The Dressmaker's War

by Mary Chamberlain

  “Put on your clean dress,” Frau Weiter said one morning in the autumn as Ada was hanging up the clean brocade curtains. “Make sure your hands and face are washed.”

  Ada did as she was ordered. Frau Weiter locked her in her room. Ada waited, watching through her window as the sun rose high in the sky, then dipped behind the houses. She’d had neither breakfast nor a midday meal, and her stomach seized with cramps, painful vises that squeezed her guts. She had chores to complete. She’d be up all night, catching up with the laundry and ironing. The door opened, and Frau Weiter entered, followed by another woman, whom Ada had not seen before, and two Scottie dogs. Frau Weiter kept a distance from the other woman, disapproval snarling round her mouth, nose on high.

  One of the dogs came up to Ada, sniffed her ankles, wagged its stump of a tail. Its breath was warm against her skin, its nose cold and wet. Ada longed to stroke it, feel the silky warmth of its fur, have it jump against her, whimpering delight, its tongue quivering to lick her, the affection of another living being.

  “Negus,” the woman said. “Komm!” She patted her thigh, and the dog turned and walked towards the woman. Ada wanted to say, It’s all right. I don’t mind. She yearned for the little animal who said, You’re there. Another human. Even the dogs had names.

  “Sitz,” the woman said, raising her finger to the dog. Ada couldn’t help casting her eye over the woman. Slim, large breasts, full-bodied. Her hair was mousy, neither short nor long, set in waves. Her face was round and plain. She was young, attractive enough, but hers was not a face of beauty, not a face that would last the years. Her complexion was clear, set off by a hint of lipstick. Lipstick. None of the women had lipstick these days.

  She was wearing a white suit. The skirt was straight and to the knee, the jacket short, with a peplum and a deep collar. She wore it buttoned, straining round her bosom, and beneath Ada could spot the top of a thin knitted sweater. You could see her in the market in the Cut, Five pound of potatoes, a couple of onions, four apples, cookers. Her and Widow Twanky, if the widow could wipe off that smear of disdain, or get the costers to do it for her. Stepped in horse shit, missus? You oughta look out. Such an ordinary-looking woman, one who didn’t make the best of herself.

  “This is the nun,” Frau Weiter said, “the dressmaker you’ve heard about.”

  The woman looked round the room. Ada was making an evening dress for one of Frau Weiss’s friends, a bottle-green creation with a halter neck. It was hanging from the rail, and Ada was waiting before she hemmed it. Let it drop, Ada, let it drop, Isidore used to say. Skill shows in the hemline. She had some fabric on the table, a floral cotton that another of Frau Weiss’s friends had commandeered for a blouse and, folded next to it, the pattern that Ada had cut out.

  “Ja,” the woman said. “I trust she is as good as everyone says.”

  She opened the parcel she was carrying, revealing a bolt of black silk. She pushed it over the table towards Ada. Ada drew it closer, running her fingers across the top, feeling its slubs and ribs, its sheen and strength. Douppioni. She had not felt silk of this quality since Mrs. B.’s.

  “I need an evening dress,” the woman said. “I am told you are the best.”

  It was a compliment, and Ada flushed, currents of glory that surged through her body. Nobody had praised her, not like this. Woman to woman. She felt ashamed, did not recognize herself. Some craven creature clamoring for approval. This woman throwing crumbs of flattery, which Ada scooped with relish, like a starving sparrow. Thank you. Much obliged.

  “I have three dressmakers,” the woman was saying to Frau Weiter. “One here in Munich. One in Berlin. One at the Berghof. I can’t tell you what my bills are like. A fortune. I pay for their silence, of course. I wouldn’t mind,” she went on, “if they were any good. Skirts. Trousers. Dirndls.” She shook her head. “Competent. But magic? They don’t have it in them.”

  She bent down and picked up one of the Scotties, lifting her chin so the dog could lick her. She smiled, let him jump to the floor, and turned to Ada.

  “And you have magic, I see,” she said. She walked over to the green evening dress, ran her finger along its skirt, turned to Frau Weiter. “Maliciousness. Lies. But why should truth stand in the way of gossip, Frau Weiter? Fitted.” She pivoted round, faced Ada. “I want it fitted. Fanning below the knee. Like a mermaid.”

