The Dressmaker's Gift

by Valpy, Fiona

  ‘But what if Claire and Vivi don’t talk? If they are released, I want to be there when they return.’

  ‘We have someone watching so we will know if and when they are released. I know it’s hard, but the best thing you can do – for their sakes as well as for your own – it to sit tight here. In a few days we will know, one way or another . . .’ His voice trailed off. ‘Try to eat something now. Keep your strength up as best you can, eh?’

  Those dark, lonely hours were some of the hardest Mireille had ever had to endure. Images of her friends’ faces floated before her: Claire’s gentle smile; Vivi’s eyes, filled with warmth. What was happening to them now? And now? And now? She could hardly bear to think. In her anguish, she lost control and beat her fists against the rough stone walls of the cellar until her knuckles bled. Then, sobbing, she sank to the floor and wept, raw angry sobs, wrenched from her guts, that tore at her throat.

  She thought she would go crazy.

  As the hours turned into days, she cried out her anger and frustration until all that remained was a cold, hard determination to survive this ordeal, just as she hoped Claire and Vivi were surviving the ordeals of their own.

  She’d lost track of time, but at last the dyer opened the cellar door and led her out of the darkness and back up into the grey light of a winter’s evening. ‘It should be safe, now, for you to return to the atelier. Your friends are extremely courageous. They never gave in, even under torture,’ he told her. ‘They didn’t talk.’

  Hope leapt in her heart. ‘Oh, thank God! Are they alright? Are they coming home?’

  He shook his head, his expression grave. ‘We have word that they are in bad shape, but they are still alive. They have been released from the Avenue Foch. But they are being taken to a prison, where political prisoners are held. Come now, my child. I will take you home.’

  Never had she thought that she would have missed the sewing room, but as she pushed open the door the familiar smell of starched fabric and the sight of the seamstresses’ chairs pushed in neatly around the table in the darkened room made her heart turn over with a longing for it all to be as it had been a week ago. She wished that a lamp would cast a pool of light on to one end of the table, making Vivi’s copper braid shine as she bent her head to her work. She longed to hear Claire’s voice, scolding Vivi as she told her that she was working too late, as usual, and that she should put away whatever it was she was doing and come upstairs for supper.

  But the darkness and the silence filled the room, amplifying its emptiness.

  She took the next few flights of stairs slowly, putting off for as long as possible the moment when she would unlock the door to the apartment on the fifth floor and step into an emptiness and a silence more terrible than any she’d experienced in the past few days.

  She steeled herself, then walked in.

  Her own room had been largely untouched – presumably the Gestapo had been too intent on the capture of Claire and Vivienne to bother with anything else – but she was expecting to see the awful reminders of their presence in the other rooms. To Mireille’s surprise, though, she realised that someone must have been into the apartment in her absence. Claire and Vivi’s rooms were tidy now, the cupboard doors closed, clothes folded and put back into drawers, the chair set to rights. The work of a friend, surely, rather than an enemy?

  She caught sight of a soft gleam in the darkness of Claire’s room. On the windowsill beside the bed lay the silver locket that Mireille had given her two Christmases ago. Mireille picked it up and ran the chain slowly through her fingers. After a moment’s hesitation, she fastened the clasp around her neck. She would wear it for Claire and for Vivi, she decided, until they came home again. She closed the doors to their bedrooms and then walked, slowly, to her own.

  She didn’t bother to remove her clothes, just kicked off her shoes and pulled the blankets over her shivering body. Lying in the darkness, she remembered something the dyer had said earlier. When he’d come to release her, seeing the expression of relief on her face when he’d told her the news that Claire and Vivi were still alive, he had laid a gentle hand on hers. ‘Don’t get your hopes up too high, my child,’ he’d said, his expression sorrowful. ‘Your friends have saved you. And the rest of us, too. But they still may not be able to save themselves.’

  She clenched her hand, in defiance, around the locket that hung above her heart. Her still-raw knuckles were covered in scabs which cracked and oozed blood as she curled her fingers into a fist. Claire and Vivi were still alive. They had endured the horrors of torture at the Gestapo’s headquarters. Surely, now, nothing else could be as bad? They were still together. Surely they would survive?

