September 15, 1947
No one at Hartnell would dare say so, but Miriam was beginning to worry they wouldn’t finish in time.
There. She’d admitted it.
Last week Miss Duley had announced that Princess Elizabeth would be in London for a few days at the very end of September. “Mr. Hartnell and Mam’selle are expecting to be summoned for a fitting of the wedding gown while the princess is in London. Working backward from Monday the twenty-ninth, when she returns from Balmoral, we shall need to have all the principal embroidery finished on the gown by Monday the twenty-second.”
That had left them with ten working days—and now, a week on, only five days remained, and the atmosphere in the workroom was one of grimly focused determination. They all knew there was no question of not finishing in time—but what if they didn’t? What would happen then? It wasn’t as if they could ring up Buckingham Palace and ask Princess Elizabeth to rearrange her calendar because the women in the embroidery workroom at Hartnell had been slow at their work.
She’d assumed, when they’d begun work on the gown, that nothing much would change. They made clothes for famous women all the time; had been making clothes for the queen for years and years. Monsieur Hartnell had been written about in magazines and newspapers, and clips of his fashion shows were often included in newsreels. But then Ruthie had come running into the cloakroom one morning, only days after they’d begun, and she’d been waving one of the morning newspapers.
“Look—just look at this. Someone’s added up the number of people who’ll be listening to the wedding on the wireless, plus everyone who’ll see the pictures in the papers and magazines, and it’s not just millions but hundreds of millions of people. Can you believe it?”
Miriam absolutely did.
For weeks now photographers had taken to lurking outside the rear doors on Bruton Place, and she and the other girls had grown accustomed to being followed as they came and went. Usually the men just shouted questions at them, but more than once—it was always when she was walking alone—she’d been offered a bribe in return for details of the gown.
“A fiver for a picture, a tenner for a look inside,” the man might say, or “Throw me a bone, luv, I’ll make it worth your while.” She never so much as glanced at them. The only journalist in the world to whom she’d willingly talk, now, was Walter Kaczmarek—and only because he had promised never to ask her about the gown or her work at Hartnell.
It wasn’t only the junior staff who were feeling the pressure, for Miss Duley was forever confiding in Ann and Miriam about one crisis or another brewing upstairs. First there was the issue of the pearls for the dress and the difficulties in fetching them from America, including their nearly being seized by customs officers when Captain Mitchison presented ten thousand pearls for inspection. “He told them they were for the princess, and those wretches still gave him a hard time,” Miss Duley had fumed.
Then there were the awkward questions coming from the prime minister, who in Miss Duley’s opinion really ought to have better things to do, about the nationality of the silkworms whose cocoons had been transformed into the fabric they were embroidering. There was concern in certain quarters that enemy silkworms from Japan might have been used. Fortunately, Monsieur Hartnell was able to confirm the silkworms were of nationalist Chinese origin, and Mr. Atlee, so reassured, turned his attention elsewhere.
Perhaps he’d been distracted by the public’s anxiety over how the princess would find enough clothing coupons for her gown, and the resulting deluge of donations that women across Britain were posting to Buckingham Palace. Of course it was illegal to use someone else’s coupons, so all of them had been sent back with a thank-you note from some royal secretary. Sheer stupidity, Miriam had thought, but she’d wisely said nothing to anyone at Hartnell. They all seemed charmed by the idiocy of people giving up precious coupons to send to a princess who lived in a palace. What was next—people sending their butter and sugar rations so the bride and groom might have a larger wedding cake?
She and Ann had finished the bodice last week, and the sleeves, too, and now they had only the skirt to complete. Each panel, properly stretched, was large enough to allow room for six embroiderers, three to a side, and that was where she sat, with Ann across from her and Ethel at her left.
