She turned in her bed, dragging the spare habit round her. The front door at home was painted black, like all the other doors in Theed Street. She could see her mother on her hands and knees, cloth stiff with the Cardinal’s, scrubbing and rubbing till the doorstep shone. Waste of time. Who cares? Ada’s eyes misted up and she tried to squeeze away the memory, but it stayed like a stubborn spot, grew larger until she was there, crossing the road on the balls of the feet so her heels didn’t scuff between the cobbles, onto the pavement. Dry land, she’d say, when she was little and still at school and could imagine the road an ocean and she a billowing ship sailing away, for a year and a day. She turned left, past bleak-black houses and absent lives that stretched no further than a ha’penny bus ride, past the corner shop with its yellow and black enamel hoardings for Lyons Tea and Colman’s mustard and OMO painted onto the wall, and the pram on its brake, with the baby fast asleep. Mum always peered into prams and Ada couldn’t see why, but now she understood. She was a mother too now, but her baby was away, lost and alone. She could feel her heart weighed down in chains, dragged round in shackles.
Love and pain, despair and hope, the future and the past. She tried not to let them drift through her mind at night, tangle like cat’s cradle as she lay on the dusty cushions on the floor. But the thoughts were stubborn, like silk, Thomas and home. She drifted to sleep, woke with a start. Stanislaus. Hold onto hope, she told herself.
The mornings were icy when she emptied her pail. The man in the striped jacket was no longer there. He’d left in the spring, and there was another who took his place, a middle-aged man whose skin hung in swags on his frame. He must have been a big man once, well fed. He winked at her when no one was looking, blew her a kiss. She had smiled.
After him came a cadaverous man, tall, stooped, clumsy. He bit his lip, looked away from Ada, as if he saw his own misery reflected in her. Frau Weiss let her out one morning and told her to cut down his body from the rafters of the outhouse where he slept. He had torn his jacket into shreds and knotted them together, tightened one end round the beam and the other round his neck. She had found the yellow star ripped off and pressed into his waste bucket. He’d only been there a week.
Ada lost count of the men who came and went. Another Red Cross parcel arrived. There was no letter. It contained two new wimples, underclothes and a tunic. Ada wondered why they still bothered. She would rather wear ordinary clothes. The new tunic fitted better, but she kept the old one as a blanket.
Ada’s fingers grew numb and clumsy with the cold. Frau Weiss and her friends brought Donegal tweeds for their winter walking skirts, and dark green loden for their coats, cashmere for their dresses, chenille for the evening. Ada clutched the warmth from the wool, soothed her chapped hands with the lanolin from the tweed. There was some cashmere left over and Ada fashioned herself a pair of fingerless gloves which she used for working, and a pair of mitts and bedsocks from the offcuts of tweed for sleeping in at night. She kept them hidden by day, stuffed in the bottom of her remnant basket. Hide a tree in a forest.
Spring came late that year in 1943. Endless days of dull clouds and chilly rain which surrendered in a sudden and gave way to May. It became unseasonably hot. Frau Weiss had beads of sweat on her forehead, passed Ada a parcel of linen, a dull slub of fabric which she wanted fashioned into slacks. Linen gets cross, she heard Isidore say, Stay out of its way. Ada took off her scapular and tunic and her wimple which made her scalp sweat and itch. She had to cut her own hair. Without a mirror, she had no idea what it looked like. She set to work in her shift and underskirts, aware of how her hands looked gnarled, her arms wasted, her veins bulged.
One morning towards the end of the month the door opened and Frau Weiss stood there hand in hand with a small boy, a toddler. He had fair hair and blue eyes, looked glum and solemn. In one hand he held a small, brown knitted bear. Ada watched his face turn from curiosity to terror at the sight of her. He began to scream. This was the child who cried himself to sleep each night.
Thomas. Her Thomas.
‘Nein,’ Frau Weiss said, slapping his hand. ‘Stop crying. You are not a baby.’
