The Red Ribbon Read online

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  Afterword

  It was really hard to run in such stupid shoes. The mud was thick as molasses. The woman behind me had the same problem. One of her shoes got stuck. That slowed her down. Good. I wanted to arrive first.

  Which building was it? There? No — here. This one. I stopped dead. The woman behind nearly ran slap-bang into me. We both looked at the building. It had to be the right place. Should we just knock now? Were we too late?

  Please let me not be too late.

  I stood on tiptoe and peered through a small, high window at the side of the door. I couldn’t see much, mostly my own reflection. I pinched my cheeks to get a bit of color and wished I had a dab of lipstick. At least the swelling around my eye had just about gone down, although the greeny-yellow bruise was still there. I could see straight; that was the main thing. Thick waves of hair would’ve hidden the rest. But . . . you make the best of what you’ve got.

  “Are we too late?” the other woman wheezed. “I lost one of my shoes in the mud.”

  When I knocked at the door, it opened almost immediately, making both of us jump.

  “You’re late,” snapped the young woman in the doorway. She looked us up and down with hard eyes. I looked back. Three weeks away from home and I still hadn’t learned to grovel properly, no matter how much I got hit. This bossy girl — not much older than me, really — was all angles, with a nose so sharp it could’ve cut cheese. I’ve always liked cheese. The crumbly sort you have in salads, or the creamy cheese that’s nice with fresh bread, or that really strong stuff with green fur that old people like on crackers . . .

  “Don’t just stand there!” razor-face scowled. “Get inside! Wipe your shoes! Don’t touch anything!”

  In we went. I’d made it. I was at the grandly titled Upper Tailoring Studio, otherwise known as a sewing workshop. My idea of heaven. The moment I heard there was a job here, I knew I had to get it.

  Inside the workshop I counted about twenty heads bent over whirring machines, like fairy-tale characters caught in a spell. They were all clean; I noticed that straightaway. They were wearing plain brown overalls — nicer than the sack-thing slipping off my shoulders, that was for sure. Wooden tables were scrubbed bone white and covered with patterns and threads. In one corner were shelves of fabrics, showing so much unexpected color I had to blink. In another corner there was a cluster of headless, limbless dressmaker mannequins. I heard the hiss and clunk of a heavy iron and saw specks of lint floating by like lazy insects.

  No one looked up from their work. They were all sewing as if their lives depended on it.

  “Scissors!” came a cry from nearby. The worker at the nearest machine didn’t even pause. Her foot kept working the treadle, and she eased the fabric under the needle even as she picked up the scissors. I watched them get passed along the table, hand to hand, then snip, set to a length of forest-green tweed.

  The sharp girl who’d opened the door snapped her fingers in my face.

  “Pay attention! I’m Marta. I’m in charge here. The boss — understand?”

  I nodded. The woman who’d come in with me just blinked and shuffled her one-shoe feet. She was pretty old — about twenty-five — and as twitchy as a rabbit. Rabbits make good gloves. I had slippers lined with rabbit fur once. They were really cozy. I didn’t know what had happened to the rabbit. I suppose it went in a stew . . .

  Time to focus.

  “Listen carefully,” Marta ordered. “I won’t say all this again, and —”

  Bam! The door opened once more. The spring breeze blew another girl inside, one with hunched shoulders and round cheeks, like a squirrel that’s just dug up a hoard of nuts.

  “So sorry.”

  The new arrival gave a shy smile and looked at her shoes. I looked at them too. One was a sickly green satin slipper with a metal buckle, the other a leather brogue with broken laces. We’d all been tossed random shoes when we were first given clothes here, but hadn’t this little squirrel even managed to bargain a proper pair? I could tell straightaway she was going to be useless. Her accent was awfully, awfully . . . you know. Posh.

  “I’m late,” she said.

  “No kidding,” Marta replied. “Seems we’ve got quite a lady in our midst. How very kind of you to join us today, madam. How can I be of service?”

  “They said there was a sudden vacancy at the Tailoring Studio,” Squirrel replied. “That you needed good workers.”

