The Dressmaker's Gift

by Valpy, Fiona

  ‘Simone,’ I begin. And then I stop, not sure how to phrase what I want to ask her.

  She glances at me, unsmiling.

  ‘Look,’ I say. ‘I don’t know if there’s something between you and Thierry. But if there is, I don’t want to do anything that might upset you.’

  She shrugs. ‘No. There’s nothing. He’s just a friend.’

  She turns to her computer screen, apparently checking her emails, but the silence between us is pregnant with something more. I let it sit, giving her time.

  Reluctantly, she raises her eyes to meet mine at last. ‘I’ve known him for years,’ she says. ‘Too many years, maybe. We’ve been friends ever since I came to Paris. You’re right, though. I did hope we could be more than just friends. But I’m like a sister to him, he says. So it’s just not going to happen. I suppose seeing him with you – how he lights up when he’s talking to you – has forced me to admit that to myself.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, meaning it.

  She shrugs. ‘Why should you be sorry? It’s not your fault he likes you.’

  Then she smiles, thawing a little. ‘And he really likes you, by the way. I could see it that evening. There’s definitely a connection between the two of you.’

  I shake my head and laugh, taking my cue from her, trying to keep it light. I’m not great at relationships. At university I tended to find them a bit overwhelming and I came to the conclusion that it was easier to be on my own. It always felt like there might be too much to lose if I let myself fall in love. And I knew that I couldn’t bear to lose more than I already had done.

  I admit that I’d enjoyed talking to Thierry that night though. I’d felt liberated by the novel sensation of being able to be myself, in French. And a concert would be a good way to spend an evening, especially if he was busy working at it. It wouldn’t be a big deal then. So, when my own phone buzzes a minute later, encouraged by Simone’s smile and nod of approval, I reply ‘oui, avec plaisir’ to his suggestion that he puts a ticket on the door for me next Saturday and that we might go for something to eat afterwards. Then I firmly put my phone aside and get on with my work.

  One of my duties as an intern involves sorting the mail when it arrives at the agency each morning. I am stopped in my tracks today by the sight of an official-looking envelope with a UK postcode, addressed to me. I never usually get any post, so I know that this must be the certificates I requested from the records office and that they will tell me more about Claire’s life. And her death, too. I set the sealed envelope aside, underneath my phone, so that I can stay focused on my work for now. I’ll open it this evening, when I can have a proper look at the contents in the privacy of my own room in the flat upstairs.

  I sort the rest of the mail quickly and then take it through to the office to hand it out. One of the account managers is in with Florence when I tap on her door. She beckons me in and both women smile at me. ‘Good news, Harriet,’ Florence says. ‘That press release you sent out? We’ve had a response from London. The buyer at Harvey Nichols is interested in seeing more of the range. It’s quite a coup.’

  The account manager asks me to help draft the reply and I am kept busy for the rest of the day translating the technicalities of shoe design and construction from French into English.

  At last the office closes and I run up the stairs to my attic room, clutching the white envelope. On my mother’s side of the family, both my grandfather and grandmother had died before I was born. My hands are trembling a little. Because apart from the photo of Claire with Mireille and Vivienne, this is the first tangible link I have had to that generation of my family.

  I’m not at all sure I’m going to like what I find when I open the envelope. I’ve come to think that Claire’s relationship with Ernst was pretty shameful. And might there even be a chance that I am of Nazi descent? Is that legacy of shame and guilt part of my genetic make-up? My hands tremble with impatience – and just a frisson of anxiety – as I tear open the envelope.

  The first certificate I read is dated, in a flowing copperplate hand, the 1st of September 1946, and is for the marriage of Claire Meynardier, born in Port Meilhon, Brittany on the 18th of May 1920 to Laurence Ernest Redman, born in Hertfordshire, England on the 24th of June, 1916. The name Ernest stops me in my tracks for a moment. Could this be ‘Ernst’? Did they move to England to make a new start after the war? But the fact that he was born in the Home Counties makes that extremely unlikely. So maybe I can assume that I’m not descended from a Nazi soldier after all. The thought allows a weight to slip from my shoulders, one less burden to have to carry through life.

