The Red Ribbon Read online

  This was a young man — maybe a few years older than me. It was hard to tell in Birchwood, where all Stripeys seemed old. Somehow the usual blue-and-gray prisoner uniform looked clean and crisp on him. He carried a toolbox and had hands rough from manual work. If he was in one of Rose’s fairy stories, he’d be the seventh son of a seventh son — poor but lucky, and destined to win the prize.

  He had a nice face. Really bright eyes. The stubble that showed under his cap was blond, like a golden retriever. I smiled to myself. He was a dog. A good dog — not the nasty ones the guards patrolled with. The sort of dog who’d bring you a stick or an old sock from under the bed, wanting to play.

  I didn’t have time to play.

  “What’s he doing here?” I asked Rose when she passed by to see how I was getting on.

  “Repairs,” she replied. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone gooey too?”

  “Ha, ha. I need to get a move on. Francine’s almost finished fitting sleeves to her baby-vomit dress.”

  I was lost in yellow satin when I felt a warm presence looming at my side.

  “Something broken?” said Dog, setting down his toolbox.

  “My machine’s fine,” I said, inching away from his warmth.

  “Is that so? Let me have a look . . .”

  “Don’t get oil on my satin!”

  I eased the material free as he poked about with the machine.

  Dog tutted. “You’re lucky it’s still going.”

  “Really?”

  “Terrible tension. Springs too tight. Spools rusted. It should be oiled weekly. Or daily if used a lot — which, I’m guessing, applies to all the machines here.”

  I flushed with panic. The machine couldn’t go wrong now!

  “Can you fix it?”

  “You better believe I can.” He leaned in closer, under pretense of rooting with the tension spring. His voice was a murmur in my ear. “I can fix it so it’ll never work again, and the pigs can go sing for their stupid fashions, or go naked for all we care, right?”

  “S-sabotage?”

  He touched his fingers to his cap in a miniature salute and whispered, “Right first time, ma’am. Won’t take a minute.”

  I glanced back to where the guard was propped against the wall, reading a magazine.

  Dog murmured, “I’m Henrik, by the way. What’s your name?”

  My name? Since when did anyone here ask your name instead of a number?

  “Never mind that. Stop fixing my machine! I mean, stop breaking it. I want it to work.”

  Henrik raised an eyebrow at my tone.

  I raised both mine back at him. “I’m a dressmaker. I have to get this gown finished. It’s going to be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever sewn.”

  Henrik made a mock bow. “Pardon me for thinking you were a slave worker like the rest of us, making fine gowns for mass murderers!”

  “I’m not a slave!”

  “Oh, do They pay you? Have you got the right to leave whenever you want?”

  “No.”

  “So . . . you’re a slave.”

  I shook my head. “It’s Them that call us slaves. I’m me. I’m Ella. And I sew.”

  The mockery slid off Henrik’s face. “Good for you!” he said quietly. “I mean it! That’s real fighting talk. They can put us in a prison, but they can’t capture our spirit, right?”

  Marta looked our way, sniffing the air for any hint of a problem. Henrik busied himself with the internal mechanism of my machine, pretending to fix a fault that didn’t exist. Before he left, he squeezed my hand.

  “Keep strong, Ella. Word from outside is that the War could be over soon. We’re fighting back. The good guys are getting closer every day.”

  Now my heart did flip. “We’re winning? How do you know all this? Can you get messages out of Birchwood as well as in? I want to tell my grandma I’m OK.” Questions poured out of me.

  “Better than that, why not tell her yourself?”

  “We’re being liberated?”

  Henrik leaned closer. “Not exactly. But let’s just say there might be a way to liberate yourself.”

  “Escape?”

  Henrik clanged his toolbox and put a finger to his lips. “I’ll see you again, Ella!”

  I watched him as he dodged between the tables to leave. Lucky him, free to wander around as an odd-jobber, just like a normal person. He must have powerful prominents protecting him to have such a role.

  “Oh, not you as well?” said Shona, giving me a dig in the ribs as she passed.

  I jumped. “Me?”

