Almost Insentient, Almost Divine Read online

  Viktor was originally from Dresden, but his family had moved to Wrocław for work when he was five years old. He spoke six languages and had helped them all arrange coming over to England—it had been his idea in the first place. He had studied engineering and always got a good salary for his site management skills. He’d gone back to Germany in 2011, as there was a big contract that needed preparing in Dusseldorf before a team of thirty site managers and technicians headed out to Iraq to build shopping centres. Bogdan did not want to go to such a hot country and neither did Michał, the brickie, the last of the others that was left. It would have been better for him to have gone, for now he spent his days drinking cheap beer and moaning about the lack of work. Bogdan had tried to get him to come to the farms and work with him but Michał said he hated the countryside of “ta pieprzona zielona i nieprzyjemna ziemia” and wanted to work in a factory instead—“żadnych pieprzonych nocnych zmian!” He’d been unemployed for two years now.

  On Saturday afternoons Bogdan would manage to muster enough enthusiasm from Michał to go down to their local pub and have a couple of drinks. It was unwise to stay out too late, with all the trouble that happened in the city, always with Tomasz in their minds. At least in their local there was more of a family mood about the place in the afternoons, and they kept their voices down in the corner of the Lounge area, where a few older regulars enjoyed playing cards.

  It was in late October 2012 when Bogdan bumped into Agnes, on his way home, having left Michał with a few friends from Leicester who were celebrating before they went home to Warsaw the following week. It was time he left too, he thought.

  Just as he turned into Bottle Lane, his head full of thoughts of home, he bumped into an old lady just coming round the corner. Thankfully she didn’t fall over, but her shopping basket went flying and, amid the few tins and packets of a widow’s groceries rolling about the pavement a reel of white lace unfurled itself. She yelped in horror as it rolled towards a large muddy puddle in the gutter. Bogdan jumped forwards and tapped it back with his foot, saving it from a rather disastrous and filthy drenching.

  “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said, with a childish energy, almost jumping for joy. “Oh, that would have been terrible, you know. I’ve just finished that reel for my friend Nancy’s granddaughter’s wedding dress trim. It’s in two weeks’ time and I was just going round to drop it off there now. It would have been ruined if you hadn’t saved it. I could never have made another in time.”

  Bogdan was crouched down reeling the delicate cloth back onto its cardboard spindle. He could feel its intricate pattern trace through his fingers as he wound. It was not a smooth texture, rather more like a fine cotton. There was something earthy and real about it, unlike silk.

  “There is no need to thank me, madam,” Bogdan said, holding the lace up to her as he continued to gather her groceries. “I was not being mindful of where I was going and should apologise to you for almost knocking you into the road.”

  “Ah, you sweet boy,” she said, offering the basket so he could place everything inside. Her hands were contorted and twisted with arthritis and they seemed to wrap around the handle of the basket like wisteria. “There’s no harm done is there. Now, I know that accent, don’t tell me… don’t tell me…”

  Bogdan stood there waiting while she screwed her face up into a very peculiar expression. She stared at him for a few moments and then shut her eyes. He wondered if she might have fallen asleep, standing up with the basket in her hands.

  He started to feel a little awkward.

  “You’re from Poland,” she said. The words bursting out of her so rapidly that it startled him.

  “Well, yes I am,” he said. “My name is Bogdan, and I am a plumber, although now I do not find much of this kind of work anymore. There is not the money for people to afford this so much now.”

  He had found himself walking along beside her as she headed off down the road.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you, Bogdarn,” she said. “I’m Agnes, Agnes Cottar. Do you know how I knew where you were from?”

  “Er, no Miss, er Mrs Cottar, I do not,” he said.

  “It’s Mrs, although my Alfred’s long gone now,” she said. “It was Alfred’s friend, and his wife, that’s how I knew. They were Poles you see. Came over just before the war. My Alfred met him while he was in the RAF, you know. Zeb and Anna. We used to call him Zeb because we couldn’t say his full name, couldn’t get our tongues round it—Zebigenuf, something like that I think it was.”

