The Wedding Dress Maker

by Leah Fleming

  ‘A good dressmaker wears her shop on her back,’ said Mrs Forsyth, peering at the little woman in her neat, well-tailored black dress.

  Vida cleared the table and brought out a sketchpad. ‘What exactly had you in mind?’

  Ideas were thrown backwards and forwards. The difficulty of obtaining good material was only a problem until the mother offered her own lace wedding dress, packed away in mothballs somewhere, to be used as the base of the gown. It was duly sent for and examined carefully for stains and rot.

  Then, in the privacy of Stratharvar House, the bride-to-be was measured from top to toe against the size of the old dress. ‘I think we’ll have enough if the bride promises me to take her dogs on plenty of walks,’ Vida whispered to Netta. ‘All brides shed pounds before the big day. I pray she’ll be no exception.’ Vida knew it would be a tight squeeze otherwise!

  Netta watched as she separated all the precious material and spread it on the table. ‘See, child, you must always shape the fabric to the body, sculpt it carefully to enhance – not conceal but glorify the wearer. We must work in cheap cotton first, make a toile and shape it round the bride before we cut all this cloth. There’s no margin for error. Next we make the pattern to fit her body. Only then will I take the scissors to this cloth.’

  Vida fussed and fretted over the first fitting until everyone was faint from standing still. She draped and redraped it until she was satisfied then sewed up the toile into a shape and fitted it over Aileen. Netta had pressed the old material carefully to gain as many extra inches from its generous seams as possible, working to the dressmaker’s principle: ‘Press after every move… and when in doubt, press again.

  ‘We build like the fortress on the shore,’ laughed Vida. ‘First the inner layer and then the outer fabric – the cut of the gown is its foundation. It must be as beautiful on the inside as it is on the outside. No skimping. This lace is flimsy and needs support or it will tear and pucker in the wrong places.’

  Peg watched the process, sniffing at all the palaver. ‘Why couldna the lassie just wear her mother’s dress?’

  ‘Because it’s Aileen’s special day and she wants her own dress!’ snapped Netta impatiently.

  ‘The girl speaks the truth, Mistress Nichol. A remake of an old dress can still look fresh and original. A well-fitted traditional gown will make Miss Forsyth into a beautiful bride. And a bride must feel good on her special day, don’t you think?’ Vida Bloom was trying to be tactful.

  The parlour now took on the clutter of a dressmaker’s showroom: a cheval mirror, a sewing machine, boxes of trimmings and offcuts that Vida showed Netta how to turn into delicate rosettes for the neck trim. Every piece of the old dress was accounted for and had to be utilised to piece up the lace into a simple overskirt cut on the cross lined with an ivory parachute silk underskirt, under-layered with net to give a little more body. The bodice had a soft sweetheart neckline caught with rosettes, and padded shoulders to neaten the waistline. By the time Aileen came for her last fitting she had slimmed down enough to do justice to the outline. There were gasps of appreciation and great excitement but Vida said that there was just one thing missing – it needed a touch of added glamour to put a lustre on its plainness. ‘What can we use to enhance the lace?’

  The other women made suggestions but she shook her head at each one of their ideas. ‘If I was in the sewing room of Molyneux now we would be adding a little row of pearls or beads to offset… ah, I know! Do you have beads?’ Mrs Forsyth shook her head. ‘Only a row of pearls for her neck, but there’s an old bead purse of my grandmother’s – a peggy purse for evenings. You can unpick that if it’s suitable.’

  Netta went to collect the purse and fingered it tenderly. It was a silk reticule, reminder of a bygone age, covered with shiny glassy beads of rose and pearl shaped into flowers.

  Vida took one look and smiled. ‘This is exactly what I had in mind. Beads will make the lace flowers bloom and sparkle by candlelight.’

  It took hours of unthreading and sorting into sizes. Vida’s face lit up with the challenge. She was in her element as she told Netta all about her days as an arpette, the lowest of pin-pickers, under the eye of a fierce dragon who breathed fire over her trainees and flung their efforts across the room if she was not satisfied. In the ateliers of a great couturier she had learned to sew gossamer stitches, make seams as smooth as liquid, to measure and cut, hem and trim, for the great maestro below.

