“Very good, Miriam,” Miss Duley said approvingly. “If you could stretch the tulle for us—this piece is fifty-four inches wide, so you’ll have room for three samples across, with plenty of room to finish the edges. Then thirty-six inches as far as depth, I think. Ann, if you could start by cutting out the appliqué pieces? Once you’ve arranged them on the backing, let me have a look.”
Ann fetched half a dozen sheets of onionskin from a box on the side table, then went to a window at the far end of the room. Taking up Mr. Hartnell’s sketch of the largest of the York roses, she held it against the window, overlaid it with the onionskin, and carefully traced over the petals.
She repeated the exercise for all the motifs, save the jasmine and ears of wheat, which would be created through beadwork alone. One by one, she cut out the shapes from the onionskin and set the pattern pieces on the sketch. Fearful that a whiff of air might throw them into disarray, she weighted down the wisps of paper with a handful of buttons from the odds-and-sods jar.
Moving to one of the side tables, she dusted it thoroughly and then, when she was certain it was spotless, spread out the satin. Had it been a less delicate or light-colored fabric, she’d have marked the perimeter of the pattern pieces with a prick-and-pounce method: first perforating the pattern’s edges with a needle, then rubbing through a scant amount of powdered charcoal. The satin was so tightly woven, though, that the needle marks alone would be enough to guide her.
Ann set the first pattern piece on the satin, picked up the needle, its blunt end set in a cork to make it easier to hold, and began to mark the edge of the petal shape. She cut out the petal with her very best scissors, just the one piece to begin, and decided to experiment a little before she went any further.
Like most satin, it was the very devil to work with, for it managed to be slippery and quite stiff at the same time. It didn’t take well to finger-pressing, but there was no way to baste under the edges without leaving marks. She would just have to turn under the edges as she went and hope they didn’t fray too badly.
With that settled, she returned to the satin and cut out petals large and small, star flowers and heart-shaped smilax leaves, and as she finished each one she set it on its matching sketch. There were more than two dozen pieces when she’d finished, all needing to be appliquéd with invisible stitches onto the stretched tulle. Only then could the embroidery proper begin.
She looked at the clock; it was almost half twelve. She must have worked through morning break.
Miss Duley, noticing that Ann had paused in her work, came over to the table. “I’m sorry, my dear. I didn’t notice you and Miriam hadn’t gone down with the others until they were on their way back. You may have an extra quarter hour now to make up for it.”
“That’s all right. If I’d been desperate for a cuppa I’m sure I’d have noticed.” Ann gestured to the array of satin shapes. “What do you think? I took account of the grain as I was cutting them out.”
“Well done. Once you’ve attached them to the backing, we’ll go over the placement of the beadwork. Miriam—I was just saying to Ann that you may make up your missed break with extra time at dinner.”
“I do not mind. I was happy at my work.”
“Then off to your dinners you go, and don’t rush back,” Miss Duley commanded smilingly.
Seated at her usual table in the canteen, with her usual fare of a cheese and salad sandwich failing to tempt her, Ann let the others talk over and around her. It was important to eat and drink and keep up her strength, but all she wanted at that moment was to return to her frame and begin to attach the appliqués.
“Ooh,” Ruthie said as they were finishing, “you never did say how it went. Yes, Ann, I’m talking to you.”
“How what went?”
“Your date with that dishy captain. Was he nice?”
“Oh, that. I didn’t go.”
A chorus of disappointed groans swept around the table.
“Why ever not?”
“And you never said a thing?”
“But you said you’d ring him up. I heard you tell him.”
She had wanted to go, very much, but when she’d rung up the number on his card a sleepy voice had answered. A woman’s voice.
“May I speak with Captain Thickett-Milne?” she’d asked once the worst of her surprise had worn off.
“Wrong number.”
“I beg your pardon,” she had said, but the woman had already hung up.
Ann had looked at the card, memorized the number, and dialed again with painstaking care.
“Hello? May I speak with—”
The same peevish voice had replied. “Oh, bugger off. I told you already—you’ve the wrong number.”
She’d been too cowed to try again.
“I wasn’t feeling well,” she now fibbed.
“Well, now that you’re feeling better you should call him back,” Ruthie advised. “Otherwise someone else will snap him right up.”
Ruthie was a sweet girl, but Ann couldn’t bear to think about it anymore. He was probably married, or involved with someone, and that was the woman who had answered the phone. It had been stupid of her even to try.
“I’m off back to work,” she told the table. “Are you ready?” she asked Miriam, and they were sitting at their frame before anyone else had returned from dinner. “So much for our extra quarter hour. But since we’re here—which one would you like to do?”
“The fleurs d’étoile? The star flowers? But only if you—”
“No, that’s fine. I think I’ll start on the larger of the roses. But first let’s move the frame into the corner. The light is much better there.”
Miriam had set basting stitches in blue to divide the backing into six equal squares, and once Ann had washed her hands at the sink in the corner, set up her little side table with her things, and adjusted her chair just so, she cast an eagle eye over the tulle. Its grain was perfectly straight, without the slightest ripple or bump, and the fabric was as tight as a new drum.
