The Crimson Thread (Once Upon a Time)

by Suzanne Weyn

  Bertie waved him off. “You’ve already helped more than I can repay. What do you do that you always have so much money?”

  He grinned. “I’m a burglar, remember?”

  “I’m sorry I said that.”

  “You are forgiven. I am a tailor by day, and by night I am excellent at cards and so increase my day’s wage.”

  “Aren’t you afraid you’ll lose your day’s wage instead?” she asked, taking the paper bag of eggs from the vendor.

  “Not meaning to boast, but . . . I never lose.”

  She laughed at his bravado. “Is that so?”

  “It’s true,” he confirmed.

  “And how did you learn to be a tailor?” she asked, continuing to walk on toward home.

  A distant look swept across his face for a moment before he spoke. “It is a long and pitiful story,” he said with a bitter laugh. “Are you sure you want to hear it?”

  “I’m sure.”

  He told her that as a young boy of about seven he had been sold to a traveling carnival show by his parents, who were so poor that they could not feed him. At the carnival he had worked as an acrobat, a juggler, and a tightrope walker.

  “That’s why you can swing around on the fire escape like that,” she realized.

  He nodded. “We traveled all through Europe and Russia. I worked with a magician, too. I know lots of magic. I became better than the magician I assisted, so one night he knocked me out and left me behind on the side of the road. It was in Moscow, I think. I was nine.”

  “How terrible,” she said with a gasp. “What did you do?”

  “The only thing I could,” he replied. “I stood on corners and juggled and walked on my hands and flipped in the air for what coins people would throw at me. Those coins were enough for me to buy a piece of bread and sometimes a blanket so I wouldn’t freeze to death on the park benches where I slept.”

  “How did you get to America?”

  “I stowed away on a steamer. I was doing my usual tricks in the park—”

  “The one with the torch?” she interrupted.

  “Yes, but the torch wasn’t there then. I was dirty and raggedy and not too many people wanted to stop to see me in that condition, so I wasn’t doing too well. Then, one day, a tailor who I had seen watching me for about a week came along and took my by the filthy shirt collar and said, ‘You will work with me. I will teach you to be a tailor.’”

  “He adopted you, then?”

  “Yes and no. His wife cleaned me up and fed me. But I lived and worked in the shop. It was my whole life. A funny thing happened too. As I learned, I began to remember my life as a child when I was very young. I recalled things that I had forgotten, such as that my grandmother was a spinner and I would help her spin the wool in a barn behind where we once lived. And I remembered my parents sewing inside our small home.”

  “And now you are a tailor,” she said.

  “Yes, it was as though I was meant to be in the garment trade, and no amount of strange turns on life’s path could change that fact.”

  “Life is strange,” Bertie remarked.

  “It is, indeed,” he agreed thoughtfully.

  “Do you still live at the tailor shop?”

  “No, that shop closed when the man died, and I worked for several other tailors after that. I was back on the street again, but this time I at least had money in my pocket; plus, I was older by then and it became easier to make my own way.”

  She observed him more closely than she ever had before and saw why she’d previously found his age so hard to judge. She saw now that he was probably younger than twenty, not much older than herself, but all that he’d been through had left a hardness, more like a deep weariness, in and around his dark eyes. Maybe it was just sadness.

  His face lit with a thought, and he suddenly appeared to be as young as he really was. “Do you want to see something I just found?”

  “What?” she asked, thinking that he was really quite pleasant-looking when he smiled. Until this moment she had not seen him smile with anything other than bitter irony. His smile of real pleasure— appearing so unexpectedly, like the sun suddenly rising from behind a cloud—raised an answering smile from her.

  “Come with me.” He picked up his pace, and impulsively she followed him. In two blocks he turned down an empty alley, where he lifted the hatch of a basement cellar and climbed down. Bertie went down after him.

  It was cold and dark, but the open door above provided enough light to reveal an abandoned room. At its center sat a broken spinning wheel.

  “When is the last time you saw one of those?” he asked happily, excitement animating his face.

  In truth, it hadn’t been that long ago. Her mother had had an old spinning wheel like this one, which she had used to spin the fleece from their one sheep until they had to sell the animal. Her mother had once shown her how to use it, but she’d forgotten now.

  “And look at this,” he added, directing her attention to a small hand loom. “All this is done in big textile mills now. Someone must have had a little home shop down here once.”

  “What’s upstairs?” she asked. “These things must belong to someone.”

  “I don’t know. The building is boarded up. I broke in just the other night looking for a place to sleep. Remember that very hot night? I came down here thinking it would be cooler, and I found these.”

  “Why don’t you get a regular place to live?” she asked him. He seemed to have enough money.

  “I haven’t had a home since I was seven. The idea of it makes me nervous. I’m happier flopping down anywhere that’s convenient.” He looked away from her as if wanting to change the subject. “Isn’t this hand loom great? I want to clean it up and see if I can use it.”

  “Would you make cloth?” she asked.

  “I don’t know yet. I just want to see what I can do with them.”

  He stepped closer to her—too close, she thought, but for some reason she didn’t move away. “You are very pretty in that new dress, you know, princess,” he said, his voice dropping to the thick, unmistakable tones of attraction.

