Graeme Has Held My Handbag For Forty Years. On Saturday He Had Nothing To Hold.

A note from a reader about a morning on the till at the library book sale, and the small New Zealand boutique dress with two deep pockets that let her leave the handbag at home.

My husband Graeme has held my handbag for forty years. Outside changing rooms, at the back of the church, at every wedding we have been to, at the counter at New World while I find the card that is always at the bottom. He holds it the way men of his age do, a little away from his body, as though it might go off.

I am 64. I was a librarian for thirty years, and these days I help the Friends of the Library with the spring book sale in the church hall around the corner. Two days of trestle tables, boxes of paperbacks that smell of other people's baches, and me on the till with the cash tin.

Every year it is the same small comedy. My phone is in my handbag, my handbag is under the trestle table, and it rings exactly when there is a queue. My reading glasses are on my head, then on the table, then gone. The key to the cash tin is in a pocket I do not have. And Graeme, who came to carry boxes, spends the morning holding my bag instead.

What I wore this year

Three weeks before the sale I had bought a dress from a small New Zealand boutique called The Mount Coastal Boutique. It is called the Kwani. I bought it for one reason, and I will be honest that it was not the colour or the cut. It was a line on the page that said two deep side pockets, roomy enough for your phone and keys.

I have been promised pockets before. You will know the kind. A slit in the side seam that holds a tissue, if the tissue is folded small. A little stitched square on the front that is there to be looked at. So I tested the Kwani at home first, the way I would test a new library system, with a list.

Phone in the left pocket. It stands up in there, and it does not tip out when I sit down. Reading glasses in the right pocket, in their soft case. Keys on top of the glasses. A pen. The cash tin key, on its red ribbon. I walked up and down the hall, sat on the bottom stair, bent to pick up a dropped peg. Nothing moved and nothing fell out.

The morning after the sale, with one of the paperbacks I could not leave behind. Hand in the pocket, where my glasses live now.

Phone on the left, glasses on the right, keys on top. I left the handbag on the hall table and did not go back for it.

The Saturday

The doors opened at nine and there was a queue down the path, as there always is, mostly retired teachers and young mums with prams and one man who buys every Wilbur Smith we have. For four hours I sold books, gave change, found the glasses, read the pencil prices on the inside covers, and answered the phone twice when Anna rang from Auckland. Every time, the thing I needed was in a pocket, by my hip, where my hand already was.

Graeme carried eleven boxes in from the car and four boxes of leftovers out again. He did not hold a handbag once. At about half past eleven he came and stood beside the till with his hands in his own pockets, looking rather lost, and said he thought he had been made redundant.

I have been laughing about that all week.

Three things I noticed

I wrote them down that night, because I like to be fair to a thing before I tell anyone about it.

1. The pockets are real. Two of them, one each side, deep enough for a phone to stand up in. They sit where your hands fall, so you do not have to think about them.

2. The weight does not drag the dress. I worried that a phone and keys would pull it down on one side. They do not. The cotton is soft but it has enough body to carry them, and the A line falls from the chest and skims, so nothing clings, even with my hands in.

3. It is real 100% cotton. The church hall in November is close and muggy by eleven, with the sun on the windows. It did not stick to me once, not my back, not the backs of my legs on the plastic chair. It went in the wash that afternoon, on the line by three, and it is softer than when it came.

It is knee length, with short sleeves, and it comes in beige, black, orange and green, sizes S to 5XL, every size the same price. I have the black. The page says the black and the green are almost sold out, which is part of why I am writing this now and not after Christmas.

→ Read about the Kwani

Now, about the price

A cotton dress with real pockets, in a smart shop in town, is easily $229. The ones at the mall are cheaper, and in my experience they are the ones with the pocket you can fit a tissue in.

The Kwani is $96.95 at the moment, down from $193.95. And if you buy two, there is 15% off, and up to 30% off the more you add, so the second colour costs a good deal less than the first. I am eyeing the orange for the summer. $96.95 for a dress that carries my whole morning seems more than fair to me.

It came by NZ Post in eight working days, tracked, and delivery is free. There are 30 days to change your mind. When I emailed to ask whether to take the large or the extra large, a real person called Susan answered the same day, and told me she could swap the size before it was sent if I changed my mind. I did not need to, but I liked knowing.

What I'd tell you if we were friends

If we were sitting on my back deck with a cuppa and you asked me whether you should order one, this is what I would say.

Check the pockets on anything you buy for summer. Not the photo, the words. If it does not say deep, or say what fits in them, it is probably the tissue kind.

And if there is someone in your life who has been holding your handbag for years, it might be time to give him his hands back. Graeme has taken up the crossword.

Leave the handbag at home. Two pockets will do.

— Wendy