“You’ve done a beautiful job on the stretching,” she told her friend.
“Thank you. At Maison Rébé we were permitted no more than thirty minutes to set up our frames, but I allowed myself rather more time today. I did not wish the tulle to warp when I laced up the short sides of the frame.”
With Mr. Hartnell’s sketch for reference, Ann set the first of the petals on the tulle. She took a curved needle from her pincushion, the same as a surgeon might use, ran it through a scrap of chamois cloth a few times to remove any trace of tarnish, and threaded it with a double strand of silk floss so fine it was almost transparent.
Ann turned under the edge of the satin by the tiniest amount, held it in place with the index finger of her left hand, and then, bringing the needle from beneath the tulle, she caught the fabric just below the edge of the petal and pulled the thread taut.
One stitch completed.
She worked slowly, methodically, taking a half hour or more to affix each petal to the tulle. Inches away, Miriam was doing the same with the first of her star-flower shapes, and while they often liked to talk as they worked, today they were silent.
They continued on in this fashion all afternoon, and when they set down their needles at five o’clock they had attached all but a few of the appliqué pieces. Miss Duley had come by every hour or so, invariably pronouncing herself pleased with their work, and near the end of the afternoon had reminded them, more than once, to cover their work with a clean length of cambric before they left.
Supper that night had been the simplest thing Ann could devise: sardines on toast, which Miriam ate with gusto, and some tiny greengage plums that Mr. Booth had brought by. The weather was still warm and fair at eight o’clock, and the sunset promised to be a pretty one, so she and Miriam carried the kitchen chairs into the back and drank their tea and listened to the agreeable noises of children playing in the half-wild lane that ran along the end of the gardens.
“I do wonder how
we’ll get it all done on time,” she said after a while. “The wedding is on November twentieth, but the fabric won’t be ready for another week at least, if not longer. That leaves only six weeks, but really it’s more like four. We can’t expect the girls in the sewing room to make up the gown overnight. And did you see how many flowers are on the gown and train? Hundreds and hundreds. It took us the entire day just to make a start on a handful of them.”
“Yes, but we are only two. There are twenty-four of us in the workroom. Also, you know, the work will go faster once we have done it a time or two. With each flower we will learn.”
“I suppose you’re right. I wanted to ask . . .”
“Yes?” Miriam asked.
“It’s just that you didn’t seem terribly excited. When Mr. Hartnell asked us to do up the samples. I’m not saying that to be critical. Only that I was a bit surprised.”
“I know. I am sorry. I was not certain how to act. In France we have no king, and I know very little of this princess and her family. Have you ever met her?”
“Me? No. I mean, I’ve seen her several times, and I’ve curtsied as she’s walked by, but I’ve never been introduced to her. Usually they—I mean the queen and princesses—don’t come to us. Mr. Hartnell goes to them when they need something, to Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle or wherever the king and queen are living.”
“What do you think of them?” Miriam asked, and Ann was a little taken aback by her expression of disdain. “These people who live in their palaces and eat off gold plates while the rest of you queue up for your rations?”
“They’re not like that. Honestly, they’re not. The king and queen have ration books like the rest of us. And they might eat off gold plates, but they have to make do with the same food as everyone else.”
Miriam frowned at this, still skeptical. “What of the rations for their clothing? If all is to be truly fair, as you say, then the princess will need coupons for her wedding gown, will she not?”
“I suppose she will,” Ann admitted. “I wonder how they’ll manage it.”
“No doubt something will be done. No one will be brave enough to say no to the king.”
“But they aren’t like that at all. The king and queen could have left England during the war, or they could have sent the princesses to Canada, but they all stayed here. And Buckingham Palace was bombed, and the king’s brother was killed. And the queen is ever so nice.
“There was one time, before the war, when she invited all the girls who’d worked on one of her gowns to come and see her in it. So we walked over to Buckingham Palace, and they let us in through a special door at the side, and we waited in this very grand hallway with paintings hung all the way to the ceiling. I remember we were so nervous we barely even breathed. And then the queen herself appeared in the gown we’d made for her, with a beautiful fur over her shoulders, and a tiara that was nothing but diamonds, hundreds of them, and besides that a necklace and bracelets and the most enormous earrings. One by one she said hello to all of us, and asked our names, and thanked us for our hard work. No one else has ever done that, in all the time I’ve been at Hartnell. Not a note, or a word of thanks, or anything. And she sends gifts, too—the white heather, just at the front of the border there, came from her. Balmoral heather, and it’s in my garden now.”
She had to stop and take a breath, and it was a bit embarrassing to realize how red-faced and strident she’d become. Miriam would think she’d lost her mind. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m that fond of the queen. Most people are. I think that’s why everyone is so excited about the wedding.”
“Then I will be fond of her, too. And you are right. It is a great honor to work on the princess’s gown.”
“It makes me nervous just to think about it. What if it shows in my work? What if my hands get shaky, or—”
“Then do not be nervous,” Miriam said.
“The whole world will be watching. How can I not?”
