The Dress

8.

Blue silk dress with net petticoats. 1950s. Lovely detail at décolleté.

Can be altered to fit size 10-12.



Ella drew the velvet curtain across her body so that she wouldn’t have to see. She hated looking at herself in the mirror. She hated the way that her body felt, the way her stomach pushed at the waistband of her skirt, the way the soft flesh at the tops of her thighs rubbed together when she walked.

Katrina liked those American films, the ones with pink covers and hearts all over them where girls carried fluffy dogs in their handbags and had perfectly groomed eyebrows. She wanted to look like Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde or the girls in those Californian soaps who drove convertibles and flicked their hair over their shoulders.

Ella had been brought up on Mamma’s vintage collection: the Audrey Hepburn box sets, Marilyn in Some Like it Hot, Anita Ekburg splashing in the Trevi Fountain, Sophia Loren.

But when she looked in the mirror, she didn’t see how she could ever look like that. There was her hair, for a start. Long, dark and thick, it was always escaping whatever arrangement she devised for it. When she brushed it, it stood out from her head in a dark fuzz that seemed to crackle with static.

Ella made a face at herself in the mirror. She felt ridiculous for caring so much. Billy would laugh if he could see her standing here.

She could hear him now.

‘That Katrina’s sending you daft,’ he’d snort.

But then she felt the panic beginning to rise in her, as if she were bursting out of her skin, as if her clothes couldn’t hold her. She could barely swing her legs under the kitchen table any more.

‘A fine young lass, your Ella’s making,’ she’d heard Mrs Stubbs, the owner of the shoe shop on the corner say, collecting a new dress for her eldest daughter. ‘Our Elizabeth just won’t grow. I try to feed her up but she’s all skin and bone.’

Ella vowed privately to eat even less. She hated being taller already than Mamma. She thought this was how Alice must have felt when she ate the cake and felt her body grow so big that it pressed against the walls of the house and she had to hang her elbow out of the bedroom window and her foot out of the downstairs door.

It was hard not to draw attention to yourself when you felt the boys’ eyes burning into your body as you walked down the school corridor. It was doubly hard to fit in when you felt so different on the outside as well as the inside.

‘You are blossoming, tesora, becoming a lovely, curvaceous woman,’ Mamma smiled.

But Ella wanted less, not more. Sometimes she’d prefer to disappear completely.

Even Billy had started to act differently around her. After school, on the days that she’d managed to dodge Katrina, they would dawdle down by the riverbank. Ella loved to lie back in the warm grass, watching the blackbirds building their nests, following the clouds as they passed overhead, spiked by the new green leaves.

Once or twice, it had happened now. She would turn to say something to Billy and his eyes would flick up guiltily to meet her face from where, she quickly realised, they’d been busily burying between the three top buttons on her blouse. She watched the colour creep over his face. He couldn’t look her in the eye. Instead he looked away, pulling at the dandelions, annoyed at himself.

It would take her days to shake off the awkward feeling after one of these moments, as if Billy was suddenly a stranger to her.

Katrina had given her a page torn out of Mizz magazine. She produced it from her schoolbag and watched as Ella scrutinised it.



Breakfast:

Omelette made of two egg-whites.

Cup of tea, no milk.



Lunch:

Tin of tuna fish.

Apple.

Cup of hot water with 1/2 tspn. cider vinegar.



Dinner:

Small piece of fish or chicken breast.

Steamed vegetables.

Half a grapefruit.

Cup of hot water with 1/2 tspn. cider vinegar.



Ella’s eyes darted down the page in horror, thinking of butter pooling on golden toast and Mamma’s pasta with olive oil, rosemary and garlic. Perhaps this was why she just kept on growing. Clearly, other people didn’t eat like they did. Mamma was getting it all wrong again.

‘Is this what you have for breakfast?’ she asked Katrina. ‘This egg-white omelette thing?’

‘Duh. I don’t think so,’ Katrina laughed. ‘Toast and marmalade. Two slices. But then, I’m not always going on about my weight, am I?’

Which was true. Katrina didn’t need to go on about it. As quickly as Ella was acquiring new soft flesh, Katrina was elongating into long smooth lines. It was as if her body, which some people, definitely not Ella, might have described before as a bit on the plump side, was emerging from its prepubescent cocoon. Her legs were long and perfect. Her arms were firm and shapely and didn’t wobble when she raised them above her head. She herself was clearly pleased by this metamorphosis and had become fond of running her finger around the waistband of her school skirt so that the elastic made a satisfying snap, or observing loudly to Ella, after making sure that she was certain to be overheard, that she bet Eddie Dickinson or Dean Silver over there could get one of their hands around her entire waist.

