Ada’s small meeting took place on a Thursday which ought to have belonged to no one. We had agreed the room a fortnight before; she had sent the particulars in writing, and I had put them in the book. Yet by the time she arrived I felt as if the house had been taken from me.
The painter had sent another message. The chairs would only be held until Saturday. Two women had promised subscription money which had not come. Nell was at the shop, and Mrs Clegg had brought her grandson because her daughter was ill and there was nowhere else he could go.
He sat on a kitchen stool, quietly examining a wooden spoon. I resented him for half a minute before he held it up and asked whether it was a boat.
“Not in my kitchen.”
“It could be.”
I gave him a bowl with a little water in it. His grandmother looked at me as if I had agreed to the flooding of a county.
“Only while we cut the bread,” I said.
He put the spoon in and began a journey which occupied him for most of the afternoon. When Ada rang he did not even look up.
There were seven women, all known to her. They had come to discuss a proposed meeting somewhere larger, and I was not required to do anything but provide the room and tea. I had engaged Bessie for the afternoon only after she confirmed Ada did not expect her elsewhere. We had become so careful about it that I sometimes feared we would have no spontaneous kindness left. Then she arrived with a little bun for the boy, and the fear looked foolish.
From the kitchen I could hear Ada directing the conversation. She was good at it. A woman who said nothing was invited to speak; another who would not stop was asked a question which made her listen. My sister’s voice had a confidence which seemed to include all the women in the room. I could understand why they followed her.
At the same time Bessie stood beside me slicing a loaf, sleeves rolled, and I could remember the five weeks without wages.
“Does she speak like that at home?” I asked.
“Sometimes.”
“To William?”
“Not often.”
She cut another slice. I had asked enough; she did not need to say so.
When the meeting ended the women stayed in pairs, putting on coats and finishing conversations. I was in the hall when one said she wished she had a sister with such a suitable house.
“It would make everything easier.”
“Eleanor lets it professionally,” Ada replied. “You mustn’t assume she is waiting for us.”
I looked at her. She was helping a woman fasten a cuff and did not glance up to see whether I had heard.
After they had gone I asked if she would stay. She had expected me to be busy and looked pleased when I said I could sit for ten minutes. Bessie went to the kitchen to collect her things. Mrs Clegg and the boy had already left, the boat put carefully beside the basin to dry.
Ada unfastened her gloves. “How is the grand scheme?”
“The talks?”
“What else?”
“Eighteen names now. Fourteen paid.”
“That sounds encouraging.”
“I think it will be.”
She looked round the room. “You’re doing something to the wall?”
“I might.”
“It would help. I hadn’t realised how dark it was until all the women sat here.”
For six weeks everyone had told me it did not matter. Ada, who had not looked at the estimate, supplied the permission I had been waiting for in the tone she used to ask for another biscuit.
“A pale green,” I said.
“Not too cold.”
“No.”
She leaned back, rubbing a knuckle with her thumb. “I wanted to ask if you’d come with me on Saturday. To a gathering. William has decided we ought to visit his cousin instead.”
“Can’t you go separately?”
“I could. It would be easier to say I had promised you.”
“But you haven’t.”
“I am asking now.”
She smiled, acknowledging the old manoeuvre before I could expose it. I thought of the furniture yard, the printer, the loose patch above the window. Saturday had become crowded in my mind without a single thing being settled.
“I’m sorry. I have too much here.”
“Of course.”
The answer came promptly. Her hands stopped moving. I could see how much she had wanted me to say yes, and felt irritated with her for making it visible when I could do nothing with it.
“You will know people there.”
“Yes.”
“Mrs Wetherby, perhaps.”
“Perhaps.”
She began putting on her gloves again. I wanted her to tell me it did not matter. She did not oblige me.
Bessie came to the door. Ada rose, thanked me for the room and took the receipt I had written. At the last moment she looked back.
“You needn’t come for the cause,” she said. “I should have liked you beside me.”
Then she was gone. I stood in the room with two cups still on the table and a reply which would have been kinder if I had found it while she was there.
Nell came home in the rain. She had finished the last page Mr Abel needed before the end of the month and brought a small bunch of flowers he had given her from his back yard. They were wrapped in an old invoice. She put them in a jug, then asked whether I had seen the letter from the dressmaker.
“For the final fitting?”
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
“I thought we were doing the dress ourselves.”
“We are. You said Mrs Keene’s friend could help with the sleeve, because we couldn’t get it to lie.”
I had said it. I could see the moment, Nell standing in cream wool, my hand inside the seam. I had offered help which would save her worrying, then allowed it to become one more paper somewhere in the house.
“I’ll come.”
“You needn’t if you’re busy.”
“I want to.”
She looked at me for a moment, then smiled. I wrote the time in my own book, beneath the carpenter’s name and above Mrs Hesketh’s fee, making a place where I could not pretend it had been overlooked.
We went together the next afternoon. The dressmaker was a little woman who made Nell stand with her arms loose and did not listen to anything I said until she had finished looking. Then she took three pins from the sleeve, moved the seam by an amount I could scarcely see, and asked Nell to lift her arm.
It no longer pulled.
My daughter looked at herself in the glass. She lifted the arm again, turned, then stood still. The dress had ceased to be work waiting to be finished. It was something she could wear on the day she married.
“There,” the dressmaker said. “You can breathe.”
Nell laughed, a little shakily. I stood behind her with the bag over my arm and watched her take a breath.
We stopped for tea on the way back. There was no particular reason to celebrate a seam, but I wanted her to sit opposite me wearing the pleasure of it. She ate a bun and told me about a mistake Mr Abel had made while trying to help with his own figures. She had corrected it without embarrassing him; he had since begun putting the papers in the order she asked.
“He listens now,” she said.
“Good.”
“Not always. But enough.”
Outside, a woman was trying to get a parcel onto an omnibus while a man behind her offered advice without touching it. Nell saw me watching and laughed. For a few minutes I could believe we had learnt the same things in time to spare one another.
At home the painter was waiting.
He had another job confirmed for the following week. If I wanted him before the talks he would need to begin on Monday. He could do the patch, of course. He could not promise the old paper would hold around it.
Nell was carrying the dress upstairs. I could hear the careful movement of the bag along the banister. The painter held his hat against his chest and waited.
“The whole room,” I said.
He asked about the colour. I fetched Grace’s little scrap and put it in his hand.