Crafting Memories

Fond recollections are shared in Ruth Shapiro’s touching short story.

MUM handed me the knitting bag. We were in Granny Anne’s lounge, surrounded by boxes, books, magazines and all sorts of keepsakes, including pictures of family, grandchildren, holidays, Christmas and all those special occasions.

Mum and I bagged and boxed the accumulations of a life. A life well lived, loving and being loved by so many.

Granny Anne had been like a second mother to me. Mum and Dad owned a small but packed general store, and they worked long hours, often seven days a week.

It left them less time for me. That was where Granny Anne came in. She had already brought up her four children, and was now reaping the rewards with her grandchildren.

However, my mother was the youngest of her children and I was the youngest of her grandchildren.

My older cousins had lives of their own and did not have the same free time to enjoy with Granny Anne.

She would sit and read to me when I was very young and, as I grew older, we would do puzzles together. I would practise my reading by reading to her.

When she was still driving, we would go down to the sea on a sunny day, or she would make up a picnic and we’d visit the park to eat our sandwiches and drink lemonade under the leafy trees.

Granny Anne would watch me play on the swings, the roundabout and the climbing frame.

Sometimes we would hop on the bus or the train and go into town together.

We would look at all the lovely things for sale and I would tell Granny Anne what I’d buy for my house when I was grown up.

We would always visit the haberdashery in the big department store, and Granny would buy some bright wools and perhaps a knitting pattern.

Then we’d look at the buttons. They were not, as I believed at first, all round.

Some were square, some triangular-shaped. There were a lot of novelty ones.

Those were always the ones I liked best.

Some were wooden, some shaped like hearts, some so shiny I could see my face in them.

When I was out with Granny Anne, it was always a happy face!

“I think your granny would like you to have this,” Mum said solemnly.

It was Granny’s knitting bag. Tears pricked my eyes as I took it from Mum.

Granny’s knitting bag was made of green tapestry, with a wooden opening at the top which I unclipped to reveal plenty of storage to hold wools, needles and all the paraphernalia that a knitter needs.

It was one of her prized possessions and something that meant a lot to us all. “Thank you.” I sniffed. I looked inside. I spotted a ball of navy wool and remembered Granny Anne had knitted me a warm navy jumper for school. It had been so itchy!

“Thank you, Granny Anne!” I laughed.

There was a twisted hank of coloured wool – orange, pink, red and yellow.

“I remember this. My teenage psychedelic jumper! It was so bright that my friends joked about having to wear sunglasses when I wore it.

“Thanks again, Granny Anne!”

I spotted a couple of balls of shocking pink.

“She knitted me a pair of leg warmers and matching gloves when I was going through my ‘Fame’ phase!”

I began to realise that all these balls of wool, the garments they made and the stories they told, made me feel a lot closer to Granny Anne.

I had not really lost her. She was living again through her wools and through my memories. I found crochet hooks. Granny Anne had tried (unsuccessfully, although it was no fault of hers) to teach me to crochet.

I had eventually got the hang of knitting after several lessons, but crochet always confused me.

I always ended up with the wool tangled and produced nothing that you could describe as a finished piece.

However, seeing the hooks again reminded me of the enormous bedspread she had crocheted for me when I moved in with friends into my first flat.

It was great to snuggle into on a winter’s night. My friends had been so envious. I was cosy whilst they shivered.

Further down the bag I found a couple of balls of white wool.

When Dave and I first got married, she crocheted us a lacy white bedcover.

Tears sprang to my eyes. “Oh, Granny Anne –” I began, but something else caught my attention. “Now, what’s this?”

I picked it up, still on its needles. It was a garment knitted in the softest pink wool. A very small garment. I gasped.

“That,” Mum interjected, “is for your darling baby girl when she arrives next month.”

As I delved deeper into the knitting bag I found tiny pink mother-of-pearl buttons.

“Oh, Granny Anne!” I cried as I marvelled, picturing the finished matinee jacket.

I knew that when my baby was born she would be able to wear this wonderful garment that really overflowed with love.

I also knew what I would name my darling daughter.

There was something more than wool to be found in my gran’s knitting bag . . .

The End.

ADELINE finished reading the short note Charles Maine had passed to her. “So you see, Miss Lee,” he said to her, “it is unclear whether the lady who seeks my assistance lives alone.

“That being the case, I should be grateful if you would accompany me on this investigation.”

“As chaperone? Mr Maine, these are changed and modern times.”

That being the case, from where, she wondered, was this upsurge in interest in ghosts and similar nonsense coming?

The era in which they lived – the reign of Victoria – would go down, she was sure, as a golden age of science and innovation.

Yet Maine made a living as a psychical investigator – or ghost-hunter, as most people phrased it. Why?

And why did she get involved in it?

She supposed she could answer that easily enough.

Adeline enjoyed the high level of success she had in debunking his outlandish theories!

She looked again at the address on the note.

“A small town, not too far away,” she said.

“And now well-connected by rail, Miss Lee.”

“Very well,” Adeline said. “Tomorrow, you say?”

****

Their destination, a large, handsome house, was a short walk from the station.

“I do not think she lives alone,” Adeline said to Maine as they proceeded up the curving driveway.

“I see two maids through that window. So she has staff.”

This pleased Adeline, who was looking forward to being served refreshments in warm surroundings.

However, it was not a maid but rather Harriet, the young woman who’d written the note, who opened the door.

She did not invite them in, and instead ushered them back down the driveway, almost to the road itself.

“Forgive me,” Harriet said. “My mother has returned earlier than planned from my sister’s. I do not wish to upset her with your presence.

“She was absent the night the disturbance happened, and we have avoided mentioning it.”

Perched on a hard bench, the wind still blowing, Maine and Adeline listened as Harriet explained.

“I was disturbed at midnight by a loud knocking on the door.”

“The main door?” Maine queried.

Harriet nodded.

“Then came a voice. It was difficult to hear everything, on account of the clock striking twelve, but I caught the words ‘return’, ‘moon’ and ‘death’.

“I looked out of the window of my room,” she pointed back to the house, “but no-one was in sight although it is an open aspect. Whoever had been at the door had vanished!”

Harriet explained that she’d read some of Maine’s writings and thus thought to contact him.

“My brother subscribes to a periodical you contribute to.”

“Was he here on the night in question?”

“No. He is away. He is an adventurer, frequently visiting far-flung places.” She looked proud of him. “That is why I am so worried. The date he was due to return coincided with the last full moon, but he has not yet come back.”

She was silent for a moment.

“I fear it was a spiritmessenger I heard, Mr Maine, warning me that something has befallen him.”

At that moment, a stern voice called out from the direction of the house.

“Harriet! Come here!”