The wardress’s hand gripped her elbow. ‘I’ll take you to the lavatory,’ she said. Ada shuffled into the bathroom. White tiles, horizontal, no lock on the door.
‘I don’t need to go.’
‘Be on the safe side,’ the wardress said, before you leave, like Ada was going on a journey.
‘I’m sorry,’ the wardress said, ‘you have to put these on.’
Padded calico drawers.
‘Do you know how to?’
‘Yes,’ Ada said. Her fingers were shaking as she pulled the tapes, wound them round, tight. They’d leave a mark.
‘How long will it take?’
‘You won’t feel a thing,’ the wardress said.
‘Where will they bury me?’
‘In the prison.’
‘Can’t I be buried with Thomas?’
‘We’ll find him,’ the wardress said. ‘We’ll find his grave. Bring him to you. We’ll make sure of it.’ She was a kind woman.
‘Thank you.’
‘A priest is here,’ the wardress said.
‘I don’t want him,’ Ada said. What had the church ever done for her? Her mother hadn’t visited. Not once. Nor her brothers and sisters. Too busy being Catholic to be Christian. Scarlett had been the only one who’d come to visit and she hadn’t set foot inside a church for twenty years. Well I never, she’d said. You were a dark horse. Added, Mind you, I’d have done the same.
Ada took off her glasses. ‘I won’t be needing these,’ she said. Placed them on the table with the exercise books.
The wardress took Ada’s hand, shook it. ‘Good bye, Ada,’ she said.
Ada heard the door open, saw Mr Pierrepoint come in. He nodded to Ada, walked over to the far wall.
Mr Pierrepoint released a catch and pushed the wardrobe aside. It had been on runners, Ada never knew. There was a door, into another room. He opened it, held it for her, beckoned her to go first, as if he was escorting her to dinner. The room was empty. The brick walls were painted green, dark below the halfway mark, pale above. The floor was concrete, polished so it shone. There was a small window high up, with bars, and the February sun shone through, casting a feeble light. This can’t be the last time to see the sun, to see a morning. It made no sense. No light. Ada couldn’t think. Why was the room empty? Where was he taking her? There was another door ahead of her. He opened it, took her elbow, led her through.
She could see the knot of the rope, knew where it would go, just so, at the point below her ear, could see the unvarnished wood of the trapdoor in the polished stone floor. She was sweating. She was cold. Why didn’t they have the radiators on? The cord on her knickers, just above her right knee, was too tight. It pinched when she walked, pressed in, on a nerve. It was uncomfortable. She had to loosen it. Mr Pierrepoint was fiddling with something at the back of her head. She’d ask him. When he’d finished. She’d like to bend down, please, and release the cord.
The wardress was standing by the door.
‘There’s the notebooks,’ Ada said. ‘I kept them. Everything’s in it. It’s the truth. My truth.’
‘Are you ready?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’
HISTORICAL NOTE
While the Second World War forms the backdrop to this novel, the story and the personas given to the historical characters are fictional.
The concentration camp in Dachau was opened in March 1933, within weeks of the Nazis coming to power, and served as a prototype for other camps. It was originally built for political prisoners but later expanded to house others, including religious, sexual and ethnic minorities, Jews and Allied prisoners of war. The numbers swelled dramatically in the last months of the war as inmates from camps in the line of the Allied advance were moved to Dachau, arriving sick and emaciated, and exacerbating the overcrowding and unhygienic conditions already there. Although it was not an extermination camp, tens of thousands of inmates died within it, the corpses cremated in large ovens. Dachau, and its satellite camps, was the second to be liberated, but the first to allow reporters in and it holds an emblematic place in the history of Nazi atrocities.
Civilian prisoners of war in Germany, many of whom were brought from occupied territories, were used as slave labour in factories, hospitals and even homes. I do not know if the Commandant of Dachau’s household used such labour. This is my invention. But I do know that my aunt, a nun, was captured when the Nazis occupied France and set to work nursing old people, although this geriatric home of the novel, and its location, are my own creation and do not necessarily represent an accurate portrayal of old age care in the Third Reich.
Martin Weiss was the Commandant of Dachau from January 1942 to September 1943, and again, briefly, in April 1945. Wilhelm Eduard Weiter was the Commandant from September 1943 to April 1945. Weiss was later executed for war crimes; Weiter committed suicide. Weiss never married. His mistress is a fictional character, as is Herr Dieter Weiss, Frau Weiter and other members of their households, including, of course, Ada. There is no record that I know of for a dressmaker of Dachau.