  I put the sheet of paper to one side and read the next one, the certificate of death for Claire Redman. It is dated 6 November 1989 and the cause of death is given as heart failure. So Claire was sixty-nine years old when she died, leaving her daughter, Felicity, alone in the world at the age of twenty-nine. How I wish she’d lived longer. She might have been able to change the course that my mother’s life took. She might have been less of an enigma. And if she’d still been around she might have been able to help me, giving me a sense of who I really am.

  How I wish I’d known my grandmother Claire.

  March 1941

  ‘Mireille, you are wanted in the salon.’ Mademoiselle Vannier’s lips were so pursed with disapproval that the creases around them were drawn into pleats as tight as smocking. It was virtually unheard of for seamstresses to be summoned downstairs into the territory of the vendeuses and their clients.

  Mireille was conscious of the glances of the other girls seated around the table who looked up from their work and watched in silence as she carefully tucked her needle into the fabric of the lining she was tacking together to mark her place, then stood up and pushed in her chair.

  A feeling of dread dragged at the pit of her stomach as she descended the stairs. Was she in trouble over some slip-up in her sewing? She was often distracted nowadays, thinking about her next assignment for the network, and constantly exhausted by the strain of keeping her activities a secret from the other girls. Perhaps she was being summoned for a scolding.

  She tried not to imagine the even worse possibility, that she had been denounced by someone and that the salon might be full of Nazis come to take her for questioning.

  She hesitated at the door to the salon, then tugged her white coat straight and held her head high as she knocked and entered.

  To her surprise, the sales woman who was renowned for dealing with Monsieur Delavigne’s wealthiest clients came towards her, smiling broadly. Behind her, an assistant hovered with her tape measure alongside one of the models who was wearing a coat that Mireille recognised. She had finished sewing the lining for it just the other day.

  ‘Here she is, our star seamstress,’ gushed the vendeuse. ‘This gentleman wanted to meet you, Mireille, to thank you in person for the work you have done on his orders.’

  Thankfully, the others in the room were too intent on fluttering about their client like moths around a flame to notice the startled look that shot across Mireille’s features before she could prevent it. Because next to the fire, which blazed brightly in the hearth to keep the damp March chill at bay, Monsieur Leroux sat in one of the gilt chairs that were reserved for visitors to the salon, his long legs crossed and his hands in his pockets, in a pose that spoke of the self-assured ease of the very wealthy.

  She composed herself quickly, forcing herself to keep her eyes cast down to the pattern of the Aubusson carpet on the floor of the salon so that no look of recognition could give away the fact that she had already met this man. Neither did she want to betray the fact that, this very evening, she would be running an errand for the underground network that he controlled. She had received her latest instructions from the dyer only yesterday.

  ‘Mademoiselle,’ he said, ‘I apologise for interrupting your work. But I wanted to thank you for the attention to detail that you put into the garments that I commissioned. It is important, occasionally, to pa
ss that on personally, n’est-ce pas?’

  Did she imagine it, or had he placed a slight emphasis on the word ‘important’?

  He smiled at the assembled company, who all beamed back at him, having already been on the receiving end of his largesse.

  He beckoned her closer and then slipped a folded five franc note into the pocket of her white coat. ‘A small token of my gratitude, mademoiselle. And my thanks to you all once again.’

  ‘Thank you, monsieur. You are too kind,’ Mireille replied, her eyes meeting his for the briefest of moments to let him know that she understood.

  He stood then, and one of the assistants hurried forwards with his coat. Turning to the vendeuse, he said, ‘So you have all the measurements you require for that suit?’ He gestured towards one of the new season’s designs that were displayed on mannequins against one wall.

  ‘Oui, monsieur. We will make it just as you wish. It’s an excellent choice – I happen to know that this particular style is one of Monsieur Delavigne’s favourites.’

  ‘Merci. And have the coat sent to my usual address.’ He nodded towards the model. ‘But I will settle my account now, if I may?’