  “Why do you call me princess?” she asked him, no longer content to let it hang as a mystery between them.

  “Because I can see you as you really are.”

  “How can you?”

  “When you grow up on the streets, you learn to see into people. You need to if you are to survive. I can see beyond the ragged skirt and even this cast-off dress to the royal blood that courses through your veins.”

  She felt laid bare, exposed; her deepest secret revealed. And yet he had said it. She had not claimed to be any princess. He had claimed it for her.

  He knew what she knew, what she felt deep down. But how?

  He looked her over and then took her hand. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. People will talk if they find us down here together, and you don’t need that.”

  “What will they say?” she asked as she climbed the stairs ahead of him, wanting to hear his version of what she knew the gossip would be.

  “They will ask why the beautiful red-haired princess from Ireland lowered herself to consort with that no-good gambling troll of a tailor from who knows where.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Da’s Wild Boast

  Over the next two weeks, it became clear that Paddy O’Malley, now Rick Miller, had not been wrong when he boasted of his daughter’s skills, even though she had not yet acquired those skills at the time of his boast. Under the expert tutelage of Margaret, Bertie soared to new heights of dressmaking, even daring to design her own dresses based on the patterns she saw in J. P. Wellington’s thick books and to create tissue-paper patterns of her own.

  And Bertie adored the work. She discovered dexterity in her hands that she had never realized she possessed, since she hadn’t ever had the chance to do such fine, delicate work before. She folded in pleats and finished buttonholes with such skill that even the exacting Margaret was impressed. Her attention to
detail was top-notch, and soon Margaret trusted her to put in collars of the most expensive lace.

  The early October nights became chilly, relieving the blistering heat of an Indian summer that had dogged the city dwellers all the way through September. It made life in her tenement somewhat more bearable.

  Eileen improved, but she continued to wheeze and cough. Bertie wanted to bring her sister back to Dr. Umberto, but her paycheck just covered their needs. Her father gave her money each week, but all it did was allow her to hold on to the apartment.

  She was reconsidering Paddy’s idea for Mike O’Fallon’s sister to take Eileen and let Liam go live with Finn in Boston, but she couldn’t stand the thought of her family being broken up like that.

  She thought of asking Maria to look in on them during her breaks from the restaurant where she now worked, but worried that it was too big a favor.

  From time to time she ran into Ray on the street and always felt a mixture of gladness and uneasiness. He continued to simply pop up unannounced and uninvited in the oddest places, as though he had some sort of ability to sense her presence. She had begun to wonder if his many acquaintances had taken to alerting him of her whereabouts when she was out in the neighborhood.

  The strange draw she felt toward him disturbed her. He was not her idea of someone she could ever love—he was so odd and intense, so rough and overly direct in his manner—and yet there was something about him. She was always glad to see him, but knowing how he felt about her made her nervous. She did not want to lead him on to believe he had a romantic chance with her. She was not going to let that happen.

  Her mind stayed fixed on James Wellington. James had finally convinced his father to let him forego a university education in order to stay home to help with the business. Bertie almost wished he had gone off to school so she wouldn’t be reminded of him on a daily basis.

  But another part of her loved the mere sight of him.

  When they passed in the halls, he grinned and sometimes even winked at her, implying that they shared some delicious secret, perhaps that he had once hidden in her room. Bertie couldn’t help but smile back. And just when she thought she had quieted her mind from playing the image of his sparkling eyes over and over, another of these chance encounters would set her brain spinning, fixating on his every movement once again.

  Bertie finally met J. P. Wellington Sr. one day when she was coming in from an errand. He was a man of about fifty, balding and stout, with muttonchop whiskers around his broad face. The millionaire industrialist asked her name, and she introduced herself.

  One October morning, Bertie was racing through the kitchen, almost late as usual, to make it up the stairs into the sewing room. She had arrived at the top floor landing when she heard shouting coming from J. P. Wellington’s study. The ferocity of it stopped her cold.

  “What is this you’ve done?” J. P. bellowed. “You’ve ruined me!”

  “I only did what you told me to do!” It was James’s voice, shouting back defensively at his father.

  Bertie stepped closer to hear, forgetting all about her lateness.

  She knew that J. P.’s textile mills down south made fabrics for curtains, blankets, sheets, and other household items, but that he bought the fine fabrics for his fashion line from Europe. He had put James in charge of purchasing the fabrics for this line. His sisters had told her all this while she sewed, since they liked to come to the sewing room to watch her work and to gossip.

  Clearly James had mismanaged his task somehow.

  Inching a bit closer to the slightly open door, she could see father and son confronting each other: the older one powerful and enraged; his handsome son alternating an aggressive posture with one of near cringing.

  Bertie bit her lip anxiously, feeling sorry for James.

  “I told you to consult with Mr. LaFleur in Paris before buying anything!” J. P. roared, pounding his wide desk.

  “He’s an old man!” James shot back. “He doesn’t know what young women like. Why should I listen to him?”

