Chapter Seven #2
Emmy didn’t want to hear any more. She was tired of everyone and everything deciding what was to become of everything that mattered to her. She cut Thea off in midsentence. “I have to go, Thea, or I’ll be late. Sorry. I’ll be back for Julia before six thirty.”
Emmy knew she had been abysmally rude, but she simply had to get away from Thea and her box of supplies for her bomb shelter, and from the fear in her eyes.
She went back to the flat for the two sketches she had promised Mrs. Crofton and held them to her chest for a moment.
These would keep her place, if not in Mrs. Crofton’s shop, then in Mr. Dabney’s future plans. They had to.
She headed for the bridal shop, passing sandbag walls on street corners that she and everyone else had been walking past for a year and hardly noticed anymore.
Everyone on the sidewalk seemed distracted by unspoken ponderings as they dashed about without a word to one another, not even a tip of the head or a weak smile.
It was as though the imminent departure of a quarter million children meant London was poised to lose her innocence and no one quite knew what to do on the eve of that loss.
Emmy arrived at Primrose Bridal and opened the door. The store was empty except for one young woman buying a veil.
And only a veil.
Emmy surmised from the conversation the woman and Mrs. Crofton were engaged in that she was to marry on Friday morning at Saint Martin–in-the-Fields wearing the veil and a dress of white dotted Swiss that she had worn to a piano recital in April.
Her husband-to-be was shipping out with his platoon on Saturday afternoon.
While Mrs. Crofton finished the transaction, Emmy went into the back room to see what hand-sewing was lined up for that afternoon, but the long table was empty.
A few moments later, Mrs. Crofton joined her.
She looked haggard, as if she hadn’t slept well or perhaps had eaten something for lunch that now roiled inside her.
“Are you all right, Mrs. Crofton?” Emmy asked.
She produced a wan smile. “Ask me that question when the war is over, Emmeline, and I might have an answer for you.” Mrs. Crofton looked down at Emmy’s hands. “You brought them.”
“Of course.” Emmy held the sketches out to her.
She hesitated for a moment before taking them. “Do you have something to tell me?”
The words startled Emmy, but a second later she was glad Mrs. Crofton had suspected she was to be sent away.
“My mother is making me leave. I’m so sorry, Mrs. Crofton. I had no idea this would happen when I took this job.”
The woman nodded once and cast her gaze to the sketches in Emmy’s hand. “I really thought I could pretend there was nothing to worry about as long as I just went about my business and sold wedding dresses to happy young women.”
Emmy hadn’t rehearsed a response from Mrs. Crofton that had nothing to do with her, so she had no words at the ready.
“Do you still want me to send these to my cousin?” Mrs. Crofton’s voice was void of emotion and strength, as though it really didn’t matter anymore that she had met Emmy and liked her sketches and wanted to help Emmy embark on a future as a wedding dress designer.
“I most certainly do. The evacuation doesn’t change anything.”
Mrs. Crofton looked up at Emmy. “Except that you won’t be in London.”
“But I am going to return as soon as I can. I very much want you to send the sketches to Mr. Dabney and I want to know when he will be returning to the city.”
The woman laughed, a short little chortle shrouded in lassitude.
“Oh, the confidence of the young! You would have us all drinking victory champagne by Christmas. My neighbor’s son is in the British navy and she told me he has no idea how long this will last. I’m not getting any more dresses from my suppliers in Paris.
It will be hard to sell wedding gowns when I haven’t any to sell.
And if all the London designers head to the hills, where will that leave me? ”
“You could sell mine.”
Her laugh this time was full and loud. “Made from what, hospital sheets? And who’s going to spend money on a wedding dress if food gets really scarce like they’re saying it will? Or if bombs are dropping every night? Don’t they teach you current events in school?”
“School’s not in session. And war makes brides as easily as it makes widows. You told me that yourself.”
“But not as plentifully. I’ve had no customers yesterday or today, except for the young woman who bought that veil.”
“Give your cousin the sketches, Mrs. Crofton. Please? I promise I will come back as soon as I can. War or no war.”
She exhaled heavily. “All right.”
“And you’ll let me know when he returns to London.”
Mrs. Crofton nodded. “Send me your address when you’re situated.”
They stood there for a moment looking at each other.
“I don’t have any work for you today, Emmeline,” Mrs. Crofton finally said.
“You can teach me how to line a bodice.”
She lifted up the corners of her mouth in a half smile. “I almost envy you. Getting out of here like you are. Away from all this. You don’t know how good you have it.”
“I’ll trade places with you.”
Mrs. Crofton laughed gently. “If you were my daughter, Emmeline, I would do the same as your mum. I’d send you away to safety, too. I had a daughter once, you know.”
Emmy didn’t.
Mrs. Crofton stared at the wall behind her as if it were a window to the past. “She died of a fever when she was six.”
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Crofton.”
Her employer hovered there, on the edge between the present and past, and then she turned toward the wall and plugged in the electric teakettle that sat on a little table by the door to the loo.
Emmy waited to hear more about the daughter who had died, but Mrs. Crofton only said she was terribly sorry that she’d run out of sugar and there wasn’t any more at the grocery.