Knitting Read online

  She rang the conference organizer to ask for a change of bedding and fly spray. The organizer apologized profusely. Sandra was too tired to be angry.

  “Is there a drugstore on campus?”

  “No. But there’s one within walking distance.”

  There wasn’t time to go to the drugstore. Self-conscious about her inflamed face, fuzzy from lack of sleep, Sandra made her way through the maze of buildings to the knitting workshop.

  The facilitator was Clare Young, a free-form knitter. The room was festooned with Clare’s garish art—the prime minister as a merman among knitted shells and starfish, caught in a large knitted web that he himself was making. A knitted businesswoman wearing a lacy knitted apron over her suit. A grossly misshapen headless female torso with a crocheted hat on the neck stump. Sandra looked around in dismay. She should never have come.

  Participants were emptying their bags of wool scraps onto the table while Clare pinned up flower images: lilies, roses, daisies, their grace and purity of form at odds with Clare’s ugly derivations. Sandra had forgotten to bring wool scraps and needles. She went to the corner and made herself a strong coffee thick with sugar. Wake up, wake up, don’t panic. It will be all right.

  “Choose a flower,” shouted Clare enthusiastically. “A meaningful image. One you care about. Then think about its counterpart, the worm, the slug, the aphid.” She turned the prime minister’s head around to demonstrate a hollow cross section in the rear of the skull. “See? White ants.”

  Sandra found herself rebelling. She didn’t want to concentrate on her dark side, on any layering of complexity. Life was difficult enough. She would lodge her own protest, go for simplicity, make something that was just as it appeared. She stared at a close-up of pale yellow Peace roses tinged with pink.

  “The technique is simple, just good old-fashioned knitting stitches.” Clare distributed pattern diagrams. “You start with a petal or a leaf and go on from there. Draw a shape if you like, and then knit to the shape. Learn to do these small things, and you can adjust the technique to larger forms.”

  Clare led them through the steps, showed them how to splice their yarn for gradual shades, how to shape the petals by casting on and casting off, how to pick up along knitted edges, increase and decrease. First they made leaves, then started on their flowers. The man next to Sandra was making a Sturt desert pea with shiny black metallic thread, exaggerating the scarlet petals so that they drooped from his lap to the floor. Inside the flower was a small white grub. He was a deft worker, his plump hands quick and sure. He called it “Invasion.”

  Sandra worried away at her rose, listening to the others talking—artists, teachers, curators, academics—obviously part of a well-established network. No one was taking the workshop seriously, which was both comforting and disappointing. Sandra had hoped for more, something beyond the reach of words. With so little sleep, she felt surprisingly alert now, thanks to coffee. The work wasn’t as easy as it looked, though she was pleased with the first petal and better pleased with the next, merging cream through shades of pink. Working on a Peace rose, at the edge of peace: the metaphor amused her. But when she tried to make the calyx, the petals were loose; the flower drooped on its stem as though it needed water.

  The workshop broke for lunch. Out in the foyer were tables laden with a variety of breads made into open sand wiches, with apples, tangelos, and bottles of spring water. The vegetarian rolls disappeared; the ham-and-mustards were left to dry on the platter.

  After lunch Sandra tried experimenting, using a feather stitch as the basis for a flower petal, but her heart wasn’t in it, and besides, it was just too difficult. Fatigue had set in; knitted flowers suddenly seemed ridiculous. She picked up her floppy attempt at a rose and went back to the flat for a nap. When she fished in her handbag for the key, she found that the rose had disappeared. No peace for me, she thought wryly, and felt the sudden prick of tears.

  After the nap she felt better. The insects had disappeared. Another woman, also from Adelaide, a journalist, came to share the flat. A big woman, she was energetic and cheerful, and soon had Sandra laughing in spite of herself. She knew a great deal about knitting and, to Sandra’s surprise, knew also of Martha. She told Sandra about another knitter, Ruby Brilliant, and how moved she had been by the pieces styled on priests’ chasubles.

