Chapter 10

Black shapes in the drizzle were crisscrossing the end of Arrow Street. The town centre market was coming to an end and the clatter from the dismantling of the market stalls reached the window behind which Anjali was working.

There were now three dress-suits draped over mannequins at one end of the consulting room.

Anjali was working alone, completing the small details, the tiny stitches that one tends to address when nervous about the coming day. There was comfort to be found in the soothing movement of a bright needle as it fastened down the last few ends. She was abruptly pulled from a tangle of meditation and fatigue by the sound of the back door opening. Panya came into the consulting room, dripping from the drizzle that was falling through the evening air.

‘I decided I had better come back rather than telephoning,’ said Panya. ‘We have been so busy that I never had the chance to look in detail at the documents the Factory Manager is presenting tomorrow. I had pulled together a pan of stew; it was something I could do quickly and then leave it to finish. Then I sat down at the table and flicked through the presentation.’

She pulled the copy of the presentation from out of the plastic bag she had used to protect it from the drizzle. She opened the document at a page she had marked with a piece of yellow material, cut for that purpose.

‘This presentation shuts the main weaving mill,’ she said.

‘Yes, I know,’ replied Anjali after a pause. ‘It is in the detail.’

‘This presentation shuts the weaving mill,’ repeated Panya.

‘Panya....I know.’

‘We cannot be a part of this any longer, Anjali.’

This was the most resolute that Anjali had seen Panya. She had felt that this moment was coming. It was that wave that eventually reaches you, soaking your feet on a shingle beach. It was always coming.

‘I am following a thread of silk,’ Anjali said slowly. ‘And I know it can lead me to all those places I have wanted to reach, since I first rubbed my fingers through folded fabric in my uncle’s workshop, and felt everything that it was capable of. It has always worried me, the thought that this silk thread would fray or perish before I reached the end of it.’

Panya was still looking down at the presentation. She had the control of a mantelpiece clock. She would strike only when the hour had come.

Anjali took this as a sign that Panya was prepared to reach a compromise and pushed her case further.

‘I have taken a fabric and made it into far more than a bundle of material. I have made a design that not only impresses, but it does so with pinpoint accuracy. This is the conclusion that I have worked for. It is the flow of the river into the sea. I cannot stop it now.’

‘The design of the clothing is good, Anjali,’ said Panya after a precise pause. ‘But the design we have created only strengthens the delivery of the message. There is still the message. We have many customers for repairs and alterations who work at that mill. What will they think when they find that we were involved with this?’

Anjali took a pin from the cushion on her arm and pushed it through the cuff of one of the jackets.

‘The Factory Manager is just making changes,’ she said. ‘If we are ever to be more than a shop that alters and repairs, we need to work with those in the town that have the need and the means to change things. Fashion is expensive – and change is the heartbeat of fashion. We cannot work at the cutting edge, Panya, without cutting.’

It was a deliberate statement. It was like the snip of a pair of scissors through lace.

‘You have hold of the wolf by the fabric of its ears, Anjali. It will bite us and it will bite hard. This is a small town where reputations are quickly formed and quickly destroyed. The town is like an echo chamber, any rumour echoes amongst its buildings and is soon distorted. Every report, every comment, every opinion will always sound far worse in echo than it ever did in action.’

‘A tailor lives from stitch to stitch,’ replied Anjali. ‘Design, form, texture, colour, they accompany a person through life, they do not lead them. We are tailors. We create garments and that is all we are responsible for.’

‘We are a paid service, and without that service it is possible this factory manager’s plan will not be adopted. We have many customers for repairs and alterations who work at that mill. I ask you again, what will they think if they find out that we were involved with this?’

Anjali let Panya’s words hang in the air. There are certain materials that will run together and certain that will clash. The trouble for a tailor is that you cannot fully know how different fabrics will work together until you see them at full stretch.

‘A badly dressed thug is a thug, Anjali. But a well-dressed thug is a name, is a presence, is a person of note. We make that difference - we make the alteration - and we cannot be anything but responsible for the alteration that we decide to tailor.

‘We will finish what we have started and then we will deliver the clothes to the Factory Manager, and we will tell him we have gone as far as we can. He can make his presentation, and we will return to our business. We repair and we make alterations. In this damp valley that is a service of real value.’

Panya turned and left. Anjali returned to the steady movement of the needle through the cloth. From that moment every cut of the scissors or snap of the cotton seemed final.