The Dressmaker's War

by Mary Chamberlain

  The woman smiled at Ada as she stood up from the table, tugging at her dress so it hung straight. She had a good figure, slender and lithe, and a pretty peaches-and-cream face. The dress was rayon, a pale apricot, with tucks round the bust and pleats on the hip.

  “Always rucks up,” she said, running her hands over her hips, “and clings.”

  Ada wasn’t sure who she was talking to. The woman’s friend was putting on powder, holding her compact to the light and dabbing at her nose. The dress. Too tight round the hip; too loose round the bust. The woman scooped up her bag and gloves and headed off to the ladies’. The nippies weren’t allowed to go there. Ada checked no one was looking and followed her in.

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, madam,” Ada said, “it’s the pleats. They don’t give enough.”

  The woman turned in surprise. “You’d know, would you?” Her voice was sarcastic. What does this little nippy know?

  “As a matter of fact,” Ada said, “I do. If you pleat on the horizontal it tightens the fabric. You need to give it a bit of rein, make allowances.”

  “You’re a dressmaker, are you?” Her voice sneered, but she was paying attention now.

  Ada put her heels together and stood straight. “I am,” she said, “a good one, too.” The woman looked at her watch. “I’m just doing this to make money,” Ada added, pointing to her apron. The woman was in a rush, anxious not to miss the 3:10 from Charing Cross, or the tube from Embankment. “I want to set up in business.”

  The woman threaded her arm through the handle of her bag. “Could you alter this?” she said.

  “I’d have to see it first,” Ada said. “How much slack there was in the seam. Wouldn’t take much. Quarter of an inch either side. Loosen the darts.”

  “I hardly ever wear it as it is,” the woman said. “But I can’t throw it away. I’ll bring it to you next week.” She placed a ha’penny in the saucer by the basin. “What can I lose?”

  —

  HER NAME WAS Bottomley, Mrs. Bottomley. She brought the dress in the following Monday. Ada turned it inside out, looked at how it was made. The seamstress who’d made this didn’t know about fabric, couldn’t even sew a straight line. The pleats were crooked, the folds caught in the stitches.

  “Leave it with me,” Ada said. “I’ll bring it back next week.”

  —

  MRS. BOTTOMLEY TRIED it on again the next week, returned to her table, the dress folded back in its wrapper.

  “Perfect,” she said. “Do you have a card?”

  “No,” Ada said. A card? Even Mrs. B. didn’t have cards. “But you can get hold of me here.”

  “For a fitting?” Mrs. Bottomley said.

  Ada held down her smile. “I can give you my address,” she said. “It’s just round the corner. We can discuss terms.” She liked that word. “I work half day on a Thursday.”

  Mrs. Bottomley took out her address book, a slim volume bound in leather. “Your name?”

  Ada spelled it out, V-A-U-G-H-A-N. Added, Modiste.

  —

  A TWEED SUIT for Mrs. Bottomley and a cotton dress for her daughter. A best dress for the daughter’s friend’s mother to wear at a christening. Sensible clothes with honest cloth. Nothing to shine, but it was a start.

  ADA LISTENED TO the news on the Home Service. She had to be on top of things, au fait with current affairs, because sometimes her gentleman friends talked about them. Not that they expected her to know anything about the wider world, but Ada was interested. Trouble in Palestine and India. Trials in Nuremberg and Dachau. It was strange to think she’d been there, in enemy territory. To think she’d made clothes for the Fraus, kept house for the commandant. She could never tell anyone that; it would have to stay a secret now, forever. Obersturmbannführer Weiter had committed suicide, and Martin Weiss had been hanged—she saw it in the Daily Herald—but there had been nothing about his wife and family. Perhaps Frau Weiss, or whoever it was, changed her name and Joachim’s. How would Ada ever find them? And Stanislaus. She knew it had been him in Dachau that day. He was alive, at least. Munich and Dachau seemed so long ago. And London, before the war. She couldn’t always remember what it had been like before the bombs flattened it to rubble. Couldn’t always remember Stanislaus. Sometimes she thought her memory played tricks, or she’d made him up. She wasn’t sure she’d recognize him now.

