The Red Ribbon Read online

  “Sorry!” she sang out.

  Sorry doesn’t butter any bread, my grandma says.

  “I could . . .”

  “Would you? Thank you!” Rose jumped down and passed me the bucket.

  I had been going to say, I could hold the chair, but Rose assumed I was offering to clean the window glass for her. As if! The last thing I wanted to do was see outside this safe haven. The only view from the windows would be of watchtowers poised like storks along wire fences. And chimneys. Smoking chimneys.

  When I was done Rose smiled and said thank you. I shrugged and went to pull the rugs up, still thinking of the wonderful pictures in Fashion Forecast. They gave me so many ideas for new frocks. If I cleaned well, would Marta let me sew again? Sewing was my love in life. Also, if I sewed there might be more rewards. I’d been so stupid not taking that bread the day before. Cleaning could mean sewing plus food. Perfect.

  I knelt to start polishing. I quickly got a nice technique going — hands in mitts, circle with the right hand, circle with the left.

  “You don’t do it like that,” said Rose, putting her bucket down.

  Her cultured voice cut my confidence. She had to be faking the posh accent to make the rest of us feel like yokels.

  I scowled at her. “I thought you were a countess. If you were, you’d have an army of servants to do it for you.”

  “Not an army — but quite a few.”

  “So you’re rich?”

  “I was.”

  “Lucky you.”

  She spread her hands as if to say, See how lucky I am. “I still know how to polish a floor better than you. Watch this . . .”

  Off came her stupid mismatched shoes. On went a spare pair of mitts. On her feet.

  Right there in the middle of the fitting-room floor, Rose started doing a soft-shoe shuffle. Shimmy to the right, shimmy to the left. Hip wiggle here, bottom wiggle there. She snapped her fingers and began to hum oh so very quietly. I knew the tune! Grandma used to sing it in the sewing room, tapping her slippers to the beat.

  “Rose!” I warned. “What if someone hears you?”

  She giggled. Unbelievably, I giggled too. Suddenly she shot off like an ice skater, right around the fitting stage in the center of the room, past the mirror, and up to where I was kneeling.

  “May I have this dance?” she asked, with a princely bow.

  “Are you crazy?” I hissed.

  She shrugged her little squirrel shoulders. “Probably the sanest person in this place, m’dear. Care to waltz?”

  Waltz? Here?

  The way Rose looked, so bold and playful, I actually couldn’t resist. I pretended to simper at the invitation, then rose up gracefully to join her. Well, maybe not gracefully. I still had polish mitts on my hands. Copying Rose, I put them on my feet. Forgetting everything else, we danced around the fitting-room floor, humming and giggling at the same time. We were princesses in a fairy tale! We were glamour goddesses in a glitzy ritzy nightclub! We were beauty queens in a pageant!

  We were caught.

  Footsteps crunched the gravel path to the outer door. There was someone in the doorway with a face so flat it could have been painted on. Rose and I froze, as if caught in a spell. There was no time to grovel. No time to erase our existence from the room. A client had arrived.

  She was tall, with solid yellow hair and lips like sulky cushions. She had a heavy tread. Her boots left prints on the newly polished floor. The bobbles on the lampshade trembled. So did I.

  She fixed us with a gaze that had us pinned to the wall like butterflies in a collection case, then she strode into the room. She set her gloves on the magazines and her hat on the armchair. Her whip went in the corner near the door.

  Here we were, in a prison camp for innocents, run by criminals.

  And here was one of the guards.

  All my life I’d dreamed of owning a dress shop. When I should’ve been out playing with other kids or at the very least doing schoolwork, I was sitting cross-legged on the floor of Grandma’s workroom, making miniatures of the gowns going under her machine needle. My dolls even discussed the décor of fantasy fitting rooms (I did all the voices) then posed in their precocious fashions.

  Now I was in an actual fitting room, with an actual client, and I turned into a rabbit, just like the woman yesterday. But rabbits are easy prey for dogs, foxes, and wolves, especially when they’re wearing polishing mitts on their feet. Quickly I whipped the mitts off and put on my stupid wooden shoes.

