Twenty-three
EMMY let herself into the bridal shop by its back door, certain that Mrs. Crofton wasn’t there, and yet she called for her as she stepped into the shadows.
She locked the door behind her and crept from the back entrance to the alterations room where she had first sewn a hem for Mrs. Crofton. Here, Mrs. Crofton had installed a blackout curtain for nights when she stayed late after business hours. Emmy lowered her belongings to the floor and reached up to the little window that overlooked the alley. She pulled the curtain down, securing it to the hooks Mrs. Crofton had nailed into the plaster. Emmy switched on the small table lamp by the sewing machine, grateful that the electricity on this side of the street had not been affected. A halo of sallow light fell about the tiny room. It was just enough brightness to see her way around but not enough to be detected by patrolling wardens and fire-watchers outside.
Emmy plugged in Mrs. Crofton’s hot plate, filled the teakettle, and for the first time since she had sat in Mr. Dabney’s elegant sitting room—a lifetime ago—she drank hot tea from a dainty, beautiful cup. Along with the tea, Emmy ate two slices of stale bread that she had taken from Thea’s kitchen, spread with marmalade.
In her rush to be away from the flat, she had not considered that she might need a blanket and a pillow this night. It was too dark now to rummage around Mrs. Crofton’s desk for her home address. Emmy would have to sleep at Primrose.
She stripped down to her underwear and, with water from the sink in the loo, she used a scrap of fabric from the alterations dustbin to wash the grit, dirt, and ash from her body. Then she stuck her head under the tap and washed her hair, repulsed by the swirls of dirty suds that accumulated at the drain as she massaged her scalp.
Emmy used a hand towel to dry off and then slipped on a pair of Mum’s slacks and a blouse to serve as pajamas. As she started to comb out the tangles with the brush she’d grabbed from Mum’s bedroom, she noticed it still held strands of her mother’s hair in the bristles.
She pulled the brush away from her head. As she gazed at the mingled strands, hers and Mum’s, a wave of grief swept over her. For hours, Emmy had kept the loss of her mother at a distance, refusing to acknowledge that Mum was dead. In her drastic measures to be able to keep searching for Julia, Emmy had not allowed herself to shed a tear for Mum. Not one. But now as she stood in the back room of the bridal shop, wearing Mum’s clothes and holding her mother’s hairbrush, the full weight of her loss came crashing in. Emmy sank to her knees, clutching the brush to her chest. The bristles pricked her skin like nettles through the thin fabric of her mother’s blouse.
The tears began to fall, rivers of them, as Emmy sat back on her bent knees.
“Mum,” Emmy murmured, as she thought of her mother’s hand on her cheek and the last words she had said to her—the last words she would ever hear her say—floated into Emmy’s mind.
Stay here and watch for your sister.
Don’t go outside after dark.
It’s not safe.
With those parting words, Emmy had suddenly been flung into an unfamiliar world falling apart all around her. She was alone in the very place where, only a few months ago, hope had been breathed into her dreams. Those dreams seemed thin as vapor now, spun by a different girl, someone Emmy barely recognized.
“Mum, Mum . . .” Emmy’s voice was hoarse as she pushed it past the anguish in her throat. She raised her hand to wipe away tears and caught the faintest whiff of Mum’s perfume on the sleeve of the blouse. Emmy folded herself to the floor and laid her head on the travel bag, clutching the hairbrush to her body just as the night before she had clutched the hammer. As she lay on the tiles, she began to shiver, and she screwed her eyes shut to take herself back to Brighton Beach, to that long-ago sultry weekend when Neville was still in Mum’s life. The sand had been warm between Emmy’s toes and a brilliant sun had been shining down on the water, making the surface of the sea look wired with tiny little flames. The white surf hitting the shore bubbled like bridal lace and Mum had been standing by Emmy as she dug her toes into the sand. They had been watching Neville and Julia play in the waves and Mum had reached down and laid a hand on her shoulder. Emmy had been reminded then of how it had been before Julia was born. When it was just she and Mum. Emmy had been flooded with the memory of her and Mum splashing in a London fountain and Mum stroking Emmy’s hair and telling her someday she’d have everything she ever wanted.
And then Julia had squealed for Emmy to help her as Neville grabbed her around the middle and the two fell splashing and laughing to the water. Mum had laughed, too.
I guess you’d better go rescue her, Mum had said, nodding toward the water. It’s you she wants.
