Counted, Not Named
A clipping, a crease, and the kind of record that forgets what matters most.
Counted, Not Named
A Maggie B. Casefile
It began with a clipping.
Audrey Crenshaw swept into the Women’s Institute hall as though unveiling a state secret, the Derbyshire Times folded and refolded until the crease cut across Bayeux like a scar.
“The Tapestry,” she announced, “is returning to Britain. We must organise a coach. A cultural opportunity.”
Chairs shifted. Teacups rattled. Knitting paused mid-stitch. Pens hovered.
From the back, Reginald Smythe-Harrington cleared his throat. “It’s embroidery, not tapestry.”
Nobody asked how he knew.
Netta Flinn leaned forward, earrings trembling. “If Bayeux has its stitchwork, surely we could make a panel. Lower Tissington in thread. Our most historic events.”
Dot brightened. “Jamgate!”
Nell suggested Reginald’s brassicas—“the grand pair, in full glory.”
Enid pursed her lips. “Not suitable for children.”
Laughter scattered across the hall until Audrey snapped her folder shut. “This is not a comic matter.”
Maggie, seated near the urn, half-opened her notebook, pen lifted—then let it rest against the spine.
Audrey flourished another sheet: a photocopy, toner blotched at the corners.
“Lower Tissington,” she said, tapping the margin. “In the Domesday Book.”
The page went hand to hand, smudging fingers as it passed.
Two ploughs.
Three hides.
Sheep, or possibly swine.
“Three ploughs, not two,” Audrey insisted.
“Clerical error,” said Netta. “Slapdash scribes.”
“Doomsday?” Enid squinted. “What do we need that for?”
“Domesday,” Reginald barked. “Ten eighty-six.”
“Seven,” Audrey said, not looking at him.
Reginald’s moustache twitched.
When the sheet reached Maggie, her fingertips brushed the inked edge. A smudge marked her skin. She steadied her hand against the table, thumb pressed hard to the notebook, but said nothing.
By the time the urn was drained, the “Tissington Tapestry” had been declared feasible.
Scenes proposed: Jamgate stitched in scarlet thread; Netta solemnly unwrapping a fig bar in cross-stitch.
Reginald was nominated as a knight, astride a brassica.
“And you, Maggie?” Audrey asked, eyes sharp.
Maggie closed her notebook. “Perhaps just a thread or two.”
On the walk home, the night was crisp—frost whitening the hedgerows, woodsmoke hanging low above the roofs.
She thought about Bayeux and Domesday. Stitched battles. Tallied ploughs. Neither gave names.
The ink smear still darkened her fingertip, as if omission had left a mark.
Her own notebook was fuller: gnome incursions, biscuit treaties, recognitions left mid-gesture. Yet she too left names unwritten. Some deliberately. Some because silence held them more safely.
At the edge of the green she stopped at the noticeboard. The Bayeux clipping was already pinned, the crease cutting straight through the cavalry charge. She traced the line through the glass. The paper shifted slightly under her touch, but the scar held.
She let her hand fall and walked on.
Case #28: Counted, Not Named
Observation: Records endure but remain incomplete.
Outcome: Counted in lists, stitched in thread, absent in names.
Additional note: Thread withheld.
She tapped the page once. Then closed the book.