The Knitting Circle (20 page)

“Then one day I came home from the football field, I must have been eleven or twelve years old, and my mother was waiting for me with a small case with a zipper closing. She unzipped it and pointed to the objects inside, naming each one. A tapestry needle. A yarn holder. A tape measure. ‘But what do I need with all this?’ I said, nearly in tears. ‘It’s for knitting. You will take this kit and go next door where Mrs. Fish will turn you into a lady. God knows I’ve tried without any success.’

“So every afternoon I went reluctantly to Mrs. Fish’s flat to learn to knit. In the distance I could hear the boys playing football, making me even more miserable.

“That first afternoon, she sat me down, looked straight at me with her watery eyes, and said, ‘Wool, of course, is the soft fleecy coat of the sheep.’ I didn’t even try to stifle my snort.

‘Mrs. Fish,’ I told her, ‘I am a girl who already knows every country on the continent of Africa.’ I was obsessed with Africa, and I was certain I would go to live there as soon as I possibly could. Mrs. Fish ignored me completely. ‘After the wool has been through many refining stages of spinning and dying,’ she continued, ‘it is called yarn, and it is ready for our needles.’ ‘Can
you
correctly place the Belgian Congo on a map of Africa?’ I challenged her. ‘Or Rhodesia?’ She handed me a hank of scratchy yarn the color of oatmeal. ‘Winding a ball correctly is the first thing we shall cultivate,’ she said. I stared down at the pile of yarn in my lap. Africa, I’m afraid, seemed very far away.

“I began to wrap the yarn, but Mrs. Fish stopped me. ‘Never wind the wool tightly,’ she reprimanded. ‘This destroys the life of the yarn.’ She positioned my hands just so. ‘The strands should pass over all four fingers and thumb of this hand, while this hand guides the wool from the skein.’

“How I hated Mrs. Fish! Day after day I sat there, winding yarn, always too tightly, too sloppily, too everything. Until finally she said, ‘Now you see how to do it properly, Alice,’ and I jumped up to join the football game outside. She pushed me back down onto the small sofa. ‘Every specialty has its own lexicon,’ she said, ‘and knitting is no exception to this rule. There are certain terms we must learn and certain symbols we must recognize.’

“I glared at her. ‘When I live in Africa and hunt big game, I’ll hang elephant tusks on my walls and make carpets of lions I shoot and skin myself.’ I got the reaction I wanted—a look of complete and utter disgust. ‘Ladies do not skin lions, Alice,’ she said.

“‘I hate knitting,’ I told her. ‘Africa is tropical. Knitting is useless there.’

“‘Knitting,’ she told me, ‘is useful everywhere.’

“The strangest things occurred while I sat in Mrs. Fish’s flat learning to knit. I developed breasts. When I played football, they bounced. And the boys noticed. Especially Rodney Harrison. Poor Rodney,” Alice said softly, shaking her head.

She sighed. “So Mrs. Fish got her way and turned me into a knitter, if not a lady. I was still dead set on going to Africa and living in a hut. But the war came and got in the way. I got a job as a secretary, to do my bit. There were rumors that Churchill’s War Rooms were right beneath us. But I don’t know if that was true. Nice to imagine, of course. I do know that I slept too many nights in the Underground while the bombs went off all around us. Even down that low the walls shook. And pieces of cement and things crumbled around us. We girls would huddle together to feel safe. And for warmth too, of course.

“My one good friend, Beatrice Cooke, she was a secretary too. So beautiful, Bea was. Strawberry blonde hair, green eyes, like a cat. I used to lay my hand on her cheek just to feel her soft skin. The boys loved Bea. She would take me along to dances and the like, but they all wanted her. Circled her like sharks around a good meal. They brought her gifts all the time. Perfume from France, chocolate bars—she’d share those with me. We’d laugh at those foolish boys and eat their chocolate. It was so rare to have chocolate. I gave her presents too. I knit her scarves, and warm gloves. Practical things. Things to keep her warm.”

Mary watched how Alice’s face softened while she spoke.

She hesitated, then said, “You were in love with her, weren’t you?”

“A long story,” Alice said, “and it doesn’t involve much about knitting. The only other person who knows it is your mother,” she added.

“My mother?” Mary said.

“Maybe that’s why I feel comfortable telling you,” Alice said.

“Your mother was such a good listener.”

