The Gown

by Jennifer Robson

  “My mother had them sent out for cleaning,” Jeremy said, noticing her interest. “The paintings that usually hang there. Said they needed a freshening up.”

  “Oh. I, ah . . .”

  “So. Hartnell. Have you worked there for long?”

  “Since I was a girl. I’ve never worked anywhere else.”

  He sat opposite her and sipped at his drink. “You must have had a lot of people asking after the princess’s dress. You know there’s a king’s ransom to be made there.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, although she had a terrible feeling she did.

  “It’s a secret, and there’s nothing people love more than secrets. Uncovering them, I mean. In the right hands, a picture of that gown is worth a lot. A fortune, even.”

  “Is that what this is about? The princess’s gown?”

  “’Course not. I mean, I did have an idea of what you did for a living. Saw you with Carmen that first night, didn’t I? She used to go out with a friend of mine. Until he found a decent girl to marry, that is. But you never said a word about your work, or that bloody gown, and I wasn’t about to go digging. I do have my pride.” He gulped at his drink; it was half gone now.

  She was going to be sick. “If I told you anything, even a single detail, I’d be sacked. I’d be betraying all of my friends at work.”

  “Have I asked? No. So let’s forget about it. Do you feel like seeing some more of the house? Been in the family for ages, you know.” He tipped the glass to his mouth. Emptied it.

  And then he looked at her, and there was something in his eyes, or behind his eyes, somehow, that set every nerve in her body jangling with apprehension. His easy friendliness of their earlier meetings was gone, and in its stead was a sort of avid, predatory watchfulness.

  “I’m not feeling all that well,” she protested. “I think it might be best if I went home.”

  “Don’t be such a wet blanket. Finish that sherry, and let me show you this house. How often does a girl like you get a peek inside a place like this?”

  He’d taken her coat when they came in, but she still had her bag. The front door was only yards away. But would it be locked? And surely he didn’t mean to hurt her. He’d think her mad if she suddenly ran across the room and started clawing at the front door.

  “Come on,” he said, and took her hand in his. He led her to the stairs, wide and carpeted, and she was surprised by how gritty the banister felt under her free hand. As if no one had wiped it down in months and months.

  They reached the top of the stairs. “There’s another drawing room at the very front,” he explained, “and several guest rooms along the hall. At the back are my parents’ bedrooms. You’ll like my mother’s room. She had it done up by some poncy decorator just before the war.”

  He hadn’t let go of her hand, so she had no choice but to follow him. He opened the door, swore under his breath when the overhead light failed to come on, and went over to the mantel, still dragging her along, and switched on the lamp there.

  It was hard to make out much, for the light wasn’t especially strong, but she could see pink and silver everywhere: the carpet, the draperies, the upholstery on the occasional chairs and settee by the hearth. Even the bedcover was made of pink-and-silver brocade.

  “What do you think?” he asked, and she realized he had let go of her hand. He’d gone over to the windows and was pulling back the draperies. Now was the time for her to go—just run. Run.

  But then he was at her side again, his hand combing through her hair, and she was too frightened to move. “It’s very pretty,” she lied.

  The room, and the house, had once been pretty, but now they felt and smelled as if they were rotting away. Armies of mice and silverfish and woodworm were nibbling away at his house, and Jeremy didn’t seem to notice or care.

  “My mother hasn’t been here in years. She and my father never come in from the country. They live their lives, and I live mine, and they don’t care that it’s all gone. That my inheritance is nothing but this moldering heap and mountains of debt. I’ll never be free of it. And now I’m almost out of time.”

  He twisted her hair in his fingers, winding it tight, so tight she couldn’t move her head. “You are very pretty, you know.”

  He began to kiss her, and his mouth was a little too hard against hers, his fingers pressing a fraction too tightly against the soft skin of her arm, and he didn’t seem to notice, or care, that he was pulling her hair.

  It was the first time he had kissed her and she didn’t like anything about it. “Jeremy,” she said. “Please stop.”