  “Hello, I’m Carla!” breezed the client. Her accent was stodgy, how a potato would sound if it could talk. She was nothing like the bored block of a guard in the sewing room — that dark figure watching over us. Carla was young and bursting with energy, like the boisterous girls I used to see in gangs on the streets back home, who’ve just left school to start their first job.

  “Yes, I’m early!” she exclaimed. “I just had to try on my new dress again. Have you seen it? The green silk. I love it. So stylish. So chic.” She pronounced it chick. “Just enchanting. Won’t everyone be jealous when they see what I’m wearing?”

  She unbuttoned her jacket and held it out to me. Wordlessly, I took it. Where was I supposed to put it?

  The door to the workshop burst open and in came Marta, as if pulled on wheels. She braked and blustered, “Excuse me, ma’am. I’m so sorry — we didn’t expect you so soon.” She snapped her fingers at Rose. “You! Get the dress.”

  To me she hissed, “Straighten the rugs!”

  Carla carried on talking as she undressed. “Such a lovely spring day again. The mornings are lighter, aren’t they? I do hate getting up in the dark, don’t you? Here . . .”

  I was given her skirt to hold too.

  In slip and stockings Carla stepped up onto the fitting stage in the center of the room. She admired herself in that amazing mirror. There was plenty of her to admire. She was rounded in all the right places, unlike me. My hips were so narrow they’d just about fit in a toaster like a slice of bread.

  Rose came back in with the dress. My dress. I almost sighed as it slipped over Carla’s up-reached arms and ran like water over her tummy and rump. It touched exactly where it should and swished beautifully as she turned this way and that in front of the mirror. Grandma would be proud of my creation.

  Carla beamed at her reflection and clapped her hands like a kid in a cake shop. “Oh, you are so clever. Such neat stitching. Such a flattering design — how did you do it?”

  “I —”

  I got no further. Marta glared at me — silence.

  “Years of practice,” Marta murmured. “It helps to have a client with such a good figure. I knew this style would suit you, and I picked this shade especially for spring. Silk is difficult to work with, but the effect is worth it, I’m sure you’ll agree. I did train in all the very best places.”

  Marta went around the hem of the skirt, checking it was level, front and back. Something fell. She snapped her fingers at me: pin! I crouched down and swept the floor — with the back of my hand, like Grandma had taught me to do — until I felt the pin. Grandma had a saying: See a pin, pick it up, all that day have good luck. Hearing Marta take credit for my work, I could happily have jabbed that pin into her arm. Instead I handed it back.

  “The dress will be wonderful for the concert at the end of the week,” said Carla. “All those violins — it’s not my thing, but I want to look pretty, of course. And thanks to you, I will.”

  “I’ll have the hem done in an hour,” Marta said, straightening up and admiring “her” work.

  “Ye-es . . .” Carla stopped posturing and glared into the mirror.

  Marta frowned. “Is something wrong?”

  I had an urge to step forward and say, Yes, there’s something wrong! That’s my dress you’re taking credit for! Plus, if I’d had the nerve, I’d’ve added that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the dress.

  Carla clapped her hands once more. “I’ve got it! Bigger pads in the shoulder
s — that’ll really add some oomph. And a belt. A nice polka-dot belt. I saw a picture you could copy in one of those magazines there. And a pussycat bow at the neckline perhaps? Or would that be too much?”

  Grandma often came home from a fitting with one of her ladies complaining they had less sense of style than a loo brush, but what could you do? As long as they paid up on time, you did what they asked, she’d say. Then she’d give a little shiver and add, But you don’t have to like it.

  Birchwood, it seemed, wasn’t much different. Marta nodded at every single one of these gruesome suggestions.

  Carla maybe caught my expression. Her eyes narrowed as she looked from me to Marta. There was a kind of cunning in her look, even if she did act like a dimwit farm girl who’s found fame and fortune. I could see that Carla had realized Marta was lying about who had made the dress.

