have any more in stock, so it would have to be manufactured again from scratch in Milan, which would take several weeks, and the client had been promised the curtains for Christmas.
‘It’s just possible we could still do it, but it will be touch and go,’ she said. ‘Is it a very noticeable flaw?’ I asked. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Well, then,’ I said, ‘perhaps the customer would accept the material with a discount.’ ‘She might,’ Fred said. ‘But it would niggle at her for as long as the curtains hung in her front room. She would never draw them without being reminded of it. She would always be wondering whether other people noticed, and having to stop herself from telling them. She would always associate us with something less than perfection. I can’t accept that.’ ‘So what will you do?’ ‘We’ll go for it,’ she said with a grin. ‘We’ll get that material in time if I have to fly to Milan myself to fetch it.’ A strong-minded woman, my wife.
Alex Loom is an intriguing person, but a bit of an enigma. Even her name is a puzzle. I couldn’t find ‘Loom’ in the Penguin Dictionary of Surnames. It might be one of those American mutations of an immigrant name. German or Scandinavian perhaps - she has Nordic, ice-maiden looks. Out of idle curiosity I looked up the noun loom in the OED and it has had an extraordinary variety of meanings, some now obsolete, as well as the familiar one of an apparatus for weaving: for instance, an implement or tool, a spider’s web, an open vessel, a boat, the part of an oar between the handle and the blade, a variety of diving birds in northern seas, a glow in the sky caused by reflection of light from a lighthouse, a mirage over water or ice, a bundle of parallel insulated electric wires, and most bizarrely, a penis. The citation for that one is ‘And large was his odd lome the lenthe of a yerde’, from a fifteenth-century alliterative romance coincidentally called Alexander. (I presume her full name is Alexandra Loom.) It would make a good slogan for one of those Internet sex-aid ads: ‘You too can have a lome the lenthe of a yerde.’ The word has fewer meanings as a verb: to appear indistinctly, to come into view in an enlarged and indefinite form, freq. threateningly; of a ship or the sea, to move slowly up and down.
In spite of the embarrassing conclusion to my visit, I don’t regret making it. It’s a long time since I did something that wasn’t part of my predictable daily routine - even the canalside location was a part of the city I’ve never seen before. And Alex’s thesis topic is undoubtedly interesting. I think I might give her some unofficial help with it - the idea of covertly supplementing, even subverting, Butterworth’s supervision is rather seductive. I can imagine him being startled when she comes up with some bright idea that she actually owes to me . . . it makes me smile just to think of it.
8
9th November. There was a strange sequel to my visit to Alex Loom. I was getting ready this afternoon to go to the bank and the post office in our local high street, and decided to wear my overcoat. I hadn’t worn it since Tuesday, because yesterday the weather was mild and wet, but today was chilly again. As I was buttoning up the coat and checking my appearance in the hall I noticed a slight bulge over my chest, as if there was a bunched-up handkerchief or small scarf in the inside breast pocket of the overcoat. I slid my hand into the pocket and, like an involuntary conjurer, drew out a pair of women’s knickers. I held them out, extended between my index fingers and thumbs, and stared at them. They were made of white cotton, with a narrow lace trim. I realised instantly how they had got into my pocket: I had used Alex’s toilet before I made my departure - the cups of tea having exerted an uncomfortable pressure on my bladder - and she must have taken the opportunity to stuff a pair of her knickers - or ‘panties’ as she would call them - into my overcoat as some kind of postscript to our conversation. But what was the import of it?
They were not unworn, but they were freshly laundered - I did not have to