  “Zbigniew,” Bogdan said.

  “That’s it!” Agnes said, stopping abruptly. “We used to go around theirs on a Friday night and drink a lovely cherry vodka he used to make, and play Whist until the early hours. They were a lovely couple. Of course, he had to stay over here after the war because the Russians were arresting all the old officers from before the war and shooting them, or something horrible like that. And their little girl died a year before the war started, so they hadn’t got much to go back for anyway. Him and my Alfred even started a little business up in the sixties, doing odd jobs for folks. Didn’t come to much though and they both ended up at the Waterworks. Good job that though, and a decent pension too.”

  They had started walking again halfway through this and Bogdan found he was interested by this old woman.

  “So you made that lovely cloth I so nearly ruined?” he said.

  “Oh, yes, I’ve been making lace since I were a little girl,” she said, stopping again and turning to him. “My mother made lace and so did my grandmother, of course she used to work in the factories then, my grandmother that is, making it by the yard. But always, as a family, we also did the bobbin work at home. I could show you if you’d like to know how to do it.”

  This came as quite a surprise to Bogdan. He had only moments to think about it but, why not. She was obviously very kindly and passionate about her hobby. Spending a few hours helping an old lady around her house, and also easing the loneliness he assumed she must suffer, would be fair for almost destroying her handiwork and sending her flying.

  “That is a very kind invitation, Mrs Cottar,” he said. “I should love to learn a little of this skill from you.”

  “Oh, none of that Mrs Cottar nonsense, it’s Agnes,” she said, taking a little notebook from her basket. “Now here’s my address. You pop round next Saturday afternoon, and we’ll have a first go. Sorry I can’t do anything before then ’cause I’ve got the cleaner in on Monday, me hair on Tuesday, and the girls from the club are taking me out Wednesday for Sue’s retirement do—although she doesn’t half look a cracker for her age, you know. Thursday I’ve got to finish off a lace order for a company in Stow. They always like the handmade stuff! And Friday I always go for lunch with my friend Arnie, from the market.”

  “Alright then, Agnes, thank you very much,” Bogdan said. Clearly she wasn’t in desperate need of company then. “I shall call at your house around midday then.”

  “That’ll be lovely, Bogdarn,” she called back at him, having already set off at quite a pace.

  “Sorry again for the accident,” he called after her. She waved it away in the air as she darted around a corner.

  Bogdan looked about him and wasn’t quite sure which street he’d ended up in. He soon found his way back home though, smiling to himself about Agnes. It was one of those uplifting encounters that brightens any day.

  *

  The next Saturday found him in Agnes’ little front room, in a row of old terraced houses, surrounded by the clutter, souvenirs and inscrutable memorabilia of a long life, filled with loves and losses. He’d already been shown the photograph of Alfred and Agnes with “Zeb” and Anna down at “the club” on New Year’s Eve 1974. It was thrust upon him almost as soon as he entered the door. He’d also been shown the award Agnes won five years previously for her embroidery—it seemed any work of thread and stitch came naturally to her. Conversation flowed almost as though no time had passed since they had met in
the street and he soon found himself in a crumbling paisley chair whose seat was disintegrating and, he thought, barely capable of supporting his weight.

  Agnes had prepared scones and jam for him, and even bought a pot of clotted cream which, she said, she usually only had in summer. But he was a special guest, she said, and so she had to get him something nice, “as a treat”. He didn’t want to tell her that cream, or dairy products of any sort, made him feel sick.

  “And my grandmother knew Rose and Lucy Hubbard, when they set up their little agency to help all the homeworkers,” Agnes said, apropos of nothing, pouring out some tea through a beautiful silver strainer. “Oh, yes, my grandmother knew them very well indeed. Most of her work came from Rose, you know—beyond the factory hours, you know.”

