‘I don’t suppose you tell them who does the garden?’
Margaret dug deeper into her basket and dragged out a fragment of crumpled flannelette, sparrow-egg blue with navy stripes. ‘This’ll do. Serviceable and warm.’
‘And ugly. You made that into pyjamas for Victor before last winter.’
‘Did I? Well, there’s enough for a shirt. Come here, Matthew.’ And she held the piece first across his back from shoulder point to shoulder point and then from the base of his neck to his waist.
‘Plenty. It’ll do. You like it, don’t you, Matthew?’
He shook his head.
‘I think it’s nice. Manly. Your father liked it.’
‘He’s dying.’
‘Don’t be silly, Matthew. Of course he’s not.’
Gran snatched up the piece of flannelette and threw it into the basket. ‘It’s all right for a dying man. It’s not all right for Matthew. Have some feeling for him.’
A little ashamed, Margaret flushed. ‘Oh, very well. If you have to be so pernicketty. We can’t really afford to be choosy, but if you say so.’ She searched again and held up a piece of emerald silk, but as she turned it towards the light from the door a rainbow of indigo, purple and violet shivered across its width. Matthew gasped and reached for it. His mother caught it away from his grasping hand.
‘Now what about this? Fit for a king, eh? A Teddy Woodbine coat—not a cloth of gold but of emerald.’ And she held it against her face so that her eyes turned the green of bright shallows and her hair blazed with ruby lights. ‘For Matthew, eh? You’d like to wear this to school? A little prince and all the other boys would kiss the ground.’ She giggled. ‘What about a shirt of this? Matthew? Mother?’
‘Now you want to give him stolen goods.’
‘It wasn’t stolen. Just borrowed by Clicketty from his friend at the wharf. It was a damaged bolt. Seawater had stained it.’
‘There was a lot seawater hadn’t stained. You got a new dress out of it.’
‘I know.’ Margaret’s eyes were dreamy. ‘Green is my colour.’
‘But not Matthew’s. Put it away. Do you want to make him look foolish among the other boys?’
‘But he won’t.’ She turned to her son. ‘You’d like it, wouldn’t you, Matthew? This silk is better than old flannelette. It could match Mother’s dress. We’d be like brother and sister. I’ll make you a shirt out of this.’
‘You’ll do no such thing, Margaret. Your perversity is tiresome. If you can’t make him clothes out of appropriate material then don’t make him anything.’
Margaret pouted. ‘Very well. Gran’s such a spoilsport, Matthew. She thinks I’m teasing you. Am I?’
He nodded.
‘What a wicked mother I am.’ She laughed and jumping up gave him a hug. ‘And now if I don’t have to make you clothes you may have to be the Devil all over.’ With a quick kiss she handed him both pieces of cloth but her eyes longingly followed the green silk.
Gingerly he picked up the flannelette, holding it from him, but the silk he clasped against his body where it nested cool and warm.
He didn’t really care about new clothes. Gran could patch and darn the ones he had, then wash and iron them. He had a pair of shoes for school; at home he went bare-footed. Although Gran worried about the way he looked he was confused about its importance. Once, some months earlier, a boy had come to play with him. He had a new cap on his head and his leather shoes shone.
Gran had been pleased. She had given them a slice of her fresh bread and treacle and they had sat on the step with sticky faces and fingers grinning at each other. Matthew did not know what to offer his visitor for entertainment but it didn’t matter because his self-appointed friend had a pocketful of knuckle bones and they played jacks.
Then Mother had come home. One look and she shouted: ‘Off with you! Don’t come here! We don’t want your type around!’ And she took her feather duster from its hook behind the kitchen door and shooed him off the step, following him down the path shouting and shooing as if he’d been a stray cat in the fowlyard.
The boy had looked surprised and confused, then embarrassed, angry.
‘Don’t want to stay here. Hate your old place.’ And as he reached the gate: ‘You silly old woman. You two silly old women.’ And he stuck out his tongue before he ran off.
‘Oh, Margaret.’ Gran, with shocked face, had hurried after her to the gate. ‘Oh, Margaret. He has no friends.’
‘Not that sort.’
‘What sort, Margaret?’
‘Not good enough. Touch tar and you’ll be defiled.’
‘Defiled? Touch tar? What are you talking about?’
‘His mother’s a half-caste.’
‘His father’s a decent man who works with Edward.’
‘And consorts with barmaids like he does.’
‘No. And nor does Edward. Your snobbery is both farcical as well as painful. The boy was better dressed than our Matthew.’
‘Clothes aren’t everything.’
‘You’ll doom Matthew to a life of loneliness.’
‘He can find other friends. From nice families.’
‘Nice families.’ And Gran sighed again and went back to the kitchen with heavy steps.
At the end of the garden, under the passionfruit vine which held up a decaying woodshed, Matthew built a cubbyhouse. There he stored the few treasures he had collected: shells from the beach; marbled stones from the riverbank; leaves eaten to skeletons so that only the fragile veins remained interwoven like brown lace.
In an old biscuit tin with a picture of a girl on a swing festooned with roses he reverently laid the green silk. The light filtered through the vines in quivering spots of iridescent brilliance, dazzling where it hit the cloth and shattering into a kaleidoscope of colour at the edges. As he tipped his head this way and that to view the material the light changed and the cloth shimmered into an infinity of colour variations.
Matthew took up the cloth