And Eddie or Dean or some other boy would, of course, always be happy to oblige, only to be batted away by Katrina, protesting that surely they hadn’t thought she seriously meant it? She wouldn’t have one of their sweaty paws within five hundred yards of her.

Now she looked at Ella from beneath her long mascaraed eyelashes. Katrina always wore mascara, although it was banned from school.

‘What’s up, cupcake? You won’t be on that diet for long, anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, it’s too much in your natures, isn’t it? You Italians. All that food. You can’t help yourselves.’

She spun away, delivering her killer line over her shoulder: ‘And Billy’ll always fancy you, anyway.’


Now Ella stood in the velvet-lined fitting-room, in a dress cut from blue silk that came in at the waist in a buckled belt and stood out all around her. It had a stiff net underskirt and swished as she moved.

‘Cornflower blue, tesora. It sets off your eyes,’ Mamma said.

Ella wrinkled her nose, tugging at the neckline of the dress. ‘It’s just too… Oh, too something, anyway. Can’t I just wear my black one?’

Mamma sighed. ‘You can wear whatever you want. I just thought you might like to try something different, a bit of colour…’

‘Mum, I don’t even want to go to this party… You know I hate this kind of thing... ’

Mamma frowned. ‘I don’t understand. I thought this Katrina girl was your friend. But then, you and Billy don’t seem to have anything nice to say about her…’

‘I know.’ Ella sighed. ‘Billy really doesn’t like her. But I think I feel a bit sorry for her, I suppose. She’s very different when we’re on our own. She talks to me about stuff. Confides in me. She needs someone to talk to. She’s there in that big house, all alone for most of the time with only this old servant woman who mutters and mumbles to herself. And I think there’s even a ghost...’

Mamma narrowed her eyes. ‘What do you mean, ghost?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Probably nothing. Except I get all these weird heebie-jeebie feelings when I go there.’

Ella tugged again at the collar of the dress and adjusted the buckle on the belt, ignoring Mamma’s frown.

‘She’s really not all that bad, Mum. None of the other girls even talk to me.’

‘Maybe that’s because you’re friends with Katrina?’

Mamma inserted the beaded end of a pin between her lips, raising an eyebrow in the mirror.

The truth was, Ella didn’t really know if she was Katrina’s friend. Sometimes, Katrina was all over her.

‘Like a bloomin’ rash,’ said Billy, but she thought that the best way to describe Katrina’s attentions as she linked arms with Ella or invited her to admire a new T-shirt she’d just bought or listen to a new bit of gossip she’d just heard, was like an exotic climbing plant, an ivy or a vine, that sent its strong tendrils into every available cranny. She was constantly seeking out a foothold and, no matter how hard you made yourself, she’d find the chink.

She would stand in the playground and point, whispering loudly behind her hand about the other girls, until Ella felt her neck and ears tingle with shame.

‘That one there, Lindi Cartwright, her dad’s gone off with a girl who’s only five years older than us.’ She’d wink, nudging Ella in the ribs. ‘A bit of a gold-digger, apparently. Well, that’s what they’re all saying… Can’t see what else she’d see in the old bugger. More fool him.’

And then, pointing over at another girl, ‘See Big Barbara over there… OK, OK. Don’t look so shocked. Even her own brothers call her that… Big Babs. Big Baps. Well, her mum’s been doing it with the postman. I mean, my God. Talk about original. The postman!’ Her laughter rang out all over the yard.

And as Ella felt the hot wave sweep from her neck and up into her hair, she added, ‘Well what? You’re the only one who doesn’t know. Just filling you in…’

Ella would dig her nails into her sticky palms, realising that this might be true, that Katrina was letting her in on the secrets that no one else would ever tell her. She didn’t like Katrina’s gossipy ways but perhaps, she told herself, Katrina really didn’t mean any harm. Perhaps she was just trying to include her.

Other times, Ella wouldn’t see much of Katrina for days. She was always relieved when she could slip out of the school gate and fall in with Billy’s lolloping stride.

‘My lucky day, then, is it?’ was all he ever said.

Now she scowled again and the girl in the mirror scowled back at her.

‘Mum, I’m sorry. I can’t wear this. I look like an explosion in a net factory. It’s just not me. I’ll wear the black. I like the black. It’s more…’ she searched for the right word.

