The Tailor's Girl Read online

  ‘I’ll stop you there, son,’ Abe said, holding up a hand. ‘It is Edie here who has shown you those courtesies. She is her mother’s girl through and through.’

  Tom shook his head. ‘From what I see she’s the tailor’s girl through and through . . . because Abe, while Edie looked upon me as an injured animal, you saw the man and you’re the one who has taken me into your home. In just a few hours I’ve invaded your privacy, you’ve said prayers with me, broken bread with me, even given me your precious son’s suit, for heaven’s sake. You’ve given me work that made me feel useful and productive again. And this work has given rise to an idea that prompts me to believe I have a fully engaged mind again, even if my memory has failed me. You’ve made me feel as though I have something to contribute again to the world.’

  ‘All that from some old clothes and a stew, Tom?’ Abe said, chuckling.

  But Tom would not let him make light of it. ‘Abe, because of today I know I can build a new life for myself. I’m going to stop reaching for the past, picking at my mind as one picks at a scab. It’s done. It’s behind me. And the war is over. I realise I’m lucky I don’t remember all of it. Today is the first day of my new life. I’m going to make a good life, Abe, and I hope you and Edie will always be friends in it.’

  Edie was staring at the flames but she couldn’t hide the water in her eyes at Tom’s provocative words. He had to look away from her.

  ‘I’m pleased for you, son,’ Abe admitted. ‘I’ll help you. Let’s get you started in this new life of yours. I’ll bring some of the buyers to the shop. I’ll give you four weeks. You get me my money back on the cloth and whatever you make on top is yours.’

  Edie shifted to look at her father, open-mouthed. Tom said nothing, waiting for Edie’s lead. ‘Do you mean that, Abba?’ she whispered.

  He gave her a quizzical look. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

  Edie’s gaze moved to Tom. ‘Do you hear that, Tom?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Abe.’

  ‘Don’t say anything. Let’s see your mettle first, son. These buyers are tougher than you imagine,’ the older man said, tapping his nose. ‘Mostly Jews, and we are not known for giving away our money freely.’ He chuckled at his own remark and Tom sensibly held his tongue. ‘They’ll beat you down.’

  ‘Let’s see, shall we?’ Tom said.

  ‘Indeed. I’ll set the idea in motion tomorrow.’ Abe stood. ‘I have coffee with one of the tailors at Gieves & Hawkes. He won’t be able to resist taking the news back when I tell him about the beautiful cloth I have.’

  Edie grinned. ‘This is exciting.’

  ‘Too much excitement for me, I’m afraid,’ Abe said and kissed his daughter. ‘Good night, my darling girl.’ He reached a hand out to their guest. ‘Sleep soundly, Tom. You have a big adventure ahead.’

  Tom grinned. ‘Good night, Abe. Thank you again for your hospitality.’

  Abe made shooshing noises but Tom saw warning in the hooded expression he cast and knew what it meant.

  When Abe had shuffled out, Edie turned. ‘Thank you, Tom.’

  ‘What for? Good gracious, the Valentines have —’

  ‘You know what for,’ she said softly. ‘I’m afraid my father is extremely old-fashioned. He struggled to let me out to fulfil my war duties. It’s only because I said he should think of Daniel that he relented.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Tom asked, putting his cup and saucer back on the tray. It meant he could sit closer to the fire . . . and to Edie.

  ‘I helped to produce supplies for the soldiers. I sewed shirts, bandages, absolutely anything that a needle and thread could do, I did. I often felt I should work in one of the munitions factories. Those girls – they called them canaries – took on such dangerous work with poisons.’

  Tom shook his head. ‘Edie, everyone was doing their bit in the very best way they could. Why were they nicknamed canaries?’

  She smiled sadly. ‘Their skin took on a yellow tinge because of the sulphur they worked with. I couldn’t help but envy them that courage. They really felt part of the war effort.’

  ‘And you didn’t?’

  She shrugged. ‘Perhaps I should have joined the Land Army and helped the farmers grow the food for our soldiers or something.’

  ‘Your skills may have saved lives, you know. Only a talented seamstress could have turned out the goods you made with such speed or dexterity.’

  ‘You’re sweet, Tom, thank you.’

