The Red Ribbon Read online

  “Exactly. Lonely.”

  “Well, boo-hoo for her! The main thing is, we got cake out of it. Go on, it’s for sharing. Not with everyone in the barrack,” I added quickly, knowing how pathologically generous Rose was.

  Rose touched the cake, then licked her finger with the tip of her tongue. She closed her eyes.

  “Oh, how I’ve missed sweet things!”

  I was mesmerized by how much Rose enjoyed the taste. She smiled and took a bigger scoop. She had a smudge of buttercream on her bottom lip. I wanted to lick it clean.

  We weren’t used to so much luxury. Stomach cramps caught up with us not long after. Well worth it.

  The next day I washed the cake napkin out in the sewing-room sink, and Rose ironed it into a neat square. I spotted Carla while I was running to evening roll call and thought I’d give her the napkin back. I got close enough to speak — close enough to set Pippa barking — but Carla marched straight past me, chin up, whip in hand. I was just one more nameless Stripey, not important enough to notice.

  A few days later, when Marta stood in the center of the workshop and clapped her hands for our complete attention, we knew it had to mean something pretty monumental. Otherwise we’d never be allowed to stop working.

  I looked for Rose. She smiled over at me from the ironing board, where she was gently pressing a panel of embroidered muslin. I smiled back. She mimed “accidentally” leaving the iron burning the fabric. My eyes widened in horror. Her eyes rolled. Just joking.

  “Serious announcement!” Marta declared. “I’ve just had a meeting with none other than the commandant’s wife. In person, at her house.”

  There were instant murmurs. The commandant and his family had a villa just on the outer prison wall. Sometimes Stripeys got to work there — a cushy job, I’d heard.

  Marta was enjoying our curiosity.

  “As you know, Madam likes to select the best gowns that come to Birchwood for us to alter and improve for her wardrobe. Now, someone very high-ranking will be visiting Birchwood soon, as part of an inspection. Madam will need a special dress. Nothing I could show her fits the bill, so she’s told me to have something made here in the workshop. An evening gown, suitable for a woman of her standing . . .”

  I didn’t hear any more. I was already sketching that dress in my mind. A gown for a summer evening . . . not gaudy, not frivolous. Madam H. was a matron and a mother, after all. Yellow would do it. A mature yellow. A flowing satin in old gold or straw gold . . .

  “Ella?”

  I blinked. “Sorry. Yes?”

  Marta frowned. “Didn’t you hear me? I said I want you to take over Francine’s work on that set of yellow pajamas so she’s free to do the evening gown.”

  “Not likely!” I exploded. “I’m going to make the dress! Francine’s work’s fine if you want something plain and workaday — no offense, Francine . . .”

  “Plenty taken,” Francine retorted with a scowl.

  I hurried on. “Sorry, it’s just I’ve already got a gown in mind. The most amazing dress ever — sleeves to the elbows, very slight lift on the shoulder, darts under the bust, a wrap around the hips here, then satin cascading to the floor . . .”

  I don’t know how I dared go on and on like that. Maybe it was remembering one of Grandma’s mottoes: Shy kids get nothing.

  Francine and I stood facing each other like boxers in a ring. Except this was much more serious than that. Marta’s eyes glinted as she watched us both. I suddenly realized that she’d set this up as a test, to see how far I was prepared to go to get ahead.

  All the way.

  Would I bad-mouth Francine’s work? Yes. Hog the best machine and tools? Yes. Sabotage her sewing? Maybe. If I had to.

  “Right,” Marta said, with a cruel curl of her upper lip. “Let’s see what you can both do.”

  “You won’t regret choosing my dress,” I said. “I can start right away. I need Madam’s measurements, a mannequin, and five meters of yellow satin — not any old yellow, a very particular shade . . .”

  I think Rose might have snorted at that point. Later, in the soup line, I asked why she was laughing.

  “Just you being you,” Rose answered with a grin. “Marta tells you to make a dress, and in your head it’s already made. You really are a born designer, you know that?”

