Sunday was a peaceful day on this side of the veil. This wretched knee still needs to be rested as much as possible, which means I haven’t been out on the weekend for ages. However, it does give the chance to get knitting or pictures done, and this time it was pictures, the ones in the previous entry and here.
I’d had the original of this one stored for some time in my files, and finally got around to turning into a portrait. The original was grey – a good shade, but not one Louis would be likely to fancy. He’s long since given away the only grey jumper he had. I wasn’t at all sure he’d have any interest in this pattern, since he hadn’t expressed any enthusiasm when I found it. He did express a preference for a blue-green shade, in much the same family as his mock-turtle knit, and the shade proved surprisingly easy to create on PhotoStudio: just one change of hue and saturation was enough, for a rarity.
What I couldn’t get was a straightforward answer about whether he would like to have this garment to wear! As usual when I can’t hear him (most of the time) I tried the pendulum. The confusion of yes, no and maybe/non-committal/does not apply answers left me no wiser about whether he liked it enough to wear, didn’t fancy it after all or simply hadn’t had time to consider. I went to bed in that state, presuming he’d let me know once we were Home and could talk properly.
This morning, Louis informed me he was wearing the jumper, so I was determined to remember as much as I could in Fawkner. I wasted no time in getting a coffee, drinking it on the way there, and finding a good place to dump my bag and relax into the memories.
The first image to come through was of us at breakfast. I think we’d finished eating; we were talking about the jumper and holding hands.
“You were being such a tease last night. I had no idea what you wanted.”
“It is your punishment for using the machine,” he answered, grinning.
“So, do you want that jumper? Shall we make it?”
“I do,” he said, not grinning this time, just smiling. At that point I slid over to sit on his lap and give him a kiss.
“I love you,” I said, rather unnecessarily. “You’re so real. Your happiness, your self …” I was rubbing his upper chest while I said this; it was a very tactile memory, this morning.
“That’s a strange reason to love someone,” Louis observed.
“You know what I mean,” I said, and we kissed again. Just then the coffee pot bubbled, and Louis leaned over to turn it off. I got up and poured our drinks, returning to my seat to have mine. I got a dark look when I poured milk into my mug, and threatened to add it to his; he drank with his hand shielding the top, just in case.
While I drank, I felt the making of the jumper coming on me. It was like a partly unguided thought; I knew what it would look like and was thinking out how the surface was so textured, but the inside would be smooth – not fluffy-soft, but pleasant on the skin. Louis watched while I did this; he obviously had an idea of what was happening.
“There’s something upstairs for you,” I said when it was done. “On the bed.”
The speed with which he gulped down his coffee and took off upstairs was a bit of a giveaway.
“All that teasing,” I said to Katie (who was of course sitting on the table – where else would she be at breakfast?). “Daddy’s being a bit of a fraud, he did want that jumper.” She looked at me, squeezed her eyes almost shut and produced one of her voiceless words, just the sound of her leathery little cat lips separating, but with the clear thought Daddy in it; she was laughing at him as much as I was.
I cleared the table; telling food scraps “Return to your energetic state” is a superior way of washing up, I think. By the time I’d done that, Louis had reappeared in the doorway. He posed and turned in his new knitwear, until I suggested we go to the main room. Spacious though our kitchen is, it’s not the ideal venue for showing off new clothes.
I flopped on the old couch near the fireplace, and Louis showed off some more, including a silly pose with one hand on his hip, one on the back of his head, and a bent leg – parodying model poses. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him in his new jumper, and how much he liked the feel as much as the look of it.
“It’s a bit warm to wear it now, but you might want to wear it tonight,” I said. We do after all have a Tradition where new clothing is concerned. “How about a first cuddle in it now, though?”
Louis wasn’t arguing with that, and droppped onto the couch. But our cuddle didn’t stay a cuddle for long, and the official breaking in of the new jumper took place rather sooner than we’d planned.
Not that anyone was complaining, mind.
At this point in my memories, I opened my eyes and asked Louis if what I was seeing was accurate. Some of it felt like I was imagining rather than recalling it; there was a feeling of directing, not following. He assured me it was real, but that I’d missed the best part. When he said that, I had an impression of Henri and Kathy being involved.
“Did we go to your father’s place to show off the new jumper?” I asked. “What, is there a knitwear rivalry going on between you two?”
Luckily I had time to try for more memories. Even more luckily, they came.
I tuned back in to our arrival at Kathy and Henri’s house. It was a little like the last time I remember us doing this, but instead of Kathy being at the door to greet us, I called out to her: “Kathy! Kathy! You there? Louis’s got new knitwear to show off!”
My dear stepmother-in-law came out, and there was an Admiring the Knitwear moment, including me assuring her that no, I had not knitted such a time-consuming and complicated garment on the earthly side. At some point Louis called Kathy Mother, and she rolled her eyes and asked, “Does he do that to you?” – meaning, does he use some wildly unsuitable title – to which I answered, “No, but the boys do!” Teasing stepsons are all the go in the Bourbon family, it seems.
We walked through the house, Louis in the middle with his arms around us, before he went ahead, calling out for his father.
“He was being such a tease about this on the other side,” I said. “He’s figured out how to avoid giving straight answers through the pendulum.”
“Are you still using that?”
“Yeah, more than I’d like, but I can’t hear him often.”
“I’m surprised. I’d have thought you would by now. Never mind, it’ll come.”
By this time we were in the cobbled back yard. Henri had been in the kennels, and when we arrived he was trying to give Louis a hug, while Louis danced around, keeping out of reach, because he didn’t want to get his new jumper all doggy.
“Leave it, Henri!” I called, laughing. “It hasn’t had its first layer of cat hair yet!”
“Are you saying my dogs are inferior, daughter?”
“No, but we have to live with the snooty little beggars if they don’t get to be first!”
I don’t remember much else about our visit. Louis took off his jumper and folded it carefully, then hugged his father; Kathy asked if it was too early for us to have lunch, and we went inside.
