The Darner in the Airing Cupboard
On Button Street there was a tall thin house, and on its landing there was a warm airing cupboard, and in that cupboard the socks went in pairs and came out alone.
Mom had given up on it long ago. Every morning she put on one green sock and one yellow sock and said, “There. Nobody can tell me they don’t match, because they never did.”
Rosie had not given up. Rosie was seven, and she liked things to match. She liked her boots side by side at the door and her pencils in a row from longest to shortest. When she had toast, she cut it into two halves exactly the same. What she wanted more than anything was a sock drawer where every single sock had its partner.
So she kept a notebook of every sock that had gone missing. It had a column for the sock and a column headed “Possible Reasons”. Under Possible Reasons she had written “behind the pipe?” and “dog next door?” and “Mom?”, which was crossed out, because Mom wore odd socks on purpose. The last entry of all said “wind?”
The trouble with the wind was the buttons. Every time a sock went missing, a button turned up on the shelf where it had been. A brown one. A shiny black one. Once a gold one with an anchor on it. Rosie kept the buttons in a jam jar on her windowsill, and the jar was nearly full.
“The wind,” Rosie told the jar, “does not leave buttons.”
One Thursday night she laid a trap. She put a brand-new pair of socks on the cupboard shelf, blue with white spots, side by side. Then she sat on the landing under the lamp with her notebook, a pencil and a slice of toast, in case it was a long wait. She left the cupboard door open the width of one finger.
She ate the toast. She waited until her left foot went to sleep. Then, from behind the towels, there came a purr, like a cat who has found the warm spot on the bed. The towels bulged. Out came a small round woolly creature about the size of a teapot, and he reached one soft paw for a blue spotted sock.
Rosie opened the door. “Got you,” she said.
And that is how Rosie caught the Darner red-pawed, which is like red-handed, only softer.
He blinked at her over the sock. His voice was a purr with words in it.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh dear. Good evening.”
“That is my sock,” said Rosie.
He held it to his nose and sniffed. “So it is. Toast and pencils. I’d know it anywhere. I sort them all by smell, you see. Your mother is peppermint and soap.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the Darner,” he said, and he looked a little proud of it. “I take the socks home behind the towels. I mend the thin bits at the heel. Then I curl up on them, which is the best part. A Darner cannot leave a sock alone. It is a weakness.”
“You only ever take one.”
“I’m not greedy,” said the Darner. “And I always pay.” He felt about in his wool, brought out a small grey button and set it on the shelf. “One sock, one button. Fair is fair.”
“But you can’t wear a button on your foot,” said Rosie.
The Darner thought about this for a long time. “I never thought of that,” he said at last. “I’m so fond of buttons myself.”
Rosie was a fair person too, and she could see he meant no harm.
“I will make you a bargain,” she said. “Every Friday night I will leave one sock of my own on this shelf, just for you. In return, you will never take another sock from a pair. Not one. Not ever.”
“One a week,” said the Darner, and his ears drooped. “I’m used to three or four.”
“One a week,” said Rosie, “and it will smell of toast and pencils.”
The Darner sniffed the air. “Done,” he said. They shook on it, and his paw was as soft as a mitten. Rosie wrote it all down, and they both signed, though the Darner’s name came out more like a smudge.
Here is the part Rosie had not thought about. She could not give him one of her lonely socks. Those lived in a shoebox under her bed marked WAITING, in case their partners ever came home, and giving one away would be giving up. So it would have to be spare socks.
On the first Friday she asked Mom for the tiny white sock from when she was a baby. The other one had gone missing before Rosie could walk.
“What do you want it for?” said Mom.
“A bargain,” said Rosie.
“Fair enough,” said Mom, who knew better than to come between Rosie and a bargain.
On Saturday morning the tiny sock was gone, and one button was left on the shelf. Rosie went through the clean washing and counted. Every pair was still a pair.
On the second Friday she gave him Captain Pip, her sock puppet. She left his button eyes on, because the Darner was so fond of buttons. On Saturday morning Captain Pip was gone, and one button was left on the shelf. Every pair was still a pair.
On the third Friday she tipped her marbles into an egg cup and gave him the sock she had kept them in. On Saturday morning the marble sock was gone, and one button was left on the shelf. Every pair was still a pair.
You might think this was easy for the Darner. It was not. On washing days Rosie could hear him sighing among the towels: big woolly sighs, like somebody sitting next to a whole plate of cake who has promised not to touch it. But every pair came out of that cupboard a pair.
On the fourth Friday, Rosie had nothing left to give. There was only the shoebox marked WAITING. She sat on her bed and looked at it.
Then she went downstairs. “Mom,” she said, “how do you make a sock?”
Mom looked down at her one green foot and her one yellow foot, and smiled. She fetched a pair of knitting needles and a bag of leftover wool, and no two balls in it were the same colour.
Rosie knitted every evening that week, and Mom sat beside her and picked up the stitches she dropped. There was not enough of any one colour, so the sock came out striped: red, then orange, then brown, then a bit of green and a bit of yellow. It was lumpy where Rosie had worried and loose where she had hurried. Then they got talking, and nobody remembered to tell Rosie when to stop. By Friday the sock was longer than Rosie’s whole leg.
It did not match a single thing in the house. Rosie held it up and found that she loved it anyway.
That night she folded it four times to fit it on the shelf, and pinned on a note: For the Darner. I made it. From Rosie.
In the morning there was no button on the shelf.
In the whole long notebook, that had never happened once. Rosie wondered if she had done something wrong.
Then she opened her sock drawer.
It was full. Every sock she had ever lost was in it, warm from the airing cupboard, darned at the heel, rolled up neatly in pairs. Rosie gave a shout and hopped on the spot. The shoebox marked WAITING was empty. Even the tiny white baby socks were there, the pair of them, rolled up together for the first time since Rosie was a baby.
From down the landing came another shout. Mom was sitting on her bed with her drawer open. “Green with green!” she said, holding them up. “Yellow with yellow!” She put on two green ones and wiggled her toes. “I may still wear them odd on Thursdays,” she said, “for old times’ sake.”
At the back of the airing cupboard, where the pipes were warmest, Rosie found the Darner. He was inside the long striped sock, all the way down in the toe like a sleeping bag, with just the top of his woolly head poking out, purring in his sleep. Nobody had ever made a sock just for him before.
Rosie took out her notebook. In the column headed Possible Reasons, she crossed out “wind?” and wrote “Darner (friend)”. Then she closed it, because it was finished.
That afternoon she started another sock, red, orange, brown, green and yellow, as near to the first one as a lumpy sock can be. She sewed the gold anchor button on the top. Rosie liked things to match, and it seemed only right that the Darner should have a pair.
And so, in the tall thin house on Button Street, the socks go into the airing cupboard in pairs and come out in pairs. Behind the towels, the happiest creature in the house sleeps in two long striped socks, one to curl up in and one to curl up on, as warm as toast. The end.