The Forgotten Seamstress (21 page)

As I left the bar and checked my phone, there was a text:
I’ve got a new lead! Phone when you’re free. Ben.
When I returned the call it went to voicemail. Shortly after I got back to the flat, the phone rang again.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.

‘So much better, thanks. I don’t know how I’d have coped without you.’

‘Good. Now, this’ll cheer you up even more. I’ve got a new lead on your quilt-maker.’

‘That’s great,’ I lied, trying to sound cheered. Finding the quilt-maker had become somehow irrelevant since the quilt itself had been stolen and this was just another uncomfortable reminder that – perhaps through my own stupidity – it was probably lost forever.

‘You were right all along, you know,’ he was saying. ‘Pearl’s daughter Julie – you know she works here at the newspaper – told me today that her mum had been talking to an old friend, another former nurse from the Hall, and mentioned that you’d been inquiring about Queenie. The friend remembered her real name: it
was
Maria, just like you said.’

‘I got this strange feeling when Pearl talked about her. It all makes sense now.’ Maria, the patient Pearl had remembered as being an exceptional seamstress, who had a fantasy about working for the queen. Was this Granny’s friend, the one who made the quilt?

‘She remembered something else.’ I could hear the smile in his voice.

‘Go on.’

‘Apparently some sociology student from the university went to the hospital, back in the nineteen seventies, to interview staff and patients just as the place was preparing for the big change-over to care in the community. Research for a doctorate or something. They think Maria might have been one of those she interviewed.’

‘The University at Eastchester?’ I asked, stung by the coincidence. ‘My father was professor of sociology there.’

‘We can soon find out. Her name was Patricia Morton. Hang on a minute.’ I could hear the click of his keyboard. ‘Go to the Helena Hall website and look under publications,’ he said, waiting as I tapped through. ‘Got it? See the title?’

‘
The story of Helena Hall Hospital
,
by Patricia Morton, University of Eastchester? Oh my goodness, she might even have known my dad.’

‘Listen, I’ve got to go, there’s someone waiting for me,’ he said. ‘I’ll call again later to see whether you’ve made any progress.’

‘Thanks so much for this, it’s a great lead.’

‘We aim to please.’

I searched on the title only to discover that the book was out of print, second-hand copies were selling for fifty pounds, and no library copies were available in my borough. I’d have to ask the British Library. Then I looked up Patricia Morton, now Professor Morton, and still at the same university after nearly forty years. I made a quick calculation: she would almost certainly have known my father.

Dear Professor Morton

I am researching the life of a former patient and believe that she may have been one of the people you interviewed at Helena Hall Hospital in the 1970s? Her name was Maria, also known as Queenie. I have also been trying to trace a copy of your book
The Story of Helena Hall
,
but have not been able to find one. I would be very grateful for any help you can give.

With best wishes,

Caroline Meadows

Later that afternoon, there was a reply.

Dear Miss Meadows

Thank you for getting in touch. It is a source of constant surprise that the research I did so long ago (for my PhD) is still being read today. Of course all my interviews were carried out anonymously and I cannot recall offhand the names of all those I talked to. It was a very long time ago. But I’ll ask my assistant, Sarah, to check through the files. As you have discovered, my book is now out of print but there are probably copies in the British Library or in our university library. Do contact me if you need further information.

Professor Patricia Morton

Department of Sociology

The following morning, when I turned on my laptop, a further email had arrived in my inbox.

Dear Ms Meadows

Professor Morton asked me to do some digging into the archives and I’ve found a list of people she interviewed for her research. It includes someone called Maria Romano. Is this the person you are seeking?

Sarah Buckle

PA to Professor Patricia Morton

Department of Sociology

‘Ohmigod! What a result!’ I shouted, doing a little dance around the living room. Maria really had existed, and now I had found someone who had actually
talked
to her. If she really was my quilt-maker I might – just might – discover the secret of that little verse, and how my granny came to meet her. Who knows, I might even be able to find out how she got hold of those royal silks?

Dear Sarah

Thank you so much for getting in touch. Do you have a transcript of Professor Morton’s interviews and, if so, would it be possible to mail me a copy of the interview with Maria?