  ‘I’m going to make Abe change his mind, you know.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I think you know the answer to that.’

  ‘He will not agree to my own salon.’

  ‘No, Edie,’ he said, laying a tentative hand across hers. ‘About Benjamin Levi.’

  She pulled her hand away. ‘Don’t, Tom. You . . . you don’t understand.’ She picked up the tray, standing in a hurry.

  He, too, stood, taking the tray from her. ‘Do you love him?’ he whispered, staring hard at her.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what —’

  ‘Do you love him, Edie?’ Tom pressed, his voice low and urgent.

  She shook her head, staring at the tray. ‘I’m not even attracted to him. He’s my oldest friend – that’s how I think of him.’

  ‘That’s all I need to know,’ he said. ‘Good night, Edie. Thank you for a wonderful evening. I’ll leave this in the kitchen, shall I?’

  She nodded, looking slightly ashamed but in equal measure excited. ‘Sleep well,’ she said to his back, knowing full well that she wouldn’t.

  _______________

  The next day passed uneventfully as Tom worked quietly and diligently in the storeroom, coordinating the cloths – now that he had made an inventory – into colours and fabric styles. Abe returned from taking coffee with the tailor from Savile Row, reporting back that evening over dinner that the seed had been sown.

  ‘Now we let him water it,’ he said, stirring the chicken soup in his bowl to cool it.

  ‘But what about the other tailoring houses?’ Tom asked.

  ‘News travels fast, son,’ Abe assured, sipping neatly from his spoon then waving it at Tom. ‘Eat. You’ve worked hard today.’

  Tom looked around. ‘Are we not waiting for Edie?’

  Abe continued eating. ‘She’s not joining us this evening.’

  ‘Oh?’

  The older man looked up and as he dabbed his beard with a napkin he regarded Tom with a meaningful stare. ‘Tonight she shares her meal with close family friends. She’s just readying herself to leave.’

  Disappointment ached through him and his appetite was instantly lost; Tom had toiled all day knowing that the reward would be Edie at sundown: her smile, that smoky voice, those sideways looks he desperately wanted to interpret as interest in him beyond the polite. He had planned to find some time alone if he could; wanted to hear her laugh unguarded as he had when they’d met at the hospital. Around her father she was so careful and dutiful it put Tom on edge. But now she was leaving him for the evening with only Abe for company. Suddenly the gentle, meaty fragrance no longer tantalised as it had just moments ago. He looked at the shallow bowl, steam rising; the rice that Edie had thrown in for some extra staple had settled at the bottom. A flash of colour to the side caught his eye and he looked to the doorway where Edie stood, dressed immaculately and stunningly in scarlet. She was pulling on gloves and appeared determined to refuse him eye contact.

  ‘There’s plenty more,’ she said to the room. Tom sensed that her bright voice sounded forced. He wanted her to meet his gaze.

  ‘You look lovely tonight, Edie,’ Tom remarked evenly but it was her father who responded.

  ‘Enjoy yourself, my dear,’ Abe said. ‘Don’t forget that checklist either. I need to know for Benjamin’s suit.’

  Tom eyed Edie, although she was nodding at her father while tying on a silk scarf. The bright red dress seemed to hang effortlessly from her shoulders. The belt was part of the dress itself but didn’
t cinch at the waist. She had a tiny white collar and matching cuffs with studs of black that echoed the overcoat she reached for.

  ‘She assures me this is the new look that’s coming,’ Abe said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Did you make that?’ Tom said to her.

  She nodded with a shy smile, still avoiding his gaze. ‘Yes. This dropped waist is quite daring, but —’ She shrugged. ‘It’s what every woman will want to be wearing soon.’

  ‘Don’t even ask how she knows these things, Tom,’ Abe said, forcing Tom to break his gaze away from Edie. ‘It’s a mystery. It’s magic. It’s . . . osmosis. She just absorbs it from everything she reads, hears, sees.’

  ‘Well, it’s incredibly eye-catching. Lead the charge, I say,’ Tom remarked, punching the air, which made Abe grin over the bread he was breaking.

  ‘I don’t know about that, Tom,’ Edie admitted, touching her hair self-consciously, turning away from him.

