Miss Seeton Quilts the Village

by Hamilton Crane

  “So there is no likelihood of their moving soon to Summerset Cottage? Such a disappointment for them, though no doubt you and dear Sir George will be pleased to have them with you. But perhaps—in time for Christmas?”

  There was further chat regarding the well-known firm of Grimes & Salisbury, building contractors of Brettenden, and their thorough but dilatory ways. The two friends laughed together over the manner in which Admiral Leighton, newly come to Plummergen, had dealt with Grimes & Salisbury, loudly threatening courts-martial and the lash. He had gone down in village history as the only man who ever made them finish a job on time.

  “They’re very good,” said Lady Colveden, “and honest, but so slow. George, of course, is useless for chivvying purposes just now because he’s so busy on the farm, with Nigel still taking afternoons off to show Louise the sights—they both send their love, by the way—and even when Fred does let me in, I might as well be still dealing with Miss Saxon and her servants because he keeps me in the hall, only now it’s on account of sawdust and planks and sacks of cement everywhere, and he’s worried I’ll trip and break my neck.”

  Miss Seeton frowned. “I have had very few dealings with builders,” she said warily. “My London flat was rented, and of course dear Stan looks after me now.”

  Lady Colveden gasped. She had a vision of Miss Seeton, chivvying with the ferrule of her umbrella the nether regions of Fred, conscientious but unhurried supervisor of the work in what would in due course of time become her son and daughter-in-law’s first home. “Oh, no! I mean—no, my request was nothing to do with the builders. It’s the other quilt—not the map, because everyone could agree on that, thank goodness. It’s to be called the Plummergen Mural, not the Tapestry, because it will be different styles of sewing according to choice—needlepoint, embroidery, cross-stitch...” An airily ignorant hand waved through the air. “People are already hard at work to finish it in time for Manville Henty’s centenary.

  “No, it’s the Legends and History Quilt that is the problem, and where I hope you can help. But first, Miss Seeton, you must be sworn to secrecy.”

  Miss Seeton, her eyes twinkling for her ladyship’s solemn tone, promised she would keep any secret entrusted to her.

  “Too many people wanted to sew the same stories,” said Lady Colveden. “You wouldn’t believe the squabbles. Far worse than children.” Miss Seeton, retired schoolmistress, could well believe. “So to keep the peace we decided in the end that everyone can sew what she wants, even if we end up with a dozen Viking raids, as long as the committee knows what it is in advance for the design of the finished layout—and that’s where we need your help.”

  Miss Seeton looked doubtful. “I fear my sewing is of a very basic nature. Practical, but hardly inspired—and I would have no idea how to begin designing a patchwork quilt.”

  “Miss Armitage is dealing with that side of things. Phyllis has really come into her own—she’s always been so quiet, none of us had any idea she was a quilter. But she knows all about it, and apparently buys special squared paper and rulers from a shop in London.” Lady Colveden frowned. “Not that I know what they’re for, but Phyllis Armitage does—only she needs something to work from, you see, and nobody will show her what they’re doing in case anyone else doing the same thing finds out and steals some of the—the inspiration.”

  “A certain amount of jealousy is surely understandable, among creative people—and, of course, an unwillingness to tempt fate. I believe that if you ask an author about his or her work in progress, some can be most reluctant to answer in more than very general terms, while others may be almost brusque.”

  Lady Colveden mentally applied brusque to some of the recent quilt discussions. Miss Seeton’s gift for understatement had seldom amused her more. “Because she’s the vicar’s sister they’re just about prepared to trust Molly Treeves, and she has managed to persuade everyone intending to stitch either a historical subject or a local legend to give her an idea of how they intend to portray it. But neither Molly nor Miss Armitage can turn those ideas into something on paper that can be used for the basic design. Proportion, or do I mean balance? Imagine trying to arrange five Queen Annes drinking water in the same quilt as a dozen Jack Cades leading revolting peasants. It would look ghastly, without careful planning in advance.”