  SHE’D NEVER KNOWN a winter so bitter, even in Germany. January 1947. The snow was waist-deep along the Strand. There were photos in Picture Post of drifts in the countryside, banks of heavy white snow smothering the fields and forest, the railways and roads. Her room had a gas fire, but it was old; the firebricks were cracked and not all the jets ran clean. It was difficult to control the gas, and the uneven heat gave Ada chilblains when she came in frozen. The windows were drafty, and a gale blew under the door until Ada found some sacking in the market, made a sausage stuffed with newspaper, and shoved it underneath. She bought a stone hot-water bottle, wrapped it in her towel, and laid it in the bed to fight off the icy damp.

  Ada’s coster friend understood how she was placed. His stall was laid out with Utility fabrics, hard-wearing material, good value for money, CC41 stamped through the selvage. But he kept bolts of cloth underneath, which he’d pull out when no one was watching. Ada had the means now. The blue moiré was fine in the summer, but she had to ring the changes of clothes, and now the weather was so bitter, she needed a proper outfit or two. She didn’t think twice about the navy petersham for her winter coat, nor about the black jersey for a new dress, even though it meant another week she wasn’t able to save. She’d pay it back.

  Jersey was greedy, grew above its station, spread where it shouldn’t. She worked on it by candlelight when the power went off, no thanks to the new minister of fuel and power, Manny bloody Shinwell. It was hard on her eyes, but if she held the work close she could make do, as she used to in Dachau. She sewed at the weekends while she listened to the wireless, the Dick Barton omnibus on a Saturday morning, Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh on a Sunday afternoon. Three-quarter sleeves, a sweetheart neck that she’d seen in Everywoman, peplum—Ada had some coat lining left over, so she inserted it as inlay in case the skirt seated and grew baggy.

  Saturday night, the first of February. Ada took care as she stepped on the pavement with her high heels, along Floral Street, round by the Actors’ Church, through the slush and broken cabbage leaves of the market, down Southampton Street, careful does it, to the Strand. The snow seeped into her shoes. The soles of her stockings were wet and the backs of her legs splashed with icy mud. Ada wiped them clean in the ladies’ lavatory, looked at herself in the long mirror of the powder room. The padded shoulders made her look tall, and the jersey clung tight without a pucker. The sweetheart neck emphasized her bosom, the peplum her hips, her waist a slender valley between. She fingered a roll of her hair and tucked it under. Ava Gordon. Even with glasses, she scrubbed up well. She folded her coat over her arm, handed it into the cloakroom, and walked up to the Manhattan Bar. Slipped her usual sixpence to the maître d’ and allowed herself to be seated.

  The room was quiet. “It’s the weather,” the barman said, “the snow. People can’t get in or out. And the strike at the Savoy. Puts people off. Frightened it’ll spread. The usual?”

  The routine was the same. She’d sip her white lady, lay out a packet of cigarettes on the table, pull out one and roll it between her fingers. She never sat at the bar. That was cheap. Nor did she look round to see who was there, whose eye she should catch. That was obvious. Wait for a gentleman and see if the barman winked. Has a room here. Take off her glasses, put them in her bag, and wait some more.

  Once their trousers were down, men were all the same little boys.

  “Immoral,” Scarlett said, “the lot of them. Sometimes I see them with their wives and kiddies and I think, How can you do this?”

  One or two of the men wanted her to do things they wouldn’t do with their wives, disgusting things, funny peculiar
. Ada thought she was a good judge of character these days, could sum a fellow up just by looking at him. But you never knew, really.

  “Charge them more,” Scarlett said. “Those types talk to you ever so nice, but as soon as they get you alone, they’re like rats in holes.”

  “No,” Ada said. She was a good-time girl, not a professional, not like Scarlett. She’d up and leave then, pocket the money. She knew they couldn’t complain.

  They liked to talk, all of them. Things they couldn’t tell their families. Poor sods. Sometimes Ada thought she should have been one of those newfangled trick cyclists. D-Day. Alamein. Scared out of their wits. No one understood, no one wanted to listen. Gone so long their children didn’t recognize them, their wives didn’t want them. Civvy life was tough. Had a good war? Didn’t do to say no. Who’d ever had a good war? Ada understood. I know how you feel. Crammed it inside, cork rammed down so hard she thought she’d crack. You’re the first person I’ve been able to talk to about it, they always said. She wished she could have someone to talk to, let it all out.