Ada stepped towards him, squatted down to his level, held out her arms. She knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t stop. This was only natural. This was her son.
Frau Weiss scooped the child up, pushing Ada with her foot and sending her sprawling across the floor.
‘Never touch my child! Never talk to him!’ She kicked Ada in the back. ‘Never!’ She kicked again, catching Ada’s ribs. ‘Never! Nie!’ She was shouting, the child was screaming.
‘Das ist eine Hexe,’ she yelled, grabbing the child by his chin and forcing him to look at Ada, ‘sub-human.’
She put the child on the floor. ‘You will not fear her. You are better than her. You must be a man.’ Ada could see the beads of sweat breaking out on Frau Weiss’s forehead, and her hands trembling as she rested them on the little boy’s head.
Ada knew then. Frau Weiss was frightened of her. You made me your prisoner, Ada thought, your slave, but I’ve got the measure of you, Frau Weiss. You need to be cruel to survive. Cruelty will destroy you before it destroys me. You hate yourself and despise me for it. Once I’ve gone, who will make you feel important? Who will make you look beautiful?
And what if I turn on you? I have the shears in my hand, one lunge, that’s all it would take before your blood would spout like a geyser and you would writhe like a serpent beneath my feet. I would have Thomas then, clutch him tight and never let him go. It would be worth it, to feel his body close to mine, to soothe his fears and wipe away his tears.
‘Put your clothes on, nun,’ Frau Weiss said. She wagged her finger at the child. ‘We will make a man of you, Joachim.’ She swept out of the room, locking the door behind her, leaving Joachim behind. The child banged at the door, his face red and blotchy, his cries so violent he began to choke and retch.
‘Mutti, Mutti.’
Ada pulled on her tunic, fixed the wimple round her head, put on the scapular and placed the poplin she was about to cut flat on the table, her head ringing with the toddler’s wails.
She knew if she spoke it would be the child who would suffer. Frau Weiss called him Joachim, but Ada wasn’t fooled. If he was the Frau’s natural son, his pain would pull at her gut. The umbilical cord, Ada knew, was never cut between a mother and her child. The passion Ada felt for this baby was proof enough that he was hers, he was her Thomas.
When this war was over, when the Germans were defeated and Hitler destroyed, she’d show Frau Weiss what a mother’s love could do. Scoop Thomas into her arms, Don’t cry. Mummy’s here. Take him home. Find a nice little place for them both. A little cottage in the country. She’d gone to Kent one summer with the Children’s Country Holiday Fund. Roses round the door, hollyhocks in the garden, thatch on the roof. Pretty as a picture. That’s where they’d go. They’d be happy. She’d take him there. If Stanislaus ever found them, she’d tell him, Stay away. What kind of a father were you? We don’t need you.
‘Mutti,’ Joachim whimpered, eyes wide in terror at the sight of Ada.
Ada tried to ignore him. She knew that Frau Weiss must have told him stories about her, a witch, vermin, knew if she stepped close he would grow hysterical. Sing, she thought, sing.
‘She was as beautiful as a butterfly, and as proud as a Queen,
‘Was pretty little Polly Perkins of Paddington Green.’
She went back to her work, cut through the fabric and marked the darts. Second verse, out loud, all together now:
‘Her eyes were as black as the pips of a pear,
‘No rose in the garden her cheeks could compare.’
Thomas stopped crying. Ada saw, from the corner of her eye, that he had pulled his fingers away from his eyes and was staring at her. A large sob forced itself through his small body. Ada carried on singing.
‘Her hair hung in ringlets so beautiful and long
‘I thought that she loved me but fou
nd I was wrong.’
Another loud sob filled the air, like a final convulsion. She sang again, loud enough for Thomas, but not so loud that Frau Weiss would hear.
‘She was as beautiful as a butterfly, and as proud as a Queen,
‘Was pretty little Polly Perkins of Paddington Green.’
She stopped singing. Thomas stood sniffing by the door, staring at her. She began to pin the darts. He began to cry so Ada sang again.
