The Gown

by Jennifer Robson

  Two weeks ago she’d gone to visit Nan and they’d had tea and some scones from the Scottish bakery that her grandmother loved, and they’d talked about the queen’s ninetieth birthday and the fuss people were making over it. Then the phone had started ringing, and it had been Nan’s friend Margie giving her the ten-minute warning for tai chi class in the recreation room.

  “I’m sorry, my dear,” Nan had said. “I feel as if you only just got here.”

  “I’ve been here for ages. It’s only that we’ve been having such a good time. How about I call you in a few days?”

  She’d given her grandmother a big hug, and even though Nan wasn’t a demonstrative person she had hugged Heather in return. She always hugged her back. Heather had walked down the hall, and Nan had waited outside her door as she always did, just until the elevator came and Heather could blow her a kiss.

  She had got on the elevator and blown a kiss to Nan, and then the doors had shut and Heather had filled the rest of her Sunday with errands that had already vanished from her memory. She had said good-bye to her Nan, without really knowing what she was doing, for there was so much to tell her, still, and now she would never get the chance.

  She had never once imagined it would be good-bye.

  Chapter Four

  Ann

  March 10, 1947

  Ann was already awake when her alarm went off at six o’clock. She nearly always opened her eyes a few minutes before it began to trill. Before she could think twice, she threw back the mountain of blankets and sat up, swinging her feet over the side of the bed. Only then did she reach out to silence the bell.

  Her slippers, she realized, were on the floor next to her bed; usually she remembered to tuck them under the covers before falling asleep. She gasped as she slid her feet inside, though the worst of the chill was absorbed by her socks. She was further disheartened by the telling plumes of vapor that rushed from her mouth and nose.

  She slipped on her robe and made her way downstairs, stopping to collect a pint of slushy milk from the front step. In the kitchen, she stood at the sink for a long minute before trying the tap. Holding her breath, she opened it all the way. Nothing. The pipes were frozen again.

  She and Milly had learned to keep the kettle full, for the only thing worse than frozen pipes in the morning was no water for tea. She set it to boiling, first filling a small bowl so she might wash her face and brush her teeth, and then hurried out to the WC. After the pipes had frozen for the first time, back in January, Milly had brought home an old-fashioned chamber pot from the shop where she worked. “Mr. Joliffe had been using it as a pot for his ostrich fern, but it died months ago and he said I could have it. The pot, not the dead fern.” It felt awfully undignified, having to use such a thing instead of a proper toilet, but it was better than enduring a full bladder all the way into London.

  Back in the kitchen, Ann washed her hands with some of the water she’d set aside, then considered the matter of breakfast. There was a heel of stale bread, but it was only enough for two thin slices of toast; she’d leave it for Milly. Leftover porridge it was. It took only a minute or two to heat through, and was ready before the kettle had begun to boil. She added some cream from the top of the milk and, not bothering to sit, ate it up in a half-dozen bites.

  The kettle was singing. She made up a pot of tea, using leaves she’d saved and reused twice before, and added an inch of water to the saucepan and bowl from her porridge. They could soak in the sink until she got home from work. The tea was a pallid shade of beige, and likely would get no browner. A splash of milk did little to improve the flavor, but it was hot, at least, and the mug took some of the awful chill from her hands.

  Back upstairs she went, feeling her way quietly through the dark, for Milly didn’t have to be up for another half hour and it was unfair to wake her. She dressed quickly, her bedroom having grown no warmer, choosing the nicest of her work frocks and cardigans. Normally she wore a white coverall at work, but it was in the bag of things she and Milly sent out for laundering at Mrs. Cole’s every Monday. It was a luxury, paying for someone else to wash their clothes and linens, but with both of them working there was nothing else for it. Her small things she kept back, of course, as well as anything that was delicate or precious—Mrs. Cole did a fine job with sturdier items, but buttons and trim tended to vanish after a trip through her mangle.