  “Oh, Rose, you can laugh all you like, but it’s going to be gorgeous. Best of all, I know how I want it decorated. I’ll have a sunflower, embroidered in silk, right here on the bodice, so the happy petals reach out over the shoulder and across the sleeve seams. I’d like the threads all shaded, like an oil painting on the dress. We’ll get beads for the seeds — hundreds of them clustered —”

  “Whoa. Wait a minute, Miss Couturier! You’re not serious, are you?”

  “You don’t think I’ll be able to get the right shade of silk? You don’t want to do embroidery with beadwork?”

  “It’s nothing to do with the silk or beads, it’s about the whole wretched dress. Francine was picked first. Let her do it.”

  That stopped me short. The dream dress stopped floating in my imagination. It slumped to the floor in a limp pile.

  “Why shouldn’t I make it? Who knows what sort of reward I’ll get? I’ll be able to trade for better bunks in the barrack block, or even for a blanket each — wouldn’t you like that?”

  “Does a cat like cream? But that’s not the point, Ella. Think who you’re making the dress for.”

  “I know! The commandant’s wife. She’s the one who set up this workshop in the first place. She’s got a really good eye for quality — nothing but the best — and when other officers’ wives see her wearing my dress they’ll all come flocking for their own fancy gowns.”

  Rose pulled away a little. “You really don’t understand the problem, do you? You honestly don’t see what’s happening?”

  “Success, that’s what’s happening. Don’t try and talk me out of this, Rose. I’ve got to make this dress and I’m going to. End of story.”

  “Stories never have ends,” said Rose, stubborn as a donkey. “There’s always another chapter and a what happens next.”

  “What happens next,” I snapped, “is that you stop poking your nose into my business! I don’t care if I’m sewing for the commandant’s wife! The only thing that matters is that I’m going to make the dress, whether you like it or not.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “You’ve made that perfectly clear.”

  “It’s clear you’ve forgotten where you are and what happens here — and who makes it happen!”

  “As if you know what’s going on around you, with your head in la-la make-believe land!”

  “You know what I see, Ella? I see all of us wobbling on this really fine line between staying alive and collaborating.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You’re calling me a collaborator? That’s an appalling thing to say! You’re just jealous because you can’t even organize proper shoes for yourself, let alone make dresses for other people! You’d be nowhere without me to get you extra bread!”

  I was so angry I didn’t know what to do with myself. We’d never argued like this before. It was Rose’s fault for goading me.

  She tried a different tactic. “Look, Ella, if it’s more bread you want, share mine. I don’t mind. Then you wouldn’t miss the extra food from the sewing room.”

  God, she was so exasperating. She didn’t understand at all. I would’ve stormed off there and then if it hadn’t meant losing my precious place in the line.

  Birchwood in summer meant days of scorching heat and nights of smoke. Stripeys wilted — so dry and thin they looked like paper dolls. Me, I was parched, I was famished, and I was sick from the taste of ashen air, but inside I made myself float above the dust, above the stink. I could’ve walked through barbed wire, electric fences, and speeding bullets without noticing. None of that was important, because, whether Rose liked it or not, I was making the Dress!

  Most marvelously of all
, Marta was letting me go shopping at the Department Store. As a peace offering, I volunteered Rose to come with me. She must still have been sulking or something, because she groaned when I told her.

  “I hate shopping,” she said.

  “You have to come, Rose, please. Listen, I’m sorry you got cross before. Come with me to see this place. Think of it — a land of plenty!”

  “I’ve plenty of work to do,” Rose punned.

  “Come on,” I wheedled. “Marta’s made a list about a mile long, and I can’t carry everything.”

  “Ask Shona.”

  “She’s sick today.”

  Shona was sick almost every day now. Instead of a graceful giraffe, she was more like a drooping daffodil, too long out of water. I think she was actually ill, rather than just pining for her husband and baby.

  “Anyway,” I said, “how can you hate shopping?”

  “You’ve no idea how many fashion shows my mother dragged me to.”

  “You went to fashion shows?”

  “Twice a year, for each new season’s collections. Don’t get me wrong — the clothes were unbelievable. I could’ve gobbled up every outfit, then gone back for seconds.”

  “You can’t eat clothes.”

