Page 7 of The Wedding Dress Repair Shop
‘I’m sure you will,’ I agreed, and sighed regretfully. ‘If it weren’t for Marco and my current promotional prospects, I don’t think I could have resisted it.’
‘Itisa shame. You could have lived in the attached cottage with the workroom and been able to carry on with your own work when the museum was shut. I’ll probably open it just weekday afternoons, like the old one,’ she said. ‘But I mustn’t tantalize you with what might have been.’
‘I’m sure you’ll find someone else,’ I said, ‘but meanwhile, if there’s any help or advice I can give you, I’m more than happy to do that. I’m very sure George will, too.’
‘Great – and we must keep in touch now anyway,’ she said.
We exchanged contact details, before I thanked her for a wonderful tea and staggered out to the taxi she’d summoned from the firm she used, which whisked me off in unaccustomed luxury to my not-very-des res in Ealing Broadway.
Rosa-May
22 May 1815
I was born in 1789, in my father’s parsonage in the small rural and remote Lancashire village of Nettlefold, which lay at an inconvenient distance from the nearest town of any size.
The parish covered a wide area, even though the sheep vastly outnumbered the people dwelling there, but Papa had obtained the living through the good offices of the Taggarts, who lived at the big house, the Grange, and were related to my mother. Mama had, against all advice, married a handsome but impecunious cleric and lived to regret it …
But more of that later, although I cannot but help reflect that I am now dwelling only a short distance from the place I grew so very eager to leave.
Papa, with his hawk nose and flapping black cassock, may have looked like a bird of prey, but I have no fear that he will swoop down on me now, for my family have long since cast me off and expunged my name from the family Bible.
Not that I had been a welcome addition to the family in the first place, for I was a belated sixth daughter (though two had diedin infancy), and seventh child, who had, so Mama informed me, set the seal on her ill health. Certainly, after my birth she took to the sofa and left the running of the household to my eldest sister, Betsy, even then an embittered old maid.
Of my other sisters, being also so much older than I, one had married the curate, who had later secured a living of his own in another part of the country, and the other, Martha, had secured a teaching post in the school for the children of poor clerics, where she had been educated.
What money we had went to educate and support my only brother, Edwin, though with some assistance with school fees and the like from Squire Taggart at the Grange. The family there provided our only excursions into society, since my parents and Betsy would be summoned to dine, when no other guests of any consequence were to be had.
So, with my sisters already out in the world and my brother embarking on his education, my unexpected and belated arrival was considered by Papa to be some kind of Holy punishment, though he bore this cross with Christian fortitude, christening me Mary Rose (Rose being my mother’s maiden name) Swan, though I was always called May.
My mother, in the broken tones of an invalid, reminded me daily that my birth had completely ruined a constitution already frail after years of childbearing. Her manner would have rivalled that of the great Sarah Siddons herself in one of her most famous tragic roles … and perhaps I inherited my love of acting from her, along with my small stature, slight frame and fair colouring.
How horrified she would be at the thought!
In any case, it was an inauspicious start for one whose future destiny was to burst forth upon the London stage as that celebrated actress and darling of the theatre-going public, Rosa-May Garland!
3
Missed Connections
To my surprise, when I let myself into the flat I found Marco there, pacing up and down my living room-cum-workroom in a caged-panther kind of way. His dark curls were dishevelled, as if he’d been running his hands through them as he does when he’s overwrought or angry, and the brown eyes he turned intently on me held a strangely accusatory expression.
I reflected, as I often did, that it was a pity someone had once told him he looked like Lord Byron in that famous portrait, because he’d rather cultivated the resemblance ever since – and I can’t say Byron would be my idea of a role model, because he sounded a nasty and self-centred piece of work …
‘Hi,’ I said cautiously. ‘I thought you were holding more auditions for the new play all day today?’
‘I was, but they finished ages ago. Do you know how late it is?’ he demanded. ‘I’ve been trying your phone for hours and you’ve been ignoring me.’
‘Oh!’ I said guiltily, and fished my phone out of the depths of my bag. ‘Sorry. I switched it to silent when I went into the museum and I’ve had such an interesting afternoon that I forgot all about it.’
‘Evidently,’ he snapped, throwing himself into one of the old armchairs that I’d covered in a fifties furnishing fabric with a pattern of clipped poodles and Eiffel Towers. ‘Mummy spotted you in Claridge’s having tea with someone, though she couldn’t see who he was, because he had his back to her. Tall and dark-haired, anyway.’
‘You know, IthoughtClaridge’s was one of her haunts, although I didn’t see her,’ I said, dropping my bag on to a small table – or at least I meant to, but entirely missed it. Champagne didn’t seem to have done much for my coordination.
‘She only glimpsed you from the doorway, because they were full. She and her friends had to go to Fortnum and Mason instead.’
‘Tragic!’ I said sarcastically, but he ignored this, as he does most things he doesn’t want to hear, especially about Mummy.
‘Naturally, she rang me to say she’d seen you—’
