The Wedding Dress Maker

by Leah Fleming

  She sneaked glances how Peg dealt with his tirades, by ignoring him mostly and then humouring him out of his screams. It was Father who really had the measure of him and took only so much cheek before he spanked the child’s legs sharply and took him out of the room to cool down.

  ‘I hope you’ll be able to handle this when he tramples all over your bridal fabrics and shames you before your customers!’

  ‘Oh, it won’t come to that,’ said Netta with a half-hearted smile. But as the rain poured down that week and she was cooped up in the farmhouse watching the rivers of water streaming down the windows like tears, she felt her confidence slipping away. What if she took him home and he screamed? How would she cope? What if he didn’t settle at the nursery and they sent for her to take him away? How would she complete her orders? What if he was so upset he became ill and wouldn’t be consoled? How would she console him?

  Peg and Father withdrew into polite silence. They just left her to deal with Gus and whenever he played up he was passed to her to manage. Netta was exhausted and gave in to his whims to humour him. Gus was now confused as to who was running the show so went from one to the other of them in search of attention. Netta tried to appear confident but dogs and children can sniff a phoney at fifty paces and Gus was no exception.

  To her horror she found herself afraid of the power of her child to humiliate her and frustrate her orders. He was sapping all her confidence. Parenthood was not some ready-to-wear garment you could slip on and off when it suited. It was like a shift, a hair shirt at times. You wore it all the time and it could scratch and pinch next to the skin. She was feeling shirtless and exposed. But surely a parent and child could just settle down together if given privacy and time together?

  Netta kept up her spirits by sorting through Gus’s bedroom, dividing stuff to pack and stuff to keep at Brigg Farm.

  The other word that Gus kept on screaming at her was: ‘Why?’

  ‘You’re going to come with me.’ She smiled excitedly but he looked at her with Rae’s blue eyes and said, ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you belong to me now and we’re going to live in our own little house…’

  ‘Why?’ he asked, not interested in her packing, pulling out his toys as she pushed them in the trunk.

  ‘Because I’m your mummy now and we must live where I work.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s the right thing to do. We’re going to have a holiday, just you and me. Won’t that be fine?’

  ‘Holly… day?’ He looked at her, not understanding. ‘Why?’

  Netta felt a flush of irritation at his questions. This was not how it was supposed to be. The stupid child didn’t understand about holidays, but why on earth should he? Gus had never been on a proper holiday in all his three years. He didn’t need to when there was sea and sand, lochs and forests, and such beauty all around him. Then it struck her that Gus had hardly left this farm at all, just the usual weekly visits to town and the clinic perhaps. This was his world and she was going to yank him out of it at the end of the week and transplant him into a strange Yorkshire town.

  She could see Gus didn’t understand why she was packing up his toys. Holiday was just a word to mimic. How could she explain to this little boy that he must leave everything he had ever known? Then, to her horror, with one sickening, gut-wrenching jolt of understanding, Netta suddenly realised that she was expecting young Gus to do what had been doled out to her three years earlier only she had been an adult then: to be packed on a train, in exile from loved ones. Would he feel as abandoned and rejected and confused as she had then? Netta was nineteen and it had nearly killed her. How would she explain to a three year old that his little Shetland pony, Bruce, or his heifer calf couldn’t fit into their luggage? That Peg and Angus must be left behind on the station platform?

  Netta gazed through the window up to the brow of Stratharvar hill and prayed for help from her mother, but there was no guiding voice in her ear. Instead in her mind’s eye there was a snapshot of Gus standing woebegone at the nursery school door, in his blazer and cap, with his pump bag wrapped across his shoulder, looking bewildered and lost: just a baby abandoned to strangers while she was busy at work. Who would wipe his nose and cuddle away his fears or find Yumpy when he wandered? Who would explain all this to him in Griseley?

  Netta slid down the wall to the floor, crouching into a ball, weeping at her foolish fantasies. Gus was far too young to be separated from everything at Brigg Farm. Perhaps in two or three years? Perhaps when he was ready for school? How could she have been so selfish and blind not to see that this was all about her need of him, not his need of her.

