The Wedding Dress Maker Read online

  Peg turned back to her chores. Taking on Netta Nichol was the price she must pay for a warm fireside. ‘Dear God, send me enough cloth to warm her coldness,’ she prayed and straightened out the dress. Once there were other kiddies at the hearth the girl would soon fall in line.

  *

  On the morning of the wedding Netta took her time fixing up her liberty bodice and the garters round her white stockings. Peg had starched her petticoat and bound the child’s wiry hair into tight ringlets. The dress was hung up ready for the trip to church. Angus was looking stiff and shiny in his best suit. His hair plastered down, his cheeks flushed from the drinking spree at the Stratharvar Hotel. Peg had squeezed into the dark pink two-piece suit that just about skimmed over her bulk, thanks to her new Spirella corset. She had let Mary MacCrindle shampoo and set her hair into a crimped wave flat against her ears and she wore her new floppy straw hat to one side. The finishing touch was the necklace of polished stones that Angus had pushed towards her in its blue box.

  ‘Here’s something to go with your outfit. It’s yours now. Shame to waste a good bauble.’

  He did not touch her or offer to put it on her neck. When he looked at her there was only resignation and gratitude in his eyes, never a spark of desire or admiration. Peg could live with that. When she gave him a son, then she might shine brighter in his eyes. She was sitting by the dressing table when Netta appeared in the doorway.

  ‘You can’t wear that!’ She pointed to the necklace in horror. ‘It’s my mammy’s, not yours!’

  Angus turned sharply to his daughter. ‘Of course she can. I bought it for Jeanie. It’s for me to gie it to whom I please.’

  ‘But it’s mine! Mammy said it was for me to have the rainbow necklace. She can’t have it!’ The child stood defiantly, expecting him to back down.

  ‘Haud yer wheest! She did no such thing. Jeanie wore it on her wedding day. Peg is yer mother now.’ Angus made towards the child.

  ‘That pink blancmange is no my mother. If I can’t wear my beads, I’m no going to yer wedding…’

  He dragged the girl, taffeta skirts rustling, out into the passageway and took his razor strap to her backside. This is for cheeking Peg on her wedding day! Never talk to my wife like that again or you’re no a daughter of mine. This is her home now. You can stay in your room all day for all I care but Peg can choose what she wants to wear without your permission, missie. Do you hear me?’

  Steely-eyed, red with tears and with a stinging backside and crumpled dress, Netta stood stony-faced with the rest of the small congregation gathered for the service. Later they went to the Stratharvar Hotel for high tea and she drank lemonade while the grown-ups drank whisky. Then Netta was sent to stay next door with the Patersons for a long weekend while Peg and Angus took the train to Edinburgh for their honeymoon.

  Peg had no stomach to wear Angus’s gift after all the carry on. A dead woman’s promise had spoiled the pleasure of it all so she made do with the corsage of roses and white heather. The necklace was put carefully back in its box and she never touched it again.

  May 1949, Friday

  Peg lay wide awake now. Only two days of the visit left. It was no use stirring up old wounds. Netta could turn the attic over all morning if it kept her out of the kitchen. What she’s really after is no up there, Peg thought to herself, and it’s no hers for the taking either.

  Netta opened the trap door and sniffed the dusty air. A moth fluttered towards her lamp, casting flickering shadows. The floor was cluttered with the flotsam and jetsam of departed Nichols packed in boxes and cabin trunks; a musty graveyard, overgrown and neglected in the usual out-of-sight, out-of-mind way of most attic dumping grounds. All the history of the ancient family must be at her feet but she was in no mood to explore the distant past.

  What she was looking for would be tucked away in cardboard boxes and leather attaché cases; stuff flung up here in the last ten years or so. It would take some sifting through so she would start at her feet and work backwards. The dust was gritty in her throat and her back was aching already but Netta was not deterred. Even if it took all day she would find the bits and pieces of her past among this lot. She would not give Peg the satisfaction of ignoring her requests. There were so many important details of her own journey that were hazy; her memories were often distorted and all mixed up in her brain.

