The Unfinished Coat

The first owner to bring a garment to my new room was the woman with the embroidered panel. By then the landlord had found the cause of the damp, repaired the window frame and given Rafi a written account of the work. After the wall dried, he gave us separate terms to sign: the front shop hers, the room off the passage mine. I had waited for both the dry wall and the signatures before putting anything against it. The new light showed the panel’s torn edge and the smaller places where threads had been tied by an earlier hand.

I had a lockable cabinet, a bench I had paid for and a notebook with the first page left blank for the owner’s account. I asked her what she wanted the panel to do when I returned it. She said she wanted her daughter to be able to see it, and perhaps to hold it once, without losing another piece.

“Then I’ll examine it with that in mind,” I told her. “I may tell you it needs support rather than a repair you can see. I’ll write down what I find before either of us chooses.”

She left the panel with me. I stood alone in the room after she went, not because there was nothing to do but because there was. No one had given me the answer. No one had promised the room would succeed. I had asked for that responsibility and it was mine.

On the shelf above the bench were the two pieces of the lemon plate. One held drawing pins. The other held nothing yet. I liked being able to tell their story without making it a lesson about how everything broken must be fixed.

At lunch Rafi knocked on the passage door. She had a new client downstairs who wanted a hem turned before Friday. I told her I could not take it. She nodded and asked her assistant to put it in the shop’s own book. Neither of us had to apologise for the answer.

· · ·Scene break

Felix came after work carrying the coat with the cuff he had sewn himself. The stitches had held through six months and one wet London autumn. He had brought it because the other cuff was coming loose.

“You can do this one,” I said.

“I know. I wanted to do it here, if you’ll let me use your needle.”

“That would be a poor first invoice.”

“I’ll pay for the thread.”

I showed him where to sit at the small table by the window, away from the panel. He threaded the needle badly, tried again and got it through. I gave him the good lamp and returned to my examination notes. Now and then I looked up. There was a pleasure in seeing him do a thing I had taught him while I did a thing I no longer needed to explain to him first.

“I’ve been offered the next library room,” he said after a while. “Tables again, and shelving. I’d need two months of long days. I haven’t accepted.”

“Do you want it?”

“Yes. I want to ask one person to work with me this time. I won’t have every evening, but I can keep Tuesday if I plan the drawings before I begin. I might have to change a few.”

“Tell me when you know which. I have owners who will want appointments after work. We can move a Tuesday.”

He put down the needle. “I didn’t come to ask permission to take the commission.”

“I know. You came to tell me the shape of it before we both live in it.”

“I did.”

He had been the person who answered every late call, then worked after midnight to finish his own work. Now he was planning to hire help and tell the woman he loved what time he could keep. It was not a change that fitted in the neat line of a chapter ending. I wanted to kiss him for the years it had taken and for the years it might save.

“How is the cuff?” I asked.

He held it up. The stitches were less crooked this time. I reached to smooth one edge, and he caught my fingers.

“Come to the window,” he said.

“There’s no room with the table.”

“Then come close enough.”

I did. He kissed me beside the open notebook. The care of his hands had not made him less hungry, nor had the months apart taught me to want him gently. I pressed him against the window frame and heard him laugh into my mouth before he kissed me again.

“We can go upstairs,” I said.

“When you’ve finished the record.”

“I’m nearly done. You could come with me now.”

“I would like that. Finish what you promised her, then ask me again.”

I did not like being sent back to my work. I loved that he knew it mattered. He took his coat and left the table clear while I wrote the last observation. When I closed the folder, he was waiting by the passage door with both our bags.

· · ·Scene break

At my flat I put the bags down and showed him the other piece of the plate. I had brought it upstairs that morning because it was just wide enough for the keys I kept losing. His workshop key lay in it beside my shop key and the new one to the back room. None of them opened his front door.

“I thought you were about to give me a speech about keys,” he said.

“I was. Then I realised I wanted to ask you something else.”

He waited. I had spent eleven years making it easy for him to know what I needed without hearing me name it. I would have preferred, even now, to show him an object and have it do the difficult part.

“Will you make a life with me?” I asked. “Here, while we’re both in London. With your workshop and my room, your father and Rafi and the days we each give elsewhere. I don’t know exactly what we’ll call home in a year. I want us to be able to talk about it without one of us arriving after the decision.”

He set his coat over the chair. “Yes. I’d like a life where I can tell you when the work is good and when it keeps me late. I’d like you to come to me because you want me, not because you can’t manage a broken thing alone.”

“I may ask you to fix a shelf.”

“You may. I may say I can do it next Thursday.”

“And I may tell you Thursday is too late and hire someone else.”

“That sounds like us.”

“It sounds like an argument.”

“Then we’ll have one and still make supper.”

He took my hand, kissed it and waited to see whether I wanted more. I did. I led him toward the bedroom, then stopped by the door to ask whether he wanted to stay the night. He said yes, and asked if I was certain. We both were.

The next morning we would have work, and the following week would have its own demands. Tonight I turned out the light with him beside me. Through the window came the sound of Rafi lowering the shop shutter and someone on the pavement calling good night. Felix’s coat hung over the chair, its cuffs stitched by his own hands. There was room for it there, and for everything we had not yet made.