That morning they’d all had a good laugh in the cloakroom when someone had brought in a newspaper article that claimed Monsieur Hartnell was working them around the clock. Their days were busy, and they never lingered over their breaks or dinners as they might do in quieter periods, but the latest she had worked was half-past six, and that was only to get the bodice pieces finished so the sewing workroom might have them the following morning. There simply was no point in expecting them to work all hours, for too-long days wreaked havoc on everyone’s eyes and nerves and did nothing more, Miss Duley insisted, than ensure the following day’s work would suffer.
Even once the skirt panels were finished, they wouldn’t be able to rest, for they had to begin work on the train—all five meters of the thing. And she knew, from her experience with the sample motifs last month, that there was no rushing the work. The satin for the appliqué pieces was slippery, frayed all too readily, and couldn’t be basted or pinned for fear of leaving marks. Then, once applied, each appliqué had to be decorated with an eye-watering variety of embellishments. And they had to set each stitch with the knowledge that the reverse of their work might be clearly seen by anyone, for the train was transparent, and any sort of additional backing to the reverse of the appliquéd pieces would strain the delicate tulle.
It would have to be stretched on an enormous frame, with everyone working from the center to begin, and Miriam was already dreading it. She hated working with others at her elbows, for there was always someone who bounced her knee or dragged at the frame as if she were reclaiming her share of blankets from a sleeping bedmate. Worst of all, it was impossible to empty her brain of everything but the embroidery taking shape before her when a buzz of someone else’s chatter took up residence in her mind.
She much preferred to share a frame with Ann alone. Her friend was a comforting and steadying presence, and while they did talk on occasion, most of their days were spent in a companionable silence. They had time after work, after all, to sit at the kitchen table and chat about their day and draw in their sketchbooks.
Once a week at most, she stayed in London after work and had supper with Walter; but he was a busy man, and could rarely spare much time during the week, and she was anxious, too, to have some time to herself so she might think about the embroideries that had decided to colonize her thoughts.
Five large hangings, as big as she could manage, for there were five images in her mind, and waking or sleeping they never left her. She wasn’t yet certain how she would begin—would she create smaller panels and join them together? Would she make single figures and appliqué them onto a larger backing, then further embellish the whole?
It would come to her eventually. For now, she was content to experiment, using the linen Ann had so kindly given her, scraps from the workroom, and her own tentative flights of imagination. It was hard, at times, to ignore the disquieting voices that told her she was fooling herself, that she would empty herself into this misguided project, and when she finished, it would be to find that no one was interested. That no one on earth, apart from her, cared to know what had happened to those she loved.
The doubt pushed at her, woke her in the middle of the night, curdled the food in her stomach. But she was stubborn, and it became easier, after a while, to ignore all else and continue on. Worrying about what would become of her work once it was finished was a waste of time, she told herself. The act of creation was what mattered.
If she were to set aside her ideas now, if she were to turn her back on them, she would be abandoning her parents and grandfather and the millions who had been vilified, betrayed, tortured, murdered, erased. It was unthinkable. It was impossible.
Some mornings she woke, and she had been dreaming of the panel all night, had been watching herself work at it, a mere bystander to the act of creation. It was a relief, come morning, to set it aside for a matter of hours, have her quiet breakfast with Ann, walk to the station, and go to work. And then, once there, to lose herself in the familiar motifs of the princess’s wedding gown. Yet by the end of the day, every day, she longed to continue where she had left off the night before.
“Can I not help you with the chores?” she asked Ann one evening. Her friend was doing the mending, having insisted she was happy to do so.
“No need. The house is clean, the kitchen is tidy, the garden is weeded, and I’ve almost finished turning this cuff. Why shouldn’t you work on your embroidery? Isn’t that the mark of an artist, anyway? Someone who has an idea and can’t rest until they find a way to express it?”
“I am no artist—”
“Because you aren’t carving marble sculptures or painting oil portraits of politicians? Here—I want to show you something.”
Ann set aside her mending, took down a teacup and matching saucer from the highest shelf on the dresser, and placed them on the table. They were painted with scenes of the countryside, with shaggy cows in the foreground and a misty look to the landscape, and the edges of both the cup and saucer were gilded.
