Sandra found a basket and tried to assemble the things they needed, but she couldn’t do it. She didn’t have Martha’s color sense, and she didn’t know enough about wool. She would just have to wait until Martha had finished. She tried to relax and enjoy the display, to get some sense of what Martha saw and felt, but whatever it was that enthralled Martha escaped her. Only one bin really attracted her attention; after assessing everything on the basis of cost, she was drawn back to the luxury oddments, and in particular a few balls of a yarn called sunshower, pale blue with silver flecks.
She held it next to her face in the mirror and suddenly saw Martha’s face behind her. Sandra flushed a little.
“That would be all right,” Martha said. “But how about this?” And she picked out several other balls.
“See, amethyst, violet, plum, this beautiful dark gold, and”—her hand hovered for a moment and then darted in—“this one!” She held up a deep green and squinted at the label.
“Coppermine! See how good and strong they are, how they balance each other?” She stood behind Sandra so they could both see in the mirror and framed her head with the different-colored balls, a woolly coronet.
“Beautiful, with your dark hair. A real statement! What are you going to make?”
Sandra felt shy. “Oh, nothing much. Just a scarf or something. I’m not very good at knitting.”
“I’ll show you.”
“Are you ready yet? Shall we get the exhibition wool?”
“Oh, yes!” Martha laughed. “I nearly forgot. That’s why we came. Where’s the list? It won’t take long.”
Nor did it. In fifteen minutes Martha had gathered the wool for a dozen garments. Sandra took out her Visa card and prepared to pay, while Martha fossicked in her bag for her purse.
“No, you don’t have to pay anything, Martha, don’t be silly.”
“Yes, I do,” said Martha, “because they won’t let me take this lot out for free.” She pointed to three baskets already behind the counter. “That’s all mine. Not for the exhibition, just for myself. Three weeks’ worth of pension I’ve got there.”
On the way home Sandra asked, “What sort of pension are you on?”
“Oh, I’m not really. We just call it that. Family joke. I inherited a share of the farm, and I’ve got a deal with Malcolm. Some years it’s good, and other years it’s not much. Malcolm takes care of me, even if his wife has ants in her pants.”
“All that wool you bought—you’re not going to knit that up before the exhibition, are you?”
“First things first,” said Martha, picking up the round needle she was using for the cape. Though her voice was reassuring, Sandra wasn’t sure that her first and Martha’s first were the same thing.
MARTHA was an early riser, an old habit learned on the farm that had calcified into her bones. After the usual routine of breakfast, dishes, and sweeping, she went to her workroom. Yesterday she had taken all the wool out of its flimsy plastic bags and put it in baskets—the exhibition wool in a utilitarian plastic laundry basket, but her own wool in two ancient wicker baskets that had been passed down through two or three generations on her mother’s side. She had pushed mothballs in among the skeins like seeds in the ground. The room smelled delicious.
But before starting on the exhibition pieces, Martha took down the calico bag hanging from a hook on the back of the door and opened out the secret white garment she was making in two-ply lambswool, the wool Sandra had wanted for the baby’s layette. She had been lucky to come by that wool. She held up the bodice, which was almost finished, and viewed it with a critical eye. It was good, very good, perhaps the most beautiful thing she had ever made. Flawless, and the diamond pattern was just right. And it should fit, too; it looked right.
For the next hour she worked away at the rose pattern. This too was habit, this hour at the beginning of the day before her other work, this hour set aside for love and pleasure. When she first began this quiet time, she had listened to the radio, but after a while she found that she preferred silence, to sit still and peacefully think things through while her hands moved easy on the needles. Sometimes she felt another presence, someone comfortable and caring. This work was different from the rest; this work gave more than it took, strengthened her somehow. Like dipping into a well. And it was peaceful. No one was likely to ring before seven in the morning.
This was the time when she had her best ideas. Only a few minutes before, she had decided to change the pattern for the skirt of this new dress. The bodice, almost finished now, was all in roseheart pattern, but she wanted something different for the skirt, something that would draw the eye upward. Feather stitch, that would be perfect. The lambswool would soften and slightly blur the elongated rows of paired holes. She could put each row of feathers slightly off-center from the previous row, so that the skirt would hint at the idea of a folded wing. Roseheart for the bodice, feather stitch for the skirt and sleeves, with bands of roseheart at the hem and cuffs for balance. She would need a multiple of seven stitches to begin the skirt. For weeks she had searched and thought, feeling her way toward the form, and now the sense of the whole had crept quietly into her mind when she was least expecting it. Martha’s heart leapt with recognition. She was so excited she put down her knitting and for a few minutes walked around waving her arms in the air to settle herself down.
Sandra could do with a bit of this, thought Martha, starting a new row. Sandra was always pulled out tight, like a rubber band ready for pinging. She could do with a bit of comfort knitting in the morning. But Sandra was a night person; she always slept late. Perhaps Sandra’s hour needed to be at the end of the day, under the moon.
Martha worked steadily, without mistakes, until the hour was up. Time for a cup of tea and a stretch. And then she must have another go at the lady’s cape, to see if she could fix that mistake she had made in the car. After that she would start that man’s funny bathing suit. Fancy actually wearing anything like that, and getting it wet! Martha’s skin felt irritated just thinking about it.
