September 4, 2016
Excited as she was to have been invited to Miriam’s reception, the question of what to wear had concerned Heather, who hadn’t anything more formal than a sundress in her suitcase. When her panic level could still be classified as low grade she’d texted Tanya, who had promptly replied with the name and address of a boutique in Soho and firm instructions on what to do once she got there.
Ask for Micheline. Tell her about the event. Buy what she tells you to buy. Stop freaking out. Have fun. xoxo
She’d followed Tanya’s advice to the letter, and had emerged with a black dress in some kind of silky fabric that made her feel like a movie star when she put it on, a pair of heels that were a solid two inches higher than her usual shoes but looked sensational, and a necklace that reminded her of chain mail but was actually a kind of crocheted silver lace.
Daniel picked her up at a quarter to six, and he looked just as good in a suit and tie as he did in jeans. They took a taxi to the Tate Modern, and the driver, after some consultation with Daniel, took the long way round so they wouldn’t get caught up in traffic. At some point they crossed a bridge, and the traffic seemed to ease a bit, and then the driver was pulling to a stop at the side of an enormous brick building that looked more like a warehouse or factory than a museum.
She let her gaze roam from the building’s exterior to the crowds of people still milling around outside, and that’s when she noticed the gigantic banners hanging from the largest of the museum’s facing walls.
MIRIAM DASSIN
COLLECTED WORKS
UNTIL 31 DECEMBER
They walked around the perimeter of the building until they reached the entrance for the Boiler House wing, and even though the museum was about to close they were waved inside after Daniel showed them his invitation. Although Miriam’s artworks were being shown on the third-floor exhibition space, the reception itself was two floors up, in the members’ bar.
The reception had only begun a few minutes before, but already there were at least a hundred people milling around. Waiters were circulating with plates of hors d’oeuvres and bottles of champagne for anyone who needed a top-up, and a handful of children had been installed at a table loaded with art supplies and bowls of baby carrots and mini pretzels.
“My brother’s children,” Daniel explained. “Along with two strays I don’t recognize. The little girl is his youngest, Hannah, and a particular favorite of Mimi’s.”
“For someone who is so private, your grandmother has a lot of friends.”
“She does,” he agreed, “but they respect her reticence, and the Tate people have accepted this is the most they’ll get from her. She’s allowing them to take some photographs, but she’s asked them not to film her remarks.”
“She’s giving a speech?”
He collected two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter and handed one to Heather. “She said she would, but I’ll check in on her later. I can always offer up a round of thanks if she’s feeling shy. Right—brace yourself. Here comes my family. You might want to drink your champagne while you still have a chance.”
In a matter of minutes she was introduced to Sarah, Daniel’s mother, a younger and somewhat sterner version of Miriam; Nathan, his father, who seemed to be enjoying his son’s discomfort at being the momentary center of attention; Ben and Lauren, his brother and sister-in-law; David and Isaac, his mother’s younger brothers; and assorted spouses and cousins and family friends who were honorary aunts and uncles. “The lines between friend and family are always a bit blurry in my mind,” Daniel whispered in her ear.
It seemed that someone, presumably Daniel, had told his parents and siblings about Nan and her connection to Miriam, and apart from condolences on her grandmother’s death and the standard sort of inquiries about her trip and hotel, they didn’t bombard her with too many questions. She likely had Daniel to thank for that, too.
They probably noticed that he’d been holding her hand when they walked in, and that he looked to her every few minutes, no matter where in the room she was, as if he was making sure she was fine and not trapped in a tedious conversation, but they were too nice to say anything about it.
Daniel took her outside to the terrace, which had incredible views of St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Thames, and that’s where they found Miriam. She was talking with a pair of young women, and Daniel greeted one of them with a quick hug before making introductions.
“Heather, this is my cousin Nathalie and her friend Ava. It was their badly timed exam that meant you and I were able to visit the palace the other day.”
Miriam was wearing a beautiful coat that was embroidered with interweaving ribbons of every color imaginable, and it was either something she had made herself or some kind of couture marvel from Paris. Heather kissed her on both cheeks, and she listened to Nathalie and Ava talk of their summer course at university, and it was hard, at times, to keep her attention on Daniel’s cousin and her friend because the view across the river was so distracting.
