The Dressmaker's Gift - Fiona Valpy Page 0,117

her new life in England with Larry, she decided that she didn’t want to take the dress with her. “It belongs in France,” she told me. And so I kept it, all these years. I didn’t know it at the time, but I kept it so that when her granddaughter finally came back, she would have this piece of her grandmother’s life. And through it, she would understand a little bit more of who she was and where she came from. Take it with you, Harriet. It’s time its story was told now.’

Carefully, I take the dress down from its hanger and the fine silk whispers as I let the folds of deep blue fabric run through my hands. Simone helps me to wrap it in tissue paper to preserve it for the journey back to its original home in Paris.

As we say our goodbyes, Mireille reaches into the pocket of her apron. ‘I have one more thing to give you, Harriet,’ she says.

She pulls out a silver locket which hangs on a fine chain. She hands it to me, saying, ‘Go ahead, open it.’

Even before I prise open the catch, stiff with age, I know what I will find within. And, sure enough, when the two halves open, the faces of Claire and Vivienne-who-was-really-Harriet smile up at me from the palm of my hand.

2017

The exhibition is finally ready now. As I leave the gallery and go to join my colleagues for a celebratory drink at the bar around the corner, I turn out the lights. But just as I’m about to press the last switch, I hesitate.

In the centre of the darkened gallery the display case is still illuminated, the light catching the tiny silver beads scattered along the neckline of the midnight blue dress. From a distance, you might think it’s been cut from one single piece of fabric. It’s only when you look more closely that you can see the truth.

I understand it a little better now; the truth about my grandmother and my great-aunt; the truth about my own mother; the truth about myself.

This extraordinary dress – this piece of living history – has helped to tell the stories of Claire and my great-aunt Harriet. They were ordinary people, but the extraordinary times that they lived in saw them step up to become extraordinary too. No matter how tough it got, no matter how dark the night, they never gave in.

And their stories have helped to illuminate the truth about my mother. At last the fog of anger and pain that have enveloped my feelings for her for all these years have dissipated, letting compassion shine through. She was the daughter that Claire and Larry had, late in life once Claire’s broken body had finally healed enough to bear a child. They named her Felicity for the joy she brought them, and they had poured into her all their hopes. But perhaps she had carried the burden of their guilt and grief as well. Was it something that was inherited through the genes? Or was it passed on to her in other ways that were subtly invasive, ways that Claire couldn’t prevent? The night fears, the trauma, the knowledge that human beings are capable of being so inhuman? Were they all still there, beneath Claire’s scarred skin, those deeper scars that could never be healed? And did my mother pick up on that, on some subconscious level?

I realise, too, that in spite of everything else they went through, my grandmother and great-aunt never had to endure being abandoned through their darkest days and nights: they were there to comfort and reassure one another, come what may. Perhaps that, therefore, is the most powerful feeling of all, the feeling that you are not alone in the world. And perhaps, when my mother found herself abandoned, by her parents who had died and by the husband who left her alone with the daughter that should have bound them together, she didn’t have the resilience to carry on. It was abandonment that broke her heart.

I’m sure that Claire was only trying to protect her own child, my mother, by not telling her about what had happened in the war. All my mother had known was that it was something terrible, shameful, somehow, something never to be mentioned by either of her parents in case the healing scars were reopened. And she had known her aunt Harriet’s name. I wonder what she had known of Harriet’s story. Had Claire ever talked about the guilt? Was Felicity aware that both her parents felt responsible for the suffering and death of the friend and sister they loved so much? And was naming me after my great-aunt Harriet an attempt by my mother to put the past to rights?

I wish my mother had known the whole story. Perhaps she would have understood, then. Perhaps she wouldn’t have felt so alone. She would have felt, as I do, that no matter how dark the night became she could make it through. Because she would have known that Harriet and Claire were a part of her, as they are a part of me.

I think of the three girls in the photograph who brought me here to tell their story. Their faces are even more familiar to me now because I can see that they live on. In Mireille’s face, her dark eyes sparkle with the same humour and kindness as the eyes of my friend Simone – the friend who is alive today because her grandmother saved my grandmother all those years before.

In my grandmother Claire, I see the loving gentleness that is reflected in the photograph of my mother, holding me in her arms as a tiny baby.

And then there is my great-aunt, for whom I am named. Harriet, who took the name Vivienne because she was so full of life. I know I have a little of her courage. I know, if I am called upon, I will stand up, as she did, and turn to face danger. I won’t run away. I will fight for what is most important. For life.

I open the locket that I wear around my neck and I look at the photographs of my grandmother Claire and my great-aunt Harriet that are held safely within.

The light in their eyes shines, even in the darkness of the shadows that partially obscure their faces in the small black and white photos. Just as the silver beads still shine on the neckline of the dress as I turn out the last of the lights in the gallery and the display case is plunged into darkness.

And as I close the doors of the exhibition hall behind me, I sense that they are here with me, Claire and Vivi, reaching out across the years to take my hand and to whisper, ‘Hush now. We are together. Everything will be alright.’