Friday's Girl

by Charlotte Bingham

  She stood back, eyeing Edith with interest, testing her figure against her own choices.

  ‘I dare say we will have to tighten the corset more than it has ever been tightened, but it will greatly enhance your trousseau if we get the undergarments right from the start, and boneless corsets,’ she stared at Edith’s young figure with vague despair, ‘boneless corsets such as you are obviously wearing, however healthy, will never do that.’

  Edith dutifully removed her undergarments, her boneless stays (complete with suspenders), thick black stockings, and white flannel petticoat, and wrapped them carefully in the piece of sheeting provided.

  ‘We will not be needing those again,’ Miss Bagshaw announced with some relief as she started to place a boned corset around her and quickly and expertly tighten the laces, whipping the threads through the eyelets with such dexterity that before Edith knew it her body had been transformed from that of a slip of a girl to a fashionable, womanly ‘s’ shape.

  As soon as she had seen the sheen of the silk underwear and stockings that Miss Bagshaw was holding out to her, Edith had been unable to wait to feel the smooth, subtle texture against her skin. She knew just how sensuous it must be after the scratchy woollen stockings and stuffy petticoat to which she had become all too used.

  ‘If Mademoiselle would raise her arms.’

  As she secured the suspenders to the stocking tops Miss Bagshaw sang out what was happening to Edith, as if Edith could not see herself in the looking glass.

  ‘Fashion dictates that we draw the eyes to the back of the silhouette. This is what the crinolette petticoat will do for Mademoiselle: it will concentrate the eyes on the back of Mademoiselle. The bustle, or tournure, as we call it in France, is most effective, even when worn under the heaviest materials.’ She smiled at Edith, who was trying not to look bewildered. ‘Do not fear, Mademoiselle Hanson. All will be revealed when we bring in the dresses.’

  This time it was she who clapped her hands to indicate to one of the assistants that she could bring in the first of the costumes that Mr North had decided might be suitable for Miss Hanson to wear to her marriage to Mr Napier Todd.

  ‘May I?’ Miss Bagshaw carefully twisted Edith’s hair around her own hand and placed it in a net snood to keep it from interfering with the dressing. Then she and her assistants, having pulled on white gloves and with the aid of expertly handled wooden sticks, scooped up the first of the gowns selected for the bride-to-be and lowered the silk dress over Edith’s now fully bustled silhouette.

  ‘Et voilà,’ she murmured. Smoothing the fabric over the bustle cage with gloved hands, she nodded to the older of her assistants and murmured, ‘Button hook!’

  Not wanting to spoil the surprise of what she knew was her transformation Edith gazed at the ceiling as the tiny silk-covered buttons were expertly done up with the precious hook. Eventually satisfied that Edith was looking as good as she could perhaps ever look in the immensely draped dress with its rear interest, Miss Bagshaw removed the snood, re-dressed Edith’s hair into a large piece of ribbon so that the emphasis of both her head and her rear view were beautifully co-ordinated, and slowly turned Edith towards the mirror. Then she stood back, her head on one side, ready to be critical, but nevertheless undoubtedly pleased.

  Edith gazed at herself. The person her large green eyes saw reflected in the dressing mirror had nothing to do with the person with whom she had grown up. Her hands might be a little too rough – a sad legacy of years of carbolic soap and rinsing cloths in cold water – but there was nothing else about the young girl now staring at her reflection that could be so described. The young lady in the mirror was taller than Edith remembered. Courtesy perhaps of the crinolette petticoat, this beautiful girl was slender, not thin, and yet her silhouette was not without shape. The collar of the cream satin dress was frilled, showing off her long neck and bright hair, and looped back to set off neat ears. The three-quarter-length sleeves ending in a lace frill pointed up her slender arms, her long, ringless fingers with their tapered nails.

  ‘Shall we?’ Miss Bagshaw beckoned to Edith to follow her.

  Edith turned reluctantly from the young woman in the mirror, trying to put aside the feeling that she needed to be introduced to the person there reflected, for she was certain she had never met her before.

  Miss Bagshaw flung open the door that led back into the main salon from the fitting room.

  ‘Mrs Hanson, Mr North, may I present to you – Miss Edith Hanson. Or perhaps it should now be Miss Edith Handsome!’