Her reply came almost immediately:

Dear Caroline

Unfortunately the written transcripts have been lost, but we still have the original cassette tapes. If you are prepared to pay for transcription we could arrange that through the university. Alternatively, you would be welcome to listen to them here – we probably have an old cassette player you could use.

I arranged to meet her in three days’ time. The university was just a few miles from Holmfield so I could fit in a visit to Mum too.

When I texted Ben to thank him, he replied:
Great news. Are you free for a drink afterwards?

The concrete brutalist architecture of the university campus that must have been considered so bold in the 1960s now looked weary and rain-stained. The wind howled unhindered from the Arctic Circle via the North Sea, and horizontal sleet soaked me on my short walk from the car park. To soften the hard edges of the place they’d planted shrubs and trees in large concrete tubs in the centre of each of the linked squares, but at this time of the year the plants were dark and leafless, struggling to survive the drifts of litter gathered at their bases. Students, almost uniformly dressed in black, huddled in groups or hurried across the squares while small whirlwinds of paper cups and plastic bags whipped up in every corner.

I negotiated my way through miles of anonymous linoleum corridors with that nostalgic college smell of polish and stale coffee, and entered the door marked ‘
Administrative Office, Department of Sociology
’.

‘Caroline? I’m Sarah.’ A large smiley woman levered herself up from her chair. ‘The professor’s teaching at the moment, but she’ll be back in a bit. You’ve come about the Helena Hall tapes?’

We shook hands. ‘Thank you so much for helping me at such short notice.’

‘It’s no trouble. Now, let me see …’ she tapped a perfectly French-manicured finger on her temple ‘… I think they’re in here.’ As she opened a large grey metal filing cupboard a roll of flipchart paper fell from the top shelf, glancing off her head on the way down.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

She chuckled. ‘No problem. I’ll leave it there for the moment, probably safer.’

After further excavation, she lifted from the back of a shelf a large cardboard box labelled ‘
Helena Hall
’ and set it down on a nearby desk.

‘It was Maria Romano you were looking for, wasn’t it?’ She started to rifle through the plastic cassettes stacked inside. ‘Should be in there somewhere.’ She took them out of the box onto the desk one by one, but none appeared to be what we were looking for, and I was beginning to fear I’d had a wasted journey when she peered into the depths of the box once more and pulled out a label which had stuck to the bottom.

‘Hurrah,’ she said. ‘Maria Romano. Now we just have to find the bundle it’s fallen off.’

In the pile on the desk there was a set of four numbered cassettes held together by a withered elastic band. ‘That’ll be it,’ she said. ‘Patsy said there were four. Now all we need is the cassette player.’

She delved into the cupboard again with no luck, then wheeled over an office chair and began to climb precariously onto it.

‘Do you think that’s wise?’ I said, holding firmly onto the back of the seat. Undaunted, she stood on tiptoe to peer into the upper shelves of the cupboard, shouted, ‘Here we go!’ and hauled out a rectangular black plastic box with a transparent panel in the top and a heavy flex hanging out of the back.

‘This must have been the latest technology in the seventies,’ I said, helping her safely down from the chair. ‘An ancestor of the Walkman I used to love as a teenager. Does it still work, do you think?’

‘We can but try. I’ve reserved a seminar room so you can listen in peace. There’s a coffee machine if you’re desperate, or the café in the square’s a better bet.’

As we set off along the corridor, a slim, athletic-looking woman in a figure-hugging cerise cashmere sweater and a showpiece necklace of brilliantly-coloured abstract enamelled shapes came towards us, breaking into a smile.

‘You must be Caroline Meadows.’ She shook my hand with a firm grip. ‘Patsy Morton.’ I’d calculated that she would be well into her sixties, but she looked ten years younger, and only the unapologetically grey hair – gently swept into a soft bun – belied her years. She was nothing like the person I’d imagined, none of the clipped vowels, severe haircut, sensible shoes and brisk manner of female academics I’d met in the past.

‘It’s very kind of you to help me, Professor Morton.’