“These belonged to my grandmother. I loved them because of the Highland cows. She would take them off the shelf and hold them so I could get a better look, and when Nan died and left the cup and saucer to me I started to wonder. I mean, I never had a thought of selling them, but I did worry they might be too valuable to keep out.
“So I took them down to the antiques shop on Ripple Road, and the fellow there looked at the pieces and said they were Royal Worcester, and they were worth something but not a king’s ransom, which was a relief, since I’d have hated to tuck them away. He told me they were painted by a man called Harry Stinton. He said Harry Stinton was one of the best artists of the last hundred years. And you can’t tell me the paintings on this cup and saucer aren’t art, because they are.”
“And you tell me this because . . . ?”
“Because I think this, what you are doing here—this is art.”
“If that is true, then are we not all of us artists? Everyone who works for Miss Duley?”
“I don’t know about that. What we do takes a lot of skill, and a lot of practice, but nearly anyone can figure it out with some training. This, though”—and here Ann touched a finger to the square of embroidery on Miriam’s lap—“this is different. This is the sort of thing people will line up to see, and when they do it will change the way they see the world, and when they go away they won’t forget it.”
“I wish you would not say such things.”
“Fine. Forget I said them. What does Walter think?”
“I . . . I want to tell him. But I am afraid.”
“Why?”
“I have not yet told him of what happened,” Miriam confessed. “Before. In France. I want to tell him, but there is so much to say. I do not know where to begin.”
“You mean what happened to your family?”
“That. And after, as well.”
“What do you mean? I thought you hid from the Nazis.”
“I did. But it ate at me. My parents and grandfather had been taken, and I had done nothing. I wanted to act, to resist, but I was paralyzed. For so long I did nothing . . .”
“You were in mourning,” Ann whispered, her voice fractured by anguish.
“I wasn’t sure what to do. How to begin. But there was a woman at work, Marie-Laure, and I heard that she was involved with the resistance. One day we were alone in the atelier, and I went to sit next to her, and I whispered that my loved ones had been taken, and I wanted to do something. She said nothing. She did not even look at me.”
“And?”
“And the next day, as I was washing my hands, she came over as I finished, and told me where I might meet her. I went, and she was sitting with a man. Five minutes after I had left I remembered nothing of how he looked. He had that sort of face. He asked me why I wanted to help, and I told him it was not his concern. That it would be silly of me to trust a stranger. He nodded to her, and said Marie-Laure would tell me what to do.”
“And?” Ann asked again, spellbound by the tale.
“I carried messages. I would find them in my coat, in a secret pocket in the lining, and I would hide them in my room until Marie-Laure told me the address where I was to go. A café or a shop, or a certain bench in a park. From the beginning it was always the same man who met me. I never knew his real name. If we were questioned, I was to say he was my fiancé. Robert Thibault. We would meet and I would say hello and we would talk of the weather, or what I had eaten that day. Normal things. And then he would look at his watch and say he had to go. I only had to pass the letter to him, usually under the table, or I would slip it in his pocket. And then he would kiss me good-bye. It wasn’t very often. Every few weeks, no more.”
“You were caught, weren’t you?”
“Yes. We were betrayed. Someone else must have been captured, and likely tortured. We were arrested together. They searched my room, and even though they found nothing they did not release me. They were convinced of our guilt. The next day I was sent to the prison at Fresnes, and a few weeks later, when there were enough of us to fill a truck, I was sent to Ravensbrück.”
“When was this?” Ann’s face had gone pale, and she had wound her fingers together in her lap. She always did that when she was upset.
Miriam smiled ruefully. “The middle of June in 1944.”
“After D-Day.”
“They knew what was coming. The man who questioned me certainly did. I can still see him if I close my eyes. His spectacles were so dirty, and he kept cleaning them on the cuff of his shirt, but it only made them worse. He had such dark circles under his eyes, as if he had not slept for days and days.”
“I doubt he had.”
