The Dressmaker (12 page)

“You’d do best to come in, Tess. I think my wife wants to talk to you,” Cosmo said. His look had turned almost pitying as he gave a slight bow, opening the door to the room the captain had given to the Duff Gordons.

Madame’s stare was alarmingly baleful as Tess walked in.

“So, what do you have to say for yourself?” she demanded.

“Pardon me?”

“Don’t feign innocence. I wanted you in that photograph. Why did you so rudely refuse me?”

“I didn’t mean to be rude. It wasn’t my place to be there.”

“Nonsense. You work for me. If I say you belong there, then you do.”

“It seemed a bit out of place—maybe too soon.” It was precisely the wrong thing to say; she could see it immediately in Lucile’s eyes.

“You’re questioning my judgment?” Lucile’s voice lashed out, sharp and hard. “Just who do you think you are? You’re a little servant girl from a farm until I make you something more, and don’t you forget it. You do as I tell you, do you hear?”

“Yes, Madame. I didn’t know how important it was to you.” She could hardly stammer the words out.

“It’s not for you to know, it’s your job to
obey
. That is, if you want employment with me.”

She mustn’t say the wrong thing again. “I want that very much,” she said. “And I will work hard.”

Lucile gave a sharp laugh. “Your refusing me in front of all those people was intolerable, Tess. Do you understand that?”

“I’m sorry,” Tess said again.

Lucile’s shrewd eyes surveyed the girl’s stiff figure, something flickering across her face. “So you’re not telling me you will disobey at will?”

“No, Madame. Never.”

“And who defines your duties?”

“You do.” Tess held her breath. She hated the shiver of needed subservience sweeping over her; at home she would be genuflecting. No more of that. But her own inner pride quavered, mixed with shame.

“What did you hear about our boat? Something you didn’t like? Is that why you refused to put on a life vest for the picture?”

“No, of course not. I didn’t know what happened, I wasn’t there.”

Lucile’s voice curled around her like a whip. “I saw you talking
with that sailor. He was no friend of ours in the lifeboat, Tess. And don’t you forget it. He’s a liar out to make a fortune on a lurid story.”

Then, stunningly, the clouds parted as fast as they had formed. Lucile dismissed her with a quick wave of her hand. “I’m exhausted. Will you bring me some tea? Hot, this time? The captain, I think, knows now who I am.”

“Yes, of course,” Tess said, both astonished and relieved.

“Yes,
Madame
.” Lucile gave her a brilliant smile. “Go, go, my dear. And stop looking as if I’m biting your head off. And I hope you’ll be less cranky tomorrow.”

The hours, the days, ticked by. When Lucile allowed her free time, Tess began teaching the other women how to stitch together shirts and coats from tarps for the children. Too many of them were still huddled in shirts and jackets scratchy with dried seawater. Some of the children who had been rushed from their beds and into the lifeboats were without shoes. “I can’t feel my toes,” one whimpered to Tess. She kneeled down and massaged his small feet, trying to warm them, hoping to see them turn pink again.

And yet, somehow, there was some laughter, some play.

On the second day, Tess found Jim on deck, surrounded by a cluster of the younger children, carving small figures for them from discarded pieces of wood.

“You’re good,” she said, leaning down to inspect his work. What long, deft fingers he had. Not the fingers of a coal miner, surely.

“Thanks. Got my instructions from an uncle who was a woodcarver, but I couldn’t make enough money at the work.” He smiled up at her. “Want to join us?” His manner was easy and gentle, which was clearly why the children were gravitating to him.

Impulsively, Tess sat down with them. He was taking orders from the children. Who wants a giraffe? An elephant? “Ah, the giraffe wins,” he said to a small girl with a sad, pinched face. The child brightened, and his audience watched in silence as a small giraffe
almost magically began to emerge from the smooth wood under his fingers. “What do you think?” he said to the child. “Is this a worthy giraffe?”

She said nothing, just grinned, her eyes round and dark, as he deposited it carefully in her hand.

“It’s now your good-luck charm,” he said quietly. Then, to Tess after a pause, “Did she come after you?”

“Yes, she was furious. You were right.”

“She’s building her defense.”

“Why?”

“Because she has to.”

For more than an hour they sat there. Each time a small figure was completed for a child, Tess reached out and touched the smooth, newly carved wood. “You’re adding the magic,” Jim said with a grin. And she laughed, loath to leave this sunny little island of pleasure he had created amid so much grief.

“Can you carve a spinning top?” she asked eagerly.

“Sure. For you?” His eyes danced.

“For two small boys who need to play.”

He asked no more. “Give me a few hours,” he said.

