The Forgotten Seamstress (7 page)

She showed me how the quilt had been designed as a series of squares, each one larger than the last, like a painting within a painting within yet another painting, each one framing the one inside, and each one so different from the next, in the complexity of its patterns and colours, and the types of fabrics used. We wondered, together, how many tiny scraps of material had been used to make the quilt and I tried counting them, but gave up at twenty, the limit of my numbers. Then she suggested that we play a game of ‘match the scraps’, discovering that a section of triangles near the head of the bed was repeated at the other end, and the row of printed cottons sewn into squares were in the same order in the opposite corner.

The design of the outer panels was just shapes and colours, as far as I could see, sometimes in patterns like sticks or steps, with what looked like rising suns along the sides and ends. I liked to run my fingers along the curly pattern of embroidered stitches in the central panel, imagining myself to be in a maze of tall hedges.

But it was the panel of appliqué figures that most intrigued me. In a row along the top was a duck, an apple, a violin, a green leaf and a dragon with fiery flames coming out of its mouth and, at the bottom, another row with a mouse, an acorn, a rabbit, a lily-like flower, and an anchor.

‘Why is the duck trying to eat the apple?’ I asked.

Granny chuckled in that easy way that always made me feel safe. ‘Have you ever watched a duck trying to eat an apple? They can’t pierce the skin with their round beaks, so the apple keeps running away.’ She mimicked the action with her hands, the fingers of one bent over the thumb like a bird’s bill, the other a round fist in the shape of an apple. ‘They have to wait until another bird with a sharp beak has cut into the apple, then they can eat it.’

I pointed to the dragon at the end of the row. ‘Why’s he got flames coming out of his mouth?’

‘Perhaps he’s trying to scare away the duck so he can eat the apple.’

I’d chattered on brightly, desperate to prolong the conversation and postpone the inevitable lights out: ‘Mummy says I can have a real-life rabbit, like this one, when I am a bit older.’

‘That’s for her to decide, my little Caroline,’ she said. ‘Now it is time for sleep. Tomorrow’s a big day. Someone special is coming to meet you.’

In the middle of the night I sat up in bed and tried to write down as much of that memory as I could. Some details were still clear as a spring day, but there was something else I couldn’t quite grasp, a foggy incompleteness, as if my mind associated something important with that moment, but which was long since too deeply buried to bring back to the surface.

Cassette 2, side 1

Is that thingy working again?

The clink of a cup being placed into its saucer.

That was a nice cuppa, thank you dearie. Much needed. So where was I?

‘You were going to alter the prince’s breeches …’

That smoky chuckle again, rattling in her chest and catching her throat till it becomes a full-blown coughing fit. She struggles to regain her breath.

It do sound a bit unlikely, don’t it, when you say it out loud like that? It’s no wonder they thought I was making it up. Most of ’em didn’t believe me, you see. And why would they, when they was surrounded by crazy women with all kinds of weird imaginings? There was Ada, for example, who believed she was the pregnant Virgin Mary and used to stick a pillow up her dress whenever she got the chance. They’d tell her off too, just like they did with me. ‘Stop putting on airs,’ they’d say. The psychiatrist was the worst, sitting there like a pudding with that question-mark face on him. ‘This is in your imagination, dear,’ he’d say to me. ‘None of it is real and the sooner you understand that the sooner we’ll be able to release you.’

Then there was poor old Winnie, who got locked up that many times for climbing into bed with other women and stealing food off other people’s plates. She always claimed it was the voices telling her to do it, but they never believed her, neither. Well, I’d try to argue back like Winnie, of course, but after a while I gave up trying to prove that what I was telling them was the truth. What was the point? In the end I figured it was best to keep quiet and let them think it’d had all been in my imagination.

But if you are happy to hear me out, I’ll carry on.

