The Dressmaker of Draper's Lane

by Liz Trenow

  ‘I have school tomorrow, Ma,’ he said. ‘In case you have forgotten.’

  ‘I do not appreciate this new tone of yours, Peter,’ she said, sharply. ‘We shall walk after school, if the weather permits, and you will join us. What do you say?’

  ‘Yes, Mama.’

  Not even this uneasy exchange could dampen my spirits. My baby was no more, nor even the little boy who enjoyed hugs and stories and who I could entertain with drawings or castles built of wooden blocks. But what a fine young man he was becoming.

  As we passed the marketplace a group of young women ceased their gossiping, their heads turning. One called, ‘Good afternoon, Master Peter,’ while the others giggled.

  He responded with a smile so flirtatious, a mixture of bashful and bold, that it jolted me to the core. For the first time, I saw in his face an unwelcome resemblance to another charmer with dark, dancing eyes. Pray God that Peter would not also inherit Tobias’s arrogant, brutish nature.

  As we waited for Ambrose to arrive home that evening, nerves seemed to make my stomach curdle. I’d been contemplating the best way of handling our first encounter and decided that a quick, simple apology would help to clear the air right away.

  ‘Please forgive the hasty words in my letter,’ I said, when he had taken off his coat.

  ‘Think no more of it, sister-in-law. Consider that to be in the past.’

  For all his piousness and pomposity and for all that I feared him, Ambrose’s behaviour was never less than that of a perfect gentleman, which only made my knowledge of his darker side even more chilling. He was the model of affability throughout supper, tendering polite enquiries about how the business was faring and listening with great attentiveness. The words ‘landlord’ or ‘rent’ never passed our lips. Convinced that he had engineered Mr Boyson’s visit as some kind of warning, I was all too aware of how vulnerable it had left me. It would have been very unwise to mention it.

  ‘And did you have a pleasant Easter weekend?’ Louisa asked, as we sat down to supper. I described my Easter jaunt to Chiswick, meeting the Garricks and our visit to Marble Hill House.

  ‘She built that house herself?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Not with her bare hands, I don’t suppose,’ Louisa said.

  ‘But it must have cost a fortune to build a palace like that.’

  ‘Some people are so rich they cannot think what to do with all their money,’ I said, hoping that he would not ask how Henrietta had made hers. Of course I made no mention of the gown. I was saving that until Louisa and I could be alone.

  After the meal, as usual, we retired to the drawing room, Ambrose to his study and Peter to a game of chess with his friend. Louisa took up her handiwork – she’d moved on to making socks for the deserving poor.

  ‘I hope I am properly forgiven now,’ I began. ‘In my haste I wrote words that were ill-considered, and even disrespectful.’

  ‘Think nothing of it, dearest,’ she said. ‘My husband may be quick to anger, but he is also quick to forgive.’

  ‘I was so relieved to receive your letter, and to learn that the village was free from the typhus.’

  She told me how concerned she’d been when Ambrose insisted on visiting parishioners suffering from the fever, placing himself, as she put it, directly in harm’s way. ‘But he’s strong as an ox, my husband.’ Her face lit up with genuine respect, and I wondered once more how she remained so admiring when in private he could be so harsh. ‘Thank the Lord he seems healthier than all of us, despite his years.’

  ‘It must have been a difficult time for you all.’

  ‘Especially for Peter. He was so bored without his friends. His nature is changing, as you have surely noticed. It is hard to get a word out of him sometimes.’

  ‘Except perhaps when there is a pretty girl in sight?’

  ‘Indeed.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘He dares not flirt like that when his father is around.’

  ‘It is no surprise the girls notice him. He’s turning into a very handsome young man.’

  ‘He is a popular boy and his schoolwork is still excellent. We are very proud of him.’

  I was burning to tell her my discoveries about Henrietta and the silk, but still I hesitated, fearing to stir up her anger once more. In the end, it was she who inadvertently introduced the topic.

