THE OLD MAN AND THE SUIT
They sit in the cool of the basement under a low ceiling and two pools of yellow
light. They have a stool each and matching eyes. The walls are stacked tight with
bolts of wool and satin, mohair and silk, in shades of black and brown, of navy
blue and grey and over the door, a tea towel map of Ireland in crude cotton, faded
and stiff with dust. The old man traps two straight pins between his teeth and
speaks from the corner of his mouth across the smooth, wide, mahogany table.
‘I am invisible,’ he says. He raises his head from the linen in his hands and flicks
his eyes to where the boy sits. ‘And so, Malachy’ he adds ‘you must be invisible.’
Malachy sits near the high window and, between his long basting stitches,
watches the sharp heel of a woman’s shoe on the pavement above.
‘What do you see?’ the man asks the boy.
The boy says nothing and the silence between them is sweet and full of the old
man’s love.
‘Pay attention, boy,’ he smiles and winks, ‘what do you see when you see a man in
a suit? Tell me what you see.’
The boy says nothing because he knows his grandfather’s voice and cannot hear
the shape of a question.
‘Listen,’ says the old man, ‘one pair of trousers has fifty seven parts.’
’Fifty seven, grandfather,’ says Malachy and nods.
‘Before you cut, you hesitate.’ The old man raises his finger.
‘You think of the pleasure you want to give, how you will suggest perfection. How
the fifty seven parts will become one. That is the job of the tailor.’
When the old man bends again to the linen on his lap, Malachy sees the curve on
his grandfather’s back and the old man’s neat beard resting on his chest. Malachy
sits up straight and hopes he will not grow too tall and stoop over his work until his
THE OLD MAN AND THE SUIT
tie disappears under his chin. He twists his neck and stretches left and right. He
knows no-one will marry a hunchback. He thinks of the girls that cluck and gather
at the corner of Long Lane and what they would say to him as he crouched past.
The old man hooks a finger and the boy leaves his stool and comes close. The
man speaks quietly, as though there are people who shouldn’t hear.
‘When you make a suit, Malachy,’ he says, ‘a man wears it and he goes to the
theatre. His friends see him and they say, ‘You look good, you’ve lost weight.’
The man goes home to his wife. She smiles and says ‘You’ve had a good day.’
At the office, they think he has a mistress.’ The boy nods and returns to his work.
Malachy can tell from the richness of the light that it is midday. The road has
become quiet, passing footsteps sparse and slow. He goes upstairs and returns
with a plate of meat and cheese and half a loaf under his arm. He cuts the bread
at his bench and makes sandwiches while the old man stitches. Malachy would
have brought the stout but for weeks now his grandfather has shaken his head at
the sight of the bottle.
‘These days,’ he says ‘the taste is bitter. Time has changed us both.’
The boy eats like a boy eats and mops up the fat that oozes from the pork with
thick, leathery crusts. He licks the salt and herbs from his fingers and grains of
mustard from his lips. The old man stares at his plate. He crumbles white cheese
on the soft, yielding heart of the bread but after only a mouthful, he coughs and
turns his back on the boy. He heaves into his handkerchief and wipes his mouth.
Malachy watches but the old man returns to his work and waves away the silent
enquiry.
‘Listen,’ says the old man ‘people look only at the outside. To be a tailor, you must
see the scaffolding, the lining, the canvas, the marks, the darning, the seams, the
bluff edge.’
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THE OLD MAN AND THE SUIT
He is standing now and the shapes he makes with his hands are like those of a
priest and his voice, the same.
‘And you must see the mechanics of the pocket. Not imagine,’ he cautions, ‘but
see. And you must also see the stitches in the button, the underfelt on the collar.’
He taps the space between his eyebrows and squints. ‘In here,’ he says ‘I can see.
I can see the weft, the length of the body panel, the interfacing, the floating chest
piece, the inner seams.’
He raises a finger to the sky. ‘And you too, must see.’
The old man gets up and begins to pace the room like a buyer, like a stranger or a
visitor from another town. He picks up threads and scraps from the floor. He
balls them in the palm of his hand, tucks them in his pocket and reaches high to
touch the Harris tweed that is folded in white tissue and kept far away from the
sun. He taps the rolls of cashmere and merino then the old man begins to mutter
and hum. But after a few minutes, he loses the tune. Malachy sees his
grandfather’s chest moving quickly in his shirt. He sees crescents of sweat under
his arms and dark stains on his waistcoat and he wonders if he should call for his
mother. But then the old man returns to his station and bends over to his work.