After ten or fifteen minutes had passed, someone from the museum sidled up to Miriam and asked if she was still interested in addressing her guests. She nodded, and Daniel smiled at his grandmother and took her arm to escort her inside.
Miriam accepted a microphone from the museum employee and went to stand, alone, in the middle of the room, and by then everyone, even the children, had fallen silent.
“Good evening. I will not take long, for it is no secret that I much prefer to express myself through my work alone. It is also the case that an excess of silence may be interpreted as rudeness or ingratitude, and so I wish to tell you that I am very grateful for your friendship and love, and that I am deeply honored to have my work displayed here, in one of the world’s greatest museums of art.”
Miriam thanked those who had put together the exhibition, and she acknowledged her children and their families, and then she paused, her eyes shining.
“I have earnestly tried to never play favorites among my offspring, but if you will allow me, just this once, to single one of them out for special praise, I shall do so now. My grandson Daniel Friedman is the reason I stand before you now. No, my dear boy, do not shake your head. I shall praise you whether you like it or not.
“My Daniel is a seeker of truth, a historian, and in that regard he follows in the footsteps of my beloved Walter. He had to convince me to be interviewed, and I will admit it took some time for him to prevail”—at this everyone present began to laugh—“and then, once I had been persuaded, he held my hand as I spoke of long-lost friends and relatives. As I remembered.”
Miriam dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief she pulled from her sleeve and waited for the applause to end, and then she beckoned Heather forward.
“Yes, yes—you, ma belle. Come and stand next to me.” She took hold of Heather’s hand. “This is my friend Heather Mackenzie. Many years ago her grandmother, Ann Hughes, was also my friend. When I first came to England, in that dark winter of 1947, I knew no one. I had no friends here. So Ann decided to become my first friend. She befriended me, and she gave me a place to live, and when I first began to dream of the Vél d’Hiv embroideries she encouraged me. She believed I was an artist before I dared to believe it myself. She was a true friend, and it is a very great regret to me that we were separated, and that is why I wish to thank you, Heather, for coming to find me, and for standing at my side tonight. My heart is full.”
With that, Miriam handed the microphone back to the waiting museum employee, and she held out her arms so that little Hannah, who had been waiting impatiently, could run up and give her an enormous hug. Heather inched away, pleading the need for a glass of water to one well-wisher, then asking the location of the ladies’ room from another, and without too much trouble she was able to escape.
“Excuse me,” she asked a passing waiter. “What’s the best way to get to the exhibition? Can I take those stairs?”
“Certainly. Two floors down and then follow the signs.”
She hurried down to the third floor, urgency lending her speed, and walked straight to the gallery, at the very far end of the exhibition space, which held the Vél d’Hiv embroideries. It was darkened, quiet, and empty, apart from a single guard standing sentinel in the far corner.
Five embroidered panels ringed the room, each about six feet across and nine feet high. Lights were trained on the artworks, leaving the rest of the gallery in shadow, and apart from several introductory paragraphs on a printed stand, and a single line of text to the left of each embroidery, the surrounding walls were blank.
Heather moved to the first of the panels, Un dîner de Chabbat. A Sabbath dinner. A group of people, a family, stood around a table laden with food, and the oldest of the men held high a silver cup. The colors of the embroidery were extraordinarily vibrant, as if it had been illuminated from within, and the delicately rendered faces were beautiful in their joy.
On to the second work, Le Rassemblement. The roundup. Some of the people from the first panel were being pushed down a narrow street, rifles at their backs. Their tormentors were in uniform, though they looked more like police officers than soldiers, and several wore the noxious emblems of Nazi Germany on their jackets and hats. At either side of the embroidery passersby looked on, men and women and children alike, their faces blank.
A figure at the center of the panel caught, and held, her attention. It was a woman from the Sabbath dinner, and she was turning back, reaching for someone, or perhaps she was warning them. The entire panel, Heather suddenly realized, was devoid of color, or rather so bleached of color, set against the first of the embroideries, that it appeared monochrome. The world had been reduced to brown and gray, black and white, and only the stark, sullen yellow of the Stars of David, neatly affixed to the family’s coats, broke free of the deadened palette.
Then Le Vélodrome d’Hiver, the third panel. The setting was a twisted blob of an arena, its bleachers and field obscured by the huddled figures of hundreds, perhaps even thousands of people. Those at the back were silhouettes, hardly more, but the people in the foreground were minutely detailed. In her every line of stitching, every subtle change of color, Miriam Dassin had captured their weariness, their hunger, their fear.