  Netta edged herself down on to the floorboards and cleared a space for the lamp. She dusted the nearest square box and opened it. It was a gas mask of all things! How she had hated fire drill and air raid warnings, the smell of the rubber up her nose choking her like a dentist’s mask sending her to sleep. She was made to carry this wretched box across her chest for a whole year until they grew lax at the School and she transferred to the Academy. Inside the box was tucked a handwritten programme for some concert but it was not in her own fancy script but a misspelt list of items. The wartime concerts, of course, with the evacuees from Glasgow. Glory to heaven! There was one bright spark in her schooldays which had brought fireworks to Stratharvar: Wilma Dixey and her brother Malky, the Lang Gang; Miss Lennox and Miss Murchison, their teachers. What a shot in the arm to such a dozy village they were! How Netta wished she had a snapshot of them all lined up on the stage for that first Christmas shindig but film was scarce and saved for only the most important occasions. The coming of the evacuees had been a shock to Stratharvar School and they had certainly changed the direction of her life forever. ‘Oh, Dixie!’ Netta sighed. ‘We were always trouble, you and me. We didn’t have a very good start, did we?’

  September 1939

  A few weeks after war was declared the Dixeys exploded into Brigg Farm like Catherine wheels: a girl of ten with a shock of straw-coloured hair which stood up like Strewwelpeter’s, and a small boy of about six with knees like doorknobs who looked as if he’d not seen a square meal in years. They seemed to be labelled up and parcelled in brown paper, carrying gas masks and paper bags, following behind Peg’s ample rump like stray pups. Netta, being in her Anne of Green Gables dreamy phase at the time, was not looking forward to sharing all her things with strangers. It was enough trying to be nice to Peg as part of her war effort.

  The Nichols were late getting to the Hall where the fifty-two evacuees from Glasgow foisted on Stratharvar were gathered for selection and distribution. The hall was in chaos with kids tearing round more like squealing piglets running amok in an auction market than at a sorting office. The best ones had long been chosen: the ones with leather suitcases and clean clothes, faces without suspicious scabs and sores. Peg was given the last two, bed wetters by the looks of them: the eldest was Wilhelmina, a skinny malinky longlegs, with Malcolm Aloysius, her brother, welded to her sleeve.

  Peg looked at their labels suspiciously. ‘Are these ones Papists? Am no having Papes in ma house.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mistress Nichol, but these are all that’re left.’ The Billeting Officer was nearly hairless with the racket and complaints. ‘They’re a mixed bunch from the Cowcaddens end of Glasgow city and that’s not Kelvinside as you probably ken.

  ‘Still, the Reverend Mackay did warn us on Sunday in his sermon: “Duty is a two-edged sword, no satisfaction without the pain of sacrifice”. Is that no what he said?’

  Peg sniffed, guessing that the big three of the village, Minister, Doctor and Headmaster, would have had first pickings of the teachers and their offspring, not these scruffy wee toerags. Netta had never seen so many strangers in Stratharvar, poking curious fingers into gardens and peering into windows, while pulling faces.

  They loaded their reluctant cargo on to the pony and cart and headed back down the twisting lanes to the farm. It was a fine autumn afternoon, trees turning golden, wisps of white clouds in a blue sky, with the scent of woodsmoke from the stone cottages by the roadside. The evacuees stared out with glum faces.

  ‘Where’s the picture hoose and the shops, missus? It’s all cows and fields,’ said the girl, looking around her with dismay.

  ‘
This is real countryside,’ Netta offered proudly. ‘We’ve got streams to jump over and trees to climb, dens to make and the sea just down the road. Only the beach’s all fastened up for the war, but I know a fine sandy cove to make sand castles.’

  ‘Is that all? We’ve got a zoo and a swing park and alleys to chase, and a dose of sweetie shops. I never saw nae proper shops here… And ma name’s Wilma, missus, what’s yourn?’ The girl turned to Netta with grey-flecked eyes fixed enviously on her thick coat and shiny shoes.

  ‘Jeanette, but it’s Netta at home and Nettie in the school.’

  ‘Like yon Jeanette Macdonald and Nelson Eddy? I seed them at the Essoldo picture house. Do you like the talkies?’

  Netta shook her head with disdain. ‘Peg says they’re the devil’s flea pits, don’t you?’

  ‘Aye, you’ll walk a long way before you’ll find me in one of they time-wasters. You’ll no be needing any of that stuff here, we make our own entertainment. We’ve a Post Office and a Jenny a’things shop, a paraffin cart and lots of delivery callers. Plenty going on on a farm tae keep you out o’ mischief!’

