The Gown(24)

“I am so sorry,” she said. “So sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Miriam shook her head and tried to smile. “It is . . .”

“I only meant to say that the worst never happened here, did it? I remember, that first year of the war, being so frightened I could hardly sleep at night. It was all people talked about. How France had fallen and we were next. How it was a matter of time. And then the Blitz . . .”

“There are times I wake,” Miriam began, her voice so soft that Ann had to lean forward to hear her. The other girls were so awfully loud. “I wake, and there is that moment when everything is”—she twirled her hand to demonstrate—“not clear . . . ?”

“Fuzzy?”

“Yes. That is the perfect word. Fuzzy. And there are times, for a minute, my memories seem like a very bad dream, and I am slowly waking up. But I open my eyes, and I am truly awake, and then I know. I know in my heart it was not a dream.”

“I am sorry,” Ann said helplessly. What else was there to say? “Is it . . . is it better here? Do you like it in England?”

Miriam nodded. “I do. I was not sure, at first. The winter did not help, of course. But I do like it here.”

“I remember, the day we met, you said you were living in Ealing. Are you still there?”

“Yes. At a small pension—a boardinghouse. But I am not very fond of it. The woman who is the concierge—”

“The landlady?”

“Yes. She is not a nice woman. Yesterday she complained that she could not understand me. She said she hadn’t lived through the war just to listen to foreigners talking in . . . what did she call it? ‘Mumbo jumbo.’” At this, Miriam made a face, as if she had smelled something unpleasant.

“Oh, Miriam. That is awful. I am sorry.”

“You do not need to apologize. She is the one who is ignorant. Not you. Everyone here at Hartnell has been very pleasant to me.”

“Well, you can’t stay on there.” And then an idea came to her. Why on earth hadn’t she thought of it before? “I wonder,” she began, her heart racing a little, “if you might be interested in lodging with me? For years I shared a house with my sister-in-law, but she emigrated to Canada last month.”

Miriam seemed nonplussed. “You would wish for me to share with you?”

“I don’t see why not.” And then, to lighten the mood, “You don’t have any strange habits, do you? Opera singing? Sleepwalking?”

“No,” Miriam said, beginning to giggle. “I assure you I am very dull.”

“It is rather a long trip on the Tube,” Ann admitted. “But we have the whole house to ourselves, and a little garden, too. Do say you’ll at least come and have a look. Do you have any plans for this evening? No? Then come and see the house with me. I’m sure you’ll like it. And just think how lovely it will be to see the last of that awful landlady.”

“Would it be, ah . . . is it very expensive?” Miriam asked uneasily.

“I was going to charge fifteen shillings a week. Half my rent. Would you be able to manage that?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“Oh, good. I did ask some of the other girls when Milly first told me she was emigrating, but they all want to stay in London. And do you know, I was going to put a notice up tonight. This is so much better. I can’t tell you how relieved I am.”

The others were drifting back upstairs. “We had better go,” she said, and waited as Miriam drank the last of her tea. Then, her heart light, she followed the other woman up the steps and back to the embroidery workroom.





Chapter Eight


Miriam


After hearing Ann’s description of the length and tedium of the journey from Mayfair to Barking, Miriam had braced herself for a voyage of several hours’ duration, with perhaps a long walk along dusty country roads at the very end. The reality was rather less daunting: first a ride of nine stops on the Tube, as she had learned to call it, and then a short walk through the station at Mile End for the District line trains heading east.

“Before last year, when they opened the Central line extension, I’d walk over to Oxford Circus and get on a Bakerloo train to Charing Cross,” Ann said as they boarded. “But the District line platform was always packed out. Sometimes I’d wait half an hour or more until I could get on a train. This is ever so much easier.”

“How far is it now?”

“From here, I’d say about twenty minutes. So, altogether, about an hour? I hope you don’t mind.”

“An hour does not bother me at all. The train to Ealing is very often delayed, or sometimes it stops for no reason. At least on this train we can look out the window.”

It was nothing like the journey that had taken her to Ravensbrück. She’d had to stand the whole way, and she’d been half-dead from thirst and fright and exhaustion by the end, and then the woman next to her had fainted and an iron-faced guard had shot her in the head and warned the rest of them to give him no trouble.

She pushed away the memory. It was useless to think of such things, and Ann had begun to talk again. She really ought to be listening.

“—that there’s much to look at. Back gardens and coal yards, and not much else. When I was a girl . . .”