‘Under that bed, dear. No, there. There are two chests. That’s it.’ I knelt and wrenched out two heavy wooden boxes with lids. Opening them, I found them filled to the brim with rows of buttons, zips, tapes and fringes. There were hooks and eyes, fastenings of every type, all neatly separated and labelled, brass naval buttons and tiny Chinese ones, covered with bright silk, bone and shell, sewn neatly onto little strips of card. In the cushioned lid sat sprays of pins, rows of different-sized needles, and an assortment of silk threads on tiny pegs. I ran my fingers across them reverently.
‘I was given those for my fourteenth birthday. My grandfather had them shipped from Hong Kong. If you get stuck you can check in there. I used to take the buttons and zippers from everything I didn’t wear any more, you know. That way if you lose a button from something nice, and can’t replace it, you always have a full set that you can sew on instead.’
‘But won’t you need them?’
She waved her good hand. ‘Oh, my fingers are far too clumsy for sewing now. Half the time I can’t even work the buttonholes. And so few people bother with fixing buttons and zippers these days – they just throw their clothes in the trash and buy something awful from one of those discount stores. You take them, dear. It would be nice to feel they were useful.’
So, by luck and perhaps a little by design, I now had two jobs that I loved. And with them I found a kind of contentment. Every Tuesday evening I would bring home a few items of clothing in a chequered laundry bag of plastic webbing, and while Margot napped, or watched television, I would carefully remove all the remaining buttons on each item and sew on a new set, holding them up afterwards for her approval.
‘You sew quite nicely,’ she remarked, peering at my stitches through her spectacles, as we sat in front of Wheel of Fortune. ‘I thought you’d be as dreadful at it as you are at everything else.’
‘At school needlework was pretty much the only thing I was any good at.’ I smoothed out the creases on my lap, and prepared to refold a jacket.
‘I was just the same,’ she said. ‘By thirteen, I was making all my own clothes. My mother showed me how to cut a pattern and that was it. I was away. I became obsessed with fashion.’
‘What was it you did, Margot?’ I put down my stitching.
‘I was fashion editor of the Ladies’ Look. It doesn’t exist now – never made it into the nineties. But we were around for thirty years or more, and I was fashion editor for most of that.’
‘Is that the magazine in the frames? The ones on the wall?’
‘Yes, those were my favourite covers. I was rather sentimental and kept a few.’ Her face softened briefly, and she tilted her head, casting me a confiding look. ‘It was quite the job back then, you know. The magazine company wasn’t terribly keen on having women in senior roles but there was the most dreadful man in charge of the fashion pages and my editor – a wonderful man, Mr Aldridge – argued that having an old fuddy-duddy, who still wore suspenders to hold up his socks, dictating what fashion meant simply wouldn’t work with the younger girls. He thought I had an eye for it, promoted me, and that was that.’
‘So that’s why you have so many beautiful clothes.’
‘Well, I certainly didn’t marry rich.’
‘Did you marry at all?’
She looked down and picked at something on her knee. ‘Goodness, you do ask a lot of questions. Yes, I did. A lovely man. Terrence. He worked in publishing. But he died in 1962, three years after we married, and that was it for me.’
‘You never wanted children?’
‘I had a son, dear, but not with my husband. Is that what you wanted to know?’
I flushed. ‘No. I mean, not like that. I – gosh – having children is – I mean I wouldn’t presume to –’
‘Stop flapping, Louisa. I fell in love with someone unsuitable when I was grieving my husband and I became pregnant. I had the baby but it caused a bit of a stir, and in the end it was considered better for everyone if my parents brought him up in Westchester.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Still in Westchester. As far as I know.’
I blinked. ‘You don’t see him?’
‘Oh, I did. I saw him every weekend and vacation for the whole of his childhood. But once he reached adolescence he grew rather angry with me for not being the kind of mother he thought I should be. I had to make a choice, you see. In those days it wasn’t common to work if you married or had children. And I chose work. I honestly felt I would die without it. And Frank – my boss – supported me.’ She sighed. ‘Unfortunately my son has never really forgiven me.’
There was a long silence.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Yes. So am I. But what’s done is done and there’s no point dwelling.’ She began to cough so I poured her a glass of water and handed it to her. She motioned towards a bottle of pills that she kept on the sideboard and I waited while she swallowed one. She settled herself again, like a hen that had ruffled her feathers.
‘What is his name?’ I asked, when she had recovered.