THE phone rang. Sandra, stepping out of the shower and toweling her hair, nearly missed it.
“Sandra Fildes?”
“Speaking.”
“My name’s Jonty Stewart? New Zealand? You may not remember me, but I was at the Wollongong conference?” She ended each sentence with an irritating upward inflection. Sandra remembered the keynote speaker, a soft-bodied woman in her mid-forties with startling pink glasses frames.
“I heard you were mounting a retro knitting exhibition. I’m writing a book called Stitching the Empire. I’d like to come over for the opening if I can.” Sandra suddenly saw herself, stark naked except for a towel around her head, talking to Ms. Stewart, the internationally known writer on postcolonial textiles.
Her little exhibition had taken on a life of its own.
CLIFF put his scratchy to one side, spread out the paper napkin, and tucked it under his clean-shaven chin. Pension day was also shaving day and shower day. Of course you couldn’t quite go from one pension day to the next without a shower—two weeks was a long time. Your resources might be limited, but you could always keep yourself clean. A bucket of water went a long way.
Today there were only three people in front of him when he lined up to buy the ticket. That was lucky. Odd numbers were lucky, and prime numbers were especially lucky. Three was very lucky. Thirteen was the luckiest number of all, but not many people believed that.
Cliff took a bite of his hot dog. Mustard spurted unexpectedly but landed on his napkin. There you go, lucky day. He chewed the rest slowly; he was missing a few back teeth, which didn’t make for speed. And he knew from experience that swallowing without chewing was not a good idea. As he chewed, he stared at the unscratched ticket, enjoying the anticipation. What was under that silver surface? Maybe only a couple of dollars. He’d won two dollars seven weeks ago; since then, nothing. His luck was definitely due to come in. This time it would be the big one.
The hot dog
was finished, the milk reduced to a few bubbles. Cliff folded his napkin into rectangle, square, triangle. He opened his wallet and took out his lucky two-cent piece, kept from the old days. Under the first silver square was a heart. Then a chicken, a dog, and a feather. And two fish. It was depressing. Maybe he’d used up all the luck he was ever going to get.
SANDRA sat in her study writing the labels to accompany Martha’s garments. As usual, she had far too much material, enough for a book, actually, which she had to condense down to one video, one interactive display, two information panels, and thirty-seven small notations to accompany the garments.
Too many words again. The old dilemma—quantitative or qualitative—and the need to balance the two. And the need to stay aware of her own biases, question her own motives.
Why couldn’t she just relax? Did it really matter if she unwittingly subverted her own purpose? Or some other purpose, for that matter, something beyond and bigger than herself?
Yes, it most certainly did. You had to stay in control. If you didn’t know exactly what you were doing, you could be caught out.
Martha was lucky. All Martha had to do was read the pattern and follow it. Pure mechanics. Whereas she, Sandra, had to think and decide and be responsible. And of course, the buck stopped here. Well, there weren’t that many bucks this time, but what there were had to be well and truly answered for.
Even today, when she was doing work she enjoyed, at a subterranean level she was searching, questioning, trying to pin down her own motives. Why was war so fascinating? Time and again she found herself drawn back to the two world wars. Maybe, after losing Jack, she had a morbid fascination with death. Or was it related to her family history, the bundle of letters her grandfather had sent back from France to his new wife? Perhaps it had more to do with her father, his six years of meticulously kept war diary, her memory of him coming out of the shed one day dressed in his old uniform found in a trunk when he’d been looking for something else. And the rough comfort of the khaki picnic rug that he kept in the back of the car, wrapped around her when she’d fallen in the river.
Maybe it wasn’t her father. Maybe it was that fascinating community of women, clicking away at their socks and undershirts and balaclavas in church, at the movies, over cups of tea, knitting thousands of small items to be sent to sons and brothers and sweethearts, or to young men they’d never met but might one day when the war was over. And the stoic humor of tough times—Thanks Auntie for the socks. One of them keeps my feet warm at night, and the other makes a great scarf.
The past fascinated her, but she couldn’t climb back into it, find out what made it tick, just what it was exactly that fired up the older women when they reminisced about ration coupons and blackouts, two-day honeymoons after weddings in borrowed dresses, Americans with good manners and silk stockings. She could only stare at relics and listen to old songs like “Pick Up Your Knitting” on wheezy gramophone records and try to understand the implica tions of a pattern book called Knit for Victory. Maybe there weren’t any great secrets. Maybe she just longed for a broader experience, for real community.
Sandra pushed the keyboard away and leaned back in her chair. Her notes sounded false. She opened a folder of primary references. Yes, this was better:
We began hearing a lot about “the war effort” and people stopped saying the war would be over in six months, or even a year. Whenever I came home from school, the house was full of women clicking knitting needles and manipulating dark wool, and making huge quantities of socks, vests, mittens and mufflers, as well as sewing pyjamas and shirts . . .
