The Patch Nobody Claimed

Hettie Marsh, mate of the Pennywhistle, brought the torn envelope down to the quays in a barrow. It was too big to carry and too dear to drag. She tipped it out on Pell’s bench by the third stair, where it lay in a grey heap, looking sorry for itself.

“A gust caught her on the mooring,” said Hettie. “We go out at noon tomorrow. Can you do it by then?”

“Tomorrow, first thing,” said Pell, and lifted the torn edge to see how bad it was.

The tear was not bad: a clean split, a hand long. But right beside it, set into the grey cloth, was an old patch: a small square, so neatly turned that the seam looked drawn on in pencil. And where the new tear had opened, Pell could see underneath it. The old patch had a lining.

It was deep blue silk, sewn all over with tiny stars, and nobody was ever meant to see it.

Now, Pell had a weakness for exactly this. Every envelope Pell patched went back up with a lining nobody would see: tangerine, peacock green, and once a pink so loud the crew called that patch “the incident”. A plain outside and a glorious inside was, to Pell, simply good manners.

Pell got out the little glass and looked. Pell turned the square to the light and looked again. Pell found the corner where the lining folded under, and could not see where the thread went in, however close Pell looked. In that same corner, tucked into the fold, was a bow of blue thread no bigger than a grain of rice. Pell had no idea what it was for.

Hettie waited. Then she sat down on a coil of rope. Then she ate the hot paper packet of fried potatoes she had bought to eat on the ship.

“Who did this?” said Pell at last.

“It was on her when we bought her,” said Hettie. “Is that bad?”

“It’s beautiful,” said Pell. “I said tomorrow before I saw the lining. Come and look at this.”

Hettie came and looked, because she was polite, and saw a square.

“The tear runs right along it,” said Pell. “So I either unpick it, which I won’t, or I match it, which I can’t. I can’t see how the corner’s done. There isn’t a stitch on the outside anywhere.”

“Could you not just unpick it?” said Hettie.

Pell looked at her the way people look at someone who has suggested eating the tablecloth.

“Tomorrow,” said Hettie, picking up her barrow. “First thing. I’ll hold you to it.”

Pell’s tomorrows were well known on the quays. A tomorrow from Pell could last a week, and once, over a lining of orange velvet, most of a spring. This time Pell wanted two things. Pell wanted to find whoever had sewn that square and ask, politely and with cake if necessary, how. And Pell wanted, for once, for tomorrow to mean tomorrow.

* * *

Pell rolled up the envelope, which was too big to carry, carried it anyway over one shoulder like a very large scarf, and went down the quays asking.

Tam Lowe, at the next bench, was patching a cargo balloon. She looked at the square for a long time.

“Not mine,” said Tam. “Wish it were.”

Mrs. Gorse, who patched the big ships and charged for looking, looked even longer.

“Not mine,” she said. “I’d have charged double for that. Wish it were.”

At the end of the row sat Kit, who had been patching for a fortnight and still held a needle as if it might go off.

“Not mine,” said Kit. “I wish anything was mine. I did eleven stitches this morning and Tam made me take out nine.”

“Which two did she leave?” said Pell.

“The last two.”

“Then you’re getting better,” said Pell, and Kit looked surprised, and then pleased, and went back to it.

By the middle of the afternoon Pell had asked every patcher on the quays, two sailmakers, and a man selling hot paper packets who had once mended his own trousers and was proud of it. Nobody claimed the square. Everyone wished it were theirs.

So Pell went back to the bench by the third stair and tried to match it.

Pell’s bench, it should be said, was the tidiest thing on the quays, and the room behind it was the untidiest. On the bench stood the thread jars, sorted by colour and also by mood. There was a jar for pleased ends, a jar for patient ends, a jar for tired ends, and a jar marked CROSS that had never held a single one. By the time Pell was cross enough to need it, Pell had usually found something to admire.

Pell tried the corner three times on a scrap. The first time it puckered. The second time it lay flat but showed a stitch like a full stop. The third time it did both. Pell snipped the thread and held the end over the cross jar for a long moment.

Then Pell put it in patient instead, because there was one more place to ask.

* * *

The Chart Room was up two flights, full of ledgers and pigeonholes, with Ilex at the desk in the middle of it, adding up loads.

Pell held out the newest part of The Duchess of the Lower Quay.

“Face down,” said Ilex, without looking up.

Pell turned it over and handed it across face down.

