The Wedding Dress
Page 14
Ian laughed and said, “Happy to be of help. We just placed our orders, but I’ll try to get Peggy’s attention next time she breezes through.”
“I’m not worried about it,” said Annie. “Peggy’s usually pretty good at spotting newcomers. In fact, there isn’t much that girl does miss—she’s great at noticing every detail. She’d make a great spy, except for the fact that she can’t keep a secret.”
“Yes, that would be a bit of a problem,” said Ian with an amused look on his face, “although, I don’t know that it’s that she can’t keep a secret as much as it is that she just doesn’t want to. That would defeat the purpose of gaining all that information as far as she’s concerned. She’s a great girl though. Wally certainly thinks the world of her; I don’t know where he’d be without her.” Looking over Dervla’s shoulder, he said, “And here she comes with your glasses of water and menus.”
After Annie and Dervla had placed their orders, Ian said, “So, Andrew tells me that he came out to Grey Gables on Monday to see the inside of the house. That was quite a storm we had. We lost power over at Town Hall for at least an hour.”
“So did we,” said Annie, “but I was glad you came over anyway, Andrew. Did you tell Ian that you were out to Grey Gables this morning and asked Dervla to model for a painting?” asked Annie.
“Yes,” said Andrew, “I had just mentioned it when you both came in.” To Ian he said, “We’ll be starting Saturday morning. Dervla is going to wear the wedding dress that Annie found in the attic.”
“Wedding dress? I hadn’t heard about that one. Is that your newest mystery, Annie?” asked Ian.
“Sort of,” said Annie. “I keep learning new things about it, but it seems that anyone who was connected with it has long since died. It has a link to Grey Gables, but it’s more of a curiosity than a mystery, I guess.”
“Considering the scrapes you’ve been in with some of your previous mysteries, I think something that’s just a ‘curiosity’ might be welcomed!” said Ian. Then to Dervla he said, “That’s quite an honor, Dervla, to be asked to be in one of Andrew’s portraits. I’ve done some research on his work since Annie and I had lunch with him over at Maplehurst.” Looking at Andrew he added, “Your paintings are amazing, Andrew, and that’s just from seeing a few of them on a computer screen. I’m looking forward to seeing them in person.”
Andrew smiled. “Thanks, Ian—I appreciate that, coming from you especially. I value your opinion.” It seemed to Annie that Ian and Andrew had formed a friendship based on their mutual intellectual interests, and seeing that increased her respect for both men.
“I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out,” said Dervla. “I’m not familiar with Mr. Gareth’s work, but Annie says he’s the best, so it must be true!” They all laughed at that, but no one disputed her proposition.
There was a slight lull in the conversation as Peggy brought out their meals. After she left the table, Ian said, “So, … Annie. … Sounds like Dervla will be occupied most of the day on Saturday. I know a really nice restaurant down in Cape Elizabeth—it’s less than two hours away—and I thought perhaps you and I could go there for lunch on Saturday. I could pick you up about ten thirty. It’s a beautiful drive along the coastal area.” Ian gave her a hopeful look, as he waited for her answer. Andrew and Dervla both smiled—Andrew watched Annie’s face to see her reaction; Dervla looked at the table instead of looking at Annie, waiting to hear her reaction.
“I don’t know, Ian … Andrew and Dervla might need … something,” said Annie. “I’m not sure I should leave them … alone.”
Dervla looked up and said brightly, “Oh, we’ll be fine, Annie. You should go and enjoy yourself. I don’t want you to feel like you have to look after me all the time. And like Mr. Butler said, I’ll be occupied with modeling for Mr. Gareth.”
Annie looked doubtful.
Andrew spoke, “Yes, please go, Annie. The weather promises to be perfect on Saturday, so I’m hoping to work from fairly early in the morning and through the afternoon, to see which lighting is best for the effect I want to produce. I promise not to let any harm come to Dervla, or to your antique wedding dress.”
