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The Artful Craft of Quilting
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72 The Artful Craft of Quilting Anne Woodborne Robert’s face receded, his symmetrical features – watchful dark eyes, straight nose, mouth with its full upper lip – became indistinct, shifted into a stranger’s hate-filled mask. His open hand, with eighty-eight kilos of force behind it, cracked across her face. Pain teared her eyes; her nose, cheek and mouth stung and throbbed. Her vision blurred as she fell backwards onto the bed. Robert hit me, she thought in surprise. She hadn’t seen his rage coming. She put her fingers to her nose, felt the blood seeping from her nostrils, trickling sideways down her cheek onto the hunting scene of the damask bedspread. Real blood mingled with the blood of the woven antelope. Robert bent over her. ‘Look what you made me do,’ he murmured. ‘Tssk, tssk, silly Sybil.’ Robert’s face slotted back into place. His face wore its usual caring, charismatic look as he stared down at her, examining her as if nothing was amiss. He touched her face with the same fingers which had branded their imprint across her cheek. ‘Sybil, Sybil,’ his voice caressed her. ‘Never do that to me. Never question or criticise me again. Never,’ his face drew nearer, his lips kissed the corner of her eye, ‘never let me doubt you for a second.’ ‘Never,’ he kissed her bruised mouth, ‘never.’ He opened his mouth and sucked gently at her bottom lip. ‘Never,’ his tongue probed her mouth. He sank down on top of her. She felt his erection between her thighs. His hands parted her blouse, lips moving to the tender skin of her breast. She lay numb beneath his sensual ministrations, his seducing tongue, his caressing voice and fingers, stroking her senses. Words popped into her head. Incongruous words. Where had she heard them? 73 A slap and a pat. She throbbed again but not from pain. She wound her arms around him as he prised open her legs. * * * Sybil had left her mother’s womb in a hurry. She was born precipitously on her mother’s bed, delivered to the waiting smoothness of a handmade patchwork quilt. Her mother had sacrificed the safety of a normal hospital delivery to her passion for perfection. She had sat stitching French knot pink rosebuds onto a lawn matinee jacket, disregarding the intensity of her labour pangs until her water broke. She barely had time to waddle to her bed, stripping off her maternity smock and skirt when Sybil made her appearance. Sybil always said this first contact with soft satins and velvets, before she was enveloped in her mother’s warm, sweaty arms, triggered her lifelong love affair with quilts and textiles. In her teens, Sybil entered into another love affair, a passion for chess; intrigued by the black and white chequered board, itself a miniature quilt, and the tiny medieval pieces. Her chess teacher explained the hierarchy of chess players, using the medieval town as a model. ‘First, the student as peasant or pawn learns the craft of chess, progressing by constant practice through the ranks of knight, rook, and beyond that, bishop, queen, king. Once the chess student reaches that level and leaves the medieval castle, he encounters the foothills of an almost perpendicular cliff and right at the top – barely visible – lives the chess grandmaster in splendid isolation.’ As Sybil learnt the exact moves of each piece from which they could never deviate, she was fascinated to discover that only the queen had complete freedom to move in any direction on the board, covering as many squares as the player wished. She heard of a woman grandmaster who could memorize all the chess pieces in play painted on the side of a moving bus in a matter of seconds. She admired people who could soak up information, with such single-minded concentration, like intellectual vacuum-cleaners. Sybil played chess regularly, began her ascent up the slopes of chess hierarchy for the love of the game, knowing she would probably never reach the pinnacle. * * * [3.235.227.36] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:01 GMT) 74 ANNE WOODBORNE After Robert left for work in his pin-striped suit, carrying his lawyer’s briefcase, Sybil looked at herself in the mirror. Her slender neck looked fragile, like a child’s, the red stripes made a sinister pattern on her skin, smooth as alabaster, and the dancing blue lights in her eyes had vanished, leaving them dull with dread. She fingered...