  “Wait!” she cried. “Forget all that. Make . . . a matching jacket . . .” She squinted at me, searching for approval. Whatever she saw gave her the confidence to go on. “Yes, a jacket. Three-quarter sleeves, bolero style, lined, and maybe embroidered. With your talent, it’ll be a breeze. Good, that’s settled then. Quick, take this off. I have to be back at work now. Duty calls!”

  She put on the uniform once more, then off she went, slapping her whip handle against her booted leg and humming a dance tune.

  “Don’t say a word!” Marta jabbed a bony finger into my chest the second the door shut and we were alone.

  “But —”

  “Not a word!”

  “You —”

  “Oh, fine. You’re cross because that big pig thinks I made her dress, not you?”

  “Well, yes . . .”

  “Tough. You do what you have to do to survive, understand?”

  I nodded slowly. I was learning fast.

  I blurted out, “When can I send a message to let my grandma know I’m OK? She’s been ill this spring, and Grandad’s not much use looking after her. I was on my way back from school when I got rounded up and brought here. She will be worried sick about me.”

  Marta sighed. “You really are green, aren’t you? How long have you been here?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “No wonder you’re so clueless. It is a bit of a shock, I’ll give you that.” She reached into her overall pocket and retrieved a cardboard box. When she shook it, out came two skinny cigarettes.

  “Here. Take them. And make me a bolero jacket for Carla.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t smoke.”

  “Like I said — clueless! You don’t smoke cigarettes at Birchwood, they’re money. Buy some food or friends; it’s all the same to me.”

  “And getting a message out . . . ?”

  “Not a hope. Not for a factory full of smokes. You think They want the rest of the world knowing this place exists? Take my advice, schoolgirl — forget your family. Forget everything out there. Here, there’s only one person in the world to worry about: the big me, myself, I. Any time you’re stuck wondering how to act, ask yourself, What would Marta do? and it’ll see you right.”

  I stared at the pinched-up rolls of paper with shreds of brown tobacco hanging out of the ends. Grandad used to roll his own cigarettes. He had nimble fingers like mine, but his were stained from the tobacco. When he coughed at night, which he did a lot, I used to creep to his cigarette pouch and flush the contents down the toilet. In the morning he’d laugh at me, ruffle up my hair, then send me out to buy more. I hated cigarettes. Their smoke makes fabric stink.

  “Well?” Marta looked straight at me, sizing me up.

  I took the cigarettes.

  It wasn’t all I took from the fitting room that morning.

  “Ella. Hey, Ella!”

  I was miles away, figuring out how to notch the lapels of Carla’s bolero jacket so they’d fit nicely. Grandma could’ve shown me easy as pie. Easy as steak pie, cherry pie, peach pie, apple pie . . . My mouth started watering.

  Grandma wasn’t here. Thankfully.

  It was Rose.

  “What’s the matter?” I whispered back.

  “You have to stop now. It’s nearly time for supper.”

  She said it like there was a big table with a starched white linen cloth and candlesticks and napkins in silver rings, and massive plates piled high with steaming food, just waiting for us to gorge on. Maybe it had been like that in her posh princess palace.

  “Just a minute,” I grouched. “I need to figure this out.”

  Annoyingly, Rose didn’t move. She reached for the jacket and turned the collar one way then another. “You could just make small snips here to release the tension; then the lapels will sit better.”

  I blinked. Of course. I was an idiot not to have thought of that. I called, “Scissors!”

  I made the snips. The lapels finally stopped fighting me.

  At the tables all around, girls and women were folding away work and returning their allocation of pins. They moved slowly, rubbing sore shoulder and neck muscles, stretching out with their hands in the small of their backs. It had been a long day. Exhausting. Even so, nobody wanted to break the spell of safety by leaving. Outside, dogs were barking.

  “Shove off, Princess,” said Marta, appearing suddenly. Rose curtsied and did just that.

  Marta poked my work with her long fingers. “Not bad. The client asked for embellishment. Can you embroider?”

  Could I embroider? Good question. Marta tapped her foot, waiting for the answer.

  What would Marta do?

  Lie.

  “I’m really good at embroidery,” I said.

  “Marvelous. Do a butterfly or flowers — something nice and easy.”

  Off she went. I sighed. I hated embroidery. Stupid satin stitch and fiddly knots.

