Short story - "Rock of Eye"

Last Updated on 14 May 2010 Written by Administrator

"Rock of Eye" is a short story I wrote for Radio 4, for a series of stories inspired by the work of the Metaphysical poets. I chose a poem by John Donne as a starting point. It is set on Savile Row in London.

 

 

 

ROCK OF EYE.

Savile Row is a small street and a big street.

Each day David opens the door to his shop, which looks like a door to a house. He likes the feel of the handle, the satisfying way the lock holds the key in itself, and the smell. He always likes the smell that comes from the shop. Of cloth and pins and mannequins. The sound of work, tape and shears. He still remembers the first time he saw that door.

He talks to his staff, to the cutters, to the tailors. An apprentice sits with one of the tailors, both of them looking at a piece of stitching. Seven years. For an apprenticeship, learning slowly and tiny. This is what he did himself. Many years ago.

David was thought of by many as the best tailor on the Row, although it is hard to say that for certain. Every tailor has his own style. Some more military, more padding, more upright. Some looser, more casual, very English. David’s style is the latter, and he has made it his life.

He has never had children, has never had a family. His staff know little about his private life, and eventually they stopped asking, coming to the conclusion that he didn’t have a private life. No women ever came to visit him, to meet him at the end of the Row for an evening walk in the London spring. His life was exact, measured in chalk stripes and stitched lines.

The day is warm. It is Summer in London. The low hum of the fans. They aren’t turned up very high so as not to upset the patterns on the tables. No air-conditioning. Just the papery hum of people working, the clicking of shears. There is no place for small talk, no place for distractions. They are not allowed. All is work and exactness and beauty. It is a still rather like the place he had known when young. That is the way he runs it.

This is what David was doing when she walked into the shop.

He was looking at the work of one of his cutters, remembering a suit he had made which his then teacher, Mr Buchanan, had dissaproved of.  Mr Buchanan had gone past it, the suit waiting on the table in a box for a customer. He went red. He went rather red. And without looking at David, he took out a pair of shears and cut the suit horizontally in half. The jetting on the pockets was not right. It didn’t matter who the suit was for. A film star. Royalty. It didn’t go out unless it was perfect. David never got it wrong again.

He lets the memory pass, and picks up his chalk. He looks at the young man’s pattern. Rock of eye. The eye telling you that something in the lines isn’t right, something in the pattern doesn’t work, no matter how many times you’ve measured and remeasured by rule. A piece of chalk. Paper and your eye. There are no right angles on a man. The white chalked curve. He lays it down. And then he goes to see the lady who has come in.

She stands near the doorway, a black suit cover draped over her arm. She wears a small cloche hat, and the sun has now reached round so that it falls at her feet. He welcomes her, he thinks she is a new customer. Like he normally does, he cannot help it, he looks at her clothes. In tiny detail he can see exactly their provenance. She has money. He cannot fault her clothes.

“Hello, Sir,” she says and it comes to him that he has seen her before. Known her before. But he cannot place her. The way she holds her head to the side.

“Can I help you,” he says.

“Yes, I have a suit. Been given one, I mean. It belonged to my grandfather. I was hoping to have it looked at.”

And then he recognised her.

In a moment, all that he had been keeping locked up inside him started to want to rush to the surface. He controlled it. He let his hours, his weeks, years of work, take over.

“I believe it might be one of yours. I’ve been told,” the lady says.

David knows instantly that it is. But partly as a show for the customer, he opens the inside pocket and looks at the ticket inside, which is stitched on upside-down, hidden.

“There it is,” she says. “I was wondering why I couldn’t find a ticket on it. How silly of me, I should have remembered that’s what you did here.”

He had often wondered what had happened to her after they had parted. They had been so close, for a time. So close, he would like to watch the skin move on her neck, heart beated, by her pulse. So young together.

And now, standing in front of her, she didn’t recognise him. He had changed, that was true. What he looked like. His voice. His accent.

“Would it be possible for you to alter it for my son?”

“You have a son?” he asked, her possible lives moving in front of him.

“Yes.”

Could he see in her eyes the faint remembrance of him.

“If you would like to leave it with me, madam. And your son could maybe get in touch for a fitting?”

“That would be wonderful.”

And finally it was as much as he could take, this breaking crumbling of the barrage he had sent years putting up, the many years of telling himself he never felt anything.

“Mr Holland can take your details, and we’d be delighted to help.”

He left the room.

-

 

You would think that she would have recognised him immediately. In fact, Winnie, her name, had indeed felt some strange under surface movement when she shook the man’s hand. That funny feeling almost like swimming, your mind rocking, trying to reach, to reach. Winnie had in fact been so struck by the smell of the place, that she was a little taken aback. Sometimes a smell would place you exactly. But not this one. She knew it. But it did not take her anywhere.

