The Gown(11)

Her slippers, she realized, were on the floor next to her bed; usually she remembered to tuck them under the covers before falling asleep. She gasped as she slid her feet inside, though the worst of the chill was absorbed by her socks. She was further disheartened by the telling plumes of vapor that rushed from her mouth and nose.

She slipped on her robe and made her way downstairs, stopping to collect a pint of slushy milk from the front step. In the kitchen, she stood at the sink for a long minute before trying the tap. Holding her breath, she opened it all the way. Nothing. The pipes were frozen again.

She and Milly had learned to keep the kettle full, for the only thing worse than frozen pipes in the morning was no water for tea. She set it to boiling, first filling a small bowl so she might wash her face and brush her teeth, and then hurried out to the WC. After the pipes had frozen for the first time, back in January, Milly had brought home an old-fashioned chamber pot from the shop where she worked. “Mr. Joliffe had been using it as a pot for his ostrich fern, but it died months ago and he said I could have it. The pot, not the dead fern.” It felt awfully undignified, having to use such a thing instead of a proper toilet, but it was better than enduring a full bladder all the way into London.

Back in the kitchen, Ann washed her hands with some of the water she’d set aside, then considered the matter of breakfast. There was a heel of stale bread, but it was only enough for two thin slices of toast; she’d leave it for Milly. Leftover porridge it was. It took only a minute or two to heat through, and was ready before the kettle had begun to boil. She added some cream from the top of the milk and, not bothering to sit, ate it up in a half-dozen bites.

The kettle was singing. She made up a pot of tea, using leaves she’d saved and reused twice before, and added an inch of water to the saucepan and bowl from her porridge. They could soak in the sink until she got home from work. The tea was a pallid shade of beige, and likely would get no browner. A splash of milk did little to improve the flavor, but it was hot, at least, and the mug took some of the awful chill from her hands.

Back upstairs she went, feeling her way quietly through the dark, for Milly didn’t have to be up for another half hour and it was unfair to wake her. She dressed quickly, her bedroom having grown no warmer, choosing the nicest of her work frocks and cardigans. Normally she wore a white coverall at work, but it was in the bag of things she and Milly sent out for laundering at Mrs. Cole’s every Monday. It was a luxury, paying for someone else to wash their clothes and linens, but with both of them working there was nothing else for it. Her small things she kept back, of course, as well as anything that was delicate or precious—Mrs. Cole did a fine job with sturdier items, but buttons and trim tended to vanish after a trip through her mangle.

There was a mirror on the wall, next to the electric sconce, and she stood before it now, hairbrush in hand. Last year she’d made the mistake of having a fringe cut into her hair. It hadn’t suited her one bit, and nearly ten months later it still wasn’t quite grown out. She clipped it back from her forehead, making sure the kirby grips crossed properly, and brushed out the rest of her hair until it was smooth and shining.

Her skin was too pale, and last summer’s freckles, which she rather liked, were all but gone. Against the pallor of her complexion, the gray-green of her eyes was all the more startling, and the color of her hair didn’t help at all. It was just a fraction too alarming to be a proper strawberry blond. Ginger—that’s what it was. Her mum had always said it looked like dried-out marmalade.

When she’d been young, her hair and too-bright eyes and even her freckles had made her miserable. The boys at school had never failed to tease her, and some of the girls had been even more unkind. Even her friends had suggested she try a fading cream on her skin, or consider bleaching her hair.

One boy had thought Ann was pretty, and had told her so. It had been the summer before the war, not long after her mum had died, and she’d been miserable, feeling out of place and out of sorts. Probably she ought to have stayed home from the dance. Even Frank and Milly, newly engaged and annoyingly happy in spite of the war, had given her a wide berth. But Jimmy had stayed at her side all evening, and the last time they’d danced together he’d bent his head and whispered into her ear.

“I think you’re lovely. I hope you don’t mind me saying so.”

Just thinking about that moment had been enough to make her smile for months, but after he’d been killed at Dunkirk, the memory had grown bittersweet. She’d barely known him—hadn’t known enough of the poor boy to properly mourn him—and yet his kind words had sung to her for years. Someone, once, had thought her lovely. Not pretty, but lovely, which had seemed somehow better. Deeper and truer, a compliment born of honesty rather than obligation.

For a short while, she’d fancied she was falling in love with him. They’d written to one another, after he’d joined up and been sent to France, but the letters had never plunged past rote formalities of weather and food. And then he’d been killed. At his memorial service, when Ann had introduced herself, his parents hadn’t known who she was.

She turned away from the mirror. What was the point in thinking about such things? She wasn’t the sort of woman to make anyone’s knees go weak, she never had been, and fretting about it would get her nowhere besides late for work.

At Milly’s door, she paused and knocked lightly. “Are you up?”