‘OW!’
Al plunged his thumb into his mouth, tasted blood and wondered for the second time that afternoon if this was really such a Great Idea, after all.
‘Are you all right?’ said Spike.
‘No! Stucka needoo immee fum!’
‘Would someone care to elucidate?’
‘He said he stuck his needle in his thumb,’ said Jon. ‘What’s up, Spike? Don’t you understand plain English?’
‘Sorry. Need new batteries in the Universal Translator—you know how it is. Is it bad?’
Al yanked his thumb out and squinted at it. ‘Nah, just a bit painful, that’s all.’
‘Well, just be more careful. It’s like my sewing teacher said: you treat the needle as you would a girl, as something deserving of a little respect.’
‘Yeah?’ said Tony. ‘He’s obviously never met my sister.’
They laughed, went on with their sewing. The sooner they got this over with, the sooner they could get down to doing something more worthwhile.
They were in Tony’s bedroom, had been there since getting in from school. It was their first sewing lesson, and not wishing to use for practice the material on which they had spent so much money and embarrassment, they had all managed to quietly borrow some scraps of material from somewhere. All except Eddie, who had just come straight out and asked his mum for some. And his mum, being his mum and therefore not even remotely interested in what he might be up to, just handed some over. No questions asked. Sometimes, there were advantages in having less-than-loving parents.
As for the rest of them, Al’s had come from his mother’s rag-bag, the sack of odd bits of material she used for dusters and mopping up spillages and the like. Jon had raided his clothes drawers, his own mother having the annoying habit of never throwing anything out even after it had long since ceased to fit him. One old T-shirt was enough. And Tony? He’d raided his sister’s clothes drawers. Her favourite denim skirt should be enough, he reckoned. He also reckoned his days on this Earth were now seriously numbered.
‘Right!’ said Spike. ‘Let’s have a look at what you’ve done.’
They handed him their bits of sewn material. And they were just bits at this stage, to give them, as Spike had said, the feel of the needle and some practice at stitching.
‘Not bad,’ he said as he surveyed their handiwork. ‘You’ve all got the general idea but…’
‘But what?’ said Al. ‘It looks okay, don’t it?’
‘Indeed it does. But remember that this is only what we call tacking, just rough stitching to hold the material together before we get to the proper stuff. And you have to admit that what you’ve done here is very rough.’
‘Yeah? And?’
‘And unless you want your rats to fall apart with the first fork being stuck into them, you’ll need something a little more substantial to keep them together.’
They gazed blankly at him, all four of them realising what they’d let themselves in for.
‘An’ I thought it was just gonna be a case of a few stitches here an’ there,’ Tony grumbled as he held up the remains of his sister’s skirt.
‘Far from it, I fear,’ said Spike. ‘If it’s going to be done, it’s got to be done properly.’
‘He’s got a point, guys,’ said Al dejectedly. ‘No use us making them if they ain’t gonna do the job.’
‘Indeed. As we have already discussed, you’ll only get the one shot at this. You have to make it a good one.’
‘Okay, what do you suggest?’
‘Something called a backstitch. It’s fairly simple and strong enough for your purpose, provided it’s done properly.’
‘Provided it’s done properly,’ Al repeated dryly. ‘And you really think we’re up to that?’
‘Of course! Here, let me show you…’
He picked up a needle and a scrap of rag. Then, explaining each step as he went, he passed the needle through the material three times in the same place to form an anchor point and started sewing. It looked easy enough. He sewed a full stitch, then doubled back and inserted the needle half a stitch length back, then forward another full stitch, back another half-stitch…forward a full stitch…back a half-stitch. And so he went on—forward…back…forward…back—until he had a neat line of overlapping thread running along the rag.
‘There you are!’ he said, holding it up for all to see. ‘Backstitching in one easy lesson.’
They clustered round, squinting at it as though he’d just performed some amazing magical trick.
‘Nothing to it when you see it being done,’ said Jon, a note of awe in his voice.
‘And that being the case, I suggest you get cracking and see for yourselves how easy it is.’
They got cracking. It was easy, too. Even Eddie was managing to create a line of stitching that looked reasonably straight, even perfectly straight if he bent the material a little.
‘This is going okay,’ he said, obviously more than a little pleased with himself.
‘Indeed it is,’ said Spike, looking over his efforts and actually managing to find something to admire. ‘You learn quickly.’
‘Hey, thanks!’
‘What about the rest of us?’ said Al, not wanting to be left out. ‘How are we doing?’
Spike cast a glance over each of their rags. ‘Not bad,’ he said approvingly. ‘Not bad at all. You all seem to have caught on very quickly. Keep going. Get some practice in while you can.’
They kept going, all four of them bent over their work like they’d found a new career and wanted to make the best of it.
