Page 12 of The Dressmaker's Gift
The account manager asks me to help draft the reply and I am kept busy for the rest of the day translating the technicalities of shoe design and construction from French into English.
At last the office closes and I run up the stairs to my attic room, clutching the white envelope. On my mother’s side of the family, both my grandfather and grandmother had died before I was born. My hands are trembling a little. Because apart from the photo of Claire with Mireille and Vivienne, this is the first tangible link I have had to that generation of my family.
I’m not at all sure I’m going to like what I find when I open the envelope. I’ve come to think that Claire’s relationship with Ernst was pretty shameful. And might there even be a chance that I am of Nazi descent? Is that legacy of shame and guilt part of my genetic make-up? My hands tremble with impatience – and just a frisson of anxiety – as I tear open the envelope.
The first certificate I read is dated, in a flowing copperplate hand, the 1st of September 1946, and is for the marriage of Claire Meynardier, born in Port Meilhon, Brittany on the 18th of May 1920 to Laurence Ernest Redman, born in Hertfordshire, England on the 24th of June, 1916. The name Ernest stops me in my tracks for a moment. Could this be ‘Ernst’? Did they move to England to make a new start after the war? But the fact that he was born in the Home Counties makes that extremely unlikely. So maybe I can assume that I’m not descended from a Nazi soldier after all. The thought allows a weight to slip from my shoulders, one less burden to have to carry through life.
I put the sheet of paper to one side and read the next one, the certificate of death for Claire Redman. It is dated 6 November 1989 and the cause of death is given as heart failure. So Claire was sixty-nine years old when she died, leaving her daughter, Felicity, alone in the world at the age of twenty-nine. How I wish she’d lived longer. She might have been able to change the course that my mother’s life took. She might have been less of an enigma. And if she’d still been around she might have been able to help me, giving me a sense of who I really am.
How I wish I’d known my grandmother Claire.
March 1941
‘Mireille, you are wanted in the salon.’ Mademoiselle Vannier’s lips were so pursed with disapproval that the creases around them were drawn into pleats as tight as smocking. It was virtually unheard of for seamstresses to be summoned downstairs into the territory of thevendeusesand their clients.
Mireille was conscious of the glances of the other girls seated around the table who looked up from their work and watched in silence as she carefully tucked her needle into the fabric of the lining she was tacking together to mark her place, then stood up and pushed in her chair.
A feeling of dread dragged at the pit of her stomach as she descended the stairs. Was she in trouble over some slip-up in her sewing? She was often distracted nowadays, thinking about her next assignment for the network, and constantly exhausted by the strain of keeping her activities a secret from the other girls. Perhaps she was being summoned for a scolding.
She tried not to imagine the even worse possibility, that she had been denounced by someone and that the salon might be full of Nazis come to take her for questioning.
She hesitated at the door to the salon, then tugged her white coat straight and held her head high as she knocked and entered.
To her surprise, the sales woman who was renowned for dealing with Monsieur Delavigne’s wealthiest clients came towards her, smiling broadly. Behind her, an assistant hovered with her tape measure alongside one of the models who was wearing a coat that Mireille recognised. She had finished sewing the lining for it just the other day.
‘Here she is, our star seamstress,’ gushed thevendeuse. ‘This gentleman wanted to meet you, Mireille, to thank you in person for the work you have done on his orders.’
Thankfully, the others in the room were too intent on fluttering about their client like moths around a flame to notice the startled look that shot across Mireille’s features before she could prevent it. Because next to the fire, which blazed brightly in the hearth to keep the damp March chill at bay, Monsieur Leroux sat in one of the gilt chairs that were reserved for visitors to the salon, his long legs crossed and his hands in his pockets, in a pose that spoke of the self-assured ease of the very wealthy.
She composed herself quickly, forcing herself to keep her eyes cast down to the pattern of the Aubusson carpet on the floor of the salon so that no look of recognition could give away the fact that she had already met this man. Neither did she want to betray the fact that, this very evening, she would be running an errand for the underground network that he controlled. She had received her latest instructions from the dyer only yesterday.
‘Mademoiselle,’ he said, ‘I apologise for interrupting your work. But I wanted to thank you for the attention to detail that you put into the garments that I commissioned. It is important, occasionally, to pass that on personally,n’est-ce pas?’
Did she imagine it, or had he placed a slight emphasis on the word ‘important’?
He smiled at the assembled company, who all beamed back at him, having already been on the receiving end of his largesse.
He beckoned her closer and then slipped a folded five franc note into the pocket of her white coat. ‘A small token of my gratitude, mademoiselle. And my thanks to you all once again.’
‘Thank you, monsieur. You are too kind,’ Mireille replied, her eyes meeting his for the briefest of moments to let him know that she understood.
He stood then, and one of the assistants hurried forwards with his coat. Turning to thevendeuse, he said, ‘So you have all the measurements you require for that suit?’ He gestured towards one of the new season’s designs that were displayed on mannequins against one wall.
‘Oui, monsieur. We will make it just as you wish. It’s an excellent choice – I happen to know that this particular style is one of Monsieur Delavigne’s favourites.’
‘Merci. And have the coat sent to my usual address.’ He nodded towards the model. ‘But I will settle my account now, if I may?’
‘Of course, monsieur.’
The saleswoman flapped a hand at Mireille, indicating that she was dismissed and should return to the atelier, while one of the assistants hurried to fetch the ledger in which the details of clients’ orders were kept.
Before going back into the sewing room, Mireille slipped into the lavatory on the first floor. She pulled the five franc note out of her pocket and unfolded it. As she’d guessed, a slip of paper was hidden inside the money. And on it was written just one word, heavily underlined: ‘CANCELLED’.
She realised that something terrible must have happened for Monsieur Leroux to have risked coming to see her to deliver this warning. Her hands shook as she tore the note into tiny pieces and flushed them away, making sure they’d gone, before washing her hands. They shook still as she dried them on the towel which hung on the back of the door, imagining what – or who – might have been waiting for her if she’d gone to the rendezvous point that evening. The Germans were trying to tighten the net around all Resistance activity and it was well known on the streets of Paris that those who were taken to the SS headquarters in the Avenue Foch for questioning did not usually reappear. She had seen, too, with her own eyes, the lines of people being marched under armed guard into the city’s stations and forced to board the trains heading eastwards. And, it seemed to her, they far outnumbered the people returning.
When she slipped back into her seat at the sewing table, Claire nudged her and asked her what she’d been sent downstairs for. She pulled the five franc note out of her pocket and showed it to the other girls, who exclaimed in envy.
‘We’ll have some sausages or a jar ofrillettesthis weekend, if the butcher has any in,’ Mireille whispered to Claire under cover of the chatter.
