I dropped a berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
And when I had laid it on floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name
- W. B. Yeats, Song of the Wandering Aengus
Christmas slips away on a prayer and tumbles seamlessly as the garments the old guards cast lots for in Crucifixion days into a wedding anniversary.
In bygone years Una took Iris to the pictures and they watched the censored Grand Hotel bemused and confused by the incoherent plot. More recently it had been Snow White and Iris had sung the music for weeks afterwards, while Una wondered what she was doing wrong that none of the Trinity House menagerie pitched in with the household chores when she sang, and tried not to bristle at the earworms Iris generated.
There are no films this year. Una's sure they are airing down by the Cathay building but she doesn't like the idea of being away from Trinity House in case…She doesn't want to end up stranded with Iris in the city centre, that's all.
Instead she sacrifices the last of the icing sugar and makes a little marzipan Santa for the occasion. They didn't have a Christmas cake, so Una didn't bother with marzipan at Christmas, but it's a well-known piece of family lore that in the heady days of 1929, Carl and Li's wedding cake did double duty as a Christmas Cake. Una is still hoarding ingredients for Iris's birthday, so she can't run to a whole cake. But she makes the Santa in tacit acknowledgment of this fact.
She enlists Iris for help, and because a twelve year anniversary is Silk and Linen, they embroider a tablecloth and napkin set for the couple. Una teaches Iris to do it, the up-down of the needle, the sheen of satin stitch, the wrap-and-tuck-and-pull of a French Knot. Iris reminds Una of Faith. Her stitches are too big, too gappy, too impatient. Unlike Faith, Iris bristles with pride. Una unpicks not one. The stitches grin, larger-than-life up at Una from the fabric, the tension askew and the things they depict wild and off-kilter. Iris is delighted, though, and Una enjoys the atypical quietude of these shared moments. The smell of orchids and coconut oil tickles her nose as Iris hair brushes whisper-soft under Una's chin. She's getting gangly for almost-nine. She will be taller and lankier than Una ever was.
They sit, heads bowed, tucked into the same chair in the robin's egg blue upholstery of the sun room, their wicker hoops spawning marks in the fabric, elbows knocking, lips fracturing into smiles. The hoops look like picture frames and the ghost-impressions they leave behind like the shadow of a story. They remind Una of the film reels of the films she and Iris are not taking in and she likes the story they tell, not of balletic hippopotami but of love and hope and family history sliding in and out of embroidered focus.
Carl and Li pretend not to know what they're about, which makes Iris laugh, and Una smile. Puck throws peanuts to get their attention and Nenni, not to be outdone, alternately attacks Una's needle or curls up tight on the part of the tablecloth undergoing scrutiny. Some days she kicks, rabbit-fashion against the trailing hem, slender feline legs working overtime and skewering Una's carefully-constructed hoop tension. Afterwards Nenni looks so ridiculously proud that no one scolds her.
They stitch a combination of blue and yellow irises in silk shading. Iris accents them with cherry-red ladybirds. But the design still doesn't feel right, so where it makes sense they add languid green lizards in India Green, using seafoam green to shade the tails. This overbalances the ratio of greens to other colours, so it's Una's idea to send a stray robin flying over the irises and their various animals. The symmetry works, the colours rebalance, and the satin stitch this necessitates breeds deeply improbable shapes. Sometimes, for variety, Una swaps out her robins for mynas and oriels. It's Iris's idea to send bold, black music notes soaring out of their mouths, and she stitches them herself in a haphazard split stitch. It looks perfect.
They finish in time for the anniversary, and Una is almost sorry because she can't imagine when Iris will let her co-opt her like this again, when they will sit so long and still together, Iris's little hands flying zealously and getting in the way of Una's still small, if more practiced ones. The smell of orchids and coconut oil under Una's nose is pleasant. She breathes it deeply, luxuriates in it like a cat in sun. She caresses flyaway strands of Iris's thick hair and cherishes the moment. They shroud the tablecloth and napkins in tissue anyway. It rustles and crinkles with reassuring normalcy. Nenni makes a dive for that, too, all claws and the zealot's ardour for blood. Una wastes a bit of paper on crinkling it into a diversionary ball and their treasure comes away unscathed.
Li prepares dinner, because in the days when Una and Iris made themselves scarce, this was part of the tradition. It's strange, Una finds, not having to fuss over the preparation of a meal. Now and then Una finds herself drawn, magnetically to the kitchen. And then Li threatens to set Puck on her if she can't help interfering and the two women end laughing, Li brandishing a spatula like a weapon. She bats playfully with it at Una's retreating person. Una settles comfortably at the piano and allows herself to relax into the music as it unfurls like a ribbon from under her fingers. And maybe it unsettles her, this exemption from cooking, more than the lumbering Buffalo Brewsters overhead, but that's okay. The family watches those planes later, as they circle over dinner. They eat sitting out on the wicker veranda chairs, Li's delicacies arranged in invitation. It's not exactly a feast, how could it be, but there are sweet curried noodles and salted guavas, and when the fireflies blink to life like winged Chinese lanterns, Una privately decides it is perfect.
