The Paris Seamstress

by Natasha Lester

  All of this rushed through her mind as a finger of dawn stretched over the sky, and then another, like a golden hand unfurling. Then there was, strangely, a cheer. Estella felt the ship’s engines throb to life, a roar of animation, and then movement, a thrusting through the water, heading straight toward the sun as if it were Xanadu and would save them all.

  “What happened?” Sam’s mother asked.

  “I don’t know,” Estella said. “Perhaps we’re safe.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” said Estella, wanting to believe it.

  The message reached them that they were, indeed, temporarily safe, that the U-boat captain had let them go, had thought they were a different ship. But they were to stay in the lifeboats, just in case. The cheer that rose up from each of the lifeboats was deafening, stranger embraced stranger, and a collective smile lifted the sun higher in the sky.

  They steamed on, aiming for that sun, Estella shielding her face from the light, shifting a little so her body might also protect Sam’s mother.

  “I’m Clarice, by the way.” Sam’s mother released her grip on her dress, relief uncurling her fingers. “I don’t believe we’ve officially met.”

  Estella smiled. “Estella. I’m glad we got to exchange names.”

  “Rather than end up at the bottom of the sea. I wonder where Sam is.”

  Estella scanned the lifeboats on the other side of the ship and pointed when she saw him.

  “How long do you think we’ll stay in here?” Clarice asked, moving uncomfortably.

  Estella remembered what Sam had said about his mother being unwell. “Not much longer, I hope. I don’t fancy sleeping here for ten days,” Estella said, hoping to distract Clarice. “Although a cot in what used to be the post office is hardly more luxurious.”

  “Why aren’t you in a cabin?”

  Estella shrugged. “There weren’t any left. It’s not as if I’m the only one.”

  “I insist on you sharing my cabin. George, my husband, can share with Sam.”

  “I’m fine,” Estella protested.

  “The post office in a cot is no place for a woman alone. Anything could happen to you.”

  Estella couldn’t help laughing. “You realize that we’re perched on the edge of a ship in the middle of the ocean with a U-boat somewhere behind us and you’re worried about me sleeping in a post office?”

  Clarice laughed too. “See, you’ll be a good diversion for me. George is spending most of his time with the many sick people aboard and he refuses to allow me to help; says I need to rest and recover. And Sam’s always off somewhere, smoking too many cigarettes. Lying in a cabin by myself worrying isn’t helping me to get back on my feet. I’d love the company.”

  The ship turned away from the sun and the gentling of the light on their faces made the passengers around them relax, the camaraderie of having outfaced a U-boat washing over them all like sea spray. Finally, the ship stopped and they were allowed to disembark the lifeboats and stretch their legs on deck.

  Sam and his father hurried over to Clarice and engulfed her in hugs. Estella turned away, as if that would help her to not miss her own mother. She heard Clarice tell both men about the new sleeping arrangements and she waited for them to demur but Sam just smiled and said, “Good. I’ll be able to find you easily next time I need someone to smoke with at five in the morning.”

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?” Estella asked.

  “Mind? God no,” Sam said. “If I have to read aloud another page of Gone with the Wind to stop her from getting out of bed, I’ll be the one saying I don’t give a damn!”

  Everyone laughed companionably and Sam went with Estella to collect her valise and sewing machine from the post office.

  “Do you think your mother will keep her promise once you’re back on dry land?” Estella asked, remembering what Clarice had said to him about doing what he wanted if they survived.

  Sam grinned. “I’m going to hold her to it.”

  “Will there be work for you in America?”

  “More than I need. With Paris cut off by the war, this will be the year American fashion finally comes into its own.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Estella said slowly. Of course Sam was right. The Americans wouldn’t be able to come to Paris to fill their wardrobes next season, and there would be no copied sketches crossing the sea if this was the last American boat out of Europe. America would be severed from the influence of Paris fashions.

  “What about you?” Sam asked. “Do you have a job?”