  “You can trust me,” Ada would say. Could have made a fortune in the war selling secrets. Could have made a fortune now if she charged extra for listening. A penny for your thoughts. Set up in business as an agony aunt, a problem shared is a problem halved. Their minds cowered from the memories of the dead they never knew but had blasted to pieces. War never went away. Not the hidden war, the unspoken war. It festered like a shameful, weeping wound, tormenting in silence. Ada knew all about that.

  She offered them a service, that’s what. They could afford it, too, with their army gratuities.

  —

  “ALLOW ME.” HE had a book of matches with SMITH’S on the cover. His hair was wavy, parted and smoothed to the side, thick with Brylcreem. He was a heavy man, dark and swarthy, but with a chubby, infant face, like one of those Cow & Gate babies that you see in the advert. Must have been out of the army for some time. Most of the other men she’d met still had the gaunt frames and hungry faces of service rations. He cupped the flame, leant towards Ada. Tufts of black silky hair showed below the cuffs of his jacket. His suit was well cut, neither demob nor Utility. Businessman.

  “Thank you,” Ada said.

  “Are you waiting for someone?” He spoke with an accent she couldn’t place. Italian. Or Spanish.

  Ada knew the patter. I am. They’re late. Yes, I’d be delighted if you’d keep me company for a while. She could turn anyone away if she didn’t like him. But this man was attractive, in his way.

  “Is this your first time in London?”

  “No,” he said. “I’ve lived here for many years. I think of myself as a Londoner now. And you?”

  “Well,” Ada said, “as a matter of fact, so am I.”

  “Well, there we are,” he said, “we have a lot in common already. Gino Messina.” He stretched out his hand, took hers and brought it to his lips.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Malta,” he said, “a little island in the Mediterranean.”

  “I bet it’s hot down there then,” Ada said. “Is that why you look so dark?”

  He laughed. She laughed with him, ha ha ha. She felt relaxed.

  “And your name?”

  “Ava,” she said. Modiste. “Ava Gordon.”

  “Ava Gordon.”

  —

  HE’D HAD A good war, nothing to complain about.

  “But I don’t like to talk about those times.”

  “Me neither,” Ada said, relieved. That made a change from the others. “Look to the future, I always say.”

  She crossed her legs, tucked down her skirt where it had rumpled. The snow had left a mark on her shoes. A bit of polish would sort that out.

  She didn’t demand up-front like the girls at the bar, but left her bag unclipped, discreet. Checked that all was there, taxi, doorman, fee. She liked that word, fee. Mrs. B. had charged a fee for her services, so did the doctor.

  “Are you here every Saturday?” Gino said as she was dressing to leave.

  “Most Saturdays.”

  “What about next week, then?” he asked. “Save my place in the queue.”

  “There’s no queue.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. In which case, save yourself for me.”

  He was smooth, suave even, continental charm, and a baby-face smile.

  She nodded.

  —

  THAT WEEK ADA knitted a V-necked cardigan in pink that she’d unraveled from an old cardigan she’d picked up in a jumble sale. Sat by the fire, knit one, purl one, listening to a play on the wireless. Gino wanted to see her. She’d wear her blue moiré, but she needed a woolly in this weather. She’d take it off when he arrived, but she might as well be warm while she waited. Couldn’t risk a clashing blue, and black was too somber. The pink was a real find.

  She asked to be seated on the velvet bench in the far corner, away from the drafts by the window. She sipped her white lady, making it last.

  “No, thank you,” she said to a tall gentleman who came over with a gold lighter and lit her cigarette. “I’m waiting for someone.”

