The Dress

2.

A pair of leopard-print shoes, platform heels. Late 1950s. Size 37.



Mamma said that city life would fit them better. Less chiacchiere, Ella, less interfering.

‘In a bigger place, no one is interested in other people’s business,’ she said. ‘You’ll see. A new start. So much better for us.’

There was a contact, someone father had worked with, someone who knew someone else. There was a shop that had come empty, with a flat over.

Mamma took the big Atlas of Great Britain from the drawer and flipped through the pages, her fingernail with its scarlet polish tracing the journey they would take, up from the bottom of the page, along the yellow spine of the country to a large splotch of blue-green, right here.

‘York,’ she said, stabbing at a small red spot. ‘Very nice, so people tell me. Three rooms upstairs: sitting room, kitchen, bedroom. We’ll have to share. And then the shop on the ground floor, of course. It’s good place for us, Ella-issima. Clean place with no trouble. The kind of place where we can start again, sell beautiful dresses to nice people. Everything much better.’

They arrived at the beginning of a new year. A cold blast of wind caught at the hem of Ella’s coat and blew her from the train steps and across the platform.

She hurried, her bag banging against her bare legs, following the splash of crimson that was Mamma as she expertly steered the trolley, piled high with their cases and boxes, through the crowd.

The wind blew through the station portico, whipping up scraps of paper and petals from the flower stall, sending them skittering over the stones.

A man with a briefcase tipped his hat at them and smiled.

‘Welcome to Yorkshire,’ he said and the sound of his voice was surprising, flat and wide, with a kind of hum to it, like what happens when you pinch your nose and try to sing at the same time.

Ella watched him following Mamma with his eyes. Mamma was wearing the red suit, 40’s style, with the fitted skirt and nipped-in waist, a wide belt of patent leather, a red hat with a little black half-veil, and her very high leopard-print shoes.

Ella wished, not for the first time, that Mamma could be more like other mums, her hair less done, her lipstick less red, that she’d dress in normal clothes, jeans and sweatshirts, draw less attention to herself. Who, Ella thought, glancing around her, wore red with leopard-print? Who wore a hat and gloves any more?

But Mamma had already reached the front of the station where another man waited for them, leaning against the wall, a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth. His hands gripped a piece of cardboard scrawled with Mamma’s name, bracing it like a shield against the cold wind.

He looked Mamma up and down, the corner of his mouth twisting. He’s laughing at her, Ella thought. The black mis-spelled letters, ‘Mrs F. Murreno,’ flapped and shuddered in his hands.

‘Good afternoon,’ Mamma said to the man, with careful precision. ‘I’m Mrs Moreno.’ She pronounced the name crisply, rolling the ‘r’ more then usual. ‘Thank you so much for meeting us.’ She extended a gloved hand.

The man took a final drag of his cigarette and then ground it under his heel. He fished a mobile phone from his pocket and shouted into it.

‘Yeah, mate. That pick-up for Jack. I’m gonna need the van.’

Mamma’s hand hovered in the air, then came to rest on the strap of her handbag, which she pushed higher up her arm. Ella saw that she was nervous. A single bead of sweat was trembling on her top lip and she was surreptitiously checking that the clasp of her bag was firmly closed.

Half an hour later, a rusty van pulled up outside the main entrance, the doors tied shut with bits of rope and the bumpers hanging half-off.

Mamma’s lips tightened as the man and the van driver began to toss their boxes into the back of the van, one on top of the other. She saw the men smirk at one another as Mamma negotiated the van step in her tightly-fitted skirt and high heels, flicking her glove over the grimy back seat before gesturing for Ella to climb up beside her.

The van jolted and wheezed over a wide bridge, the river flowing fast and brown below. Through the spattered window, Ella caught glimpses of high stone walls, brooding clouds, a throng of afternoon shoppers shouldering their way towards the station, their heads angled against the wind. She pulled her thin coat closer around her.

The van bumped down a cobbled side street and sputtered to a stop. Mamma sat up straighter in her seat, craning her neck impatiently over the backs of the men’s heads.

What she saw made her gasp out loud, her hand flying up to her mouth to stifle the sound.

‘But it’s perfect,’ she said, her eyes welling with tears of relief.

And although, Ella thought with new irritation, this response was just a touch on the dramatic side, she saw that it was also true.

Their new home stood in its own secluded courtyard. To enter the yard, you had to walk under a low archway of old wooden beams and that was when the noise of the street faded away and you could feel the buildings draw close around you, as if cradling you in their arms.

There were no other shops facing into the courtyard, only a café with a few chairs and tables outside and three or four customers staring into their cups.

They looked back at Ella with glazed expressions. One of them fed flakes of croissant from his fingers to a little dog that he’d tethered to the back of his chair by its lead. No one seemed the least bit interested in the van or their arrival.

Ella let her mind soften into a small, still point, then imagined herself floating upwards and outwards, flying across the courtyard and into Mamma’s head. From here, she could see the shop as Fabbia Moreno was seeing it right now, windows polished to a bright gleam, a smart sign in gilt lettering, a mannequin in the window in a red crepe dress and scrolls of silk and velvet spilling over the counter.

‘Where do you want these, then, love?’ one of the men shouted, throwing a box in the air and catching it with a fake flourish. Ella snapped back into herself.

She watched as the men stacked their boxes in a clumsy pyramid on the shop floor.

‘Please, no need… No, really,’ Mamma entreated them, her lips tightening again.

But the men were fast, deft, efficient. The van moved off in a cloud of exhaust fumes and Ella watched as Mamma removed her hat, twisting it in both hands.

She picked her way between the puddles, poking at the splintering shutters, testing the footboards with the toe of her shoe, then stepped inside the shop, peeling off her glove and running her hand over the surfaces.

‘So much dust. It must have been empty a long time.’

Ella saw only how the white plaster seemed to glow in the half-light, the graceful arches of the window panes and the ironwork above the shop door where the face of a woman smiled down at her. The woman’s ironwork hair, unravelling over the lintel, was so realistic that Ella could almost imagine her winking.

Licking the tip of her finger, she wrote on the dirty window ‘Fabbia Moreno,’ and beneath that ‘Ella Moreno,’ making the ‘b’s as loopy and extravagant as she could. And beneath that, she drew the shape of a heart.