  Claire had continued to hold on tight to Vivi’s hand until the car pulled up in front of eighty-four, Avenue Foch. From the outside, it looked like many other buildings in the elegant sixteenth arrondissement.

  ‘Courage,’ Claire whispered, leaning as close to Vivi as she dared. ‘I can be strong if you can too.’ She wasn’t sure whether her friend had heard the words and, if she had, whether they’d registered. Vivi still appeared to be deep in shock, or perhaps stunned by a blow to her head. But after a moment Claire felt a reassuring squeeze of her hand in return.

  The car door was flung open and Vivi was dragged out. Then two pairs of hands grabbed Claire and she was manhandled into the building. The bag of clothes she’d packed so hastily was wrenched from her grasp and handed to a grey-uniformed woman who disappeared with it.

  ‘Take them straight to the sixth floor,’ one of the men barked, as he removed his cap and gloves. ‘Let’s see how these dressmakers enjoy a spell in the “kitchen”.’

  Just like the apartment in the Rue Cardinale, the attic rooms in this building were cramped and sloping with small windows. But that was where any similarity ended. Boards had been nailed across the window-frames and the room that Claire was led into had nothing in it but a single metal-framed chair beneath a bare lightbulb that hung from the ceiling. She heard a door slam shut a little further along the corridor and presumed that Vivi had been bundled into a room similar to this one.

  The two men who came to question her were polite at first. ‘Please, mademoiselle, take a seat,’ one said, patting her shoulder as he ushered her towards the chair. ‘We really don’t wish to detain you any longer than is necessary. So if you’ll just answer our questions then we can let you be on your way. Can I get you anything? A glass of water, perhaps?’

  She was aware that his apparent kindness was a ploy to get her to drop her guard. She shook her head, clasping her hands together tightly in her lap to prevent her whole body from trembling.

  Their opening questions seemed almost inconsequential, the man’s tone pleasantly conversational. How long had she worked for Delavigne Couture? Did she enjoy her work? And how long had her red-headed friend worked there? She refused to speak at all to begin with, shaking her head.

  The second man, who had been pacing up and down, turned on his heel abruptly and brought his face close to hers. She could smell the staleness of his breath, and flecks of spit spattered her face as he hissed, ‘You are a very attractive young woman, Claire. It would be a shame to spoil such a pretty face. I suggest you start co-operating now. Tell us what your friend – Vivienne, isn’t it? – was doing with a shortwave radio in her room. You must have known. And maybe you were working with her, hein? Did she give you messages to carry?’

  Claire shook her head again, not daring to raise a hand to wipe the drops of spittle from her face. She wondered, briefly, how he knew their names. Someone – Ernst maybe? – must have given them to him.

  ‘Very well.’ The man straightened up again. She thought he had turned to walk away from her, so when he spun back round and hit her across the face the blow seemed to come out of nowhere. She cried out then in shock and pain, the sound of her own voice seeming alien to her. She needed to stay strong for Vivi, just as she knew Vivi would stay strong for her. And so she spoke then, determined to rega
in control of her voice.

  Her words were low and trembling, but she managed to say, ‘I am Claire Meynardier. Vivienne Giscard is my friend. We are seamstresses in Saint-Germain.’ She would hold on to these three simple truths, she told herself. She would say nothing more.

  Like waves washing up on the beach, time seemed to advance and retreat and she lost all track of how many hours might have passed. The minutes when they were questioning her felt interminable. But then the lapses of consciousness could have lasted seconds or days.

  The pain ebbed and flowed too, sometimes hard-edged and blinding, sometimes enveloping her in darkness. She was sick with tiredness, but they wouldn’t let her sleep, questioning, coaxing, shouting until her head spun. And yet, each time she spoke it was to repeat the three truths that she clung on to as she drowned in that sea of pain and time. ‘I am Claire Meynardier. Vivienne Giscard is my friend. We are seamstresses in Saint-Germain.’ Again and again, through swollen lips, she mumbled the words until, at last, darkness descended.