‘More questions … Frank Junior.’
‘So his father was –’
‘– my editor at the magazine, yes. Frank Aldridge. He was significantly older than I was and married, and I’m afraid that was my son’s other great resentment. It was rather hard for him at school. People were different about these things, then.’
‘When did you last see him? Your son, I mean.’
‘That would be … 1987. The year he married. I found out about it after the event and wrote him a letter telling him how hurt I was that he hadn’t included me, and he told me in no uncertain terms that I had long since relinquished any right to be included in anything to do with his life.’
We sat in silence for a moment. Her face was perfectly still and it was impossible to tell what she was thinking, or even if she was now simply focused on the television. I didn’t know what to say to her. I couldn’t find any words that were up to a hurt that great. But then she turned to me.
‘And that was it. My mother died a couple of years later and she was my last point of contact with him. I do sometimes wonder how he is – if he’s even alive, whether he had children. I wrote to him for a while. But over the years I suppose I’ve become rather philosophical about the whole thing. He was quite right, of course. I had no right to him, really, to anything to do with his life.’
‘But he was your son,’ I whispered.
‘He was, but I hadn’t really behaved like a mother, had I?’
She took a shaky breath. ‘I’ve had a very good life, Louisa. I loved my job and I worked with some wonderful people. I travelled to Paris, Milan, Berlin, London, far more than most women my age … I had my beautiful apartment and some excellent friends. You mustn’t worry about me. All this nonsense about women having it all. We never could and we never shall. Women always have to make the difficult choices. But there is a great consolation in simply doing something you love.’
We sat in silence, digesting this. Then she placed her hands squarely on her knees. ‘Actually, dear girl, would you help me to my bathroom? I’m feeling quite tired and I think I might take myself to bed.’
That night I lay awake, thinking about what she had told me. I thought about Agnes and the fact that these two women, living yards away from each other, both cloaked in a very specific sadness, might, in another world, have been a comfort to each other. I thought about the fact that there seemed to be such a high cost to anything a woman chose to do with her life, unless she simply aimed low. But I knew that already, didn’t I? I had come here and it had cost me dear.
Often in the small hours I conjured Will’s voice telling me not to be ridiculous and melancholy but to think instead of all the things I’d achieved. I lay in the dark and ticked off my achievements on my fingers. I had a home – for the time being at least. I had paid employment. I was still in New York, and I was among friends. I had a new relationship, even if sometimes I wondered how I had ended up in it. Could I really say that I would have done things any differently?
‘I was given those for my fourteenth birthday. My grandfather had them shipped from Hong Kong. If you get stuck you can check in there. I used to take the buttons and zippers from everything I didn’t wear any more, you know. That way if you lose a button from something nice, and can’t replace it, you always have a full set that you can sew on instead.’
‘But won’t you need them?’
She waved her good hand. ‘Oh, my fingers are far too clumsy for sewing now. Half the time I can’t even work the buttonholes. And so few people bother with fixing buttons and zippers these days – they just throw their clothes in the trash and buy something awful from one of those discount stores. You take them, dear. It would be nice to feel they were useful.’
So, by luck and perhaps a little by design, I now had two jobs that I loved. And with them I found a kind of contentment. Every Tuesday evening I would bring home a few items of clothing in a chequered laundry bag of plastic webbing, and while Margot napped, or watched television, I would carefully remove all the remaining buttons on each item and sew on a new set, holding them up afterwards for her approval.
‘You sew quite nicely,’ she remarked, peering at my stitches through her spectacles, as we sat in front of Wheel of Fortune. ‘I thought you’d be as dreadful at it as you are at everything else.’
‘At school needlework was pretty much the only thing I was any good at.’ I smoothed out the creases on my lap, and prepared to refold a jacket.
‘I was just the same,’ she said. ‘By thirteen, I was making all my own clothes. My mother showed me how to cut a pattern and that was it. I was away. I became obsessed with fashion.’
‘What was it you did, Margot?’ I put down my stitching.
‘I was fashion editor of the Ladies’ Look. It doesn’t exist now – never made it into the nineties. But we were around for thirty years or more, and I was fashion editor for most of that.’
‘Is that the magazine in the frames? The ones on the wall?’
