Dedication
In memory of
Regina Antonia Maria Crespi
1933–2017
an immigrant, a seamstress,
and a most beloved grandmother
Epigraph
Sleep serene, avoid the backward
Glance; go forward, dreams, and do not halt
(Behind you in the desert stands a token
Of doubt—a pillar of salt).
Sleep, the past, and wake, the future,
And walk out promptly through the open door;
But you, my coward doubts, may go on sleeping,
You need not wake again—not any more.
The New Year comes with bombs, it is too late
To dose the dead with honourable intentions:
If you have honour to spare, employ it on the living;
The dead are dead as Nineteen-Thirty-Eight.
Sleep to the noise of running water
To-morrow to be crossed, however deep;
This is no river of the dead or Lethe,
To-night we sleep
On the banks of Rubicon—the die is cast;
There will be time to audit
The accounts later, there will be sunlight later
And the equation will come out at last.
—Louis MacNeice, Autumn Journal, Part XXIV
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter One: Ann
Chapter Two: Miriam
Chapter Three: Heather
Chapter Four: Ann
Chapter Five: Miriam
Chapter Six: Heather
Chapter Seven: Ann
Chapter Eight: Miriam
Chapter Nine: Heather
Chapter Ten: Ann
Chapter Eleven: Miriam
Chapter Twelve: Heather
Chapter Thirteen: Ann
Chapter Fourteen: Miriam
Chapter Fifteen: Heather
Chapter Sixteen: Ann
Chapter Seventeen: Miriam
Chapter Eighteen: Heather
Chapter Nineteen: Ann
Chapter Twenty: Miriam
Chapter Twenty-One: Heather
Chapter Twenty-Two: Ann
Chapter Twenty-Three: Miriam
Chapter Twenty-Four: Heather
Chapter Twenty-Five: Ann
Chapter Twenty-Six: Miriam
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Heather
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Ann
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Miriam
Epilogue: Ann
Acknowledgments
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the Author
About the Book
Read On
Praise
Also by Jennifer Robson
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
Ann
Barking, Essex
England
January 31, 1947
It was dark when Ann left work at a quarter to six, and darker still when she reached home. Normally she didn’t mind the walk from the station. It was only half a mile, and gave her a chance to clear her head at the end of the day. Tonight, though, the journey was a cheerless one, for the midwinter cold had burrowed through her coat, setting her shivering, and the soles of her shoes were so worn that she might as well have been barefoot.
But tomorrow was Saturday. If she had any time after queuing up at the butcher, she would visit the cobbler and see what he had to say. She didn’t have enough coupons for anything new, and these had been resoled twice already. Perhaps she might be able to find a half-decent used pair at the next WI swap meet.
She turned onto Morley Road, the memory of countless homecomings leading her surely through the night; it would be another few days before there was any moonlight to guide her way. A yard or two more and she was at her front door. Pushing past the curtain they used to keep out drafts, she switched on the wall sconce and was relieved when light filled the vestibule. Last night the power had gone off at eight o’clock and hadn’t come on again until the morning.
“Milly? It’s me,” she called to her sister-in-law. The sitting room was cold and dark, but appetizing smells were coming from the kitchen.
“You’re late!”
“I think they were running fewer trains than usual. One way to save on fuel, I suppose. And the ones coming through were all jam-packed. I had to wait for an age before I could squeeze on.”
“Did you hear it’s supposed to snow again tomorrow? Imagine what that’ll do to the trains.”
“Don’t make me think about it. At least not until I’ve thawed out.” Ann hung her coat and hat on the wobbly rack behind the door and pulled off her shoes. “Have you seen my slippers?”
“I brought them in here with me to warm.”
She switched off the light and, bringing her bag along, crossed through the sitting room and into the kitchen. Milly was at the cooker, her attention fixed on the contents of a small saucepan. “I’m just heating up the potatoes and veg from yesterday, along with the last bit of the gammon.” She turned her head to offer a quick smile, then bent to open the door of the oven. “Here they are,” she said, and handed over Ann’s slippers. “Warmed through and not a scorch mark in sight.”
“You are a dear. Ooh—that feels lovely.”
“I knew it would. What’s that you’ve got there?”
Ann was at the sink, gently unwrapping a small clay pot from a twist of newspaper. Brushing off some loose soil that was clinging to its rim, she lifted the pot so Milly might see the plant within. “It’s heather. From the queen.”
“The queen gave you a pot of heather?”
“Not just me. We all got one. Well, all of us who worked on those last set of gowns. The ones she and the princesses are taking to South Africa. There was ever so much beadwork, and one of them—she’s wearing it to a ball for Princess Elizabeth’s twenty-first birthday—was nothing but sequins. Millions of them, it felt like. So she had these sent down from Scotland to thank us.”
“It doesn’t look like much,” Milly said, wrinkling her nose.
“Haven’t you seen heather in bloom? It’s ever so pretty. And this is white heather. For good luck, one of the girls said.”
Milly returned to the cooker and resumed stirring. “I think this is warmed through. Can you set the table while I dish up?”
