Page 11 of The Wedding Dress Repair Shop
If ever I’d met a woman who could take care of herself, it was Honey Fairford!
Rosa-May
I was lucky enough tohave a kind young nursemaid, Sara, a girl of some education, whose family had fallen on hard times. Her older sister, as I later learned, had eloped with a strolling player, who had been performing with his company in the village where they then lived. But this, of course, had to be kept from my parents, and only to me did Sara confide the interesting information about the exciting world beyond the bounds of Nettlefold that she received in her sister’s occasional letters.
The squire’s family at the Grange included a daughter, Kitty, almost my own age, so it was arranged that I should share her lessons with her governess and be her playmate.
Sara, meanwhile, had become quite indispensable to Mama’s wellbeing, bathing her head with lavender water when she had a headache and reading aloud books of tedious sermons and the like. My sister Betsy was at first inclined to be jealous, but was at heart glad to be relieved of some of these duties.
Sara dreamed of escape from her humdrum existence as much as I did when I grew older, for earning a living in some menial capacity was the only alternative to marriage open to either of us, and marriage was unlikely in the extreme, given our situations.Besides, Sara was very tall and bold-featured, which, together with a very decided air and her superior education, set her apart from the local villagers.
Meanwhile, my lack of interest in scholarship – other than an ability to memorize and recite long pieces of poetry and prose – had caused my parents to think that, once I was old enough, I would be fit for nothing more than the post of companion to some elderly or invalid person.
I got on well enough with Kitty Taggart, who was a little lazy and stupid, but very good-natured. Kitty and I kept mostly to the nursery wing, but when the family were having one of their lively house parties, which often occurred when her two older brothers were at home, and decided to get up a play, we were sometimes bidden to take on minor roles.
I enjoyed this very much and my facility for learning a part quickly meant I was given longer roles than Kitty, from whose head the words, once learned, seem to pass out again with the utmost rapidity.
*
I was not, of course, on an equal footing with the daughter of the house, but at her beck and call as well as that of the rest of the family: useful for small tasks and errands.
Life continued in this not unpleasant, but humdrum fashion, until the year I turned sixteen …
5
The Stage Is Set
Time seemed to flash by me during the next few busy weeks, as a dry, dusty July turned into an unseasonably cool and damp August.
Marco and I spent even less quality time together than before and I began to worry again that we were drifting apart …
But then, he was so absorbed in the production of his new play, which was to open at the start of September, while I was working overtime for Beng & Briggs: not only did we have the fairy scene costumes to reproduce for Marco’s play, but also those for a TV costume drama.
I did manage one or two overnight stays with him, but they weren’t a resounding success since he was now writing a new play and so kept vanishing up to his study, which was in Mummy’s part of the house.
Then, when he did reappear, he only wanted to exhaustively discuss his new ideas with me, demanding my support and encouragement as usual, which was a bit draining … as was his habit of ringing me in the early hours for the same reason when we were apart.
Mummy ignored my presence in her basement, though I’m certain she knew whenever I was there and I was sure she was still hoping the engagement would fizzle out eventually.
It was not a very satisfactory situation, but I comforted myself with the thought that onceA Midsummer Night’s Madnessactually opened, our workloads would have eased a little for both of us.
My wedding gown was completed, the mannequin carefully covered by a cotton dustsheet, and I’d now begun on a miniature version of an Elizabethan dress for the V&A Museum shop … and if you’ve ever tried to make an authentic-looking lace ruff scaled down to mouse size, you’ll know how tricky that was. Still, I like a challenge.
Sometimes my neighbour’s cat, Golightly, would appear, silent as a ghost (unless he was hungry, in which case he would scream like a banshee), to keep me company for an hour or two.
Icallhim my neighbour’s cat, but actually Miss McNabb found him in possession of her flat when she moved in. The previous occupants must have shared him with whoever lived in my flat before me, for there was a cat flap in my kitchen door that gave on to the fire escape leading up to Miss McNabb’s, and Golightly was obviously used to moving between the apartments as he liked.
He was a detached, unaffectionate kind of cat, so I might still have felt a bit lonely if I hadn’t been in constant contact with Honey ever since the day we met. She’d quickly become a cross between a best friend and (though she had forbidden me to call her by the title) an acerbic and amusing aunt – a far cry from Aunt Rhona, who had brought me up!
It felt strangely comforting to have someone who was actually related to me, who cared about what was happening in my life. And she did seem as interested in me as I was in her. Shesaid she always enjoyed exploring new worlds, and mine, the behind-the-scenes work of theatre costume making, was entirely novel to her.
True to her word, she’d had someone trace my family connection to her, working back from my father. I’d given her what information I’d found in the papers that had been stored in the lockup, particularly Dad’s birth certificate. They’d tracked the line back to the younger of Rosa-May’s twin sons, the one who’d run away to America, so Honey’s guess about that had been right.
‘Uncle Hugo said the reason for the family row was because he wanted to marry the blacksmith’s daughter,’ said Honey, on the phone. ‘So they eloped and then eventually their son returned to England, though never making contact with the rest of the Fairford family. That was probably because his father had stolen a piece of family jewellery to fund his new life!’
‘If his older brother came in for everything else, he probably felt entitled to it,’ I suggested.
‘I expect he pawned it before they even got a ship to America,’ she said. ‘Anyway, your father was the last of that line – it’s amazing how so many big Victorian families do dwindle away to nothing. Mine did, too: I’m the last descendant of Rosa-May’s eldest son.’
