The Dress

4.

A plume of emerald-green feathers with Swarovski crystal clip. Bespoke stage costume jewellery from Paris. 1990s.



Jean Cushworth frowned at herself in the mirror. Like this, with her hair sticking out in clumps all over her head, each clump wrapped in a piece of carefully folded tinfoil, she could see every wrinkle on her forehead. She moved in closer, trying not to look at the jowly bit under her chin, whilst inspecting her crows’ feet, which even ludicrously expensive pots of eye cream didn’t seem to be preventing from becoming so much more noticeable. She passed a hand over the skin at her collarbones, noticing the way that it no longer sprang back under her fingers.

She watched this woman in the mirror, this woman who was herself and also strangely not herself, a woman she no longer recognised, and let out a long sigh. The woman in the mirror sighed too so that she noticed now, along with the baggy skin under her eyes, a delicate web of lines at the corners of her mouth.

Jean Cushworth knew women with mouths like that. They were the main reason why, years ago, she’d finally managed to kick her thirty-Marlboro-Lights-a-day habit. Those women couldn’t wear lipstick any more without it creeping up from the edges of their lips, giving them a slightly mad expression.

Now she saw that she too would very soon be one of those women.

Maybe she’d go for the Botox option, after all. Perhaps even full-on surgery. God knows, Graham could afford it. And he owed her. That much was clear.

She thought of her mother and how she’d let herself go in the last decades of her life, the cardigans with the splotches of gravy down the front, her hair, the lustrous chestnut curls, her ‘crowning glory’ as she’d always liked to call it, left to fade to a wiry grey thatch and hacked at every couple of months by that awful woman who came to the nursing home.

‘Only seven pounds, she asks for,’ her mother had announced jubilantly. ‘Special OAP rate. And to think I’ve spent all that money in salons over the years. Yes, that’s one good thing about getting older. You don’t have to give a damn anymore.’

But Jean Cushworth did give a damn. She made a little grimace at the woman in the mirror and saw her mother – the raised eyebrows, the disapproving glare – grimace back at her.

No, she was not going to give in. She’d fight it just as long as she possibly could. She wasn’t and was never going to be her mother.

Vincent, the colourist, was faffing over her, adjusting the towel around her shoulders and then carefully unwrapping one of the foils.

He caught her eye in the mirror. ‘Just seeing if you’re cooked, Mrs C.’

She grimaced again and flicked through the pages of a magazine, lingering over the soft spray-tanned curves of some young celebrity presenting her new baby to the camera. No laughter lines on her face, Jean noticed, despite the fact that this girl was smiling in that way they’d always told her you really never should, back in her own modelling days. It was a smile that bared all of the girl’s perfectly straight white teeth.

Probably touched up, Jean thought. Lots of air-brushing. We never had any of that back then. We even did our own make-up.

Now Vincent was removing the foils, one by one, playing each strand of damp hair through his fingers, spreading it over the towel.

‘Have you seen that there’s someone new moved into that old boarded-up place on Grape Lane?’ he was saying, ‘A vintage shop. Vintage with ‘vintage-inspired bespoke.’ Apparently.’

He raised a provocative eyebrow.

‘Oh, I haven’t been down there in months,‘ Jean said. ‘Not much reason to, really…’

Vincent brightened, relishing the opportunity to impart some new gossip.

‘It’s someone come up here from Down South. She’s Italian, I think. She came in the other day with some flyers. Very lovely, she was. Terribly glamorous. A breath of fresh air, really. She’s kitting the place out beautifully too. I had a little walk past there, bit of a nosy. Very stylish. Worth taking a look.’

Jean smiled at him sweetly. ‘Oh, I’m sure it’s lovely, if you like that sort of thing. Personally, I’ve never liked the idea of wearing,’ she dropped her voice conspiratorially, ‘someone else’s cast-offs… I mean, it might be alright for students and people with not much money to spend but…’

Vincent laughed. ‘I know what you mean. Those dusty old places. Smell of mothballs and damp and old ladies’ wee, most of ‘em, don’t they? Still, I think this place isn’t going to be like that. No, it looks much classier. And vintage-style bespoke. That’s the next big thing, really. I’m getting people asking for 40s up-dos and 60s asymmetric bobs. I love all that stuff. Good luck to her. Anything new in this place gets my vote, that’s for sure.’

‘I suppose,’ said Jean, ‘but then, are people in York actually ready for something new? I think most of us rather like this place the way things are.’