For a moment, a solitary pinch of time, she and Mum stood in the sand, looking out past the happy swimmers to the vast and endless Atlantic.
You’d better go rescue her.
“I will, Mum,” Emmy whispered now as the sensation of the warm sand and hot sun began to fade away, replaced by the cold tiles.
Emmy had no sooner murmured this promise than the sirens began their dreadful wailing and she was forced to contemplate her options. If she ran outside to join those sprinting for the nearest public shelter, she would be noticed by the local ARP warden whose job it was to account for the civilians in his or her sector. She could run for the nearest Tube station, but those inside would wonder where she had come from that she could suddenly materialize out of nowhere and be in need of shelter in a space they’d been hunkering down in for weeks.
As the first whistling bombs began to fall, followed by the thundering claps of their detonations, Emmy instinctively crawled under the sewing machine. Then an explosion rocked the world outside and she knew she needed something to cushion her against shattering walls, if it came to that. And Emmy knew where she could find that protection. She came out from underneath the sewing machine and stumbled into the dark store, yanking ebullient wedding gowns off their hangers as outside the air rocked with violence. She ran back into the alterations room, her arms overflowing with yards and yards of downy fabric. She scooted under the sewing table, then shoved the gauzy, generous gowns all around her until she felt she might suffocate. For the next seven hours, until four o’clock in the morning, Emmy crouched under the Singer as the Luftwaffe pummeled London, every word off her lips a promise to her mother.
When at last an eerie quiet signaled that daylight was not far away, she nodded off, enveloped by bridal gowns.
Emmy awoke midmorning and emerged from her white cocoon. Her head ached from mourning the loss of Mum, and a heavy numbness clung to her, but she still sensed relief that the street and the shop had not taken a direct hit. The toilet still flushed. The hot plate still worked. She could make tea. She found a bottle of aspirin inside a cabinet in the privy and took two.
With her teacup in hand, Emmy ventured out into the main room to steal a glance outside. As she was about to walk past the dressing room and Mrs. Crofton’s consultation desk, Emmy saw a suitcase, standing as if at attention along the wall. A pair of gloves rested neatly on top and a neck scarf was draped over one side. Mrs. Crofton was prepared to go away. Perhaps she would be coming by the shop today to get her suitcase and flee London. Perhaps Emmy could convince her to delay her departure for just a few days so that she could help Emmy find Julia.
Emmy saw a neat pile of documents at the edge of the desk closest to the suitcase, and the unmistakable shape and color of a British passport. The other documents were folded. She picked up the little pile of documents and unfolded the first two. Mrs. Crofton’s marriage license and her late husband’s death certificate. The other three pieces of paper were her business license and her late daughter Isabel’s birth and death certificates. Emmy noticed that Isabel would have been eighteen on the coming Sunday had she lived. Such history bound up in such flimsy pieces of paper. Private pieces of paper.
Emmy put them back where she had found them as her burning cheeks reminded her they were not her documents. A stamped but unmailed envelope lay next to Mrs. Crofton’s private papers, addressed to Mrs. Talmadge, the woman who cleaned the shop on Friday mornings. Emmy reasoned that she needed to read what was written inside because she had to know what Mrs. Crofton’s plans were. She needed to ascertain whether Mrs. Crofton would be able to be of any help.
The letter had not been sealed. Emmy lifted the flap, drew out the single piece of stationery, and read what Mrs. Crofton had written: It was dated Sunday, September 8.
Dear Mrs. Talmadge:
I am closing the shop for a while, perhaps a long while, and leaving London to wait out the war with my cousin and his wife in Edinburgh.
We are leaving Tuesday morning, so I shall not need . . .
Emmy stopped reading.
Today was Thursday.
If Mrs. Crofton had left on Tuesday with Mr. Dabney, why had she not taken her suitcase? And her important documents?
Had Mr. Dabney not left yet?
In her heart Emmy rushed to believe this was the case, that Mr. Dabney had been detained because of complications from the bombings, and that if Emmy just waited there at the shop, Mrs. Crofton would be by shortly to fetch her suitcase and papers.
Emmy could tell her what had happened. She could offer to wash by hand the gowns she had used for protection the previous night. Perhaps Mr. Dabney would allow her and Julia both to join them all in Edinburgh, once Emmy found her.
Mr. Dabney could write to Charlotte and have her send the brides box to him in Edinburgh.