It was whilst walking up the Row that she remembered. And it all came back to her in a flood.

She remembered him as a young man. Images came to her. A walk in Hyde Park, past the serpentine, her hand on his, the lightest touch. A wet, cold swimmer slipping out of the pool. You could feel the cold from him as he padded past, half walk half run.

David, she remembered his name, had just come down to the city from Scotland. He had just started work at a tailors in Savile Row as an apprentice. She remembered. His mother had been a seamstress. She had made corsets. As a young man he had learnt how to sew so well, that he made money making them for her. He had impressed the tailors when he went for his interview. Something not easily done.

She felt a dullness in her stomach. She remembers how in love he was with her. She remembers the coat.

It takes her a long time to find it when she reaches home. She has moved and moved house and things are in boxes, and there is no memory of them in her mind. But she is determined to find it. She thinks of nothing else as she goes through the attic. She starts to get a little frantic. She tries to calm down but can’t, she must find it.

Finally she does. It is still in it’s box, the initials of the company on the side, Savile Row. She wonders how he got hold of the box, seeing as it wasn’t for a proper customer. It is in tissue paper, and when she starts to unwrap the thin tissue, she recognises the smell. It is the smell from the tailor’s shop. Cloth and pins. Mannequins.

He spent many hours measuring her body. Probably unnecessarily, now she understands men better, she knows that the fittings went on for a longer time than absolutely necessary. Strange how across so many years she can remember his  hands on her. The small whipping of the tape, the sound it makes.

She puts the jacket on. She can clearly see the imprint of her young, slim body as she tries it on. How it has changed, now that she is older.  It doesn’t quite feel comfortable enough when she closes it. It needs to be let out. Ho hum, she thinks.

Then she remembers, she opens the inbreast pocket, and there it is. Her name embroidered in gold, beaten to an aery thinnness. She wonders now how much this cost him. Not just in lost weekends and evenings. An apprentice tailor, weaving her name in gold.

It was during the walk beside the Serpentine that she told him about the other man. He sat down. He knew a little about it, knew there was someone else from the start. But she had told him that it mattered nothing, and she would deal with it. That would melt away, noiseless.

She told him that she didn’t love the other man, even though she had bought a small flat with him. And she would  soon be finished with it, and they could be together. Would he wait?

 

And then, in that small moment, he gave the answer that for the rest of his life, he looks back on and regrets. He looks back on it and wonders why he wasn’t stronger. What exactly was the love he thought he felt. Had it been a construct. Was it all a fantasy. He was sure of it as the time. Sure of her love. He felt as tied to her as a compass. But he was always the one to lean towards her when she moved away.

He had lost.

She knew this.

He says “yes”. I will wait for you.

And then three years of waiting pass. Nights knowing she is with someone else, interminable waiting, the pressure on his heart growing. The way it ends leaves him short of life. Leaves him with a rock in his stomach. For years and years.

The only thing that saves him, is his work.

She only really know her side of the story. She sits in her attic, her legs folded under her. She thinks of that young man that loved her so much, and she is filled with longing.

 

-

 

David receives the package in the post a little later. The box still hasn’t changed after so many decades. And when he opens it, first he smiles, because he can see the inexperience in the hand of the person that made the garment. And yet, skill latent. Talent.

What does this mean?

A small hand-written note. “I was wondering if you could have a look at this, when you have the time. I was hoping I could have it altered? I’m sorry I didn’t recognise you when last I was in. Would be nice to see you again. Winnie.”

He needs to sit in a quiet room for a while, thinking about it. Is it just that she doesn’t want to put pressure on him by not coming in. Or maybe there is a sign in it, some message. He knows her life now, from what her son has told him. She is a widower. Could it be that she wants. Something.

She wants to meet him. That is clear.

The end being where he begun. Back now at this place. The place he had never left behind. He understands this. The way that moment at the Serpentine has stayed with him through his life, like the golden thread intertwined. He feels the pull, the old pull, wanting to see her again. And then he makes his choice again.

“Mr Holland?”

“Yes, sir,” is the reply.

“Could you take care of this client please. Maybe a home visit might be in order. Her details are in the box.”

“Very good.”

“I’m going for a walk. In fact. I’m taking the rest of the day off.”

A moment of silence on the shop floor.

“The day off, Mr Weir?”

“Yes. It’s such a beautiful day. Isn’t it?”

And so he steps out of the same door. Immaculately dressed, of course. The sun high among the buildings, a valediction against mourning, and he feels light, as light as spun gold. Airy thin. As if a picture has been finished.

Rock of eye he got wrong once. He won’t do it again.

He joins the gentle tide of people walking up the row, virtuous men passing mildly by, the grief he has carried melting to essence. He finally forgives his young self.

END.