Thursday was nothing to write home about. Art went off to LambChop, the centaur came to collect her tweed skirt, a society matron picked up the blue gown with the slit up the back. I went out and snipped a few tendrils in the garden. The rain had cleared and it was a fresh, clean day. If the Blackout went on for weeks, as people were saying it would, I’d be reading a lot of books, I’d be drinking cups of tea and reading the paper—which was what I did next, in the front room. Megan Sligo Mending and Alterations would close. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. But as one door closes another opens. I was brought up on that expression. The world was full of doors. I felt jumpy.
The flat was dead quiet, as if it had gone back in time—hey, to the Edwardian banker’s wife. But hang on, the suburb would have been inventing itself around her, houses being built all over the valley, footpaths tarred as she walked along them, children everywhere. There were no kids in this part of town anymore. I fossicked for Mabel’s aprons. May as well get on with them, although the show wasn’t for a few weeks. I rattled the beads. They really would be lovely, these aprons, when they were finished. Mabel was right—the juxtaposition of function and beauty. Not that I gave a rat’s arse. Soon I was making the olivey stems of koru in stem stitch (although ‘olivey’ is an example of Western centricity if ever there was one), and every so often sliding a bright bead down the thread. Usually I would’ve spaced this kind of work out over days, weeks even. But I spent most of the day at the window embroidering. It drove me nuts.
Around seven I showed the client into the front room. On his tense face, more a grimace than a smile. I can’t blame him—the oddness of it, an eccentric little ritual already solidified. Sunlight poured in the bay window. You brushed it out of your eyes like a fringe. He was in his suit again, but carried the jacket over his arm, prim as anything despite the wrinkly shirt. I offered him tea. He shook his head as if the idea was ridiculous. I half smiled. I hadn’t really meant it. Tea!
‘It’s not finished,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘The costume. Isn’t finished.’
He dropped his jacket over the back of a chair. ‘Again?’
Again! He’d guessed. That it was already mended, and I was keeping it from him.
‘Still. It’s still not mended.’ I’d broken out in a sweat. ‘Sorry. I have these aprons.’ I indicated the pretty tufts of organza.
He didn’t give them a second glance. One hand was clenched under his chin like The Thinker. ‘Are you going to do this or not?’
‘I’ll do it, don’t worry, it’s just that I have . . . all this.’
‘Because if you’re too busy, say so and I’ll take it somewhere else. Maybe you can recommend someone. Doris of Kingsland.’ I laughed. He laughed through his nostrils. He remembered that I’d mentioned Doris to his wife, outside the workroom door.
I went serious. ‘The thing is, there isn’t really anyone else. Not who’d redo the embroidery. The way I would.’ He frowned and I felt myself flooded with an awful power. I was holding his future like a hand of cards. I’d often been in this situation but had never withheld anything. ‘We don’t grow on trees, you know,’ I said.
‘I didn’t mean that.’ A tightening of the mouth.
To show how busy I was, I fished around twitching fluff out of a dish of beads on the table. I shook out an apron. From under my eyelashes I could see him watching. It occurred to me he might ask to see the costume, to check its progress, and in my head I hurriedly prepared a convincing performance of not being able to put my hand on it. But of course he wouldn’t ask. A man wouldn’t ask to see a garment, at least most men. I was trading on stereotypes. What a relief it was. My little one-act play was unnecessary.
‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘I’m kind of busy myself.’ Of course he was. I mean, Donovan Brothers. He narrowed his eyes at the bright window. ‘And there is sunlight today.’
‘True,’ I said. ‘Good old sunlight.’
‘There’s a wee bit of urgency about it.’
‘Oh, I know,’ I said. ‘I know that.’
‘I don’t mean to drag you into all this.’
I shook my head. ‘You’re not. Not at all.’ I was loving this. I gestured at a chair but there was no reason for him to be here. He reached for his briefcase. It’s strange how the words ‘sit down’, ‘have another cup of tea’, make people leave in a hurry. I picked up an apron and, standing there at the table, busied myself with a bead. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘why exactly are you so concerned?’ I was being dense. ‘I mean, now you have Trisha.’
‘I don’t,’ he said quickly, getting a little het up. ‘She’s gone. Remember? You asked me that and I told you.’
‘Ah, no. I don’t remember everything. I have a lot of clients.’
He looked sideways as if checking for evidence. ‘Well,’ he said, more to himself, ‘I was an idiot. But you don’t want to throw everything away just for being an idiot, do you?’
I held up my hand with the needle in it. ‘No need to explain.’
‘It’s just simpler,’ he said. He put his briefcase down again.
I was genuinely curious. I was. I asked, ‘Is it possible to hide this from someone?’ I reached for a fresh amber bead from the dish.
‘The costume?’
‘Well, yes, but not just the costume. I mean, can you really keep someone in the dark? You must think she’s pretty naive.’
‘No, not at all!’ He was bursting. ‘She’s . . . funny and wise. You didn’t see her at her best the other day. I just don’t want to hurt her. When the thing’s mended I’ll put it back where it was.’
It occurred to me that she’d already seen it wasn’t there.