‘Boring? Predictable?’ Mamma suggested, her eyes twinkling.

‘Dignified, Mum. That was what I was going to say. Dignified. Maybe I am boring. Maybe I actually like not being noticed. We can’t all be like you…’

‘Ella, I was just teasing. I didn’t mean… I was just… It’s just that it’s so nice, this colour, on you…’ Mamma’s voice trailed off. She looked defeated.

‘Look, it doesn’t matter, Mum. Please. Let’s just leave it. The black will be perfectly fine. Really. I’m happy as I am…’

She was already stepping out of the dress, pulling on her jeans. Mamma shook her head sadly, shaking out the blue silk like the petals of a giant crumpled flower.

Ella felt guilt creep through her. Rejecting Mamma’s attempts to dress her felt as if she were rejecting a part of Mamma herself. She laid her hand on Mamma’s arm.

‘But thank you, Mum,’ she said, stroking Mamma’s sleeve, which was bottle green today and freckled with tiny pink polka dots. ‘And Mum, please. You’ve got to stop worrying about me.’

Mamma’s wrist under the thin silk felt delicate, almost fragile. She smiled back at Ella, wearily, and suddenly she looked as if all the colour had drained out of her.

Ella had a sudden impulse. She lifted a pair of platform sandals from their stand, the straps covered in huge pink and yellow satin roses, their clunky cork soles. They were too big but she slipped them on anyway, rolling up the hems of her jeans.

‘How about these?’ she said to Mamma. ‘Will I do now?’

Mamma pretended to examine her closely, head on one side, then scooped up a handful of sparkling bracelets and pushed them up Ella’s arms. She reached into a basket on one of the side tables and selected a red velvet rose, tucking it into Ella’s hair.

Ella steadied herself on the teetering heels and began to spin. Round and round, she whirled, faster and faster. She felt her hair whipping her face.

‘Come on, Mum, join me!’

‘You’re crazy!’ Mamma laughed but she clapped her hands together and stamped her foot like a flamenco dancer.

In the dimness of the shuttered shop, Ella and Mamma spun together and, as she whirled faster, faster, Ella began to feel, for the first time, that she was spinning her own spiral of story, flinging her colours out everywhere.

Mamma’s laughter floated up, all around them. She could feel Mamma’s Signals fly in giddy ribbons of orange and yellow and cornflower blue.

And for a moment, Ella forgot to think about the swell of her hips, the curve of her stomach. It was as if she was becoming another body, somebody different, some new possibility of herself. She felt all the worries, all the old stories melting away from her in a spill of words. For that moment, it felt as if she and Mamma were big enough to spin an entire new world.


Fabbia found herself longing for someone to talk to. Sometimes she’d have conversations with Enzo in her head. She’d ask herself what he would do or say if he were here with her now, about this strange and beautiful child they’d made together.

Madaar-Bozorg too. She wished she could just call her. Sometimes she got as far as picking up the phone and dialling the first few digits of the code. But she knew that was hopeless. Madaar-Bozorg had become increasingly deaf in recent years but refused to succumb to what she saw as the indignity of a hearing aid.

‘Why would I wear such an ugly thing?’ she’d written in her last letter, in response to Fabbia’s carefully reasoned arguments. ‘There’s no one here who says anything worth listening to, anyway.’

‘Speak up, dear,’ she’d shouted when Fabbia had called her on her birthday last year. ‘You’re not pronouncing your words properly. You’ve forgotten how to speak your own language.’

And Fabbia knew that Madaar-Bozorg was standing with her hand partially over the receiver. She pictured her, a tiny frail figure standing in the hallway of her ninth floor apartment, her hair still carefully brushed every morning and caught in a chignon at the nape of her neck, the string of pearls clasped firmly around her throat as outside the balcony windows, the sounds of the new city clamoured and jostled against one another.

It was as if, with every year now, Maadar-Bozorg was slipping further away from her, the letters arriving less frequently, in a spidery Biro that was hard to decipher and the phone calls in which Fabbia heard her own voice, bounced halfway around the world, echoing back at her down the line, unheard.

This was her choice, of course, the choice of the exile, the consequences of a decision she’d made all those years ago. No one but herself to blame. She’d chosen another life for herself, here on a separate continent. She’d left Maadar-bozorg behind with nothing more than a kiss and a wave of the hand. And she’d been in such a hurry. As a young woman, it had all been very simple. Keep moving.

