A Sewing Circle in Cornwall

by Laura Briggs

  "Because it's traditional, Pippa dearest," said Lady Amanda, embracing her in turn. "And I find it extremely charming. My, but the little one is showing, isn't he?" She drew back and patted the slight bulge beneath Pippa's blouse, which was definitely not caused by too many teatime buns or Dinah's snack-sized saffron mini cakes.

  "Four months," said Pippa proudly. "It's a boy, so the doctor says."

  "What's his name?" asked Lady Amanda.

  "Oh, Gavin's being a positive stick — he wants to name it after himself, but I think we should choose something more original," said Pippa.

  "Like what?" I asked.

  Pippa's face colored scarlet, briefly. "Just something new," she muttered. I bit my lip, wondering if the name 'Ross' might be among them, for Pippa's obsession with Poldark.

  "Pip!" This positive scream came from Gemma, who appeared in the foyer now. She threw herself into Pippa's arms. "Whatever are you doing here?" she said, after squeezing — carefully — Pippa's pregnant self in a hug. "Why didn't you call and tell us you were coming? Your mum never said a word of it if you did!"

  "I told her not to — I wanted it to be a surprise," said Pippa. "I'm homesick for this place, so I've come back for my holiday — two whole weeks. Gavin's still working, and there's not a thing to do in Hampshire. It's deadly dull. Besides, I don't want to miss the festival. You lot have had all the fun since I left, what with famous people popping by, and now the big plans for the fete."

  "What fun?" demanded Gemma, planting her hands on her hips. "It's the same as ever, Pip. Hardly anything happened since you moved."

  "That actor spending the summer here, to begin with," said Pippa, ticking items off on the fingers of one hand. "Then there's a famous author coming to stay — and that royal wedding you almost didn't tell me about —"

  "It was my idea to bring you along for it, I'll have you know," retorted Gemma.

  "And now you're writing stories, trying to become a posh author, and too busy to come visit —"

  "If you hadn't been so keen on moving when Gavin suggested it, you'd still be here —"

  "Girls, girls! Enough of this," said Lady Amanda. "It's ever so good to see you, Pippa. We all think so, Gemma included — no matter what she might be saying at the moment." Gemma rolled her eyes. "And I'm sure if you'd like to be put to work on a little something for the fete —"

  "It's her vacation, Lady Amanda," I pointed out, laughing. "I think she's probably just here to attend the festival."

  "All right. You can't blame me for trying, though. We've gone beyond the church committee's limitations — maybe those of the village's volunteers, too." Lady Amanda emptied her shoulder bag of various notes, sketches, and proposals by the fete's committee.

  Pippa was now perusing Lady Amanda's brochure design from among them. "Droll tellers ... folk dances ... sewing club raffle ... cream tea under a marquee ... amateur rose gardener's competition..." she read aloud. "I've never seen so many attractions at the fete before."

  "Who's the droll teller?" Gemma asked.

  "Guess," said Lady Amanda.

  The two girls exchanged glances, lifted eyebrows in accompaniment. "Old Ned," they said, almost in unison. The Fisherman's Rest's most 'persuasive' regular had volunteered his service with emphasis when the committee began its search for entertainment.

  "I do hate to break up the reunion, but I'm due at the green," said Lady Amanda, checking her watch. "Anyone who wishes to come and oversee the layout of the grounds is welcome to do so." She gathered up a different pile of crumpled papers to cram in her bag — if this was the state of the parlor table, I wondered what her office was like.

  "I can't," said Gemma. "I've got loads of cleaning to begin if we're going to be overrun with tourists in the next couple of weeks. Besides, it's not fair to leave Michael all alone with Edwin."

  "Good thinking," said Lady Amanda. Amanda and William's lively toddler could be a handful sometimes, and Michael the cook was often too wrapped up in preparing dinner to notice little things like overturned flour bins or imported baking chocolate being consumed by the fistful. "William won't be back from London until well past teatime."

  "I'll go," said Pippa.

  "Me, too. Let me grab my bag." Not the one full of crooked patchwork pieces, but the one that held my planner's sketchbook. Here was my chance to actually be useful to the celebration.

