Coronation Year, page 15
“I feel so angry, too. Even on the brightest days I can feel it whispering in my ear. I hope that does not sound strange.”
“Not in the least.”
“What happened to your family?” Stella dared to ask.
“My parents and grandfather were arrested in 1942. They were sent to a place called the Vélodrome d’Hiver, along with many thousands of other French Jews. I think your uncle and his family were probably taken at the same time.”
“I wrote to them after the war, but the letter was returned. How was it that you were not arrested, too?”
“I was working in Paris. My father had feared such a thing might happen, and he had helped me change my identity papers so it appeared I was a Gentile. I was able to hide in plain sight for months, and I even helped in a small way with the resistance. But I was captured and sent to Ravensbrück. Like you, I found friends there who helped me. I survived, and then I came to England so I might begin again.”
“Did you ever learn what became of your parents?”
“I did. My Walter promised to find them, and as I’m sure you already know, he can be very persistent when something is important to him.” A pause, and Miriam brushed away her own tears. “They were murdered at Birkenau.”
“I was there,” Stella whispered. “I was there, and I think that is where my parents were killed. I suppose the rest of my family, too. I have not yet tried to find out.”
“Yet you survived when they did not?”
“The police did not find me when they came for us, not at first. I tried to hide, but I had no money. No food. I asked one of our neighbors to help me, but she turned me away, and then she called the police. I was sent to Bolzano for a while, and from there to Birkenau.”
“And then?”
“There was a selection. I survived only because my friend told me to lie about my age. All the children and old people on our train were being sent to their deaths, so I said I was sixteen and they decided not to kill me straightaway. Instead they took away my name and replaced it with a string of numbers, and then they shaved my head and gave me a shift to wear that had been taken from the body of a dead woman. That was my first day at Birkenau.”
“How old were you?” Miriam asked, her face a rictus of agony.
“Fourteen. But I was strong, and tall for my age, and they needed workers. They sent me to a camp in Germany. I was put to work in the foundry, making parts for weapons.” She held out her hands so Miriam might see the constellation of tiny scars. “After a while I did not notice the sparks.”
“I am so sorry,” Miriam said.
“They do not bother me. But this,” she said, unbuttoning her cuff and pushing back her sleeve, “this still hurts. The memory, I mean, not the tattoo.”
Miriam stared at the numbers on Stella’s arm, and then she set her fingers atop the markings. Her hand was warm and her touch was kind.
“I told myself I would not learn the number. I would refuse to carry it in my head. But I had no choice but to learn it, for they called it out at appell. They took away my name and replaced it with this, and now I cannot forget.”
“My dear Stella. Oh, my dear. I am so very sorry.”
“Thank you. It is good to talk to someone who understands. How . . . how do you live with it?” she asked her new friend.
“Imperfectly,” Miriam answered, her own eyes bright with tears. “My husband is a patient man, and of course my children do not understand, not yet. And there is my work. My work has made all the difference. Would you like to see?”
They went through the kitchen door and along the path to the greenhouse, only it wasn’t a greenhouse but rather a studio. Miriam switched on an overhead light and beckoned Stella forward. “This is my studio.”
On the far side of the room, drawn close to a large window, was a sort of table without a top, and where the top ought to have been there was a panel of fabric stretched tight around a wooden frame. A group of people had been drawn on the fabric, or rather outlined in thread, and they were running down a street, pushed along by unkind hands, and at the center of their group a woman had stopped and was turning to face her pursuers.
The other figures were still ghostly outlines, but the woman was almost complete. She was constructed of delicately appliquéd pieces of fabric, and wondrously fine embroidered stitches brought life to her face. Stella could not look away, for the work before her, even unfinished, was the equal of anything she had ever seen in the galleries of London or Florence or Rome.
“I hardly know what to say. This is extraordinary. I thought, at first, that these were paintings. But they are made of fabric and thread.”
“Until recently I was an embroiderer at the atelier of Monsieur Hartnell—perhaps you have heard of him? He is the couturier who is making the gown for the new queen’s coronation.”