‘Guess what, guys,’ said Al. ‘We’re…’ He hesitated, glanced questioningly at Spike. ‘What do you call people who do sewing?’
‘For a living?’
‘Yeah, what do you call people who do sewing for a living?’
‘I believe the correct term is seamstress,’ said Spike.
‘That’s us, then. We’re all seamstresses.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ said Spike, ‘but I rather think not.’
‘Well, okay, so we ain’t doin’ it for the money but—’
‘Oh no, it’s not that. If you were female then you’d be a seamstress. But seeing as you’re male, you’d be a tailor.’
‘I thought a woman tailor was a tailoress.’
‘No,’ said Spike patiently, ‘seamstress.’
‘So then a male seamstress isn’t a seamster.’
‘Look at it this way, I don’t somehow think you’ll find the word in a dictionary.’
‘Never use them,’ said Tony. ‘Dictionaries, I mean.’
‘Philistine! A greater storehouse of knowledge would be hard to find.’
‘Yeah, well, you need to use them, don’t you?’ said Jon.
‘Do I, now! And why should that be, I wonder.’
‘’Cos of the way you talk. You need all them words ’cos you talk different to what we do.’
‘Really? I can’t say I’d noticed…’
‘Oh, come on!’ said Al. ‘You listen to you an’ then you listen to us. You talk totally differently. Personally, I think you do it on purpose.’
‘I probably do ham it up a little, I have to admit,’ said Spike wistfully. ‘Why? Does it cause you any problems?’
‘Nah, we all do it from time to time. We did it when we shoved you down the bog that time, talked as rough as we could.’
‘Yes, I rather thought you did. I couldn’t believe that anyone could really speak in such a way.’
‘My dad does,’ said Eddie brightly. ‘Sometimes, he talks so bad, me mum don’t understand a word he’s saying.’
‘Yeah but that’s only when he’s drunk,’ said Jon.
‘No, no! He does, he really talks like that! Sort of cuts bits off his words an’ stuff like that.’
‘It does happen,’ said Spike ruefully. ‘And with increasing frequency, I’m rather afraid. There’s a term for it, I believe: Estuary English.’
‘Estuary English,’ Al repeated, puzzled. ?
??Why estuary?’
‘Because the speech is like the water you find in a river estuary—shallow, not very clear and flowing lazily through a wide mouth.’
‘Yeah, that’s me dad all right,’ said Eddie.
They laughed.
‘Such disrespect,’ said Spike. ‘Do you really harbour such negative feelings towards your father?’
‘You ain’t met his dad,’ said Al.
‘Yes but even so…’
‘An’ you should see him when he’s drunk,’ said Jon.
‘But—’
‘Or had his dole cut off,’ said Tony.
‘No, my dad ain’t much,’ said Eddie, interrupting them all. ‘He spends more time on the dole than he does in work, an’ what money he does get, he spends more in the pub than he does on us. So no, I don’t like him much.’
Al looked across at his friend bent over his sewing, feeling genuine pity for him. Eddie didn’t have much going for him. He wasn’t especially bright or good-looking. And on top of all that, it seemed he had his family to contend with. People who should be there when he needed them but were not, never would be while they submerged themselves in the only meaningless existence they knew or even aspired to, and that was probably the greater tragedy. But he had his friends, the three of them—no, now the four of them—and that, he knew, they all knew, would always make up for a lot.
‘What’s your dad like, Spike?’ he said, wrenching his gaze away.
‘What is my dad like?’ He repeated the question slowly, as though pondering how best to answer it. ‘Well, he doesn’t get drunk, doesn’t get his dole cut off and he enunciates perfect English.’
‘That don’t exactly tell us much. Come on, what’s he like, what’s he really like?’
‘Probably much like your own fathers in many ways, I should guess, always under the delusion that they know best.’
‘Don’t we know it?’ said Jon. ‘If my old man found out about even half of what I get up to, he’d do his crust.’
‘You’re lucky to even get the chance to do something in the first place.’
‘Why?’ said Al. ‘Does your dad keep you under his thumb or something?’
‘Let’s just say that nothing escapes him.’
‘That bad, huh?’
‘Yes, I sometimes wonder if he ever remembers he was young himself, once.’
‘Some people are born old, that’s what me nan says,’ said Tony. ‘They never know what it’s like to act like a kid, they’re too busy trying to be grown up.’
‘Wise words,’ Spike mused. ‘You would do well to remember them.’
‘So what about your teachers?’ said Eddie. ‘I’ve always wondered what teachers at a posh school were like.’
‘My teachers? Much the same as teachers everywhere, I imagine, always under the delusion—’
‘—that they know best,’ Al finished for him, and they laughed again.