  “Crucifixion, Passion, Ascension,” she said. “Knitted. Knitted!” Sandra was wary—that was all she needed, a large, loud born-again—but the topic stopped there. And it was good to have someone to walk with, to share a meal in the evenings, to discuss the day’s events, to hear her confession that although she was a member of the Spinners and Weavers Guild, she too was hopeless with her hands. They discussed the keynote speaker, Jonty Stewart, at some length, and the gap between practice and theory.

  Sandra began to relax and to enjoy the conference. There was no need to disclose personal details; Jack didn’t get a mention. Life was easy if you kept it superficial.

  BACK at home, Sandra had another look at the article on Greek artifacts. Spinning, weaving, knitting, all part of the long tradition of women’s work, skills that had survived even the efficiency of the industrial revolution. Why did people still do it? The techniques hadn’t changed, even if needles were now made of plastic and colors were commercial dyes.

  Martha had a spinning wheel and an old-fashioned spindle as well, Sandra had seen, a relic from the late seventies, no doubt, when spinning and weaving had flourished. Did Martha still use the spindle? It looked handy enough there in the corner, tossed on top of a basket of dark fleece.

  The spindle had been simple chipboard—no elaborate carving here, like the god’s eye on the Greek stone spindles. Judging by the photographs with the article, little had changed in a couple of thousand years. Perhaps the ancients had had wooden spindles, too, but they had rotted away.

  Sandra had never learned to spin and, though she had learned the basics of knitting, was sure she’d never be a real knitter. It was too slow. At the workshop she had been clumsy and awkward with the needles: the stitches were too tight or too loose, and in the beginning they had increased or decreased of their own accord. She was better at words; she could make even the most convoluted theory accessible to her students if she stayed patient enough. In spite of their limitations, words were more malleable, more cooperative; they strung themselves evenly along the straight line of argument, and it was easy to see the holes and puckers, to straighten out the bumps.

  Ancient language, ancient skills. Stories and spinning. It would be fun to have some kind of exhibition. Clothing, perhaps. Everyday textiles, everyday words, fragments of oral history. Sandra started a tentative list.

  Text and textiles? No. Boring.

  Words and wool? Wool and words? Too corny.

  Fact and fabric. Who believed in facts?

  Textuality. Maybe. No, Textu(r)ality. That was it, text, texture, textile, context, all there or implied. A title to make you think. She wrote down the word in capitals and drew a line under it.

  Years ago she had written a paper on women’s domestic work, focusing on textiles. Most of her interviewees had been older women, whose ordered lives she envied. Yes, they sewed, and knitted, and crocheted—or used to once. So what? Everybody did. Now they were painting and traveling or getting the education they had missed. “Back in the old days,” one of them said, “running a house took all your time. Food and clothes and kids—that was our job. The men brought home the bacon. That was their job. I think you modern girls have it tough, doing everything.” Well-defined roles, defined times for work, defined times to relax peacefully in the evening and knit by the radio or TV. Sandra remembered her own mother’s life with nostalgia, and despised herself for it. No pay. Remember that.

  Not all women had been like that, of course. She had aunts who had worked for a paycheck, politically argumentative women who could knit and read interesting books simultaneously. In Sandra’s youth it was mainly single women who worked. Later,
working herself, she saw colleagues caught in the tug of war between work and family, saw the puffiness around their eyes, the guilty cost of the juggling act. And though she had longed for children once, perhaps it was better this way; if she was allowed only one of the two, at least she had traveled freely and enjoyed her career. Though now that Jack was gone, she worried sometimes about growing old alone.

  She had stashed hard copy of her favorite interview pieces in a folder somewhere. Plenty of material there for mining. But it was more than the textiles, it was the way the women had talked about them, and the breadth of subject matter, that had fascinated her. Social history knitted in snippets of everyday language: a pants fly deliberately sewn up, a child’s sweater sleeve picked up on the needles for extension, the seat of a pair of jeans made into a baby bag, wartime socks knitted during church. Conversation, dialogue, all the same substance, but fragmentary, just like those ancient scraps of linen. Yes, she could see it now, narrative fragments in various forms, mounted between the garments, text and texture creating their own dynamic. She smiled broadly and caught herself at it.