  “If only they were edible! I’m telling you, the fashions in the City of Light were delicious. It was just the people who gave me indigestion. So many air kisses, so many dahhhhhlings, so many powdered faces and talon fingers. Nasty!”

  “When I have my dress shop I’ll charge extra to snooty clients like that.”

  “Ah, the famous Ella dress shop!”

  “You wait, I’ll do it. I’ll be chauffeur-driven to all the best warehouses on proper fabric-buying trips . . .”

  Rose tucked her arm into mine. “I’ll do the driving if you let me wear a peaked cap. ‘Step aboard, madam, and enjoy the ride.’”

  “So you’ll come to the Department Store with me?”

  “Oh,” I said. “I was hoping for something more . . .”

  “Glamorous?” Rose mocked. “Revolving doors, vast glass windows, and pretentious potted plants?”

  “Something like that.”

  The so-called land of plenty was, in fact, a series of about thirty huge huts, stretched across a section on the northern edge of Birchwood, not far from a cluster of parched birch trees.

  We slipped through the nearest set of doors, not knowing what to expect.

  The first building we came to was frantic with activity. It was called the Small Store. Guards and Stripeys all mingled together, choosing things from shelves or bustling around with parcels.

  A woman named Mrs. Smith was in charge. Rumor had it she used to run a puff house. Rose asked me what that was. I pretended I knew but that it wasn’t polite to tell her. Mrs. Smith was definitely one of the elite prominent prisoners.

  She looked absolutely nothing like us normal Stripeys. She was elegant in a plain tailored suit of dark linen and simple heeled shoes. Her sparse hair looked as if it had been freshly shampooed and set. Her nails were painted. She was something like a cross between a hawk and a snake. A venomous snake.

  She spotted us and her lips narrowed. I almost expected a forked tongue to come flicking out.

  “Ah, Marta’s girls from the workshop. Welcome.”

  There was as much warmth in Mrs. Smith’s welcome as in an iceberg. Her voice wasn’t cultured — not as posh as Rose’s at any rate.

  “The stores are rather overwhelmed at the moment, as you see,” said Mrs. Snake. “At least ten thousand new packages each day. This much stock needs a lot of sorting, so my girls are always busy. I can just barely spare you an escort. Don’t get ideas. Theft is never tolerated.”

  As she spoke, Mrs. Snake tapped her manicured fingernails against a row of crystal perfume bottles on the table in front of her. Carla’s favorite, Blue Evening, was there. Out in the real world, each bottle would’ve cost more than my grandparents earned in a year. I ached to lift the stoppers and sniff the scents.

  Mrs. Snake called to a short, round girl in a white blouse and black skirt. “Take these two to the Big Store. Bring back a tally on nightgowns while you’re at it; we’ve had a request for summer styles.”

  Our guide looked as if she’d never seen sunlight, she was so pale. She wore glasses with thick lenses, had very sloping shoulders and wide, white hands. When I saw her scurry to a pile of stuff to dig inside, I knew what sort of animal she’d be. A mole. Small, soft, and subterranean.

  “They’re prisoners, but they don’t have to wear striped sacks,” I whispered to Rose. “Aren’t you just aching to get out of here and wear normal clothes again?”

  Without once looking us in the eye, Mole scuttled out of the Small Store and into the Big Store — twenty-nine vast huts crammed with every kind of object ever owned. Suitcases, shoes, spectacles, soap, prams, toys, blankets, perfume . . . I saw one box filled with combs and brushes, some still with strands of hair clinging. My own shaved scalp prickled.

  In between huts we saw Stripeys pushing carts with more and more cases, more and more bundles, all tied with thick string. Some strong-looking women in the outdoor sorting yards were even dressed in white shirts and black slacks, like normal people. There had to be a few thousand prisoners at work in this place — the strangest shop assistants you ever saw.

  “Can you imagine being able to have whatever you want?” I said to Rose. “It’s like a treasure trove.”

  “You mean an ogre’s hoard,” Rose replied contemptuously. “Stolen and stashed away.”

  “Hey, you could get yourself a better pair of shoes,” I said. “I mean, an actual pair.”