  Abe waved a finger. ‘All you need to care about, my love, is that Benjamin Levi likes how you look in it.’ His gaze slid back to Tom, slow enough to register, fast enough that Tom was left staring at someone who was tucking into his food as though no conversation had passed.

  Tom pasted on a smile he wasn’t feeling. ‘So that’s why you’re not joining us,’ he said, picking up his glass for something to direct his annoyance at. He swirled the water expertly.

  ‘It’s not wine, Tom,’ Abe remarked.

  ‘Have a lovely evening, Edie,’ Tom offered.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, finally forced to meet his eyes, and in that glance he registered soft pain.

  Whether Abe registered it too, he didn’t reveal. ‘Give the Levi family my respects,’ he said brightly. ‘Tell Moshe it’s time he came in and got his suit spruced too. We’ve a wedding in a few weeks.’

  ‘I’ll do that, Abba,’ she said, avoiding Tom’s eyes again.

  He would not be ignored. ‘How are you getting to your friends’ house?’ Tom suddenly asked.

  She smiled but it was brittle. ‘I walk. It’s not very far.’

  ‘Nevertheless, it’s cold and icy. Let me walk you there. See you indoors safely.’ He glanced at Abe. ‘I’ll leave Edie at the corner if she prefers but I think I was raised, I’m certain, to see a lady door to door.’

  ‘What fine manners our Tom possesses, dearest,’ Abe said with only a hint of dryness. Tom knew he’d trapped the old man. For him to refuse his daughter a safe escort would be churlish. ‘Go ahead, young man. But it’s barely five minutes away.’

  ‘All the same,’ Tom said, leaping up.

  ‘Your dinner will go cold,’ Edie complained but with no heat in her tone, Tom noted.

  ‘I feel sure I ate a lot worse in the trenches. Cold soup will not daunt me. I can warm it again.’

  She nodded, and Tom was confident she was trying to mask her pleasure at the turn of events. He hoped the angels were smiling on him tonight.

  ‘All right. To the corner, then,’ Edie said. ‘Thank you, Tom. Night, Abba. Don’t wait up.’

  Outside the front door, Tom offered his arm. ‘Your father didn’t try to stop me.’

  ‘He’s made his point, I’m sure. He knows I won’t defy him. And he knows you wouldn’t risk betraying him.’

  ‘He’s very confident, clearly.’

  Edie sighed. ‘Let’s walk,’ she said and he noticed she declined to take his arm.

  ‘How does tonight work?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You sit and talk with his parents present, or do you just say hello to them and then go out alone?’

  ‘Tonight I shall have dinner with the family at their house.’

  ‘Is this what Benjamin wants too?’

  She wasn’t offended by how quickly he’d advanced the conversation to what obviously mattered most to him. She shrugged and it was a sad gesture. ‘Benjamin asked me to marry him when he was nine and I barely seven. He didn’t know then – and neither did I – that this is precisely what our four parents intended. He’s not changed that desire.’

  ‘But now you’re triple that age with a mind of your own and aspirations that —’

  ‘That I am not permitted to entertain, Tom. You must forget about what I shared with you.’

  ‘I can’t.’ He pointed to where some ice had formed on a puddle and she neatly sidestepped it.

  ‘Well, put it out of your mind then, because it has no future. I rely on my father’s income and soon I will rely on Benjamin’s. He’s a lawyer.’

  ‘I’m happy for him,’ Tom remarked dryly.

  ‘Cross here,’ she said, pointing, and this time she did take his arm. Instantly a current of need as much as desire sizzled through him.

  ‘What about if you had the means?’

  ‘Means?’

  ‘The financial means to set up.’

  She laughed. ‘You’re such a dreamer, Tom,’ she said, but it wasn’t spoken unkindly. ‘I do love that about you.’

  ‘So you do love something about me?’ he remarked as the smell of baking bread elevated the pleasure that her spirit-lifting words had achieved. ‘Do they bake through the night?’ he asked, as they passed the bakery, deliberately distracting her.