“Last month’s cover had the duchess on the cliff stair with the letter in her hand,” said Ilex. “She doesn’t reach the stair until page ninety. I had ninety pages of knowing.” She slid the book under the desk, with all the others Pell had lent her, where they were safe from ink and visitors. “What do you want?”

“The old repair books for the Pennywhistle,” said Pell. “As far back as she goes.”

Ilex went along the shelves with one finger and came back with three books. She opened the first on the desk.

“Don’t read over my shoulder,” she said. “You read faster than me and your face does things.”

Pell stood at the window and looked at the ships and did not read over her shoulder, very hard.

“Here,” said Ilex. She kept her finger on the line. “Fact. The Pennywhistle, envelope, starboard side. One square, lined. Patched at this harbor in early spring, at the bench by the third stair. It took four days. Lining: blue silk, owner’s own. Fact.”

“Four days for one square?”

“Four days. And it’s signed.” Ilex turned the book round.

In a round, careful hand, much bigger than Pell’s hand now, it said: Pell (new).

Pell looked at it for a long time. It had been a great many squares ago, and that whole first spring Pell had been too busy being frightened of the needle to notice what it was sewing.

“Inference,” said Ilex. “You were very slow that month.”

Pell laughed out loud, which nobody does in the Chart Room. Two pigeons got up off the windowsill.

“Quietly,” said Ilex. “There are ledgers.”

“I’ve been all down the quays,” said Pell. “I asked Mrs. Gorse. I asked the man with the trousers. I was going to bring cake.”

“I can tell you what’s written,” said Ilex. “I can’t tell you how you did it. That isn’t in the book.” She went back to her loads. “Bring the next part when it comes. Face down.”

* * *

So Pell sat down at the bench by the third stair, as the lamps came on along the quays, and did the new patch the way first-month Pell had plainly done the old one. Slowly. Counting every stitch out loud.

Pell had not counted stitches in years. Pell was quick now, and good, and busy. But a patcher in the first month knows none of the quick ways and does everything the long way round, and the long way round, it turned out, was the whole secret.

At stitch thirty-eight Pell found it. The thread went back into the fold instead of through it, twice, and came out where nobody would think to look.

The lining came next. Pell went through every drawer in the untidy room for that deep blue with the stars, and there was nothing like it. So Pell chose a gold silk that had been saved for something special, decided this was it, and thought no more about the blue. There was a great deal of counting still to do.

At midnight Ilex came down the stairs with two hot paper packets and the duchess under her arm, finished.

“Don’t stop,” she said. “I’ll talk. You’ve read it.”

She sat on the coil of rope, held the lamp where it was most use, and told Pell exactly what the duchess had done with the letter. Pell said “No!” in all the right places and did not lose count once.

The dock wards glowed under the moored ships like lamps left on under tables. At the last corner of the last square, Pell tied the final stitch in a tiny bow.

There was a bow on the old patch too, in the same corner. Pell had wondered all day whether it was a beginner’s mistake or a beginner’s joke, and could not remember. This one was certainly a joke. Pell decided the first one had been too.

By morning the patient jar was full to the neck. The cross jar was still empty.

* * *

Hettie Marsh came at first light with her barrow and a face ready to wait.

The envelope was folded on the bench.

“Done,” said Pell.

Hettie unfolded a corner, and then the whole side, and looked at the two squares side by side. She could not tell the old from the new, except that the new one was cleaner.

“You said tomorrow,” said Hettie.

“I said tomorrow before I saw the lining,” said Pell, and this time it was a boast.

“Did you find who did the old one?”

“I did.”

“Any good?”

“Very slow,” said Pell. “But very good.”

Pell helped wheel the barrow round to the mooring, and on the way back stopped at the end of the row, where Kit was threading a needle on the fourth try.

“Four days,” said Pell. “For one square. I looked it up.”

Kit did not know what this meant, but could tell it was good news, and was right.

At noon the Pennywhistle went out. Her envelope filled and rounded. On her starboard side were two small grey squares, side by side. Nobody on the quay could see the bows in their corners, or the blue and the gold underneath. Both were Pell’s.

Pell stood at the rail and waved until the ship was a long way off, very pleased, and a little more moved than seemed reasonable over a piece of cloth.

Pell went to bed in the middle of the afternoon and slept like a folded envelope, smiling.

And the next time Pell said tomorrow, Hettie Marsh believed it, which on the quays was a first.