  By the firelight in the farmhouse parlour she was passing on all these skills to the willing fingers of her helper who lost herself in the intricate tasks and felt a sense of satisfaction never experienced when studying or working with farm stock. They had turned that simple wedding dress into a model gown, and putting the finishing touch of the beads raised it on to another plane.

  Netta was sad when the task came to an end. She had learned so much from sitting with Mrs Bloom, watching, copying and asking questions. ‘I think I’ll be a dress designer,’ she declared.

  Vida laughed and shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s the men who get the glory and the women who do the work in that business, Netta! It’s a long, hard training for very little reward. I was glad to marry Izzy and leave it all behind but a decent training’s never lost. It’s seeing me through until he comes home.’

  There was no one prouder at the church door than Vida Bloom, fussing over the photographing of her creation, with Netta bursting with pride at her own bead-sewing efforts. Aileen looked like a film star on the arm of her gallant officer. His cronies all winked in Netta’s direction. How she yearned to wear a gown as perfect as that when her turn came along.

  May 1949, Friday

  ‘Are you asleep, Auntie Netta?’ Gus was shaking her awake from her day-dreaming. He was standing over her, blue eyes peeping out from beneath a black helmet.

  ‘What’s that you’ve got on your head, young man?’

  ‘I found it by that suitcase over there. Look, it’s real! Brmm… brmm!’

  Netta knelt up and lifted it from his head as if removing a crown, hugging it lovingly, sniffing the hard black leather, examining the ear flaps and chin straps; there was still an oily petrol smell to the inside. How did this come to be here? And what else was here?

  She turned to the battered leather suitcase, pressed the rusty sneck and the hinges sprang open. She lifted the lid cautiously as if it were Pandora’s Box. There was a layer of tissue paper, and folded neatly underneath a dress and jacket in lavender blue wool: her own wedding outfit. Why was this still up in the loft when it should be with her in Griseley?

  How strange that she should be dreaming about the Forsyths’ bridal extravaganza and forgetting her own humble outfit cobbled together in such haste. Through her tears, the colour of the dress shone like amethyst. Red hair and lilac was a bold combination but she had not been afraid of colour then. She shook out the dress and sniffed the mothballs. It looked so old-fashioned, so short and homespun, but it had been sewn in secret with such love. There were many more threads like this, tying her life together, still hidden here for the taking.

  You don’t choose the moment when love races like a rip tide, flooding over the shore, she thought. You don’t choose your passion. It pulses like blood through your veins and roars up behind you in a leather helmet, setting the heather on fire with its heat.

  All the coloured beads of her life’s journey started here with this suitcase, and a lilac dress bore silent witness to her desperate time.

  2

  Stepping Stones Garnet

  ‘Colour of blood, and earth,

  Birth and violent death.

  An amulet worn on life’s journey,

  protecting from evil and fearful

  dreams.’

  Rae, 1944

  On first inspection, Corporal Raeburn Hunter’s arrival did not impress the worthy wifies of Stratharvar. They doubted that this scruffy individual would ever suit Farmer Nichol’s only daughter. The village stalwarts with spy-glass eyes who usually pi
cked out affairs of the heart before they actually happened were surprisingly slow on the uptake about this particular courtship, being in no position to pass comment until the fortress was stormed and fair lady carried off.

  Netta herself did not think much of the soldier who roared up on his Triumph Tiger 70 motorbike to the Hogmanay Social, with Dougie Mackay, the Minister’s youngest son, riding pillion; two mess mates on a forty-eight hour pass from the Sixth Battalion of the Kings Own Scottish Borderers, an outfit that had been recruiting Border sons to arms since the Regiment was formed in 1689.

  This particular recruit had three obvious defects. First, he was not an ‘in born bairn’. The safest bet for local girls was ‘to marry over the midden than over the muir’. Secondly he was sort of artist, one of they queer folk who cut off their ears if crossed. Thirdly he spoke with a pukka English accent, having been educated in a public school over the border.