  When she came to, Claire was lying in the corner of the room. Her body was numb with the chill that seeped through the walls and the bare floorboards behind and beneath her but, as she slowly regained consciousness, the numbness was replaced by a burning sensation in her feet. The stiffness of her limbs slowly thawed into a throbbing ache and, as she tried to sit up, a sharp spike of pain shot through her ribcage.

  Tentatively, she ran the tip of her tongue over her cracked and swollen lips, and winced. She began to shiver then, uncontrollably.

  Her woollen stockings were tangled in a heap beside her and she slowly sat up and began to pull them on over her bloodied feet for warmth. What day was it? How many hours had passed? Where was Vivi and what had they done to her? Her head swam and she lay back down on the floor, curling her bruised and battered body into a ball and tucking her hands into her chest so that they could absorb the faint warmth of her breath. ‘I am Claire Meynardier,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Vivienne Giscard is my friend.’

  It was the woman in the grey uniform who opened the door. She looked at Claire without emotion. ‘Get up and put on your shoes,’ she said. ‘It’s time to go.’

  Claire didn’t move, unable to uncurl her aching limbs from the small core of warmth she’d created. Her hands were pressed against her heart and she felt the blood pulsing faintly through her body.

  The woman nudged her with the toe of her shoe. ‘Get up,’ she repeated. ‘Or do I have to go and get the men to put you back on your feet?’

  Slowly, painfully, Claire sat up then. The woman pushed her shoes towards her and Claire put them on, gasping at the flashes of searing pain as she forced them on to her swollen feet. She couldn’t tie the laces, but they were on, at least. She managed to pull herself up using the chair and then shuffled forwards, following the woman to the door.

  Each downwards step on the stairs sent more pain stabbing through her feet and up into her calves, but she gripped the handrail and hobbled on, determined not to cry out. At last they reached the ground floor and the woman gestured to her to take a seat on a hard, wooden bench against one wall. Thankfully, she lowered herself on to it. ‘May I have some water?’ she asked.

  Wordlessly, the woman brought her a tin mug and Claire took a few sips, moistening her mouth and washing away the iron taste of blood. Plucking up courage at being granted this small request, Claire said, ‘My bag of clothes? May I have it back?’ But the woman just shrugged and turned away.

  As she sat and waited for whatever was to happen next, she heard two sets of footsteps coming down the stairs. The men carried a stretcher between them and it took Claire a few moments to realise that the huddled bundle of wet rags that lay on it covered a person. And it was only when she saw the tumble of copper hair hanging over the side of the stretcher that she realised who that person was.

  Harriet

  Outside the building where my grandmother was so brutally tortured, once I’ve stopped crying – enough to be able to gather my thoughts, at least – I turn away from Thierry and I start to walk. All I know is that I need to be anywhere other than here. How can I ever see the world as a good and kind place to be when I know what obscene cruelty humanity is capable of?

  As my feet carry me onwards, the sudden wail of a police siren makes the traffic scatter and a sickening scream of pain and anger fills my head with white noise, blotting out everything else. Without thinking, I begin to run, wildly, panicking. I can hardly see, can’t think, can’t make sense of my surroundings. Flickering blue lights engulf me and I feel them burning like flames. Stumbling, I blunder off the edge of the pavement and hear a shout, the screeching of car tyres, a blaring horn.

  And then Thierry catches me and pulls me back to the safety of the pavement, holding me up as my legs threaten to give way beneath me.

  Taking juddering breaths, I look into his face and I see fear written there behind the bewilderment. His eyes are searching mine, asking, Who is this crazy woman? Why would anyone run into the traffic like that? She is unbalanced, hysterical.

  I can see it in his uncertainty, feel it in the way his touch has become tentative now, not solid and reassuring like it was before.