  Douppioni was strong, would take a tail, but it didn’t like to be stretched. It watches sport, she could hear Isidore say, it doesn’t play it. The woman was slim, but her calves were muscular, her shoulders square. Ada could see her playing tennis, or swimming, or in the Women’s League of Health and Beauty back in London, black knickers and a white blouse, backward flips and forward tumbles. The dress would have to be supple so it lived like skin, not tied taut like a winding cloth.

  “High neck,” the woman went on. “Backless. And roses.” She pulled out some red fabric from the bag and showed it to Ada. Raw silk, a rich crimson. Rare. She crunched it up, pressed it against her throat to show Ada.

  “Roses,” she said. “Here, round my neck.”

  Roses would be too fussy with a fantail skirt, would spoil the line, the simplicity that Ada had in mind. Roses would be a disaster. But a single rose, a large one, a corsage, center left, just below the neckline, that would be class. She swallowed, took a deep breath, and said nothing. This woman had poor taste. Ada would have to show her. Keep it pure, give it grace. More soigné. That was the magic. She hated herself for thinking this, needing to say, Madame, perhaps this way…Why did she care how this German woman looked? But it was the only thing she could do that was her own, that made her whole, a person.

  “I will need to measure you, madame,” she said. “Without clothes. For accuracy.”

  “You’ll have to undress, then,” Frau Weiter said, adding, “Don’t worry. I’ll stay with you.”

  The woman shrugged. “I know what needs to be done,” she said to Frau Weiter in a curt tone. “You don’t have to tell me.” She bent down and fondled one of the dogs, rubbing it behind its ear. “She doesn’t have to tell me what I know, does she, my Stasile?” The dog rolled onto its back, its hind legs kicking as she scratched his stomach. “Mutti’s done this so many times.”

  She stood up, unbuttoned her jacket, looked round for a hook, handed it to Frau Weiter instead, as if the older woman were a clotheshorse. Ada coughed to hide her smirk.

  The woman stood in her satin underwear, a creamy brassiere and matching French knickers, the suspenders and the tops of her stockings showing just below the lacy hem. She was strong, this woman, sporty, no flab or spare about her. Ada took the measurements, over bust, under bust, bust. Upper hip, lower hip, length. Wrote them down on a piece of paper. Nape to waist, waist to ankle, and tucked the paper by the sewing machine with the other orders so it wouldn’t get lost.

  THE BOMBING RAIDS grew more intense that autumn. Ada watched the glowing skies, waiting for the booms of the bombs, counting between the light and the noise, as if it was a thunderstorm. Eighteen miles away. Twelve. Nine.

  Christmas passed. She chalked it off. Nineteen forty-four. Her sixth. Half of them in this house. How many more would she have to spend here? Thomas would be four in February. She hoped he was safe and happy. Hoped Frau Weiss comforted him during the bombings, It’s all right, Tomichen, Mutti’s here. Vati will look after you.

  The Widow Twanky and Obersturmbannführer Weiter and Anni weathered the raids in the basement, came up in the morning, disheveled and angry. The Russians were getting closer, and the British. Americans, too. Ada had only ever heard how well Germany was doing, although she had wondered. If they were so successful, why were they still fighting? Now she knew the truth. Germany could lose, Germany was losing. She watched Frau Weiter’s eyes narrow with hate, as if it was Ada’s fault.

  The boiler was in the basement, a black furnace that Ada had to stoke morning and night. That winter, 1944 to 1945, was bitter. Ada had never known it so cold. She shivered by day in
her flimsy shift, lay on her cushions at night rubbing her legs to keep warm. She put on her habit, tunic, underskirts, even the wimple, doubled the blanket over her, as well as Sister Jeanne’s old habit, but she could still feel it, the frost creeping through the windows and icy drafts blowing across her face. Boom. Boom. Ada counted eight, seven, six. The bombs were coming closer. They rattled the doors and shook the house. Ada put on her crucifix, just for luck.

  Frau Weiter’s rash was still there. It left livid weals round her waist, which Anni had to dab with calamine. The doctor didn’t know what caused it.

  “What does he know?” Frau Weiter said, her voice high like a child’s. She spat at Ada, a nasty gob of saliva, which missed and fell to the floor with a plop. “It’s you. It’s ringworm. Impetigo. Shingles. You’re all filthy. Diseased.” She snatched the lotion from Anni, scratched the angry blisters, pulled up the slip and hitched the straps over her shoulders. Ada waited until she had left. Widow Twanky.