  The green for the fete was a field not far from the church itself, freshly-mown and devoid of any sheep or cattle. There was plenty of room for the makeshift stage for the performers and the announcements, for the tea tent and the refreshment booths, as well as the usual games and raffles that accompany any village fete.

  A large banner hung across the main entrance. VILLAGE HERITAGE FESTIVAL was printed in bold letters, with a nice little ink block illustration of a mythical 'piskie' from an old Cornish folklore printed at either end of it. We passed beneath it to join the volunteers and the committee, who were discussing layout plans, while onlookers hung around the volunteers' tea table, populated by Charlotte's sumptuous 'oggies.'

  "There's Charlotte," said Lady Amanda, waving. "That reminds me — how is your little quilt coming along?" she asked me.

  "Oh, you know. Slow and steady stitches," I said, hoping that no members of the sewing circle were going to pop by to chat about my progress. "It's nothing compared to the rest of the group, though."

  "No one can outdo Dovie Todd," snorted Pippa. "She sewed a coverlet for a wedding present for Lola Clark — it looked like a tapestry, what with all that tiny embroidery."

  Lady Amanda had joined the committee members at work, but Pippa was eagerly joining the line for oggies, catching me up on the various misadventures at the nursery school where she worked before someone from the ad hoc committee arrived to claim my help for choosing the position for the tea tent.

  "Of course, we'll need Doctor Rose's help for the garden exhibition," she said. "Is he here today, by chance?" She craned her neck, trying to catch sight of him in the crowd as she spoke. "We did try to ring him, but there was no signal."

  "He's having lunch with a former university colleague today," I said. "He won't be back until evening, otherwise he would have joined us today. I'm sure he's planning to come soon, however."

  Matt had been absent frequently lately, due to his latest lecture tour involving various universities and museums this summer. Once Matt's talents had been claimed by the committee, however, he would quickly be submerged in my world of event planning on a smaller scale. Thus far, I had been helpful in protecting from the committee what little spare time he had left after long train rides and long speeches.

  As of now, he had only been asked to arrange the delivery of the exhibition plants to a safe, environmentally-friendly location — specifically, the hothouse in our back garden. It was clear at this moment, however, that the committee wasn't satisfied with this contribution alone.

  "Do you think he might possibly pop by tomorrow morning? We're quite eager for his input, and as the other judge for the competition hasn't arrived —"

  In the midst of this discussion, a man wearing a wool cap and heavy fisherman's mac despite the warm day marched to the middle of the green and jammed a signpost into the ground, hammering it in place with two firm blows from a rubber mallet. It was Cal Pentworth, a local farmer and fisherman who sometimes came to the pub, where I had seen him a few times.

  "The time 'as come for us to rise and be heard!" he declared. "How many of you want to join me in preservin' our real heritage and stop supportin' this sham o' the past? How long are we going to put up with it? I say no longer — it's time to claim our rightful name like so many Cornish villages before us."

  The sign resembled the ones on posts beside the roads, with a single word painted on it: 'Marghgwydn.'

  "What does that mean?" I asked Pippa. "The word on his sign?"

  "It's the village name. In proper Cornish," she answered, between bites from her pasty. There was a murmur from the crowd of onloo
kers, whose attention was momentarily diverted from the tents and from the refreshments.

  "Proper Cornish?" I repeated, confused. "But I thought —"

  "Pull up that sign and go home, Cal," said Nigel, who was a retired brewery manager and an enthusiastic member of the fete's ad hoc committee. "This isn't the proper time or place for this discussion — or for your tomfoolery —"

  "Tomfoolery?" he echoed. "Here you are, Nigel, talking about the village's Cornish pride for this fete, and we've got our name painted in Welsh on every sign from Truro to Penzance —"

  "Hear, hear," said somebody else in the crowd.

  "— and you're standin' by and doin' nothin' about it," said Cal, accusingly. "Stuck in the old ways, like half the village, and not willin' to stand up for the true Cornish language and its pride."

  "Save it for the parish meetings, Cal!" called someone.