  Miss Seeton agreed that one group would certainly overwhelm the other if proper care was not taken. It did not do to rush things. But with a deadline to meet, if both the map and the quilt were to be ready for the centenary, she would do what she could to assist—provided that she was not asked to sew. “My cousin Flora was a most delicate worker with a needle, but I possess no such gift. I fear I take after my dear mother in being barely adequate at sewing.”

  Lady Colveden could sympathise, though she hid it well. “Well, we do hope you’ll manage a picture of Sweetbriars—” Miss Seeton gasped “—but what we would really like is that if we gave you the list of ideas, perhaps you could sketch them, fairly detailed if you didn’t mind, so that Miss Armitage can lay them out—oh, dear.” She giggled. “That reminds me of Mrs. Flax—” the witch attended the deathbeds of many villagers “—and how she seems to have adopted Puck of Pook’s Hill and is claiming half the stories as her own family experience.”

  “The Flax name appears on several stones in the churchyard,” said Miss Seeton.

  “Well, yes...and talking of stories, the other reason for all the secrecy is that everyone is worried Murreystone might try to poach in our preserves. They’re only a few miles away, and legends don’t have boundaries as such, do they?”

  Miss Seeton agreed that, generally speaking, they did not. One often encountered the same, or very similar, stories in different parts of the country, such as the hare shot one night with a silver bullet, and the limping old woman next day.

  “Oddly enough, we don’t seem to have that one in these parts.” Lady Colveden smiled. “And if we did I’m sure Murreystone would say it happened there, too. It would be just like them to start making a quilt because we’re making one, and nobody wants that—though if they did, at least it would stop the squabbling.”

  “United against the common foe,” said Miss Seeton, and both ladies laughed.

  Next morning was one of Martha Bloomer’s days. As she had once “done” for old Mrs. Bannet, so Martha now “did” for Mrs. Bannet’s goddaughter, relative and heir, Miss Emily Seeton. But Miss Seeton inherited far more than her cottage and its contents from Cousin Flora; she inherited the devoted friendship and willing service of Plummergen’s domestic goddess Martha, as well as the cheerful arrangement her cousin had established with Martha’s husband, Stan. Mrs. Bannet provided the wherewithal; Stan built a hen house. She paid for the feed; he did all the feeding, watering, mucking-out and egg collecting. What eggs the two households did not require he sold for profit in the village. This arrangement worked so well that over the years his trade had come to include flowers, fruit, and vegetables from the cottage’s large rear garden that ran gently down towards the canal.

  While Miss Seeton was permitted only to weed at the front, Stan was less strict about the back, and within certain limits let her potter as she pleased, under his distant and jealous supervision. She was even sometimes allowed to experiment with seeds and bulbs about which she had read in Greenfinger Points the Way. Stan disagreed on principle with the advice given by Greenfinger, a book-learning type with no soil on his townified boots, but he accepted that it was, all said and done, Miss Seeton’s own garden. So long as she didn’t do nothing to give him (him as everyone knew did her garden as well as her fowls) a bad name, he supposed it might not reflect on him too poorly.

  But this morning Miss Seeton had no thought of gardens. She and Martha, whose busy mop for once stood idle as the two friends drank tea together, were studying the cherry-wood sewing box inlaid with mother-of-pearl that Mrs. Bannet always kept on top of her treadle sewing machine in its veneered oak cabinet.

  “These must be bone, ra
ther than ivory,” said Miss Seeton hopefully. She thought of the sad fate of too many elephants in bygone, less enlightened days, and stifled a sigh as she picked up the delicate creamy-white spools of thread. “And the silk has hardly faded at all, not that I would dream of using it in my humble efforts. It would be such a waste.”

  “Sweet little pin-cushion,” said Martha, touching the plump red velvet back of a small, prick-eared dog cast in black metal. “Wonder what kind it is? A Pom, maybe.”

  A similar dog, sturdy and tailless like the first, was enamelled on the top of a circular box in which a spring-coiled tape measure was concealed. The tab was in the shape of a small silver bone. “The mechanism might be too delicate, after so long,” said Miss Seeton, resisting the temptation to pull on the bone and measure something.

  “Now you could use this thimble, dear. A good rub with Bluebell and it’ll come up shiny as new.”