  And Martha, what a find! Martha, still working in the direct line of the ancient traditions, spinning and knitting. Women’s work, indeed, but the inventiveness! That crazy horse! And the graciousness of her gift, the silver shawl. Sandra’s mind was twirling in the dance now. Implications of empowering . . . Ariadne’s thread, kill the Minotaur and find your way out of the suffocating darkness, the way back home.

  The exhibition would need parameters of some sort. The last hundred years, perhaps, with hints of the past and future. Knitted garments. Of course! Hand-knitted, to keep the field narrow. And there was Martha, just waiting to happen. Unlike weaving, knitting was a relatively recent development, only about a thousand years old, but it was a tangible link, a strong branch of the great historical flow that was still evident in modern households. And it provided a basic framework.

  Textu(r)ality: an exhibition of knitted garments in all their variety, joined and juxtaposed with text, with constructions of text. She had been waiting for something like this ever since Jack died. Teaching was demanding, but there was a sameness to it; she had learned to go with the ebb and flow of the intense periods, to ride them out. But teaching wasn’t enough anymore; she was restless, needed a change, a new project away from teaching. A little exhibition in a hall somewhere, away from work—it didn’t have to be too serious. Her career wasn’t hanging on it, though maybe her sanity was.

  She must send an e-mail to her flat-mate from Wollongong and go to see Martha. Martha—what an opportunity for Martha to showcase her work! Martha would never look back.

  IT WAS a hot spring day that smelled of summer. Martha and Sandra were lying on the green grass by Sandra’s swimming pool. Sandra had locked the gate and was lying face down and topless in the full sun, thinking about the proposed exhibition. She had invited Martha over for lunch and a swim, on the pretext of returning the patterns she had borrowed when they had lunch with Kate. She wanted to discuss the exhibition but had not found a way to articulate it without sounding as though she was simply using Martha. Members of the Spinners and Weavers Guild would provide some garments, but so far they didn’t seem to have everything she wanted. While there were more old knits available than she had expected, there wasn’t the range she wanted, especially from the first twenty years of the 1900s. Even if they had survived the moths, they’d been recycled during the Second World War, unraveled and reknitted, the scrappy pieces sewn into quilts as a middle layer for warmth.

  She hadn’t mentioned the project to Martha yet. There just hadn’t been the right opportunity, even though they had shared coffee more than once. Martha, she was learning, could be unpredictable, and Sandra wanted to choose her moment. Working together would change their relationship, and she wanted to start well.

  Martha was lying face up with her head in the shade of the Queensland box tree.

  “This darn tree’s raining leaves on me,” said Martha, flicking one from her face.

  “It always does that in the first heat. Makes a mess in the swimming pool. Jack was always fishing them out. Now I leave them for the pool man.” Sandra was talking into the grass. Martha turned her head sideways to hear better, and saw that Sandra was lying like a broken bird, all ribs and elbows and messy feathers. On Martha’s other side the pool glinted clear blue.

  “Cliff would like it here,” said Martha.

  Sandra settled deeper into the towel but half turned her face so Martha could see one eye, half a nose, and half a mouth behind stems of green grass.

  “Yes, but if Cliff was here, I couldn’t take my top off. He’d be too embarrassed.”

  “You mean you would be,” said Martha.

  “No, he would be. I wouldn’t care.”

  “Yes, you would,” said Martha stoutly. “I bet you wouldn’t just sit there and take it off, like you did a minute ago.”

  Martha was beginning to grate. Sandra sat up, suddenly self-conscious. “Martha, you shouldn’t pretend you can get inside my head.”

  “Shouldn’t say ‘shouldn’t,’” said Martha. “You’re supposed to say, ‘I don’t like it when you say things like that.’”