‘When I asked her to marry me she said “Oh, what stuff”
And told me to drop it, for she’d had quite enough.’
The child was silent once more. She wanted to smile at him, talk to him, ich bin deine Mutti, Tomichen. I wouldn’t hurt you. You like music, huh? Don’t be frightened of me. Ada heard Frau Weiss’s footsteps and she entered the room, yanked the child’s arm and dragged him away.
*
Ada still counted the months in cycles, ticking them off with the chalk underneath the table, next to where she marked the years. She’d been here eighteen months. June 1943. Long days and nights that stretched to dawn while Ada sewed linen into skirts and lawn into blouses, smocked cotton into swimming costumes, fashioned parachute silk into negligees and knickers. If she didn’t get them done, Frau Weiss beat her with the buckle end of the belt, or whatever came to hand. The silk snagged on her fingers so she had to fold it over the table, stab the needle down in, up out, lest her chapped skin dragged a thread and puckered the clothing. She’d lift the negligees to her face, stroke them against her cheeks, holding them up with the backs of her hand balled tight so the fingers didn’t catch the gentle membranes. They were soft and warm as a baby’s hand, her baby’s hand, her Tomichen.
She had to make Thomas’s clothes now. He was no longer a baby, but a little boy, in shirts and jackets, shorts and rompers. She took extra care with them, embroidered a small car on the bib, or baby bears on the braces. He still screamed at night. Ada wondered what terrors he had to visit in his dreams. During the day, she could hear him on the lawn behind her room. He had a bicycle with squealing brakes which she saw one morning when she emptied her pail and had peered round the rose bush into the garden. It was a small child’s bike, black and low, with thick rubber wheels and stabilizers. He must have learned to ride it. He would be clever. He had left it out overnight, laid on its side on the grass, where it slept like a wounded clock.
She hoped she’d see him outside, playing in the garden. She could hear his chatter, his squeals and laughter, but he was always pulled inside when Ada went out. By September, as the nights drew in again, and the first of the frosts pinched the golden haws and coated the grass with the crunch of ice, she knew she would not see him again, not that summer.
*
Ada woke with a start. She could hear a dull hum, like a sewing machine, or a bee, a deep, steady chug and above it the hiss of air. It was coming closer, growing louder.
An aeroplane. Overhead. The sound circled, grew faint, and then swelled again. There was more than one. Who did they belong to? A faint light flickered and Ada heard the boom of an explosion. It was in the distance, but the sounds repeated. Boom, boom. She remembered Belgium, Namur, Stanislaus. It seemed a lifetime away, another world again. The night sky began to glow like a rich, copper scuttle. It couldn’t be the Germans, Ada knew. It must be ours. Ours. Our boys. Dare she hope? The war would be over soon. She could go home. Perhaps she’d be home by Christmas. Christmas, 1943. It was only three months away.
In the morning, Frau Weiss said nothing but Ada could see she was angry. The bombing had been far away, probably Munich. Had they bombed the centre? Was Sister Brigitte safe? Perhaps the old man, Herr Weiss, was hurt, or dead. If only, Ada thought, if only.
Frau Weiss flung a dress on the table, swiping Ada across the face as she did so.
‘A pin,’ she screamed. ‘You left a pin.’ She was holding it in her fingers and began to jab at Ada, hitting the palms of Ada’s hands as she lifted them to defend herself.
‘I don’t need you,’ she went on. ‘None of us need you. Don’t you think we have German dressmakers of our own? They are the best in the world. Do you think I like having my clothes made by you?’
She was wearing a simple blue frock Ada had made, which highlighted the angles of her body, stark squares and triangles that camouflaged the flamboyance of the cut and elevated Frau Weiss into a higher realm. She looked sublime, ethereal, transformed by Ada’s art from a dull chrysalis to a ravishing beauty. Frau Weiss needed Ada. She liked Ada making her clothes. She liked showing her off to her friends, sharing her with them. No other dressmaker could match Ada. Ada understood this. She knew Frau Weiss understood it too, hated herself for the weakness it showed.