  “He’s only thirty, and he knows what’s happening in Paris!” J. P. turned such a bright shade of enraged red that Bertie could imagine his head exploding. “He telegraphed me this morning to say that bolts and bolts of dark gray and blue material have arrived in the New Jersey warehouses. You have spent our entire year’s budget on these colors.”

  “Young women want to look sophisticated, and dark colors make them seem worldly,” James defended himself.

  “This year women want everything from China!” J. P. argued. “Even if it’s not from China, it has to look like could be from China! They want dishes from China and rugs from China. And they want fabrics from China: bright colors—reds, yellows, purples! They want silken embroidered dresses. LaFleur says all our competitors are featuring them!”

  Someone came up the stairs from the kitchen and stood behind Bertie on the hall landing. It was Paddy. “What’s the fracas about?” he asked her in a low tone.

  She told him what she had heard.

  He nodded knowingly. “That lad thinks he knows a great deal more than he actually does,” he commented. “I’m happy to see his father putting him in his place.”

  Bertie scowled at him. He didn’t know what James was like at all. “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “Mr. Wellington called for his carriage, but I was still feeding the horses, so he asked me to come tell him when I was ready to roll,” he explained.

  “We are ruined, James!” shouted J. P., his voice thunderous. “I cannot take a loss like this!”

  “Send the fabric back!” James told him.

  “I can’t! Its low price comes with the stipulation that it is not returnable. I’ve never returned a single bolt in more than twenty years!”

  Paddy grabbed Bertie’s wrist. There was a dangerous, almost maniacal, gleam in his eyes that frightened her. “Here is our time, my girl! Fate has brought us to this landing at an auspicious moment!”

  “Da! No!” was all she had time to say as he pulled her into J. P. Wellington’s study. “Good morning, sir,” Paddy greeted his employer. “Your carriage awaits outside. But before we leave, I could not help but overhear you speak of your business predicament.”

  “No doubt the entire block is aware of it,” James muttered sullenly.

  “Allow me to suggest a remedy for your plight, if you don’t mind,” said Paddy, releasing Bertie’s wrist and stepping forward.

  “Go on,” J. P. allowed.

  “You have met my daughter, Bertie?”

  Once again, as on the very first day at the Wellington townhouse, Bertie was seized with an urgent desire to flee, to escape while she still could. What was he up to?

  “Miss Miller.” J. P. acknowledged her with a nod.

  James lifted an ironic eyebrow in her direction, as if to say, Look at this mess I’ve gotten myself into.

  “You’ve seen the excellence of her work aiding the able Margaret in making dresses for your daughters, have you not?” Paddy began.

  “Margaret reports that she is quite skilled and my daughters are impressed,” J. P. conceded cautiously.

  “Oh, come on, they rave about her,” James countered.

  Despite the tense situation, Bertie looked down and smiled a bit at his praise.

  J. P. glared at his son. “Continue,” he prodded Paddy impatiently.

  “My talented daughter can take the unsuitable fabric that has been regrettably purchased and transform it into a shining, gleaming dress that will look like it came right over on a boat from China. She will prove to you that it can be done, and then she will show you how to do it on all your dresses.”

  Bertie’s mind was screaming at him to stop talking. He had truly gone insane. She had no idea how to do this! What was he thinking?

  “How can she do such a thing?” J. P. questioned.

  “We have skills in Ire—Wales . . . such as you have not heard of in this country; ancient spinners and weavers have passed them do
wn from mother to daughter since time immemorial. In no time, Bertie will have your dull colors shining.”

  “Can you embroider?” J. P. asked, speaking directly to Bertie. “Chinese embroidery is all the rage.”

  Paddy didn’t give her the opportunity to debunk his claims. “Certainly she can. If you give her your pattern books, some of your disastrous fabrics, and sketches of what you’d like to see embroidered on the dress, she will have the most beautiful Chinese-style dress you have ever seen waiting for you in the morning.”

  J. P. circled his desk, looking from Bertie to Paddy and back again. “We can go to the warehouse and bring back some of the fabric. Miss Miller, you know where the pattern books are kept. I will ask Margaret to give you the rest of the day off to make this dress.”

  Bertie wanted to throw herself on J. P.’s knees and beg his forgiveness for her father’s well-meaning insanity. She longed to say that this was impossible and that it was really not their intention to give him false hope when there was none. “Yes, sir,” was all that came out.

  “Do you really think you can salvage this disaster?” J. P. asked her.

  This was her moment to say, “No!” but nothing came from her mouth.

  “She’s modest, but I know she can do it,” Paddy answered for her.

  “All right,” said J. P., sitting behind his large desk and taking a cigar from the humidor. “If you can successfully do this for me, my gratitude will know no bounds and the rewards will be great. But if I find that you have wasted my time and my fabric on some foolishness, both you and your father will leave my household immediately!”

  After leaving the Wellington townhouse, Bertie went directly to the restaurant where Maria worked and, after explaining what she needed to do, asked her friend to stay with Liam and Eileen so she could work all night, because that was surely what would be required, if the task was even possible at all.

  “Of course I can,” Maria assured her warmly. “How often do you get a chance like this? Go make dresses so heavenly they’ll think that the angels created them.”