  There was a mirror on the wall, next to the electric sconce, and she stood before it now, hairbrush in hand. Last year she’d made the mistake of having a fringe cut into her hair. It hadn’t suited her one bit, and nearly ten months later it still wasn’t quite grown out. She clipped it back from her forehead, making sure the kirby grips crossed properly, and brushed out the rest of her hair until it was smooth and shining.

  Her skin was too pale, and last summer’s freckles, which she rather liked, were all but gone. Against the pallor of her complexion, the gray-green of her eyes was all the more startling, and the color of her hair didn’t help at all. It was just a fraction too alarming to be a proper strawberry blond. Ginger—that’s what it was. Her mum had always said it looked like dried-out marmalade.

  When she’d been young, her hair and too-bright eyes and even her freckles had made her miserable. The boys at school had never failed to tease her, and some of the girls had been even more unkind. Even her friends had suggested she try a fading cream on her skin, or consider bleaching her hair.

  One boy had thought Ann was pretty, and had told her so. It had been the summer before the war, not long after her mum had died, and she’d been miserable, feeling out of place and out of sorts. Probably she ought to have stayed home from the dance. Even Frank and Milly, newly engaged and annoyingly happy in spite of the war, had given her a wide berth. But Jimmy had stayed at her side all evening, and the last time they’d danced together he’d bent his head and whispered into her ear.

  “I think you’re lovely. I hope you don’t mind me saying so.”

  Just thinking about that moment had been enough to make her smile for months, but after he’d been killed at Dunkirk, the memory had grown bittersweet. She’d barely known him—hadn’t known enough of the poor boy to properly mourn him—and yet his kind words had sung to her for years. Someone, once, had thought her lovely. Not pretty, but lovely, which had seemed somehow better. Deeper and truer, a compliment born of honesty rather than obligation.

  For a short while, she’d fancied she was falling in love with him. They’d written to one another, after he’d joined up and been sent to France, but the letters had never plunged past rote formalities of weather and food. And then he’d been killed. At his memorial service, when Ann had introduced herself, his parents hadn’t known who she was.

  She turned away from the mirror. What was the point in thinking about such things? She wasn’t the sort of woman to make anyone’s knees go weak, she never had been, and fretting about it would get her nowhere besides late for work.

  At Milly’s door, she paused and knocked lightly. “Are you up?”

  “Yes. Almost,” came the muffled reply.

  “Sit up now, or else you’ll fall asleep again. Don’t forget to take the laundry to Mrs. Cole.”

  “I won’t. What are you thinking for supper?”

  “We’ve a few potatoes. Let’s make a cottage pie from the leftover stew.”

  “Right, then. Have a good day.”

  “You too. Oh—I forgot to tell you. The pipes are frozen again.”

  “Wonderful. That really does make me want to get out of bed.”

  “Sorry. I’m sure they’ll thaw once the sun is up. Right—I’d best be off.”

  She hurried out the door, not bothering to pack her dinner, as it was easier, and cheaper, to eat at the canteen in the basement at work. A biting sort of sleet had begun to fall, and she had no umbrella, hers having collapsed in tatters the week before. By the time she reached the station, her wool hat, already on its last legs, was a sodden and shapeless ruin.

  The tra
ins were running, at least, and she was even able to get a seat in her usual carriage. A man across from her was reading the Daily Mail, his attention fixed on the football results. She could see the front page from where she sat, and the headlines were a variation on a familiar theme: more bad weather expected, food shortages increasing, dire predictions of economic collapse, further unrest in India.

  At Mile End she switched to the Central line, but two trains came and went before she could squeeze on. Nine stops to go, penned in on every side, the smell of damp wool and unwashed bodies almost unendurable. That’s what happened when the soap ration was slashed to nearly nothing.

  She all but leaped from the carriage when it pulled into Bond Street station. Up the steps she ran—the escalator was still under repair, or perhaps they simply didn’t want to waste the electricity on running the thing—and out into the street, head down against the needling rain, her feet leading her to Hartnell’s as surely as they’d send her home come evening.

