Four
THE broken glass had been swept away and several long sections of wood had been nailed to the window frame at Primrose Bridal. Emmy stepped inside the shop and the tinkling of two silver bells attached to the handle announced her arrival. Mrs. Crofton looked up from a white French provincial writing desk situated along the left wall. Two Queen Anne chairs upholstered in cobalt blue velvet sat opposite her. Emmy imagined one was for the bride, and the other for the bride’s mother or sister or maid of honor. Mrs. Crofton had probably consulted with a thousand brides from behind the desk.
“Flip the Closed sign, will you?” she said. “And set the latch.”
Emmy turned back to the door and did what Mrs. Crofton asked, using the few seconds to still the niggling nervousness that had suddenly bloomed inside her chest.
“Please have a seat, Miss—I’m sorry I’ve forgotten your name,” Mrs. Crofton said as Emmy completed the task. “Too maddening of a day.”
“Emmeline. Emmeline Downtree.” Emmy closed the distance between them and sat down on one of the chairs.
Mrs. Crofton finished making notations in a leather-covered ledger and closed it gently with a bandaged hand. “Eloise Crofton. If it’s not a drunkard crashing his car into my window, it’s daft suppliers who think just because there is a war, women aren’t getting married.”
Emmy had said as much to Mum earlier that day and nodded.
Mrs. Crofton set her pen down. “War makes brides as easily as it makes widows, Miss Downtree. And do you know why?”
“Because people still fall in love?” Emmy said hopefully.
“Because people need to believe love is stronger than war. A soldier marries before he marches off so that the ring on his finger will remind him who he is when he’s crouched in a trench with his weapon raised to kill. You don’t want to forget who you are then.” She opened a drawer and slipped the ledger inside it. “Now, then. Tell me how long you’ve been admiring my shop?”
“I guess as long as we’ve lived in Whitechapel. We moved here two summers ago when my mother got a new job.”
The woman waited for more and Emmy knew in an instant she’d probably already said too much. To mention a mother’s new job and say nothing of the father meant there was something amiss.
“Oh. I see. How very nice.” Mrs. Crofton tipped her head and Emmy saw the unspoken question in her eyes.
“Yes, I’ve walked past your shop every Saturday morning since then. I love your gowns. They’re just so beautiful. And . . . so full of promise.”
Mrs. Crofton regarded the dresses hanging all around them on hangers and dress forms and lithe mannequins. “Yes. They are very pretty. The prettiest dress a girl will ever wear on a day like no other.” She turned her focus back to Emmy. “And what is your experience?”
Emmy cleared her throat of the knob of anxiety bobbing there. “Well, my grandmother taught me all the stitches for hand-sewing. I know the satin, cross, whip, running, chain, blanket stitch—all of them, really.”
Mrs. Crofton leaned forward and steepled one hand under her chin. “What I meant was, what kind of retail experience have you had?”
The nervous knob bubbled its way back and Emmy tamped it back down. “None. But I’d be happy to show you my stitches. Your advertisement says you need someone to do hand-sewing and alterations, not someone with retail experience.”
Mrs. Crofton smiled. “Fair enough. Come with me.”
The woman rose from her chair and Emmy followed her into a back room. A long table was set up in the middle and a gown was lying across it. A black and gold Singer sat in one corner. Bolts of tulle and lace crowded into one another. Baskets of white thread, cards of silvery hooks and eyes, and little glass bowls of pearl buttons and rhinestones sat on the top of a cabinet in the farthest corner.
“I’ll give you twenty minutes to finish the blind hem on that wedding dress. If I like what you do, I’ll hire you on a trial basis. If I don’t, you have to take out all the stitches before you leave so that I can do it later. Deal?”
It took supreme effort not to hug Mrs. Crofton when Emmy told her yes.
“I’ll come back in twenty minutes, then,” Mrs. Crofton said.
Emmy sat down in front of the dress, a feather-soft chiffon, and placed her box of brides at her feet, a bit disappointed that she hadn’t needed to show them to Mrs. Crofton. The hem was a quarter of the way completed, the tiny pricks of the needle nearly invisible. Emmy lifted the gown to her lap, prayed to God Almighty for divine favor, and took up where the stitching had stopped. She made her stitches as even as the ones before hers, and as weightless. She was finished in seventeen minutes.
Emmy found a hanger and was just placing the dress on a hook on the wall when Mrs. Crofton came back into the room with a blue-and-white teacup in her hand. The air immediately became fragrant with the aroma of Earl Grey.
“My, my. Done already?” She set the teacup down, lifted the skirt, and studied the hem. “You’ve a nice touch with a needle, Emmeline.”
“Thank you.”
“Did your grandmother happen to also teach you how to use a sewing machine?”
Emmy gazed at the Singer in the corner. “I didn’t get to see her very often. She died a couple years ago.”
“Ah.” Mrs. Crofton released the skirt and studied the way it fell from the hanger. “Very nice. Quite nice, actually. Perhaps you might work out after all.”
Emmy looked at Mrs. Crofton’s face to make sure there was no joking sentiment behind the words. “Are you hiring me?”
“Let’s say Tuesdays and Thursdays, two to six. A Saturday or two a month, depending. Twenty shillings a week. At the end of the month, we’ll see where we’re at. It’s an uncertain world right now.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Crofton. You won’t be sorry.” Again Emmy’s eyes were drawn to the Singer in the corner. “Might I be able . . . That is, perhaps you wouldn’t mind if . . .” But she couldn’t finish. Surely it was too soon to beg for favors.
Mrs. Crofton followed Emmy’s gaze. “You want to learn how to use my machine?”
“If it’s not too much to ask.”
“I can teach you a few things if you like. I’m thinking you’d pick it up fast enough. It would actually be better for me if you knew how to use it.”
The opportunity to learn to sew on a machine was more than Emmy had hoped for. She felt her mouth drop open in grateful wonder.
And then out of Emmy’s mouth burst words she hadn’t needed to say. They seemed to gush from the spring of elation that was bubbling inside her and there was no stopping them. “Mrs. Crofton, may I show you something?”
“Yes? What is it?”
Emmy reached for the box at her feet, undid the clasp, and handed the woman the sketches.
After paging through a couple of the drawings, Mrs. Crofton cocked her head, intrigue etched in her expression. “Where did these come from?”
“They—they came from me.” Emmy was unsure whether Mrs. Crofton’s wide-eyed gaze was one of delight or dismay.
“Are you telling me you drew these? You didn’t copy them from a magazine?”
Emmy nodded.
Mrs. Crofton leafed through the sketches a second time. She stopped at the one Emmy liked best, a form-fitted gown that fell from a ruched bodice with a dropped waistline into a petaled skirt. “This one reminds me of a dress I had in the window this past spring.”
“The one you had had a scooped neck and high waist. It was pretty but no one with long legs would have looked good in it.” Emmy’s heart skipped a beat. She had said too much.
Mrs. Crofton raised an eyebrow, but her eyes were smiling. “Is that so? And how did you come to that conclusion?”
“Because I look at how women wear dresses. I always have. Even when I was drawing paper dolls for my sister. All dresses start out the same. A bodice, sleeves, skirt, and waistline. But not everyone can wear the same dress. A wedding dress is still a dress.”