  His hand moved from her arm to her breast, kneading, pawing, and one of his fingernails scraped against the soft skin just above her brassiere. She flinched, and he laughed softly.

  “Were you expecting hearts and flowers? Stupid, silly girl.”

  “I wasn’t expecting anything. I’d like to go downstairs now.”

  “Why did you think I brought you here, if not for this?”

  “You said you wanted to show me the house, and now I’ve seen it and I’d like to go home.”

  “Stupid, silly girl,” he repeated, and he pulled at her hair so sharply that tears came to her eyes. He might do anything to her now, for they were alone in the house. She was alone and she had gone into this bedroom with him willingly, or at least that was how anyone else would see it.

  He propelled her backward, one stumbling step after another, and then the back of her knees hit something. It was the bed, the bed, and he pushed her back, finally letting go of her hair, but only so he might pull at her skirt, higher and higher, oblivious to her slapping hands. The same fingernail that had caught at her breast before now tore one of her stockings. It laddered, splintering, and he laughed, a cold, sharp heh that killed the last of her hope.

  “No, Jeremy! I said no! I’ll scream,” she threatened, and she pushed at his shoulders with all her strength. It made no difference.

  “There’s no one to hear you. My sister’s staying with friends, and the daily girl doesn’t come in until eight. Scream all you like.” And then, his mouth hot against her ear, “I actually rather like it.”

  He wrenched aside the crotch of her knickers. “That’s better,” he said, and then he spat. She flinched, but he’d aimed the spittle at his own hand. It made no sense—why should he do such a thing?

  He opened the flies on his trousers, and now he was rubbing his wet hand over his—no, no—and he pushed at her legs, forcing them wide, and the horror of his invasion, the tearing, wrenching brutality of it, stunned her into immobility.

  What had she done for him to be so cruel? Or was this what it was simply like? Did all women have to endure such indignities? Were the love stories Milly had read aloud to her all lies?

  Everything had been a lie.

  He was so heavy, and his breath against her face was so rank, and everything he was doing was so painful and disgusting, and the sounds he made under his breath were just awful. Filthy words, over and over, right against her ear, and soft, whining groans that turned her stomach.

  She hardly noticed when he rolled off her.

  “Up you get,” he said, slapping at her thigh. He sounded almost playful. “You’ll want to clean yourself up. I’ll see you downstairs.”

  How long did she stay there, her legs splayed open, her eyes hot and dry and sightless? She had to get up, she knew, and find some way out, but it was a long while before she was able to move. Even then the room spun around her and she had to fight hard not to be sick.

  She noticed an open door, and beyond it the cool gleam of white tile, and somehow she managed to stand and then stumble to the bathroom. She was still wearing her shoes.

  She switched on the light above the sink, and was surprised by the woman she found in the mirror. Eyes wild, face ghostly pale, hair dull and straggling and damp against her neck.

  A stack of linen hand towels, impossibly fine, sat on a table next to the sink. She wet one of them with cold wat
er, wrung it out, and wiped her face. Then her breasts, where a long, livid scratch had risen against her milky skin. And, last, between her legs. She had to rinse the towel again and again, but after a while the water no longer ran pink.

  She pulled down her skirt, straightened her ruined stockings, and, after a moment’s hesitation, stepped out of her torn knickers and stuffed them in the bin. Her blouse was intact, for the buttons had obediently popped through their holes when he’d tugged it open.

  He was in the kitchen, and her bag was on the table. He must have taken it with him when he’d gone downstairs. He had made himself a sandwich and a cup of tea, and he didn’t even look up when she came in.

  “I’d like to go home,” she said.

  “Fine. You know the way out. I hope you didn’t make a mess on my mother’s bed.”

  “No,” she said, enjoying a moment of perverse pride in her lie. There was no easy way to get blood out of silk brocade. She put on her coat, which he’d thrown over the back of a chair, and picked up her bag.