  "Cal's got a point, though," said another, murmuring close by to their neighbor.

  "Enough of your pamphlets and shouting like the town crier," snapped Nigel. "Stop making trouble for the fete this instant, do you hear me?" He adopted a menacing expression for this warning. "I won't have it."

  "Bite my tongue, you mean?" retorted Cal, bitterly. "Learn my place in your village, is it? Sounds more like an emmet taking charge than a proper villager!"

  "This place has been called by its name for nigh on centuries," said Nigel, stonily. "We can't change things simply because the language changed. Our ancestors in ancient days spoke this name with pride —"

  "I've got a petition right here to speak to the government about gettin' our proper name put on the map," announced Cal, holding it up. "I want everybody to sign who supports the right way o' doin things, includin' this committee."

  "Haven't you any respect for the proper channels and procedures?" demanded Nigel. "For the traditions of this village, which you claim —"

  "Are you, a Cornishman, going to sit quietly and let some London lord molderin' in his grave be the final word on what we call our home?" demanded Cal, who was addressing everybody and not just the irritated committee member.

  "Nigel'll never give in, Cal," chirped up one of the onlookers, with wicked humor in his voice. "Got Welsh blood in his veins, he does."

  "I'll repeat my previous statement," said Cal, "to the committee member just named, who's stood time and again after proper Cornish ways —"

  "That tears it!" Nigel dropped his own clipboard and lunged towards his opponent. Someone seized Nigel's arm, but holding him back didn't prevent an argument from breaking out between him and Cal, and other parties on both sides of the discussion.

  The village had a different name? The one I knew it by was, according to one of its lifelong natives, the wrong title for a Cornish place. It was deserving of a more fitting choice, according to them.

  The petition to push for a different name was lying on a table piled with little survey flags and boundary tape. I lifted it up, noticing a few signatures scribbled on it, by both onlookers and people whose names I recognized from crossing paths now and then — in a small village, it's hard not to find the names of other residents familiar. A stack of pamphlets were beside it, about the preservation of the Cornish language.

  I picked one up. "Is what he says really true?" I asked Pippa. "Is Cal right about this?"

  "Don't ask me — I'm not getting involved in an old scuffle between them." She popped the last of her oggie in her mouth.

  I unfolded one of the pamphlets and perused it. Nigel and Cal were both growing red-faced as their voices grew heated, one giving the other a very savage push. Now some of the volunteers were restraining both of them, while Noreen Prowse demanded that focus be restored to the day's proper tasks.

  "Forgive me, Julianne, but I do need your assistance on the subject of the tea tent," said Lady Amanda, who appeared at my elbow. "With this melee, we've lost the volunteers who were helping us, and there's a bit of concern over whether it's too close to the garden exhibition."

  "Coming," I said. But first, I lifted the pen and scrawled my name just below the last one on Cal's sheet. Maybe it was the right thing for the village to discuss this issue.

  ***

  "You'll never guess what I did today," I said, laying aside the latest grounds map for the village fete and folding my hands before me as I peered in the direction of Matt's entrance.

  "If I can't guess, you'll have to tell me," said Matt, who laid his briefcase on the chair and shrugged off his overcoat. He looked tired, but offered me a smile as he entered the kitchen. He loosened his tie, then unknotted it altogether as he paused before the stove to make himself a cup of tea.

  "I might have helped a group of activists make village history," I said. "Not really, of course ... but maybe just a little." I tried to repress my eager smile for telling this story, since Matt undoubtedly had no idea what I was talking about.

  Matt looked perplexed. "Whatever do you mean?" he asked, taking a coffee mug from the shelf and turning up the heat beneath our kettle.

  "I signed a petition to look into adding the village's modern Cornish name to its sign," I said. "Cal Pentworth had a stack of brochures about the modern push to restore Cornwall's traditions — something about Welsh or English influence being removed. He wanted people to sign his petition, so I did."

  "You what?" Matt froze in the midst of opening our tea tin.

  "I signed the petition. You heard me," I said, puzzled by his response.

  Matthew groaned. "No, Julianne, you didn't." He grimaced, pressing his hand over his face, the way he did sometimes when he was tired and extremely annoyed during a situation.