Mary stifled a laugh. Her mother? A good listener?

Alice motioned toward the tape recorder. “Perhaps you can turn that thing off?”

Mary clicked off the tape. The sun warmed the room, and cast a golden light across it. In her pink chair, Alice sipped her tea, looking out the window as if she could see across the ocean, all the way to England and her past there.

“Poor Rodney,” Alice said finally. “He was my fellow for a time. We’d go into the alley and, how should I say this politely? Make love is not right, but for lack of a civil term, I’ll say it. We’d make love there. And he would burst with passion while I traveled in my mind to Africa and set up house there. I would kiss him when he was done, and share a cigarette with him. That part was nice. Afterwards. Having a smoke in the late hours with a nice fellow. We’d talk about the war, where the Germans were advancing, what Hitler was up to. Sometimes he’d say,

‘When we get married, we’ll do such and such,’ and I’d tell him flat out that I wasn’t going to marry him, or anybody. ‘Alice,’ he’d say, ‘you don’t do what we just did and not marry the fellow. That would make you a whore.’” Alice chuckled. “Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard? But he was so serious when he said it that I couldn’t laugh.

“Then he went off to the war, of course. They all did. Before he left he blathered on about love and marriage and all his plans. I let him talk. After all, that was the thing girls did for boys about to go to war. We gave them hope. Something to look forward to. Something to think about while they were out there.

“I got my secretary’s job and my desk right beside Beatrice’s. She showed me around the place, taught me the shortcuts, how to win favor and stay out of trouble. There must have been twenty or thirty of us girls sitting at rows of desks, doing our part for the war effort. Filing and stamping papers. Typing and mailing. Tedious stuff, but the days passed pleasantly. Except for the air raids. Those were frightening. At first, anyway. But eventually they became part of the day too. Type these letters. Make tea. File these papers. Run to the Underground until the planes pass.

“Bea and I became fast friends. We’d go together to the picture show and link our arms or even hold hands and cry if it was a sad one. Right off, I recognized that all of those feelings I hadn’t had for Rodney, I did have for Bea. I remember one night, I walked her to her flat, and we stood on the steps out front whispering together, and our faces came close and it seemed we might kiss and I thought I would surely die from joy if my lips actually touched hers. Then the moment passed and she turned and went inside, quickly. She stopped at the door, and looked at me, amused. ‘Good night, darling,’ she said, as if testing the word. Or the idea that I could be her darling. She ran inside, but I stood there, paralyzed.

“Sometimes on Friday nights, Bea and I would go to these dances and then let a couple of boys buy us dinner after. Both of the men only had eyes for Bea usually, but I didn’t care about them. I just wanted to be near her. At the end of the night we’d let them kiss us a little, because they were soldiers and going to die probably. One of them who was especially crazy about her was an American. From Hartford, Connecticut. She let him kiss her an awful lot and it made me jealous. So I told her I hated him. Beatrice said, ‘You’re jealous of Pete, aren’t you? Admit it.’ I was speechless. ‘Pete is a bore,’ she said. ‘A big American bore.’

“It wasn’t long after that night on her stairs, we’d gone to another picture and I’d walked her home, that she invited me upstairs for some tea. ‘Pete brought me a canister of sugar,’ she said wickedly. Bea lived with two other girls, but one was in the infirmary with the measles, and the other had gone to the sea for a few days with an American GI. It was colder in the flat than it had been outside, and I rubbed Bea’s arms to warm her. She let me for a bit, then moved away abruptly and put on the kettle, chattering the whole time about the funny American ways. Then she took a small silver canister and held it out to me.

‘Sugar,’ she said.”

Flushed, from embarrassment or memories, Mary could not guess, Alice got up and went to the window, holding her cup in both hands, staring out at the sea.

“She was my lover for the next two years,” Alice said without turning around.

“But what happened to her?” Mary asked. “To the two of you.”

“She married Pete,” Alice said flatly.

“Pete?” Mary said, confused.

“The American from Hartford, Connecticut. He came back and for two weeks she saw him, crying in my arms every night when she got home. Apologizing for being such a coward. Until one night, she didn’t come home. I sat by the window, waiting, knitting the sweater I was making for her. I knit the whole night, not letting myself think, just knitting. Finally, the next morning, I heard the door open. I had dozed off in the chair and I opened my eyes and watched her come in. She knelt right at my feet, and put her head in my lap. ‘Darling,’ she said—her voice was hoarse, from cigarettes and no sleep—‘I’m going to marry him and go and live in America.’”