  Edith would never forget the look on Aurelia Hanson’s face as she stared at the vision that her stepdaughter had become. She was plainly horrified by what she saw, and not just horrified, but affronted. She was made indignant. She even reddened as if she had been insulted, as if Edith had been transformed not only into a beautiful white swan, but to someone quite improper.

  She turned to Mr North.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so, do you, Mr North? I don’t think so at all. This gown is far too sophisticated for someone so young – would you not agree?’

  Miss Bagshaw’s lips tightened, and she pulled herself up and shook her chignoned head as if she had heard someone swear. Mr North’s mouth twitched, and his lips too tightened.

  ‘I am not really very sure that we can agree about that, Mrs Hanson,’ he said with sudden firmness, after a small pause. ‘I doubt it very much.’ He cast a superior look at Mrs Hanson, a look that showed sudden despite for this provincial woman with her uppity manner, and at the same time he turned towards a pile of discreetly placed magazines. ‘I think you will find here, for instance, in this last copy of The Season, I think you will find the original description of what we ourselves would certainly term a very simple, rather unsophisticated dress described—’ He snatched up the relevant fashion journal, and started to flick through it at great speed. ‘Ah yes, we have it here. I thought so.’

  He placed a pair of lunettes, hastily produced from his waistcoat pocket, on the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Yes, we have it here. A silk gown from the Master of Paris, Monsieur Worth, undoubtedly perfect. A gown that will show off the youngest and most unsophisticated bride in a way to satisfy the most exacting of tastes. Demure is the word.’ He looked round at Mrs Hanson as he said it. ‘Demure,’ he repeated. ‘Demure and appealing in every way, leaving nothing for the bride’s mamma to do except to pick fresh orange blossom for the headdress and bouquet on the morning of the wedding.’ He closed the magazine sharply. ‘I do not think we can argue with The Season, which is after all the organ of fashion, Mrs Hanson.’

  For the first time in her life, Edith saw that someone was standing up to her stepmother, perhaps for the first time in her life, and she could not help finding it a delightful sight.

  Mrs Hanson swallowed hard; she even licked her lips, mercifully briefly, as if she was aware that her mouth had become suddenly dry. She searched within herself for a few seconds for words that might combat the accolade accorded by the fashionable journal to the vision presented by her stepdaughter, still standing in front of her, and could find none.

  ‘Of course we can look at some other choices against which Miss Hanson could set this first one,’ Mr North finally offered in the seconds of silence that had followed his reading from the journal. ‘Bring the draped muslin with the ruched ribboning,’ he commanded Miss Bagshaw, who was staring at him with proprietary pride.

  ‘Very well, sir.’ Miss Bagshaw nodded to one of her assistants to do as Mr North had commanded, and turned back to Edith. ‘If Mademoiselle Hanson would like to follow me?’

  Edith, who had long grown accustomed to her stepmother’s sharp tongue, followed Miss Bagshaw back to the fitting room, and, not long after, the two young assistants hurried in carrying more dresses. Miss Bagshaw smiled at Edith in the dressing mirror, thinking that she must need to be comforted after such a disappointing reaction.

  ‘The first one is always the right one, believe me, Miss Hanson. You will walk
up the aisle in the first one.’

  There was so much to-ing and fro-ing after that, with Edith appearing and reappearing at well-timed intervals in gowns of wildly differing styles, that Mrs Hanson, dizzy and confused, which was perhaps what was intended, finally flung in the towel and turned to Mr North with pleading eyes.

  ‘What would you say, Mr North?’

  ‘I would say the silk with the three-quarter sleeves and the frilled collar,’ Mr North announced, having first thrown a small triumphant glance in Miss Bagshaw’s direction. ‘Most definitely the silk. And now Miss Bagshaw will fit Miss Hanson with some new day dresses.’ As he spoke, Mr North made sure to roll up Edith’s servant dress in such a way that Mrs Hanson could not help noticing it.

  Mrs Hanson half rose from the duenna sofa upon which she had been seated, the expression on her face that of a woman who was finding herself in a bad dream.

  ‘Surely we should be going? If the bridal dress is chosen, that is the end of our task, surely?’