  She was telling the truth this time. Only he was late. Ada finished her drink and ordered another. Perhaps he had forgotten. She should give him another half hour. She kept an eye on the tall man, who was talking to one of the girls at the bar. He kept looking her way. She only had to smile and she’d lure him back over. She couldn’t afford to lose a fiver, just like that. How long should she give Gino? It would serve him right if she did go with someone else. He shouldn’t keep a girl waiting, keep her hanging about, as if she had nothing else to do. It was rude. No, it was more than that. He was showing her who was in charge. You wait for me, Ava. Not me for you. Well, Gino Messina, Ava Gordon had news for him.

  She fished her glasses out of her bag and put them on, spotting anew the sharp features of the faces, the stains on the carpet, smoke unfurling in the air. She slipped off her cardigan and pulled another cigarette out of its packet, rolling it between her fingers, eyeing the man at the bar.

  “You did wait then.” She hadn’t seen Gino come in, flick open the matchbook, strike a light. “Didn’t recognize you in your spectacles.” She saw him clearly now, with her glasses, in the bright light of the bar. His eyes were black, still like a hammer-pond, deep enough to see herself reflected. His mouth and forehead were creased. Well fed. Foreign. A voice inside her whispered, Don’t trust them. Haven’t you learned?

  “I was about to give up on you,” Ada said. “Thought you weren’t coming.”

  He reached across and pulled out a cigarette from her packet as if it belonged to him. Bloody cheek. “I apologize for that. I was delayed.”

  “So I see,” Ada said. “What kept you?”

  “Business,” he said. “Nothing you’d understand.”

  “And what is your business?”

  He tapped the side of his nose. “In my country, we have a saying. Chi presto denta, presto sdenta. Curiosity killed the cat.”

  —

  SHE’D RUN OUT of things to wear. It was one thing going with different men. They’d never see you in the same thing twice. But she and Gino were going regular now and she needed more outfits. She liked that idea, her and Gino, regular, like they were stepping out together. He was a man of the world, she could see that, well traveled, polished. He had class, old-fashioned chivalry.

  “That’s what you need,” Scarlett said. “Regular clientele.”

  “Clientele?” Ada said. “I’m not what you think I am.” She didn’t fish like Scarlett did, stand in the street until she hooked one in.

  Scarlett guffawed. “The law might see different.”

  Gino wasn’t clientele. More like her young man. He treated her well, spoilt her really, the high life, wine and port afterwards, never kicked her out, not like some of them who couldn’t wait to get rid of her, as if she’d made a nasty mess in the bed.

  Her coster friend had some wool crepe. “Only a remnant this wee
k, Ada, couple of yards, but fifty-four-inch wide. I’ll let you have it cheap.”

  Burgundy, wool crepe. Ada remembered Frau Weiss, that first time, wool crepe with a white sailor’s collar, slim fit, cigarette holder. She’d had blond hair, too, glowing like the fresh-born sun, set off by the ruby fabric. Ada had never forgotten that, such elegance and beauty in the face of ugliness and squalor.

  She cut it out that night. Not enough to make on the cross, but a simple frock, straight down, fitted sleeves and a diamond cutout below the neck band, a hint of cleavage, tasteful, nothing common, just right for Smith’s.

  The maître d’ nodded approval when she slipped him the sixpence that night. The barman brought her drink. “You’re looking gorgeous tonight, Ava,” he said. “Quite fancy you myself. Meeting the same gentleman? Only that’s five weeks on the trot. Might say you were courting.”

  Ada liked that thought. She liked Gino and he liked her, she knew, as his eyes scrolled down her figure and he slipped his arm round her waist.

  “Beautiful,” he said. “Bella. You have exquisite taste.”

  “Thank you,” Ada said.

  “Where do you shop for these dresses?”

  “Shop?” she said. “I don’t shop, Gino, I make my clothes. Design, everything.”

  “Well, you have a rare talent, Ava Gordon. It could be couture, straight from Paris.”

  “I’d like to do more,” she said. “You know, set myself up in business. Have my own clients, my own name.”

  “You would do well.”

  “I could make it work. I’ve got clients already.” Mrs. Bottomley had introduced her to another lady who wanted an outfit for her son’s wedding. Something classic. So it won’t date. And she had recommended Ada to someone who was looking for a dressmaker. Said she’d write her a testimonial any time she wanted. Miss Vaughan is a woman of sound character, pleasant disposition, and exemplary dressmaking skills.