  “I don’t.” Estella hesitated, then decided to come clean. She told him about her work as a copyist, how she’d earned $1.50 a sketch every season to pass on drawings to the American buyers in Paris, who’d then take them back to New York and make up “genuine” Chanel copies. “So I know some people in New York. Buyers and manufacturers. I’ll see if they have a job for me, to start with.”

  “I can help too,” Sam said cheerfully. “Start on Seventh Avenue. The great bazaar of duplication, where they’d copy your grandmother if they thought anyone would wear her. Otherwise known as the Garment District. You want to work as close to 550 Seventh Avenue as you can and definitely don’t work anywhere below 450. And if that gold dress is any indication of what you can do, I don’t see why you shouldn’t have an atelier of your very own one day.”

  Estella smiled. That was a pronouncement she very much hoped would come true.

  Chapter Four

  Almost one thousand more people boarded the ship in Galway, so it carried twice as many as its capacity. Somehow, everyone made room for everyone else and Estella and Clarice shared their room with two elderly ladies who took the beds while Clarice slept in a cot and Estella on the floor. On the way, the news came through that Paris had fallen with barely a shot fired. Estella could hardly comprehend it, nor understand what it all meant.

  Each day, she read Gone with the Wind to Clarice, which she rather liked, even if Scarlett had to make clothes out of curtains. At night she slipped out, senses feeling across the water for Maman, finding nothing, wondering what would become of the atelier where so many Jewish people worked, praying that Paris would not suffer its own Kristallnacht. She smoked too many of Sam’s cigarettes and asked him to tell her everything he could about the New York garment industry, which wasn’t as much as he would have liked, having not been able to indulge his passion freely in the years before he left with his parents for France.

  It was with Sam that she first heard Charles de Gaulle speak over the ship’s radio from London, speak words that the French government seemed too cowardly to say, words that made the tears pour unchecked down Estella’s cheeks: “…has the last word been said? Must hope disappear? Is defeat final? No!…Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished.”

  Somebody cared. Somebody had given French people like her, who wept for their country, a dream to hold on to. Somebody would help her mother. She sobbed and Sam put a gentle arm around her shoulders, saying nothing, letting her take in de Gaulle’s words, letting the flame flare a little brighter inside her heart.

  Eventually she composed herself enough to thank him. “You’ve really been the best kind of friend.”

  “Glad to,” he said, dropping his arm.

  Three days later, New York came into view, suddenly and spectacularly. Passengers began to weep as Estella had wept on hearing de Gaulle. Estella grabbed Sam’s hand and pulled him along, running to the front of the ship to get the very best view. In her rush, she’d forgotten to pin her hat properly and the wind picked it up and tossed it into the harbor, a lily pad of turquoise silk that bobbed delicately for a few seconds before disappearing into the wake of the ship.

  “Hatless and homeless,” Estella said with a wry grin, clasping both hands onto the rails and leaning out as far as she could.

  “You’ll fall in!” Sam laughed and tugged her back but she resisted, wishing she could reach dow
n and touch the waters surrounding her new city.

  “Is that the Empire State Building?” she asked, pointing at a spire that had nothing on the Notre Dame in terms of antiquity but was so very brash in its position as the tallest building in the whole of the world. Its ambitions had never been in question and she hoped she could be that brave.

  “Sure is,” Sam said.

  After that, there was a flurry of docking and disembarking, of having papers checked and, once again, Estella was waved through as if she really was American.

  “You’ll come and stay with us tonight, my dear,” Clarice said. “Have a proper bath. I still can’t believe they rationed bathwater among nearly two thousand people and didn’t once think how that would make the ship smell.”

  “My mother was given the address of the Jeanne d’Arc Residence by the American Embassy and I’m going there,” Estella said, more cheerfully than she felt at the thought of striding off into Manhattan on her own.

