The Gown(78)

Miriam led her into the flat, and even though they were in an apartment building it felt like a big old house, with high ceilings and a wide hallway and parquet floors the color of maple syrup. The walls were closely hung with oil paintings, brightly colored modern prints, and photographs of a gaggle of children at different ages, all of them evidently related in some fashion or another. In one picture, Miriam stood arm in arm with a tall, distinguished man with a shock of white hair and pale blue eyes—Daniel’s eyes, Heather realized—and she was holding up an enameled medal in a velvet case.

“That was taken at Buckingham Palace,” Miriam said. “Such a happy day.”

Heather nodded, because she wasn’t sure what to say, and then they were in the kitchen, and instantly she felt at home. There was an enormous French gas stove, the kind that had brass handles and enameled blue doors, and the counters were made of marble, and there was a set of copper pots hanging from a rack on one wall, and on the other was a dresser piled high with mismatched blue-and-white china. On the windowsill above the sink there were pots of herbs and a carved wooden rooster with a quizzical expression on his face.

Miriam went to a compact espresso maker on the counter next to the stove and switched it on. “My daughter bought this machine for me,” she explained. “She was worried I would burn myself on my old stovetop espresso maker. It is tremendously convenient but the coffee is not, I think, quite as good. Would you like a cappuccino?”

“Yes, please.”

After the espresso machine had begun to hum away, Miriam took a small china jug from a low shelf on the dresser, filled it with water, and set the posy inside. “There. So lovely.” Then she turned to Heather.

“You must know that it is one of the great regrets of my life that I lost touch with your grandmother. For a time we were very close, you see. We shared a house for much of 1947, the year I came to England, but she emigrated to Canada at the end of the year. I never heard from her again.”

“She just left?” Heather asked, dumbfounded yet again by another of Nan’s long-ago decisions. “Even though you were friends?”

Miriam nodded, her expression bittersweet. “It was a long time ago, and in those days Canada seemed very far away. It was not unusual to fall out of touch with people, you know, and we had no Facebook or Google. And I . . .”

The espresso machine began to sputter, and Miriam turned and fussed with the buttons before retrieving the cups she’d set beneath. “Would you mind taking these through to the sitting room? I almost forgot about the biscuits. Beautiful sablés from my favorite patisserie.”

The sitting room was large and bright, with one wall taken up entirely by three enormous bay windows. Bookshelves rose to the ceiling on either side of the fireplace, and opposite, out of reach of the sun, an embroidered panel hung from a scrolling wooden valance. It was as wide as the sofa below but half as high, and the view it depicted was a twin to the one from the sitting room’s windows: a green, sloping hill woven through with walking paths and ancient woods, the sky above a clear and limitless blue. Only just seen, in the far distance, was the familiar silhouette of London’s skyline.

“It is rather out-of-date,” Miriam said, nodding apologetically at the embroidered panel. “When I made it forty years ago, the church spires were all I noticed. Now it is nothing but skyscrapers. Yet I still love the view. We both did, Walter and I.”

“He was your husband?” Heather asked.

“Yes. For forty-eight years. He died twenty years ago. At his desk, pen in hand, exactly as he would have wished.”

“I am so sorry.”

“It has been a long time. And yet, even now I am surprised when I wake in the night and he is not there. I suppose I shall never get used to it.”

They sat in silence for a moment, and Heather sipped at her coffee and nibbled at the edge of a cookie. How should she begin? She had so many questions—

“She never told us anything,” she said abruptly, her voice a degree too loud, too sharp, for the sunny room and their tentative friendship.

But Miriam didn’t seem to mind. “It does not surprise me at all,” she said.

“My entire life I thought she was a shopkeeper. She sold yarn and knitting needles and buttons. Not once did she ever mention that she’d worked on the queen’s wedding dress. I mean—I’m not wrong about that, am I?”

“You are not wrong. Some of the most beautiful embroidery on Princess Elizabeth’s gown was your grandmother’s work. She was exceptionally talented, and she was very, very kind to me when I first came to England.” Miriam smiled rather tremulously. “She was my first friend here.”

“I know she was upset about my grandfather and being widowed and all, but . . .” Miriam had smoothed out her expression and was examining the crumbs on her plate. “Oh, boy,” Heather said. “Was she married when you knew her?”

Miriam looked her in the eye. “No.”

“But she had my mom in 1948, so she must have been involved with . . .”

“She was. Briefly.”

“Wow. Just . . . wow.” Of all the things she’d expected to learn today, the fact that Nan had been a single mother had not been one of them. Never mind that it actually made a weird kind of sense. “Times were different then, I guess.”