  With some regret Miss Seeton shook her head. “I think I prefer to keep the contents of the box together. After all, I have been accustomed for many years to darn and stitch for myself, in a modest way, and have all the basic requirements in an old biscuit tin—scissors, and needles, and pins and so on.”

  “Does this hold needles?” Martha was carefully unscrewing a slim tortoiseshell cylinder that rattled. Miss Seeton sighed again, for the tortoises this time, and picked up a pair of scissors with long sharp points, the handles curved in a stork’s head and neck. Or perhaps it was a crane of some sort? Whichever it was, the feathers of its gold-plated body gleamed in pleasing contrast against the shining steel (she supposed, for it had not tarnished as had the silver thimble) of its beak.

  There were other treasures to be lovingly examined, and both ladies enjoyed themselves very much, but in the end Miss Seeton shook her head again, preparing to close the velvet-padded lid and lock the contents safely away once more. “No, it would not be advisable for me to use any of these things. They were Cousin Flora’s dear possessions—I recall her telling me the box was given to her mother as a bride—and quite apart from the risk that I might inadvertently do some damage, Cousin Flora is, I fear, too much to live up to.”

  They both contemplated the faded, but still exquisite, sampler in its neat wooden frame, hanging on one wall of the sitting room. Flora Winifred Colyton wrought this in the ninth year of her age, it announced in curlicued lettering at the bottom of a display of different alphabets and rows of numbers, stitched in fine wool on what must be linen. This central block lay between peacocks and other exotic birds most beautifully embroidered in silk, while across the top marched a row of elephants—Miss Seeton smiled—linked trunk and tail as they progressed.

  “Far too much to live up to,” said Miss Seeton. “Only eight when she started! Yet one can almost hear those elephants trumpeting. I also have my doubts about her sewing machine. Sewing machines seem to go so fast. Although my dear mother bought one, and we both did our best, somehow having to turn the handle and keep the fabric steady at the same time was never something that either of us found easy.”

  “You’d find it easier now, dear, seeing how that yoga of yours has limbered you up something amazing,” suggested Martha, but Miss Seeton shook her head, reminding her that when she had left her London flat for Sweetbriars she disposed of such of the contents as did not belong to her landlord.

  “Apart from my personal belongings, that is, which because we had seldom used it did not seem to apply to the sewing machine, and as Mrs. Benn mentioned that the needlework mistress was searching for a simple model on which the younger girls could learn, I naturally gave it to the school.”

  “Then you did really ought to try Mrs. Bannet’s treadle,” said Martha. “Riding your bike the way you do I’m sure you’d pick it up quick enough—and both hands free all the time, which nobody sensible does on a bike, in case of accidents.”

  “I suppose I could think about it...”

  “And talking of accidents,” said the loyal servitor as she prepared to resume work, “did you hear about Bert the other day? Right by the council houses, it was. Those foreigners who’ve taken Mrs. Venning’s place—oh, no, you were still away when they came—anyway, they’re real foreign, not just from farther afield than Ashford,” sniffed London-born Martha, Plummergen only by marriage, “but Italian or similar, and everybody knows how the likes of them always drive on the wrong side of the road—and they did.”

  Miss Seeton looked dismayed. “Was poor Bert badly injured? Surely they cannot have been driving too fast, within the village limits.”

  Martha sniffed again. “They wouldn’t understand what it means, thirty miles an hour, being metric as they are—but luckily he wasn’t badly hurt. Bert stopped just in time and was about to give the other chap a right earful when he got out and apologised like a proper gent, Bert says, except that not knowing much English it was the same over and over again. But it was obvious what he meant. He takes that Mercedes—funny, I always think of a car, but that’s what he calls her—to the shops and they’ve always got a phrasebook. Give them their due, they’re shopping local as well as taking trips in that posh car, not that I’ve seen them around apart from at a distance, but so long as they don’t upset people and do their best to fit in and don’t drive too fast, I should think they’d enjoy their holiday right enough.”