  ‘Of course, monsieur.’

  The saleswoman flapped a hand at Mireille, indicating that she was dismissed and should return to the atelier, while one of the assistants hurried to fetch the ledger in which the details of clients’ orders were kept.

  Before going back into the sewing room, Mireille slipped into the lavatory on the first floor. She pulled the five franc note out of her pocket and unfolded it. As she’d guessed, a slip of paper was hidden inside the money. And on it was written just one word, heavily underlined: ‘CANCELLED’.

  She realised that something terrible must have happened for Monsieur Leroux to have risked coming to see her to deliver this warning. Her hands shook as she tore the note into tiny pieces and flushed them away, making sure they’d gone, before washing her hands. They shook still as she dried them on the towel which hung on the back of the door, imagining what – or who – might have been waiting for her if she’d gone to the rendezvous point that evening. The Germans were trying to tighten the net around all Resistance activity and it was well known on the streets of Paris that those who were taken to the SS headquarters in the Avenue Foch for questioning did not usually reappear. She had seen, too, with her own eyes, the lines of people being marched under armed guard into the city’s stations and forced to board the trains heading eastwards. And, it seemed to her, they far outnumbered the people returning.

  When she slipped back into her seat at the sewing table, Claire nudged her and asked her what she’d been sent downstairs for. She pulled the five franc note out of her pocket and showed it to the other girls, who exclaimed in envy.

  ‘We’ll have some sausages or a jar of rillettes this weekend, if the butcher has any in,’ Mireille whispered to Claire under cover of the chatter.

  ‘Don’t worry about me, I’ll be out to dinner on Saturday evening,’ Claire replied, turning away from Mireille towards the light, the better to concentrate on stitching some intricate beadwork on to a chiffon bodice.

  ‘But we never seem to see each other, apart from at work these days,’ Mireille said sadly.

  Claire shrugged. ‘I know. You always seem to be out on the evenings when I am not.’

  ‘Well, one of these days we’ll have an evening in together and you can tell me all about this new man of yours.’ It had recently become public knowledge in the atelier that Claire was ‘seeing someone’, after one of the girls in the flat had seen her slipping out one evening wearing a pair of silk stockings, which must have cost far more than any of them could afford on their wages. Under close questioning, Claire had admitted that they were a gift from an admirer. The same admirer she had been seeing since New Year’s Eve.

  Mademoiselle Vannier clapped her hands to quell the murmuring of the girls. ‘That’s enough now, everyone. The excitement is over. Don’t expect you are all going to be invited downstairs so that clients can give you tips. That sort of thing only happens once in a blue moon. Quiet, please! Pay attention to your work and save your gossiping for your breaks.’

  Mireille reached for the lining that she’d left on the table and began, once again, to tack it together with careful, quick stitches. As she sewed, she reflected that she’d had no idea that some of the clothes she was making were commissions for Monsieur Leroux. That had been a woman’s coat that the model was wearing, and it was a woman’s suit that he had pointed to on the mannequin. Did he have a wife? Or a mistress? Or both perhaps? How strange it was to be linked to so many people through the network and yet to know nothing about them, even though they each held one another’s lives in their hands.

  It was only the following day, when she went to fetch some more silk from the dyer, that Mireille heard why last night’s operation had had to be cancelled. Madame Arnaud, from the safe house, had been picked up outside the baker’s shop and was found to have more than her ration of bread in her basket. That sort of black market activity was, fortunately, not enough to have her deported and she had been lucky to be released with just a severe reprimand. But then she had realised that their house was being watched, and had managed to get a message through to Monsieur Leroux to cancel the previous evening’s assignment. The Arnauds would need to lie low until they were no longer under suspicion. So activities would be suspended for a while, the dyer explained, until they worked out which other houses could be used to hide the network’s cargo. He would let her know when it was safe to begin again.