  It would be easy to accept Clarice’s offer. Estella had refused to take more than the money needed for her passage from her mother because she’d known instinctively that her mother would need it more than Estella did. She couldn’t afford to pay for accommodation for more than a week, and she was quite sure Clarice’s home would be much more comfortable than the Jeanne d’Arc.

  “Is that a nunnery?” Clarice asked. “I hope you don’t mind my saying so but you seem a little too worldly for a nunnery.”

  Estella exploded with laughter, which made her feel better. It was still possible to laugh, even now. “Luckily it’s not a nunnery. It’s a women-only boardinghouse run by nuns. I’m sure they’ll take me in.”

  It was what her mother had taught her to do. To stand on her own two feet. If Estella didn’t tackle Manhattan on her first night headlong and independently, then she might let everything that had happened overwhelm her. In refusing Clarice, she sensed her mother’s nod of approval, a closeness that she mightn’t be able to hold on to in a big family home with people all around.

  “Then I insist on you coming to dinner tomorrow,” Clarice said. “So does Sam.” She looked beseechingly up at her son.

  “You know she’ll make my life a misery unless you do,” he said with a grin.

  “We can’t have that,” Estella replied, smiling too, glad to know that she had at least one friend in the city and also very glad to have been given a way to keep the friendship going.

  Clarice insisted on Estella sharing their taxi and on walking with her into the six-story brick building on West 24th Street to be sure she was given a room. It was spartan, but the apartment in Paris had been similarly plain and under-furnished. So it reminded her of home and brought her mother nearer to her.

  After Clarice had left and before she’d even had a bath, Estella went into the small chapel attached to the boardinghouse, lit a candle, knelt on a pew and prayed, hoping that the fervor of her emotions would somehow make her pleas heard by Sainte Jeanne. Please, she whispered, take care of my mother. Take care of my city. Take care of my country. Let no one die. Let the Germans be there for a week or even a month, no more. Let Charles de Gaulle save France quickly, before too many people get hurt.

  The minute Estella stepped onto the sidewalk the next day, she felt it: verve, energy, life. Paris had, she realized, been insentient for so long, holding its breath until all the animation had drained away. Whereas New York had the movement, the pizzazz, the éclat of a Lanvin fashion show. And there was much that was familiar. The streets near the boardinghouse were lined with buildings whose facades contained orderly and perfectly aligned windows, almost Haussmanian in style. There was a Metro, or subway, which she rode to Times Square. But there everything changed.

  Coca-Cola billboards flashed beside those for Planters Peanuts, Macy’s and something called Chevrolet. An advertisement for Camel Tobacco somehow blew actual smoke onto passersby, making Estella stop and stare so that everyone had to swerve around her, which they did without any real complaint. In France she would have, at the very least, been remonstrated with but most likely sworn at.

  Peculiarly, amid this place of rushing and gaudiness and industry, there was a statue of a man and a cross—the words Father Duffy engraved below—as if he was worshipping at the altar of American goods. Perhaps they had no churches in New York, Estella thought, but prayed at street-side monuments like this one. She shut her eyes, erasing the image of her mother kneeling beside her at the Église Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis on Sundays. How could she live in a city unadorned by steeples and stained glass and bells?

  Then she opened her eyes, casting them around, realizing it was impossible to open them enough to take everything in. Here in Manhattan, one’s vision was automatically drawn upward to the sights above, where buildings graduated in, like stepped pyramids piercing the sky. In Paris, the only thing of any height was the Eiffel Tower. But in New York, elevation mattered.

  She smiled at last. This was New York. Bright, sparkling; the very place for a bold, gold dress. For the first time, despite the war and despite the awful contraction in her stomach every time she thought of her mother, she felt an exhilaration that made her walk on.