‘Yes, those were my favourite covers. I was rather sentimental and kept a few.’ Her face softened briefly, and she tilted her head, casting me a confiding look. ‘It was quite the job back then, you know. The magazine company wasn’t terribly keen on having women in senior roles but there was the most dreadful man in charge of the fashion pages and my editor – a wonderful man, Mr Aldridge – argued that having an old fuddy-duddy, who still wore suspenders to hold up his socks, dictating what fashion meant simply wouldn’t work with the younger girls. He thought I had an eye for it, promoted me, and that was that.’
‘So that’s why you have so many beautiful clothes.’
‘Well, I certainly didn’t marry rich.’
‘Did you marry at all?’
She looked down and picked at something on her knee. ‘Goodness, you do ask a lot of questions. Yes, I did. A lovely man. Terrence. He worked in publishing. But he died in 1962, three years after we married, and that was it for me.’
‘You never wanted children?’
‘I had a son, dear, but not with my husband. Is that what you wanted to know?’
I flushed. ‘No. I mean, not like that. I – gosh – having children is – I mean I wouldn’t presume to –’
‘Stop flapping, Louisa. I fell in love with someone unsuitable when I was grieving my husband and I became pregnant. I had the baby but it caused a bit of a stir, and in the end it was considered better for everyone if my parents brought him up in Westchester.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Still in Westchester. As far as I know.’
I blinked. ‘You don’t see him?’
‘Oh, I did. I saw him every weekend and vacation for the whole of his childhood. But once he reached adolescence he grew rather angry with me for not being the kind of mother he thought I should be. I had to make a choice, you see. In those days it wasn’t common to work if you married or had children. And I chose work. I honestly felt I would die without it. And Frank – my boss – supported me.’ She sighed. ‘Unfortunately my son has never really forgiven me.’
There was a long silence.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Yes. So am I. But what’s done is done and there’s no point dwelling.’ She began to cough so I poured her a glass of water and handed it to her. She motioned towards a bottle of pills that she kept on the sideboard and I waited while she swallowed one. She settled herself again, like a hen that had ruffled her feathers.
‘What is his name?’ I asked, when she had recovered.
‘More questions … Frank Junior.’
‘So his father was –’
‘– my editor at the magazine, yes. Frank Aldridge. He was significantly older than I was and married, and I’m afraid that was my son’s other great resentment. It was rather hard for him at school. People were different about these things, then.’
‘When did you last see him? Your son, I mean.’
‘That would be … 1987. The year he married. I found out about it after the event and wrote him a letter telling him how hurt I was that he hadn’t included me, and he told me in no uncertain terms that I had long since relinquished any right to be included in anything to do with his life.’
We sat in silence for a moment. Her face was perfectly still and it was impossible to tell what she was thinking, or even if she was now simply focused on the television. I didn’t know what to say to her. I couldn’t find any words that were up to a hurt that great. But then she turned to me.
‘And that was it. My mother died a couple of years later and she was my last point of contact with him. I do sometimes wonder how he is – if he’s even alive, whether he had children. I wrote to him for a while. But over the years I suppose I’ve become rather philosophical about the whole thing. He was quite right, of course. I had no right to him, really, to anything to do with his life.’
‘But he was your son,’ I whispered.
‘He was, but I hadn’t really behaved like a mother, had I?’
She took a shaky breath. ‘I’ve had a very good life, Louisa. I loved my job and I worked with some wonderful people. I travelled to Paris, Milan, Berlin, London, far more than most women my age … I had my beautiful apartment and some excellent friends. You mustn’t worry about me. All this nonsense about women having it all. We never could and we never shall. Women always have to make the difficult choices. But there is a great consolation in simply doing something you love.’
We sat in silence, digesting this. Then she placed her hands squarely on her knees. ‘Actually, dear girl, would you help me to my bathroom? I’m feeling quite tired and I think I might take myself to bed.’
That night I lay awake, thinking about what she had told me. I thought about Agnes and the fact that these two women, living yards away from each other, both cloaked in a very specific sadness, might, in another world, have been a comfort to each other. I thought about the fact that there seemed to be such a high cost to anything a woman chose to do with her life, unless she simply aimed low. But I knew that already, didn’t I? I had come here and it had cost me dear.
Often in the small hours I conjured Will’s voice telling me not to be ridiculous and melancholy but to think instead of all the things I’d achieved. I lay in the dark and ticked off my achievements on my fingers. I had a home – for the time being at least. I had paid employment. I was still in New York, and I was among friends. I had a new relationship, even if sometimes I wondered how I had ended up in it. Could I really say that I would have done things any differently?