  ‘This vicarage is so dull, do you not think, with these whitewashed walls and plain furniture,’ she said with a small sigh, resting from her knitting for a moment. ‘I should so love to introduce something to delight the eye. Like those Chinese wall-paintings you described. But Ambrose would never allow it. He’d call it ostentatious, overly indulgent.’

  ‘Marble Hill House is just a showpiece, not a place where one could ever really feel at ease,’ I said. ‘You are blessed with a comfortable home. But I have to say that those Chinese designs did remind me of something.’

  ‘What is that, dearest?’ I looked at the top of her dear head bent again over her work, and almost faltered, fearing to risk antagonising one of the people most dear to me in all the world. But if I stopped now I would never find the truth.

  ‘When we were admiring the wallpaper, it reminded me so much of the silk I showed you, the one with the pagoda design. And would you believe it,’ I pressed on, ‘we discovered that Henrietta Howard has a gown made of the very same silk.’

  She stopped to pick up a dropped stitch. ‘I’m sorry, I do not understand your meaning. Why is that so surprising?’

  How should I answer? It felt as though I was about to blunder into a thicket, hacking forward without any notion of what dangers it might pose, or where it might end. Would it not be better simply to turn back along the clearer, well-trodden paths of our relationship, rather than pressing on into the unknown? I took a deep breath.

  ‘Mr Garrick told us that Henrietta probably had several children by the king. She fostered two of them with her brother, so they believe that she is their aunt. Can you see the parallel? That is just what we have done, between us?’

  Needles clicked loudly in the silence and then, when she spoke, her voice was calm and soft.

  ‘I wish you would not speak of this, Agnes. Have we not agreed? And anyway, I cannot see the relevance.’

  ‘What about the other children? Whatever happened to them?’

  ‘What others?’

  ‘The babies she did not keep. She must have given them away to someone, somewhere.’

  Her forehead furrowed with irritation. ‘What babies? Really, your riddling is beginning to try my patience.’

  ‘It is a riddle to me too, dearest sister, one that I have been trying to unravel ever since I found that silk. Our mother left me at the Hospital with a piece of Henrietta’s silk gown as a token. I have since learned that silk was woven under the cloak of greatest secrecy, and the merchant dealing with it was under strict instructions to hand over every piece of it and not to show the design to anyone. So who else could have a piece of it, except Henrietta?’

  ‘What merchant is this?’ Her eyes snapped up, holding mine in a gaze so piercing it was almost painful.

  ‘The one who went bankrupt, whose silks were in the auction.’

  She scoffed. ‘It doesn’t sound so secret to me, when you were able to buy a piece of it.’ She rose suddenly, throwing down her knitting. ‘I am tired of this conversation, Agnes. I cannot understand why you are telling me, or where it is leading.’

  ‘Did you know Henrietta Howard?’ I blurted.

  ‘Now you’re just being silly.’

  ‘I think she might have been your mother, Louisa.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake.’ She went to the door and closed it, before turning back to me.

  ‘To be perfectly honest I am beginning to fear for your sanity, Agnes. Are you actually suggesting that you and I are the illegitimate children of the king’s mistress? I’ve never heard such poppycock. You seem to have become obsessed with this piece of silk and have concocted this fantasy on the basis of some dubious information
about a token, of which you have no proof whatsoever. So what if the silk was Henrietta Howard’s? That has no relevance to me, or to you, or to anyone else in our family.’ She shook her head, exasperated. ‘Are we not happy to have found each other?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Is Peter a happy, contented boy, growing up in a loving family?’

  ‘Yes, Louisa, he is.’

  ‘Do you have a successful business and good friends in London?’

  A tear formed and trickled down my cheek.

  ‘Then please, dearest Agnes, be content with what we have.’ She leaned down to squeeze my hand. ‘Now, I am going to make some hot milk for Ambrose before we retire to bed. Would you like some?’

  I knew of course that she was right: why could I not learn to cherish every happy moment, rather than always searching after that missing piece of the jigsaw? Being part of a family – however imperfect or incomplete – is a very great blessing. And as I was about to discover, one that can so quickly be torn away.