  To Netta he looked a tousle-haired, scruffy pup in baggy khaki trousers, roving restlessly up and down the lines of dancers as if he was looking for someone. He looked more like an Irish lurcher than a full-blooded Scottie, with his tight brown curls which even the regulation army short back and sides couldn’t tame. Yet there was something intriguing about the way he kept eyeing her up as she birled across the floor doing the Dashing White Sergeant. Then, when her pals sat lined up against the wall like a set of skittles, the others nudged her and giggled. He kept staring, making her blush.

  ‘Watch him, Nettie Nichol, he’ll begetting you up for the dancing next. Look, he’s giving you the eye!’

  I don’t want his eye, I want his arm round my waist, Netta thought to herself with surprise. Don’t be so forward, she mused, let him do the running and see what he catches.

  She tossed her curls and straightened her well-worn party frock of dark green tartan, its hem let down and disguised with matching green trim, trying not to feel the butterflies flitting inside her tummy.

  As the evening wore on and the jollifications got rowdier and rowdier, the Corporal did not make one move in her direction but he kept on staring. Netta was so furious she began to think she had warts all over her nose. How dare he stand there eyeing her up like a farmer at a beef auction! Then she remembered they’d not even been introduced. She flounced around the edges of the dancing groups, trying to look casual, but everywhere she moved she could feel those eyes boring into her.

  To her horror as she passed him by she found herself whispering, ‘What you staring at?’

  Quick as a flash came his reply: ‘Your bones – you’ve got good cheeks. They should last you a lifetime if you don’t run to fat!’

  ‘Hah!’ Netta stormed off, furious with herself and with him. How dare he look at her bones and not even ask her name! She hung on for the last waltz, watching even Peg and Father shuffling over the floor, feeling like a wallflower, and then left the dance early, trying not to feel slighted by the rude stranger who had spoiled her evening.

  Next morning to her relief he was there in the Minister’s pew, sitting meekly with the family, and she tried not to flush as she sat opposite them. Doubtless Dougie had filled him in on all the local gossip: who was fast, who was slow, and who like Netta worked on the family farm, hardly going out, preferring her sewing, knitting stripey lace jumpers from old unravelled wool and demonstrating make do and mend to the Guides and Brownies. What a mundane wartime it was – waiting for her call up, waiting for life to begin outside the confines of Stratharvar.

  Later in the afternoon she took the farm dogs for a good stretch across the fields, down to Carrick beach to feel the sharp January breeze on her cheeks and soothe the restlessness inside her. Why did the arrival of one cocky soldier trouble her so? Then she saw him sitting alone on the shore, skimming pebbles into the water, alone with his thoughts. One of her Collie dogs bounded in his direction and he turned and waved at her as she was about to dart for safety behind a thicket of brambles. Instead her feet just walked up to him and the words shot out like bullets from a gun.

  ‘What did you mean about my bones? What’s wrong with them?’

  She stood over him, furious, and he smiled a cheeky child’s grin, showing white teeth and sparky brown eyes with ridiculous lashes wasted on a boy.

  ‘They’re perfect, Miss Nichol, just perfect. Dougie said you were a spitfire,’ he laughed.

  ‘What else was he saying then?’ Netta rested her hands on her hips, waiting for the worst.

  ‘He told me there was only one human subject worth painting hereabouts: a redhead with fingers as sharp as needles who lives by the shore. He wasn’t wrong but I’ve no oils handy, just charcoal and a sketchpad. Shall I do you now?’ He mimicked the ITMA catchphrase. ‘Why did you leave the dance last night?’

  Netta shrugged. ‘You get fed up with dancing with the same faces and you didn’t exactly fill up my card.’ She couldn’t resist a dig at him.

  ‘I don’t dance. I’ve never danced… totally useless. In fact I don’t know my left foot from my right. I was afraid I’d flatten your toes. So were you sulking that I didn’t dance with the prettiest girl in the room?’

  He was teasing her and she had to smile. Why was it she could say anything she liked to this stranger? Why was it that she felt he’d been sitting on this beach all her life, like Dougie and all the other lads from Stratharvar? Yet why was it when she looked into that dark stubbly face, at those grinning eyes and that mop of hair, she couldn’t breathe for the thudding in her heart? This was something strange and new, something she had never experienced before. Why did it feel like an ache inside her, it was so strong? It was easy to plonk herself down and talk about her dreams of designing dresses when this drab war was over and colour would flood back into life again.