  Mr North shook his head. ‘The trousseau, Mrs Hanson, we must not forget the trousseau,’ he murmured, and he smiled. ‘Please allow me to ask the maid to bring you a nice glass of ginger wine and some sweet biscuits. We shall be quite a while yet, you may be sure.’

  Inside the fitting room, Edith, now clothed in a demure two-piece, complete with hat and gloves, one of many such outfits that would go to make up her trousseau, smiled at Miss Bagshaw.

  ‘I would like to bring my little friend Becky Snape to be fitted as a bridesmaid,’ she murmured. ‘But I do not have enough money to buy her anything new. In fact I have so little money, it would be impossible to buy her anything more than a petticoat or a new pair of stockings.’

  ‘I will lend your friend something, made-moiselle. We sometimes do this.’ She smiled in the mirror at the beautiful young girl standing before her. ‘We sometimes do this for people we like.’

  A few days later Becky was brought to Mr North’s salon, and delivered into Miss Bagshaw’s expert hands.

  ‘I dunno, I dunno that I should,’ Becky kept protesting. ‘Cook said that Mrs Hanson had a fit when she heard I was to be yer bridesmaid, Edith, really she did.’

  ‘Mademoiselle?’

  Becky turned slowly back to Miss Bagshaw. She had never heard French before, let alone been addressed in it. ‘Ye-es?’

  ‘Miss Hanson has chosen you to be her bridesmaid, so that is how it has to be, mademoiselle. You understand? You are not to be the only one, you know. Two of my assistants are also to attend Miss Hanson. We have some lovely dresses for the purpose, and you will be given some lady’s underwear without charge.’

  When the underwear duly arrived, as it had done for Edith, Becky stared first at it, then later at herself in the mirror, astonishment in her eyes.

  ‘’Ere,’ she said, after a few moments. ‘I could get used to this!’

  On the day of the wedding, Edith’s father did not look in the least impressed by either Edith or her gown, which, as predicted by Miss Bagshaw, was indeed the one that Edith had tried on first. He was far too worried about his own appearance to bother much with that of his daughter.

  However, if Edith felt disappointed by her father’s muted reaction to her transformation, the rest of the servants certainly made up for it. As she walked slowly down from one of the best bedrooms, reluctantly loaned to her by Mrs Hanson for the purpose of changing, Becky and the other bridesmaids following her, the servants stood at the bottom of the wide oak staircase and allowed their mouths to drop open in astonishment. Since the arrival early that morning of Miss Bagshaw and her assistants, there had been total concentration on the bride-to-be, beginning with a long longed-for bath – a copper placed in front of the fire and filled from cans – and ending with the placing of a bouquet of orange blossom in her hands.

  ‘Edith Hanson, you look beautiful,’ one of the younger maids murmured, trying to reach out to touch her gown for luck, but Miss Bagshaw was there before her, smacking the eager fingers away from the precious cream silk.

  ‘Be off with you all,’ she said, although in a kindly tone. ‘Back to your pots and pans and dusters and pails.’

  The three identically dressed bridesmaids stepped into the hackney carriage that was to follow the bridal coach. Seeing them, Harold frowned, and before stepping forward to join his daughter he took Miss Bagshaw aside.

  ‘Are the bridesmaids coming at extra cost, do you know?’ he asked anxiously.

  Miss Bagshaw gave him a tolerant smile as she took his silk hat and quickly buffed the edge with the small brush that she always carried on such occasions. Surely only Harold Hanson could ask such a vulgar question on the morning of his only daughter’s wedding?

  ‘No, sir, they are here courtesy of Mr North. It seemed a pity not to make some sort of occasion of it, particularly since there has been so little time for us all to prepare in the kind of style for which you might have otherwise wished,’ she told him, a look of innocence on her face.

  But if Miss Bagshaw sounded lightly sarcastic, Harold Hanson seemed to be unaware of it, for he merely nodded, and giving every appearance of being reassured he climbed into the bridal coach to seat himself beside his daughter. Miss Bagshaw leaned into the carriage after him and handed him his brushed top hat.

  ‘I will be following with Mr North in the hackney behind the bridesmaids’,’ she told Edith, ‘so wait for me, outside the church, so that I can adjust your gown.’