‘Next time,’ Frau Weiss said, ‘and you go to the camp.’ She stomped to the door, slapping Ada hard again with the back of her hand as she passed. ‘You disgust me.’
The Polish prisoners in the geriatric home came from the camp. They hadn’t looked healthy. Ada wondered if the camp had anything to do with the black smoke that she saw in the sky when she went outside to empty her bucket. The smell reminded her of that place in the Cut, back home, where they rendered fat. She guessed it came from the factory. Maybe it was where they processed meat, pork or even horse, given how difficult Frau Weiss said it was to get good beef.
When Frau Weiss and her friends talked about the camp in front of Ada, they said it was full of Bolsheviks and Jews, gypsies and queers. Troublemakers. Frau Weiss spat out the words, vermin, Untermenschen. Ada knew plenty of Jews and Bolsheviks. She could hear her father, sitting in the Windsor chair with the broken spokes in the kitchen back home in London, If anyone calls you a Bolshie, Ada my girl, you say yes, and proud of it. Home was a century ago. Her life had once had horizons. The war had shrunk them, shriveled her memories and buried them along with her dreams. Her world now was nothing more than this filthy room with its dirty windows and rusty bars.
The only thing she had done wrong was to believe Stanislaus. Her cheeks burned, hot as lava. What if she was stuck here for the rest of her life? What if the war never ended? Or the Germans won? What would she do? She grabbed Frau Weiss’s dress and flung it across the room. She picked up the scissors and hurled them at the dummy, threw the tailor’s chalk at the window, slung the pin cushion on the ground. She clasped her hands to her head, pressed them against her skull and screamed, rocking her body from side to side.
There was blood on her finger. She must have snagged it on the pins. She sucked at the bleeding. The pin. A painful scratch every time Frau Weiss turned. A pin, of course. She laughed. A pin, amidst all this bombing. Fancy that. It was always the little things, the straw that broke the camel’s back, the flea that wore the elephant down.
There was more than one way to fight a war. She pulled off her clothes and stepped into the dress, fine worsted wool, black and slinky to the touch. She pressed it against her skin, followed the line of her body from her breasts to her thighs. Her bones jutted out and the dress was loose on her frame, but Ada was a woman again, possessing the dress, like a cat spraying scent. Frau Weiss would never know.
She rubbed her hand across the welt on her face. There was blood. Frau Weiss’s ring must have caught her cheek.
*
No one opened her door to let her out that day at the end of September. There were strange voices in the house, urgent noises, the scrape and thump of furniture being moved, footsteps past her door, through the kitchen and scullery. The sun began to warm the room, shining through the window, catching motes of dust in its rays. Ada guessed it must be afternoon. She was hungry and thirsty. The house grew silent, hollow and empty. Dusk crept in and night fell. Ada turned on the light switch and nothing happened. There was no electricity. She had been left, alone.
She tried to sleep but her feet tangled with the blanket. She shook them off with a panicked kick. She tried her usual trick, her mantra: Thomas. Home. Stanislaus. Modiste. She was closed in. The walls moved towards her, the ceiling pre
ssed down. Planes droned and circled overhead. Ada waited for the vermilion to light her room, for the thud of the bombing. Once or twice the explosions landed close, shaking the house and rattling the windows. She screwed her eyes tight.
She could be bombed, suffocated in the rubble, buried alive. She sat up, screaming, but her cries bounced back. She lay down again. Her head lolled off the cushion, pulling her onto the icy, stone floor. Her stomach hurt. She was going to die here, locked away in a workroom, lost forever. Who knew she was here? Her leg cramped and she jumped up, walked round until the spasm passed. She would hang herself, cut her wrists. She could do it this time. She would have to. Starvation was a painful death.
Please don’t bomb me. Let me live. She wondered what could be left of Munich now. She guessed the Germans must be doing the same to England. She tried not to think of her family. They would survive. Like her. Lucky.
The Dressmaker of Dachau Page 13