  Bogdan didn’t really know who these people were that she spoke of, or what the factory hours were. He just nodded. Agnes had a beautiful, melodic voice that was just betrayed, with a slight fracture, now and again, due to her age.

  “It was a good job too, an’ all. What with six children on her hands by that point, and two more to come. Do you take sugar?” Agnes ran the sentences into each other and it took a moment for Bogdan to realise that he had been asked a question.

  “Oh, yes, thank you, two sugars,” he stuttered. “And I don’t take the milk, if you please.”

  “Oh really, no milk. That’s just like my Alfred. He liked it almost as black as coffee, also with two sugars.” She ladled two heaped spoons into his cup, her arthritic fingers did not allow her to stir with any precision though and a few slops of tea gushed into the saucer with each stir of the spoon. “Now, there I go again, what a messy pup! I’ll get a cloth.”

  “No please do not trouble yourself,” Bogdan said, jumping to his feet. “You tell me where it is and I will fetch it for you. It is very kind of you to invite me here and I must help, if I am able.”

  “Well, what a polite young man you are, Bodgarn,” she said, with a little smile. “There’s a tea towel through on the side table in the kitchen.”

  The kitchen, if such it was, was an education. It belonged in a museum. There was no fridge, or indeed any “appliance” that might be termed modern. An ageing gas cooker, with an eye-level grill was the only concession to anything like the age they were actually in. An old Belfast sink, set low, had a few plates and saucers in it. A rickety tap dripped into it, perched on the end of a copper pipe caked in verdigris. It’s only days before that blows, he thought, I could fix her up a new one some time. But the tap had been there forty years, its demise was either unlikely or imminent.

  He found the tea towel and took it back to the lounge. As he handed it to her their forefingers touched and a little electric shock passed between them.

  “Oh,” Agnes yelped, but began laughing almost instantly. “That’s what my dad used to call the “shockers”. He had a new jumper from my mother, from Woolies, one year—God, their clothes were terrible, I don’t know why she got stuff from them, she could make much better herself—and he would rub his hands on it and creep up behind us kids and just touch the back of our ears, and do the “shockers”. He only did it to mother once, she clipped him one and split his lip. I used to hate it but my brothers loved it and he’d always end up in a rough and tumble with them afterwards. He was a lovely man, my father. Do you have a name for it, the ‘shockers’—you people, I mean?”

  Bogdan had heard this phrase “you people” many times before, normally shouted at him and his friends in the town at night and often accompanied by “go home” or “stole our jobs”. He knew Agnes did not mean this though. It was a genuine question—a true care for, and pleasure in, difference.

  “No, I do not think so,” he said, simply. “If there is such words for this, I do not know them, I am sorry.”

  “Well, no matter—it must have just been just our dad then, I never heard anyone else call it that either. As I say, you’re a very polite young man, it makes a nice change to have someone so polite around, and one interested in the lace. It’s rare to find such interest in young people,” Agnes said, handing him his cup with a jittery hand that threatened a repeat of the earlier spillage.

  “Thank you, I try my best,” Bogdan replied. “I am interested in all things that require skill and effort.”

  “That’s lovely, that is, young Bogdarn,” she said, pushing aside the tea tray and taking a roll of linen from a basket at her side. She undid the cloth ties around it and opened it on the coffee table before her. There were little compartments within, each with a couple of sticks of turned and polished wood within.

  “We’re going to learn bobbin lace—and I’m still learning, I can tell you; a very old craft, and it needs its tools, as all such crafts do—tools refined and perfected over generations. Now these are what we call bobbins,” she said, taking one of the sticks out of its neat little compartment. It was made of wood, with a dark varnish that had long since worn away in its middle, from years of use. At its base there was a purple bead, threaded on copper wire through a large hole in the wood. “They come in pairs, you see. So that you know which belongs with which.”

  Bogdan took the thing from her. It was light and simply made, with a few different turns up and down its length, and some basic ridges here and there. He rolled it back and forth in his fingertips, as though assessing its merit. He was well aware of the importance of quality tools and attempted to transfer to this new skill his understanding of his own.