All were chilled now by the sight of the cook’s wife. Time after time, someone would gently guide her to a cabin, but she would get restless and distraught, drifting soon back to the railing, fastening her gaze again on the horizon. “They’re coming soon,” she said softly. “My children are in a boat. They are rowing a bit slowly.” Her face was almost radiant now. Her eyes glittered in a strange way.

“That woman obviously has a weak character,” Lucile said at one point as Jean Darling trudged past them on the deck, carrying a basket of bread for her husband. “She’s certainly burned her bridges
with
me
, not that the same thing won’t happen with everybody else when her husband’s deception becomes public.” Lucile brushed a few shriveled raisins from the biscuit crumbs on her plate onto the deck.

Automatically, Tess bent to pick them up and throw them over the railing, watching them loft into the air and then down to the sea. She was getting better, she hoped, at keeping her thoughts to herself. But she had always done that, and why had this servile gesture come so automatically? Perhaps to hide those thoughts. She wondered at the vigor of Lucile’s contempt for the Darlings.

Too many dreams—dark ones filled with wailing. It was late when she knocked at Lucile’s door the last night. Cosmo was up with the radio operator, sending telegrams, including one that she had given him for her mother, so Lucile would be alone. “I’ve brought you an extra blanket in case you’re cold,” she said as the door opened.

“That’s not necessary,” Lucile said crossly. “I’m tired, and I don’t want any more blankets or anything else right now.” She was wearing a battered old sweater over a flannel gown that had been donated, a combination that made her look strangely vulnerable. “Go to bed. Why aren’t you asleep?”

“I can’t,” Tess said.

“Why is that?”

“I keep dreaming about the ship going down.”

“It’s over, and we survived. That’s all best put behind us,” Lucile said firmly. But her gaze flickered. “Oh, come in, then,” she said, opening the door wider.

Tess stepped in. The tiny room, so stark and bare. Something more than luxury had been stripped away.

“Aren’t you still a little—afraid?” she whispered.

Lucile went still. Her face seemed to break, then quickly reconfigure itself. “I’m always afraid,” she said.

“You are?”

“Of water,” Lucile quickly amended. She sat down, clasping her hands in front of her. “I almost drowned when I was ten,” she said abruptly. “People were on the shore, watching. None of them tried to rescue me. I screamed, I cried. No one came.” She could have been reciting a grocery list, her voice was so matter-of-fact.

“What happened?”

“A boy had the common sense to climb out on a rock and throw me a line. I managed to hang on and he pulled me in. I don’t talk about this. I do hope you know I don’t want it repeated.”

“That must have terrified you,” Tess said quietly, imagining the fear of a drowning child.

“No, I wouldn’t allow it. Sit down.” Lucile patted the lumpy, narrow bed.

Tess lowered herself next to Lucile. They were sitting so close, she could smell vestiges of Lucile’s favorite jasmine perfume, now at the bottom of the sea.

“You will learn to move on,” Lucile said, almost gently. “You will, Tess. I’ve learned not to show fear, to take charge, to stand up and be strong. Isn’t that what you want, too?”

“Yes.”

Lucile reached out and took Tess’s hand, squeezing it so tightly Tess almost jumped. “Don’t allow anyone to make you suffer, dear. We need to be thinking about what comes next, not about the past.” She hesitated for a second, and then said, “I have something for you.”

She reached into the pocket of her baggy sweater and pulled out the velvet drawstring bag. “Take these,” she said. “My gift for your future.”

Tess opened the bag and gasped as Lucile’s moonstone earrings—sparkling with light even in this dense, windowless space—tumbled into her hand. “I can’t take these,” she stammered.

“Think of them as salvage, my dear. They’ve already saved my life, and I have plenty more at home. Jewelry can be soothing, you know.”

It was so oddly offhanded, Tess was at a loss. She gently put
them back on Lucile’s lap. “I don’t need these—I just wanted to tell you I feel altered somehow,” she said. “I just needed to know you understand—that maybe you have nightmares, too. And you have comforted me. That’s all I want.” She searched Lucile’s face in confusion. Was she insulting her?

“Are you afraid I’ll change my mind and demand them back?”

“No, not at all.”

“Well, then, perhaps for another time.” Lucile slipped the earrings back in their velvet pouch and then into her pocket. “And, as for how we deal with fear, we are who we are. I think that’s enough for tonight.”

Tess didn’t want to leave. She didn’t want their short moment of intimacy to slip away. “When did you decide that you wanted to sew, to be a designer?” she asked impulsively.

Lucile blinked, as if startled at the question. “I sewed clothes for my dolls,” she said after a pause.