‘Please do. That’s what I am here for. When you’re ready. The prince’s breeches …’

Ah yes. Hrrrm. Well, I don’t know what I imagined a royal bedchamber to be like, but that room was so enormous if there hadn’t been a carpet on the floor I’d have taken it for a ballroom. Besides, there was no bed – must be next door, I thought to meself. On the far side was a person preening himself in front of a long mirror dressed in what I took to be a pantomime outfit – not that I’d seen a pantomime in me life, you understand, but I’d seen the posters outside the music halls. He had white satin breeches with great rosettes at each knee, with a doublet which barely came down to his thighs, and a coat and cape in purple velvet with furry trimmings – I later found out it was called ermine – and a floppy velvet hat on his head.

‘At last, Finch, you’re back,’ the prince said, and as he turned to us his face twisted into an angry frown. Finch bowed and I made my best curtsey. I’d been practising since last time.

‘This is Miss Romano, Your Highness, the best seamstress in the palace, come to make the alterations you require,’ said Finch in his oily voice, making me shimmer inside at the compliment.

‘Excellent, excellent,’ said the prince, looking at me so curiously I began to wonder whether I’d put my apron on back to front. I kept my eyes fixed to the ground as I’d been told, but through my eyelashes I could see that the frown had been replaced with a teasing smile.

‘Your curtsey is much improved since we last met, Miss Romano,’ he said. ‘I only hope your needlework skills are as good.’

He smiled at me then, that smile that seemed to light up the room, just like he did that day when I’d botched my first attempt at a curtsey. I could feel my cheeks burning and my heart begin to beat a little faster just recalling that moment, and realising that he, too, remembered it.

‘Now sir,’ said Finch, all brisk and business-like. ‘Perhaps you could describe to Miss Romano the work you would like her to undertake?’

‘These bloody breeches,’ the prince grumbled, and he pulled out the sides of them below the doublet so that they stuck out like angels’ wings either side of his thighs. ‘They’re like something a ruddy ballet dancer would wear. There’s not much we can do about the rest of this preposterous rig, but at the very least I want these taken in. Not too tight, mind.’

‘Would you care to show Miss Romano exactly how tight, Your Highness?’ said Finch, ‘so that she can place a pin for marking?’

I rummaged in the basket of necessaries to find Miss G’s pot of pins. Then as the prince held the fabric either side I knelt down in front of him, with my hands trembling so much that I could hardly hold it, doing my best to place the pin close to his fingers through the fabric on both sides and all the while trying not to have hysterics at the extraordinary turn of events which had brought me kneeling with my face only inches away from the most personal parts of the future King of England.

She breaks out into that smoky cackle and the interviewer laughs along with her. They are growing easy in each other’s company. It takes some time for them both to gather themselves.

Oh dearie me. I’ll remember that night till I die, I tell you. Thinking about it has helped me laugh through the blackest of times since, and there have been plenty of them, let me tell you.

Anyway, I managed to pin the fabric without sticking a pin into the royal nether regions and then stood back while he regarded himself for a long time in the long mirror again and finally pronounced that the shape of the breeches was now much improved. He turned to me, said a brief ‘Thank you’, and then, without so much as a by your leave, undid the hooks at the waist, dropped the breeches to the floor and stepped out of them, in his undershorts alone.

Of course I turned my eyes away, blushing to the roots of my hair and the soles of my feet. A man in his underwear wasn’t something I’d ever seen before but Finch took no notice, as if it was perfectly normal to see the prince in a state of undress. When I thought about it later, that was probably how a valet sees his master most days. He just pointed to me again to pick up the breeches and said, ‘Thank you, sir, we will return these first thing in the morning. Just to remind you, it is a six o’clock start, sir, for the rehearsal at Carnarvon tomorrow afternoon. Will that be all?’

‘That will be all, Mr Finch,’ said the prince, ‘and you too, little Miss Romano.’ Finch bowed and I curtseyed again, and I copied him as he shuffled crabwise out of the chamber so’s not to turn his back on His Royal Highness. I was that elated about the whole business that I seemed to glide along the corridors and downstairs to the sewing room without touching the floor. What a red letter day it turned out to be. I had just been within inches of my heart’s desire, the boy who would be King of England.
And
Finch said I was the best seamstress in the palace.