“You no longer work there?”
“Not since Sarah was born. I still embroider, but it is for my own purposes now.”
“The woman, here—was she your mother?”
Miriam nodded, as Stella had known she would. “Yes.”
“I wish I had the words to explain how I feel. Your work is extraordinary,” she repeated.
“Thank you. I wonder if you might consider doing the same.”
“Embroidery like this? I could never—” Stella protested.
“I mean with your photography. I have only seen a few of your pictures, but they are the work of an artist. I am certain of it.”
“Even if I am, what does it matter? I cannot change what happened. I cannot bring them back.”
“You cannot. But you can tell their story, and your own, and that of others who have suffered and died.”
“How?” Stella asked, feeling helpless in the face of Miriam’s calm certainty.
“Only you can answer that question. Simply consider the idea, and imagine how you wish to tell your story, and the rest will come to you. Perhaps not tonight, nor tomorrow, but it will come. As one artist to another, I can promise you that.”
Chapter Fifteen
Jamie
Friday, April 17, 1953
Of course it was raining, and of course he’d left his umbrella upstairs. He would just have to make a run for it.
He’d waited until the worst of the morning rush was past, but impatience had got the better of him and now it was five past nine and he couldn’t be bothered to fetch his coat or umbrella. So he ran as fast as he might to the newsagents in Charing Cross station, and joined the end of a long queue of commuters who were buying their papers, and as he waited he tried hard to temper his expectations.
At last it was his turn. “Good morning, Mr. Patel. How are you?”
“Very well, thank you. I have them ready for you. Half a dozen copies, and so fresh I can smell the ink. I put them in a paper bag for you already—ah. Here it is. That will be one florin.”
Jamie handed over his two shillings, accepted the bundle of magazines, and briefly considered opening the bag and taking a peek. But no; it was better to wait a little longer. “Thank you.”
Mick was waiting outside the hotel, and as soon as Jamie came around the corner he hurried forward to shelter him under his umbrella. “Morning, Jamie. Whyever didn’t you take one of the brolleys from the front hall? Since I’ll wager you left your own upstairs in your room.”
“I’m afraid I did. I was in a rush to get to the newsagents. The new issue of Picture Weekly is out today.”
Mick, having closed the umbrella, now followed Jamie inside. “So it’s out already? The story that American gal was writing about the Blue Lion?”
Jamie took out his handkerchief and set about mopping the worst of the rain from his face and hair. “It is, and I bought extra copies so everyone might have a look. If it’s all right, though, I’d like Miss Howard to be the first to see it.”
“More’n all right,” Mick agreed. He turned in the direction of the reception alcove, where Ivor Brooks was fussing with a stack of outgoing post. “You, there. Go on and tell Miss Howard that Mr. Geddes is waiting to see her.”
Jamie had to suppress a laugh at Brooks’s silently indignant response to being ordered about by Mick, but he found the man’s next words rather less humorous. “Confound it, Nelligan. You know that Miss Howard is busy at the best of times. He can leave the magazines with me.”
“No,” Jamie said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“No,” Jamie repeated. “I do not wish to leave the magazines with you.” He raised his voice a fraction so it might carry a little farther, but not so much as to appear belligerent. “If you could simply let Miss Howard know I have the new issues of Picture Weekly to show her?”
It worked. The door to her office opened and Edie appeared. “It’s here?”
“It is indeed. Do you have a moment?”
“Of course—do come straight through.”
It would have been satisfying to scowl at Brooks, but it was far better, he judged, to simply look through him as if he were invisible, and thereby give the man a taste of his own medicine. He did allow himself a mischievous wink in Mick’s direction, and to his delight the doorman not only returned it, but also amplified the cheeky gesture with a wide grin.
Jamie shut the door to the office, for he didn’t care to have Brooks listening in, and joined Edie where she stood by her desk. “Nervous?” he asked.
“A little. Miss Sutton was very nice, but one never knows how these things will turn out.”
“I doubt very much it will be anything less than perfectly flattering.”
“You haven’t read it yet?”