  Miss Seeton smiled. “They will certainly feel at home with the weather.” It was a fine September day. The sky was a clear, pale blue with few clouds, and the sun, warm and welcoming, shone bright on still-green trees that, this early in the season, were as yet only dappled with the gold of approaching death and dry rustles underfoot, of bonfires and bare branches that in time would be white with snow.

  “I really should start work on sketching the list,” said Miss Seeton. “I promised Lady Colveden—but it is such a beautiful day, and one hates to waste the sunshine, except that there is a need for haste because of the centenary. If Manville Henty’s first success is to be commemorated properly, those who live in his village must play the best part they can. As my part in this project is to sketch, I suppose I should begin...”

  “Stan tried reading one of his books once. In bed with the mumps. Old-fashioned, he said. Give him Jeffrey Farnol any day—if he had to read anything at all, he said. My Stan don’t really hold with books.”

  Miss Seeton, thinking of Stan’s views on Greenfinger, smiled.

  She left Martha to those domestic duties she had abandoned when a cup of tea and some chocolate biscuits had occupied the sort of happy and companionable half-hour both ladies had missed during Miss Seeton’s absence. Martha herself had returned from Scotland soon after the wedding. Stan could not long be spared from the farm; and Mrs. Bloomer harboured doubts about such substitute hygienas as the ladies for whom she “did” might have found for themselves—or (perhaps an even greater crime) might not have bothered to find. Built-up dust and catch-up cleaning she did not fear: it was the fear that her ladies might have tried to do for themselves what Martha knew herself to do far better—might have used (or misused) the tools and appliances she knew only she could wield with an expert hand—that had made her hurry home after kissing Nigel and his bride a tearful goodbye, and wishing them even half as happy a married life as she and Stan enjoyed together.

  Miss Seeton likewise mused on Nigel and Louise as she prepared to draw her first quilt sketch. The secret list entrusted to her by Lady Colveden included several claims to the Cracked Church Bells story. Odd, that one had never closely studied the church tower. One saw it, and heard the chimes of the clock every day and the peal of the bells every Sunday, but as to how the bells were hung, and how easy it would be to crack one by mistaken pulling, she did not know. She was grateful that one panel of the quilt was going to show three cracked bells and no ringers, which should be easy to draw, but the other pictures seemed likely to prove very elaborate indeed.

  Miss Seeton knew only too well how time-consuming detailed sewing could be. As she took her sketchbook from the bureau, she
ruefully contemplated the neat cloth cylinder, tied with tape, where her pencils lay in individual slim compartments to protect their points. Practical, but dull. In an old book of Cousin Flora’s—one of those serendipitous bound volumes of six months’ or a year’s run of some long-defunct journal—she had discovered the pattern for a Ladies’ Jewellery Roll In Soft Velvet and realised it could be adapted, in some less exotic fabric and without the decorative feather-stitching and lace the designer seemed to feel essential, for paint-brushes, or pencils. So much easier to pop in one’s bag or coat pocket than a tin. And far less likely to rattle.

  Her pencil points were safe. Her stitching was neat and strong, her handiwork practical—but uninspired. Miss Seeton sighed. Like her artistic abilities. Perhaps a different choice of fabric for the brush holder—ribbon rather than tape, and in a contrasting shade—but Welsted’s stock of haberdashery was likewise uninspired. She did not ask for velvets, for silk or satin or gossamer net—for the storage of artistic materials that would be absurd—but her sense of colour and texture, of light and shade and tone, demanded rather more for the brushes from whose bristles she hoped, one day, some truly worthwhile picture might come. And, should she decide to attempt a portrait of Sweetbriars in appliqué, as Lady Colveden had explained dear Louise was to show her how to achieve with the Hall, she might go into Brettenden to see what could be found there...

  All this, though, was for the future. First, she must really begin sketching out the quilt panel ideas. But it was such a lovely day; she need not start at once. She would study the church tower and the bells, then stroll along Nowhere Lane to take a quick likeness of Summerset Cottage. It might make a house-warming present for Nigel and Louise, should the builders ever finish the job. Lady Colveden, over the teacups, had been most eloquent on the topic of Grimes & Salisbury.