Nicola Upson - Two for Sorrow

‘Seven, darling—you can’t count Josephine. It’ll be so nice to see her.’

‘Of course it will, but I’ll never understand how she can bear to rattle around with those harridans in Cavendish Square for weeks at a time.’

‘It’s convenient for her, and she couldn’t have come to us this time—it’s chaos here and even worse at Maiden Lane. She says the club’s very comfortable, though.’

‘I’m sure it is, but all those women in one place …’ Ronnie shuddered. ‘It can’t be healthy, and they’re so dull . It’s as much as I can do to stay awake for the duration of a fitting. Fittings that your generosity has thrust upon us, I might add.’

‘I thought it would be a nice gesture to make the dresses as well,’ Lettice said defensively, sucking the tip of her paintbrush to make a fine point. ‘The nurses are a very good cause, after all, and those ladies on the committee work so hard to raise money for them.’

‘Hard my arse! Swanning around with a glass of free champers in their hand?’

‘Oh, I’m sure it’s not all galas.’

‘No—you’re right. Twice a year they swap their designer gowns for some overalls and imagine they know what it’s like to be a working girl. Jesus!’ She held up her hands in exasperation. ‘I can think of a nice gesture, too, but I can make mine sitting down.’ She lit a cigarette and demonstrated. ‘It would all have to happen when we’ve got work coming out of our ears, wouldn’t it? There’s all of Wendy’s ballet to do before Christmas and we haven’t even thought about Bitter Harvest yet—it’s only a matter of time before the director asks to see the designs. In fact, we seem to have forgotten that we work in the theatre at all. Celia Bannerman and Amy Coward will be laughing their way to the bank in a haze of silk and chiffon, while our whole business goes to the dogs in tatters.’

‘Oh for goodness’ sake, darling—you do exaggerate.’ There was a knock at the door, and an attractive dark-haired girl poked her head round without waiting for a response. It was a face which would have been more at home on a cinema screen than behind a sewing machine, and Lettice smiled at her, glad of some respite from Ronnie’s tirade. ‘Yes, Marjorie—what is it?’

‘Mrs Reader says we’ve run out of black bugle beads, Miss, and someone from the club has just telephoned to see where the samples for the accessories are. Apparently you said one of us would drop them round to Cavendish Square. Do you want me to kill two birds with one stone?’

‘Only if I can choose the birds,’ Ronnie muttered sarcastically.

‘Ignore her,’ Lettice said, ‘and yes please—that would be very helpful. There might be some other things we need from Debenhams, though—give me five minutes and I’ll bring you a list.’

Marjorie shut the door behind her and Ronnie raised an eyebrow. ‘So I exaggerate, do I? Accessories? They only have to snap their expensively manicured fingers for us to jump—and for what? The self-glorification of half a dozen bored women with more time and money than they know what to do with. Go on, admit it—you know I’m right.’ She got up and looked over her sister’s shoulders. ‘God, that’s good,’ she said, admiring the delicate image which was just receiving its finishing touches. ‘Please tell me we’re not giving it away.’

‘Of course we’re not.’ Lettice tore the sheet of thick white paper impatiently from its pad and waved it back and forth a few times to dry the paint. ‘While you’ve been holding forth, I’ve been hard at it,’ she said, and handed the page over smugly. ‘I think you’ll find that Wendy’s ballet has been taking shape without you.’ Enjoying the surprise on Ronnie’s face, she continued: ‘Anyway, not all charity is selfless—we took Marjorie on trust from prison and she’s turned out to be the best seamstress we’ve got.’

‘All right, all right—I agree with you completely about that, but rehabilitation is a very different thing from meddling and fundraising. I’m proud that we’ve been able to give Marjorie a fresh start—she’s not even quite such a cheeky little madam as she was when she first arrived.’

Lettice laughed. ‘I’m sure a girl needs a bit of spirit where she’s been. Anyway, I always like to meet someone who can give you a run for your money.’ She stood up and walked over to the glass that separated the main workroom from the small design studio which the sisters shared. ‘And the other girls seem to like her. I was worried they’d give her a hard time at first, but she settled in right away. It’s hard to believe she’s only been with us for six months.’

Ronnie stubbed her cigarette out and joined her sister at the window. ‘It’s hard to believe that this is here at all,’ she said, looking across at the roomful of women, engrossed in a series of small individual tasks that made up a remarkably successful whole—a business which now occupied two houses in St Martin’s Lane and kept sixty people on the payroll, including thirty fulltime seamstresses. ‘The last eighteen months have been extraordinary, haven’t they? First Hamlet , and now Romeo —we’ve never had better notices than the ones we’re getting at the moment. Johnny’s certainly been lucky for us.’

‘And Josephine—if it weren’t for the success of Richard of Bordeaux , I’m not sure any of us would have had the freedom we’ve enjoyed since.’

They watched as their head cutter showed one of the newer girls how to work with a length of beautiful soft crêpe, reassuring her when she got it wrong and patiently starting again at the beginning. ‘Look at Hilda,’ Ronnie said affectionately. ‘Do you remember when she taught us to cut fabric and make up costumes like that? She was the village dressmaker’s niece and we couldn’t tell one end of a needle from the other—who’d have thought that we’d all end up here?’

‘And thank God she still enjoys it as much as we do. I suppose we could have our pick of cutters and supervisors now, but I honestly think the whole place would fall apart if Hilda left us.’

‘Then let’s just pray that she doesn’t—and if good works will keep the sun shining down on us, then I suppose we can afford a few free frocks. You’d better get that girl over there sharpish with her samples.’

Lettice jotted some items down on a bit of paper and went out into the workroom to deliver her list. ‘Ask them to put it all on our account,’ she said, piling a glut of brightly coloured materials into Marjorie’s arms to be parcelled up. ‘And deliver the samples to Miss Bannerman at the club, with this letter. We’ve only got a few days to make any alterations, so if she can send a couple of the women round this afternoon, that would be helpful. But don’t be long—there’s still so much to do today. Take the bus, and get back here by lunchtime at the latest.’

‘With the change from the bus fare,’ Ronnie called, winking at the girl. ‘We know what you’re like.’

‘If you did, Miss, you’d blush,’ Marjorie said good-naturedly, winking back. ‘I’ll see you later if I don’t get a better offer.’

Marjorie went down the corridor to the small back room where the girls kept their outdoor clothes and rifled through the layers of coats and scarves which accumulated each morning, looking for her own modest raincoat. The racks held a hotch-potch of clothing, which functioned as a catalogue of styles from the last twenty years or more—the Motley sisters were fair with their wages but a good coat, once afforded, was unlikely to be replaced quickly for the sake of fashion, even here. The varying shapes and sizes reminded her of her last day in prison, walking down the line of discharge cubicles to the one where her own clothes awaited her, past a series of outfits which would have been the envy of any jumble sale in London—petticoats, skirts and hand-knitted jumpers, some in preposterous colours, others faded and drab; some torn and stained, others smarter and more respectable. It was a brief glimpse of lives waiting to begin again, and it mattered because it was the moment when women found their old selves, free of the levelling effect of prison and the loss of individuality—femininity, even—which was standard Holloway procedure.