They let Papatee out, and he lies down in the garden on outsized paws, Nenni serene on his back. Akela runs helter-skelter between his people, fishing for food and mostly receiving titbits. Puck doesn't run. He sits in his self-appointed spot on Carl's shoulder and steals bites as opportunity presents. Typically, this is when Carl is mid-reminiscence about how he and Li met or where they went on their first outing together, or what the first film they saw was. Li agrees and disagrees by turn, which makes Iris laugh, and writhe and squirm with all the embarrassment of almost-nine confronted with parental devotion. Li sits there in gauzy orange that rustles like a whisper when she so much as breathes, looking Una thinks, like an outsized firefly herself. It's an old style, this one, Una knows, and the folds of it cocoon Li like some delicate butterfly. But when she moves she is still willow-fluid, unencumbered. Beautiful. Carl tells her so, and Una and Iris chorus agreement.
As the fireflies spin and the zero-planes swoop, Una brings out the turntable and sets Rhapsody in Blue playing.
'Remember?' she asks the others, and they do. Of course they do.
Carl takes Li in his arms, Puck still on his shoulder. Una waltzes Iris imperfectly, the two pairs dancing in narrow, diamond-pattern around each other. Diamond Strathspey, Una thinks, with half-remembered memories of enforced school dance lessons and a pattern she could never get right for all Walter's tutelage. Impossible, she thinks now, to learn how to dance when you don't know where to look for blushing. Even now it's not quite what they're doing. They move with too much improvisation, shoulders brushing shoulders, calves rustling against calves.
'Auntie played this for our wedding, Firecracker,' Carl tells his daughter.
Iris pulls a face, and Harry the lizard pokes his head out of her sleeve, so that Iris squeals and Una jumps and the dance stutters.
'That reminds me,' says Una. She reaches for the tissue-shrouded linens.
The dance dissembles and they collapse inelegantly but content against the wicker furniture. Una thinks it will snag Li's gown, but it doesn't. Li sweeps the folds of her old-world orange gown away and sits, relaxed as water against the snug of Carl's arm. Together they pull at the paper. The tissue comes undone and she and Carl make a show of pretending not to know what it covers. But they haven't seen the pattern, and the cries that occasions are genuine. Li touches her throat and Carl strokes the lugubrious satin stitch lizard.
'Look,' he says to Harry, 'it's your portrait. Una, that's a fabulous likeness.'
'Firecracker's idea,' says Una. Iris beams the beam of the righteous sunbeam.
Li strokes the stitches, all fingers, and Una watches her feel the difference in who did what. She smiles and says to Iris, 'Did Auntie manage to make a lady of you, after all?'
'Not a bit of it,' says Una and they laugh. The moon is up now, defying the blackout, and it feels strange to laugh in the face of it. But their family, Una thinks, has survived twelve years of condemnation and caustic observation. She supposes they can survive a little longer. Certainly until the British come through for them.
The air smells of curried noodles and residual dust, of buffalo and the remnants of guavas. Una accepts Li's kiss of thanks and Carl's bear-hug. She watches as he swoops Iris up into his arms and the little girl is kissed and hugged in her turn.
'You've reminded me,' says Carl. 'I have things for you, too. Almost forgot.'
There is a moment when the women catch each other's eye and teeter on the edge of laughter. Then Li's eyes crinkle and they succumb, helpless, because of course Carl bought and then forgot about whatever gift he planned for the evening.
'What would he do?' asks Li watching father and daughter trail into the house, 'without us?'
'Get hopelessly lost,' says Una and rests her head against Li's shoulder. 'Probably he'd forget he was teaching university students and end up with a whole heard of buffalo, several monkeys and nothing to eat.' She feels the jolt of Li's shoulder as she begins to laugh again. It's contagious. Una laughs too. They look up at the pregnant swell of the moon, eyes streaming and find the silvery light refracts across their eyeline in gossamer-rainbows.
'That's the least of it,' says Li. 'There would be lizards, snakes, probably half a dozen spiders…'
'At least,' says Una.
'How many tame birds?' asks Li.
'I sense,' says Carl from the doorway, 'they're mocking me, Firecracker. What do you think?'
Iris says, 'What's wrong with having lots of lizards and snakes?'
Mirth threatens again. Una reigns it in – just – because she is now looking at Iris, not Li and reluctant to puncture the child's feelings.
'Nothing at all, little one,' says Li. She holds out her arms and Iris tumbles into them, feet over hem over ankles, a bundle of laughing, overtired contentment. The turntable now plays Let's Call the Whole Thing Off, Puck having taken it upon himself to change the record. Puck is fascinated by music, and by the way the turntable works, especially. Once he took it apart to catastrophic effect. Well, he took the old turntable apart to catastrophic effect, because no one could afterwards reassemble it. These days, though, Puck sticks to the records, turning them and turning them like a magician spinning a fire-stick. Una has watched him dance his way through this trick for years. He does it now, hop-stepping around the spinning record while the long arm of the needle arcs swan-graceful across it. For a moment they forget Carl's promised gift and sit there listening, buoyed by the playfulness of the music, by Puck's best impression yet of Fred Astaire. Iris skips into his thin grey arms and they improvise a double act.
