Mr. Pinny Sews a Pocket on the Wind

When Mr. Pinny was seven, the Wind took his hat.

It was a brown tweed cap with a red button on top, and he had worn it every day for a year. He was sitting on the harbour wall eating a bun when the Wind came down off the hill and lifted the cap off his head. The Wind carried it away over the roofs until it was a speck, and then not even that.

Most boys would have stamped their feet. Mr. Pinny, who was small and tidy even then, finished his bun and had a think.

“He doesn’t really want my hat,” he told his mum that night. “His hands are cold and he’s got nowhere to put them. He needs a pocket.”

His mum said that sounded very likely, and to eat his peas.

The town where Mr. Pinny lived was crooked, and it was by the sea, and in that town anything without a pocket kept dropping things. The Wind dropped hats all over the harbour. The Moon dropped her light, a little every night, until by the end of the month she had none left and had to start again. Any apple set down on the hill rolled straight to the bottom. And the sea took buckets and boots and spoons off the beach, dropped them somewhere down at the bottom, and could never find a single one to give back.

So Mr. Pinny grew up to be a tailor, which surprised nobody. He had a shop on Steep Street, and on two hooks behind the counter he kept a needle as long as his arm, for big jobs. He meant to sew a pocket on everything in the town that dropped things. He saved the sea for last, because it was the biggest and the wettest, and it never kept still.

Whenever he lifted the long needle down off its hooks, he said the same thing.

“Everything’s kinder with a pocket.”

* * *

The first was the Wind.

You may be wondering how anybody measures the Wind. Mr. Pinny climbed the hill where the Wind lived and asked him, very politely, to stand still. The Wind had never stood still in his life, but he was curious, so he tried. It was the stillest afternoon the town ever had. Every line of washing hung straight down, and the gulls had to flap.

Mr. Pinny found out two things with his tape. The Wind was a good deal bigger than he looked, and the Wind was left-handed.

So the pocket went on the left. It was a big one, grey as a rain cloud, and the Wind put both hands in it, the left one first.

“Oh,” said the Wind. “Oh, that’s much better.”

He went whistling off over the roofs with his hands in his pocket, and from that day on not one hat in the town went missing. People began wearing their best hats down to the harbour.

The second was the Moon.

The Moon was shy, and a little vain, and she did not like being looked at while she was fitted. So she came down to the harbour wall late at night, when the town was asleep, and Mr. Pinny measured her round the middle, which took some time. He sewed her a small silver pocket. In it she kept one slice of light, saved from the full moon, for cloudy nights when the boats needed to find their way home.

Light is sharp at the edges, though, and the pocket wore thin. So every full moon she came back down to the harbour wall to have it darned. She held very still and looked out to sea, as if she were only passing.

“Will it show?” the Moon said, every time.

“Not from the ground,” said Mr. Pinny, every time.

The third was the hill. He sewed a pocket into the side of it, just below the top, where the climb got hard. People put things in it: a sandwich, a flask of cocoa, an apple that could not roll away now. Anybody tired could reach in and find a picnic, and they nearly always put something back.

* * *

Then a nice thing happened in the crooked town. People started sewing pockets for each other.

The baker sewed a pocket in her apron and kept a spare biscuit in it, for whoever looked hungry. Old Mrs. Bell sewed a pocket on her front gate with a key in it, for anyone who had locked themselves out. Mrs. Bell always made whoever it was a cup of tea, and some people locked themselves out on purpose.

And in every pocket in the town there was a needle, just in case.

Years went by, the way they do. Mr. Pinny grew old. His hair went white and his hands began to shake, so his granddaughter Dot threaded his needles for him. She could thread the long needle first time, with her tongue out, and at every full moon she held the lantern while he darned.

Dot had a red bucket. She had one, anyway, until a bright morning when she set it down on the sand to look at a shell, and the sea came up quietly and took it, and did not bring it back.

She did not cry, quite. She sat in the shop with her chin on the counter.

“The sea hasn’t got a pocket,” she said. “That’s the trouble with it.”

Mr. Pinny looked out of the window. There it was, the last thing in town without a pocket, and the biggest, and he had been saving it for fifty years.

“No,” he said. “It hasn’t.”

* * *

He lifted the long needle down off its hooks.

“Everything’s kinder with a pocket,” he said, and Dot threaded it.

He went down to the beach in his good shoes and stood at the very edge of the water. He waited for a wave, and pinned it, and sewed. It was a lovely little pocket. Then the wave went back out with the pocket on it, and the next wave came in without one, and so did the next, and the next.

His long needle only reached the first wave. His hands shook. The sea was very wide and very wet and would not keep still for anybody. At teatime he came home with wet shoes and no pocket on the sea at all.

“It wants more hands than mine,” he said.

Dot thought about that overnight. In the morning she went up Steep Street and down Harbour Row and knocked on every door in the town. She did not have to say much. Everybody had a needle in their pocket already, and Dot threaded every one of them, with her tongue out.

By noon the water was full of boats: the ferry, the fishing boats, the baker in her little rowing boat. Dot rowed her grandfather out in front. He sat with the reel of thread on his knee. It was the grey-green of the sea on a quiet day, and he had been saving it for this.

The boats lined up along the whole length of the beach. Each boat sewed the stretch of sea in front of it and handed the thread on to the next. The sea was flat and blue that day, which helped. When the last boat had sewn its stretch, there was only the knot left to tie.

Mr. Pinny lifted the long needle. “Everything’s kinder with a pocket,” he said, and the whole town said it with him, because by then they all knew it.

He tied the knot, and the sea had a pocket.

The sea gave a small, surprised slosh against the boats. Then something red bobbed up beside Dot’s boat.

It was her bucket. Dot leaned over and lifted it out, and it was full of water, and in the water was a spoon.

After that the sea went through its new pocket the way anyone does who has finally got somewhere to keep things. Up came a boot, and then the other boot, and then a great many spoons. The ferryman got his whistle back. Everyone rowed home with something.

The Wind had come down off the hill to watch. He blew very gently, so as not to rock anybody, with his hands in his pocket on the left. When Mr. Pinny stepped out onto the sand, the Wind took his left hand out. In it was a brown tweed cap with a red button on top.

“I never dropped this one,” said the Wind. “I was only waiting for a good day to give it back.”

“This is a good day,” said Mr. Pinny.

He put the cap on. It was a little small, because he was not seven any more. It was only a little small, because he had never got very big. He wore it anyway.

Then he took Dot’s hand, and Dot held her red bucket in the other, and the two of them walked home up Steep Street in wet shoes without dropping a single thing.

The end.