twigged.

‘Hello, Ben.’ A call from him was the very last thing I needed right now.

‘I’ve got a couple of decorator suggestions,’ he said cheerfully.

‘Thank you,’ I said, trying to breathe through the pain. ‘Listen, could you email me instead? I’m a bit busy right now.’