Nora Pennington, the good little girl who had written the composition about Gallipoli, was the school’s champion sock knitter. At lunchtime and recess she sat with her ankles neatly crossed and her boots buttoned, turning the heels of the socks very prettily. She eventually won the district record for the number of socks, mufflers, mittens and balaclava helmets knitted by anybody under the age of thirteen; her father made sure that the news reached the front page of his paper, with the heading “LITTLE NORA DOES HER BIT.” The rest of us longed to grab her knitting, rip the stitches out and snarl the wool for her. (David Gleason, “At First I Thought It Was the Most Wonderful Adventure,” in Jacqueline Kent, In the Half Light [North Ryde: Angus & Robertson, 1988], pp. 56–58)
Sandra knew, even as she attached the reference, why she liked that piece. She recognized a kinship with little Nora sitting there knitting with her boots crossed, ordering her world, disciplined and useful, striving for excellence. But she also identified with David Gleason, wanting to rip it all to bits.
THE matinee jacket would not come right.
Martha could feel the flush of anxiety rising from deep down in her belly, rising like a flood to carry her mind away from its moorings into a swirling, panicking fright, bumpy with recollections of getting things wrong. Misjudgment, misplaced trust, not being able to do what was needed, being young and clumsy and stupid—so stupid not to see it coming, not to get it right the first time and avert disaster. She was an idiot, a klutz, a throwaway rag. It was no use, no use at all now, she would never be able to fix it.
But she couldn’t throw away all that good wool. What a waste. It was wicked to waste. She would put it in the bag and do it later, do it when she had more time, wasn’t busy, do it some never-never day when she was relaxed and able to think clearly, when she could sit down calmly and do what was needed.
She unzipped the big striped bag and thrust the pieces of the jacket as far down as they would go. Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full of mistakes. So many mistakes to carry around all the time, waiting for the right moment when her head was clear and she could think like a normal person and just count the numbers and get it right. That was all it was, some careful unpicking, and counting numbers, and getting it right. But it wasn’t a job she could do today. She zipped up the big bag and put it back against the wall. The third bag was nearly full. She couldn’t start a fourth bag. Carrying four bags around all the time would kill her.
But that rose dress, that was all right, there were no mistakes in that.
She had better start one of those other things for Sandra.
MINT—that was the color. Mint green, fresh as mouth-wash. The little green dress frolicked at the end of the sales rack, shiny and beautiful, a bright emerald in a dull day. Jack had liked Sandra in green—good for her brown eyes, he said, and a foil for her hair—back in the days when she’d allowed it to be red. Jack had liked being married to a redhead.
It fitted too, perfectly, slipping over her hips, lying flat over her stomach, the V-neck flattering, the scrunch at one shoulder playing with the light. It was half price. San dra got out her Visa card and smiled broadly at the shop assistant.
She was getting better. She was stepping out.
THE man’s bathing suit, 1930s, stocking stitch, was in black worsted wool. It was plain knitting for the moment, not very interesting, best done in daylight. The yarn was fine, and it was difficult to pick up dropped stitches unless you could see properly. It was easy work, but tedious because it was easy, and there was a lot of it. Martha had done the shaping around the crotch, and while she knitted black, she eyed the red wool in another basket. It would be much more interesting knitting red, apple red, mailbox red, fire engine red. Martha’s hands flew on the needles but her mind darted out and away. Why was she thinking red? Ah, because yesterday she had seen a beautiful red.
Yesterday she had needed to get out. Yesterday, when she had undone the jacket twice, and the wool had started to fray, and the count was wrong for the third time straight, she had zipped up the big bag and gone out.
She had decided on the Botanic Garden for a change of scenery. She would sit in the quiet hush under the Moreton Bay figs and start the black swimsuit.
Lugging her bags along North Terrace, past the hospital where she had visited Cliff, she was nearly to the Garden gate when she saw the red bike.
S
he clenched her fists in excitement. It had three big wheels—it was a tricycle! Like the one she had had at the farm when she was small, but this one was enormous, an adult bike, and shiny shiny red, called crimson in the paint box. It was speeding along North Terrace and up toward Magill Road, focused and fearless in a dash through an amber light. The handlebars had little white covers on the ends, and there was a hooter, a big hooter. Hoot! Hoot! went the red bike. It made a lot of noise; even buses would be able to hear that hooter. Underneath and behind the two back wheels of the red bike was a basket, a white mesh wire basket full of shopping. Not in plastic bags, but nice cotton bags, and sticking out of the top of one she could see bananas, leafy celery, and a brown head of bread. See, you could go to the market with a bike like that and bring home all your shopping. You could go anywhere. You could go to Alice Springs and back. You could ride away and leave all your mistakes behind.
Martha had seen an adult tricycle before. Barney, who had cerebral palsy, had ridden one around her hometown, but it was a dirty brown, that bike, a man bike. Poor old Barney would lift one hand and stretch the uncooperative muscles of his face into a smile when you waved at him.
But this bike, this modern red bike, was ridden by a young woman, only about thirty, in shorts and a T-shirt, with elegant long legs and a black spiked haircut poking out from under her helmet, and you could see she was happy to be riding that bike along North Terrace. Maybe she put her kids in the basket after school, or maybe she didn’t have kids, maybe you wouldn’t ever want kids if you had a bike like that.
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