  You’re taking him back like some trophy to show off, she told herself. Look what I’ve got everybody, like a rabbit out of a hat. Your precious secret, indeed! How could you be so ignorant and so selfish? You don’t even know how parenthood works. You’re going to have to learn a lot more about Gus before you try this exercise again.

  Netta wept for all her false dreams and the shattering of precious hope then dried her eyes and went downstairs.

  No one spoke at the tea table. The atmosphere was chilly before she broke the silence. ‘I’ve been thinking over what you said, Father. It is too early to take Gus back with me. It would upset him, I see that now. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to come back for him, only I shall wait until he can understand who I really am and why I want him to live with me. So you can eat your tea in peace now, Peg. He’s all yours for the moment.’ Netta speared a spud with her fork, waiting for their grateful reaction.

  ‘You’ve put us through hell this week, my lady. Don’t you ever do that to us again! In his eyes we’ll always be his parents and you know it! That’s the way it’ll stay for the next few years, until he’s old enough to make up his own mind. You can come and visit, of course, far be it from us to deny you your rights! Being a parent isn’t as easy as it looks, ma girl! You’ve a lot to learn.’ And Peg tucked into her stew and dumplings with relish.

  Saturday Teatime in Kendal, 1949

  The Kendal waitress was anxious to sweep up the café floor and close up. Netta’s tea had gone cold while she fingered each of her precious photographs: staring sadly at the one of her stone cottage and thinking about that first lonely return there from Stratharvar. The nursery bedroom, smelling of paint and newness, looked accusing. The satin eiderdown quilt plumped up for its new occupant a haunting reminder. It quickly reverted to being Netta’s summer sewing room.

  She smiled wistfully at a snap of Gus taken on his first day in the nursery class in Stratharvar. How silly she’d been to think she could whisk him away with no thought for his feelings and needs. He was not some plaything to toss about to distract her from her loneliness, even now when they’d grown to understand each other better. How that one miserable experience had sapped all her resolve. Somehow it’d never been the right time to ask for him again. Until now. The years had just rolled by. Mother and son in two different worlds, always running in parallel lines like ladders, with her making visits like rungs across the divide, to keep in touch with his growing up.

  Why can’t you stand firm and rock solid when the panic waves come crashing over your head? Why do you waver like flotsam blown this way and that by the tidal forces around you? Why didn’t you stand up to Peg just one more time? How will you face yourself if you run away now from the young friends you’ve created for yourself, your adopted family in Griseley? When it comes to those children you can be as tough as leather in their defence, but did you find them or did they find you?

  6

  Jade

  ‘Colour of growth and cleansing,

  The great harmoniser,

  A resting point balancing

  Past and future.’

  Dancing on the Green, Summer 1948

  What was the point of carrying on? Netta flung her sewing across the bedroom in frustration. Since her return from Stratharvar all the purpose of her work had evaporated in the summer heatwave. If she
couldn’t have her son by her side why bother building up all her connections, why stay here? Why not move back to Dumfries and start all over again, closer to home and not so easily ignored? There was nothing to keep her here but a dreary, back-

  aching job.

  Suddenly her cottage felt dark and ice cold in the sunshine. She slumped into a lazy routine, shoving her appliqué work into the basket until Vida Bloom called in person to demand where all her trimmings for the bridal dresses were, catching Netta in her dressing gown.

  ‘If you’re going to let me down every time you have a setback then I shall have to find someone else to do my embroidery. I’m surprised at you! You never struck me as the type of girl to give in to despair. So you can’t have the boy back yet? So you failed at the last hurdle? That’s no reason to give up now. It’s not the size of the dog in a fight, it’s the fight in the dog, Izzy used to say. Think of that song Arnie plays about picking you up, dusting yourself off and starting all over… Where’s that Dunkirk spirit gone?

