Read Online Things to Make and Mend by Ruth Thomas - Free Book Online
Authors: Ruth Thomas
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is a kind world, a womanly world, full of gift-giving and the consumption of time. Time measured out in stitches and pricked fingers. Sally and Pearl often laugh at the more curious ‘makes’ in Embroidery Times. The embroidered egg-cosies and the embroidered bag in which to keep one’s embroidery threads. The Zen-ness of an embroidered embroidery-bag! She never makes these ‘makes’. But sometimes she wishes she was the sort of woman who did.
*
Rowena Cresswell’s mother used to subscribe to magazines. It is one of the few things Sally feels she would have in common with Rowena Cresswell’s mother. She used to get Woman and Home, Woman, Woman’s Realm, Women’s Weekly. She kept them all in a polished wooden magazine rack between the sofa and the television. She bought them on a fortnightly basis. It seemed like a kind of aberration, the amount of money she would spend on these publications, which all advocated the same things: plumped-up cream cushions, candles, highly-complicated dinner -party recipes involving lasagna sheets and roux sauce; adverts for shoe racks and leather-bound encyclopedias. Mrs Cresswell’s lifestyle, Sally supposes, must have mattered to her a lot. The ordered calm of it. The unchanging neatness. It is an ambition which Sally can comprehend now. The Cresswells certainly lived in a nicer house than the Tuttles did, at the expensive end of town. Unlike the Tuttles’ house, all the houses on Rowena’s estate were detached and they all had names. The Willows didn’t actually have a willow tree (it died shortly after they moved in) but it did have a very green, spongy lawn and a lot of bright, blowsy flowers in the flower beds. Custard-yellow tulips. Scarlet gladioli. The house was new, built in the early Seventies, with fake, old-fashioned tile-cladding. Sussex-red. Mr Cresswell was an undemonstrative man but from time to time, in the summer and early autumn, he would sit in his traffic-noisy garden, drinking beer and playing Frank Sinatra songs. ‘New York, New York’ bellowed aggressively across all the neat lawns of the neighbourhood.
‘… start spreading the news,/ I’m leaving today,/ I want to be a part of it …,’ sang Sinatra, as people’s washing twirled around on their East Grinstead Whirly-birds.
Mr Cresswell was overweight. Mrs Cresswell was very thin. Even when Sally knew her, she must have been ill. Her legs gave no form to the blue trousers she wore. She used to work in a gift-shopcafé, serving buns and scones with a silent sadness. Rowena and Sally used to go and watch her sometimes after school: they would sit at a table in a corner of the café and eat discounted flapjacks. Mrs Cresswell never spoke to them as they sat there: she seemed unable to combine work with any semblance of banter. Not even ‘How was your day?’
Occasionally she used to look across at Sally with an expression that was hard to fathom: a combination of irritation and pity. Her fine, fair hair was scraped tightly into a bun, wisps escaping from it like a badly-built nest. The other women all seemed quite jovial as they plodded around behind the counter, slathering margarine on to white rolls and wrapping buns in clingfilm. But Mrs Cresswell was not. Mrs Cresswell looked pained. Disappointed.
When, some evenings, Sally went round to tea, Mrs Cresswell spoke to her in a slow, exaggerated voice, as if she was slightly delinquent.
‘And what are you doing for your O-levels again, Sally?’
‘English, Maths, French, Chemistry and Needlework.’
‘How nice. Needlework. And what a good idea, to focus on five. Five is all anyone needs, isn’t it?’
*
Rowena told Sally once that her mother had been an aspiring ‘career woman’: she had been heading for greatness in the legal profession. But then she had met Rowena’s father and got married and had Rowena and her ambitions had been shelved amidst the ornaments.
Rowena’s was one of the few houses Sally ever visited. After school
*
Rowena Cresswell’s mother used to subscribe to magazines. It is one of the few things Sally feels she would have in common with Rowena Cresswell’s mother. She used to get Woman and Home, Woman, Woman’s Realm, Women’s Weekly. She kept them all in a polished wooden magazine rack between the sofa and the television. She bought them on a fortnightly basis. It seemed like a kind of aberration, the amount of money she would spend on these publications, which all advocated the same things: plumped-up cream cushions, candles, highly-complicated dinner -party recipes involving lasagna sheets and roux sauce; adverts for shoe racks and leather-bound encyclopedias. Mrs Cresswell’s lifestyle, Sally supposes, must have mattered to her a lot. The ordered calm of it. The unchanging neatness. It is an ambition which Sally can comprehend now. The Cresswells certainly lived in a nicer house than the Tuttles did, at the expensive end of town. Unlike the Tuttles’ house, all the houses on Rowena’s estate were detached and they all had names. The Willows didn’t actually have a willow tree (it died shortly after they moved in) but it did have a very green, spongy lawn and a lot of bright, blowsy flowers in the flower beds. Custard-yellow tulips. Scarlet gladioli. The house was new, built in the early Seventies, with fake, old-fashioned tile-cladding. Sussex-red. Mr Cresswell was an undemonstrative man but from time to time, in the summer and early autumn, he would sit in his traffic-noisy garden, drinking beer and playing Frank Sinatra songs. ‘New York, New York’ bellowed aggressively across all the neat lawns of the neighbourhood.
‘… start spreading the news,/ I’m leaving today,/ I want to be a part of it …,’ sang Sinatra, as people’s washing twirled around on their East Grinstead Whirly-birds.
Mr Cresswell was overweight. Mrs Cresswell was very thin. Even when Sally knew her, she must have been ill. Her legs gave no form to the blue trousers she wore. She used to work in a gift-shopcafé, serving buns and scones with a silent sadness. Rowena and Sally used to go and watch her sometimes after school: they would sit at a table in a corner of the café and eat discounted flapjacks. Mrs Cresswell never spoke to them as they sat there: she seemed unable to combine work with any semblance of banter. Not even ‘How was your day?’
Occasionally she used to look across at Sally with an expression that was hard to fathom: a combination of irritation and pity. Her fine, fair hair was scraped tightly into a bun, wisps escaping from it like a badly-built nest. The other women all seemed quite jovial as they plodded around behind the counter, slathering margarine on to white rolls and wrapping buns in clingfilm. But Mrs Cresswell was not. Mrs Cresswell looked pained. Disappointed.
When, some evenings, Sally went round to tea, Mrs Cresswell spoke to her in a slow, exaggerated voice, as if she was slightly delinquent.
‘And what are you doing for your O-levels again, Sally?’
‘English, Maths, French, Chemistry and Needlework.’
‘How nice. Needlework. And what a good idea, to focus on five. Five is all anyone needs, isn’t it?’
*
Rowena told Sally once that her mother had been an aspiring ‘career woman’: she had been heading for greatness in the legal profession. But then she had met Rowena’s father and got married and had Rowena and her ambitions had been shelved amidst the ornaments.
Rowena’s was one of the few houses Sally ever visited. After school
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