“I will, and I’ll switch on the wireless, too. We can listen to the seven o’clock news on the Light Programme.”
The royal family had left for South Africa earlier in the day, and their leave-taking would certainly be at the top of the news. No hopping into a cab with a pair of suitcases for the king and queen. Instead, according to the papers, the royal tour would begin with a carriage procession from Buckingham Palace to Waterloo Station, where the king, queen, princesses, and dozens of retainers and servants would be given a formal farewell by a host of dignitaries before boarding a train to Portsmouth. And the dresses, suits, and gowns that Ann had helped to make would be part of that historic journey.
She had worked for Mr. Hartnell for eleven years. There was no reason for her to still find her heart racing when she thought of her handiwork being worn by the queen. Her family and friends had stopped being impressed by it long ago. Some, like Milly, all but groaned when she came home with stars in her eyes.
She couldn’t help it, though. It was exciting. She was an ordinary girl from Barking, the sort of girl who usually ended up working in a factory or shop for a few years before getting married and settling into life as a wife and mum. Yet by some twist of fate she had ended up working for the most famous dress designer in Britain, had risen to one of the most senior positions in h
is embroidery workroom, and had helped to create gowns that millions of people admired and coveted.
It had been a near thing, too. When she’d finished school at fourteen, there’d been no money for anything like secretarial college. So she’d gone to the labor exchange, and a gray-faced woman had set a list of jobs in front of her. They’d all sounded awful. Trainee shirt machinist, assistant nursemaid, restaurant cashier. She’d turned the page, ready to give up, and that’s when she’d seen it:
Apprentice embroiderer, central London, training given.
“This one,” she’d said shyly, pointing to the listing. “‘Apprentice embroiderer.’ What does that mean?”
“Exactly what it says. Let me see the reference number. Right . . . it’s at Hartnell, where the queen has all her clothes made.”
“The queen?”
“Yes,” the woman said, her voice sharpening. “Are you interested or not?”
“I am. Only . . . I don’t know how to sew very well.”
“Can’t you read? ‘Training given,’ it says.”
The woman wrote down an address and shoved it across the desk. “I’ll ring them up to say you’re coming. Be there tomorrow at half-past eight. Don’t be late. Make sure your hands are clean.”
She’d all but waltzed home, eager to share her momentous news—London! the queen!—but her mother had only sighed. “You, an embroiderer? You can barely thread a needle. They’ll see the dog’s breakfast you make of whatever they put in front of you, and then you’ll be out the door. Mark my words.”
“But they’re expecting me. The woman at the exchange won’t send me out for another job if I don’t go. Please, Mum. I’ll get in trouble.”
“Suit yourself. But straight there and back, mind you. Can’t have you traipsing around London all day when there are chores to be done.”
The next morning she’d left at dawn, since the early trains cost sixpence less, and had perched on a bench in Berkeley Square Gardens until Big Ben in Westminster chimed the quarter hour after eight o’clock. Then she’d finished her journey, which ended in a quiet back mews in Mayfair, and had rung the bell with a trembling hand.
A girl about her age had answered the door. “Good morning.”
“Good morning. I’m here for the job. Apprentice embroiderer?”
The girl had smiled, and nodded, and told her she was at the right place, and then she’d taken Ann upstairs to meet the head of the embroidery workrooms.
Miss Duley had looked her over, had asked if she had any experience with embroidery, and Ann had answered fearfully, but honestly, that she did not. For some reason that had pleased Miss Duley, who nodded and smiled just a little, and said to Ann that she would do, and that her pay would be seven-and-six a week, and she would begin on Monday next.
“Seven-and-six?” her mother had scoffed, even though it was more than any of Ann’s school friends were making in their new jobs as shop assistants or trainee stenographers. “You’ll spend all of it on the train.”
Ann had started work at Hartnell the next Monday, and those first few months had been a blur. She had learned later that Miss Duley had chosen her because she knew nothing, so there was nothing for her to unlearn. Things were done a certain way at Hartnell, which is to say they were done to the highest conceivable standard, and anything less than perfection was unacceptable.
Miss Duley’s eye was infallible: if a bead sat in the wrong direction, or one strand of satin stitch sat proud of the rest, or even one sequin was duller than its neighbors, she would notice. She would notice, and her left eyebrow would arch just so, and she would smile in that confiding way she had. As if to say she, too, had once been an apprentice and had made her share of mistakes.
It was hard to imagine Miss Duley as a girl of fourteen, or indeed as anything other than the diminutive yet somehow towering figure who dominated the embroidery workrooms. She had bright blue eyes that noticed everything, the faintest echo of the West Country in her speech, and a calmly certain demeanor that Ann found immensely soothing.
“Attend to the work in front of you, and the rest will take care of itself,” Miss Duley was fond of saying. “Leave your cares at the door, and think only of Mr. Hartnell’s design.”
The years since had brought no end of cares to her door, and some days—some years—it had been almost impossible to follow Miss Duley’s advice. Her mother had died suddenly in the summer of ’39. Her heart, the doctor had said. Then the war, and the Blitz, and the horror of the night when her brother had been killed. Burned beyond recognition, they’d been told, with even his wedding ring melted away.
