Who's It From

Piet Ferrabee lifted the lid off the oldest vat at first light on Wednesday, the seventh day, and did not look away.

The steam came up smelling of onions and sage and bread, fainter now, like a supper in the next room. Piet put the paddle in, found the skein at the bottom, and lifted it out in one long dripping loop.

It was green, deeper than Monday’s thread. Under it was the brown warmth of a whole barrow of onion skins. It was the colour of a pea row at supper time, with the lamps just lit, and it was new to Piet, in a vat or anywhere else. They stood there with water running down their wrists and looked at it until their arms ached.

Piet was happy. It came up plainly, all at once, and surprised them.

Behind the tent, someone struck a light. A thin line of smoke came round the corner, and then Anouk Feld came after it, carrying one slow stick in a clay holder, lit.

“The first of the batch,” Anouk said. “I wanted you to have the first hour of it.”

The stick burned sweet and steady. It smelled of Sunday supper: the pot on the Terraces, the long table, the bowls going round and round. Anouk had chased that smell for years, and there it was in a clay holder, in the Dye Yard, at dawn on a Wednesday.

Piet looked at the stick, and at the skein, and laughed.

They carried the skein to the drying lines and hung it on the third line, nearest the tent. The smoke from Anouk’s stick would drift through it all day. Then Piet took the shears from their apron and cut the first length, a good long one, and held it out.

“For your bundles,” Piet said.

Anouk took it in both hands and turned it to the light. “Who’s it from?”

In the Grove that is how you say thank you, and Piet knew it. Piet answered anyway, properly, the long way round, starting with a Thursday and a lid.

The skein is still on the third line by the tent. If you go through the Dye Yard this week, Piet will cut you a length of it. Then ask who it’s from, and Piet will tell you.