‘Mamma, are you a witch?’

Ella spun the screw-top jar of threads-ends on the kitchen table. She watched the bits of silk, blue-red-brown-yellow-white, blurring together.

Mamma’s needle stopped moving. Her eyebrows shot up in an expression of alarm.

‘What a funny thing to ask, tesora. A witch? Why would you think that?’

Ella held up the jar.

‘Well, this, for instance. It’s not exactly normal, is it? How you collect all these bits of thread and put them in this jar and, every time you do, you mutter something to yourself under your breath. Like a kind of spell… Well, you do, don’t you?’

Mamma waved her hand dismissively.

‘Ah. That’s just a silly habit. Something Madaar-Bozorg used to do. It’s not a spell. It’s more of a superstition. Each time I come to the end of a bit of thread I say, “Bless this house and keep us all from harm.” I’ve been doing it for so long that I’m almost afraid to stop doing it now. You see? Silly nonsense, really.’

Ella frowned.

‘But what about the words you’re embroidering right now. The words you hide in the clothes… in the hems and the pockets. You used to tell me they were spells… Words to give people luck or special powers…’

Mamma sighed and smoothed her fabric on the table.

‘Again, Ella, habit. A thing I like to do. It makes me feel good about what I’m making for people. Something beautiful. Something… yes, well, secret. You remember, I told you these words were spells when you were very little, long before we had a shop, when I used to make things as gifts for the people who’d been kind to us. I was teasing you. We were just playing together. And yes, I suppose the words are a kind of magic. But only in the way that I put peppermint leaves and rose petals in your bathwater… to help you relax, to help you have sweet dreams… or the way that I tell you stories, like Madaar-Bozorg and her sisters told them to me, to help you to understand things, see things in a different way. Or the way I make torta and bowls of pasta like your father used to do…’

She looked at Ella. ‘Oh, I can see that I’m not convincing you. But you know, you could even say that the way we dress the shop window, to make a little bit of pleasure for our customers, is magic. Because the world is full of magic when you know where to look. It’s in the river, the way it moves and in that pot of basil on the windowsill, the way the leaves know exactly how to grow, how to create themselves… and,’ she patted the silk on the table, ‘it’s in this fabric, here, the way it has a flow and a feeling all of its own when I move my needle through it… But really, tesora, this magic is not an “Abracadabra, I turn you into a frog, I make you disappear” kind of magic. This magic is more like… like love…’

‘OK. I get that part.’ Ella tried to hide her impatience. Something didn’t feel quite right about this conversation. It was as if Mamma were weaving around them both a cocoon of soft colours - pastel blues, silvery pinks, a smudge of primrose-yellow - whilst somewhere underneath, she could feel a pulsing, a thrumming, something bolder - red vibrations, streaks of lightning-white and black jagged edges.

From the corners of the room, she imagined that she could hear voices and echoey laughter, insistent, repeating Mamma’s words in a way that sounded almost mocking: Abracadbra, abracadabra. Magic, magic, lu-uuurve magic.

She shivered.

‘But what I don’t understand, Mum, is these weird feelings I’m getting all the time now – colours and feelings and… well, you know, really strange vibes?’

‘Yes, The Signals,’ said Mamma. ‘That’s what I’ve always called them. I thought you were starting to feel them too. You’ve heard people talk about sixth sense, I’m sure. And that’s what we have – you and me and Madaar-Bozorg and her mother before that and probably her mother before that… You see, your mind, Ella, and your body are very powerful instruments. You should always listen to what they tell you about the world. They’ll always serve you well…’

So why do I feel so cold, right now? Ella thought. Why don’t I trust what she’s saying? It’s not as if I don’t want to.

‘Mamma?’ she said and her voice sounded small, thin, afraid.

‘Yes, tesora?’

‘What about the box under your bed?’

Mamma’s face froze. She drew herself up straighter in her chair.

‘What do you know about that?’ she said, quickly. ‘Ella, some things are very private.’

Ella felt Mamma’s green eyes reaching deep inside her.

‘Yes, Mum. I know. I wasn’t snooping. I promise.’ She made a quick gesture. ‘Honest. Cross my heart and hope to die…’

‘Don’t say that, Ella! I’ve told you before,’ Mamma snapped.