Again Heather recognized the figures at the center of the panel: the elderly man, the woman, and a second man, taller than the others, his eyes dark with sorrow. He was embracing his loved ones, bending protectively over them. It was all that had been left to him.
Le Voyage à l’est. The journey east. A train arched across the fourth tapestry, its farthest carriages all but unseen in the gloom, only the train wasn’t made up of passenger carriages but cattle cars, their slatted wooden sides as weathered and barren as the empty landscape through which they moved. Heather could see nothing of the cars’ interiors, nothing that confirmed there were living, feeling, suffering people within, but she knew they were there. She knew it down to her bones.
And then to Au-delà. Beyond. This, the final panel, was drenched with color, its vivid hues so startling after the monochrome of its predecessors that Heather found herself blinking in surprise. In the foreground of the panel was an archway, its crumbling stones blanketed with a tangle of roses in full, bounteous, exuberant bloom, and beyond was the family, walking hand in hand, their faces upturned in wonderment. Surrounding them was a garden, and it reminded her of Nan’s flower beds with their old-fashioned flowers, only this garden was larger and wilder, its every petal, leaf, and branch a work of glorious perfection.
There was a bench in the middle of the gallery, and Heather now sat and stared at the embroideries, one after the other, turning and turning. It was impossible to look away.
“Have you found her yet?” It was Miriam. How had she known Heather would come here?
“I wasn’t looking for anyone. I just came down to see the embroideries.”
“What do you think?”
“I feel like I could stare at them for days, and even then I’d still be trying to figure them out,” Heather said, wincing inwardly at her feeble response. People had written entire books about these embroideries, and that was her answer?
But Miriam only nodded. As if she approved of Heather’s response. “Thank you. Just now I asked about Ann. I wanted to know if you had found her. She is there in the first panel, you know.”
“Really? But how . . . ?”
Heather approached Un dîner de Chabbat, and she searched the faces, one after the other. “Is that her? The woman at the back? I can’t believe I didn’t notice before.”
“Well, you never knew Ann when she was that age.”
“I suppose. And I always forget that she had red hair. It was white by the time I came along.”
“I placed her among my family, along with some other friends. They became my family after my own was taken from me.”
Heather stared and marveled and tried, unsuccessfully, to smother an unexpected wave of sadness. “I so wish Nan had known. She’d have pretended to be embarrassed, but secretly she’d have loved it. I know she would.”
“I agree. Come back and sit down, my dear. I have something to tell you, and I also have something to give you. We haven’t much time before everyone else barges in and fills the air with their chatter.”
“Is it all right if I ask you something first? Actually two somethings. Otherwise I think I’ll lose my nerve.”
“Go on.”
“I was wondering, first of all, if you remember the name of the man Nan was seeing. The man who I think was probably my grandfather.”
There was a long pause. “Jeremy,” Miriam said at last, her voice edged with disdain. “I cannot recall his last name.”
“What did he look like?” Not like Mom, Heather prayed. Not like me.
“I only met him the once, but I remember that he was tall, with fair hair. Blue eyes. But there was something too . . . how should I put it? Too smooth about him. Too easy.”
“Did she love him?”
“In the beginning, I think, she may have been infatuated with him. She may even have thought she loved him. But that did not last. Not after . . .”
“After what?”
Miriam’s expression became unsure. Hesitant. “He hurt her, and the pain of it went very deep.”
“It must have been so upsetting.” To think of Nan being hurt, even though it had happened so long ago, tore at her heart. Never mind it had happened decades and decades ago and Nan was dead and, very likely, that Jeremy asshole, too. Heather still ached for her grandmother.
“It was, but your nan was a strong woman. Never did I know her to feel sorry for herself. Never.”
“Is that why she left? Because she was pregnant with my mom?”
“Yes. She could think of no other way to protect her child. It was considered a shameful thing, in those days, to be an unwed mother, and she could not bear the thought of her child suffering in any way. So she left for Canada, and she never looked back. We said good-bye, and I never saw or heard from her again.”
“Didn’t it hurt your feelings? She was your best friend, wasn’t she?”
“She was, but I knew it was for the best. At least, that is how it seemed at the time.”
“Did you never wish to see her again?”
