Secrets of a Charmed Life (6 page)

“I got a job working for the lady at the bridal shop,” Emmy said.

Mum faced her. “What?”

“I said I got a job. At the bridal shop. Two afternoons a week and some Saturdays.”

“The bridal shop.”

“Yes, the bridal shop. The owner is going to teach me to sew. She also looked at my sketches today and she said I have talent.”

“You and your brides,” Mum said derisively, under her breath but loud enough for Emmy to hear.

“She said I have talent! She likes my wedding gowns!”

“Pieces of paper, Emmy! They’re just pieces of paper. Just wait until you grow up and you see what real life is like. You can draw all the dresses you want and imagine your life an endless parade of perfect tomorrows. But wishing it won’t make it happen and neither will all the white bridal lace in the world. You’re chasing after moonbeams, Em. Someday you’re going to remember I told you this. You’ll thank me then. Just you wait.”

“I
am
grown-up. And I’m not like you.” The words felt like poison off Emmy’s lips, distasteful even to her. This time, Mum flinched but she held Emmy’s gaze.

“Everybody’s like me,” she said.

Emmy turned from her.

“I didn’t say you could take on a job!” she called after Emmy, almost like an afterthought.

“I’m not asking for your permission.”

“What am I supposed to do with Julia while you’re working?” she yelled as Emmy and her mother reassumed their roles.

“I’m not her mother. You are,” Emmy shouted back.

Emmy headed for the stairs that led to the bedrooms to get dressed for the day. She met Julia halfway.

“Why are you and Mum yelling?” Julia’s eyes were half-closed with the remnants of sleep. She hadn’t heard much.

“Mum broke a teacup. She’s just sad about it. Let’s leave her alone for a little bit.”

Emmy led her sister back up the stairs to their room and shut the door.

THE
first month at Primrose Bridal was magical despite the air raid sirens going off nearly every night and the friction between Emmy and her mother.

Emmy had relented and suggested Mum talk to Thea about caring for Julia when Emmy had to work, an arrangement to which their childless next-door neighbor was clearly happy to agree. Julia didn’t seem to mind much, although Thea’s aging mother thought Julia was a classmate from the Welsh village where she grew up, a state of affairs Julia didn’t quite know what to make of.

Still, the situation couldn’t have been more ideal. Thea was dependable, as she hardly ever left her flat, she doted on Julia, and she refused to be paid any money. The easy fix tamed Mum’s annoyance over Emmy’s taking a job without having consulted her. Her attitude toward Emmy’s good fortune quickly dissolved into the ambivalence Emmy was used to.

After their fight that early Sunday morning, Emmy thought she began to understand why indifference suited Mum when it came to her older daughter. Surely it was because Emmy reminded Mum of herself. Emmy was nearly the age Mum had been when she became pregnant; Emmy’s unfolding life mirrored hers before she had found herself a mother at sixteen. Emmy wanted to think that her mother involved herself so little in Emmy’s life so that her bad luck wouldn’t rub off on her, but it was perplexing to think Mum was doing something as noble as that on Emmy’s behalf. Mum’s way of showing love, if that was what it was, was mystifying.

When Emmy entered the bridal shop, she could forget about what was going on at home. Mrs. Crofton was easy to work for, provided Emmy arrived on time and stayed on task. As Emmy sewed in the back room, she could hear her waiting on anxious brides-to-be, helping them choose a dress off the rack—no one wanted to wait to have a dress made—and assuring them that war or no war, they could have a beautiful wedding even with just a gown and a groom.

Mrs. Crofton was also a patient instructor on the Singer, an impressive machine that seemed to have a mind of its own. The needle moved so fast and was so precise. On Emmy’s first Saturday afternoon, when the morning crowd died away and the afternoon shoppers had yet to appear, Emmy threaded and rethreaded the needle fifty times so that she could do it confidently with her eyes closed. And then she sewed ten straight lines and ten figure eights, half on easy muslin and half on unforgiving crepe. When she was finished, Mrs. Crofton said Emmy had performed better than she had when she first learned and that, with practice, Emmy would be able to master crepe, satin, chiffon, taffeta, and all the other
fabrics that floated like air or swam like water when a seamstress tried to guide them past a slender needle the width of a cat’s whisker.

On the first Saturday in June, after showing Emmy how to alter a bodice to fit a woman with far less cleavage than the dress provided for, Mrs. Crofton told Emmy she had heard back from her cousin Graham Dabney.

“His father-in-law is very ill and he’s up in Edinburgh with his wife taking care of him. I don’t know when he’ll be back in London. Soon, he thinks. But he said if your sketches are as good as I told him they were, he’d like to meet and discuss perhaps mentoring you.”