  “I find those little ridges very handy now my eyes aren’t quite so good,” Agnes said. “You can feel which one you have and find its partner, just by touch. Close your eyes and I’ll show you.”

  He did. She placed about six bobbins, of varying lengths, in his other hand and closed his fingers around them. Her skin was smooth and cold.

  “Now you find the partner bobbin to the one in your left hand,” she said.

  Within a moment he had found it.

  “You see,” Agnes chuckled. “This is a work of the fingers, as much as the eyes.”

  He rolled the bobbins back and forth in his hand, coming to know them.

  “Lots of people collect these now,” she said, with regret. “It’s such a shame to think of all of them lying idle about the country in old jam jars, or displayed in cabinets. I admit, they’re very pretty, but they were made for making and not for lazing—much like ourselves.”

  She started a long list of dos and don’ts, along the lines of, “Always use brass pins, so they don’t rust in the pillow—that makes an almighty mess of the lace.” Bogdan had a job keeping up with the information she was heaping upon him. And then, as though pausing at a point before the crescendo of perfectly scored piece of music she said, “First though we will make your lace pillow.”

  And so they did. It was a rich blue velvet, with a gold trim around the edge that came from a reel of braid Agnes’ Aunt had made many years before. It was Agnes’ gift to him. He was pleased with the pillow and the trim, more pleased than he had been with anything in a long time.

  *

  Over the coming weeks he learnt the basics of making bobbin lace—the winding of the bobbins; how to prepare a pricking pattern and then to make it; dressing the pillow and how to move the lace across it when working on collars or trim; lengthening and shortening threads; starter stitches: cloth stitch, half stitch and cloth stitch and twist; the differences between Torchon, Cluny, and Bucks Point lace.

  The weeks became months. Sometimes he’d go to see Agnes on a Wednesday afternoon, but mostly on a Saturday. He’d stopped going to the pub on Saturday afternoons now, and spent most evenings practicing his lace. Michał didn’t notice. He’d become even more withdrawn and bitter. It looked likely they’d both be getting evicted soon as they had been unable to find anyone else to share the house and were very behind on the rent. At that point, Bogdan thought, he’d have to go home, and had started saving the odd five pound note, for a flight back, inside the cover of a book on lacemaking that Agnes had lent him—he thoug
ht it unlikely that Michał, who he was sure had been rifling through his things for money, would look in there.

  During the strawberry season Bogdan had a lot of work, and he was working ten hours a day for almost three weeks, without a break. He’d called at Agnes’ house one night after work and explained he would probably not see her until early the following month. She understood and said it was lovely he had the work, and that that was the main thing. He grimaced a little and she touched his hand tenderly saying, “Don’t you worry dear, I’ve earmarked a beautiful pattern for us to start once you’re ready, it’s one of my mother’s and I’d been saving it for a special day.”

  *

  The special day came and she pricked out the pattern on his pillow and guided him through the first turns of the work. Tea flowed but Bogdan’s progress was frustratingly slow.

  “I would give anything to have the skills you have,” he said, draining a cup, and resuming his slow progress on the pattern.

  “Really?” Agnes said. “Would you give anything?”

  “Oh, yes,” he replied, concentrating on selecting the right bobbin to thread over the one in his left hand. “To know something—to truly master it—that is what life is all about isn’t it. I want to be well trained at what I do, and you have been a wonderful teacher, but then it will take me many years of practice and hard work to be as accomplished as you are at it.”

  “Anything at all?” Agnes said, distantly, as though she had not been listening.

  “Yes,” he said again, firmly.

  “Then look at me,” Agnes said, taking his hands from their work and holding them in her tiny, deformed fingers.

  He did not really understand, but turned to her and looked into her eyes, the colour of which was difficult to discern in the half-light of her front room, and beneath the folds of the wrinkles that gathered around her eyes, threatening to enfold them in darkness.