  “Got a thing for the repair guy?” She pinched my cheek and hurried on before Marta started shouting.

  It was only when I tried to get back to work on the dress that I realized Henrik had done exactly what I’d asked him not to. My sewing machine was broken.

  Marta said I was to deliver Francine’s dress to Madam H.

  “But mine’s finished and ready to go,” I objected. And it was, thanks to a frenzied burst of hand-sewing on my part. Screw Henrik and his sabotage! How lovingly I had rolled the hem of the gown. How neatly I’d overstitched the seams and finished the neckline. I had forgotten who the dress was for while I was wrapped up in the sewing.

  “Just shut up and take it,” Marta replied with a nasty twist of her mouth: her version of a smile. She snatched the sunflower dress from me and, soon after, handed me a big flat box.

  All the other seamstresses were jealous that I was getting to leave Birchwood. Well, the part of the prison camp we all knew, at any rate. My heart fluttered a little, remembering Henrik’s talk of escape. It was impossible, of course. Not dressed as a Stripey, and not with a guard as escort. None other than Carla.

  “Nice day for a walk,” she said with a wink. Then, “Heel, Pippa, heel.” The dog had spotted a herd of Stripeys and was itching to go scatter them.

  I trotted to heel like the hound. I wasn’t on a leash, but I might as well have been. We were in full sight of Birchwood’s sentry towers and machine guns. Sun shone on twists of barbed wire. Guards were everywhere, and bosses too. There was no escaping the sight of miserable work gangs, lugging lumps of stone by hand or digging ditches in full sun. Every single worker was just a skeleton in a striped sack. They’d all been women once.

  My arms ached miserably. I had to hold the cardboard dress box flat. I was terrified of dropping it, much as I fantasized about spilling Francine’s frumpy dress onto the road so my frock would go to Madam H. instead.

  It was good to be outside, though, more or less. The air was somehow fresher when it wasn’t trapped behind barbed wire, even if it was still tainted with the taste of petrol, ash, and smoke. There were clear views over fields cropped down to dead yellow stubble. I could see a distant streak of brown, coming closer by the second. Another train arriving.

  I remembered Henrik’s talk of escape. Imagine that — just kicking off these stupid wooden shoes and running out to the fields . . . free!

  Carla’s bullets would reach me before the dog did, bang, bang, bang in my back.

  The strangest sight for me was all the men. They looked just as tired and ragged as the women workers.

  “Good to get away from the crowds,” said Carla to me or Pippa; I couldn’t be sure which. “Summer’s been rotten! All those hordes arriving at the station, so no hope of a seaside holiday to get away from this heat. Ten thousand units a day to process, can you believe it? What do they think we are? Machines?”

  I blinked rapidly. Units? Drops of sweat were rolling into my eyes, and I had no free hand to wipe them away.

  “And Pippa needs her walkies, doesn’t she, darling? Doesn’t she, drippy chops? Who’s the best doggie, then? Hey? Hey? Who’s the best?”

  I had to stop walking while Carla fussed over the mutt. When I looked down there was a tiny mole at my feet. It was dead. The first creature I’d seen in months that wasn’t a dog, a rat, a louse, or a bedbug. It reminded me of Grandma’s moleskin slippers, all soft and patchy where the
fur had worn away.

  Pippa came to sniff at the mole corpse. Carla yanked the leash.

  We came to a wrought-iron gate. It was scrolled in beautiful loops, like something from a storybook. A Stripey ran up to let us in. Carla ignored him. She clearly knew her way. Pippa stopped to piddle by a gatepost.

  I followed Carla down a garden path. I tripped on almost every paving stone, I was so busy gazing at the wonderland. There were flowers everywhere. Not just ones printed on fabric, or embroidered with silks. Real flowers! They grew in abundant borders around the edge of a lawn grown from real grass. Every blade of grass within Birchwood’s barbed wire had been eaten.