  "What?" I replied. "I thought it was an interesting cause. Cal seemed really passionate about it, and there were others who agreed with him. And even Nigel Barrymore didn't exactly contradict him."

  "An interesting cause, yes," he agreed. "But signing that petition was the last possible way you should become part of it. Have you any idea what you're involved in?"

  "After glancing over the pamphlet a couple of times, I do," I retorted. "You never told me the village's name wasn't proper Cornish. Cal Pentworth was going on about Welsh and Anglicized words — "

  "That isn't what I was talking about," began Matt.

  "So what exactly is painted on the village's sign?" I demanded to cut to the heart of this topic. "Is it Cornish or not?"

  "Not the Cornish words we speak as a unified language, no," answered Matt. "I agree with him that other villages with Cornish names have the advantage — the name currently on the sign is a version of Old Cornish, taken from old English maps and documents throughout its history." He sighed. "Which, yes, is a great deal like old and modern Welsh, in respect to many words and some spellings, since they share —"

  "I know, I know — they share the same language root — along with Breton and who knows what else." I remembered this lesson from Kitty, my assistant, who spoke Cornish, and probably from Matt himself a time or two. I didn't need it repeated. "You don't have to explain its minutia to me."

  Something about Matt's expression made me think he disagreed with this statement. My hackles rose slightly in my annoyance. "So, technically, is he right?" I asked. "Should they call the village by that name? Or is that what you don't want me involved in? Deciding which one it should be?"

  "This isn't about true Cornish versus Old Cornish," said Matt. "I would support whatever decision the majority of the village felt best reflected their heritage, of course. This is purely about getting involved in a local grudge that everyone knows fuels this argument more than the actual merits. Sometimes I wish you would hesitate before leaping into something, Julianne. Sometimes there are other circumstances behind the facts."

  "All I did was sign a piece of paper," I protested. "I didn't get involved in any of the fisticuffs between Nigel and Cal."

  "It came to blows, did it?" said Matt, sarcastically. "Naturally. Don't tell me — someone brought up Nigel's ancestry versus his Cornish loyalty. And I'm sure tha
t he didn't hesitate to remind everyone present that Cal has a history of protesting the status quo on every possible issue."

  He poured hot water into his coffee mug with more force than necessary, and it splashed over the side onto our counter, making a puddle. I tried to ignore this.

  "So?" I said. "I don't understand why you're so annoyed about this — I told you, it has nothing to do with either of them, only with the discussion about the village's name. Can't you just accept that?"

  "It has everything to do with them, Juli. Everyone in the village knows this entire debate is colored by the presence of those two and their longstanding hatred of each other. Choosing sides with one of them is the last thing any sensible person would do...."

  "Except for me — the non-native," I said. Bitingly. The 'professor' tone irritated me first, but his feigned patience was more annoying now than his lecturer's voice.

  "Yes," he said, with a slight edge to this word. "Why didn't you ask Gemma or Amanda first — someone who could have told you that most people avoid getting involved when either of them pushes a cause because it always ends as a petty match of wills."

  "I always have to ask someone, don't I?" I said. "Two years here isn't enough time to decide on my own, is it? I'll never be as native as you are, with your dozen or so words of Cornish — half of which are probably Old Cornish —"

  "I never claimed to be more Cornish than anyone else," snapped Matt. "My family isn't even from Cornwall, to begin with."

  "But you're not an outsider, unlike me," I said. "I'm always just the meddling American, aren't I? Making mistakes and causing trouble by poking my nose into other people's problems." I couldn't repress my sigh with this description.

  "When have I ever accused you of meddling?" he argued. "Or anybody else, for that matter? I think you're being irrational. I've never said anything to directly criticize you. Ever."

  "Sometimes it's just implied, Matt," I said. "In the way everybody treats me. Even the way you treat me," I added. "Like now, when you're lecturing me on a decision I made, like I'm some child, when I was an adult who made a judgment call based on how I felt about something. Maybe I didn't have all the facts, but maybe I didn't need them to express my opinion about whether something deserves a fair hearing."