  I’ve ruined it. I’ve proven to myself what I’ve always feared, that I am too damaged to be loved. I’m not strong enough for this. Perhaps Simone was right in the first place: I never should have tried to find out Claire’s story. I should have left the questions unasked, let history lie. I was coping, before. On my own. With sudden, breathtaking clarity, I see that I can’t inflict the darkness that I carry inside me on Thierry – this man who is standing beside me, tentatively putting a hand on my arm to hold me in case I bolt again. I care about him too much.

  ‘Come,’ he says, ‘you’ve had a terrible shock. Let’s find a café, get you a cup of English tea?’ He smiles, trying to make things right again.

  I shake my head. ‘I’m sorry, Thierry,’ I say. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Okay, then I’ll take you home.’

  But it’s there now, between us. Something has shifted. Something has been broken and it cannot be repaired. He leaves me at my door, tries to kiss me, but I turn away pretending to search in my bag for my keys. And when he says goodbye, I can’t quite meet his eyes.

  I have to let him go.

  1943

  Mademoiselle Vannier had come upstairs to look for the three girls when none of them turned up for work on Monday morning, and had discovered the apartment in its abandoned state. It was clear that something terrible had happened, but where the girls had gone was a complete mystery. Their absence had been the source of much whispered conjecture amongst the other seamstresses in the days that followed.

  And so there were gasps of surprise when Mireille appeared in the sewing room. Without a word, she walked across and took her seat at the table between the two empty chairs belonging to Claire and Vivienne.

  The stunned silence gave way to a tirade of questions.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Where are Claire and Vivi?’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They’re gone,’ she said, bluntly. ‘The Gestapo came and took them. No, I don’t know why. I don’t know where they are now. I don’t know anything.’

  Mademoiselle Vannier shushed the seamstresses. ‘Quiet, now, everyone. That’s enough. Leave Mireille in peace and get on with your work.’

  Mireille shot her a glance of gratitude as she set her sewing things on the table and, with trembling fingers, began to tack together the pieces of a waistband.

  She had scarcely slept and had eaten nothing since her return the night before, unable to get the images of Claire and Vivi’s faces out of her head. The dyer had said they were in bad shape. She couldn’t bear to think about what they had been through during those four days in the Avenue Foch. But they were alive, she reminded herself. That was all that mattered.

  She tried hard to concentrate on her sewing. One stitch, then the next, then the next . . .
It helped her to shut out the images of her friends’ pain-wracked faces, for a little while at least.

  Heads bent over their work, the others shot surreptitious glances at her from beneath their eyelashes. The room was filled with an oppressive silence, heavy with questions unasked and unanswered. Then, without a word, one of the girls slid across from her usual seat into one of the empty chairs next to Mireille. After a moment’s hesitation, the girl on the other side followed suit. Scarcely glancing up from her work, Mireille nodded her thanks to them for their gesture of solidarity. And then, blinking the tears from her eyes, she forced herself to sew another stitch and another . . .

  Returning upstairs to the silence and the darkness of the apartment was almost as bad as it had been the night before. She made herself heat up a little soup and eat it, wrapping herself in a blanket to keep out the bitter cold. She was just washing up her bowl when a soft tap on the apartment door made her freeze in terror.

  But then she heard a familiar voice, softly saying her name, and she breathed again.

  Monsieur Leroux accepted her offer of a tisane, and then insisted on making it himself while she stayed in the sitting room, curled up in her blanket. He handed her a cup of lemon balm tea and she cradled it in her hands, letting it warm her.

  ‘Is there any news?’ she asked once he’d settled himself in the chair opposite.

  His eyes were filled with pain when he raised them to meet hers. ‘Nothing more yet. They’re being held in the prison at Fresnes.’

  She sat up. ‘Fresnes? But that’s not far. Can we go and see them at least?’

  He shook his head. ‘Even if they would let anyone visit them, it would be too risky. The intelligence I have is that Claire and Vivi managed to convince the Gestapo that you’d already been picked up. Things are so chaotic these days that they can’t easily trace whether or not it’s true, so they’ve stopped looking for you now. If you turn up, you’ll be arrested on the spot. And it would make things even worse for the other two.’