‘I think they are the way they are because of what they have to teach,’ said Spike. ‘It can’t be much fun churning out the same nonsense lesson after lesson.’
‘Yeah, it’s crap, all right,’ said Al. ‘Don’t know why they bother, half the time.’
‘I have an older cousin,’ said Spike, ‘left school a few years ago and went on to college then university. He’s working now—something in the City, I believe—and he told me not so long ago that he’s never used most of what he was taught in school. Basic numeracy and literacy skills, yes, but nothing else of any real consequence.’
‘Makes you wonder why we need to go to school in the first place,’ said Eddie.
‘Oh, as a learning institution, school’s fine in theory. It’s what they teach in it that’s so often questionable.’
‘What does your cousin reckon on that one, Spike?’ said Al. ‘What does he think they should be teaching us?’
‘He has clear ideas on the subject. School should indeed teach us how to read and write and add up, but it should also be preparing us for life, for the world we live in.’
‘He got that one right,’ said Jon. ‘Don’t see me ever needing the History and Economics of Cocoa Production in Africa for any job I’m likely to get.’
‘You were taught that?’
‘In Geography. For a whole term.’
‘Then I imagine you all know what I mean. No, my cousin would much rather we were taught things like modern politics, comparative religion, economic theory—all the sort of things that might help make us better able to understand the world and form our own judgements on it.’
‘Maybe there’s some reason why they don’t,’ Al offered.
‘Ah, now, one of my friends has a theory about that. He considers that we’re taught what we’re taught in order to make us fit to serve as a cog in someone’s great machine and no more. Factory fodder, he calls it.’
‘He could be right,’ said Jon. ‘If you started to think for yourself, you might start to understand things your boss probably wouldn’t want you to.’
‘Or the Government,’ said Al, ‘don’t forget the Government. After all, it’s them what sets the curriculum.’
‘Hey, now we’re getting into conspiracy theories,’ said Tony.
‘And who’s to say it isn’t true, even so? Ain’t you ever wondered why we have to learn the stuff we’re told to learn? There could well be a reason for it.’
‘Well, it’s what my friend thinks,’ said Spike, ‘for what it’s worth.’
‘Since we’re talking about your friends,’ said Al, ‘what are they like?’
‘Again, pretty much the same as yours, I imagine, with the same hopes and dreams, and the same fears.’
‘You mean they’ve got big sisters, too!’ Tony quipped.
‘Some. But none, I’ll wager, quite like yours.’
‘That’s a relief,’ said Al with feeling. ‘So what else can you tell us about them?’
Spike thought for a moment, as though he was having some difficulty finding the right words.
‘Nothing much, really,’ he said at length. ‘Nothing of any real value, anyway. You’d have to meet them to get a real idea of what you’re seeking.’
He stopped, gazing blankly into space. The others looked at him, then at each other, wondering if being with them had finally got to him.
‘You okay, Spike?’ said Al.
‘Yes,’ he said vaguely. ‘Yes, I’m fine. I have just had the most extraordinary flash of inspiration.’
‘What, use a sewing-machine?’ said Jon, holding up his piece of rag and looking at it ruefully.
‘No, no! My friends!’
‘What about them?’
‘You want to know what they’re like, why don’t you all come and meet them?’
They glanced at each other again: yep, being with them had got to him.
‘Are you serious!’ said Al. ‘What makes you think they’d want to hang out with guys like us?’
Spike sighed. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘this snobbery you suffer from is really most tiresome.’
‘Snobbery! Me! But it’s them what’s got the money!’
‘And who is creating the social barrier because of that money?’ said Spike reasonably.
Al needed a moment to take that one in. ‘You mean…I’m the snob in this one?’
‘It cuts both ways. There are those in the world who take a positive delight in acting like a slob, who refuse manners or cultured behaviour in any shape or form.’
‘I see we’re back to me dad,’ said Eddie.
‘I’m not saying, of course, that you’re anything like a slob,’ Spike went on, ‘but just because someone seems to have a little more in the way of material wealth than you or speaks with a little more refinement, is that any reason to avoid them? After all, they’re just the same as you underneath.’
‘You mean when they fart, they still make a smell,’ said Jon.
‘Succinct, if a little coarse. But I’m serious, come and meet them. I’m sure you’ll find the experience most instru
ctive.’
Al looked round at them all, they at him. Then they were nodding and murmuring vague agreement.
‘Fine,’ said Spike. ‘I’ll take it as settled, then. Just leave it to me to arrange it.’
After that, there didn’t seem to be much left to say. A silence descended over them as they went on with their sewing. It was Tony who broke it.
‘Spike,’ he said, ‘when you called me a Philistine just now…’
‘Ye-e-s.’
‘…well, what is a Philistine?’
Spike smiled. ‘Look it up in a dictionary.’
NINE