‘Well, don’t tell me that magic is only about cooking and sewing and… and love,’ said Ella, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she could stop them. ‘Because that’s not the whole truth, is it? I saw you opening that box when we were moving here. I saw you taking out the candles and that big old book and a lot of other weird stuff… I’m not a little girl any more. I wish you’d just tell me…’

Mamma sighed again, heavily. It was as if all the anger were seeping out of her. Ella felt it gently flowing away in long, muscular ripples.

‘Tesora, you have to trust me,’ she said, laying her hand over Ella’s own. Her touch was warm, soothing. Ella felt a tongue of mauvish light creeping through her fingers, reaching up as far as her elbows.

‘Trust me, Ella-issima. What’s in that box is not magic. It’s just props. You know, staging. Just like my old stage costumes. Candles, an old scrapbook that I made as a girl. Cards – tarot, I-Ching, Goddess – I’ll show you them all if you like. Old bags of herbs that Madaar-Bozorg gave me. But they are not something I play with any more. Do you understand? They are part of the past. Part of the Old Ways, the Old Country. We don’t need them. You do not need them. You have education, books, opportunities, so many ways to make the world bend in your direction. You can be anything you want to be. And we mustn’t make ourselves different, Ella, any more than we already are. This much I have learned – the hard way. So carina, you have to trust me… You mustn’t talk about magic or spells or any of these things to anyone else. Not Billy, not anyone at school, OK? Because they won’t see it the way we do...’

Ella felt the cold glitter of Mamma’s rings as she reached to stroke her cheek and cup her chin with her hand.

‘Do you understand what I’m saying, Ella? Do you? We have to fit in here. Sink… or swim…’

‘Yes,’ Ella muttered. ‘OK, Mum. OK.’



That night, Ella slept deeply behind the old curtain that Mamma had rigged up to divide their bedroom into two separate halves.

The curtain was a faded rose colour, with shepherdesses and sheep wandering all over it in gold brocade.

‘We can count these sheep,’ Mamma laughed, ‘when bad dreams come.’

Ella dreamed of an autumn tide, its swell washing up against the stone walls of the city and in and out of the shop door. The water entered everywhere, smooth and brown as rippled silk. As it receded, it left behind a flotsam of jewels and feathers.

She felt herself rocked by the movement of the water. Her heart floated loose in her chest, like a water lily drifting above its long stem.

She lifted the hem of her nightdress and walked down the narrow stairs to the shop, over and over, over and over, the carpet squelching up between her toes.

The woman with the long hair had climbed down too, from her place high above the shop doorway, and she stood in the middle of the shop, smiling, her hair flowing over her shoulders and down over her bare feet, making miniature whirlpools on the wooden floor.

In the distance, Ella heard the Minster bells chime three o’ clock. The woman pointed in the direction of the sound with her pale fingers.

‘Listen’ she laughed. ‘Sink or swim? Sink or swim?’

In the morning, there was no sign of Mamma. Ella poked her head around the dividing curtain. The bed looked unslept in. She made her way down the shop stairs, rubbing at her eyes.

‘Ta da!’ Mamma turned to her, spreading her hands vaudeville style. ‘What do you think?’

Ella saw that the window was finished. The mannequin had her hand on her hip and her head tilted at an angle, as if she were listening to far-off music. She was wearing a 1930s black cocktail dress with hundreds of tiny pearl buttons down the back. At her feet, shawls and scarves, which Mamma had twisted and coiled to imitate waves, spilled in brilliant colours. She’d positioned a silk umbrella so that you could almost believe the wind had snatched it, just a moment ago, out of the mannequin’s upturned hands, and from the ceiling she’d suspended paper leaves, each one turning gently on a single thread of silver.

Ella recognised the velvet hat stands, their haughty profiles newly adorned with plumes and headpieces. On the counter, a blue calfskin travelling case spilled sparkling necklaces and brooches.

She admired the new white labels, each inscribed meticulously in Mamma’s flowing copperplate script: ‘Sweet little 1930s ballerina brooch. £6,’ ‘1930s art deco crystal dress clips. Perfect for décolletage. £19,’ ‘Delightful 1950s lizard brooch. £11.’

There were gowns arranged along rails at each side of the shop and silk kimonos floating from the ceiling, their sleeves and skirts pinned like the wings of butterflies.

Across an alcove, Mamma had formed a sort of fitting room behind an old theatre curtain with gold tassels and fringe. She’d propped an antique mirror against the wall at the precise angle to catch your reflection and throw it back at you in such a way that your neck and legs appeared immediately longer.

