The Dressmaker's War

by Mary Chamberlain

  The foreman of the jury was leaning forward. The judge was rifling through his file.

  Mr. Wallis waited, and the judge focused his eyes back onto the court. “She pleads not guilty to murder.” He spoke deliberately and carefully, shoving out his words like he was pushing a boulder up a hill. “But to manslaughter, under the duress of provocation.”

  —

  SHE BIT HER nails to the quick in an hour. That’s all it took. Ada knew, the moment the foreman stood up, shoulders back, chest forward, hero’s ribbons striped across his lapels. She didn’t stand a chance. Could have spared herself the trouble. She could have pleaded guilty and had it over and done with by now.

  Night was closing in, and the single bulb in her cell was high in the ceiling, dribbled a dim brown light and cast long shadows across the walls. She had no one left in the world. “Will you visit me, Mr. Wallis? Before I go?”

  She knew she’d never see him again.

  —

  THE WARDRESSES WERE kind to her. They had nothing to lose. Ada couldn’t run away. Her cell was big. She had her own bathroom, bathroom, with a bath and a proper lavatory. Table. Wardrobe, not that she had anything to put in it.

  She was counting the days. Wished they had done it there and then, not made her wait. Time on her hands. The last of time. The trial. Funny way of looking at the past. Facts. This way, or that, white or black. Twisting them. Where was the in-between? The truth that connected one fact to another? The twilight? If you read about it in the papers, or in a history book, it wouldn’t tell what went on, what really happened, to women in war. Ada’s war would be forgotten.

  “An exercise book?” the day wardress said. She was an older woman, old enough to have been Ada’s mother. Her bosoms sagged and her stomach was soft. Ada wanted to tell her she should wear a girdle and get a better brassiere, but that would have been a cheek.

  “And a pencil,” Ada said, “or two.”

  “No sharpeners allowed,” the wardress said. Ada knew why. Unpick the screws, take the blade, and swish, the gallows man would be out of a job. Albert Pierrepoint. She knew his name.

  “Albert Pierrepoint. He does them all,” the night wardress had said. They chatted at night. Ada couldn’t sleep, and they wouldn’t turn the lights off. “Nice, clean job. Skill. Nothing to worry about.”

  He’d looked a jolly man, ordinary, like a shopkeeper, a grocer perhaps. Ada could see him in a brown gabardine overall behind a counter. Coupons? Thank you. Yorkshire accent. Smoked a pipe while he sized her up. What kind of a living was that?

  Ada expected him to have a tape measure round his neck, like a tailor, neck size thirteen inches, knot. Never knew a rope could have so many sides.

  Ada filled the notebooks, wrote small along the lines. No one else would tell the truth, tell her story, her war. Ada’s war. This was what she wanted to say. It happened, like this. The wardress brought her another book, then another. Looked over her shoulder once. Gave her an eraser, too.

  “Even though you didn’t ask for it,” she said. She brought Ada six HB pencils. Ada had tried not to rub out too much because it left smears across the page. She got a bump on her middle finger with all that writing, and the side of her palm was gray with lead.

  She had another fitting with Mr. Pierrepoint. Almost like Mrs. B.’s. Was this her last?

  “I used to be a dressmaker,” she said. “Neck to waist, I know about measuring.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “House of Vaughan,” she said. “I was going to call it House of Vaughan. Like Chanel. Signature style, too, like her. Mine was a corsage. A large red corsage. Like—” Why was she telling him this? He didn’t care. The wardress nodded, smiled at her. She’d talk to her, tell her the stories.

  “I dreamed of Paris,” she said. “Rue Cambon. Have you ever been there? Cut them on the cross, too, my dresses. Once this rationing is over, that’s what I’ll do.”

  She stopped, corrected herself. That’s what she would have done.

  That’s what she should have done. She wished she’d never met him. She might have been rich without him. Successful and happy. Worked hard. House of Vaughan. Paris. London. A different baby, maybe. Or Thomas, Thomas. Her baby. Her beloved son. If he had lived, she would have cared for him, given him a home, with his own bed. Your father died in the war. That’s all she would say. Like Sister Brigitte said, sometimes you have to tell white lies. They would have been happy, just the two of them. A little family.

  It was time.

  The wardress’s hand gripped Ada’s 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.

  She still had the slender figure of a mannequin, and a mannequin’s grace.

  The wardress handed her the thick, calico knickers with drawstrings. Ada wound the tapes fast round her thighs and waist, so nothing would leak. They would leave marks on her skin, when they came off. The wardress was biting her lip, putting on a brave face, Ada could see.

  Ada removed her glasses and placed them on the table.

  “I won’t be needing these,” she said. “Or these.” She handed the notebooks to the wardress.