  “Damn right I do! Real dressmakers, not la-di-dah ladies. You look like the sort of princess who’s sat around on a cushion embroidering lavender bags and other useless frivolities. Am I right?”

  Squirrel didn’t seem offended no matter how much Marta sneered. “I can embroider,” she said.

  “You’ll do what I order!” replied Marta. “Number?”

  Squirrel put her feet together nicely. How did she manage to look so poised in that mismatched footwear? She was not the sort of girl I’d normally mix with. Even though she was dressed so badly, she probably thought I was too common. Beneath her.

  She recited her number with perfect enunciation. Here it was all numbers, not names. Me and Rabbit reeled off our numbers too. Rabbit stuttered a bit.

  Marta sniffed. “You!” She pointed to Rabbit. “What can you do?”

  Rabbit-woman shivered. “I . . . I sew.”

  “Idiot! Of course you do, or you wouldn’t be here. I didn’t put out a call for seamstresses who can’t sew. This isn’t some excuse to slack off from doing tougher jobs! Are you any good?”

  “I . . . I sewed at home. My children’s clothes.” Her face crumpled like a used handkerchief.

  “Oh god, you’re not going to cry, are you? I can’t stand snivelers. What about you?” Marta turned to glare at me. I shriveled up like chiffon under a too-hot iron. “Are you even old enough to be here?” she scoffed.

  “Sixteen,” said Squirrel suddenly. “She’s sixteen. She said so before.”

  “I wasn’t asking you, I was asking her.”

  I swallowed. Sixteen was the magic number. Any younger, and you were useless.

  “She’s, er, right. I’m sixteen.”

  Well, I would be. Eventually.

  Marta snorted. “And let me guess — you sew dresses for dollies and can just about stitch a button on, once you’ve finished your homework. Honestly! Why do they waste my time with these cretins? I don’t need schoolgirls. Get out!”

  “No, wait, you can use me. I’m a, um —”

  “You’re a what? A mama’s girl? A teacher’s pet? A waste of space?” Marta started walking away, with a little dismissive flip of her fingers.

  Was that it? My first real job interview — failed. That meant going back to a job as kitchen maid or laundry scrubber at best. At worst, quarry work or . . . or no work at all, which was the worst thing that could happen.

  My grandma, who has a motto for every occasion, always says, When in doubt, chin up, shoulders back, and be bold. So I straightened to my full height, which was pretty tall, took a deep breath, and declared, “I’m a cutter!”

  Marta looked back at me. “You? A cutter?”

  A cutter was a super-skilled sewer responsible for creating the shapes that would turn into actual clothes. No amount of decent dressmaking could save a garment botched by a bad cutter. A good cutter was worth her weight in gold. I didn’t need gold. I just needed this job, whatever it took. It was my dream job — if you could have dreams in a place like this.

  Up to that point the other workers had ignored us. Now I sensed they’d been listening in all along. Without missing a stitch, they were waiting to see what would happen next.

&n
bsp; “Yes,” I continued. “I’m a trained pattern-drafter, cutter, and tailor. I . . . I do my own designs. One day I’ll have my own dress salon.”

  “Ha! That’s a joke,” Marta sneered.

  The woman on the nearest machine spoke without even taking the pins from her mouth. “We need a good cutter, since Rhoda got sick and left,” she murmured.

  Marta nodded slowly. “That’s true enough. All right. Here’s what’s going to happen. You, Princess, can take over doing ironing and scrubbing. Those soft hands of yours need toughening up.”

  “I’m not a princess,” said Squirrel.

  “Move!”

  Marta looked me and Rabbit up and down.

  “As for you two pathetic excuses for seamstresses, you can have a trial. I’ll be blunt: there’s only room for one of you. Only one, do you understand? And I’ll chuck you both out if you fail to meet my high standards. I trained in all the very best places.”

  “I won’t let you down,” I said.

  Marta seized something from a nearby pile of clothes and tossed it to Rabbit. It was a linen blouse, dyed such a fresh shade of mint you could practically taste it.

  Marta gave her orders. “Rip the seams and let it out. It’s for a client — an officer’s wife — who drinks her cream by the jugful, so she’s rounder than she thinks she is.”

