only old bed linen,’ I called through to the kitchen. ‘Shall I take it to a charity shop?’
Mum set down the tea tray. ‘That’s it,’ she said, her face lighting up, ‘the quilt we were talking about.’
She was right: the sheet was just a lining. As I lifted the quilt out and unfolded it right side out across the dining table, light from the window illuminated its beautiful, shimmering patterns and dazzling colours. True, it was faded in places but some of the patches still glittered, almost like jewels. Textiles, plain and patterned, shiny satins, dense velvets and simple matt cottons, were arranged in subtle conjunctions so that groups of triangles took on the shape of a fan, semicircles looked like waves on the sea, squares of light and dark became three-dimensional stairways climbing to infinity.
The central panel was an elegantly embroidered lover’s knot surrounded by a panel of elongated hexagons, and a frame of appliqué figures so finely executed that the stitches were almost invisible. And yet, for all the delicate needlework, the design of the quilt seemed to be quite random, the fabrics so various and contrasted it could have been made by several people, over a long period of time.
‘Did Granny make this?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Mum said, pouring the tea. ‘She liked to sew but I never saw her doing patchwork or embroidery.’
‘Why’s it been hidden away for so long?’
‘Not really sure. You wouldn’t have it on your bed – said it was too old-fashioned or something.’
‘Can I take it home with me now?’
‘Of course, dear. She always wanted you to have it.’
It was only when I went to fold the quilt back into the suitcase that something on its reverse side caught my eye. In one corner of the striped sheet backing, cross-stitched inside an embroidered frame like a sampler, were two lines set out like a verse. Some of the stitching was frayed and becoming unravelled, but I could just about make out the words:
I stitched my love into this quilt, sewn it neatly, proud and true.
Though you have gone, I must live on, and this will hold me close to you.
I read it out to Mum. ‘It’s a poem. Did Granny dedicate it to Grandpa? Or was it for Dad?’
‘Just a mo … I’m just trying to remember something.’ Mum rubbed her temple. ‘I don’t think it was Jean who sewed it. It was something she said once …’
I waited a moment, trying to be patient with my mother’s failing memory.
‘Something about the hospital …’
‘Eastchester General?’
‘No, the other place, you know? It might have been someone she met there. Oh, it’s all so long ago now,’ she sighed, wearily. ‘When your father was a boy. Had a bit of a breakdown, poor old thing.’
‘Granny had a breakdown? I never knew about that. She had to go into hospital?’
‘Not for long. Just till she’d got better. It wasn’t far from here …’
‘And you said she met someone there who might be connected with the quilt?’ I prompted, but it was no good. I could see she was exhausted now. I started my usual routine before leaving her: cleaning up the kitchen, sorting out the fridge, taking out the rubbish and making a sandwich for her supper.
When I returned to the living room she was fast asleep. I wrapped a rug around her and kissed her tenderly on the forehead. It tore at my heartstrings to see how vulnerable and old she looked these days, and I wondered how long it would be before she was unable to manage on her own.
Back at my flat in London, I unfolded the quilt across the spare bed, scanning both sides to make sure I hadn’t missed any clues, and re-read the cross-stitched lines of that sentimental little verse several times, as if by studying them long enough they might yield their secret. One thing was clear: it certainly wasn’t the sort of thing my feisty grandmother would ever have composed.
Chapter Three
Cassette 1, side 2
That was a nice cuppa, thank you dearie. Much needed. So where was I?
‘You and Nora were going into service. You had just arrived at the big house.’
Oh my lord yes. What a day! We was terrified, of course. Nora, me and Emily got bundled out and straight down some steps into the basement; the servants’ entrance, you see, away from the eyes of upstairs. We stood in a dark, echoey hallway for what seemed like an hour while they called someone to call someone else, and finally a maid came and said she was to take us to our room.
We said goodbye to Emily and dragged our bags up hundreds of stairs to our room, which had four beds in, and the two closest the fire was already taken so Nora and me put our things on the other two cots and waited for someone to come and tell us what to do. The room was bare and the beds narrow and hard, but we weren’t much bothered by that ’cos we didn’t know any different. While we waited, we opened the little parcels Sister Beatrice gave us and ate the biscuits she had wrapped inside – oatcakes with a sprinkle of brown sugar – and the taste reminded me so much of The Castle that I started snivelling all over again.
The maid came back and told us we must hurry now, as we must never keep Mrs Hardy waiting. It turned out that Mrs Hardy was the mountain of a housekeeper, the one who came to interview us. Her office under the stairs was not a large room and felt even smaller with her filling up most of the space.
‘Ah, you two, wherever have you been? Come and get your uniforms. Now!’ she bellowed. I started to say we haven’t been anywhere, Ma’am, but Nora dug me in the ribs and put a finger to her lips to remind me that we was not allowed to answer back, or do anything except be clean, neat, hardworking and obedient. Them nuns was so quiet spoken that we was petrified of the woman’s shouting but we soon learned that was how she usually talked to anyone beneath her station.
We grew used to life at the new place pretty quickly, Nora and me, and it wasn’t a bad one. It was nothing near as friendly as at The Castle, mind, but we just had to get on with it and we had hardly any free time to dwell on anything. Our uniforms was plain pale blue with black stockings and we got new black shoes, too, and it was a relief to get out of the clothes what was growing too small for us anyway.
There was hundreds of servants, not to mention the upstairs lot. The two maids who shared our bedroom had to get up early every morning to make fires so we barely had any time to speak with them. They was nice enough, but kept themselves to themselves, at least till we had been there a few weeks.
We spent our days in the needlework room doing mending for the household, and for the rest of the servants too, and there was only the three of us: the chief needlewoman, Nora and me. It was a small white painted room with no furniture save for the three cutting tables and hard chairs, with high wide windows and the floor painted white, too, what we had to sweep and wipe clean every day. There was no fire, on account of the coal dust would soil our work. Instead there was hot water pipes which we put our feet on when we was working, it were that cold sometimes.
The
