19 The sewing lady

We are not very sociable in our family. Mama doesn’t like the hassle of hanging around being pleasant to people she doesn’t care for, which is nearly everybody, so most of the people she knows are people she meets accidentally in the street, and she does not visit them or have them visit us.

Unfortunately, even she can’t avoid being sociable now and again, and if you have to socialize, you have to be dressed for the part. That applies to me, too. I have to wear a hat and coat for Sunday school, and my best clothes are worn only on high days and holidays, so that I regularly grow out of them before they show any signs of wear, and they have to be sent to a good cause.

I never get to choose what I wear, and we don’t always even go to the shops to buy things, because Mama knows someone who sews even better than she does. What is more, this person lives on the main road between Uncle Arthur’s farm and our monkey puzzle house, and getting her to sew is also a good cause, because the poor woman is needy.

Our sewing lady’s first name is Nora, and she was a great disappointment to her father, being a skinny, mournful little creature with drooping grey eyes and little vitality. Nora Crane is so far off the beaten track usually trodden by humanity that I can’t imagine her ever being young and going to school, or doing any of the things other people do.

When people talk about her, it is in respectful tones as if she were some kind of martyr. She had a hard life employed as a seamstress at a draper’s and keeping house for her father till he died. She wasn’t his only child. There is mention of a sister and a brother, but no one seems to have set eyes on them. When her father died he left Miss Crane to fend for herself as best she could. When you look at her you start guessing her age. She could be young, or she could be old. She has translucent skin and all her bones stick out. If there is one person I do not want to emulate, it is Nora Crane.

Miss Crane has lived all her life in the tiny two-up-two-down terraced cottage in a row of identical two-up-two-down cottages that has been the family home since time immemorial. The sash window in the front-room is only about two yards from the main road, and the vibration of the traffic rumbling past sets the floorboards creaking and the old-fashioned gold-rimmed crockery in the china cabinet jigging and tinkling.

Once a week, a van delivers provisions to the corner shop at the end of the row. The proprietor, a Mr Wick of Wick’s Emporium, who keeps his shop door open twelve or fifteen hours a day, and his back door ajar for the other twelve or nine, is a mine of good food and advice because hardly anyone has a car and trips on the bus into town are usually reserved for market day on Fridays. If you go to Mr Wick’s emporium and buy some of his cheese and farm eggs and boiled ham, you can hear all the latest gossip about who is running away with whom and where to, and what people are having for supper, and who is not bringing his or her custom to the little shop, and that includes Miss Crane, who seldom buys anything apart from matches and paraffin for her upstairs lamp, since the gas only reaches to the downstairs rooms and she has not had electricity put in the house.

No one hangs around much in this part of town, especially after dusk. There’s no entertainment of any kind, not even a pub, and now the latest rumour, that the houses opposite Miss Crane are to be knocked down and the road widened so that even heavier lorries can pass Miss Crane’s front window is a good excuse for the house-owners to wriggle out of spending on desperately needed improvements, though some of Miss Crane’s neighbours have at least installed electricity in their little abodes, and one or two are like palaces inside. I know, because every time I walk pass them I peer into the windows through the frothy net curtains and am amazed at the plush sofas, shiny ornaments and blazing coal fires.

The only house now left in the terrace that has had no home improvements at all, or even a lick and a promise, since it was built, is Miss Crane’s. I can’t see into her front room, because a heavy damask curtain  is drawn across the window, which not only hinders peeping Toms but also stops any sunlight permeating into the dark interior.

As usual once a year, Mama is having something made for special occasions. Since she does not want our snobby relations to think she is too impoverished to buy proper clothes, she has her things made according to the latest Vogue fashions.  She even buys a Vogue magazine to consult the fashion experts, since Miss Crane can copy any design you care to mention. This year I am going to have a special occasion frock made there, says Mama to my secret horror. It is to be sewn out of a sizeable remnant of pale blue crepe de chine bought at the market the previous week. I know I won't like it because I'm not really very fond of baby blue, but Mama says it will match my eyes and that I should learn to be grateful.

I should point out that when I talk about bargains and prices in general, I have Mama in mind. She was an expert haggler and good at being parsimonious, except that she called it being economical. She never spent more than she had to on anything, and achieving an even better bargain than the one on offer was to her a triumph over the less insightful and much less market-aware traders she had to deal with.

Today I am to go with Mama to have my first fitting. She is sure Miss Crane can make me a lovely frock that will transform me into the young lady I think I am anyway. I am amenable about going there. Which little girl does not want to look even nicer, even in a baby blue frock? Little do I realise that Miss Crane and her fittings will soon be engraved on that part of my memory that is otherwise reserved for Mrs Glotzky, the witch-dragon auntie, almond flavouring and spiders.

