September 1, 2016
Heather was awake at dawn the next morning. Daniel had walked her back to the hotel after their late afternoon coffee, and after promising to talk to his grandmother, he and Heather had exchanged cheek kisses as if they were both French or, more accurately, unsure of how to behave when a handshake was too formal, a hug was too touchy-feely, and a straight-up kiss was just too much.
True to his promise, he’d called that evening.
“Mimi is keen to meet you. We thought ten o’clock tomorrow would be a good time. Her flat is on East Heath Road in Hampstead, just around the corner from the Tube. The building is called Wells Manor and the name on the buzzer is Kaczmarek. I’ll email you all of that, as well as a map.”
“Thank you. I know you think this is no big deal, but it really is. At least to me it is.”
“You’re welcome. I was also wondering if you might like to go out for dinner with me. I would’ve asked you earlier, but then I began to worry you might feel I was taking over your holiday.”
“Not at all. If anything, you’ve saved it. Were you thinking tomorrow?”
“Unfortunately, I have a department meeting at six and they usually drag on forever. Would Friday night suit you?”
“It would,” she said, feeling very glad he couldn’t see how she was bouncing around her hotel room.
“Then it’s a date. We can sort out the details tomorrow—and do let me know how things go with Mimi. Ring me anytime.”
HEATHER HAD LET herself get so starry-eyed over her date with Daniel that she’d forgotten to ask him what sort of gift she ought to take to his grandmother. It didn’t seem right to show up at Miriam’s empty-handed, but she could hardly hand over a bottle of wine at ten in the morning. Food was tricky, since Heather had no idea if Miriam had any allergies or was diabetic or simply didn’t like certain things. But she had a feeling that flowers would be a safe bet.
Dermot was at the front desk when she headed out, and was able to recommend a good florist around the corner from the hotel. “Ask for one of their hand-tied posies,” he advised. “I get one for my mum every Christmas and she loves them.”
Armed with the posy, which looked and smelled like it had come out of Nan’s garden, though its thirty-five-pound price tag would have horrified her grandmother, Heather found her way across London to Hampstead station. According to the map Daniel had sent her, she had only to walk down the hill a little before heading east to Wells Manor, one of several blocks of century-old mansion flats that overlooked Hampstead Heath.
The manor’s redbrick exterior was patterned with zigzagging rows of a light-colored stone, the overall effect making the building look, rather comically, as if it were wearing an argyle sweater. An ancient intercom system was set into the wall of the vestibule, and she found the button for Kaczmarek without trouble; there were only sixteen apartments in the entire place.
Miriam answered right away. “Hello? Is that Heather? Do come up. I am on the top floor. I shall wait by the lift.”
The inner doors unlocked with a click, and Heather walked into an entrance hall that was impressive and homey at once, with polished oak paneling, burnished brass fixtures, and a tile floor with an intricately patterned border. An elevator was straight ahead, the broad flight of the central staircase curling around it. It had a scissoring gate that passengers had to pull shut behind them, and in every movie Heather had ever seen with such an elevator, it ended up getting stuck. The stairs it was.
She was hot and sweaty and out of breath by the time she got to the top floor, and for a moment, just as she came eye to eye with Miriam for the first time, she fretted that the other woman might disapprove of her. Her sundress was wrinkled, her makeup was melting away, and her nose told her that the all-natural deodorant she’d swiped on an hour before had failed her entirely. It didn’t help that Miriam was the picture of effortless French chic in a white linen tunic and slim, ankle-length trousers. Even the silk scarf she’d knotted around her neck was perfect.
“It is so nice to meet you,” she said, still puffing a little, and held out the posy.
“What a lovely surprise,” Miriam said, and sniffed at the flowers appreciatively. “But come here first.” She gathered Heather into a fierce, heartfelt embrace, only loosening it enough so she might kiss her on both cheeks. “At last, at last. Do you know, I hardly slept last night? I was so eager to meet you. And now you are here and you look so much like Ann. The same pretty hair, and the same eyes, you know. But let us not linger here—come with me and we will have some coffee, and I will put your beautiful flowers in water.”
Miriam led her into the flat, and even though they were in an apartment building it felt like a big old house, with high ceilings and a wide hallway and parquet floors the color of maple syrup. The walls were closely hung with oil paintings, brightly colored modern prints, and photographs of a gaggle of children at different ages, all of them evidently related in some fashion or another. In one picture, Miriam stood arm in arm with a tall, distinguished man with a shock of white hair and pale blue eyes—Daniel’s eyes, Heather realized—and she was holding up an enameled medal in a velvet case.
“That was taken at Buckingham Palace,” Miriam said. “Such a happy day.”