Sources in the National Archives on the logistics of repatriation for British civilians (or Distressed British Subjects as they were called) interned in Germany or in occupied Europe revealed that British nationals married to Germans who wished to return to the UK after the war were treated as immigrants for ration purposes. For them, and for others, the family was required to pay for the repatriation of their relative. If they were unable (or unwilling) to pay, then the Red Cross had the responsibility for the journey home of DBSs, and provided emergency clothing if necessary; the British consulate made the travel arrangements and notified relatives of the impending return; the repatriation of British nationals interned in Germany took place by ship from Cuxhaven to Hull; the clearance from Hull to the destination was paid for by the Red Cross and the Central Office for Refugees. On arrival in the United Kingdom (at the port, not the railway station), they would complete their national registration and be given a civilian ration book. The Assistance Board would help with weekly maintenance and hostel accommodation in cases of destitution; the Ministry of Health or a D.P.A.C. (Displaced Persons Assembly Centre) officer would provide clothing coupons if there was an immediate need. British-born women, however, had to make their own arrangements for their reception in the United Kingdom.
I took liberties with the procedures, because I wanted Ada to see the River Thames as she arrived home, a view visible from the train from Southampton, but not from Hull.
The Messina family ran brothels in Mayfair and trafficked women from across Europe. Of the five brothers, Eugene (Gino) Messina was the most ruthless. He operated out of London, Brussels and Paris, and was found guilty on 24 June 1947 of grievous bodily harm, but it was not until 1956 that a Brussels court sentenced him to six years in prison for procuring women for prostitution. His wife and son are imaginary.
The Britain that Ada returned to, and particularly the London she found, had been ravaged by war. Churchill’s wartime government had been overturned in 1945 in a landslide victory for the socialist Labour Party who promised change and an end to the inequalities of pre-war Britain. They put in place sweeping reforms, nationalizing key industries, instituting a welfare state and a National Health Service (in 1948), opening up educational opportunity and (in 1949) legal aid. While these institutions were popular (the welfare state and NHS broadly speaking remain in place, albeit under increasing attack), the continuing policies of austerity, including the rationing of clothing and food, were not and the Labour government was voted out of office in 1951. People were sick of hardship and drabness. The black market, providing both essentials and luxuries, including forged clothing and other coupons, thrived.
Although the 1945 reforms were designed to make Britain a fairer and more equitable society, post-war Britain was desperately poor and remained hidebound by the same class, gender and racial prejudices which had characterized it before the war. Working class women, in particular, were doubly discrimina
ted against and women who found themselves caught up in the judicial system fared badly. They would stand trial not just for the crime, but for a crime against gender as the trials of Edith Thompson in 1922, or Ruth Ellis in 1955, attest. Both women were charged with murder (of a husband and lover, respectively); although there were serious issues surrounding the veracity of their testimony and the conduct of the trials, both were found guilty and hung. Ada’s clients, respectable and middle class, would never have befriended Ada nor, given the charges, have defended her. On the contrary, they would have sought to put as large a distance as possible between themselves, and her.
Ada’s London no longer exists. Working-class neighbourhoods in London, before and after the war, were further stratified by occupation and status. Cottages in Theed Street and in nearby Roupell Street and Whittlesey Street were known, colloquially and locally, as the ‘white curtain streets’, although the white net curtains were rarely white for long. Streets along the banks of the River Thames were notorious for their noxious industries and trades and intolerable levels of pollution. Ada’s neighbourhood was inhabited by ‘respectable’ working-class families of labour aristocracy – skilled men with regular employment, who could afford to rent a whole house and provide three references for a landlord. Their wives would not have gone out to work (although they may have taken in work to do at home) and would mark their status, and signal their cleanliness, by scrubbing their doorsteps and the pavements, polishing the thresholds red with Cardinal’s polish, or marking out an arc in white around them.
Ada was typical in her desire for self-improvement. The school-leaving age was raised to fifteen in 1936, but most working-class children had an elementary education only. There was a hunger for further education, and institutions arose to satisfy it, among which was the Borough Polytechnic Institute which provided evening classes in a range of vocational, academic and recreational subjects. The original building – along with Theed Street and the neighbouring streets – survived the bombing in the Second World War. The Borough – a neighbourhood of London bordering the south side of the Thames, and obliquely opposite the City on the north, the financial centre of London – is now best known for its gourmet food market. Then, it was a working-class area of London, with pockets of respectability and of roughness.