  22

  Satin: a silk with a glazed surface created using many threads of the warp overlaying the weft.

  On my return to London Mrs T. greeted me with an outpouring of woes: late deliveries of a certain important length of satin, a shortage of silk thread of the correct colour for an urgent job and an irate customer who had returned her gown torn after a single outing, claiming it to have been the fault of shoddy sewing.

  Over the past few years I have trained myself not to become flustered by such irritations. In fact there is great satisfaction to be gained through placating a complaining customer, or making a recalcitrant supplier understand that your order must be met, and now. Rent must be paid, suppliers’ overdue invoices to satisfy and, most importantly of all, wages to find.

  I spent the following week sorting out the accounts; there is nothing like applying one’s brain to the black and white facts that are numbers, ensuring that the books are balanced, for sorting out your priorities. Five people – Mrs T. and the four seamstresses – rely on me for their livelihoods, not to mention the legion of children and elderly relatives who depend in turn on their income.

  And all the while new customers arrived requesting outfits for the summer season at Bath and elsewhere. On Wednesday, Eva Garrick appeared at our doorstep and we enjoyed a most lively afternoon considering what she might wear – gowns that were both flattering and pretty – to accompany her husband at the various events of his Shakespeare Pageant. Having previously been so much in awe of her, I realised partway through our meeting that she was talking to me as you would a friend, sharing gossip and jokes.

  Mrs T. and the seamstresses were greatly impressed when I told them who she was.

  ‘Could she get us tickets to see Mr Garrick on the stage?’ they all wanted to know.

  As ever, tastes in fashion turned on a penny: waistlines were rising, petticoats disappearing, hoops almost vanished. Sleeve lace must be simpler, necklines lower and more revealing, except for married ladies, of course. A less fussy, more natural look in both line and fabric design seemed an unstoppable trend, but it was a rare sort of customer, the more adventurous types only, who were prepared to embrace it entirely. Some even spoke of the day when stays could be abandoned, though I would eat my hat if this occurred in my lifetime.

  ‘Why would one want to reveal one’s untamed curves, darling? Mine are in all the wrong places,’ one particularly pompous customer pronounced. Thereafter the phrase ‘all the wrong places’ was bandied about the sewing room as humorous invective, especially when the seamstresses were trying to piece a particularly demanding fit of bodice or sleeve.

  Three weeks passed in almost continuous work, save for a couple of visits from Anna, whose own waist seemed to expand by the day. I designed two gowns for her with high waistlines so that she did not have to wear stays, and made them up in soft cambric.

  ‘At last I can breathe,’ she sighed gratefully as I tied the laces at the back, subtly concealed beneath a flattering false cape. ‘You’re a miracle worker, Charlotte. Why has no one ever thought of designing for expectant mothers before now?’

  It set me thinking. Married women spend much of their lives with child, so why should they be expected to conceal their condition or even, as their time approaches, to remain hidden from society? Was their shape something to be ashamed of, somehow offensive to the eyes of men or indeed their fellow women? Surely, the creation of a new life was something to be celebrated?

  I determined that the next time a customer came to us asking for a gown to be altered to allow for their expanding belly I would show them my designs for Anna. Of such are small revolutions made, I told myself. Although I rather doubted that it would single-handedly change society’s expectations, at least it might make life a little more comfortable for women undertaking the most important task in the world.

  Then, late on a Friday afternoon just as we were shutting up shop, she arrived in a state of great distress, her face flushed and eyes reddened from weeping. As I unlocked and opened the door she stumbled into the showroom and fell into my arms. I pulled over a chair and sat her down at once.

  ‘My goodness, what ails you? Not the baby?’

  She struggled for breath. ‘It’s my father . . . I must go . . .’

  ‘Theodore? He is unwell again?’

  She leaned against me, clutching at my arms and sobbing afresh. ‘Oh Charlotte . . . I cannot bear it . . .’

  ‘Is he . . .?’ I asked, unwilling to say the dread word.