“I said nothing, I admitted nothing, but still he condemned me. He insisted that one way or another I was guilty of something, most likely of being a whore. It was not quite enough to be shot, but it was more than enough for Ravensbrück.”
“He didn’t know you were Jewish,” Ann guessed.
“No. In that, I suppose I was lucky.”
“What was it like there? I’ve read stories, but . . .”
How to describe the indescribable? “I was young, and strong, and once they discovered I could sew I was sent to a sweatshop where we made uniforms for Nazi officers. We had an easier time of it than those in the munitions factories, or those who were made to do hard labor outside. Or those who were forced to work in the brothels. That was the worst of all. Those women never lasted more than a few weeks.”
She stopped, waited until she could breathe again, until her pulse wasn’t hammering quite so loudly against her ears. “They had already begun gassing women when I got there. If you were old, or sick, or if you resisted them at all, they gassed you. At the end, the guards were panicking. They rounded us up, like farm animals being sent to market, and they shot anyone who couldn’t walk, and they made us march. Away from the Americans, away from the Soviets, away from anyone who might help us. My friends died around me as we marched, and in another few days I would have been dead, too.”
“Miriam.”
“We were liberated by some Americans. A few months later I was back in Paris, in a convalescent hospital, and once I was better, or at least well enough to get out of bed, I returned to Maison Rébé, and they gave me my job back.” She looked up and saw that her friend was crying. “Do not be sad. I am safe now. I am fine.” She very nearly believed it, too.
Ann nodded, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief she’d pulled from her sleeve. “It is an honor to call you my friend. Really, it is, and I’m sure Walter will feel the same way.”
“I know. I will tell him.”
And yet. Would it change things with him? Would he be disgusted by the months she had spent hiding away, terrified, mute, inert, after her family was taken? Or would he pity her? Nothing could be worse than his pity.
She glanced at her wristwatch; ten o’clock already, and far too late to ruin another night’s sleep with worries over her past and future. “It is late. Time for us to be in our beds.”
“You’re right.” Ann took the tea things to the sink and began to rinse them out.
“What of your Jeremy?” Miriam asked, suddenly aware that she hadn’t asked her friend a single question all evening. “Shall you see him again soon?”
“Next week. He’s quite good company, and he always has interesting stories to tell. Places he’s traveled or things that happened during the war. And he has beautiful manners, too. Never lets me pay for a thing.”
“Does he know where you work?”
“No. At least I don’t think he does. I haven’t said anything about it, and he hasn’t asked. I suppose he thinks I work in a shop or office. Not that it matters.”
“Why not?”
“This isn’t going anywhere. I mean, he’s handsome and interesting and I’ve had several nice evenings with him, but it’s never going to lead to anything more. I’d be an idiot to think otherwise. And it is fun, you know. It gives me a little peek into how the other half lives.”
“‘The other half’? Ah—one of your idioms. It does make sense, does it not? Although I doubt as many as half the people in this country live as well as he does. Do you remember the people at his table that night? There was no mistaking them for anything but aristocrats. They had that soft look about them.”
“They did at that. Right—it’s well past ten now, and we’ll both be in a state tomorrow if we don’t get to sleep soon.”
“Are you worried? About finishing on time?” Miriam asked.
“Didn’t you tell me, not even a month ago, that it was no different from any other gown? That we just had to work as we always do and we’d be fine?”
“Yes, but I had not realized how many people would care. Everyone is so anxious at work. I can tell they are.”
“We’ve survived rushes like this before. Not even a year ago the royal family was off to South Africa for weeks and weeks, and we had to turn out dozens of gowns and outfits for the queen and princesses. They needed so much that some of the work was given over to other designers. All told, we only had a month or so to get everything done, and we managed it then with time to spare.”
“How did you feel when you finished?”
“Exhausted. I could have slept for days. But I also felt so proud I thought I might burst. We’ll feel like that again when we see the princess in her wedding gown. I promise we will.”