Then the spun-out wretchedness of the years that followed, and all the while her certainty had grown that this was all she would ever know. The house on Morley Road and the workrooms at Hartnell, and the anonymous spaces in between. This life, this succession of gray days and cold nights and loved ones forever lost, was the furthest her dreams would ever stretch.
The sitting room clock chimed seven, startling Ann from her reverie. Standing by the table, a bundle of cutlery clutched in her hand, she tried hard to summon up an appetite for the supper Milly had prepared. It was a struggle, for the gammon was little more than gristle and fat, and the vegetables had collapsed into a grayish sort of paste. Even the school dinners of her childhood had been more appealing.
“Weren’t you going to turn on the wireless?” Milly reminded her.
The wireless, a big old-fashioned model in a walnut-veneered case, sat in the sitting room to the right of the fire. Ann switched it on and quickly set the table, having left the door between the two rooms ajar. By the time they’d eaten and washed up, it might even be warm enough to spend an hour there before bed.
No sooner were they seated than the blandly inoffensive music of the BBC’s Light Programme gave way to the news.
“On the last day of the coldest January London has experienced for years, Their Majesties the king and queen and the two princesses set off for the first stage of their tour of South Afri—”
“I can hardly hear,” Milly said abruptly. “Let me turn up the volume.”
“Yes, yes. Shh . . .”
“—have gathered along the route to wave the royal family an affectionate farewell, every single member of those half-frozen crowds wishing that they, too, could be transported from the bitter January afternoon to the fabulous sunshine of South Africa—”
“You wouldn’t catch me lining up to wave at them,” Milly muttered. “Not in weather like this.”
As if responding to Milly’s complaint, the newsreader turned to that frosty subject.
“Temperatures in London at midnight last night had risen to twenty-seven degrees, more than ten degrees warmer than earlier in the week. By the middle of the night, when snow was falling on parts of the capital, the temperature had scarcely dropped. But the winter has yet another blow for British housewives: a mass shuttering of laundries across the nation is expected unless coal supplies are increased.”
The kettle had boiled, so Ann went to the cooker and busied herself with making tea for them both. Only a scant spoonful of tea leaves for the pot, as the tin was almost empty. And no sugar, for she and Milly had both learned how to do without that small luxury long ago.
“I wonder if those girls know how lucky they are,” Milly said.
“The princesses? You always say that. Whenever they’re in the news.”
“But they are. Just look at how they live. All those clothes and jewels, and never having to lift a finger to do anything. I should be so lucky.”
“They work. No—don’t make that face. They do. Just think what it’ll be like for them on that tour. Day after day of the same boring conversations with strangers. Being stared at wherever they go. People being struck dumb at the sight of them. I doubt they’ll even see a beach, let alone have a chance to go for a swim.”
“Yes, but—”
“And no matter how hot it is, or how much their feet hurt, or how bored stiff they are, they
have to keep smiling and pretend there’s nothing they’d rather do than cut a ribbon and declare that some little town in the middle of nowhere has a bridge or park named after their father. If that isn’t work, I don’t know what is. I do know I wouldn’t trade places with them for all the . . . well, for all the coal and tea and electricity in the world.”
“Of course you would, silly. You’d be mad not to want to be rich like them.”
“I wouldn’t mind being rich. But for everyone to know my name and expect something from me? Watch every move I make? That’d be awful.”
“I suppose.”
“I’ve heard stories from the saleswomen and fitters at work. Some of our wealthiest clients are the rudest ones. Ever so demanding, and they never bother to say thank you, let alone smile, and they definitely never send gifts to the girls in the workrooms. Compared to the princesses, or the queen? Those are the people who have it easy.”
“Fair enough,” Milly acknowledged. “So let’s be millionaires, and we’ll winter in the south of France, or down in the toe of Italy, and get suntans and be mistaken for American film stars.”
Ann had to smile at the notion of her or Milly ever being mistaken for a film star. “Wouldn’t that be lovely? To just hop on a ship or a train and go somewhere exotic.” To see something beyond gray skies and soot-dulled bricks and the backs of winter-dead gardens from the window of a train.
“Not so far as that. A few days at the seaside would be enough for me.”
Conversation faded as they set to work on the washing up, with Milly doing the washing to save Ann’s hands from chapping. It was scarcely half-past seven when they finished.
“Do you think we can light a fire in the sitting room? Just for an hour?” Milly asked.
“All right. But only a small one. I checked the coal store this morning and it’s almost empty. Goodness knows if the coalman will even come by this week.”
“A very small fire, then, and we’ll sit close, and I’ll read to you. I stopped at the newsagent’s on the way home and got the new People’s Friend.”
The fire Milly made was very modest indeed, but it warmed the sitting room by a degree or two. It was a pleasant way to end the week: sitting in her comfortable chair, her eyes closed, her feet warm at last, listening to one of the romantic short stories her sister-in-law loved so much.
The Gown Page 1