Mama quite enjoys the attention Miss Crane gives her. Mama, who has spent her life in service to others, is temporarily a lady, imagining how nice it would be if you could always have clothes made especially for you, which fitted you perfectly and made you feel elegant and affluent.

And there really is something ephemeral about the clothes Miss Crane makes. They linger at the back of Mama’s wardrobe, hung on padded silken coat-hangers with lavender bags tied round the hooks looking just like the pictures in the fashion magazine Mama pours over when the time comes round for another addition to her fashion collection. .Miss Crane has quite a steady flow of customers, a few of them quite well-off, and all of them as thrifty as Mama. For the rest of the year we spend our shopping trips to Chester comparing the expensive fashion items with Miss Crane’s. Mama is highly satisfied that Miss Crane invariably comes out tops.

If you employ a dressmaker, you have to know exactly what you want, buy the material and notions, and even supply the pattern yourself of one is needed, because Miss Crane hardly ever sets foot beyond the corner shop, and her only dress-making patterns are basic shapes like a skirt, a blouse, or a jacket. But even though she is recluse, and a half-starved one at that, Nora Crane can still be relied on to make you perfect garments for a fraction of what it would cost anywhere else without ever asking for a dress-making pattern. 

If you are long-suffering enough, that is.

I have been with Mama to some of her fittings in the past. I hate all the hanging around. I think I am only taken there so that Miss Crane, who cannot be said to be partial to children and their little foibles, will hurry up with the snipping and pinning and Mama can get back to the warmth of our kitchen.

I never let Mama down as far as being a nuisance is concerned. If she says ‘Don’t touch that!’ and winks, I do touch it, and she then says to poor Miss Crane, who is anxious about her heirlooms, "Faith’s getting tired. Can you be quick today, Miss Crane?"

"Why don’t you leave her at home?" Miss Crane asks in a cross voice.

"Her father is ill, you know. He has to rest in the afternoon."

Mama always talks very distinctly, to make sure Miss Crane understands. We are not sure, but we think she is deaf. Or is it the cotton wool that is stuffed into both ears? Why doesn’t she remove it?

Miss Crane nods understandingly. She doesn’t know at that point that Mama has it in mind that she should also make me a frock, but she is friendly. She needs Mama’s custom.

"Well, just one more dart, and let’s hope your other side is still the same."

Mama winks at me again.

When you want to have something made by Nora Crane, you first have to make an appointment, and this in itself is an achievement because the sewing lady lives more or less isolated from the world around her, possibly because of her deafness, but probably because she is congenitally antisocial. I know she hardly ever goes out, and I’m sure she doesn’t get much to eat.

One day, she is pinning a particularly difficult shoulder pleat on a particularly difficult Vogue dress while Mama moans and tells her all about the difficulties of finding a good cleaning woman. This is a story deliberately meant for retelling, which she assumes Miss Crane will to her next client, if given half a chance. While Mama is moaning and Miss Crane is grovelling around on the floor pinning the hem, neither of them sees me creep out of the cramped front room that doubles up as fitting room. The back room has only a very small window and is too dark to try clothes on, especially by gas light. My prying nosiness leads me into that back room, which is devoid of furniture apart from a big old wooden table covered in half-finished sewing. Beyond the table there is a sort of annex that looks like a kitchen, being furnished with a low-slung white pot sink, an ancient gas cooker and a dresser with drawers in the main bit and willow patterned plates arranged along its open top shelves. There is hardly anything to eat there except for a bit of mousetrap cheese and some ancient cake. I don’t stay there very long because I can hear strange noises behind the skirting board, and I think they might be the rats, because the terrace is very near an open drain. The smell isn’t very nice, either.

The truth is that Miss Crane has always relied on the generosity of her customers, who never turn up for a fitting without a bag of food. Mama is no exception.

Mama thinks that Miss Crane sends all her money abroad. She has a brother who went to sea and probably has a woman in every port. Mama thinks Miss Crane looks after him, wherever he might be.

Another explanation that comes up in conversation with Dada, when I am sitting on the stairs listening in, is that Miss Crane is a drinker. Dada and Mama don’t talk about things like that until I’m ostensibly out of earshot. It’s like all the other interesting things they discuss. Little do they know that I eavesdrop. Mama gets really carried away once they start chatting.

Today, as on many previous occasions, we set off to walk to Miss Crane’s house carrying bags full of home-made jam, butter, cake, slices of meat, and whatever else Mama can spare.