  ‘Come on, Netta, don’t let me down now. I want you to get that business going. I’m looking forward to visiting your little bridal shop, knowing I gave you a start. There, that’s the truth told and the devil shamed.’

  ‘You sound just like Peg on her high horse. I’m sorry, I’ve just let things slide. It’s been an effort to drag myself out of bed each morning to face Miss Venables without biting her head off. I don’t think I can stand much more of her.’

  ‘What about your dancing class? Have you been to any summer gala displays or shows?’

  ‘No, I can’t be bothered,’ Netta confessed.

  ‘Can’t be bothered? What sort of mother can’t be bothered to make the best of herself, get out and face the world? What example is that to your son? Where would Arnie be if I didn’t chivvy him to do his studies? No one hands success to you on a plate. You have to work every step of the way, every stitch of the way in your case, if you want to make your mark. Work hard and play hard. So if dancing’s your hobby, then do it and stop whining about yer lot. There’s many far worse off than you: all those poor souls in the concentration camps who lost their children, and refugee families. Your boy lives and breathes, never forget that. He is safe and secure with those who love him. One day he will be yours, God willing, but slouching about in a sulk won’t get him back… getting on with your life will. There I go again!’

  ‘I know you’re right but I feel so wimpish to have come back empty-handed again. What must I do?’

  ‘Give it time, Netta. Just time.’

  *

  Vida’s words touched her heart for they were true and honest. Netta reached for her thimble and went back to her Thursday class. Jean Brownleys was especially pleased to see her.

  ‘I know you’re busy but I have a big favour to ask of you. The Scotia always dance at the Cottage Homes annual garden party and I want some of the younger girls to put on a wee bit display themselves for our patrons. They need costumes, something simple that our older girls can run up, but as usual it’s all last-minute. Could you help them sort something out – a straight up and down shift with a bit of decoration? I know it’s a cheek, I was hoping to see you earlier. Have you been ill? We’ve missed you.’

  ‘I’ve been very tied up, back home to Scotland, just family stuff,’ Netta fudged.

  ‘Nothing serious, I hope?’ asked Jean, with her nursing voice and warm eyes. Netta smiled and shook her head.

  ‘Can you come next week to meet my girls? A nice bunch, eager but a bit hamfisted at times.’

  ‘Of course, I’ll do my best.’ Netta wondered what she was letting herself in for. The Oldroyds’ Home was only a name on a collecting box to her so Netta needed instructions on how to find the orphanage. The dancing troupe always performed at the open day. Netta imagined that it was one of those gala occasions when the tartans swirled before the great and the good of the district on an expanse of green lawn, lit by the summer sun glinting through broad-leafed trees.

  The house itself was half-hidden up a country lane leading high on to the moor: a gracious Victorian millowner’s mansion bequeathed to the town for the benefit of homeless orphans. There were bay windows like turrets at each corner of the main house and two blackened brick extensions to the building that made it look like a private boarding school. In the grounds were staff cottages and the stables were converted into a nursery for the infants.

  Netta prepared a simple pattern for a short shift dress, like a ballet dancer’s rehearsal tunic with slits to either side. She found some end-of-roll bridesmaid taffeta in four shades to donate for the costumes. The girls would have to make a simple side dart and sew up the side seams of each outfit then they could decorate them how they pleased. A wreath of crepe paper flowers for a headdress would finish the costume off perfectly. True to her word, she walked through the country lanes to make her first visit to Matron Jean.

  She welcomed her visitor warmly and proceeded to give Netta the full tour of the Home. She was a brisk, buxom ex-Army nursing sister who ran Oldroyds like a main line train station, keeping to a strict timetable of activities. Netta was immediately reminded of Peg’s maxim: ‘An idle brain is the divil’s forge’. She soon saw how Matron Brownleys liked to see everyone fully occupied in some useful task. When Netta saw the dormitories and the row of iron bedsteads crammed into each room she wondered when the children ever got any privacy to daydream and play alone. Perhaps it didn’t matter. Since that her last encounter with Gus, she realised what she knew about young children wouldn’t cover a button.