Emmy wasn’t sure what that meant. It sounded wonderful but also beyond what she could afford. “Does that mean . . . Would I need to pay him?” she asked.

“Graham said if you’ve the raw talent, he will teach you how to make your patterns in exchange for working in his studio here in London. He designs for several theaters on the West End and he always needs extra hands who understand formal wear. He’s done this before with young designers who lack instruction and experience. Does that sound agreeable?”

It sounded amazingly perfect.

“A thousand times yes,” Emmy said.

“I didn’t tell him you were not yet sixteen. You might want to keep that to yourself for right now. And if school starts up again, you will have to work out a schedule with him that he will be happy with if you choose to continue with your schooling. He can be a little demanding when there’s a show in production. And of course I will still expect you for the ten or so hours that you work for me. Will your mother have a problem with your being gone so much?”

“I make my own decisions about my time,” Emmy said, and then quickly added, “My mum treats me like an adult.”

“You’re fortunate she does, Emmeline. I doubt this would work if she didn’t.”

Perhaps Emmy was fortunate. Up to that point, she hadn’t seen the benefit of Mum’s casual parenting.

“One more thing,” Mrs. Crofton said. “Graham has asked to see a couple of your sketches. I’d like to send him by post the two that I liked the best.”

As much as Emmy wanted to have all that Mrs. Crofton had just promised, the thought of handing over two of her best designs to a man she had never met made her instantly anxious. Her eyes must have betrayed her panic.

“You don’t have to worry about sending them to him, Emmeline,” Mrs. Crofton said. “He’s a designer, too. He knows how to safeguard the work of a colleague. If I were you, I might be a little afraid, too, but I wouldn’t let that stop me from sending them. This is a tremendous opportunity. He wouldn’t ask to see them if he wasn’t intrigued by what I told him about you.”

For a breath of a second Emmy considered telling Mrs. Crofton she wasn’t interested in having Mr. Dabney’s offer if it meant sending him two of the designs before she’d even met him. But Emmy had no sooner imagined herself saying these words than she realized she had been brought to a life-changing fork in the road. If she chose to keep all the brides in the box and never trust them with anyone, it was likely they would never leave it. Mum had said wishing something didn’t make it happen. Emmy had to do more than wish.

“All right,” Emmy said. “I’ll bring them on Tuesday.”

It was going on early evening when Emmy got back
to the flat. The air inside was stuffy and hot even though a metal fan swung its neck from side to side from the windowsill by the front door. Other than the hum of the fan, the flat was eerily quiet for a Saturday at near twilight. Emmy stepped into the kitchen and found Mum still in her uniform at the kitchen table with a juice glass in her hand. In the middle of the table, a bottle of whiskey, a crumpled handkerchief, and the day’s mail all touched one another in a triangle of unspoken woe. She looked up at Emmy and her eyes, red rimmed from earlier tears, glimmered from the numbing effect of alcohol. Pins had come loose in her hair and one long lock curled over her shoulder in a graceful way. The light above the table tossed a mellow and compassionate light onto Mum, the bottle, the handkerchief, and the two opened envelopes.

“Expected you home earlier,” Mum murmured with no trace of anger in her voice. It was almost as if she were jealous Emmy had the lucky fortune of having been somewhere other than the flat.

“I was learning how to use the sewing machine. What’s wrong? Where’s Julia?” A band of sweat broke out on Emmy’s forehead. The kitchen was sweltering. She walked over to the window above the sink and opened it to let in a breeze, but only hot stale air met her. She turned back to face Mum. “Why are you drinking? What happened?”

Mum downed the last bit of amber liquid in the glass and set it down gently. She fingered the corner of her mouth. “Neville was in a car accident. He’s dead.”

Emmy’s gaze darted to the two opened letters on the table. “How do you know? Who told you? Where’s Julia?”

Mum looked up. “His
mother
wrote to me. That’s right, his mother. She’s not dead after all. Neither is his
father. You were right about him, weren’t you, oh wise Emmeline? You tried to tell me he was a lying cheat. But I wouldn’t listen.” She picked up the glass, stared at its emptiness, and set it back on the table. “His last name isn’t even what he told me it was. Black was his stage name.”

Emmy closed the distance between them. “Mum, where is Julia?”

Mum waved Emmy’s concern away with one hand and picked up the handkerchief with the other. “Next door at Thea’s. The cat had her kittens. She doesn’t know.” Mum reached for the bottle and sloshed another mouthful into the glass. “She’s not going to know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly that. She’s not going to know.” Mum downed the whiskey and grimaced. She wiped her mouth with the handkerchief. “You’re not to tell her, Em. I’m not going to do to her what I did to you.”