‘Nearly finished,’ he says.
It is towards the end of the day. Malachy hears men on the street with hurried
steps and many of them. And there are women outside too, girls in fact, their
voices chatter and sing and there is laughter sewn through everything like fine
embroidery. He wonders where the girls live and what they do in the evenings and
what they wear at night.
He gets up and walks to the window, lifting himself on
his toes to see out and wishes the glass was clean. He can see the bottom half of
the door of O’Driscoll’s Tavern and a red skirt disappearing inside. He imagines
the woman that chose that skirt, imagines her leg, her thigh, her breasts, her lips.
He feels again of the weight of his inheritance and the lifetime he’ll spend
underground.
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THE OLD MAN AND THE SUIT
The old man shuffles towards him and looks up. ‘Nearly time,’ he says.
Malachy goes back to his stool. When he has finished his work, he will peel off the
smell of chalk and dye and wash his skin in lavender water. He will lie down quiet
on his bed and close his eyes. He will walk out later, on his own, towards the
canal where he can mingle with the crowds and smoke a cigarette. He digs one
hand into his pocket and brings out his watch with the broken strap. He winds it
on and thinks he will take it to his friend in the jewelers shop where there are
always women looking in the window pointing at rings and brooches.
He thinks
of the job his friend has in natural daylight showing necklaces and pearls,
unlocking glass cabinets with pretty keys.
The old man has stopped working. ‘All of life is in a man’s suit,’ he whispers.
The quiet in the room is like the winter nights when the old man would talk about
his son and the boy would try hard to be sad and miss the father he never knew.
And always afterwards the boy’s mother would leave the room to cry.
His grandfather lays the linen jacket on the table, carefully as if it could break.
‘Like a woman,’ he says ‘you work to give birth, to make it grow, to let it breathe.
When you finish, when it is done, you give your work a final kiss, the last touches.
And you say goodbye.’
His grandfather slips the tape measure from around his neck and rolls it up. ‘This
is the work of a tailor,‘ he says. ‘You make a beautiful thing then you let it go.’
‘Yes, grandfather,’ says the boy and severs a thread with his new scissors, cool
and smooth in his hands.
‘I made a suit once,’ says the old man ‘a perfect suit.’
Suddenly, across the table, Malachy can hear his grandfather’s breath as sharp
and brittle as a box of needles. He stands to call for his mother. The old man
stops him with a sign. Malachy watches his grandfather take some water from a
green glass on a silver tray. Then the old man takes off the damp waistcoat and
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THE OLD MAN AND THE SUIT
leans against the table, creasing the jacket of fine linen like the pain that is
creasing his face. The boy looks at the button by the door that rings the bell in the
shop above. His grandfather sees.
‘I made it with these hands,’ he continues and the way the old man shows his
palms reminds the boy of the Christ that hovers over the altar of the little church
where his father is buried. ‘My best work,’ says the old man ‘worn once, by my
best work.’
The old man makes his palms into fists that he mashes into his chest like when he
has swallowed a fish bone or strong brandy.
‘Ah,’ says the old man and the sound makes the boy run to his grandfather and
makes him want to cry. ‘Do your best,’ the old man whispers.
‘I will try, grandfather,’ says the boy and he helps the man to lie down on the stone
floor. The boy puts a cushion under the old man’s head and sees that his face has
changed from the colour of sand to the colour of dust. The old man whispers.
‘Remember,’ he says, ‘when it is done, cover me over with midnight silk.’
‘I remember,’ the boy replies.
Malachy crouches down and puts his hand on the old man’s head and waits for
him to become still and the time between them is like the water in Balinafagh,
deep and calm under their fishing boat, moving them gently out and far away from
the shore.
He eases brown paper from a bolt of cloth under the table and pulls at the slippery
folds length by length, until it flows like a black river over the old man’s body.
The boy sits on his grandfather’s stool. He will hang the creased linen jacket
overnight between two damp towels. He will check it first for tacking and threads,
for his grandfather’s straight pins, then he will deliver it himself in a calico cover.
The owner of the linen jacket has a daughter. Malachy tries not to think of her
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THE OLD MAN AND THE SUIT
while his grandfather lays at his feet, her hair twisted like a golden rope over her
shoulder, her eyes as brown and bright as corozo.
He waits until he hears his mother lock the shop door. Then he presses the
buzzer. He hears her footsteps on the wooden stairs and stands to catch her fall.
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