  I kept a lookout for Rose over supper, but she was lost among the thousands and thousands of women in striped clothing slurping soup-water from tin bowls. It was sheer chance that I found her, not long before lights-out at nine p.m. I was in my block, up on my bunk. The barrack blocks were long, low, miserable buildings. About five hundred of us were squashed inside each block. We were wedged into damp wooden shelves, three tiers of them, reaching floor to ceiling. Each shelf was divided into bunks with rows of dirty straw mattresses. At least six to a bunk, at least two to a mattress. There was no other furniture, unless you counted the toilet buckets. That night my usual bunkmate hadn’t turned up. I didn’t ask why not. Some questions you don’t want answers to.

  I heard a kerfuffle down at floor level and peered over the edge of the bunk. The barrack boss and her cronies had Rose cornered. I hadn’t even realized she was in my block. Too bad she’d caught the attention of the boss. Barrack bosses were prominents, like Marta at the workshop. They were prisoners, but they acted like guards. They got the best food, best bunks, and best jobs. Our barrack boss was a woman named Gerda. She was so sturdy her nickname quickly became Girder. Her muscly arms could well have been made of welded metal. She slung these big arms around a different girlfriend every day of the week. She boasted a really low number, which meant she must’ve been in Birchwood for several years, not weeks. Nobody soft could survive that long.

  Rose was soft. Girder & Co. had her cornered near the stove in the middle of the hut. They weren’t being rough — yet. They were just teasing. Testing how far they could go.

  “Got nowhere to sleep, little one?” Girder mocked. “Aw, don’t cry. You don’t want to spoil that pretty face . . .”

  Rose wasn’t crying. She was just standing there looking helpless, letting them jostle her. Hadn’t she learned anything since coming to Birchwood? You couldn’t let people push you around. I bet Marta never got bullied in her barrack. She was probably boss there too.

  What would Marta do?

  Ignore Rose. Join in with the bullying. Side with Girder.

  I didn’t want to get in Girder’s bad books. As boss, she supervised the slicing and sharing of the daily bread ration. She also doled out duties, such as lugging the soup cauldron
. . . or the toilet bucket. Girder blew a cloud of cigarette smoke in Rose’s face. I could guess what would come next — a cigarette burn somewhere tender. Best not to interfere.

  On the other hand, wouldn’t it be better to have Rose as bunkmate, rather than sleeping next to another complete stranger?

  “Hey. Rose! Rosalind! Up here!” I patted the thin straw mattress of my bunk.

  Rose broke into a smile brighter than the single bulb dangling between the beds. She waved and made a little gesture for Girder & Co. to step aside. They were so surprised that they actually let her through.

  “Thank you,” she said, as if they were all guests mingling at some tea party. Despite having arms as thin as noodles, she managed to haul herself up to the third tier of the bunks. Girder flicked her skirt up a few times as she was climbing, just to save face. I got lost in a quick reverie about noodles with fresh basil leaves and a rich tomato sauce . . . the sort of meal you just had to slurp, then you’d get saucy flecks all around your mouth . . .

  “Phew! Don’t you get altitude sickness?” Rose said, heaving herself onto the mattress.

  “Watch your head —”

  Too late. Rose knocked her skull. The ceiling was very low, too low even to sit with a straight spine.

  I shifted to make room for her. “The air’s fresher up here.” Fresh meant freezing when the wind blew through all the cracks and gaps. “And people don’t climb over you all night to go to the toilet bucket. On the flip side, if you need to pee, it’s a long way down in the dark.”

  “Thanks for letting me share,” Rose said, rubbing her head. “Some other women took my bunk space. It wasn’t as classy as this.”

  “Classy?”

  She grinned. “Well, we’re here, aren’t we?”

  Now that I had company, I was in a bit of a dilemma. I’d swapped one of the cigarettes from Marta for an extra slice of bread and marg. How was I supposed to eat it with Rose watching? I supposed I could hide it till breakfast, assuming nobody stole it while I was asleep, or rats didn’t get at it. The rats that ran across the roof beams were fatter than any of the humans in the beds below.