  Cream . . . oh, cream! Poured over strawberries from my grandma’s best green-flowered jug . . .

  I caught a glimpse of the label inside the blouse collar. My heart almost stopped beating. It was the elegantly scrolled name of one of the most revered couture houses in the world. The sort of place where I wouldn’t dare even to stare in the windows.

  “And you”— Marta slapped a piece of paper into my palm —“another client, Carla, has asked for a dress. Semiformal, for a music concert or something this weekend. Here are her measurements. Memorize them — I want the paper back. You can use the number four mannequin. Get fabric from over there.”

  “What?”

  “Choose something to suit a blonde. Scrub yourself first at that sink and put overalls on. In this workshop, cleanliness is essential. No grubby finger marks on the fabric, no bloodstains or dust. Understand?”

  I nodded, desperate not to start crying.

  Marta’s thin lip curled. “You think I’m severe?” She narrowed her eyes at me and jerked her head to the far end of the room. “Just remember who’s standing in the corner.”

  At the back of the workshop there was a dark figure propped against the wall, picking at her cuticles. I glanced once, then looked away.

  “Well?” said Marta. “What are you waiting for? The first fitting’s at four.”

  “You want me to make a dress from scratch, before four? That’s —”

  “Too hard? Too soon?” she jeered.

  “That’s fine. I can do it.”

  “Go on then, schoolgirl. And remember, I’m expecting you to botch up, big time.”

  “I’m Ella,” I told her.

  I don’t care, said her blank expression.

  The workroom sink was one of those massive ceramic things, with green streaks under the taps where the pipes had wept. The soap barely lathered, but it was better than nothing — which was all I’d had for the past three weeks. There was even a towel — a towel! — for drying hands. Seeing clean water coming out of a tap was mesmerizing.

  Squirrel, right behind me waiting her turn, said, “Looks like liquid silver, doesn’t it?”

  “Shh!” I frowned, conscious of the shadow of that dark figure at the far end of the room.

  I took my time washing. Squirrel could wait. Even if I wasn’t posh like her, I knew how important it was to be clean and well presented. Appearances matter. When I was a kid Grandma always made a tsk-tsk noise if I came in with grubby hands and dirty nails, or a suspicion of grime in hidden corners. You could grow potatoes behind your ears! she’d say, if I hadn’t done a thorough rub with the washcloth.

  Clean hands mean clean work was another of her mottoes. She also liked muttering Waste not, want not. And if anything mildly bad happened, she’d shrug and say Better than a smack in the eye with a wet kipper!

  I never much cared for eating kippers, not when the house stank of fish for days afterward, and there were always bones, even when Grandma said, Don’t worry, it’s boneless. So you’d start in on the flesh, and then you’d gag as one of those spindly bones pronged the back of your throat. You’d have to hold up your napkin to root it out without revolting everyone else at the table. You’d put it on the side of your plate and try not to look at it for the rest of the meal. But you’d know it was there.

  Since coming to Birchwood I’d already decided I was only going to see things I wanted to. Every second of my first three weeks had been horrible — things far worse than kipper bones. I’d been like a golem — a girl without a soul — shoved this way and that, waiting, standing, squatting. Now, in the sewing workshop, I suddenly felt human again. If I truly narrowed my mind, I could believe that nothing in the world existed except making this dress for my client, Carla.

  A fitting at four. It just wasn’t possible. Not designing, cutting, pinning, tacking, sewing, pressing, and finishing. I was going to botch it, just as Marta had said. I was going to fail.

  Don’t think failure, my grandma would say. You can do anything you set your mind to. Anything. Except bake. You make lousy cakes.

  As I stood there, close to panic, I felt eyes on me. It was Squirrel, over at the ironing board. She was probably laughing at me. Why wouldn’t she?

  I turned my back on her and went clomp-clomp in my stupid too-big shoes to the shelves of fabric . . . and promptly forgot all about Marta and her threats. It was just so wonderful to see colors that weren’t brown: three weeks of nothing but wood-brown, mud-brown, and other browns too horrible to mention.