But neither girl nor monkey seems to care about an audience because as Iris dances around Puck she says over her shoulder, 'Daddy, the gifts!'
They startle to alertness, the spell of the music slipping silk-slick off of them.
'Right,' says Carl. 'I was going to wrap them, but…'
There are two boxes, slim and elongated. He hands one to Li and the other to Una, who protests.
'But this isn't to do with me.'
'Course it is,' says Carl. 'The wedding only happened because you found us someone to take the service. I do remember things, you know. Except you're not normally here to remind about that and tonight you are, so…'
He shrugs. Una shakes her head, indulgent. Recalls how hard it was, in those long days of 1929. How insurmountable their problems seemed when no minster not Presbyterian or Anglican or Catholic – certainly no one from Chinatown – would take the marriage rites in hand. How strange, Una thinks, fingering the box in her lap, that that should be the least of their problems after all.
A voice on the record threatens to call the whole thing off and Una wonders how often Carl and Li circled that theme in olden days. How often they asked was it worth it and could they bear it, and how would they all weather it. So many what ifs. She watches the fireflies like sentient lanterns and like that Una is back in the sun room on that grey November afternoon, remembering inspiration like the Holy Spirit descending on her. How attached, she asked, still thinking it through, are you to it being a Presbyterian wedding?
They had laughed afterwards, over the nuances of it, the theological distinctions Una doubted that even now anyone really grasped between Methodists and Presbyterians. On the record the singers agree to call the calling-off off, segueing into unlikely but artful improvisation, and Una recognizes the sentiment. Oh, if we should part…that would break my heart…Thinks it is where the three of them wound up that afternoon in November, because by then they were all too much to one another not to find a way to make the marriage work, condemnation and outsider scrutiny notwithstanding. Slowly, Una lifts the lid of the box in her lap.
Slim, slippery silver cord unspools before her. It lies there like liquid, wiry moonlight, reflecting the light of the fireflies. And there at the centre, pulsing like a heart there is – but surely not – a sapphire. It is blue as an iris, a bluebird, the sea on a hot summer's noon. Blue as midnight or the slender blue band of a zero plane. It lies cushioned on padded satin lining, the switch-slender cord a ribbon of sheer moonlight, with an azure heart. It looks and feels like satin too, smooth and sheer-polished under Una's fingers.
'Carl,' she begins.
'For your eyes,' says Carl as if this is obvious. Easy. 'Mummy's eyes.'
It's not that kind of anniversary. And it certainly isn't Una's occasion. She says none of this. Just gapes at him like a stunned, gasping fish, the silver kind snagged by hazel switch in some mystical wood. Thank you sticks hard and feeling-dense in her throat.
Una looks across the table and sees that Li has its twin, only that heart is red. Red for luck, for blood, for remembrance and for love unwavering through adversity. Li's necklace heart is a ruby. Of course it is. The price of virtuous women, or near enough. The warm scarlet of her wedding gown, the rich red of poppies. Colour aside, the jewellery is the same even to the charm at the centre, of three leaping fish. They leap as they do in stained glass windows, mouth to tail to mouth, always touching, always enmeshed. In church they are a Trinitarian emblem, and perhaps that was part of Carl's idea in choosing it, Una thinks, feeling the silvery spiked prongs of the nearest fish fin. But she doubts that's the whole of it. Trinity House, after all, owes its name to more than belief in God, however staunch.
Yeats comes back to Una like a susurration, like a prayer.
And when the moths were on the wing
And moths like stars were flickering out
I dropped the berry in the stream
And caught a little, silver trout.
'For luck,' says Carl, needlessly. 'I know it's not thematic or anything but I saw them, and I saw the charm and…'
He rambles on, but like the music, Una looses the thread of it. Li says it best. She takes Carl's hand and kisses it, then kisses him thoroughly.
'They're perfect,' she says. 'Absolutely perfect.'
Parnokianlipstic - I'm delighted you think Carl works. Possibly it's the monkey in this universe but when I try to get a handle on him I think cheeky first, and then playful, and as absent-minded as John. But then, too, incredibly good with gifts and this depth of love for all his people, whether they go on two or four or no legs. As for the music - that's one of my favourite things about Christmas, so inevitable it snuck in here, I think. But you're right, if I think cheeky and affectionate when I think Carl I think musical and steel-boned when I think Una. So there's always a bit of music somewhere when she's got the spotlight. And of course the Apocalypse of Candles...I taught primary school for a bit and it comes through when I tackle the work at the school. Nothing with pouring water or fire unless you were actively courting catastrophe and mess! As always, love the musical recommendations. It's always such a treat to have someone to chat music with. Also on there this week, Elgar's Song to Autumn/Herbstlied, partly because I need to learn it but also because the sentiment feels perfect for this last gasp of Una's world as it was.