  He sketched the outline of her face as she gabbled on. Then he told her about his own life in Glasgow College of Art and the travel scholarship that he had sacrificed to do his army service. He had no family left, and the wealthy aunt who had reared him in the Borders had sent him away to England to sharpen his manners and get this artistic nonsense out of his head. It hadn’t worked, of course. How could a boy who had been named after his distinguished forebear, Sir Henry Raeburn, the famous portrait painter, not fulfil his instinct to capture the world on canvas? He had built up a portfolio that got him his place at the famous College of Art but the war had intervened and now he must wait for its end to continue his studies.

  ‘We have to set the heather on fire, Miss Nichol. Make our mark however small… leave something more than footprints in the sand or it’s all a waste of time. I’m not one for life after death. You saw me in the kirk today but that was out of politeness to my kind hosts – and I knew somehow you’d be there. So if you want a carpet slippers sort of suitor, Miss Nichol, I’m no the man for you!’ He peered at her intently and she felt a stabbing feeling deep in her stomach.

  ‘Who says I’m wanting any suitor? I’ve my own plans too. I want to train up with the best dressmakers, have my own business and set my own footprints one day.’

  ‘That sounds exciting. Don’t get bogged down here in the sand… a body could grow comfortable in this lotus eater’s pasture of milk and honey. London or any city’s full of sharp edges to cut you down to size. I bet you’ve never been further than Carlisle in your life!’

  ‘I have so… to Edinburgh once, and Dumfries and Ayr!’

  ‘Ah-hah! The joys of Ayr on a wet Fair weekend.’ He was mocking her again and Netta rose to the bait, standing up to go.

  ‘If you’re going to make fun of me every time we meet… We can’t all be fancy artists with cut-glass accents, Corporal Hunter. I should have thought, with all your airs, you’d be a Captain by now!’

  ‘Ouch! I can see I’m going to have to teach you to see the jokes in my patter, Miss Nettie Thimble.’

  ‘So Dougie told you my nickname? I prefer Netta or Jeanette.’

  ‘And I’m just Rae. Will you write to me and let me visit you again, Jeanette? Here take this sketch… I
t must be your mother you’ve to thank for such cheekbones, certainly not yer pa!’

  Suddenly Netta felt old maidish and silly for being so touchy with him. She didn’t know what to make of this tousle-haired man with his long legs and beautiful hands, but one thing was for certain: she wanted to see him again.

  *

  He came to Brigg Farm a month later for a third-degree grilling by Peg and Angus, and was found wanting in every department. They had heard he was an unsettling influence on Dougie Mackay: an atheist by all accounts who was tempting the Minister’s son into doubts. Before the war he’d had Conchie leanings and came into the regiment late. He had no immediate prospects to support a family and his pedigree was dubious. It was rumoured his aunt, who’d never married, was very mannish and lived in some reclusive mansion with a female companion. They had been found dead in suspicious circumstances.

  Peg was polite enough and brought out the best china: always a bad sign in Netta’s eyes. The meal was strained, punctuated by Father asking awkward questions about Rae’s army career and the preparations for the Big Push which everyone hoped would not be far away. The farmer would have been happier if Rae had been one of the Galloway lads in the Fifth Battalion, now training as an Airborne Division.

  *

  How Rae managed to get the petrol for the long journey from his barracks, Netta never dared ask. Sometimes he drove through the night for a few hours of precious leave together and brought a tent to rough it down by the beach or in a barn, not wanting to overdo the hospitality now wearing thin at the Manse. Netta was furious that Peg and Father refused to encourage his visits by inviting him to stay at Brigg Farm.

  They wrote to each other every day, long newsy letters as the feelings between them grew fiercer and more passionate. They walked up into the heather hills or along the shoreline for hours, putting the sad world to rights, discussing pictures and artists, sharing confidences, getting to know each other. It was getting harder to stay in control of their passionate lovemaking under the shelter of some granite crags, overlooking the bay, wrapped in his army coat and a ground sheet.