The walls of the fitting room were painted deep red and hung with some of Mamma’s old publicity photos: a nineteen-year-old Fabbia Moreno sporting a bikini made of green crystals with a plume of emerald feathers sprouting from her head; a poster for The Songbirds and their ‘Sizzling, Scintillating, Sell-out Show’ with Fabbia at the centre of the line, caught forever in a high-kick, smiling and smiling; and this black-and-white close-up, Mamma’s personal favourite, dark hair flowing over pale sculpted shoulders, eyes downcast, full lips and the tiniest, most tasteful hint of cleavage.

As a little girl, Ella had loved these pictures, constantly asking questions about them: ‘Tell me again, Mamma, about Paris…’

Her dressing-up box had held bits of the old costumes.

Now, seeing them here on the changing room wall, she felt nervous, on edge in a way she couldn’t really explain.

Mamma was still moving around the shop, arranging pairs of shoes on a small table, their heels nested one inside another, their toes turned out, as if requesting the next dance. She’d made still-lives of gloves and handbags and compact mirrors and fan-shapes of handkerchiefs and scarves.

‘It’s beautiful, Mum. Much better than our old place.’

Mamma stopped and picked up an elbow-length green silk glove, laying it along her forearm like a favourite pet.

‘You think? You honestly think, tesora?’

Ella nodded. ‘I do. In fact, it’s wicked.’

Mamma laughed that deep throaty laugh of hers. ’Wicked? Ah, I like this new word. Wicked…’ She snapped open a pearlescent plastic compact shaped like a shell and patted at the shadows under her eyes.

‘Look at me! Tsk. What a sight. And still more boxes to do. Coffee. Let’s make some coffee...’

‘Mum, have you slept at all?’

‘Not really, tesora. My mind was too busy, too full of things to do.’

Ella followed her up the stairs.

‘You have to sleep, Mum. Why don’t you lie down for a bit and I’ll wake you in a couple of hours?’

Mamma turned mid-stair, frowning.

‘Because you have to go to school, tesora.’

‘Not today. It’s Saturday, Mum.’

As she watched her mother moving around the kitchen, selecting her favourite cups, delicate white porcelain with a gold rim, flicking stations on the radio, banging the filter of the coffee pot against the side of the sink to dislodge the old grounds, running water, Ella turned over the Mamma Problem in her mind.

She’d thought about it a lot over the past few years. Mamma’s tendency to work all hours at something, to forget to sleep or eat. Her organisational brilliance when it came to sourcing vintage clothes at fleamarkets and fabrics from wholesalers all over the country, scouring eBay for bargains and transforming junk-shop finds, coupled with her occasional inability to remember what day of the week it was.

Ella was different. She liked to have a carefully-drawn out timetable of all her activities at school so that she could be sure that she’d packed her bag the night before with the right books and PE kit, the envelopes with trip money or club money and even, where necessary, the right notes to the teacher, which she’d draft out carefully on the telephone pad and then ask Mamma to copy and sign in her own beautifully flowing handwriting.

‘So organised,’ Mamma would say, ruffling her hair. ‘But really, tesora, you worry too much.’

To Ella, everything about Mamma was a kind of contradiction: the dramatic outfits and red lipstick with her desire to fit in; her love of everything that was brave and colourful and different – in dresses, food, languages, people, places – with her respect for British people and their very reserved and careful British ways; and, of course, the secret at the heart of it all, the thing that Ella alone knew, that Mamma was only pretending to be Italian.

She wondered how other people would react, here in this new sleepy city, to the opening of Mamma’s shop, her window displays, the photos in the fitting room and all her little eccentricities.

As Mamma pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and yawned and stretched her arms wide, circling them to release the ache in her shoulder blades, Ella felt that surge of feeling again. She wanted to protect Mamma from the raised eyebrows and the unfair bitchy gossip; but privately she wished that, this time, her mum would just get a nice, quiet job - secretary or teaching assistant or something at least half-way normal - and then she immediately felt guilty for even thinking such things.

Now Mamma placed one of the white cups in her hand. Ella took a sip, savouring the slightly bitter flavour.

‘To us,‘ Mamma said, raising her cup and then she stooped to look out of the tiny kitchen window across the higgledy-piggledy rooftops, sparkling with frost, and the two stone angels with their tired faces that could just be glimpsed on a portion of the Minster walls. ‘To us, tesora. To new beginnings...’