  The grand entrance on Bruton Street was reserved for Mr. Hartnell, his clients, and senior staff such as Mademoiselle Davide. Everyone else came and went through the mews entrance on Bruton Place, chanting a string of hellos and good mornings to one another as they streamed up the stairs to the cloakrooms.

  Ann hung up her coat and scarf and set her wretched excuse for a hat on one of the radiators, though she held out little hope of its drying. Then down a flight of stairs and along a warren of corridors to her second home, the main embroidery workroom, where she’d spent nearly every weekday of the past eleven years. She knew every inch of it by heart.

  The heavy fire door and the short run of steps with its rickety handrail. The rows of embroidery frames, their plain wooden stretchers filled with panes of fabric. The bank of windows that stretched to the ceiling, and the hanging electric lights, their cords bunched and tied so they shone just so. The scores of drawings and samples and photographs pinned to the whitewashed walls, with one entire section given over to the women of the royal family and their Hartnell gowns. The low tables along the perimeter of the workroom, their tops messily shingled with trays of beads and sequins, boxes of buttons, and skeins of embroidery silk.

  Every blue moon Miss Duley would ask the assistants and juniors to sort everything out, but the return to order never lasted more than a week or two. Soon enough they’d be onto the next big push—a state dinner, a set of theater costumes, an export order for American clients—and the workroom would revert to its usual state of artfully disordered chaos.

  It didn’t bother Ann. She knew where to find whatever she needed, and it wasn’t as if Mr. Hartnell’s own office was shipshape—far from it. The few times Ann had been to that part of the premises, usually to deliver a finished sample, his desk had been awash in books, correspondence, and art supplies, with one end entirely given over to bolts of fabric and lace so fine and precious that a single yard easily cost more than she earned in a year.

  A gaggle of the younger girls burst through the door and clattered down the steps, their excited voices shattering the comfortable silence.

  “Look, Ann! Look!” cried Ruthie. “Go on, Doris, show her.”

  “Yes, show her,” squealed Ethel. “Just stick out your hand so she can see.”

  Ann moved closer, still unsure as to why they were so excited. “I don’t—”

  “Don’t you see? Doris got engaged!”

  “That’s wonderful news,” Ann said. “And your ring is very pretty,” she added, though she’d only caught a glimpse of it before everyone else had crowded round.

  “He asked me yesterday, right after Sunday lunch with my mum and dad. I’d been helping with the washing up, and in he came and got down on one knee. I still had soapsuds all over my hands!”

  “That’s ever so romantic,” cooed Ruthie. “What did your mum say?”

  “She had a good cry, of course. And Dad was happy, too. He liked that Joe had asked his permission first. That’s what they were doing when me and Mum were in the kitchen.”

  “When are you thinking? A summer wedding?” someone asked.

  “I think so. Joe’s mum is all on her own, so she’s happy to have us stay with her.”

  “Will you be leaving work, then?” Ann asked, though she already knew the answer.

  “Not until after the wedding. Joe wants to start a family straightaway, so there isn’t much point in staying on.”

  Ann disagreed, but there was no point in making a pill of herself by saying so. The point of working was to earn her way, spend her days in an interesting occupation, and retain some measure of independence for herself. Once children arrived, Doris would be tied to home and hearth for years, so why not make the most of her freedom while she could?

  “I suppose not,” she said instead. “We had better—”

  “Good morning, ladies! I’m surprised to find you still standing about.”

  “Sorry, Miss Duley,” said Edith. “It’s only that Doris got engaged and—”

  “Splendid news. I’m very happy for you, my dear. Perhaps we could all continue the conversation at break? In the meantime we have quite a lot of work to get through.”

  “Yes, Miss Duley,” came the chorus of voices.