Ian smiled at the encouragement the other two offered and then said to Annie, “I didn’t want to bring this up, but you did promise that we would go for a meal sometime soon. I promise not to keep you out late. We’ll have a nice leisurely lunch and then enjoy the sights in the area and easily be home before four o’clock in the afternoon.”
Annie sighed. “It would be nice. … OK. I’ll be ready at ten thirty on Saturday morning.”
“Great!” said Ian. “I’ll be there on the dot.”
13
Annie and Dervla spent the next couple of days working on their projects—Dervla made her petticoat, and Annie began her secret project for Dervla’s hope-chest shower. Annie finally had a chance to go through her grandmother’s crochet books and found a pattern that she thought would work nicely. It was a detachable collar made using Irish crochet techniques. The pattern called for crochet cotton thread and consisted of ten joined motifs with roses in the center of each one. It was delicate looking, and Annie thought it would look nice on Dervla, worn over a dark-color dress or sweater. Also, it met Annie’s two other criteria—she was sure she could finish it in time, and it would be easy to hide from Dervla. Though Dervla wouldn’t know the gift was for her, Annie didn’t want her to see it beforehand—it was better for it to be a complete surprise.
For Dervla’s project, Annie set up Gram’s portable sewing machine on a small desk in what had been her mother's bedroom. The machine worked well, but it was old and only sewed a straight stitch. Annie wished she had thought to bring her sewing machine to Grey Gables from Texas—it was “new-fangled”—computerized with at least twenty stitch settings and the ability to make buttonholes almost automatically, it seemed. It was handy for a lot of things, but since she had been at Grey Gables, she had spent most of her craft time on crochet and hadn’t needed a sewing machine for anything more than a few minor repairs.
Still, Gram’s old one was a good machine for Dervla to use with her limited experience. It turned out that the petticoat pattern was fairly easy. After Dervla had cut out the pattern, she and Annie laid the fabric out on the kitchen table and cut out the pieces.
Annie explained a few seamstress techniques to Dervla, like staystitching, how to sew French seams so that the inside of the garment would be nice and neat, and how to grade the seams and under-stitch the facings to help them lay flat. There seemed to be no alternative but to do the buttonholes by hand, and though Annie hadn’t worked any of those in ages, she hadn’t forgotten the method and was able to show Dervla how to do it. Dervla practiced on scrap fabric until her buttonholes looked as good, or better, than machine-made buttonholes.
All in all, it was a good experience for both of them—for Dervla to learn, and for Annie to teach. And the petticoat turned out beautifully—it was feminine and well-made, and it was the perfect thing to wear under the wedding dress.
Annie went to pick up the dress on Friday. As Molly had promised, it was ready, and smelled fresh and clean. Molly had hung the dress on a padded hanger and placed it in a zippered, cotton garment bag. The wire had been reinserted into the wreath and the veil reattached; it looked even better than it had before. Along with the gloves, it had been placed in a cotton bag and boxed for storage. Just before Annie left, Molly handed her a CD in a slender case marked “Dawson Wedding Ensemble Photos.” Annie thanked her and brought everything home to Grey Gables.
Andrew arrived Saturday morning just after the dew had burned away, and immediately began unloading his “studio” from his SUV and placing it out in the front yard. He was all business, setting up his easel and laying out the tools of his trade—his palette, tubes of oil paints, palette knives, brushes of all sizes, jars of linseed oil and turpentine, etc. Andrew had explained to Annie and Dervla that he wanted Dervla to stand, facing the ocean, in the front
yard, so Annie gave him an old sheet to lay down on the ground to protect the dress from the grass. He spread that out on the ground where he wanted Dervla to stand.
