Page 136 of The Wedding Dress Repair Shop
It was frustrating to leave the final small room untouched, when we had so nearly finished. Not that it looked very exciting: just a tightly packed jumble of more recent cast-offs, like hat stands, standard lamps, tea chests of books and lots of old luggage.
‘It doesn’t seem likely we’ll discover any more of Rosa-May’s things now,’ I said regretfully as, tired and grubby, we headed downstairs for our takeaway treat and a lot of cold lager to soothe our dusty throats. ‘And I’m almost at the end of her journal, too, with only a few more scrappy-looking entries to go, so if she did start a new one, it must have been lost. Pity, because her husband was injured at Waterloo and she’s waiting for him to return – and now I’ll never know what happened.’
‘We can tackle the last little attic on the Sunday after the museum opens, if we’ve still got the energy, so you never know what we might turn up,’ Honey said encouragingly.
If anyone would have any energy left by then, it would be her!
Over our dinner, I told them about Will’s latest email and Honey said it was a pity he would be working on the day themuseum opened, or she would have invited him. As so often with Honey, I wasn’t sure if she was joking or not …
*
The next week was as hectic as I’d expected it to be and the museum a hive of activity, with Derek, Ella and Kay in and out setting up the shop, reception desk and office.
I’d quite often find Viv somewhere upstairs, sitting on a camp stool with notebook and pen in hand, or wandering around like a modern-day Miss Havisham, though if she came across me arranging accessories on the shelves in one of the display units, or dressing a mannequin, she would quietly lend a hand. She always spoke to me quite normally now, when we were alone, or with just Honey, and I got to know her much better. I quickly realized she and Honey shared a similar dark sense of humour, despite her gentler, Charlotte Brontë appearance, but then, all the Brontë sisters had had cores of steel, too.
On the Tuesday evening she and Honey joined the book group, which was at Ginny’s house this time, so we could celebrate the good news thatBloody Young Menwould be in the next weekend’sSunday Timesbestseller chart – straight in at number one! Honey arrived bearing champagne and a large fruitcake, baked by Viv, with the book title iced on top in bright red. The ‘n’ in Men was running down the side of the cake like blood – nice touch …
Later, at the pub, Honey bought us all drinks, so I was feeling slightly jaded and had a bit of a headache when I began work next morning on Dress 11, the one with the bittersweet story behind it.
Luckily, this one needed little more than recording and photographing, before some careful pressing.
The couple had married in 1992 when they were very elderly, but had actually been childhood sweethearts, parted by the war. The man had been reported missing in action, although actually he had just been injured and eventually returned home, but by then his fiancée and her family had moved away and he’d been told she’d been working in a munitions factory that had been bombed.
Each thinking the other was dead, they eventually married other people and got on with their lives – until the day when, by one of those strange twists of fate, they met again many years later when they were living in the same retirement home.
They married in their eighties, with the blessing of their families, and lived there together until they died within a week of each other almost ten years later.
For the wedding, the bride had worn a lilac cotton sateen dress with a ruffled cowl-style neckline and short sleeves, only slightly fitted. She had a matching fascinator with flowers and feathers and soft, comfortable lilac pumps with a small heel. In the wedding picture she looked very sweet, with curly silver hair. Her new husband, dressed in an obviously new dark suit, held her hand.
It brought a lump to my throat: our grandparents’ generation had gone through so much, to ensure that their children and grandchildren could live in safety.
*
Given my slight hangover, it was a pity that this was the morning Kay and Ella had chosen to instruct me in the ways of the till and credit card machine, because even with a clear head I’d have had trouble grasping it all, particularly the till, which Ijammed every single time. I just hoped there would never be an emergency when I had to take over the desk!
I was glad to escape back to my own work and, by early afternoon, I’d put the final dress on display and was just heading downstairs again to the foyer, when Honey came in from the house, carrying three large packages.
‘I hate to do this to you, Garland,’ she said with a grin, ‘but I’m afraid some more dress donations have arrived!’
43
Alien Intrusions
‘They’re all relatively modern, from weddings within the last fifty years, so nothing terribly fragile or precious,’ she said, handing them over. ‘They can wait till after the museum opens.’
While that took the pressure off me a bit, I still spent Thursday morning measuring each one for a mannequin, before carefully packing it away with its accessories in a proper archive box.
Honey had already opened the parcels, so she could thank the donors, which was a help, and I added them to the catalogue.
I sent over an order for yet more mannequins to Derek, then quickly scanned in any information and photos that had come with the dresses, resisting the urge to read their stories. There would be time for that later.
When I’d finished, I had a cup of coffee in the staff room with Ella and Kay. Ella had been pricing up the latest batch of souvenirs, while Kay was answering some emails, for the new website had gone live.
‘So far, they’re all asking about things that they can find out on the website,’ she said. ‘What days we’re open, the times andwhere we are. It was just the same in the museum I worked in before.’
Then I had to admire the big donations box, which had arrived and been placed in the centre of the foyer, a giant wedding cake house, with a crack opening up between the figures of the bride and groom on top, together with a slot for the money we hoped would roll in.
When I returned to my room, wondering what to start on next, I looked idly across the courtyard and, since it was a bright day, wasn’t entirely surprised to see Jester lying on his cushion outside the open door to the puppet workshop.