“Mum—”

“I mean it, Emmy. Don’t you tell her! Let her think what she wants about him. She has every right to think what she wants.” Mum reached for the bottle. Emmy leaned over her and moved it away from her outstretched hand.

“Stop it,” Emmy said.

“Julia has every right to think whatever she wants!” Fresh tears rimmed Mum’s glassy eyes. “Don’t you tell her! I mean it, Emmy!”

Emmy placed the bottle atop the fridge and used the moments when her back was turned to assess her own reaction to the news of Neville’s death. She felt nothing. Neville, most of the time an unemployed actor, had lived on and off with them for four years, starting when Julia was two. Emmy didn’t like the way he treated Mum and
she didn’t like the way he looked at her when she started to develop a woman’s body. But Julia loved that Neville could sound like an old man or a French painter or an American cowboy. She loved his outlandish stories and crazy songs. He was the kind of father every kid thought she wanted. He never raised his voice to Julia, never corrected her, never made her mind. After he’d disappear for months on end, he’d come back with a fanciful tale of the adventure he had been on, bearing trinkets for Julia and excuses for Mum. He could see that Emmy saw straight through the lies and pretense, so he brought her nothing. He was handsome and talented. He was also an opportunist and a playboy. Emmy celebrated the day he said he was moving out for good, even though Julia and Mum both cried.

They hadn’t heard so much as a word from him in nearly a year. Julia believed he was somewhere in India on a movie set.

His death meant nothing to Emmy.

“Did you hear what I said?” Mom railed. “Don’t you tell her, Emmy.”

Emmy turned from the fridge. “Someday Julia won’t be satisfied with vague answers about where he is.”

“Today’s not that day.” Mum held out the juice glass.

Emmy took the glass and placed it in the sink where the breakfast dishes were still soaking. “I never said Neville was a lying cheat.”

“You knew I shouldn’t have trusted him. You were just a kid and somehow you knew. God, isn’t that ironic.”

Emmy opened a cupboard and pulled out a tin of corned beef, a loaf of pumpernickel, and a jar of peaches, as Mum apparently had no plans for their supper. “What’s done is done, Mum.”

“Why did he tell me his parents were dead? What
was the purpose of me thinking that?” Mum crumpled the handkerchief and tossed it onto the table next to the mail. “Why would he do that?”

“Does it really matter now?” Emmy withdrew six slices of bread, picked off a few flakes of mold, and set them on a plate.

“It matters to me! Why would he tell me his parents were dead?”

Emmy could think of a number of reasons why Neville had lied to Mum about his parents, not the least of which was that when he wanted to move in with them; it was a lot easier for Mum to welcome him when she thought he had nowhere else to go. “Because he wanted you to feel sorry for him. Or because he liked lying to see if he could get away with it. He was an actor, Mum. He made his living pretending to be something he wasn’t.” Emmy opened the fridge and pulled out a jar of mustard.

“Aren’t you Miss Know-It-All,” Mum murmured.

“You asked me. I’m just answering your question. He lied to you because it suited his ends.”

“He told me he didn’t have the money to marry me. Did I ever tell you that? What a fool I was. His father is a professor! He probably has all kinds of money. What a daft fool I was. You’d think I’d know better. . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Emmy opened the tin and the greasy-sweet odor of canned meat permeated the air in the little kitchen. “If you don’t want me to tell Julia right now, I won’t. But if she asks me why he’s taking so long to come back from India, or wherever else she thinks he is, I’m not going to lie to her.”

Mum inhaled deeply. “You won’t have to. I’ll tell her my own way, on my own day. If she asks you where he is, you tell her you don’t know. Because you don’t.”

Her mother was staring at the letters on the table. It occurred to Emmy that if Neville’s mother knew about Mum, she might also know Neville had a daughter.

“How did his mother find you?” Emmy asked. “Does she know about Julia?”

“She knows,” Mum said slowly, her tone calculating. “He told his parents as he lay dying in a hospital in Dublin that he had a daughter in London. That’s where he was. Dublin. Living with a woman half his age, no doubt.”

“And?”

Mum swung her head around. “And, what?”

Emmy set the tin down. “Do they want to see her?”

Mum picked up the top letter and pocketed it. “Doesn’t matter if they do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that. It doesn’t matter if they do. They’re not going to. I want them to want to for a good long time. I want them to
want
to see Julia and not be able to. I want them to want it so much, it drives them near crazy.”