  Now there were rivers of material for my fingers to wade into. Marta had said this Carla was blond. Out of Birchwood’s brown, green grew in my mind: a good color for blondes. I tugged at folds and bales of fabric, searching for the perfect shade. There was moss-green velvet. Silver-spangled gauze the shade of grass in moonlight. Crisp cottons with leaf prints. Satin ribbons ripe with light . . . And my favorite — an emerald silk that rippled like cool water under dappling trees.

  Already I could see the dress I would make. My hands began sketching shapes in the air, fingertips touching invisible shoulders, seams, and skirt gores. I looked around. I needed things. A table and paper. A pencil, pins, scissors, needle, thread, sewing machine, BREAKFAST.

  “Excuse me.” I tugged on the sleeve of a sapling-thin girl swaying past. “Can you tell me where to get —”

  “Shh,” the girl said. She put two fingers to her lips and mimed a zip fastening them shut. She had ridiculously elegant hands, like a nail-polish ad but without the polish.

  I opened my mouth to ask why talking was forbidden, then thought better of it. The dark figure in the corner didn’t appear to be watching or even listening, but you never knew.

  The thin girl — Giraffe, I labeled her — signed for me to follow her along rows of workers to the far end of a trestle table. She pointed to an empty stool. Three women were already sitting there. They hunched up to make room for me. One of them was Rabbit, nervously pulling the mint-green blouse inside out and peering at the seams.

  I sat down with my silk. Now I needed to make a pattern. A girl farther down the table had a roll of pattern paper and a stubby pencil. I took a deep breath. Got up. Mimed that I wanted the paper. The girl bristled, just like a hedgehog. She pulled the paper closer. I put my hand on the roll and pulled it hard. Hedgehog tugged. I tugged back. I won. I took her pencil, too.

  Marta was watching. Did I imagine she smiled? She gave a little nod, as if to say, Yes, that’s how it works here.

  I rolled the paper out. It was plain brown, shiny on one side and faintly striped on the other. The sort of paper we used to wrap sausages in. Lovely plump sausages with bits of chopped onion
, or sometimes tomato sausages, violently red in the frying pan. Or herb sausages flecked with green basil and thyme . . .

  My stomach growled.

  Grandma always used newspaper for patterns. She could sketch out a complete dress or suit pattern in seconds, straight onto the pages of the local gazette. Then she’d snip through the headlines, the ads for medicinal tonics and the racing results. You never needed more than one fitting with Grandma’s patterns. Me, I had to squint a bit first and do a few faint trial runs. Usually I had Grandma looking over my shoulder when I cut. Now I was on my own. I could hear a clock in my head ticking. First fitting at four . . .

  Right. The pattern was drawn.

  “Hey,” whispered one of the hunched women opposite. She was wide and squat with blobby skin, like a frog. “Save me any scraps of paper, will you?” she asked.

  Frog was doing buttonholes on an apple-green wool coat. It was the sort of coat that’s just right for spring if you can’t decide whether it’ll be warm or cool. We used to have an apple tree in the front yard of our house. It always seemed like forever before the blossoms became buds. One year the branches were loaded with fat fruit, and bent just like my back as I sewed. We had apple crumble flecked with caramelized sugar, flaky pastry apple turnovers, and even apple cider, which made me hiccup from the bubbles. When the War started, one of our neighbors chopped the tree down for firewood. They said Our Sort didn’t need trees.

  “The paper?” Frog broke into my thoughts.

  I glanced around. Was saving paper scraps allowed? Before I knew how to reply, Frog had made a face at me and turned away.

  I swallowed and called, “Scissors!” in a croaky voice. And then louder: “Scissors!”

  Just like I’d seen before, a sharp pair of fabric shears was handed — slowly — along the tables. They were a decent set of steel scissors with double-sided handles. Grandma would have approved.

  I swallowed again. “Pins?”

  I’d already caught sight of Marta’s pin tin, tucked in a pocket of her overalls. She came over. Counted out twenty. I told her I’d need more.

  “My grandma says it’s best to put them head to tail on silk so it stays in place.”