The design of the outer panels was just shapes and colours, as far as I could see, sometimes in patterns like sticks or steps, with what looked like rising suns along the sides and ends. I liked to run my fingers along the curly pattern of embroidered stitches in the central panel, imagining myself to be in a maze of tall hedges.
But it was the panel of appliqué figures that most intrigued me. In a row along the top was a duck, an apple, a violin, a green leaf and a dragon with fiery flames coming out of its mouth and, at the bottom, another row with a mouse, an acorn, a rabbit, a lily-like flower, and an anchor.
‘Why is the duck trying to eat the apple?’ I asked.
Granny chuckled in that easy way that always made me feel safe. ‘Have you ever watched a duck trying to eat an apple? They can’t pierce the skin with their round beaks, so the apple keeps running away.’ She mimicked the action with her hands, the fingers of one bent over the thumb like a bird’s bill, the other a round fist in the shape of an apple. ‘They have to wait until another bird with a sharp beak has cut into the apple, then they can eat it.’
I pointed to the dragon at the end of the row. ‘Why’s he got flames coming out of his mouth?’
‘Perhaps he’s trying to scare away the duck so he can eat the apple.’
I’d chattered on brightly, desperate to prolong the conversation and postpone the inevitable lights out: ‘Mummy says I can have a real-life rabbit, like this one, when I am a bit older.’
‘That’s for her to decide, my little Caroline,’ she said. ‘Now it is time for sleep. Tomorrow’s a big day. Someone special is coming to meet you.’
In the middle of the night I sat up in bed and tried to write down as much of that memory as I could. Some details were still clear as a spring day, but there was something else I couldn’t quite grasp, a foggy incompleteness, as if my mind associated something important with that moment, but which was long since too deeply buried to bring back to the surface.
Chapter Five
Cassette 2, side 1
Is that thingy working again?
The clink of a cup being placed into its saucer.
That was a nice cuppa, thank you dearie. Much needed. So where was I?
‘You were going to alter the prince’s breeches …’
That smoky chuckle again, rattling in her chest and catching her throat till it becomes a full-blown coughing fit. She struggles to regain her breath.
It do sound a bit unlikely, don’t it, when you say it out loud like that? It’s no wonder they thought I was making it up. Most of ’em didn’t believe me, you see. And why would they, when they was surrounded by crazy women with all kinds of weird imaginings? There was Ada, for example, who believed she was the pregnant Virgin Mary and used to stick a pillow up her dress whenever she got the chance. They’d tell her off too, just like they did with me. ‘Stop putting on airs,’ they’d say. The psychiatrist was the worst, sitting there like a pudding with that question-mark face on him. ‘This is in your imagination, dear,’ he’d say to me. ‘None of it is real and the sooner you understand that the sooner we’ll be able to release you.’
Then there was poor old Winnie, who got locked up that many times for climbing into bed with other women and stealing food off other people’s plates. She always claimed it was the voices telling her to do it, but they never believed her, neither. Well, I’d try to argue back like Winnie, of course, but after a while I gave up trying to prove that what I was telling them was the truth. What was the point? In the end I figured it was best to keep quiet and let them think it’d had all been in my imagination.
But if you are happy to hear me out, I’ll carry on.
‘Please do. That’s what I am here for. When you’re ready. The prince’s breeches …’
Ah yes. Hrrrm. Well, I don’t know what I imagined a royal bedchamber to be like, but that room was so enormous if there hadn’t been a carpet on the floor I’d have taken it for a ballroom. Besides, there was no bed – must be next door, I thought to meself. On the far side was a person preening himself in front of a long mirror dressed in what I took to be a pantomime outfit – not that I’d seen a pantomime in me life, you understand, but I’d seen the posters outside the music halls. He had white satin breeches with great rosettes at each knee, with a doublet which barely came down to his thighs, and a coat and cape in purple velvet with furry trimmings – I later found out it was called ermine – and a floppy velvet hat on his head.
‘At last, Finch, you’re back,’ the prince said, and as he turned to us his face twisted into an angry frown. Finch bowed and I made my best curtsey. I’d been practising since last time.
‘This is Miss Romano, Your Highness, the best seamstress in the palace, come to make the alterations you require,’ said Finch in his oily voice, making me shimmer inside at the compliment.
‘Excellent, excellent,’ said the prince, looking at me so curiously I began to wonder whether I’d put my apron on back to front. I kept my eyes fixed to the ground as I’d been told, but through my eyelashes I could see that the frown had been replaced with a teasing smile.
‘Your curtsey is much improved since we last met, Miss Romano,’ he said. ‘I only hope your needlework skills are as good.’
He smiled at me then, that smile that seemed to light up the room, just like he did that day when I’d botched my first attempt at a curtsey. I could feel my cheeks burning and my heart begin to beat a little faster just recalling that moment, and realising that he, too, remembered it.
‘Now sir,’ said Finch, all brisk and business-like. ‘Perhaps you could describe to Miss Romano the work you would like her to undertake?’
‘These bloody breeches,’ the prince grumbled, and he pulled out the sides of them below the doublet so that they stuck out like angels’ wings either side of his thighs. ‘They’re like something a ruddy ballet dancer would wear. There’s not much we can do about the rest of this preposterous rig, but at the very least I want these taken in. Not too tight, mind.’
‘Would you care to show Miss Romano exactly how tight, Your Highness?’ said Finch, ‘so that she can place a pin for marking?’
I rummaged in the basket of necessaries to find Miss G’s pot of pins. Then as the prince held the fabric either side I knelt down in front of him, with my hands trembling so much that I could hardly hold it, doing my best to place the pin close to his fingers through the fabric on both sides and all the while trying not to have hysterics at the extraordinary turn of events which had brought me kneeling with my face only inches away from the most personal parts of the future King of England.
She breaks out into that smoky cackle and the interviewer laughs along with her. They are growing easy in each other’s company. It takes some time for them both to gather themselves.
Oh dearie me. I’ll remember that night till I die, I tell you. Thinking about it has helped me laugh through the blackest of times since, and there have been plenty of them, let me tell you.
Anyway, I managed to pin the fabric without sticking a pin into the royal nether regions and then stood back while he regarded himself for a long time in the long mirror again and finally