“Oh, yes. I missed her terribly. But the years passed so quickly, and after a while I could not imagine how we should begin again. I expect she felt the same way.”
“Okay,” Heather said, though none of it really seemed okay to her, not least because she was almost totally certain that Miriam had told her only part of the story. How, exactly, had that Jeremy guy hurt Nan? Had he hurt her feelings—broken her heart? Or had Miriam been speaking in a literal sense? Just thinking about it was enough to turn her stomach.
“What of your second question? Your second ‘something,’ as you put it?”
“Oh, right. It’s a long story but I’ll try to boil it down to the essentials. I was talking with Daniel about my job, which I actually lost not so long ago, and how I wanted to try something new.”
“You are a journalist, are you not? Just like my Walter.”
“I’m not sure I’d ever dare to compare myself to someone like him. But thank you for even suggesting it.”
“Are you still a journalist?”
“I am, I guess. I lost my job at the magazine, and that got me thinking about what I really want to do. How I want to write about things that actually matter to me. So I told Daniel I wanted to write about the work Nan did at Hartnell, and what it was like to be an embroiderer and to work on the queen’s wedding dress. Only I can’t ask Nan about it, and I haven’t been able to find anyone else who was there, except, um . . .”
“Me.”
“Yes. I know you don’t give interviews, and I respect that, I do. Only I’m not sure how to write it without you.”
Miriam set her hands atop Heather’s, and the cool weight of them was like a drink of water on a humid July day. “Of course I will help you. That is what I was going to say.”
“Did Daniel tell you already?”
“Yes. I think he was hoping to ensure I would not refuse you. Such a dear boy.”
“And you’re fine with talking about your time at Hartnell? You’ve never discussed it publicly before.”
“Would you believe that I did? Only a few times, in interviews when I was just beginning to become known, but none of the people asking questions—none of the men, I should say—seemed to care. The better story, in their eyes, was that I had appeared out of nowhere, a sort of phoenix rising from the ashes of the war. And so my having trained and worked as an embroiderer for many years was at odds with their description of my overnight success. In any case, I stopped giving interviews after that.”
“Despite being married to a journalist like Walter Kaczmarek?”
“Despite that. We agreed that it wouldn’t be right for him, or his magazine, to run stories about me, and the only journalists I knew and trusted were the people who worked for him.”
“Didn’t you ever want to tell your side of the story?”
“But I did. It is there for anyone to see—there in my work.”
They sat in silence for a moment, and just as Heather was beginning to feel a little steadier and calmer, another worry descended upon her.
“Do you think Nan would mind? I won’t go into anything about her personal life. About that awful Jeremy or having to leave England. But would she be okay with my writing about the two of you and how you were friends? How you worked on the gown together?”
“She put your name on the box with the embroideries, did she not? She saved them all those years, and she left them for you to find, and if she had truly wished to shut the door on her time at Hartnell I believe she would have destroyed them long ago.”
“But she didn’t.”
“She did not, and you were the one who saw the ray of light peeking through, and you were the one to open the door. It is past time that she, along with all of us who made the gown, be recognized for our work. And I will help you do it.”
“Thank you.” Relief clogged Heather’s throat, and something that felt like joy, too, at the chance to learn more of Nan and her life and the work she had done.
Miriam patted Heather’s arm, and then she reached for her handbag. “I also have something for you. Do you remember the sprigs of white heather that Ann had the idea of adding to the train? This is the sample she made up for Monsieur Hartnell. I wish for you to have it.”
As she was talking, Miriam pulled a small parcel from her bag and gave it to Heather. Inside, beneath several layers of tissue paper, was a square of silk about the size of a cocktail napkin, and embroidered upon it was a sprig of heather. The same kind of heather that Nan had always grown in her garden.
“I remember the day she told Monsieur Hartnell about her idea for the heather,” Miriam said fondly. “She was inspired, she said, by a pot of white heather that the queen had given her. The present queen’s mother, that is. I believe Ann brought it with her when she emigrated to Canada.”
“She did. It was all over her garden, and when she sold the house my mom and I kept some of it.”
“It lives on?” Miriam asked wonderingly, tears in her eyes.
“It does. Maybe I could send you some? Only I have a feeling I’d be breaking about a hundred laws.”
“It is no matter. To know it is there—oh, Heather. That alone is enough.”