  “Do something with them. I wrote it all down, what really happened in the war. What happened to women, what happened to me. The truth. Nobody wanted to hear.”

  “Are you ready?” the wardress said.

  “No,” Ada said. “No.”

  While the Second World War forms the backdrop to this novel, the story and the personae given to the historical individuals 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, 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, with 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 labor in factories, hospitals, and even homes. I do not know if the commandant of Dachau’s household used such labor. This is my invention. But I do know that my aunt, a nun, was captured when the Nazis occupied France, and she set to work nursing old people, although the geriatric home of this 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 are 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.

  While the repatriation of military prisoners of war was straightforward, civilian prisoners (or Distressed British Subjects, as they were called) were more of a conundrum. The British treasury, almost bankrupt and always inclined to parsimony, required the family of a DBS to pay for the repatriation of their relative(s). If they were unable (or unwilling) to pay, the Red Cross had the responsibility for the journey home of a DBS, and to provide emergency clothing if necessary; the British consulate made the travel arrangements and notified relatives of the impending return; the repat
riation 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. British nationals married to Germans who wished to return to the United Kingdom after the war were treated as immigrants for ration purposes. The Assistance Board would help with weekly maintenance and hostel accommodation in cases of male destitution; the Ministry of Health or a PAC (Public Assistance Committee) 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 some liberties with the procedures here, because I wanted Ada to see a particular view of London as she arrived home, a view visible from the train from Southampton, but not from Hull. I also awarded Ada a one-off ex-gratia payment.

  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 June 24, 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 prewar 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, postwar Britain was desperately poor and remained hidebound by the same class, gender, and racial prejudices that had characterized it before the war. Working-class women, in particular, were doubly discriminated 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 and Ruth Ellis in 1955 attest. Both women were charged with murder (of a husband and a lover, respectively); although there were serious issues surrounding the veracity of their testimony and the conduct of the trials, both were found guilty and hanged. Ada’s clients, respectable and middle class, would never have befriended Ada or, given the charges, 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 neighborhoods in London, before and after the war, were, in addition, 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 neighborhood was inhabited by “respectable” working-class families of labor 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 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 neighboring streets—survived the bombing in the Second World War. The Borough—a neighborhood bordering the south side of the Thames, obliquely opposite the City, the financial center of London, on the north—is now best known for its gourmet food market. Then, it was a working-class area, 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 postwar Labour government), poor defendants had no entitlement to 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 defense 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.

  For the little ones—Aaron, Lola, Cosmo, Trilby—and their Ba

  My talented and inspirational agent, Juliet Mushens, tops the list for her exemplary help, advice, and support, as does her U.S. 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 Beth Pearson, Allison Merrill, Annette Szlachta-McGinn, Victoria Wong, and the rest of the team at Random House.

  I owe a debt to my skilled and inventive writing group: Cecilia Ekbäck, Vivian Graveson, Laura McClelland, Saskia Sarginson, and Lauren Trimble. We met in 2009, when we were enrolled in the master’s program 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, and who provided me with Ada’s defense 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. Acknowledgment is 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:

  National Archives, Kew.

  Sally Alexander, Becoming a Woman: And Other Essays in 19th and 20th Century Feminist History (London: Virago Press, 1994).

  Ian Buruma, Year Zero: A History of
1945 (London: Atlantic Books, 2013).

  Mary Chamberlain, Growing Up in Lambeth (London: Virago Press, 1989).

  C. H. Rolph, ed., Women of the Streets: A Sociological Study of the Common Prostitute (London: Secker & Warburg, 1955).

  Matthew Sweet, The West End Front: The Wartime Secrets of London’s Grand Hotels (London: Faber and Faber, 2011).

  Christina Twomey, “Double Displacement: Western Women’s Return from Japanese Internment in the Second World War,” Gender & History, 21, no. 3 (November 2009): 670–84.

  Judith Walkowitz, Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012).

  Marthe Watts, The Men in My Life: The Story of the Messina Reign of Vice in London (London: Christopher Johnson, 1960).

  Jerry White, London in the Twentieth Century: A City and Its People (London: Viking, 2001).

  BY MARY CHAMBERLAIN

  FICTION

  The Dressmaker’s War

  NONFICTION

  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 AUTHOR

  MARY CHAMBERLAIN was born and raised in London. She 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 the feminist Virago Press in 1975 and was one of the inspirations for Caryl Churchill’s award-winning play Fen. She has written many books on women’s history, oral history, and Caribbean history. She is a graduate of the acclaimed creative writing master’s degree program at Royal Holloway, University of London, and now lives in London with her husband, the political scientist Stein Ringen.