While Andrew worked outside, Annie helped Dervla get into the wedding ensemble upstairs in her bedroom. Dervla put on the new petticoat she had made herself, with its pink ribbon and lace edging, while Annie once again began undoing the back buttons on the dress, stopping long enough to help Dervla with the buttons on the back of the slip. The day Dervla went shopping, she had purchased some opaque white pantyhose and white ballerina-type shoes with a small bow at the top of each. She put those on next. When the dress was unbuttoned, Annie lifted it over Dervla’s head, and Dervla slipped her arms into the sleeves. Annie began the process of refastening the buttons. Dervla finished buttoning the cuffs and slipped on the crocheted gloves. Annie retrieved the veil and placed the wreath on Dervla’s head, arranging the veil over the back of her hair and down her back.
She hadn’t told Dervla about the prayer that Molly had found written in the stitches on the veil. She thought she would bring her laptop to the carriage house when they had the hope-chest shower, and she would show everyone the photographs that Molly had loaded on the disk, and tell them about Amanda Grey and the prayer she made for her daughter.
Annie stood back to look at Dervla in the wedding dress with the veil and gloves. She had thought that part of the effect she experienced when she first saw Dervla in the ensemble—the day of the storm—had been molded partially by the eeriness of the dark atmosphere and the flickering candle flame. But as she looked at Dervla now, in the full light of a glorious summer morning, she had the same feeling she’d had then—Dervla seemed to glow. Whatever beauty Dervla possessed, both inner and outer, was magnified by the wedding dress ensemble in a way that Annie was at a loss to explain.
Dervla was ready to go outside to stand for the portrait. With her two gloved hands, she lifted the front of the dress well off the floor so that the lower part of her legs and her feet, all clad in white, were exposed; Annie picked up the train, and together they made their way down the staircase, out onto the porch and into the yard.
Andrew looked up and smiled. He didn’t appear to be shocked as he had the first time he’d seen Dervla, but he actually seemed rather amused. Annie supposed the sight of two women trying so hard to protect the dress from any contact with the carpet of grass struck him funny somehow. Men, she thought.
Once Dervla was standing safely on the sheet, Andrew came over to place her as he wanted for the painting. Annie watched for a while. First, Andrew placed his hands on Dervla’s shoulders to turn her slightly; then he moved the positions of both her hands. Next he touched her chin to tilt her head just so. Then he walked back to his position by his easel to look at her, his eyes taking in every detail. Again he walked over to Dervla to move the train of the dress; he lifted the bottom of the veil, and then he picked up and twisted the wreath slightly and placed it back on her head. He walked back over to the easel to look at her again. He continued this back and forth—positioning and then observing—again and again. There were the things he couldn’t change, but took into account at any rate. Andrew looked at the position of the sun, the shadow cast by a tree, the effect of the wind on Dervla’s hair. … The whole process was absolutely painstaking. And he hadn’t even started painting yet.
Annie decided she had better go and change for her date with Ian. Yes. There, she’d said it. It was a date. It was a date with a friend, it was true, but it seemed silly not to call it what it was. It was a lunch date, but knowing Ian she expected it was a very nice restaurant, so she thought she should dress up more than she would for a bite at The Cup & Saucer. Annie opted for a sleeveless dress with a black bodice and a black-and-white geometric print skirt that was fitted down to the top of the hips and then flared out in several pleats down to the hem. With big sunglasses propped on top of her head, and black flats on her feet, she felt very Audrey Hepburn-like.
As promised, Ian arrived precisely at ten thirty. Annie invited him in while she finished transferring the contents of her everyday purse to one that was more compact and more in keeping with her outfit.
“You look super,” said Ian. He had dressed up a bit more than usual for a Saturday noon lunch too, and looked very handsome in a sport jacket with a button-down shirt open at the neck and light-color slacks.
“So do you,” said Annie, smiling. “Just let me tuck one more thing in my purse, and I’ll be ready to go.”
“That’s quite a production going on out there. Is that the wedding dress you found in the attic then?” asked Ian.