  The washing froze on the line. Ada brought in the brittle sheets and draped them round the furnace in the basement. The snow was deep and had blown against the house up to the windowsills. The sky was clear blue. Ada preferred it when it was heavy and yellow. It was warmer then, just before it snowed. The chimney from the factory in the nearby camp belched smoke day and night, ugly black clouds that drifted across the garden and left gritty smuts on the ground. Ada heard noises from the camp that she hadn’t heard before, lorries churning, orders shouted, Raus! Beeilung! The dull thud of people tramping. Something was changing. In the winter, when the trees were bare, she could spy the driveway to the camp from the far corner of the garden. Every morning as she hung out the washing, every evening when she took it in, more and more people were arriving. They looked hunched, exhausted. Someone fell and one of the guards stepped forward. There was a light, flimsy crack as if a twig had snapped. The man did not get up.

  The camp. The factory. Ada had always thought of prisons as big Victorian buildings with bars at the windows. She gripped the frozen sheet in her hand. This prison was different. She shivered. Something wasn’t right about it. The smoke, the smell. The words the Germans used. Untermensch. Ungeziefer. Vermin. She’d heard once that they gassed sewer rats in London, burned their bodies.

  —

  ADA HAD ALMOST given up on the woman with the douppioni and the dogs, but she reappeared one morning in January 1945 for a fitting, dressed in a simple skirt and twinset, the two Scotties at her heels. There had been plenty of fabric for a fantail, but Ada had cut the dress straight, fitted, simple. Let her see it on. Let her appreciate its magic.

  “And if you still wish for the fantail,” Ada said, “I have enough.”

  She had made up a single rose, cutting the silk on the cross, doubling, twisting so it curled and bloomed. She tacked it just below the neckline, to the left. The woman slipped into the dress while Ada hooked it together behind.

  She stood there, the skin of her naked shoulders glowing ivory against the ebony silk, the rose at the neck, a luscious glimpse of crimson.

  “There is no mirror,” Ada said. “You have to go with Frau Weiter.”

  Every customer had had to use the mirror upstairs in a bedroom, twisting in the reflection, one side to the other, back view, front, talking about the outfit away from Ada, as if Ada hadn’t made it. Why they never let her have a mirror she didn’t understand. Did they worry she would break it? Snatch a shard and hold it to their throats? She could do that more easily with the shears. Or were they too vain? They couldn’t let her see that they knew they weren’t worthy of Ada’s creations?

  “Kommt,” the woman said to the dogs.

  “You can leave them,” Ada said. “I’ll look after them.” The woman hesitated, smiled.

  “Bleib da!” she said, raising her finger until the two dogs sat, then lay.

  Ada waited until the woman had left before she called them over, their warm, wiry bodies and silky fur squirming under her touch, whimpering as they struggled to lick her face. She could feel the tickle of their beards and clutched them tight, kissing them on their foreheads as if they were the last living creatures she would ever know, the last affection she would share. She started to cry, wiped the tears from their fur, rubbed her hand to dry her cheeks.

  “Schön,” the woman said as she walked back in. “Elegant. Perfekt.”

  The dogs rushed towards her.

  “Sitz,” she said, and they sat, quivering, tail stumps thumping the floor.

  “No fantail?” Ada said. “And a single rose?”

  “You were right. Thank you. Danke.”

  Who had ever taken the trouble to thank her before? Ada swallowed. She hated to feel so grateful, it was pathetic, but kindnesses were to be clutched at.

  “I need to hem it,” she said. “Please, if you will, stand here.” Ada walked over and fetched her stool. “On this. Mind how you go.”

  The woman leant on her as she climbed onto the stool. Frau Weiter looked cross. Ada had never dared ask Frau Weiter to stand on the stool. She was too heavy, her legs too fat to lift. Ada pressed her finger into the soft of the woman’s leg, just above the ankle.

  “I think, madame,” she said, “this would be the best length. Longer, it would trail the ground. Shorter, it is neither one thing nor another.”

  She pinned the fabric—“Turn when I say”—pinned again as the woman circled with tiny steps so the hem was even all round. Ada had never spoken to the other women, not to Frau Weiss nor Frau Weiter, much less asked them Is this for a special occasion? Are you going somewhere nice? She wasn’t sure she could ask this woman, but what did she have to lose?