‘Call me Patsy, please,’ she said, with an appraising glance. ‘I see Sarah’s found the tapes and my trusty old cassette player. Have you got time for a quick chat before you start?’

Her narrow office, lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves, had just enough room for a desk and a visitor’s chair covered with a beautiful hand-woven throw. Sun poured in through the windows onto several dusty house plants. Beyond them, the view spread away from the concrete squares, across the valley to the townscape and the clock tower of Eastchester town hall in the distance. On the pin-board above her desk were photographs: a good-looking man on the beach with a small child on his shoulders, the professor with other small children – perhaps grandchildren – all grinning uninhibitedly at the camera.

As we sat down she looked me directly in the eye. ‘Forgive me for asking so directly, Miss Meadows, but are you by any chance related to the late Professor Richard Meadows?’

My heart did several skips. ‘He was my father, did you actually know him? I thought perhaps you might have done,’ I said. ‘I was going to ask, but …’

‘Yes, I really
am
that old,’ she replied, laughing. ‘I was lucky enough to have been taught by him for a seminar in my second term as an undergraduate. The university was very new in those days and everyone felt it had been fortunate to attract someone of his calibre. We were all in awe of his reputation, he had a brilliant mind and was also highly respected in the field, but he was very approachable all the same, generous and kindly towards us first years. I’m sure it was partly his influence which prompted my interest in mental health,’ she said.

It was heart-warming to hear that my father had been so loved and respected, but painful too. ‘I was just three years old when he died. I wish I’d known him properly.’

‘You’re his very image, did you know?’ she said, her voice tender now. ‘It gave me a bit of a jolt when I saw you.’

‘Apart from my mother and grandmother, I don’t think I’ve met too many other people who knew him,’ I said, feeling self-conscious in the directness of her gaze.

‘Is your mother still alive?’

‘Oh yes, she’s only seventy-three, but sadly losing her memory a bit now. She was much younger than him of course; she was one of his students at UCL, before he came here.’

‘I’m not surprised, I think we were all just a bit in love with him. So handsome, still blond-haired even in his fifties, and with extraordinary blue eyes. I think you’ve inherited them.’ She smiled across the desk. ‘He made you feel as though you were in the presence of someone quite special.’

‘That’s lovely of you to say so,’ I said, ambushed by a sense of loss, and the deep ache of envy that she had been old enough to know him, even to have been taught by him.

We both fell quiet for a moment.

‘Now, tell me why you are so interested in my research,’ she said, breaking the silence.

I explained about the quilt I’d inherited from my grandmother, the royal silks, and the woman we knew as Maria, who we believed had sewn it, the woman she had interviewed for her research. ‘She stitched a little verse on the back of the quilt,’ I said, reciting it from memory.

‘Hmm. Over-sentimental, but not untypical of the time,’ she said.

‘Can you remember Maria?’

She shook her head, with a rueful smile. ‘It’s all a bit hazy now, but since you contacted us I’ve been doing my best to bring her to mind. All I can really recollect is that she was quite a character, a tiny person with a big personality. The hospital’s medical officer tried to warn me off, told me I shouldn’t believe a word she said.’

‘Because she was insane?’

‘That’s what he told me and that’s what the hospital notes said but, by the time I met her, she didn’t appear the slightest bit insane. She’d been discharged by then, and had gone to live in London with an old friend. She had an incredibly tough life: her story doesn’t make for easy listening.’

She glanced up at the clock on the wall. ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve got a lecture to get to. Can I leave Sarah to look after you now?’

We were about to leave the room when she turned back to her desk. ‘I nearly forgot to give you this.’ She handed me a much-worn hardback notebook.

‘It’s my PhD research diary,’ she said. ‘There are a couple of references to my meetings with Maria in there which might help for context. I’ve marked the relevant pages. But please make sure you put it back with the tapes on Sarah’s desk when you leave. They’re all rather precious, you understand – but being the Prof’s daughter I know I can trust you.’

The seminar room smelled of dusty central heating and fatty fast foods recently devoured by hungry students. I closed the door, and sat down at a table marked with cup rings and felt-tip scribbles.