He’d thought of that, he said, he had a plan. He was watching my hands jabbing away at the organza. I’m pretty fast, though I say it myself. I told him he was thorough. The eyes: they were grey, no, green, marbly, and intent. His plan: he was going to put the costume on the wardrobe floor.
‘There’s a pile of junk there, shoes and things. It’ll look as if it fell off the hanger.’ He looked at me pleadingly for verification, the thumbs-up. I made my lips into a sceptical twist. The man thought his wife was a moron.
Another bead, like sticky pollen. ‘That day here, she said she saw a woman wearing the costume in the supermarket.’
‘Did she?’
‘Didn’t you hear her say that?’
‘No.’
Lying through his teeth, of course. He’d heard all about Doris of Kingsland. I continued. ‘It is a beautiful thing, I mean, I can imagine any woman wanting to try it on.’ For some reason I blushed. I’m a terrible blusher, as I said. I moved things along. ‘It was your mother’s, right?’
‘I suppose so.’ He looked out the window at the dark wild garden and the bright western sky.
‘You suppose so?’
‘It’s not like she wore it or anything.’
I nodded.
‘Will it be done tomorrow? She might just turn up, if the power comes back on.’
‘Don’t be anxious,’ I said.
Because he was anxious. I didn’t mean to be comforting—he was a cheating bastard—but it just came out.
He took a step over to the window and looked back at me. ‘I have this feeling.’
‘Yes?’
‘That you’re on her side. And that’s why you won’t get on with this. I don’t blame you.’ He held up his hand as if to stop traffic.
‘I’m neutral,’ I said. I squashed down my smile. ‘But I never put one job in front of another.’ I pointed to my workbook on the table. ‘It wouldn’t be fair otherwise, would it?’
‘Neutral?’ He gave an ironic guffaw.
When I was a kid I used to read guffaw as gawuff.
‘But I’m paying you,’ he said.
I couldn’t argue with that.
‘I’ll tell you how you can be even more “neutral”.’ His fingers doing quote marks. He was suddenly animated, the grey-green eyes leaping. ‘I’ll pay double.’
I did a bead. ‘I knew you’d get to that.’ And I did.
‘For God’s sake, triple. Whatever happened to supply and demand?’
I must say I was tempted. I had no work to speak of, apart from Mabel. I sat down. At that point he noticed the organza apron for the first time and frowned. ‘What about this? Is this urgent?’
‘Of course this is urgent,’ I said. ‘It’s fashion.’
He hesitated, and seemed to decide I was joking. ‘I’ll go now.’ He took his jacket from the chair.
‘Does your wife sew?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I just wondered if she might recognise a mend.’
He stopped in the middle of the room. ‘Hopefully she won’t go looking at it with a magnifying glass.’
Our voices had gone quiet, like the day we waited for his wife to be out of earshot.
‘Well, not a real one,’ I said. His silence indicated he wasn’t going to be drawn into what sort of magnifying glass I meant. But he didn’t turn away. ‘I mean,’ I said, ‘she might look at it with the eyes of someone who—’
‘Who can sew, yeah, okay.’
‘The eyes of someone close.’ I held my hand a centimetre from my eyes to demonstrate. ‘Close to you, I mean. So close she can see everything.’ My metaphor astounded even me.
When I looked up I saw he was blushing, an odd sight on his white face. ‘If you’re so concerned about Milly, why don’t you . . . do whatever you do to these things and mend it?’
It seemed something had given way in him, a cell wall. I burred at seeing a bit of him, however tiny, undone. ‘I will,’ I said. ‘I just need good light.’
The smallest pursing of the lips. ‘About tomorrow . . .’
There was a sudden greyness, the exciting loss of the sun leaving the room.
‘About Milly,’ I said. ‘I only meant if she looked right inside. She’ll be happy it’s there’—and I looked directly into his eyes because I’d just remembered something about him—‘waiting for your daughter to grow up.’
He peered at me as if I’d suddenly gone small. ‘Daughter?’
‘It’s for your daughter. That’s what your wife said.’
‘We don’t have a daughter.’
I looked at the apron. I’d worked the whole thing, the koru, the white flowers the shape of stars.
‘Not that I know of.’ He smiled. ‘She meant if and when.’
‘So you did hear her through the door that day.’ I neatened the thread and picked up my little snake scissors to snip it off. ‘Maybe in the future,’ I said lightly.
‘Anyway, tomorrow?’
‘If you like.’
‘I like. But will it be ready is the point?’
‘Yes.’
‘What time?’
‘What time can you come?’
‘Sevenish. After work. I work.’
Oh, he worked.
I smiled. ‘I’m surprised you’ve got time then.’
‘I’ve got time to come and pick up a dress that should’ve been ready days ago.’
‘I meant time for all this,’ I said.
He winced. I’d overstepped the mark. Somehow our roles had gone topsy-turvy. He was supposed to brag about his conquest while I fixed things. ‘Early evening then?’ I said in a conciliatory manner.
‘Okay. I hope it’ll be ready. My wife’s in Wellington, but she’ll be back any day.’
‘Yes, you told me. Because of the Blackout. See you tomorrow then.’
I watched him tramp down the path between the wiry garden beds. I noticed that he wore no clothes, like a lot of men. His clothes were almost invisible, his suit like nothing. His car was parked right outside. It was almost invisible too, a grey sedan.