  She crossed Seventh Avenue and saw a sight so familiar it made her smile broaden. Steam billowing out of windows from the irons, which pressed the garments before they were shown. But the steam was so far up above her head, on the twentieth floor, the thirtieth even, little wisps that joined the clouds, which meant that the clothes themselves must be made on all levels of the buildings. Imagine that. Sitting so high off the street while pressing, sewing, sketching, designing. The light would be good up there, she thought. Manhattan might be different, but that didn’t mean it would be worse than Paris.

  She decided to start with the offices of the manufacturers who’d bought sketches from her in Paris. If they didn’t have a job for her, then she’d try the department store buyers. And she was especially pleased to see that the card of one of the manufacturers she knew, Mr. Greenberg, bore the address Sam had told her to aim for: 550 Seventh Avenue. In Paris, it had meant nothing to her. Now it represented opportunity of the kind she needed to seize.

  But her spirits did more than sink; they almost drowned when she reached Mr. Greenberg’s office. He was pleased to see her. But he didn’t want her to design.

  “I need you in my comparative shopping department,” he said. “The others get the details wrong, don’t pay attention to the buttons or the seams. You always had an eye for what makes each dress different.”

  “Comparative shopping department?” she asked. It wasn’t a phrase she’d ever heard and she wondered if it was particularly American.

  “You go out to the stores—Bergdorf’s, Saks, Forsyths—see what they’re selling, especially anything that looks French, sketch it, give it to the cutter; then he makes it up.”

  “Pardon?” Estella replied, certain she had not, somehow, turned on the English language part of her brain sufficiently.

  “Take your sketchbook,” he shoved some paper at her, “and your pencil, and get me something I can make into a model. Damned war means nobody’s got enough sketches. One dollar fifty a sketch. Same as Paris.”

  Estella turned on her heel, knowing she had to leave before she said something she shouldn’t. That war wasn’t simply a damned inconvenience; she’d seen dead people, people who’d done nothing more than try to move to a safer place, or people like Monsieur Aumont who’d tried to do the right thing when so many others were too frightened.

  On the street, she was knocked sideways by a passing clothes trolley. “Damn,” she muttered, feeling her ankle.

  But it didn’t matter how sore it was; she had to do what Mr. Greenberg asked if she wanted to pay for her room. If she wanted to eat, to buy a subway ticket back to the boardinghouse. She had to do something she’d sworn never to do again: copying. Why did nobody want anything original? Why was everybody here so in thrall to a few Parisian couturiers?

  But those were unanswerable q
uestions. Her purse contained just twenty American dollars. So she studied the map she’d been given at the boardinghouse and walked across town to Saks Fifth Avenue, glad she’d chosen to wear a dress she’d made herself, something smarter than she’d normally have worn to work at an atelier. She’d wanted to make a good impression on Mr. Greenberg but now she needed to pass as a woman who could afford to shop at Saks.

  She adopted the walk and the posture she’d copied from the salon models and she breezed gaily up to Ladies Wear. The first dress she saw was a fake Maggy Rouff in beautiful black satin, dropping in a gentle flare to the floor. She checked the price ticket: $175! It probably sold for three times that much to a Maggy Rouff client in Paris. She wondered what price Mr. Greenberg would sell it for. Something lower than $175, she suspected. And here Estella was, at the bottom of a long chain of copies, making just $1.50 a sketch.

  She surreptitiously made as many notes as she could until a sales clerk began to shadow her, then she slipped out to Bergdorf’s, where the clerks were less attentive, and took down the details of another six gowns. After that, she walked back to Greenberg’s to sketch them properly before the memory faded.

  She soon discovered that Greenberg didn’t have a designer working for him; he said it was the way of Seventh Avenue. Nobody had designers; nobody designed. They all copied Paris, and one another.

  “America is industry; Paris is art,” he told her. “Paris creates, we make.” The cutter, he said, would make up the models from Estella’s sketches.

  “He might be able to cut fabric,” Estella said, “but does a man in his fifties know what women want to wear? I could design for you,” she offered. “I can bring in some sketches tomorrow.”