Heather nodded, because she wasn’t sure what to say, and then they were in the kitchen, and instantly she felt at home. There was an enormous French gas stove, the kind that had brass handles and enameled blue doors, and the counters were made of marble, and there was a set of copper pots hanging from a rack on one wall, and on the other was a dresser piled high with mismatched blue-and-white china. On the windowsill above the sink there were pots of herbs and a carved wooden rooster with a quizzical expression on his face.
Miriam went to a compact espresso maker on the counter next to the stove and switched it on. “My daughter bought this machine for me,” she explained. “She was worried I would burn myself on my old stovetop espresso maker. It is tremendously convenient but the coffee is not, I think, quite as good. Would you like a cappuccino?”
“Yes, please.”
After the espresso machine had begun to hum away, Miriam took a small china jug from a low shelf on the dresser, filled it with water, and set the posy inside. “There. So lovely.” Then she turned to Heather.
“You must know that it is one of the great regrets of my life that I lost touch with your grandmother. For a time we were very close, you see. We shared a house for much of 1947, the year I came to England, but she emigrated to Canada at the end of the year. I never heard from her again.”
“She just left?” Heather asked, dumbfounded yet again by another of Nan’s long-ago decisions. “Even though you were friends?”
Miriam nodded, her expression bittersweet. “It was a long time ago, and in those days Canada seemed very far away. It was not unusual to fall out of touch with people, you know, and we had no Facebook or Google. And I . . .”
The espresso machine began to sputter, and Miriam turned and fussed with the buttons before retrieving the cups she’d set beneath. “Would you mind taking these through to the sitting room? I almost forgot about the biscuits. Beautiful sablés from my favorite patisserie.”
The sitting room was large and bright, with one wall taken up entirely by three enormous bay windows. Bookshelves rose to the ceiling on either side of the fireplace, and opposite, out of reach of the sun, an embroidered panel hung from a scrolling wooden valance. It was as wide as the sofa below but half as high, and the view it depicted was a twin to the one from the sitting room’s windows: a green, sloping hill woven through with walking paths and ancient woods, the sky above a clear and limitless blue. Only just seen, in the far distance, was the familiar silhouette of London’s skyline.
“It is rather out-of-date,” Miriam said, nodding apologetically at the embroidered panel. “When I made it forty years ago, the church spires were all I noticed. Now it is nothing but skyscrapers. Yet I still love the view. We both did, Walter and I.”
“He was your husband?” Heather asked.
“Yes. For forty-eight years. He died twenty years ago. At his desk, pen in hand, exactly as he would have wished.”
“I am so sorry.”
“It has been a long time. And yet, even now I am surprised when I wake in the night and he is not there. I suppose I shall never get used to it.”
They sat in silence for a moment, and Heather sipped at her coffee and nibbled at the edge of a cookie. How should she begin? She had so many questions—
“She never told us anything,” she said abruptly, her voice a degree too loud, too sharp, for the sunny room and their tentative friendship.
But Miriam didn’t seem to mind. “It does not surprise me at all,” she said.
“My entire life I thought she was a shopkeeper. She sold yarn and knitting needles and buttons. Not once did she ever mention that she’d worked on the queen’s wedding dress. I mean—I’m not wrong about that, am I?”
“You are not wrong. Some of the most beautiful embroidery on Princess Elizabeth’s gown was your grandmother’s work. She was exceptionally talented, and she was very, very kind to me when I first came to England.” Miriam smiled rather tremulously. “She was my first friend here.”
“I know she was upset about my grandfather and being widowed and all, but . . .” Miriam had smoothed out her expression and was examining the crumbs on her plate. “Oh, boy,” Heather said. “Was she married when you knew her?”
Miriam looked her in the eye. “No.”
“But she had my mom in 1948, so she must have been involved with . . .”
“She was. Briefly.”
“Wow. Just . . . wow.” Of all the things she’d expected to learn today, the fact that Nan had been a single mother had not been one of them. Never mind that it actually made a weird kind of sense. “Times were different then, I guess.”
“They were. And such a thing was more complicated, I think, than it would be today. Perhaps we should begin by your telling me what you know. Then I will tell you what I know.”
“Okay. I guess I don’t actually know all that much. She only ever said that her parents had died when she was young, that her brother was killed in the Blitz, and that she came to Canada at the end of 1947. I do remember her saying the snow wasn’t that much of a shock because the previous winter in England had been so bad. And that was about it. She never talked about my grandfather, not even to my mom. We just assumed he had died. And there weren’t any pictures of him anywhere. I did ask her, once. She had photographs up of her parents and brother, but not my grandfather, and it made me curious.”
“What did she say?”
“She just changed the subject. Not in a mean way. She just said something like, ‘Let’s not waste the day talking about things that happened a long time ago,’ and that was that.”
