The Gown(4)

“A very small fire, then, and we’ll sit close, and I’ll read to you. I stopped at the newsagent’s on the way home and got the new People’s Friend.”

The fire Milly made was very modest indeed, but it warmed the sitting room by a degree or two. It was a pleasant way to end the week: sitting in her comfortable chair, her eyes closed, her feet warm at last, listening to one of the romantic short stories her sister-in-law loved so much.

Milly was too young for a life like this. She and Frank had only been married a matter of months before he’d been killed, one of those awful, senseless Blitz deaths that still upset Ann if she allowed herself to think about it. Her brother had been a fire-watcher, not a firefighter, but when the factory down the road had been hit, he hadn’t hesitated. He’d gone in, looking for survivors, and had never come out.

But Milly was still young, twenty-six to Ann’s twenty-five, and before she and Frank had married she’d been the sort of girl who loved to go to the pictures on a Friday night, or out dancing with friends, and would have turned up her nose at an evening spent reading aloud in front of the fire.

When was the last time Ann herself had gone out, for that matter? It wasn’t for lack of opportunity, for hardly a Friday went by that a group of girls from work didn’t go to one of the West End dance palaces. They always invited her, and she always said no, thanks, perhaps another time. It was a habit, one she’d acquired when her mother had been alive and would respond to her rare requests for an evening out with variations of the same reproachful lecture.

“Might as well throw the money away. Clothes, shoes, paint for your face, food and drink that’ll turn your stomach and your head, not to mention a shilling or more to get in,” she would say, counting off on the work-roughened fingers of an outstretched hand. “And for what? So you can hold up the wall with the rest of the plain girls?”

Her mum hadn’t said such things to hurt her, of course. She’d only meant to toughen her up. Make her aware of how pitiless the world could be, especially for plain girls. And she had been right, of course. There was little chance of anyone taking an honest interest in Ann, and it would be silly and self-indulgent to insist otherwise.

The same could not be said of Milly, however, who was young and pretty and never in her life had been described as plain. There was no reason Milly couldn’t go out and have some fun. All she needed was something to wear and a little encouragement from Ann.

The women who worked at Hartnell were allowed to borrow patterns for their own use, and even to use such scraps of fabric and trim that the workroom heads let them have, and from time to time Ann had gleaned enough material to reface the lapels on a blouse, or cover a set of buttons.

That’s what she would do. She would go to the next WI swap meet and find a frock for Milly that she could freshen up with some scavenged trim from work, and then she’d persuade her to go out dancing with some friends. Perhaps Milly might find a new beau. Perhaps she might aspire to a future that was a degree or two warmer and wider than a wanly flickering fire and the pages of People’s Friend.

The mantel clock sounded the hour. It was nine o’clock, the fire had faded to a few glowing crumbs, and suddenly Ann felt so tired she wasn’t certain how she’d manage to climb the stairs to her bedroom. At least she didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn the next morning.

“You go on up to your room,” she told Milly. “I’ll bring you a hot-water bottle to take the chill off the sheets.”

Alone in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to sing, Ann admired the pot of heather she’d brought home. In the spring she would plant it outside, for their house had a tiny back garden that had just enough room for one flower bed, tucked between the shed and the coal store. For most of the war it had been filled up with practical things like beans, carrots, marrows, and potatoes. The June after VE Day, though, she’d planted a handful of marigold seeds that Mr. Tilley down the street had given her, and they’d popped up again the next spring, and bit by bit she’d squeezed in more and more flowers, until she’d covered every square inch of soil with plants that did nothing more to earn their keep than give her pleasure.

Milly might scoff, but the heather was something to treasure. A gift from the queen herself, given in recognition of the work she had done. She’d baby it for the rest of the winter and then, if spring ever did come, she’d find a spot for the heather in her own garden. It was a long way from Balmoral to Barking, but her garden was a fine place for it to end up.

“You’ll be happy here,” she told the plant, letting her fingertips brush against its downy stems. And then, feeling a little silly at her flight of fancy, she filled her and Milly’s hot-water bottles, switched off the kitchen light, and went up to bed.





Chapter Two


Miriam


London

England

March 3, 1947

Her first impression would forever be the grayness of it all. It was late in the day, the half-seen sun withering by degrees as it sank in the western sky, and arrows of sleet were beating against the windows of the train. Outside she could make out a dull, leaden sort of countryside, its winter-bare fields and lonely cottages giving way slowly, almost mournfully, to the huddled buildings and tangled streets of a city. The city. London itself.

The train shunted from one track to another, then another, steadily losing speed, its engine groaning in a deeper, gloomier cadence. Soot-stained brick walls were her view now, relieved by the briefest glimpse of rushing water as they crossed a river. The Thames, she supposed. Slower and slower they moved, the train lumbering forward, until with one last, shuddering lurch it reached the end of the platform and halted, belching out its ire in great huffs of smoke and steam.