A Short Story by Leslie Hills (1996)
My wedding dress.
It’s on the top shelf of the cupboard in my bedroom underneath the blankets we discarded when the duvets came in. The box is grey with age and the tissue paper brown and scratchy. I lay it on the bed and lift out the dress, high and I shake it till the skirt flows, just so, across the bedroom carpet.
It’s ivory satin with long beaded sleeves that come to a point and a short train. Even a train that length meant saving the clothing coupons for months.
We’d waited and waited for so long, right through the depression when there was no proper work for him, saving every last penny so we’d have the money to do it all properly – the deposit on the house, which was cheap because Glasgow was thought to be risky for bombs; the furniture, only the back bedroom was war utility furniture and the rest we got from Wylie and Lochhead; the wedding, full tid and a reception at the Ca d’Ora; my wedding dress from the bridal department at Frasers.
And here it is, fifty-five years on, still perfectly beautiful. But not quite perfect. Look here. See where the satin folds into the train and look closely, here at the hem. It’s more like a spot of rust than anything. But it’s not. It’s blood.
Oh, we’d waited so long and then the war came and by Christmas 1940 we knew it was going to go on and on. So we decided on April 12th 1941.
I spent January scouring the fabric departments and finally settled on my ivory satin and they offered to make it up for me, very reasonably. I had my wide shoulders and hips even then, of course, but there wasn’t an ounce of extra fat on me. The girl had me put on a white cotton slip and then she measured me top to bottom and all round while the saleswoman wrote it all down, in a black notebook. I wonder what happened to that notebook.
Over the weeks the dress took shape. She had wonderful hands that girl. They cut and stitched and pinned and smoothed, like you never saw. She was just a wee thing, always dressed in black with a white apron, her tape measure round her neck and a pad with pins on her left wrist.
She was pleasant enough, but you felt that once the dress was on you, she saw nothing but the dress. The dress was the thing. She’d pin a bit, then stand back eyeing and thinking; then she’d kneel and pin and suddenly the line flowed. She was a marvel. When the fitting was done she’d smile, a big smile, say “good morning” and leave. We didn’t talk much, but by the time it was nearly finished I felt easy with her. You got the impression she really cared.
We’d been out at our new house. It was special. No-one we knew had ever bought their own house before. On the edge of Glasgow it was, with parks near and a school right on the corner.
We were planning ahead. But it was miles from the river so when the bombs started falling and we saw the light in the sky, we could still get a bus back to the east end without much bother.
And when we got there my mother was in the kitchen, just sitting.
My father had a good job. In his fifties, when the railway yards got too much for him, he was lucky. When the big ships docked in the Clyde with their holds full of cargo, someone had to go and get samples so that everyone knew that the cargo was what it was meant to be. That was what my father did. He had a leather bag and lots of little bottles and boxes, some of them special, carved and made of ivory and the like, and he’d go to the Clyde and fill his boxes with grain and cement and spices and all sorts and take them back to his office where the chemists analysed them.
So, he was in Clydebank when the bombs started falling.
He never heard the planes. One minute he was walking up the street away from the river and the next the buildings around him were falling down. He wrapped his scarf around his face, to try to keep the dust from his mouth and then it was all confusion and shouting. There was a woman running in a petticoat, blood streaming down her face and he tried to help her but then the ambulances appeared and there were police everywhere.
My father wasn’t young and suddenly he couldn’t breathe. He stood for a minute, leaning against a shop door, but then the building began to shake and he ran for the middle of the road and just stood, breathing as best he could.
When the dust had cleared a little, a green basket chair with a flowery cushion still on it had appeared from nowhere, right in front of him. He sat on it and tried to clear his lungs. A couple of ambulance men came by but my father said he was all right and they should look after folks worse off.
He just wanted to get home. That was the one thought in his mind. To get home. The ambulance men said that was going to be a problem. There was no transport out of Clydebank that night unless you were injured or dead. And then there was a howling and the house opposite fell down and the chair collapsed.
My father picked himself up and started to walk home. Through the bombs and the broken houses and the shouts and the screams. He said to himself that if it was his time, it would be for him and if not, well, he’d get home. And so he walked right through it and out the other side.
Hours later his key turned in the lock and my mother stood up. So stiff she could hardly take a step. They put their arms around each other and went to the bedroom.
It was the one night in their whole married life, I think, that she didn’t take out his piece tin and clean it, ready for the morning. So I did it. After all, I was practically a married woman. All his bottles and boxes stood in their little compartments and nothing was broken.
I was tired the next day, and so glad he’d been spared I was a bit light-headed. I went for my final fitting. It was a sharp bright March day and I jumped off the tram, ignoring the awful newspaper placards, one of the lucky ones.
The seamstress was late but nothing mattered today. I waited and tried out a few poses for the photographer, in the big mirror. I have to admit I was pleased with myself. She came in. There was just the hem to finish. I stood tall and white, you wouldn’t believe it now, in the sunshine. It was spring and there I was like a big white crocus on the green carpet, starting out. A perfect new beginning. I smiled, just at me.
She was on the floor crawling around. And suddenly she said, “Sorry! Oh, I am so sorry. It just slipped.”
I looked down where she was hunkered, her head forward, one hand clutching the other, on her chest. The satin rose around me as I sank down beside her. Her face was thin and white as white, except for her eyes which were creased and puffed and red-raw. She held up her finger. A little blob of blood plumped out and she caught it on her other hand. The one with the pin cushion on the wrist. The red blood smeared across her palm. She clutched her apron over it and up around her neck.
“There’s no harm done,” I said. “It’s not a tragedy. You caught it.”
“It’s too late,” she said. “It’s too late. There’s blood on your dress. On the hem. Look.”
I looked and there it was – a tiny spreading spot on my beautiful dress that had been perfect. We crouched there together and suddenly I felt quite sick. I turned, reaching out and she took me in her arms and sobbed and sobbed. After a while my knees started to hurt.
“Come on, now,” I said, “It’s only a drop. It’s on the very edge. We can turn it under and stitch it in. No-one will guess.” Still she sobbed, her apron up round her neck catching the wet.
Her voice whispered raw, close to my ear. “My sister….. She got a house in Clydebank with her man. And the baby…… All three of them. All three of them.”
She was still holding me there on the floor when the buyer came in and took her away. I packed up my dress as best I could and carried it home to stitch the little brown stain into the hem.
But when the time came to do it I didn’t have the heart for it. I left it there to remind me. To remind me to live my perfect new life minute by minute.
But of course, mostly, I forgot.