  She stared at him, wondering how he could be so calm. So unaffected by what he had done to her. “Why?” she said at last.

  He kept eating his sandwich, bite after bite, and when it was gone he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and went to set the empty plate in the sink. Only then did he turn to look at her.

  “You have no idea what it costs to live properly. No idea of the expectations people have, of the things I’ve had to force myself to do, just to keep a foot in the door.”

  “It was all lies.”

  “In the main, yes. I kept hoping you might be silly enough to tell me about that bloody gown. But not a word—not one word. And I couldn’t come straight out and ask, could I? You’d have run in the other direction if I’d said a thing. I’ve wasted weeks on you, and I’m no further ahead than I was in August.”

  “So it was revenge just now?”

  “That? That was me having some fun. You, too, if you’d bothered to unclench your teeth.”

  “You raped me.”

  “Did I? You came to this house with me. You walked upstairs on your own. You let me kiss you. There isn’t a judge in this land who’d agree it was rape.”

  “But I know it was. You can try to forget, but it will never leave you. I know, and you know, that you are the farthest thing in the world from a decent man.” She walked to the side door and tore it open. “I hope you drown in your debts. It’s no less than you deserve.”

  She didn’t look back. Her heart pounding out of her chest, she ran up the darkened steps, through the garden and garage, and back into the mews. She ran until she could see lights and traffic and safety ahead.

  Soon she would be home. She would be home, and safe, and she’d have a hot bath and a still hotter cup of tea, and she would mend the parts of her he’d broken.

  He had been a mistake. That was all. The sort of mistake she’d never be stupid enough to make again.

  The sort of mistake she would take to her grave.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Miriam

  November 10, 1947

  Something was wrong with Ann. Miriam was certain of it. About a month ago she had fallen ill with some nameless malady, and it had left her wan and shaky, her stomach so upset that she hadn’t been able to face anything more than tea and toast. Still she’d gone to work, faithful to the dictates of the great project before them, but the long days had left her flattened. It had gone on like that for weeks, and no matter how often Miriam begged her Ann would not go to the doctor.

  “All I need is some sleep,” she kept saying. “I’ll feel better after I’ve had a good night’s sleep.”

  Miriam had tried to cheer her with news of Ruby’s baby, for was it not the case that everyone loved to hear about babies? She had shown her pictures of the infant, named Victoria in recognition of her parents having become engaged on VE Day, and Ann had nodded and agreed the baby was very sweet, her voice an almost inaudible monotone.

  “Is anything the matter?” Miriam had asked.

  “No, not at all. Please do pass on my best wishes to your friends.”

  At the end of October, when Princess Elizabeth had asked Monsieur Hartnell to nominate three women from his staff to attend the wedding ceremony, Ann, together with Miss Duley and Miss Holliday from sewing, had been chosen for the honor. Ann had smiled, and accepted the other women’s congratulations, and had sworn she was indeed excited beyond belief, but Miriam had remained unconvinced. Her friend was unhappy, deeply so, and her melancholy only seemed to deepen as the day of the royal wedding grew near.

  This past weekend, Miriam had watched Ann’s every move, and when she realized, as of Sunday night, that her friend had eaten only a few crackers over the course of two days, she had made up a mug of Bovril and taken it upstairs. It was that or summon the local doctor.

  “Ann, ma belle, will you let me come in and give you this Bovril? It smells vile but I know you like it. I am worried that you have not eaten. Will you let me come in?”

  Ann had opened the door, still in her nightgown and robe, and had tried to smile. “Thank you. I’m sorry I made you worry.”

  “Is anything the matter?” Miriam had asked gently.

  “No,” Ann had said, and she’d hidden her face behind the mug of Bovril, and Miriam had known she was lying. She knew it because she would have done the same. “I do feel badly that I didn’t go to church today. Since it’s Remembrance Sunday.”