  Claire had spent her Saturday morning in the usual way, standing in queues outside shops in the hope of picking up that week’s food rations. Two women, who’d been gossiping just ahead of her when she’d joined the line, had turned and given her a scornful glance, taking in her silk scarf and fine stockings. She’d met their look with defiance, holding her head high: so what if she had a German boyfriend who loved to pamper her? Just because she wasn’t a scrawny old bird with varicose veins like them was no reason for her to deserve the filthy looks that they shot at her as the queue shuffled forwards, inch by inch.

  Walking home, as she turned into the Rue Cardinale, she swung her shopping bag, planning the bean stew that she would make for lunch, flavoured with a precious morsel of pork belly that she’d managed to find at the butcher’s.

  And then she noticed the young man sitting in the doorway of Delavigne Couture who scrambled to his feet when he caught sight of her. She didn’t recognise her brother at first. When she’d last seen him, his hair had been long and unkempt and he’d been wearing his thick fisherman’s jersey, the wool heavy with a mixture of engine grime and fish oil. He looked different – older, somehow, but ill-at-ease and surprisingly vulnerable in a workman’s cotton jacket, with his normally tousled hair trimmed short and neatly combed, exposing a tender strip of pale skin where it had been cut away from the back of his neck.

  ‘Jean-Paul! What are you doing here?’ she exclaimed.

  He took a step towards her, then hesitated as if unsure how to greet the elegant young woman his little sister had become. But she reached across the space that separated them and put her arms around him, breathing in his scent of woodsmoke and sea salt and feeling an unexpected pang of homesickness as he hugged her back.

  ‘You look good, Claire.’ He stood back to appraise her, his grey eyes crinkling as his weather-tanned face creased into a smile. ‘Quite the Parisian lady. The city life obviously suits you. I don’t know how you can stand living here, though; too many people and not enough fishing boats for my liking.’ He gestured towards the scuffed canvas duffel bag that leant against Delavigne Couture’s plate glass vitrine. ‘I’m on my way to Germany. Been ordered to report for work in a factory there. I’ve got an hour or so before I have to be at the station, though, so I thought I’d look you up on my way through Paris.’

  She took him by the hand. ‘Come up to the apartment, then.’ Taking the key from her bag, she pu
shed the door open and led the way upstairs. ‘Oh, Jean-Paul, I can’t tell you how good it is to see you. How is Papa? And the others?’

  ‘Papa is well. Told me to make sure you’re looking after yourself in the big city and getting enough to eat. He sent you these.’

  With a grin, from the top of his bag Jean-Paul drew a newspaper-wrapped parcel tied with twine and set it on the table. She opened it to find three mackerel, their skins gleaming, as silver as the sea off the Brittany coastline from which they’d been pulled.

  ‘And the others? Marc and Théo and Luc?’

  Her brother’s face grew serious then and his eyes clouded with sadness. ‘Théo and Luc went to fight when the war was declared. I’m sorry to have to tell you like this, but Luc was killed, Claire, when the Germans broke through the Maginot Line.’

  Claire gasped and abruptly sat down on a chair, the colour draining from her face. Her eldest brother, dead for nearly two years and she hadn’t known. ‘And Théo?’ she whispered.

  ‘We received word that he was captured and kept in a camp for prisoners of war for a while. But when France surrendered he was released, on condition that he work in a German factory. That was the last we heard. I’m hoping that I might be able to find out where he is and request a placement in the same factory so that we can be together. Though I’m not sure whether the Germans will allow that.’

  Claire buried her face in her hands and sobbed. ‘Thank God Théo is okay. But Luc . . . gone . . . I can scarcely believe it. Why didn’t you let me know?’

  ‘Papa did write. He sent a letter, but it was just after the Germans had taken over so it probably got lost in the chaos. And he tried to send you one of those official postcards but it was returned to us marked “inadmis” because he’d written more than the permitted thirteen lines. He’s been knocked sideways by the loss, Claire. You wouldn’t believe how it has aged him. He spends every waking minute out on the boat these days, hardly says a word. Marc and I have been trying to support him. But some days he goes out on his own, in all weathers. Doesn’t even wait for us. It’s like he doesn’t care that he’s taking such risks, almost like he couldn’t care less if he lives or dies.’