Back then her country, the Old Country, had seemed far too real, too constricting, while the rest of the world was vague, blurry, like a vast blue-green ocean. She’d fixed her eyes on the horizon and felt the surge of it launch her forwards, a current of cool, clean air coming up to meet her. And this current was progress, she’d told herself. She was part of history. She’d ride the eddy of it, follow it out, far out, as far as she could go.

And now she didn’t answer to anyone. There was no man telling her what to do. She’d reinvented herself over and over, turning her back on the old ways, eventually adopting the name and language and customs of her European husband. To anyone else, she was Italian now. The candles lit on Sundays for the dead ancestors, the turns of phrase, the coffee made a certain way, Enzo’s recipes of fish and pasta, the jokes, the pet names that extended even as far as the name that she’d taught her own daughter to call her: Mamma. Mamma-issima.

It was as if she had no history any more, her few remaining ties dissolving as quickly as an old lady’s spidery handwriting.

So she couldn’t start complaining, all these years later, that there was no one around to understand her. No, that was a weak way of thinking and she despised such weaknesses.

It wasn’t as if she was completely alone, anyway. There was David, of course, a sensible man, a kind man. Quite a surprise to have discovered this man, Fabbia thought, just when she’d decided never to open her heart again. She couldn’t be sure yet, of course. It was much too early.

To begin with, he wasn’t her type. Not really. She’d always liked men with dark hair and dark eyes. Men like Enzo. She wasn’t always sure how to be around this blonde English gentleman with his funny manners, who acted always so carefully, as if she was made of china and might break under his hands.

She could talk to him and this was a nice feeling, a relief after all the years on her own. But he was a man and that meant that, if she told him her worries, he’d suggest solutions, try to fix things. And Fabbia didn’t know if there even was a solution or anything to be fixed.

Ella keeping herself to herself. Not going out except with Billy. Her insistence on wearing black clothes all the time. Jeans, black sweater, black T-shirt. That plain black cocktail dress. Beautifully cut, of course. Chic, in its way, but so solemn, so severe. It worried her.

From all the colour and pattern in the shop, Ella would always select the simplest pieces. She pulled faces at Fabbia’s suggestions for jewellery and accessories. Just the other day, Fabbia had held up some oversized pearls, a diamante brooch.

‘Like Coco Chanel,’ she’d suggested. ‘Trés chic. Not too much. Just a little bit of something against all this black. Something to brighten.’

Ella had just sighed. ‘This is how I like it, Mum.’

And spending so much time on her own in her room. Was this normal? Studying, so she said. But this could hardly be something to complain about. Other mothers who came in the shop told her about how they had to bribe their own children to do homework or household chores. Despite the new dark cloud that seemed to cling to Ella and the solitary ways that she’d always preferred, Fabbia couldn’t say that she was ever anything except a good girl, so conscientious. So why was she even worrying?

And maybe, Fabbia thought - and this thought was like a spotlight cutting through the haziness in her mind - Ella was clever enough to really make something of her life in this new world. After all, this was Ella’s country, her inheritance. It belonged to her in a way that it never would to Fabbia. Maybe one day, Ella would be a nice lawyer or a doctor. Dr Moreno. She liked how that sounded. Enzo would have liked that. Maybe David would help her to make this happen.

Fabbia felt her heart quieten then, her breathing become steadier, more even. Yes, her Ella was clever and hardworking. Not like some of these other young people, wasting their time, making noise in the street, hanging around. As her mother, she would encourage this hard work. She would stop nagging all the time. And she would be strong, strong as steel, so that Ella would have everything she needed to walk smoothly through this world. She would work even harder and put a little money by each week for Ella’s future.

It was then that she heard it. A faint stirring in the air. A crackle under her fingers.

There’s always another way, the voices whispered.

No, she said to herself. She might even have said it out loud. No, definitely not. Not that. Not spells and potions and Dumb Suppers. And definitely not the summoning of spirits. All that Old World nonsense. She’d left it behind a long time ago. Well, apart from a few old habits. But they didn’t count. Not really.

Go away, she hissed under her breath. Leave me alone.

The shop bell jangled sending The Signals skittering across the room.

Fabbia dropped the swathe of silk in her lap and met David’s open grin. He was holding up a paper bag.

‘Croissants. Proper French ones,’ he said, ‘and they’re still warm. Any chance of a coffee?’

She was already there, putting her hand up to his face, pulling him down towards her so that she could kiss him.

He smelled of soap and aftershave and, very faintly, of the surgery’s disinfectant. She breathed deeply.