  “It is only one year. And we can observe the silence on Tuesday, on the eleventh, as we still do in France. Even if it is only the two of us in the corner of the workroom.”

  By Monday morning Ann seemed a little better, and Miriam began to hope she might be on the mend. She had some porridge for breakfast, and she even managed a bit of conversation as they sat on the train. How awful the weather had been and how cold it was for November, yet not once did she smile. Not once.

  They were in the cloakroom with the other women, on the point of going downstairs to begin their day, when Ruthie upended everything. Digging in her bag, she extracted a newspaper and held it up so they all might see the front page. It featured a drawing of a woman in a long white gown, a veil streaming from her dark hair, a small bouquet in one of her hands. Above, in large, jet-black type, was the headline:

  EXCLUSIVE TO THE EXAMINER

  THE GOWN OF THE CENTURY

  “Can you believe it? ‘Gown of the century,’ they say, and it’s not even the right dress! I wonder where they got it from.”

  Ann had been rummaging through her own bag, oblivious to the talk around them, and now she grew still, a sudden gasp hitching in her throat. Miriam looked to her friend, but she had shut her eyes.

  “Does it say anything more?” Ann asked.

  “Hold on . . . here goes:

  “‘Our insider source at the Mayfair premises of Norman Hartnell has provided us with this exclusive peek at Princess Elizabeth’s sensational wedding gown more than a month before the rest of the world gets to see it. We can reveal that it is made of white silk and is covered with “a king’s ransom” of diamonds and pearls, in the words of our top secret source. Behind the closed doors and whitewashed windows of his exclusive atelier, Mr. Hartnell has teams of seamstresses and embroiderers working around the clock on the finery that the princess and all her family, including the queen herself, will wear to Westminster Abbey. More news inside, including behind-the-scenes details and an estimate of how much this fairy-tale gown is likely to cost.’”

  “None of it is true,” Miriam said. “How can they print such things? And this gown—it is not even close. Why do they bother?”

  “Pounds, shillings, and pence,” Ethel said. “Just think how many newspapers they’ll sell today. Doesn’t matter that Mr. Hartnell and the palace will say they’ve got it wrong. People will believe it until they see the princess on her big day.”

  They were saved from further discussion by Ethel’s exclamation that it was half eight already an
d Miss Duley would be waiting, so they all trooped downstairs, Ann as silent as the grave, and moved to their usual places, clustered around the princess’s bridal train in its long, cumbersome frame, and Miriam listened to the same whispered discussions they’d been having for weeks now. Husbands, beaux, rationing woes, gossip about film stars, and none of it was noteworthy enough to hold her attention. Not when Ann was suffering so.

  She worked in silence, and she watched her friend wither before her eyes, and before long Miriam had had enough. Rather than follow the others down to the canteen at morning break, she took Ann’s arm and led her to the cloakroom.

  “What . . . ?”

  “Come with me,” Miriam hissed. “Wait until we are alone.”

  Once in the cloakroom, Miriam retreated to the bench in the far corner, by the masking noises of the ever-clanking radiator, and patted the spot beside her. “Come. Something is wrong, and I insist you tell me what it is.”

  She waited, and waited, and at last Ann came to join her.

  “The sketch of the wedding gown in the newspaper,” Ann whispered. “It’s mine.”

  “How is that possible? I know you would never—”

  “It was stolen from my sketchbook, the blue one I sometimes carry around in my bag. I checked earlier and there’s a page missing. I think it was cut out of the book.”

  “You are certain of this?”

  “Yes. I mean, I could look again. But I know it’s not there.”

  Suddenly Miriam remembered the night she and Ann had sat at the kitchen table and shared glimpses of their work with one another. Her drawing of Grand-Père offering the kiddouch blessing, and Ann’s drawing of a bridal gown. “Is it the dress you showed me? Doris’s dress?” It had been hard to see the picture in the newspaper from across the room, but thinking on it, now, she did recognize the sketch. It was indeed Ann’s work.

  “Yes.”