“The world will watch the wedding itself, yes, but not our workroom. And you must ask yourself: Is any of this beyond your capabilities? No. You are a fine embroiderer, the equal of any of my peers at Maison Rébé. You can do this. Of course you can.”
It was a rare compliment from Miriam, and all the more precious as a result. “Thank you. I’m glad we’re in this together.”
“So am I, my friend. So am I.”
Chapter Fourteen
Miriam
August 23, 1947
The longing had taken hold earlier that week at supper. Ann had made chicken, two wizened and rather tough legs, seasoning them with salt and pepper and nothing else. It had been good, if bland, and she had found herself wishing for something that tasted of more—what, exactly, she couldn’t say. Only more.
And then, as she was falling asleep that night, the memory of Grand-Mère’s Friday-night chicken had come upon her. She hadn’t tasted it since her childhood, nor in all the intervening years had she ever considered making it herself. Yet her desire for the dish, once awakened, would not leave her.
The difficulty was that almost everything she required, excepting the chicken itself, was impossible to acquire in Barking. Not that it had surprised her, for one could not even buy a decent bottle of olive oil in the local shops. She’d asked Ann, but her friend had explained it was only carried by chemists. “For earache,” she’d explained.
Miriam had nodded, bitten her tongue, and resolved to look further afield.
On Wednesday afternoon, Monsieur Hartnell’s chief fitter, known to all as Mam’selle, had paid a visit to the embroidery workroom. Miriam had been intent on the spray of jasmine blossoms she was creating, her thoughts returning again and again to the impossibility of tracking down ingredients that were regarded as exotic rarities by the English, when the Frenchwoman’s voice caught her attention. Mam’selle was deep in conversation with Miss Duley, likely over some detail of the royal ladies’ gowns, and it occurred to Miriam that if anyone in London might be able to recommend a good French épicier, it would be Germaine Davide.
Few people made her nervous, but Mam’selle was one of them. Revered and feared in equal measure by the seamstresses whose work she governed, she was renowned for her impeccable taste, adored by her clients, and even, on occasion, deferred to by Monsieur Hartnell himself.
She waited until Mam’selle had finished speaking with Miss Duley and was about to climb the stairs that led out of the workroom. Her palms damp with nerves, her heartbeat hammering in her ears, Miriam rose from her seat and approached in as diffident a manner as she could conjure. Never would she have dared to directly approach such a personage as Mam’selle when she had been a lowly petite main at Maison Rébé, but she had dared many things in recent years, had she not? And this was not the sort of thing for which she might be dismissed. Of that she was almost certain.
“I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle Davide, but may I ask your advice on a small matter?”
Her hand already on the banister, Mam’selle turned to face Miriam, her bearing as imperious as an aristocrat of the ancien régime. And then her expression softened. “You are the girl from Maison Rébé,” she stated, her accent as thick as crème fraîche. “I have heard about you.”
“Yes,” Miriam admitted, wincing inwardly at the reminder of her effrontery in approaching Monsieur Hartnell. “My name is Miriam Dassin.”
The merest smile, and then Mam’selle switched into French. “Comment pourrais-je vous aider?”
Miriam explained her dilemma, also in French. It was such a relief to let her mouth relax into the familiar words and cadence of her mother tongue. “I thought that you might know of a grocer, perhaps, where I might find what I need,” she concluded.
Mam’selle rolled her eyes dramatically. “I love this country, but the food . . . let us speak no more of it. It is possible to find such things in South Kensington. Around the French embassy there are several provisioners, and there are one or two good shops in Soho, of course. But the prices are crim
inally high. Simply criminal.”
“Oh. I see. I was hoping—”
“That is why you must go to my friend Marcel Normand in Shoreditch. To the east of here, not far from the market at Spitalfields. He has an épicerie on Brushfield Street. I cannot recall the number but the awning is striped green and white. Impossible to miss. Tell him I sent you.”
Miriam had stammered out her thanks, the great lady had taken her leave, and later, after supper that evening, she had confessed all to Ann. How she wished to make a favorite family dish for supper on Saturday evening, but needed to go to Shoreditch to fetch the ingredients.
“I do not wish to neglect my share of the chores. Would you mind if I do them on Sunday instead?”
Ann hadn’t minded at all. “It won’t hurt to let things slide for a week or so. How about I fetch the chicken on Saturday morning, and you head into London? If I go early enough the butcher will probably still have something.”
Miriam decided to keep her opinion of the butcher to herself. To voice her conviction that he was a wretch who sold meat that was fit only for dogs, and who ought to be prosecuted for his black-market dealings, would only depress them both. Instead she cautioned Ann that she ought to keep her expectations low as far as supper was concerned.
“I have never made it myself, you see, and I have no recipe. Only the memories of watching my grandmother make it many times, and of course its taste. I fear I will disappoint you.”
“Oh, I doubt that. And you know already that I’m a poor cook. Who am I to criticize?”
On Saturday morning she took the train into London, but rather than continuing into the West End she alighted at Liverpool Station. From there it was only a short walk east to the neighborhood of Shoreditch and the ancient market of Spitalfields.
The Gown Page 14
