That night, Kitty waited for Mr Crane to come again. She told herself that this was not what she was doing. What she was doing was finishing her embroidery, just as she would have done if nothing had happened. She was sitting on her bed – where he’d held her head to his chest, where he’d kissed her earlobe, and then her neck – with the embroidery in her lap, and she would finish it tonight. Looking towards the window, she saw there was a light in his studio. Her ears strained for the sounds of his door opening, his footsteps along the gravel path. It was half past eleven, and he hadn’t had any dinner. Surely he’d come in soon. She threaded her needle with red silk. He hadn’t said he would come. He hadn’t said anything much as they’d lain in each other’s arms on the grave, looking up at the patches of blue flickering between the yew’s needles. He’d stroked her hair and said Kitty. Kitty he’d said, as if it were a beautiful sound.
She would fill the stripes on the girl’s gown with fern stitch. Gripping the needle, she forced it through. The picture was almost complete, and the cloth had stiffened. How could he come? He’d left her as soon as they’d got back to the cottage, saying nothing about when he would see her again. He hadn’t been at the dinner table when she’d left the cutlets and retreated without looking anyone in the face, not even Geenie, who’d kept thanking her for the Pierrot costumes. The thread creaked as she made the last stitches on the girl’s sash. But how could he not come again? How could he not come, when he’d touched her between her thighs, running his forefinger along that secret nub of skin, building a fierce heat low down in her, a pressure that had to be released. It had been painful when he’d pushed himself into her, and she’d kept her eyes on his face and gripped the sides of the grave as her lower back pressed against the uneven stone. But she wanted it to happen again, now that she knew the pressure was possible, now that she suspected he would be able to release it.
She secured the stitch with another at the back of the calico, removed the frame, shook out the fabric and examined her work. Everything was correct – she’d managed to pick out the faces and the rocks well; the French knots were all even; the loop stitches of the fishing nets were almost perfect; the fern stitching was so close you could hardly see it was stitched at all – but the work seemed flat and bland to Kitty now. What was it for ? There was no life to it, and no purpose in it: she realised that she’d sewn the whole thing without knowing what its use would be. She flung it down on the bed beside her, scooped her silks back into her workbox and slapped the lid shut.
The pink organdie frock was hanging on the door of her wardrobe. There was a long grass stain down the back of the skirt; a few stitches at the waist were broken, and a button on the bib front had been lost, leaving a trailing thread. She thought of that stray white button, buried somewhere in the grass and the fallen yew needles of the churchyard. Then she drew handfuls of the material to her face, covering her nose and mouth with it, inhaling the dampness of the grave, the salt of his skin, the musk of her own body.
Still holding the frock, she went to the open window and fixed her eyes on the light in the studio. If she concentrated hard enough, he might come. That’s what lovers did, wasn’t it? Called each other up out of the night. She waited, but there was no sign. There was just the gurgling sigh of the stream, and the willows, huge and quiet in the darkness. She would have to send a signal. Gathering up the frock, she hooked a button hole over the window catch, and threw it out into the night like a flag. For the next hour Kitty stood at her open window, touching the organdie and watching for him. But the light in the studio remained constant.