  At the edge of the lawn, two tortoises were munching at a feast of vegetable peelings. I stared at them, mesmerized. Watering the lawn was a Stripey gardener with a hose. I got sprinkled with water drops. It reminded me of a summer’s afternoon years and years ago when Grandad leaned out of an upstairs window while I was in the yard below, and he showered me and my friends from a watering can. We’d squealed so much! No squealing now. I had to step out of the way of a little boy clattering past on a bicycle — the same boy I’d once seen in the fitting room with Madam H. He left scuff marks on the lawn.

  “Hurry up,” grouched Carla.

  I trotted after her, pausing just long enough to smell the yellow roses growing right next to the door.

  Pippa was told to sit, stay outside.

  Then a real hallway in a real house. I smelled beeswax furniture polish, fried fish, and the lingering ghost of freshly baked bread. Farther up and farther in: carpets on the floor, woven with happy colors.

  A door opened somewhere deeper in the house. There was a patter of feet. Not a dog running — a toddler. A real child scampering around noisily. A voice called out. The toddler must have tiptoed after that, because everything went silent.

  Another door opened. A girl stood there, framed by the white gloss paintwork. She was just a couple of years younger than I was, with a fresh dress made of yellow checked cotton. She had a bow in her brown hair and a book in her hand. I saw her eyes go straight to the dress box.

  “Mother’s in the sitting room,” she said to Carla, never noticing me at all. Then she walked off in light summer sandals.

  Yet another door along the hall. Carla knocked.

  “Come in!” said a woman within. When the door opened, I saw a sitting room decorated in soft vanillas and pastel shades of lemon. There was a bookcase . . .

  “A bookcase?” Rose couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “What books were there?”

  “Who’s telling this story?” I objected.

  Rose pretended to pout. “Strictly speaking it’s a descriptive narrative, not a story, because it’s true. It is true, isn’t it? About the books? Oh, we used to have a room just full of books in our palace. All four walls, with a space for the door. There was a ladder on wheels that you could roll along to reach every shelf. That was traveling, Ella — from history to botany to tales of wonder and imagination . . .”

  “You and your make-believe palace. Hush now, or don’t you want to hear the rest?”

  “Yeah, shut your mouth for once,” laughed Girder. She was hunched on the edge of the bunk below, scarfing black-market bread and swigging black-market booze. “We want to hear about the commandant’s house.”

  “And the boy!” someone shouted with a hoarse voice. “Tell us about the little boy — how old? My son was three when They took us.”

  This audience for stories had begun weeks before, with Rose spinning her tales from the top bunk. Nearby Stripeys had swayed toward the sound of her voice, like sunflowers turning to the light. Rose’s reputation had spread. Stripeys came crawling across the bunks to hear her better. Girder soon demanded a story.

  “I don’t think I can do the sort of stories you like,” Rose had said cautiously. Girder knew the rudest, lewdest songs of anyone in Birchwood.

  Girder said, “Just tell ’em like you have been. With the woodcutters, the wolves, and swords that cut stone — I fancy getting me one of those, ha!”

  Now that I had ventured beyond the gates of Birchwood and lived to tell the tale, I had been ordered — by Rose and Girder — to give a full report.

  “The commandant has five children, including a baby,” I told everyone. “There was a cradle in the sitting room, covered in lace and ribbons and a cot blanket.”

  “Oh, my baby boy’s cot blanket!” came the lament of the upset mother. “I used to snuggle into that and smell his warm skin and talcum powder . . .”

  I swallowed. “I saw toys for older children on the sofa. Toy cars and a doll . . .”

  “Did you get to sit?” asked Girder. “Big though my buttocks are, I really miss cushions!”

  Of course I wasn’t allowed to sit. I wasn’t even allowed into that elegant room. Carla left me alone in the hall with the heavy dress box. I stared at the sprigs of meadow flowers on the wallpaper and the framed photograph of the commandant. If I hadn’t known who he was, I’d’ve said he seemed reliable and handsome, in his civilian suit, lit by the film-star flash of a photographer’s studio. It made me wonder what my father had looked like. The man I’d never met. When I got home, perhaps I could find him, and my mother. I’d have a proper family again. Family was important.