  “The dress suits you, madame,” Ada said. “May I ask what it’s for?”

  “Nein,” Frau Weiter shouted. “How dare you?”

  “Why shouldn’t she ask?” the woman said. She turned to Ada. “It’s a secret.” She put her fingers to her lips. “Let’s say it’s for the day that every woman dreams of.”

  Widow Twanky was panting with fury. She could have a seizure, Ada thought. Any minute. Good. Ada could work for this woman then. Tell her black wasn’t the right color for that special day. More for a funeral.

  “Wear heels,” Ada said. “Your hair back, away from your face.”

  The woman smiled. A kind, ordinary woman. “The nun isn’t speaking out of turn,” she said to Frau Weiter. “You will not punish her.”

  Frau Weiter sucked in her breath, was silent for a moment. Ada reveled in her discomfort. “So, you approve of my little dressmaker?” she said at last, her voice soapy and pliant.

  “Very much,” the woman said. “My boyfriend will like this gown. It will be his favorite, I have no doubt. And nothing to pay.” She laughed. “He will like that most of all.”

  She stepped down from the stool, stood on tiptoe, twirled.

  “Send it to me when it’s finished,” she said to Frau Weiter. “To Berlin. Perhaps, Sister Clara, we will meet again.”

  She stepped out of the dress, back into her everyday clothes, called the dogs, and left.

  —

  THERE WAS FABRIC left over. The woman had not asked for it back. A yard, maybe more. Enough for a small jacket, a bolero, short raglan sleeves, a splash of crimson on the left breast, enough raw silk for a small rose.

  —

  THE AIRPLANES CAME almost every night now. Sometimes there were flashes and explosions, other times they flew past without dropping bombs. Frau Weiter grew more agitated; the rash round her waist seeped blood that Ada had to wash from her slips. A horrid job, but it was worth it, to see her suffer. The Obersturmbannführer came home later each day. Ada understood that Obersturmbannführer Weiss was coming back, resuming his charge of the camp. She heard Frau Weiter screaming at her husband about him. And Thomas, Ada thought. Where is Thomas? Please let him be safe. Sent to the country somewhere, away from the bombs. The war was going badly for Germany. Ada listened as Frau Weiter screamed to Anni. The Germans had pushed back the Americans in Fr
ance, but it had taken everything they had, and now the Russians were coming closer. The Russians were beasts, ill-disciplined, vengeful. Who would protect them?

  “Who is in charge?” Frau Weiter had screamed. “What will happen to us? Who cares about us now?”

  —

  EVENINGS GREW LIGHTER, but the cold persisted. The ground was icy underfoot where Ada trod with the laundry, and more than once she skidded and fell on her back and winded herself. Anni stayed in the kitchen and cooked, but food was scarce. The railways and the roads had been bombed. There was no transport. The British had blasted the fields and the factories, the airfields and munitions. It must end soon.

  Hope made it worse. It had become an impatient horse that Ada needed to rein back each day. She wasn’t sure she could hold on. Her hands trembled and she had bouts of weeping that she couldn’t stop, standing over the sink, elbows in water, watching the tears fall hard as pebbles, breaking the surface and rippling in circles, just like Auntie Lily when she was attacked by nerves. Came and stayed with them then, days spent screaming and sobbing. Was Ada getting nerves, too? Was she at breaking point? Now, when it was nearly over? When she’d held it in all these years?

  They still had some vegetables that the prisoners had grown, but they were running short and the spring crop wasn’t ready. A few onions, soft in the middle. Potatoes, starting to sprout. Cabbage, more leaf than heart. Ada had to feed herself from the peelings, but Anni still let Ada scrape the saucepans, drain the last dregs of soup. They were running out of tinned fish, and the flour wouldn’t last till the end of the month. Anni still made bread, but she eked it out, a slice a day, and none for Ada. She made traps and laid them in the garden. She caught a pigeon, wrung its neck and plucked its feathers, and added it to the stew. Ada had pains that made her nauseous, and she was constipated. She grew thinner and more frail. She had no strength for heavy washing, or ironing or mending. Frau Weiter shouted all the time, thumped and shoved Ada, walloped her with the strap. Her periods had stopped, too, as if the effort would push her body over its limit, would waste its precious blood.