We hammer loudly on the tarnished gargoyle door knocker then stand back so that we can be seen with our bags of food. They are the incentive for her to let us in.

There’s no answer at first. Miss Crane never comes straight to the door. It’s sheer luck if she hears the knocking at all from the back room where she spends all her working hours, even though she has no radio and the house is as silent as the grave. But the repeated knocking might bring movement to the draped damask behind the sash window. Miss Crane might now be checking out who is at the door. If you have no appointment, she does not open it. She shouts through the letter-box, and you can make an appointment for next week, or next month, or next year.

But, if you come at exactly the time you have previously arranged, and especially if you have brought her something to eat, she may eventually let you in, always depending on whether she has decided to keep her side of the appointment.

However, there is never any question about Miss Crane losing her marbles. She’s as sharp as a fox and she never forgets anything you tell her, which means she can carry on a conversation after a year as if you’d left off only the day before.

If you are one of the lucky few to fulfil all the criteria for entry, she will open the door and let you into the narrow, dilapidated entrance hall. Her greetings are always cursory and she makes you feel there must be something wrong with you as she leads you into the front room to wait. She walks with a stilted, arthritic gait on her match-stick legs and mutters mantras under her breath. She is almost as grotesque as Macbeth’s witches, Mama says.

Then the waiting begins. I can’t understand why she has to keep us waiting every time if she has been expecting us to come. Is she savouring her moment of power? Is she deciding whether she can be bothered? Is she showing us that we need her more than she needs us?

When you are safely installed the front room, sitting on an ancient sofa covered in the kind of upholstery that makes you want to scratch yourself, she always mutters something about being ready in a minute and disappears into the back part of the house, not forgetting to take the bags of provisions with her.

We think she is so hungry that she has to go and eat something first. Once she didn’t, and I heard her stomach making awful rumbling noises all the time she was pinning a sleeve on.

Mama always talks to Miss Crane as though she were in a fashion store getting advice from a sophisticated sales-girl, and I always feel silly because I am sitting forgotten on the horrible scratchy sofa and I can’t think of anything to do.

Before Miss Crane comes back and starts her fitting session, Mama sometimes tells me stories about this weird woman, about the brother who went to sea and a sister who was there one day and gone the next, about the mother who faded away and the father who beat all his children, and about Miss Crane having been quite pretty when she was young (which I frankly do not believe), and having had a boyfriend who probably ran away with the sister Mama is not sure about any of these stories. I prefer them to any of the ones in my books, so I take it all in, especially when I think Mama has forgotten who she is talking to.
"I’m sure she’s eating some of the food now and has forgotten us," Mama says at some point in a low voice, so that Miss Crane cannot possibly overhear. "Look at her, when she comes back. She’ll still be chewing. She’s all skin and bones. I wonder how she can keep going like that. And look at the place here. Dark and dank. It gives me the creeps."

"Me, too. Why does she wear such awful clothes?" I whisper back. "Can’t she sew herself something nice?"

Indeed, Miss Crane wears drab, shapeless garments in all shades of mud or colourful patchwork garments Mama says she has sewn from the remnants of clothes she has cut out for clients (which would explain the brocade and silk). Miss Crane’s skin-and-bone legs are encased in grey rayon stockings that fall into folds round her ankles. She wears down-at-heel lace-up shoes with scuffed-up fronts and usually ties a head-scarf round her head tied in a knot under her chin like the Queen, so that you can see only a few wisps of the buff-coloured hair. Even scarecrows have more self-respect than Nora Crane, Mama says.

"How old is she?"

"I don’t know. Middle-aged, I suppose. It’s hard to tell. Thin people always age quicker."

Mama has theories about middle-age and being fat or thin. Middle-age is when the children leave home, and if living off your fat is not exactly ideal, having jutting-out bones like clothes-pegs wrapped in skin is certainly not a viable alternative. I don’t think I’m in any danger of following Miss Crane’s example. Remembering the stink at the back of the house, I can well believe that housework does not take priority with her, either. 

Mama is a crack housewife.

Miss Crane’s front room is choc-a-bloc with the ancient, scratchy velvet sofa we have to sit on, a matching armchair, the china cabinet, a table for sewing equipment and a candlestick. The floor is wooden boards, barely disguised by the tatty Persian carpet you stand on to be fitted. There is a small gas fire in the hearth, but it is never lit when we arrive. I suppose that making half-dressed clients comfortable is not a high priority.

"Do you need a shilling for the meter?" Mama always asks. Even in summer it is freezing cold in here, sun and air being effectively banned from entering to dry up the dampness that seeps up through the floor, in through the walls and down from the ceiling.

