Chapter 5 Kate
KATE
The game’s afoot.
Pia’s text is short:
Have you seen the Instagram post?
They had swapped numbers at the café, planning to meet for coffee again soon. Another text arrives, this time with a link and a note:
Sorry about that. Might not know what I’m on about.
Kate clicks on the link. There is a post against a bright green background. It reads:
To be, or not to be . . . an artist
If music be . . . your thin?g
The short and the long of it . . . want to write a poem, a short story, or the next Harry Potter?
Then you need to know about the MACKL competition.
The what? Kate has never heard of it. Below this post is:
Just get on with it.
Just do it.
Follow this link NOW!!!
Brief and to the point, Kate grins. She wonders if it has something to do with Tay in the coffee shop. It is how her teenage girls would have talked to her. All exclamation marks, no proper explanation. “Mom!!! No brainer!!”
She clicks on the link.
A new text arrives:
What do you think?
Kate quickly types:
Just reading.
The link takes Kate to a website with a very different tone.
She switches to her tablet to see better.
It is professional but with a definite community feel.
It depicts photos of artwork of all descriptions, some photography, and links to prose pieces and poetry.
Images show people of all ages gathered in groups.
She quickly gets the answer to what the MACKL competition is.
It seems that Shakespeare wrote rather a lot while in quarantine for the plague: Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and King Lear.
Hence MACKL. The competition started when people had similarly been quarantined—this time in lockdown.
The idea being that stress and worry could inhibit creativity (she knew that one well) and that this collection of prizes would be an incentive to get people writing or painting—or whatever.
Open to pretty much all forms of expression, the clear implication was that it would be something positive to concentrate on and help with mental well-being during lockdown.
But why is it still going?
Kate reads on.
Ah, so this is not so much about the competition—which is still running—but a community group designed to support people who want to enter the competition.
Her phone rings. “It is interesting, is it not?” Pia says. She clearly got tired of waiting.
“Yes,” Kate responds, still reading. “It looks like this group meets every week for eight weeks in the run-up to the deadline for the competition, so people can support each other.”
There’s a pause, then Pia adds, “It says here that they bring in experts if someone gets stuck . . . It seems mainly writing, art, and some sculpture.”
“I think there’s composing too,” Kate comments, looking at a photo of a young man playing a classical guitar. “Have you seen the picture of that guy, Sam? He was a runner-up a few years ago.”
“So not an art class. More like a . . .” Pia then says something Kate cannot understand. “I’m sorry, that is how we refer to this type of community group in Denmark.”
Kate gets sidetracked. “How long have you lived in England?”
“Since my twenties.”
“You’ve not been tempted to move back?”
“Sometimes. I did for a few years. Now I spend a lot of my summers at home seeing family . . .”
So this is not her home.
“. . . but I really love the English and how you are . . .”
This makes Kate smile.
“. . . and now that I am spending more time here in Norfolk, I am happier.”
Pia says this in rather a forlorn voice, and it makes Kate wonder even more about her life.
“I grew up by the sea, so it feels good to be settled here.”
There is a pause. Kate is aware that she is talking to a relative stranger and vice versa.
Nonetheless, she leaps in, “What do you think? Should we join and try to enter something?” Is this the push she needs to start drawing again?
Could she try an oil painting? And maybe Pia needs something in her life, too.
The gurgle of laughter at the end of the phone stops her in her tracks. It is so unlike the sophisticated, slightly hesitant woman she met in the café.
“What is it?” Kate queries.
“Kate, I’m as creative as a stone.”
“But you can’t be,” Kate blurts.
“Why not?” Pia laughs.
“I’m sorry, I hardly know you. It’s just you look creative,” Kate says, grinning. She finds she is imagining Pia as a sculptress, effortlessly stylish in a studio looking out to sea.
The vaguely apologetic tone creeps back into Pia’s voice, like she doesn’t want to disappoint Kate.
“It is not that I don’t appreciate beautiful things, and what others can do.
I enjoy visiting art galleries and the ballet.
In London and in Denmark. I love that other people can do these things. It is just not me.”
This last sentence is delivered with a firmness that hints again at a steelier side to Pia.
Kate is a bit lost. She realizes she would like to join this group and thinks it would be far easier to go with someone. Not that she couldn’t go on her own or ask one of her other friends. But she would like to get to know Pia better.
