The Gown(60)
“What about romance? Love?”
“That’s for beautiful princesses in palaces. Not for me. Those stories are never about women like me.”
Chapter Seventeen
Miriam
September 15, 1947
No one at Hartnell would dare say so, but Miriam was beginning to worry they wouldn’t finish in time.
There. She’d admitted it.
Last week Miss Duley had announced that Princess Elizabeth would be in London for a few days at the very end of September. “Mr. Hartnell and Mam’selle are expecting to be summoned for a fitting of the wedding gown while the princess is in London. Working backward from Monday the twenty-ninth, when she returns from Balmoral, we shall need to have all the principal embroidery finished on the gown by Monday the twenty-second.”
That had left them with ten working days—and now, a week on, only five days remained, and the atmosphere in the workroom was one of grimly focused determination. They all knew there was no question of not finishing in time—but what if they didn’t? What would happen then? It wasn’t as if they could ring up Buckingham Palace and ask Princess Elizabeth to rearrange her calendar because the women in the embroidery workroom at Hartnell had been slow at their work.
She’d assumed, when they’d begun work on the gown, that nothing much would change. They made clothes for famous women all the time; had been making clothes for the queen for years and years. Monsieur Hartnell had been written about in magazines and newspapers, and clips of his fashion shows were often included in newsreels. But then Ruthie had come running into the cloakroom one morning, only days after they’d begun, and she’d been waving one of the morning newspapers.
“Look—just look at this. Someone’s added up the number of people who’ll be listening to the wedding on the wireless, plus everyone who’ll see the pictures in the papers and magazines, and it’s not just millions but hundreds of millions of people. Can you believe it?”
Miriam absolutely did.
For weeks now photographers had taken to lurking outside the rear doors on Bruton Place, and she and the other girls had grown accustomed to being followed as they came and went. Usually the men just shouted questions at them, but more than once—it was always when she was walking alone—she’d been offered a bribe in return for details of the gown.
“A fiver for a picture, a tenner for a look inside,” the man might say, or “Throw me a bone, luv, I’ll make it worth your while.” She never so much as glanced at them. The only journalist in the world to whom she’d willingly talk, now, was Walter Kaczmarek—and only because he had promised never to ask her about the gown or her work at Hartnell.
It wasn’t only the junior staff who were feeling the pressure, for Miss Duley was forever confiding in Ann and Miriam about one crisis or another brewing upstairs. First there was the issue of the pearls for the dress and the difficulties in fetching them from America, including their nearly being seized by customs officers when Captain Mitchison presented ten thousand pearls for inspection. “He told them they were for the princess, and those wretches still gave him a hard time,” Miss Duley had fumed.
Then there were the awkward questions coming from the prime minister, who in Miss Duley’s opinion really ought to have better things to do, about the nationality of the silkworms whose cocoons had been transformed into the fabric they were embroidering. There was concern in certain quarters that enemy silkworms from Japan might have been used. Fortunately, Monsieur Hartnell was able to confirm the silkworms were of nationalist Chinese origin, and Mr. Atlee, so reassured, turned his attention elsewhere.
Perhaps he’d been distracted by the public’s anxiety over how the princess would find enough clothing coupons for her gown, and the resulting deluge of donations that women across Britain were posting to Buckingham Palace. Of course it was illegal to use someone else’s coupons, so all of them had been sent back with a thank-you note from some royal secretary. Sheer stupidity, Miriam had thought, but she’d wisely said nothing to anyone at Hartnell. They all seemed charmed by the idiocy of people giving up precious coupons to send to a princess who lived in a palace. What was next—people sending their butter and sugar rations so the bride and groom might have a larger wedding cake?
She and Ann had finished the bodice last week, and the sleeves, too, and now they had only the skirt to complete. Each panel, properly stretched, was large enough to allow room for six embroiderers, three to a side, and that was where she sat, with Ann across from her and Ethel at her left.
That morning they’d all had a good laugh in the cloakroom when someone had brought in a newspaper article that claimed Monsieur Hartnell was working them around the clock. Their days were busy, and they never lingered over their breaks or dinners as they might do in quieter periods, but the latest she had worked was half-past six, and that was only to get the bodice pieces finished so the sewing workroom might have them the following morning. There simply was no point in expecting them to work all hours, for too-long days wreaked havoc on everyone’s eyes and nerves and did nothing more, Miss Duley insisted, than ensure the following day’s work would suffer.
Even once the skirt panels were finished, they wouldn’t be able to rest, for they had to begin work on the train—all five meters of the thing. And she knew, from her experience with the sample motifs last month, that there was no rushing the work. The satin for the appliqué pieces was slippery, frayed all too readily, and couldn’t be basted or pinned for fear of leaving marks. Then, once applied, each appliqué had to be decorated with an eye-watering variety of embellishments. And they had to set each stitch with the knowledge that the reverse of their work might be clearly seen by anyone, for the train was transparent, and any sort of additional backing to the reverse of the appliquéd pieces would strain the delicate tulle.