Miss Crane knows no shame or shyness where money is concerned. She holds out her claw-tipped hand for the shilling and shuffles out to feed the meter.

"I’ll bet that’s the first shilling her meter has seen this week," Mama says, kneeling down to light the gas. "Although I could be wrong, I suppose". After all, Miss Crane does have other clients who don’t necessarily relish standing half naked in the freezing cold.

Mama wallows in graciousness when confronted with such misery.

"Why hasn’t she got any money?" I ask.

"Perhaps she has a bit hidden under the mattress. Some people hate banks. Perhaps she has already sent everything to her brother, or she’s a miser."

"What’s a miser?"

"That’s someone who is too mean to spend any money."

“Are you a miser, Mama?” I can’t resist asking. Mama ignores the question.

"She’ll starve to death one day and someone else will get all the money, if there is any."

Since we have some money in the bank, I tell Mama that I don’t think she is a miser after all and Mama smiles in appreciation. I feel better now. The conversation ends with Mama going to the door and calling out "Miss Crane, have you forgotten us?"

Miss Crane shuffles back in, saying she’s sorry but she just had to do this or that. She has cake crumbs down the front of her jumper. Mama’s half-finished garment is draped carefully over one arm. Sometimes Miss Crane is still chewing with a clacking of dentures, which Mama explains must be too big for her emaciated gums.

"You’ll need at least two more fittings, Mrs Jones."

"But this is the third already. You’ll have to get it finished this week, Miss Crane."

Miss Crane’s production rate is governed by the seasons. The reason for this is the lack of light you can reasonably sew by as well as the coldness of her fingers. It seems unbelievable in this day and age, on a busy main road near a busy town, that Miss Crane really does only have gas and paraffin in her house. The light flickering in the small storm lamp hanging from the dark ceiling in her back room is so dim that sewing is quite out of the question, so she only sews by daylight. How she spends the long hours of darkness all alone is a complete mystery.

Despite her dilapidated personal appearance and the neglected state of her house, Miss Crane is a perfectionist in her work. She has learnt sewing the hard way, mending and patching, and later doing alterations in a posh shop. What made her turn her back on the outside world?

When Nora Crane makes you a frock, it fits you perfectly, but to achieve this, you have to stand still for up to two hours at a time, while she prods around, looking for any tiny bits of you that don’t correspond with the garment. Her fingers are freezing cold even in the summer and her nails are excessively long, sharp and discoloured. Being prodded by Miss Crane is not a pleasant experience.

All the pieces of material are treated individually, so you start off with half a bodice, then a sleeve, then part of the skirt, then the collar, and so on. Each of these procedures means a fitting appointment. It can take months for her to complete a garment. Mama says it takes so long that you think you’ve been wearing it for years by the time you are allowed to take it home. No wonder Miss Crane’s masterpieces hang in the wardrobe long after they have gone out of fashion.

When the last fitting is finally over, the time has come to settle the bill. Miss Crane never actually says what she wants for her work, so you have to put some money down where she can see it, and ask if it’s enough. If she hesitates, you put some more down, until she finally nods approval and pockets it with icy fingers that culminate in curled and stained nails like the claws of a bird of prey. The similarity to birds of prey is extremely conspicuous on pay-day as she swoops on her hard-earned fee.

Today Mama takes out the baby blue crepe de chine and drapes it elegantly across the armchair. She is hoping that Miss Crane will say something nice about it so that she can ask her to make the frock for me. And sure enough, Miss Crane likes the colour and the texture, holds the material up against the dim light to check for blemishes, and finally pronounces the idea to be a good one. I can get myself measured up today and she will have the frock cut out in exactly two weeks. Will that be all right?

Mama’s new dress will be ready quite soon apart from the final details like buttons, which have to be provided in exactly the right shape, colour and size if they are not to be rejected as unsuitable, and Mama is commanded to try on her new frock again. While she is doing so, Miss Crane measures me from every imaginable angle, and announces that I am a big girl and it won’t be easy. I secretly hope that she will decide not to bother after all, but before Mama and I have left, two hours later, all the details of the new blue frock have been thrashed out and I am ordered back for the first fitting.

Several fittings and many weeks later, I am almost ready for any eventuality on the social horizon.

I have been to the fittings on my own. Mama is not anxious to sit on the scratchy sofa waiting for me. She has better things to do. A kind of routine gets established between me and Miss Crane. When I knock on her door, there is the usual delay while she controls who it is, but I am beginning to think she quite likes to see me again even if that is because Mama invariably gives me a big bag of edibles to give her.