“Is there nothing you’ve ever fancied doing? I just thought it would be a good chance to meet new people . . .” Kate leaves that out there. She feels sure she detected a loneliness in Pia, a desire to be part of something. “Do you draw, or write, or . . . how about pottery?”
Pia’s response is despondent. “Not really.”
“How about music?”
“I play the piano.”
“There you go,” Kate says encouragingly. She wonders if she is being a pain in the arse. Like people who love golf and insist you should love it too.
“No.”
There is such finality in the single word that Kate is silenced.
“Look, I’m sorry, Kate, that was rude. What would you do?”
“I’d like to try oil painting.” Kate recognizes a wistful note in her voice, and she wonders if Pia hears it too.
“I can quilt,” she says with resignation. “Do you think that would do?”
“I’m sure it would. My youngest daughter did textile art at uni, and she made the most amazing pictures out of embroidery and fabrics for her final exhibition. I’ve got loads of stuff of hers here, and her sewing machine.”
“She doesn’t use them in her work now?” Pia asks. And Kate feels Pia rather wishes that she did.
“Ellie’s traveling. Has been for the past few years. She’s in Patagonia at the moment. I don’t think she has plans to come back anytime soon.”
“Do you mind?”
It is a direct question. None of her friends have come out and asked her this.
She wants to say “Yes” and “No.” But it is too complicated, because the “No” is so linked with her sister, Alice.
And thinking of her brings so much with it, like the storm tide that leaves beautiful driftwood, but also detritus on her shore.
So, instead, she says, “Sometimes,” which is sort of true.
There is a pause on the phone, and Kate wonders if Pia knows she is prevaricating. She is a lawyer, after all.
“What do we do next then?” Pia asks, moving on. Obviously resigned to joining, along with Kate.
Kate grins and scrolls down the page looking for contact details. No mention of Tay.
Pia spots it first. “It says here to book into the first session, which is next week. We need to email a guy called Shakespeare: J.K. Shakespeare. It seems he runs this group.” Kate can hear the smile in Pia’s voice as she adds, “Well, Mr. Shakespeare certainly has the right name for this. I wonder if he’s a writer. ”
Kate hears the answering warmth in her own voice. Maybe it was a sign seeing him in the café? Not that she believes in things like that. But still. “He taught English at the school my girls went to. I think he’s married to . . . or was married to . . .” Why did she add that? “An art teacher.”
“Maybe they run it together,” Pia suggests.
Oh, I hope not.
Kate can’t stop this last thought.
After the phone call, Kate goes to the cupboard under the stairs to unearth Ellie’s sewing machine—she is pretty certain she still has it.
After bullying Pia into this, it is the least she can do.
Peering into the cupboard on her hands and knees, she spots the cream case and as she pulls it toward her, a box topples onto the carpet, spilling threads, ribbons, embroidered patches, and a scattering of sequins.
Kate collapses back on her haunches, transported to another time.
Alice was ten years older than Kate and left home at seventeen.
Alice. Bright as a dragonfly. And just as elusive.
They never quite knew when Alice would come to visit—either when Kate was a child or as an adult.
Except with Kate’s daughters—she had never failed to appear for their birthdays and important dates.
Kate picks up some stray sequins and sprinkles them into her open palm.
Alice had always been able to sew. Whenever she popped up, she would make a beeline for Kate’s wardrobe, rummaging and commenting on the good, the bad, and the ugly, until she found what she was looking for.
She would then fall on this “chosen” garment and, sitting cross-legged—usually on Kate’s bed—she would settle down to chat and sew.
She would swap buttons around, add colorful stitching to a collar, even change the lining of a jacket.
It did not occur to either of them that Alice should ask Kate’s permission.
That wasn’t how it worked. These transformations were Alice’s gift.
And Kate loved them. As a child, she would find butterflies and birds embroidered somewhere on her jeans.
As a teenager, Alice’s embellishments made her walk that bit taller.
Even as a middle-aged woman, she loved the offbeat style her sister lent her.
The clothes Alice sewed would become favorite pieces, and Kate felt as if her sister was with her when she wore them.
“And what would you think of all this, Alice?” she asks aloud, thinking of painting, new friendships, and an English teacher called Mr. Shakespeare.
All around is silence. Even the wind and water outside are still.
Kate exhales and starts to gather the jumble of haberdashery. She boxes it up and closes the cupboard door on it. As she walks back down the hall, a shaft of sunlight gleams through the glass of her front door, catching a lone sequin lying there. It winks at her—an iridescent peacock blue.
Dragonfly bright.