Witness account · 3 min read · Set in Calder Row ·
The Button That Awaits Its Coat
The spare-button drawer at the Calder Row shop has come up one button over each serving week, sewn through a fresh card by nobody on the premises.
- reliability: uncorroborated
- witness: "Walter Fenn, haberdasher"
I am the haberdasher at No. 11 Calder Row, and the button drawer is mine to count. It is the old card drawer under the counter, four trays deep by the maker's plan, and in it we keep the buttons that arrive spare with the wholesalers' cards. House rule, older than me: every button sewn down through its paper card with grey thread, two strands, a flat knot tucked under the card; the cards kept for years, because the drawer is this shop's memory of coats.
On Tuesday afternoons I count the drawer against the counterfoils. That is the habit, and the habit is what a counter is for. Since the spring the count has run one button over. Not drifting, not occasional: one over, regular as a stamp, at the end of every serving week, whatever the week's trade. The button that makes it up is never loose among the trays. It is sewn. There is a card we have not cut, in a fifth tray that we have not fitted, punched at the corners the way the depot punches its stock cards, and on the card one button, grey thread, two strands, the knot lying flat underneath.
The sewing is good work. The hole is clean, the ends trimmed close, the tension even across the shank. Nobody on these premises did it. The trays are shut at six when the counter chalks up; the needle-cushion hangs from my apron and does not leave my sight through the serving day; and the card comes out of the drawer sewn, with the paper uncreased, as if it had been lying in a milliner's keeping and not in a drawer with a lock on it.
Of late the thread is not only fastening. On the newest card of each week it passes through the paper in short strokes, laid tight and level, and read against the lamp they make letters. The card of the second week of October reads TOM SHAW. There is no Shaw in my books: not in the coat ledger, not in the delivery years, not in my father's books either, which I keep out of thrift and temper alike. The button sits square on the paper, four-hole, horn by the weight of it, the sort that goes on a good winter overcoat, and it has the patience of stock. It is not waiting to be sold. It is waiting to be wanted.
I asked Miss Shine, who serves the counter mornings, to count with me on the Tuesday and to sign the finding as she found it. She counted, and she signed that the trays held their proper number and a card plain and unsewn. So the matter stands uncorroborated, and I have not pressed it further, because she is a careful girl and I will not make arithmetic out of her. But the card in the fifth tray is sewn, and I did not sew it, and the knot is under the paper where no needle I own can be made to tie. What I have not managed to settle, before the winter trade opens, is whose coat the drawer is keeping Tom Shaw for.