  The commandant looked like a family man.

  “How are you, my dear?” came the voice of the woman in the sitting room. So Madam H. knew Carla already. “Feeling any better after our little chat the other day?” Madam murmured. “I know it’s hard missing the farm and your family. Keep doing your duty, and you’ll have your reward.”

  Did the female guards talk with Madam like she was their mother? Soon they spoke too softly for me to hear. Eventually Carla said more loudly, “The dress is here. You know, made by the prisoner I recommended.”

  I stiffened. So all this time Carla had been pretending to be my friend, when she was actually promoting Francine’s work!

  At this point in my description of the visit, Girder described Carla in a word that Grandma would never tolerate me thinking, let alone saying out loud. It was a very descriptive, emphatic word.

  “Oh, there’s more,” I told my barrack-block audience. “Just wait . . .”

  Madam H. came out into the hall. She was wearing a nice summer dress in corn-yellow muslin. Despite feeling horribly tired, I was forced to trot after her and Carla, up two flights of stairs and along a corridor to a back attic room. The room had a bare floor, a table, a chair, a double wardrobe with mirrored doors, and a sewing basket. The window was shut.

  The doors to the wardrobe were open. Inside was a feast of fashion. Gowns of every color hung from satin-padded hangers. Short, long, narrow, full — every style was there. Some I recognized from projects at the Upper Tailoring Studio. Some could have come straight from couture houses in the City of Light. Other outfits were hung on the side of the wardrobe. Summer dresses, summer suits, nighties and naughties . . .

  Close up, Madam was not the sophisticated aristocratic type I’d imagined. She bustled about looking more distracted than divine. When she took off her day frock she was wearing very sensible underwear and a rubber girdle. A little roll of flesh oozed over the top of it.

  I set the dress box on the table and eased the lid off.

  Madam gestured me out of the way. She teased apart the leaves of tissue paper packing the dress. Carla stood at the door with her arms folded. I waited to see the disappointment on Madam’s face when Francine’s excuse of a frock was revealed. Instead her eyes lit up and she practically glowed with pleasure.

  “Oh, this is just ravishing,” she said breathlessly.

  Carla smirked. The dress in the box was my very own sunflower gown.

  “Marta tricked you?” asked my audience in the barrack block.

  “What are the odds?” said Girder drily.

  Madam held the yellow sunflower dress in front of her and swished from side to side, mesmerized by her own charms.

  “Quick, qu
ick,” she commanded abruptly. “Help me on with it.”

  It fit oh-so-beautifully. Perhaps it needed a few minor tweaks here and there. Marta had at least trusted me with pins, so I made the necessary adjustments — or tried to, while Madam turned and turned in front of the mirror. She opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, like a goldfish. One of those fat fish that go around in circles in a pond.

  I wondered if goldfish were edible.

  Madam gazed for a long time at the ripe beauty of the sunflower embroidery. I was bursting with pride on Rose’s behalf.

  Finally Madam said, “This is outstanding. A perfect fit . . . superlative fabric draping. Tell the woman who made it I am pleased. I will be wanting more from her.”

  I coughed. Carla nodded at me — Tell her.

  I almost couldn’t rustle up a voice. “Pardon me, Madam. I made it.”

  Now Madam turned and actually looked at me for the first time.

  “You? You’re just a girl!”

  “I’m sixteen,” I lied quickly.

  Madam turned back to the mirror. “Honestly, I never knew Your Sort were so gifted. Such a piece of luck I set up the Tailoring Studio so your talents wouldn’t go to waste, don’t you think? After the War, you must all work in a proper couture house, and I shall order my gowns there. How about that?”

  She spoke as if there were no Lists, no chimneys, and no ash showers.

  “So,” said Rose, back in the barrack block, “how does it feel to be the most amazing dress designer ever?”

  To her surprise — to everyone’s surprise, even my own — I burst into tears.

  “You’re a lucky girl,” said Marta, somehow making it sound like a threat. “I decided your dress was acceptable for Madam after all. You’ve learned a lot working for me. Of course, I did train in all the very best places.”