November 1, 1958
Dear Emmy,
No news to report on the sketches.
I found a seamstress willing to make one of the drawings a reality—I’ve actually found several who make custom dresses all the time, for a pretty price—but the one I like best is not interested in being part of launching a line of wedding dresses with your name on them. She will make a dress for me from one of your designs, but it won’t be to sell in a boutique somewhere. It will be for me to wear.
I am discovering that if I want your drawings to become real wedding gowns, I will need a treasure chest full of money to fund the project myself and then peddle them to bridal shops door-to-door.
I don’t have a treasure chest full of money.
Gramps isn’t a rich man, but he’s done well. I can only hope I can convince him to help me do with your sketches what you would have done with them.
But first I will have to tell my grandparents about the brides box.
And what I did.
Julia
November 9, 1958
Dear Emmy,
Gramps said no.
Simon and I took the train to Woodstock and had tea at Granny and Gramps’ house this afternoon. Gramps said he was sorry but neither he nor I know anything about the bridal gown business. We don’t have the know-how, the instincts, the connections.
He said it would cost thousands of pounds to have your drawings made into dresses, provided I could find a suitable seamstress able to read the faded sketches, and then I would have to traipse around London on foot, carrying them from store to store, hoping some shop owner would want to buy a gown that was in style twenty years ago, designed by an unknown who has disappeared off the face of the earth.
Gramps can’t see the value of plodding across London with an armload of wedding dresses no one to date has expressed any interest in.
He also commented that the designs aren’t truly mine to do this with. They belong to you. I don’t have your permission and I’m likely not going to get it.
Gramps and Granny were both appreciative of my desire to make things right between you and me, but they don’t think I’ve anything to regret. You and I both made mistakes that day. Mine were less egregious, perhaps, but that’s not the point, Gramps said. The point is, London was bombed a few hours after you and I arrived. The war is the true destroyer of your dreams, not I. So it’s not up to me to restore what the war shattered.
Simon was sitting next to me the whole time, stroking my hand under the table and saying nothing. I wanted him to say, But Emmy’s designs are really good. Or I’ll drive Julia around London so she won’t have to tramp across the West End on foot with an armload of dresses. Or even just, Don’t we owe it to Julia’s sister to at least give her dresses a chance?
He didn’t. We left soon after that.
What was the good in finding Emmy’s sketches if not to do something with them? I asked Simon on the way home.
He said maybe the finding was just for me. Maybe I was meant to find the brides box now because I happen to be in need of a wedding dress.
Pick the one you want for you, Simon said. Wear one of your sister’s designs to your own wedding. Wouldn’t that be the good in finding them?
I suppose he’s right.
I laid out all the sketches on my kitchen table tonight after Simon dropped me off. The most faded ones I put back. A couple others just weren’t right for my body shape.
Of the seven that were left, I picked the one I used to call the button dress. Remember it, Emmy? You had tiny pearl buttons going down the front, all the way to the floor. And a high, fitted waist. Lacy sleeves you can see through, a heart-shaped neckline, and a swishy skirt with a lace petticoat underneath.
I wonder if you ever imagined that someday your little sister would wear one of your dresses.
Perhaps Simon is right. Perhaps finding the brides box so I can wear one of your designs is what you would have wanted.
I am eager to take it to the seamstress who said she will make one of the dresses for me. I know what Gramps will say when I tell him my dress is to be custom made and might cost a little more than he thought he wanted to spend. He will say he doesn’t care. The dress is for me, for my wedding.
It’s for my happy ending.
One of us should have one.
I guess it will be me.
At least, as happy as I can make it.
Julia