Finally, the judicial system in 1947 was stiff, formal and misogynist. The jury, the judge and the barristers would have been male and anti-German sentiments would have run high so soon after the ending of the Second World War. Before the Legal Aid and Advice Act of 1949 (part of the welfare reforms of the post-war Labour government in Britain), poor defendants had no entitlement for legal representation and relied on the goodwill of lawyers. It is quite likely that Ada would have had a young, inexperienced barrister who provided his services pro bono, in order to further his legal experience and career. The defence he ran at the trial fell under the law of provocation as it then stood, an archaic and gendered piece of legislation which has now been revised. Ada didn’t stand a chance.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My talented and inspirational agent Juliet Mushens tops the list for her exemplary help, advice and support, as does her US counterpart Sasha Raskin, and my editors Cassie Browne at HarperCollins and Anna Pitoniak and Kate Medina at Random House. Their editorial suggestions were invaluable. Thanks are also due to Ann Bissell and the team at HarperCollins.
I owe a debt to my skilled and inspirational writing group: Cecilia Ekbäck, Vivian Graveson, Laura McClelland, Saskia Sarginson and Lauren Trimble. We met in 2009 when we were students of the MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London, and have critiqued and enjoyed each other’s work ever since. Their support and guidance is always in my head as I write and their comments always spot on. Thanks, too, to Susanna Jones, Andrew Motion and Jo Shapcott, for their dedicated tutoring on that course.
I am also hugely grateful to Bob Marshall-Andrews QC, who has been a stalwart and supportive critic of my work over the years, who provided me with Ada’s defence as it could have been in 1947 and suggested the murder weapon. I would also like to thank Judith Walkowitz, who pointed me to sources on prostitution in London in the 1940s; Sally Alexander, Jane Caplan, Julia Laite and Jerry White on whom I unfairly called for quick answers to complicated questions. Sally Alexander, in particular, read the novel for me and her comments were much appreciated. I could not have hoped for a more distinguished group of historical advisers. Acknowledgements are also due to Sylvia Kieling who checked my German for regional diminutives, and Thibaud de Barmon who helped invent the names for the order of nuns.
All historical and linguistic errors are, however, my responsibility.
My daughters all contributed to the book: Rosie Laurence, with her editorial advice; Kate Lane, with her know-how on couture and Alice Lane, with her legal inputs. Thanks, girls!
Finally, let me thank Bill Schwarz and Ursula Owen who helped with my research at the Old Bailey and in the fictional Manhattan Bar in Smith’s, in the Strand, respectively – as did Stein Ringen, my beloved husband, who also offered me endless support and love and, in an off-the-cuff comment, the final idea.
The following sources were also useful:
The National Archives, Kew
Sally Alexander, Becoming a Woman (1994)
Ian Buruma, Year Zero. A History of 1945 (2013)
Mary Chamberlain, Growing up in Lambeth (1989)
C. H. Rolph (ed.), Women of the Streets. A sociological study of the common prostitute (1955)
Matthew Sweet, The West End Front. The wartime secrets of London’s Grand Hotels (2011)
Christina Twomey ‘Double Displacement: Western Women Return from Japanese Internment in the Second World War’, Gender & History, vol. 21, No. 3 (November 2009), pp. 670–84.
Judith Walkowitz, Nights Out – Life in Cosmopolitan London (2012)
Marthe Watts, The Men in My Life: The Story of the Messina Reign of Vice in London (1960)
Jerry White, London in the Twentieth Century: A City and Its People (2001)
About the Author
Mary Chamberlain has lived and worked in England and the Caribbean, and is Emeritus Professor of History at Oxford Brookes University. Her book, Fenwomen, was the first to be published by Virago Press in 1975. Since then she has written many books on women’s history, oral history and Caribbean history. She is a graduate of the acclaimed Creative Writing MA at Royal Holloway, University of London and now lives in London with her husband.
Also by Mary Chamberlain
Non-Fiction
Fenwomen
Old Wives’ Tales
Growing Up In Lambeth
Narratives of Exile and Return
Family Love in the Diaspora: Migration and the Anglo-Caribbean Experience
Empire and Nation-building in the Caribbean: Barbados 1937–1966
About the Publisher
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http://www.harpercollins.com.au
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http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
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United States
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The Dressmaker of Dachau Page 30