But then something happens that nobody, not even Mama in her wildest dreams, could have predicted.

It is a rainy Thursday, and I am at last to pick up the finished blue frock. I have a pocketful of coins to pay for it. Miss Crane prefers coins. I think she likes the feel of them. Apart from that, rats don’t eat coins. I arrive at exactly 5 o’clock, knock vigorously and wait. After a few minutes the door is opened and I am ushered into the front room with the peremptory command to "Wait here!"

Then Miss Crane goes into the back room, and I can hear voices. Yes, voices. A man’s voice and hers, to be exact. May I be forgiven for not sitting down on the scratchy sofa. I edge my way to the door, which is slightly ajar. It doesn’t close properly because it doesn’t fit into the door-frame. The rising damp in Miss Crane’s abode is taking its toll on the basic structure.

"You shouldn’t have come here," hisses Miss Crane to someone.

"But Nora, I had to. You know I couldn’t stay away forever."

"You promised never to set foot in this house again."

"Rubbish. I told you that I would prefer not to come here again. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t, and now I am here, so what do you propose to do about it?"

I am transfixed. It sounds like an extract from a radio play. Who is the man?

Hardly has this question formulated itself in my mind than Miss Crane starts off again:

"When Irene was alive, she made arrangements to get money over to you in Spain. And when she passed away, I took over those payments, and I’ve been paying ever since. Why else do you think that I have to live like this?"

So that’s it. He must be the long lost brother and Irene was the sister, I suppose. Mama wasn’t far off the mark with her speculations, after all. How I wish she had come with me. Wouldn’t she have loved this!

"You don’t know what it’s like to be in penury," the man shouts. "Living on fish and rice and bread."

"I AM in penury," Miss Crane shouts back. "I haven’t got enough money for fish or rice or bread. My clients keep me from death’s door, I swear it."

"Don’t make me laugh," screams the man. "You make enough money to keep us all in luxury and you’ve got the house, after all."

"You should never have come here. Father left us girls this house so that we would have a roof over our heads. But you take every penny of what I earn. Look at the place. Falling in rack and ruin for want of attention. If I didn’t sew for people, I’d starve."

"Well, you can say farewell to your cosy little nest here. The house belongs to me, too, and now I’ve come back I am going to live here. If you don’t like it you can lump it."

"But you can’t."

"Can’t I? We’ll see about that."

Then Miss Crane starts to shout very loudly. She repeats over and over again "Get out of here and never come back, do you hear?" and stuff like that.

I decide it’s time to get out myself, so I sneak out of the front room, grab the blue dress, which is hanging on a nail in the hall, dash out of the front door and run home as fast as I can.

"How was it?" Mama asks.

"Terrible," I reply, gasping for breath. "Miss Crane’s got a man in the back room and I think it’s her brother and she can’t get him to leave."

"Nonsense! You’re making it up," Mama insists, thinking it’s another of my stories.

"No, I’m not," I say. "I think someone’s going to be murdered."

"Don’t be so melodramatic."

"But it’s true. Let’s call the police."

Mama looks at me quizzically and realizes that I am not making it all up. I can’t blame her for being cautious. Admittedly, my imagination does run away with me sometimes.

"I’ll ask your father," Mama says. "Go and do your homework."

Then she spots the blue frock.

“Does it fit properly,” Mama asks. “You’d better show me.”

Remembering that I still have the coins for Miss Crane in my pocket, I am not sure how to proceed. I put the coins on the kitchen table. No one shall say that I have kept them deliberately.

“You didn’t pay her,” says Mama, quite shocked.

“I couldn’t. I had to run away.”

Mama should have looked shocked and anxious, but she didn't. She just shook her head and sighed.

I am torn between the need to get my sums done and the urge to go back and listen to the next episode at Miss Crane’s house. Common sense wins the day. If all I’ve told Mama really is true and not just a bad dream, my own room is the safest place for me right now.

That evening, Mama and Dada decide to go for a nice long walk in the fresh air. I think they are going to investigate my story, but they don’t invite me to go with them. They get Mrs Logan in to sit with me and my little brother. This is such a rare occurrence that it is actually much nicer than going for a walk in the dark. I sometimes wish Mrs Logan were my grandmother. She tells lovely stories about her youth in Donegal and sings Irish ballads in a sweet soprano voice.

Next morning, before I set off for school, Mama tells me not to loiter anywhere because Miss Crane has been found sprawled across her sewing table with her best scissors in her back and there is no sign of her attacker.

As if I would.

And we got the dress for free.