“Did she ever speak of her old life in England?”
Heather shook her head. “Never. The only person who knew her from before was her sister-in-law, Milly. But she died when my mom was still young.”
“And of her work at Hartnell?”
“Nothing. I only started figuring things out after she died in March. My mom was going through Nan’s things and she found this set of embroidered flowers, and my name was on the box. ‘For Heather,’ Nan had written. As soon as we saw them we knew they were something special. I brought pictures if you’d like to see.”
“Yes—yes, of course. Let me fetch my spectacles.”
Heather moved her chair to sit alongside Miriam’s, and she set the stack of photographs on the tea table, and they looked through them together.
“Oh, yes. I remember these. I had forgotten how pretty they were.”
“What were they for? Were they samples of some kind?”
“Indeed they were. We made them for the princess and the queen, to ensure they approved of the motifs. I had one of them, I believe, for there were six or eight in total, but I haven’t seen it in years. I do hope I haven’t lost it.”
“What about the EP in the corner—could that be someone’s initials?”
“It is. ‘Elizabeth Principessa.’ For the bride.”
“Did you ever meet her?”
“Yes, although it was more a case of seeing her. Certainly I was not introduced. She and her mother—the Queen Mum, as you would know her—came for a visit before the wedding, along with Queen Mary and some of the other royal ladies. We were all quite bouleversées about it, but Ann was calm. Nothing ever seemed to fluster her.”
“Did you go to the wedding? When I was trying to learn about the gown, I read that some of the people who worked on it were invited to the ceremony.”
“No, although I was at Buckingham Palace on the morning of the wedding. In case of any last-minute disasters with any of the gowns we had made. But your grandmother was invited to Westminster Abbey, and Miss Duley, too. The woman in charge of our workroom.”
“Nan went to the royal wedding and she never told me?” Had she ever known anything about her grandmother? What, between them, had been real?
“No, ma belle. Do not be upset with her. Ann had her reasons for not speaking of the past, and it was a usual thing, in those days, to keep our secrets. It astonishes me, you know, the way you young people are so honest about everything. Every moment of grief or trauma or loss, laid bare for all to see on your Facebook and Twitter.”
The phone, which sat on a desk a few feet away, began to ring. “I shall let the machine answer for me,” Miriam said, and offered Heather the plate of sablés.
“Allô, Mimi? It’s Nathalie. I feel so bad, ’cause I just looked at my calendar and I know Ava and I are supposed to go see the queen’s dresses at the palace with you, but the tickets are for the same time as our exam. It’s that summer course we’re both taking, and I—”
“If you will excuse me,” Miriam said. “The poor child will wear herself out with apologies.” Heather would have offered to bring over the phone, but it was an old-fashioned one that was attached to the wall.
“Nathalie? Yes, I am here. I am having coffee with a friend. No, no. It is quite all right. I am certain I can find someone. Yes. And perhaps we can see about getting tickets again at the end of the summer? Of course. Toi aussi, ma belle.”
Miriam set down the receiver and returned to the tea table. “I do apologize. As you heard, that was one of my granddaughters. I was supposed to take her and her best friend to the summer opening at Buckingham Palace tomorrow, but they have an exam.” And then, fixing her bright eyes on Heather, “Would you like to come with me?”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. It will give you a chance to see the gown itself, and the state rooms are certainly worth seeing. The tickets are for one o’clock in the afternoon. Does that suit you?”
She wouldn’t have objected if they’d been for five o’clock in the morning. “It does.”
“Wonderful. I shall ask Daniel to join us. Such a lovely boy. I shall miss him very much when he goes to America.”
“America? Doesn’t he live here in London?”
“He does, but he is going to New York City for a year to teach at one of their universities. I gather it is a very great honor for him to have been invited.”
“I’m sure it is,” Heather said dutifully.
“New York and Toronto are not very far from one another, are they?” Miriam asked, her eyes sparkling with mischief.
“They are not, but I hardly know Daniel. I wouldn’t want to presume—”
“It would make me very happy if you were to become friends. That is all.”
“Okay,” Heather acceded. She really had only just met the man, and no matter how much she liked both him and his grandmother she wasn’t about to start picking out an engagement ring.
Longing to change the subject, she returned to the problem of the tickets for Buckingham Palace. “Are you sure I can’t pay you back? I tried to buy one, but they were sold out.”
“Of course not. Consider it, instead, a partial repayment of the kindness your grandmother once showed me. She helped to convince me I should begin work on my embroideries, you see.”
“The Vél d’Hiv ones?”
“Yes. She was the first person, in all my life, to tell me that I was an artist. And I never had the chance to thank her.”