  ‘Tom, don’t —’

  ‘Don’t what?’ He couldn’t be polite any longer. ‘Don’t tell you that I think I fell in love with you the moment I saw you?’ Even in the thin pool of gaslight from the street lamp he could see her blanch with surprise. His mental injuries had surely affected his natural inhibitors to be quite so raw with his emotions. Had he always been this candid? He pressed on, heedless that he was being too direct, too fast. ‘I can remember exactly what you were wearing, how you’d styled your hair, that your footsteps resonated in my mind hours later. Or maybe you’d rather not hear that I fell deeper in love when you joined me on the garden bench at the hospital, and that once I saw you smile just for me I knew I couldn’t ever love another woman.’

  She’d stopped walking and he could see her breath was short, slightly ragged, as it steamed around her in the freezing evening. ‘Tom, this is your vulnerability talking. You’ve felt lost, lonely, anxious . . . Perhaps I was the first person to show you the sort of friendship you sought, but —’

  ‘No, Edie, don’t do that.’

  She swallowed. ‘Don’t do what?’

  ‘You mustn’t patronise me. I’ve lost my memory but I haven’t lost my ability to rationalise, to know what I want, to know how I feel at this moment. And I know how I feel about you. It’s sudden, perhaps even shocking – for both of us – but I feel it all the same. And I hope it doesn’t sound preposterous to you.’

  ‘Tom, I . . .’ She looked lost but he sensed she was not horrified or offended by his admission. ‘Listen . . . you might have a family somewhere. A wife, a child! Your name could be John, or Edward.’

  ‘Is it that I’m not Jewish?’

  ‘Yes! No,’ she said, then sounding forlorn, her shoulders slumped. ‘No, definitely not that.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘You actually look quite Jewish with this beard of yours.’

  He grinned in spite of the tension. ‘Do you know something, Edie? You are the only woman I’ve met since I woke who hasn’t asked me to shave.’

  She lifted a shoulder. ‘I’m used to men with beards. I’d like to see you clean-shaven, of course,’ she added.

  ‘Aha!’

  ‘Why haven’t you? Shaved, I mean?’

  It was Tom’s turn to sigh. ‘I think I’ve been working hard to convince myself that once the beard goes, the real me is waiting and I’ll recognise the man in the mirror immediately. But while my heart likes to believe this, my head is assuring me that I will stare back at him, just as confused and angry that I don’t know him.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So then all hope is gone.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ she said, sounding both dismayed and angered by his belief. ‘You are you, Tom. You’re alive, you’re getting stronger, you have all your faculties. Y
our memory is damaged, that’s all. It will return when that wound heals and, if it doesn’t, you did return. So many didn’t!’

  He stared at her, holding the awkward silence between them as she searched his face, willing him to agree. Finally, Tom nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ she said and laughed gently, a sound that he knew could push away night terrors and fill his dreams with brightness. ‘Shave your beard only when you feel ready to accept the man beneath it precisely how he is and not despise him.’

  ‘You dodged my question, Edie.’

  ‘I can’t even remember it,’ she said in a droll voice, but unable to look at him. She walked on. ‘Come on, I can’t be late. And I think my eyebrows are frozen.’

  He would not be deterred. ‘You remember very well that I told you I’ve fallen in love with you and I think you’re fearful,’ Tom said, falling into step alongside her.

  ‘Fearful?’

  ‘Of disappointing Benjamin, disappointing the families, especially disappointing your father and then, of course, those prospects Abe spoke of. I apparently have none.’

  ‘All of it,’ she said, ‘though perhaps the last is of little importance to me.’

  ‘Edie, give me a chance,’ he said, running around her as she doggedly cornered into a new street . . . a darker way of houses, a lone dog barking in the distance and each home backlit behind curtains like heavily lidded eyes watching them.

  ‘I —’

  ‘No, don’t say any more. When you’re sitting with Benjamin and his family tonight, think about . . . well, just think about this conversation and what perhaps you’re not saying.’

  ‘I hardly know you, Tom,’ Edie said in a small voice.

  ‘You know me, Edie,’ he said, his voice confident. ‘And you know I’m what you want. I think big. So do you. We’d make a good team, you and I. As for who is in my past, I am absolutely certain if I were married or even just engaged, I would feel that connection somewhere. Or rather, I wouldn’t be able to feel about you as I do. All of me is yours if you want me. Marry me, Edie. Don’t think too hard – just follow that instinct of yours that served you well when you helped me leave the hospital, and bring me home. It led us here . . . to now. There was a reason we met.’