  On Friday afternoon Ann, Doris, and Ethel had begun work on a gown for a client who was moving abroad—apparently her husband had been named to a very important diplomatic post and she required a wardrobe to match. While Doris and Ethel worked on the skirt, Ann occupied herself with the bodice. She had Mr. Hartnell’s design at her elbow, as well as a sample of the motif that she’d worked up herself, and she was confident in her ability to translate his vision from paper to silk. Swirls of tiny gold beads, translucent crystals, and matte copper sequins would cover nearly all the bodice by the time she was finished, the design continuing onto the skirt in irregular waves. It was straightforward work, and relatively fast, too, since she could use a tambour hook for most of it.

  She enjoyed the rhythm of such work, for it left no room in her head for anything beyond pushing the hook through the fabric in just the right spot, setting the bead or sequin, pulling the hook back, repeating the same, repeating and repeating, pausing only to check the design and sample to ensure she was copying them exactly.

  At their morning break for tea, predictably enough, they all sat together in the basement canteen and discussed Doris’s plans for her wedding.

  “I don’t want to waste coupons on a dress. I was thinking I could make over my mum’s.”

  “When was she married?” asked Ruthie, one of the assistants. Only seventeen and as starry-eyed as they came. A good worker, though, and she would settle down in time.

  “In 1914. White cotton and inset lace down to the ground. And a high neck. It looks like something Queen Mary would wear to a picnic.”

  “Does your mum mind if you change it?” Ann asked.

  “She said she doesn’t. I’m not sure where I’d even start.”

  “Don’t worry about that now,” Edith broke in. “Tell us again how he proposed. Did he give you any hint ahead of time?”

  Morning continued in the same vein as before, the workroom hushed and nearly still as the women bent over their frames. Once or twice the flash of a reflected thimble, caught in a rare beam of brighter sunshine, made Ann look up from her work, and then she would remind herself to stretch her neck and arms, rub her hands and wrists to get the blood flowing again, and close her eyes for a long, soothing minute.

  When dinner began at half-past twelve, Ann stayed behind, promising the others she’d catch up. Working quickly, as they only stopped for half an hour, she unearthed a piece of tracing paper and a pencil, then set to work. Five minutes later she was joining Doris and the others in the canteen for a sandwich and cup of tea.

  “What’s that you’ve got there?” Ruthie asked, her attention drawn to the sketch in Ann’s hand.

  “I had a few ideas for Doris’s dress. They aren’t—”

  “Don’t keep us waiting! Give it ove
r here.”

  Ann set the drawing in front of Doris, now wishing she had chosen a quieter and more private moment to share her ideas. “Here, on the bodice, it’s probably a bit drapey, so you’ll need to add some darts under the bust, and then, if you’re feeling brave, you can recut the neckline so it’s lower and a bit curved, just here—”

  “Heart-shaped,” Doris sighed.

  “Yes. And you’ll need to take it in at the waist, or make a sash that will cinch it in tight.”

  “It looks a bit like something Mr. Hartnell would design,” said Ruthie, and everyone gasped.

  “Of course it doesn’t,” Ann said, her voice sounding a little sharper than she meant. “It’s only because I used one of his drawings as a template—I traced the outline of the figure. Otherwise I’d never have got the proportions right.”

  At school she’d never been very good at art, but during the war she’d started carrying an old exercise book with her, along with a few pencils, and had taught herself to draw. It was cheaper than buying books or magazines, and easier on her eyes, besides. Some things, like people’s faces or hands, would forever be beyond her capabilities, but it was a nice way to pass the time, and a means of remembering some of the really fine work she’d done over the years.

  Last year, for Christmas, Milly had given her a beautiful sketchbook from the shop where she worked, the sort of thing a real artist would use, with thick paper and a lovely pale blue binding. It had taken Ann a week or two to work up the nerve to draw in it the first time, and even now she preferred to save it, like Sunday best, for her favorite ideas. She’d add Doris’s dress to the book as soon as she had a bit of spare time. Maybe on Sunday afternoon, when she’d finished her mending and other small chores.

  “It’s perfect,” Doris said. “Isn’t it?” she asked the others, and they all agreed that Ann’s ideas were perfect and Doris would look a dream on her wedding day.