  ‘And in the summer the tallyman calls with his ice cream van,’ added Netta, hoping to impress.

  ‘Not any longer, he won’t, hen. He’ll be off to one of them camps for Eyeties and enemy aliens.’

  ‘Whit’s that stink?’ The two children pegged their fingers to their noses in disgust.

  ‘Just muck spreading… from the cows, you’ll soon get used to the pong. It clears yer chest.’

  ‘It smells like shite! Malky, we’re goin’ to have tae live in shite,’ whispered Wilma.

  ‘Any more o’that bad language, young lady, and I’ll wash yer mouth out with Oxydol!’

  ‘Ma maw washes ma hair with Persil tae bring out the colour, so she does. She says I’ll look like Jean Harlow if we keep it up. I didna want to be evaporated doon here.’ Wilma hugged her parcels close to her chest. Netta looked at Peg’s lips twitching into a smirk and burst out laughing herself.

  ‘Whit are yous twos grinning at?’ snapped Wilma, suddenly on the defensive.

  ‘You’ve been evacuated, not evaporated… you’re not a can of milk!’ laughed Netta.

  ‘I’m no dumb cluck, that’s whit I said. You must have tatties in yer ears.’ This girl was not easily put down.

  ‘Suit yersel, I know whit I heard,’ Netta mimicked.

  Just you speak properly, Netta Nichol, I’m not having you picking up the patter from the likes of this girl. She’s as coarse as heather!’

  It was not the best of starts. As they climbed the track up to the whitewashed farm the two strangers fell silent, watching the huge fat stock cattle eyeing their progress. They clung together at the sight of Angus in his huge boots, his corduroys held up with a black leather belt. He looked like a whiskery, sandy-haired giant to them. Malky hid himself under Wilma’s thin coat, cowering away from the sight of the bull calf being led out into the field.

  ‘This’ll be your job to milk him each morning,’ teased Angus. Malky buried his head in his sister’s thigh.

  ‘He’s just blethering, Malky, don’t you be scared. You’ll soon get the hang of it.’

  Netta couldn’t look her father in the face. These two idiots didn’t know a bull from a cow.

  When they sat down to a plate of beef stew Malky poked around his plate suspiciously, picking out each lump of meat from the vegetables with his fingers. There was a stunned silence for a second.

  ‘Use yer knife and fork, son,’ whispered Peg, looking to his sister for support but she was no better. Netta was sniggering at their lack of table manners when Wilma sprang to his defence.

  ‘Ma maw says we’re to use oor fingers, it’s mair hygienic. Fingers first and tongue after to lick the juice. No washing up after us.’ She stared at Netta’s gaping mouth. ‘And you’d better shut yer mouth, there’s a train coming.’

  ‘Well, in this house, Wilma Dixey, you’ll do whit we do. We eat civilised, and I’ll be seeing you two eat civilised too. Just pick up they forks and knives and follow what our Netta does,’ said Peg from the top of the table. The battle to tame the evacuees had begun.

  Next came the palaver with the zinc bathtub and the undressing. Netta had wondered if either of the evacuees had ever seen water before, the fuss they made. Wilma was in high dudgeon, squealing for the cruelty man to rescue them from the torture of having knots combed out and searched for nits. They were sewn into their vests, which were lined with more brown paper against winter’s chills, and afterwards Peg lifted up their clothes with a pair of tongs, dumped them in a basket and put them on the compost heap to rot down. Wilma was shown how to scrub the muck out of Malky’s ears properly. Once dried by the firelight, with flushed cheeks and shiny noses, they took on a much healthier glow. After a mug of cocoa and shortbread biscuits for supper, it was up the wooden hill for the tired pair.

  Peg had made up two beds in the spare bedroom at the end of the passage, the room she hoped would one day have a cot for her own bairn, God willing. These toerags wouldn’t settle down, though. Peg was up and down like a helter-skelter. ‘Whit’s it the now’?’ she yelled from the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Where’s our suckies? I canny sleep without ma Mary. They’re in ma paper bag.’ Netta rooted at the bottom of their sticky sandwich bag and pulled out two grubby blue felt circles on which were sewn badges imprinted with the image of the Virgin Mary and Infant Jesus, colours faded with the dribble of years, smelling of nothing on earth.