“It is. I don’t know if you got a good look at Dervla in the dress, but she’s absolutely stunning in it. I hope we’ll get to see the painting when we come back. I’m not sure if this is just a preliminary thing, or the actual painting. You should’ve seen Andrew arranging everything just so. He’s a stickler for detail.”
Annie stooped over and picked up a small cooler she’d placed by the front door. “Could I get you to carry this out, Ian?”
Ian got a puzzled look on his face. “Uh … the invitation was for me to take you out to a nice restaurant for lunch … are you expecting to be extra hungry?”
Annie laughed. “It’s not for us! I meant for you to carry it out and place under that tree nearest Andrew and Dervla. You should have seen us trying to get her across the lawn without dragging the dress through it. I thought they might just stay outside for lunch. I put some water and sandwiches with a bag of ice in the cooler. I’m going to carry out a couple of folding stools from Gramps’s old camping set, and a bag with cups and napkins.”
“You seem to have thought of everything,” said Ian. “You like looking out for other people, don’t you?”
“Can’t deny it,” replied Annie simply. “I’m ready to go when you are.”
* * * *
As promised, Ian returned Annie to Grey Gables before four o’clock in the afternoon. The meal at the restaurant had been wonderful, and the location provided a magnificent view of the ocean from their table. Then they’d visited the lighthouse and museum located in the same vicinity, and Ian even drove her past a castle that was purported to be haunted.
When they pulled into the drive, they saw that Dervla was still standing on the sheet in the yard, though Andrew was in the process of moving her to a slightly different position than Annie had seen her in that morning. He was using the same back-and-forth technique that Annie had observed earlier.
Dervla looked different. Her hair was arranged in an upswept style on top of her head; she was no longer wearing the veil and gloves, and there was no sign of them. Annie thought that Dervla or Andrew must have taken them inside. She hoped the items were upstairs in Dervla’s room and the door was closed. She hated to think what Boots would do to the pieces given the opportunity.
“I hope those two took a break,” said Ian.
“I’m sure they did,” said Annie. “See—the camp stools have been used. I might make some fresh lemonade to drink. Would you care for any? We can take it out to share with them.”
“That would be very nice, thank you.”
They made their way inside, apparently unnoticed by the artist and his model. Annie checked the living room; no veil or gloves, and Boots was contentedly stretched out on the sofa. Annie heaved a sigh of relief. She and Ian headed on back to the kitchen.
As Annie was reaching into the cabinet for drinking glasses, she said, “I’m not used to being taken out for Saturday lunch—I had such a good time. Thanks for inviting me, Ian.”
“Not at—” Ian began, but stopped suddenly at the muffled sound of men shouting outside. He and Annie looked at each other with puzzled expressions for a moment. “What is tha—” he began to say when he was cut off again by a woman’s scream. Annie dropped the glass she was holding when she heard the scream and it crashed to the floor, breaking into pieces. Ian ran into the hall and through the front door; Annie was right on his heels.
Tony sat to Ian’s left, wiping blood that was running from his nose with the back of his hand; even so, his expression was still belligerent, as if he was considering going after the older man again. Ian gave him his handkerchief and told him in no uncertain terms to sit tight.
Andrew appeared to be the worse off of the two. Breathing heavily, he lay on his back in the grass moaning slightly. Annie knelt down and leaned over him to assess the damage. The area next to his left eye was red, and would surely be black and blue in short order; his lower lip had split and was bleeding slightly, but at least his eyes seemed clear and alert. Annie didn’t doubt that he was bruised all over and would feel every bit of it for days to come.
Dervla was in shock. She had fallen to her knees, and her face was streaked with tears as she looked at the two men, first Tony, and then Andrew, and then back again. Annie wanted to comfort her, but she thought the primary thing was to tend to the wounds of Andrew and Tony. She checked the cooler, but the ice she had put in it that morning had melted.
To Ian, Annie said, “I’ll be right back—I’m going to get some ice from the freezer.”
As she ran back toward the house, she heard Ian begin to address the two men, “What in the blazes …”