  “Who said?”

  “The leader of a group I was in once.”

  Sandra rolled her eyes, started to work out a convoluted reply, and then gave up.

  “It’s Sunday, Martha. Give me a break. It’s a day to relax, not have a group therapy session.” She saw that the shadow of the pool safety fence had crept over Martha’s solid body in her floral bathing suit, covering her in a series of parallel lines.

  “Look, Martha,” Sandra said to change the subject. “You’re in a cage.”

  Martha got up on her elbows to see what Sandra meant. She moved one arm slowly and watched the shadows ripple across her skin.

  “A shadow cage,” said Martha. “I can’t break the bars, but at least I can get out.” She straightened her arms above her head and rolled over heavily a couple of times till she bumped into Sandra.

  “Oops.”

  Sandra was reaching for her shirt. Martha had no idea of personal space.

  “I’m getting dressed. Do you want another swim before I take you home?” She heard her own voice, disguising coercion as generosity. The exhibition business would have to wait.

  November

  IT WAS HOT, the third day straight over ninety-five degrees, and it was going to get worse. Summer had not even begun. Summer and the beach. Summer and the beach and all those memories she and Jack had made together.

  It had been hot that other day, too, three or four years ago, when the air conditioning in the car had broken down, and suddenly Jack had swung down an unfamiliar side road. They parked at the top of a cliff among the other empty cars and ran down the steps. Dotted around the beach were flaccid white lumps turning various shades of pink.

  “What is this place?”

  “Maslins Beach. Legal nudity.”

  Jack dumped their towels near a bumpy old couple in their sixties and started to strip. “Race you in,” he said.

  Sandra, caught up in Jack’s enthusiasm, was suddenly snagged.

  She stared around her, felt her body shrink into itself.

  “Can’t do it,” she said. “Too many people.”

  “Too many people with their clothes off?” asked Jack.

  “No. Too many people watching.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Jack. “As if they’d care. Besides, you’re nearly fifty, my darling. Time to face the facts. Who’s going to look at us with our saggy bits? They come here to gawk at the young ones.” He grinned at her over his hairy chest. They were both pasty white.

  She turned her back on the old couple and draped a towel around herself before stepping out of her clothes, then followed him gingerly across the soft white sand to the hard flat surface near the water. She dropped her towel reluctantly, just out of reach of the waves, and followed him in.

  Jack was ahead o
f her under the green water. The sea was almost flat, but Sandra gasped with shock as the swell of water rose against her chest.

  She stopped watching Jack. Bending her knees, she looked at her hands floating eerily under the water, then gradually lowered herself until she was wet up to her neck. Jack was swimming out to sea in an easy freestyle. She peered around, looking for prying eyes. Gradually she relaxed and let the water take her. She flipped to her back, swaying on the surface like a clump of floating seaweed. She must look like a series of floating islands. It was good out here.

  Suddenly something grasped at her ankle. She cried out in alarm, but it was only Jack, upending her, pulling her off balance so that she was forced to tread water. He twisted around to catch her from behind, cupping her breasts in his hands and putting his salty mouth against her ear.

  “Mm, what’s this I’ve caught in my net? A real live mermaid. Come and live with me, mermaid, and I’ll show you how we landlubbers enjoy ourselves.” She elbowed him in the chest and kicked away backward.

  “I’m no mermaid! No man is worth cut feet!” She was surprised at her own strength, how the distance between them increased more rapidly than she expected.

  “Hey, come back!” Jack shouted. She started back toward him but couldn’t make any headway.

  “You’re in a rip! Swim sideways.” He waved his hand parallel to the shore.

  Panic surged up like vomit.

  Mustn’t panic, she said to herself. Get a grip. Swim. She looked toward the beach to get her bearings, but it made things worse; it was much farther than she had thought.

  “Jack! Help!” Her swimming was feeble.

  Jack had seen that to catch her he too had to enter the rip. He came close but not close enough to touch.