  ‘Father in Heaven, spare us such Popery… would you believe the day we’ve taken in idolators to this hoose? The Lord has very strange ways, does he not?’

  Angus sucked on his pipe unperturbed. ‘Come on, Peg, any mother who makes sure both her weans have some comfort from their own home is a good one in my book, Pape or Proddy, green or orange. Give me their sucky cloths. It’ll no bother my conscience to take them upstairs.’

  To Netta’s astonishment her father climbed the stairs and helped them settle down without another murmur.

  The evacuees were now sharing the use of Stratharvar School which ran two working shifts. In the mornings Miss Armour Broun and Mr McCurdy took the local pupils, and in the afternoon Miss Lennox and Miss Murchison ruled over the visitors. Officially they mixed only when necessary but there were many informal skirmishes behind the hedges and in the dykes, and especially on the green when the Glasgow boys kicked the football and the shins of the local eleven. On the way home, however, having the advantage of the lay of the land, Netta’s school friends got their revenge. There were chessie fights with conkers the size of ping-pong balls, and hit and run raids. When the locals were tied down in their classrooms the Dixeys and the Lang brothers and all the other Glasgow toerags roamed over Stratharvar district, getting into mischief, pulling down washing lines and stealing from the delivery vans.

  ‘Wilma Dixey is so light-fingered she’d steal the salt off my porridge if I didn’t watch her,’ Netta moaned to her school friends. Then she noticed her pencils were disappearing, her rubber and her purple crayon too. Her satchel was no longer safe slung over the banister rail at the foot of the stairs. Her favourite tartan ribbons that finished off her two plaits disappeared next. She couldn’t prove anything, but when her precious packet of ju-jubes walked out of her room, she decided to take action.

  Netta found the tablet of Ex-Lax laxative, kept for emergencies, wrapped in silver paper in the medicine cabinet alongside the suppositories and Syrup of Figs. Peg kept everyone dosed in winter. Netta found some old silvery toffee paper and wrapped pieces of laxative up neatly, leaving them perched on her satchel for all to see. ‘That’ll teach you!’ She smiled, waiting for Miss Greedy Guts to pounce. It did not take long for it all to vanish. When they were all tucking into their prunes and custard, Netta started counting her stones.

  ‘Silk, satin, calico, lace… I’m lace!’

  ‘No, yer no! It’s silk, satin, cotton, rags and you’s just rags,’ piped up Wilma.
‘I’m gonna be dressed in silk, see?’

  Netta ignored her and called to Peg, ‘I left some laxatives on my satchel but they seem to have vanished. Anyway I don’t need them now… yon stuff goes through me like the Royal Scot!’

  She saw Wilma going green as she bent her head. That night Netta noted with grim glee that the evacuee was up and down to the lavvy, clutching her stomach. Something to confess to the parish priest who called each Sunday to take the pair off to the little Catholic Chapel down the coast.

  Gradually Wilma and Malky settled down to the routine of farm life: helping feed the pigs and clear out the byres; watching the milking. When they were naughty each was sentenced to a hundred pumps on the well handle which fed the water tank, which soon took the edge of their mischief. Everyone joined in the Hallowe’en Social, the apple dookin’ and dressing up. The Battle of the Boyne was fought again over the muted Bonfire celebrations. Wilma refused even to look at the fireworks, dim though they were.

  Miss Armour Broun decided in the interests of harmony that there should be some joint fundraising effort to encourage the two factions to pull together. It was decided by the Board to hold a Christmas concert in aid of Red Cross funds. All the classes were to be involved and provide sketches, songs and dances to fill the programme, but each was to keep their item a surprise.

  The girls in the Qualifying and Advanced Division decided to put on an ambitious display of Physical Exercises to music. Netta and her chums put in hours of extra practice on their clubs and hoop routines. It was proving difficult to keep all their jerks in time with the music without resorting to counting out loud. As for their costumes, modesty decreed against their blackout knickers and vests in favour of pleated shorts and shirts decorated with seasonal trimmings brought from home.

  Wilma was very secretive about her turn. She had a solo spot which no one was allowed to observe. One day a parcel arrived in the post from ‘Maw’ Dixey that sent her into cartwheels of excitement. ‘It’s ma costume for the show!’