  The boys and girls slept in the purpose-built wings and shared the large communal rooms that made up the original house. The old drawing rooms and gracious high-ceilinged reception rooms may have seen more gracious days but now they rang with the laughter and noise of children. There were scuffed skirting boards and smears up the wallpaper, a clutter of gumboots and gaberdines in the hallway. The managers had done their best to furnish it like a real home but the regulation green paint and treacle-coloured woodwork, with a canteen smell of boiled vegetables hanging over all, gave it an institutional air.

  In the stable block the infants were playing on tubular seesaws, with nurses in starched uniform waiting for the older children to return from their day schools around the district. As they piled out of a school bus Netta was relieved to see that they were all in gymslips and cardigans, in the local school uniform, not set apart in the orphanage grey garb of the Cottage Home children who had come to Stratharvar School during the war.

  Four girls of about fifteen were summoned to meet her, to be instructed how to cut out the pattern and make up the costumes. Four very different girls sat silently, taking in Netta’s own pretty dirndl skirt and neat blouse with its Peter Pan collar, examining her strap sandals. There was Vera who wore thick-lensed glasses and Pat whose face was one blotch of erupting pimples. Beryl was the smartest of the bunch in a neat cardigan and bottle green gymslip with white ankle socks. She had braided her hair in a criss-cross of plaits over her head. Then there was Polly Liddell: a hawk’s face on a sparrow’s body. Her wide sad brown eyes reminded Netta of that cornered look on Dixie’s face at their first encounter at Brigg Farm: sharp, defiant and nervous.

  Netta sat them down away from the rumpus of school children letting off steam along the corridor. She showed them her choice of material, a sketch of the simple outfit and the pattern block she had made for them to use. She brought out two already made up pieces and showed them where to place the darts and where to join the seams. Netta had checked with the matron that all the girls could tack up, hem and use a sewing machine. She suggested they each ran up five slips in one of the colours. They discussed how they might decorate the costumes with paper leaves or appliqué and told them she would return in two weeks to see how they were progressing.

  Beryl asked about Maison Dorelle and if they could have a look at her workshop sometime as she was very interested in clothes. Pat and Vera nodded their heads but Polly said nothing. ‘I
would have to ask Miss Venables if you could look round once the shop is closed,’ Netta told them.

  ‘My little sister wants to be a ballerina, miss. She’ll be a long time waiting for lessons,’ Polly piped up in a squeaky voice. ‘I think dancing’s silly!’

  ‘Why?’ answered Netta.

  ‘It’s stupid prancing about,’ she argued.

  ‘Take no notice of her, Miss. She’s a right Scrooge.’

  ‘I’m not! My gran said…’

  ‘Well, your gran’s not here, is she, or you wouldn’t be in here, would you? Or Lil or Jack?’ This seemed to silence Polly’s outburst and she folded her arms and said nothing more.

  Netta was surprised when Polly turned up with the other girls after school in gaberdine macs and berets at the shop door. Netta tried to persuade Miss Venables to give them a tour but she looked down her nose and turned them away.

  ‘We don’t want riff-raff in here. Kindly refrain from making an exhibition of my premises without my permission in future.’

  Netta asked them to wait outside and then took them all back home to show them some of the private sewing she was doing – a bridal dress and bridesmaid’s outfit – trying to make this tour interesting, showing them all the fabrics and the swatches of material, the half-made gowns. She demonstrated how the pattern block was turned into a cotton toile which was pinned on to the bride to form her own body shape. She showed them how the pattern was cut then on to the proper silk fabric, and fitted and refitted until it was perfect. They examined some of the pattern pictures in the sample books for customers to choose from, oohing and aahing over the drawings like love-sick brides.

  Beryl and Polly called in by themselves the following week for a chat as Beryl wanted to ask if they needed a tea girl on Saturday afternoons in Dorelle’s. Netta gently told her it would not be a good idea to ask there. Polly hung back, saying nothing, but she fingered the last of the bridal gowns slowly.