  Edith smiled. Miss Bagshaw closed the door, and nodded to the coachman, and the beribboned carriage set off for the church, which was so near that it made the use of the carriage seem almost ludicrous to everyone except Mr North and Miss Bagshaw, who had a firm rule when it came to the dressing of brides: as far as they were concerned, either their clients arrived looking immaculate, fresh from the hands of the Charles North salon, or their custom was refused.

  After all, as Mr North was very fond of pointing out, their bridal wear was immensely popular. A Charles North bride had to look fresh, dainty, and immaculate, not windswept and mud bespattered.

  Edith walked up the aisle, one gloved hand on her father’s arm. For a second she imagined that everything was going to change and that in a few minutes she would be working like all the others back at the inn, instead of walking up the church to the sound of an organ playing, with no one telling her to go back to the Stag and Crown and get her bucket and mop.

  All at once, even before her father and herself reached the top of the aisle, she could see her future husband. He was dressed as a man of fashion – black coat, tall silk cravat with a pearl pin, highly polished boots, the whole fandango. It did not seem possible that this elegant creature was about to become her husband, and she his wife.

  Edith smiled up at the vicar’s round, reddened face, feeling vaguely disappointed that he did not look more like the saints in the stained-glass windows that surrounded them, before turning to Napier. As she looked up at him through her bridal veil, happiness of a kind she had never known before flooded through her. Napier Todd was so handsome, and the expression in his eyes so kind, that she knew at once that she had to be the luckiest girl in England. She was getting married in a silk dress to the sound of an organ playing, with the smell of orange blossom scenting the air, and what was more and what was better, she was in love.

  With a sudden giddiness Edith at last recognised what she was feeling. Of course, she was in love! And why would she not be? What young woman would not find it easy to feel passionate about this tall, handsome man with his pretty mouth and darkly intense eyes, who even she realised could not take his eyes off Edith’s face now that her veil was lifted?

  They took their vows with quiet intensity, but when Napier slid her wedding ring on to her finger and Edith looked down at it she felt she did not, could never, deserve the joy that she was feeling.

  The bridal breakfast was held back at the inn, and was everything that it should be. Harold – feeling great relief that not only had the bridesmaids been f
itted out courtesy of Charles North, but happily the cost of the breakfast could be put down in his accounts books as entertaining influential customers – was now quite able to smile down the table at his second wife. He knew he had laid on as good a spread as could be wished for, and since his new son-in-law, aside from his best man, had invited no other friends, the whole affair was proving really very satisfactory. He rose to his feet to make his speech.

  ‘I am very proud to be able to say that giving away my daughter Edith, the only child of my poor late wife . . .’ Here he paused for a few seconds to remember his poor late wife, which turned out to be a mistake, since at the mention of his previous union his second wife found it incumbent on her to clear her throat in a rather too marked manner. ‘Where was I? Ah yes, my poor daughter Edith, left as an orphan, except for myself, of course. Not that my dear wife, the second Mrs Hanson’ – he once again smiled down the table with unusual warmth at Aurelia, who, seeing that all eyes were upon her, smiled back as best she could – ‘not that the second Mrs Hanson has been backward in coming to my aid in bringing up my poor motherless daughter. It was not easy to raise a daughter, as you can well imagine, what with the temptations of the present day, not to mention the pits into which orphaned children, bereft of their mothers, can fall. Mrs Hanson had her work cut out, you may be sure. Nevertheless I think we must all agree that she has done a fine job, and will continue to do a fine job, if and when Edith should need her in the future. Married life can prove thorny, however good the intentions of those caught up in its broil. So now, I really must pause to raise my glass to the bride and groom. Before too long I will have to be about my duties, but until then I hope all of us present will continue to enjoy the blessings of this table. The bride and groom!’

  They all raised their glasses to Edith and Napier, but Edith, who had been constantly distracted by the looks of the maids waiting at table, had hardly heard her father’s speech, being all too aware of the wonder in the faces of her former colleagues as they busied themselves with the placing and replacing of the dishes. Would any of these girls, in their crisp uniforms and stiff collars that chafed so infernally at the neck, ever marry? Edith knew that they must be asking themselves the same question, even as they scurried backwards and forwards. They must also be wondering what kind of lucky star had allowed Edith to be scrubbing the floor when Napier Todd had come into the inn that Monday morning.