And I remember my pregnancy, the way my belly took on a life of its own as Grace grew and somersaulted and flexed her feet against the warm, cocooning walls that constrained her and how she arrived in our arms, perfect, scarlet, yelling in outrage at the indignity of birth, and then immediately grew calm as we held her and laughed and cried, our love for her and for each other spilling over as I covered her tiny face in kisses.
I turn the block I’m sewing so that I can pin the next triangle in place, shifting my chair so the light falls on my lap and I can see what I’m doing more clearly. The colours of the pieces remind me of the photographs on Tom’s phone of the sunrises he’s encountered, morning after morning, as his feet pound the boulevards and avenues of the sleeping city. I feel a pang of sadness for him on his lonely runs. He’s been asking again if I’ll consider some sessions with a marriage guidance counsellor. I’ve told him I’ll only do so if he stops drinking, creating a stand-off in which neither of us is able to make the first move. We seem to be arguing more and more these days, following the same old well-worn tracks, going round and round over old ground – his drinking; my suspicions; his frustration at my inability to move on from the blows our marriage has already suffered; my frustration and anger at his past mistakes, his absences, his need for company that I can’t fill. I know he’s as unhappy as I am. But talking to a stranger won’t change what we’ve been through. The wounds we both carry will never heal, but that’s no reason to stick a knife into them all over again. I still can’t bear the pain. It’s all I can do to get through each day as it is. My coping strategy may be avoidance, mixed with a large dollop of what the professionals call denial, but it does help me to cope. I’m too scared to admit the truth to myself, let alone to a counsellor in a featureless office, a box of tissues sitting on an otherwise empty table between us. I know my refusals frustrate Tom and only make him turn all the more often to the comfort and numbness he finds at the bottom of a bottle of whisky. I suppose he means well and he’s only trying to do the right thing. But I’m afraid nothing can make it all right, ever again. And I’m even more afraid that trying might only prove that to both of us.
The light shifts and I pick up the pieces and begin to sew again, soothed by the repetitive action and the need to think only of forming one neat backstitch after the other.
At last I reach the end of the last seam and finish it off with three firm stitches, tucking the end of the thread under itself before snipping it with the tip of my scissors. That’s the thirteenth block completed. I hold it up, showing it to Grace, who gurgles her approval.
Next, I’ll need to carefully work out how I’m going to cut the Berber shawl into the sashing strips I’ll use to set the blocks. But the sun is sinking beyond the rooftops of the city now, dropping slowly towards the distant waves that crash beyond the breakwater, and the shadows have lengthened across the floorboards, dimming the worn colours of the rug.
‘Time to pack up for today, I think,’ I tell Grace, and she reaches her arms towards me as I bend to pick her up, giggling as I kiss the soft curve of her neck and inhale the scent of her innocent perfection. ‘And time to get you ready for bed.’
The distant sound of the call to prayer mingles with the contemplative murmuring of the doves as I hold her close and hug her so she knows she is safe here with me in our sanctuary, tucked away from all the hardship and pain of this world in our attic room.
Josie’s Journal – Friday 23rd January, 1942
We’re all feeling pretty shocked after the events of this week. I’d expected to be on the ship to Portugal now, but here I am back in my bedroom – so there’s still a mad woman in the attic of the house in the Boulevard des Oiseaux.
Papa managed to get our transit visas for Portugal and the exit permit for Morocco and so at last we had all the bits of paperwork in place to leave. The ship that Mr Reid had told Papa about – the Esmeralda – arrived into Casablanca on the 14th of January and was due to leave for Lisbon 3 days later, just in time for our papers for America to still be valid. We packed everything up and I said my goodbyes to Nina and Felix, sad that it was all such a rush in the end after those long months of waiting. I gave Nina my library card and told her that Mademoiselle Dubois would be expecting her. She said that her auntie, the dreamseller, had sent a farewell message for me, to remind me of the words she’d said before: when the moon shines on one hundred bowls of water, every one of them is filled with moonlight. We agreed that those words would help us feel better even though we were apart – we could look at the moon, whether we were in Morocco or America, and know that it was shining on us both, reminding us of our friendship.