Mary jumped to her feet, clattering the teacup and saucer. “But that can’t be!” she said.

“Why not? Doesn’t life surprise us like that all the time?” Alice said, smiling wryly. “When Pete came for her, his friend Emmett was with him, to help with the bags and the passport and all of the details. Emmett remembered me from the dances and asked if I’d join him later for dinner, after they’d gone. I said yes, out of loneliness, I suppose. Or maybe out of revenge. One dinner led to another and then to another and in three or four months’ time I was marrying Emmett and on my way to America myself. He bought us a little house outside of Boston and for a time I tried being a wife. But it didn’t work.”

“You left him then?” Mary said, struggling to write a happy ending for Alice.

“I’m afraid I was too much of a coward for that. I found comfort in drinking instead.”

Of course, Mary thought, there are no happy endings. She tried to remember when she had been a woman who believed in them, but that woman was a stranger to her now.

“Like your mother did,” Alice said.

Mary swallowed hard. “Did she ever tell you why she drank?” she asked.

Alice shook her head. “But there’s no shame in it, Mary.” She stopped. “That’s all that really matters. Why, I was drinking sherry instead of tea in the afternoon and a martini with Emmett when he came home and wine with dinner and then a little Drambuie before bed. Before long, it was sherry in the morning and my martini for lunch and the day was just one long blur.

“Then, one afternoon, this was in June of 1970, I was sitting in my kitchen, drunk, which was how I was most of the time anyway, and I heard this rapping at the door, a light sound, and I stumbled toward it and there stood Beatrice, the summer sunshine all around her, like an angel. She was still beautiful, even all those years later.

“‘Do you want me to go away?’ she said right off. She looked so American, in a way that’s hard to explain. But she had on these blue jeans, one of those T-shirts with a pocket, a white one, and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Like an American teenager, except there were the loveliest crinkles around the corners of her mouth and eyes. She wore these silver hoop earrings, and lots of silver bracelets up one arm.

“I stepped aside to let her in, and the kitchen was a bit of a mess. Everything around me was a mess. I couldn’t get things organized or accomplished. But what she saw was my knitting. I had a poncho half finished, with orange and green stripes, on the kitchen table. ‘You still knit,’ she said, smiling.

“‘Let’s go somewhere,’ I said. ‘It’s about cocktail hour, isn’t it?’

“‘God, yes,’ Bea said. ‘I could use a good stiff one.’

“She drove a big dark blue Mercedes-Benz to a bar nearby, talking the entire way. Remember the sugar? she said. Remember the reams of paper we filed? Then we were inside the bar, sliding across the red vinyl booth to sit close, knee to knee. We both ordered gin and tonics. It was one of those dark bars where drunks go, or people having affairs meet. It was attached to a motel called the Red Rooster. All around us sat businessmen who’d gone to seed, or married men with their lovers.

“When the drinks came, Beatrice clinked her glass to mine, then took a long sip. ‘I was so nervous coming here,’ she said. She took out her wallet to show me pictures. Three sons, big tall American boys. Only one looked like her. The strawberry blonde hair, the cat eyes.

“She kept chattering about Pete, his business, those sons. I ordered another drink. They lived in West Hartford, she told me, and described the big lawns, the leafy trees.

“She was nursing her drink, but I ordered a third and then asked her, ‘Why did you come? After all this time?’

“Beatrice finished her drink. ‘Have you done it with anyone else?’ she said, sucking on her straw. She glanced around again, and lowered her voice. ‘With another woman, I mean?’

“‘No,’ I said.

“‘I have,’ she said, fishing out an ice cube. Her hand was trembling. ‘I meet someone and we spend a few months together. You know, at my house or at her house. Then I get worried that people can tell. That somehow Pete will know, or a neighbor, and I break it off.’ Her accent was practically gone, I noticed. ‘Until the next time,’ she said.

“The air conditioner came on noisily, as if it had to work very hard to send out cold air.

“‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘I’m still in love with you. And I wanted to come and see if that feeling was real, you know? Because with all of these other women, I never felt the same.’

“‘I’m a mess,’ I said. ‘You can see that.’