After that I was so determined to prove it, I spent most of the night on the alterations to the prince’s breeches. First I had to remove the knee band and the satin rosette on each leg and then take in both side seams. The satin was so delicate that every stitch threatened to rip the fabric unless I used the very finest of needles with a single strand of silk thread, and sewed the tiniest of fairy stitches. Knowing that if I had got it wrong there would be no going back and my job at the palace would probably end here and now, I cut away the excess fabric and oversewed the seams to stop them fraying. Then I had to re-gather, with a double line of tacking stitch, and sew back the below-knee band and fit the rosette in exactly the right place. It wouldn’t do for it to hang out at the back or stick out at the front – or, nightmare of nightmares – to fall off in the middle of this investi-wotsit.

After all that, I pressed the seams flat with a very cool iron ever so carefully – imagine if I had singed them – so that they would sit perfectly on the prince’s beautiful limbs. The big clock on the sewing room wall ticked around at an alarming pace, but I was finished at ten minutes to five o’clock, so I wrapped the breeches in some white cambric, picked up my sewing kit again and went in search of Mr Finch in the servants’ hall.

I heard nothing more for quite a few days and so I had to assume that my work had been to the prince’s satisfaction. Gossip in the servants’ hall was that the event had been a great success, that the rain had held off, and the prince had said his lines in Welsh correctly and the king had been very pleased. There were photographs in the newspaper, and to be honest he did look a bit of a ninny even with the slimmed down version of the satin breeches I’d created, but at least I had done my best. After all the excitement of that night, I felt a little let down that my efforts had gone unnoticed and un-thanked.

Until Mr Finch arrived in the sewing room one afternoon and passed me a note. He stood in the doorway while I opened it, my fingers trembling terribly as I’d given a bit of cheek to the housekeeper the day before and feared I might be for the sack.

It was unsigned, but had the Prince of Wales crest at the top:
‘Dear Miss Romano, I have some further sewing for you to do. Please come to my chamber at ten o’clock this evening.’

We went through the very same rigmarole as before. Finch called for me at five minutes to ten precisely. From his silence and the set of his shoulders as we made our way to the prince’s chambers I could tell he was dreadful put out, having to escort the needlework maid around the palace at this hour.

This time, the prince was in a red velvet smoking jacket and Harris tweed trousers, and seemed a deal more relaxed, resting on a chaise by the fireplace with a cigarette, and a newspaper in his hands. When we entered he looked up with that smile like spring sunshine.

‘That will be all, thank you Mr Finch,’ he said. ‘Miss Romano will see herself out once we have finished. There is no need for you to wait.’

I could feel Finch hesitating beside me, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He cleared his throat and said, quietly, ‘Excuse me, sir. Are you sure? It’s just that …’ he struggled to find the right words, ‘Miss Romano may not be too familiar with the route …’

The prince looked at me with a mock-serious frown and a little smile on his lips. ‘I am sure you can find your own way back to the servants’ quarters, Miss Romano, can you not?’

What was I supposed to say? I could not disagree with the prince, whatever trouble that got me into with Finch later, so I mumbled, ‘I think so, sir’, and he said, ‘Very good, very good’, before waving his hand at Finch. ‘Thank you for your concern, Mr Finch, but that really
will
be all. See you in the morning.’

The next few hours was like a dream. Even now I cannot really merit that it actually happened and, believe me, I have thought of it almost every day of my life. In the Hall they give you drugs to forget, and I didn’t want to forget a moment of this time, so after a while I refused to take them. What else did I have but my memories?

I asked what it was he wanted me to sew for him, and he laughed and said, ‘There’s no mending to be done tonight, little one, except perhaps my poor life. It’s been so dreary since they made me leave naval school and all my pals. No, I’ve invited you here because I want to have a conversation with someone normal. And you have such a charming smile I felt sure you would be fun to talk to.’

I hesitated then, I really did, and my heart started banging in my chest at the unusualness of the situation I found myself in. It was not my place to go round having casual conversations with princes, let alone at night when everyone else was asleep.

‘Are you sure, sir, I mean, Your Royal Highness,’ I stuttered. ‘I am a very ordinary girl you know, not even needlework mistress. When Miss G gets back to work, perhaps …’