  ‘No, but the doctor says we must prepare for the worst.’ She held out a crumpled letter, signed by Theodore’s neighbour Mary Marshall. Quickly scanning it, I caught the words: ‘We may not have long.’

  ‘Of course you must go to Suffolk at once, and I shall accompany you. That is what I promised,’ I said, already starting to plan, in my head, how to persuade Mrs T. to cover for me once more, so soon after my recent absence. But this was a matter of life and death.

  At eight o’clock the following morning, just as I was about to leave to meet Anna at the coach stop as we had arranged, there was an urgent hammering at the front door. It was Henri, grey-faced and dishevelled.

  ‘You must come, Charlotte. She is asking for you,’ he gasped, grabbing my hand.

  ‘What, who? Now, slowly. Is it her father?’

  ‘No, not him. It is Anna. The pains have started.’

  ‘But it is long before her time.’ I know little about childbirth but had heard that if a mother suffered a terrible shock it might bring on a baby too early.

  ‘She has been suffering all night, crying out with the agony. And there is blood, lots of it.’ He shuddered. ‘She is scared, Charlotte. You know what happened to her mama?’

  ‘But she is strong, Henri. Have you called the midwife?’

  ‘She’s just arrived. But Anna wants you. Can you come?’

  ‘Of course, we shall go at once. Just let me get my cape.’

  He set off at such a pace through streets already busy with carts and carriages, shoppers and traders that I had to run to keep up with him. Anna’s agony could be heard from several doors away. As we entered Wood Street, women were already out on their doorsteps, wringing their hands and whispering their sympathies to Henri as we passed.

  Mariette appeared at the doorway carrying little Jean, who was clutching his favourite cloth rabbit. ‘We are going to see grand-mama, aren’t we? We’re going to have a lovely day, and then later perhaps we will meet your new sister or brother.’

  Henri leaned forward to kiss his son. ‘Be good, little one,’ he said, adding, ‘We really appreciate this, Mariette.’

  ‘Is there any further news of Theodore?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Not since the letter yesterday that put Anna into such a spin.’

  ‘Then we must pray for both of them,’ she said.

  The Vendome house is normally such a welcoming place, full of cheerful industry and friendship. But this day the usually bright and convivial
atmosphere was cloaked with the heavy weight of anxiety. As we passed the parlour door I saw that Monsieur Lavalle was slumped in his usual chair beside the empty fireplace. He barely lifted his head to acknowledge me.

  ‘It’s been a long night for the old man,’ Henri whispered.

  Breakfast was laid in the dining room, apparently untouched. Not even the normally ravenous apprentices or the drawboy, it seemed, could summon any appetite. By this time of the morning we would expect to hear the familiar thud of the looms from the weaving loft above, but it was silent. Perhaps Henri had told them to go out for the day? No one could have the heart to continue their everyday tasks while such a drama was taking place.

  As if Anna’s cries were not distressing enough, we encountered cook descending the stairs carrying a bowl of bloodied red towels. ‘The mistress is calling for you, Monsieur Vendome,’ she puffed. ‘Just going to boil more water.’ We hurried upwards to Anna’s chamber.

  As we reached the door a formidable figure who I presumed to be the midwife rushed to block our entry. ‘Sorry, master,’ she said. ‘The birthing room is no place for a man.’

  ‘But cannot I even see her?’ Henri protested.

  ‘Be assured we are taking the very best care of your wife,’ she said firmly. ‘Please wait downstairs until we call you.’ He stepped away reluctantly, nudging me forward. ‘Then you must allow our friend Miss Amesbury to go in. Anna has been calling for her.’

  ‘Are you the person she calls Charlotte?’

  ‘I am, madam. Please . . .’

  We were interrupted by a most chilling sound, a deep baying howl like an animal in the deepest distress; the sort you would hope never to hear from any living being. As the midwife rushed back into the room, I followed. My dearest friend was almost unrecognisable: her face contorted and grey in hue; her body writhing in agony. The sheets were streaked with red.

  ‘Listen Anna, it’s me, Charlotte,’ I said, rushing to her side and clasping her hand. ‘Squeeze tight if it helps.’