  Rose shrugged. We followed Mole.

  Each hut of the Big Store was like our barrack blocks with the same sort of wooden struts holding the roof up, but longer, wider, and higher. Mole brought us to one that made me wrinkle my nose. Birchwood was never fragrant, but this was a whole new world of smells. Damp. Mold. Sweat. Stinky feet. It made me feel sick. This wasn’t what I’d had in mind at all.

  An aisle down the middle of the hut was just wide enough for two people to pass, if they didn’t mind a bit of a jostle. Every other inch of floor space was covered with stacks of suitcases and great lumpy mounds that reached back into the shadows and up to the rafters. Some of the piles were so high they threatened to topple over. I saw sleeves sticking out, and trouser legs, and bra straps, and odd socks.

  “They’re clothes,” said Rose in the hushed tones usually saved for tiptoeing around religious places or art galleries, or for discussing anything to do with sex. “Mountains of clothes!”

  Mole looked around and sighed. “Ten thousand suitcases a day. It’s too much. We can’t keep up. Every case is opened. All the contents sorted. Clothes, valuables, perishables. Some of the food is moldy by the time we get to it, of course. Such a waste.”

  “Where do they all come from?” I blurted out. As soon as I’d said it, I wished I could reel the words back in. Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to, Ella.

  Mole looked at me as if I was missing a brain.

  Rose glanced at me and quickly said, “What do you do with them once they’re sorted?”

  “What isn’t kept in Birchwood gets fumigated then packaged up and sent by railway back to the towns. For victims of bombing raids, or just to be sold as secondhand goods,” Mole said in a flat voice. “Every single garment has to be checked for valuables first. They hide money and jewelry in hems, in the seams, in shoulder pads, everywhere. Anything we find goes on these piles here in the center of the hut. The guards and bosses keep an eye out for anyone who thinks they might snag something for themselves. Yesterday they shot a girl who took a piece of jewelry. She said it was her mother’s wedding ring. . . .”

  Mole’s voice trailed off for a moment. Then she resumed her description of Department Store sorting.

  “All name tapes to be removed, and identifying marks. New owners don’t need to know who once had their clothes. All dressmaker and
tailor labels are snipped out carefully too and burned in the stove. Except for the most exclusive labels, of course. Couture clothes come to you girls at the sewing workshop.”

  I became hypnotized by the sight of Stripeys tugging garments from a pile. Their hands moved like spiders over each item. Snip went the scissors if something was to be cut. Clink went coins poured into a tray. Money notes rustled. Gold twinkled. Slowly, reluctantly, clumsily, my mind was making the connection between the high-quality clothes we altered at the workshop and these suitcases spilling out all over the Department Store floors.

  Ten thousand suitcases a day. Ten thousand people a day. All arriving, never leaving.

  My heart beat faster. My focus went from the mountains of stuff to tiny details. Bobbles of fluff on a child’s jumper. Sweat stains in the armpits of an old shirt. I saw cracked buttons, stocking holes, and darned vests.

  There were fancier things too — satin bra straps and spangled skirts. My attention was caught by the shimmer of silk pajamas edged with swansdown and scented by stalks of lavender tied with a ribbon. These got set aside as special, along with diamanté-heeled shoes and a silver cigarette case. I saw nightgowns and ball gowns, swimsuits and evening suits, golf shoes and tennis shorts.

  What sort of place did people think they were coming to?

  As if anyone could imagine a place like Birchwood existed.

  A thought began to uncurl in my mind: someone should get out of Birchwood to tell the rest of the world what was happening here. Other people on Lists had to know what was waiting for them at the end of the train line. My grandma had to be told: DON’T GET ON THAT TRAIN.

  “Ella?”

  Rose touched my hand. I broke out of my trance and trotted after her and Mole. My mouth tasted of vomit.

  “Do you think . . .” I began, as we hurried on. “Do you think our things are in these piles? I don’t like the idea of people rooting through my school satchel and reading my homework. I mean, what about our clothes, too? I had a beautiful sweater my grandma knitted. Is some other girl wearing it now? I bet she never stops to think who wore it first, or how it got to her.”