“I haven’t so much as peeked. I wanted us to have the chance to see it together. I mean . . . I hope that doesn’t seem presumptuous of me.”
“Not at all,” she reassured him. “I’m glad you waited. Shall we?”
He nodded, and he pulled one of the issues from the bag and set it faceup on the desk. On the cover was his illustration of the Blue Lion, along with the question Is This London’s Most Historic Hotel? He had not known, nor expected, that his work would be on the cover.
Edie was the first to break the silence. “I had assumed it would be Rab Butler and his new shoes.”
“I expect this issue had already gone to press when the budget was announced,” he said, almost reflexively, because he still wasn’t sure if she liked it. He longed to know, but he couldn’t bear to ask.
“Your painting of the hotel,” she began. “It’s perfect.”
He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Thank you. I hope I’ve managed to capture the hotel as it was in Jacob Howard’s day.”
Jamie had depicted the exterior of the sixteenth-century version of the Blue Lion in some detail, employing only sparing touches of color: a bright blue for the lion on the hanging sign, and dots of red, orange, and yellow to suggest the bounty of midsummer flowers in the surrounding gardens that had since been buried under centuries of progress and oceans of concrete. The result was an idealized version of the hotel, but not impossibly so, and if it meant a sacrifice in his artistic integrity, then so be it. The look on her face had been worth it.
“Shall we look inside?” he asked, and waited for her nod before opening the magazine. Walter Kaczmarek had given the story three full pages, generous by any measure, and along with Ruby Sutton’s story there were Stella’s photographs of the hotel and the people who worked there. The first, and largest, was of Edie standing at the Blue Lion’s threshold, her usual jacket and suit abandoned in favor of a pretty blue dress.
Their heads nearly touching, they read the story, though it was hard to focus on the words rather than Edie’s reaction to them. As he’d hoped, Ruby Sutton had captured the warmth and appeal of the Blue Lion without entirely glossing over the difficulties of operating a small hotel in a great city. Anyone reading the article would be tempted to at least visit for afternoon tea, which was described in loving detail, and the legend of Elizabeth I’s snowy visit had also been recounted with care.
He knew Edie had finished reading when she let out a deep breath and looked up at him. “What do you think?” she asked.
“I think it’s splendid. Both the article and Stella’s photographs. Do you agree?”
“Oh, yes. I had been worrying about how it would turn out. Not that Miss Sutton would write anything unpleasant. More, I suppose, that the hotel would come across as horribly outdated or old-fashioned. Instead she’s made it seem like the most charming place imaginable.”
“I bought some extra copies,” he remembered to tell her. “I thought you might like them for the staff, and even the guests.”
“How thoughtful of you. Everyone is very excited, you know. Apart from the professor, that is. He got wind of it the other day and came to me in an absolute froth. According to him, the government is employing the coronation to convince ordinary people that all is well. ‘Gilding the nation with false hope’ was the phrase he used, and he accused me of being complicit by cooperating with the Picture Weekly article.”
“Is there anything I can do to help? Perhaps try to reason with him?”
“I wouldn’t dream of wasting your time in such a fashion. Besides, it’s mostly bluster. I’ll do my best to ensure the other guests leave him in peace, and I’ll have Ginny bring his breakfast and tea to his room or the library. That should minimize any fractious moments.”
Jamie had half a mind to seek out the professor and set him straight on a few matters. But that would only upset Edie. “He seems rather oblivious to the opinions and well-being of others,” he said instead. “If that’s not too harsh.”
“Oblivious is a good way of describing him. He is a dear, but once he’s got an idea into his head he can be relentless. Yesterday, for instance, it was the tunnel beneath the hotel. He’d been reading about timber construction in the 1400s, and it made him curious about the hotel’s structural supports. He insisted that I allow him to inspect the support beams for evidence of scribe-framing, whatever that is, and he went on and on about hand-hewn beams and saw-hewn beams, and I’m afraid there was more but I stopped listening.”
“There are tunnels beneath the hotel?” Jamie asked, trying earnestly to suppress his horror.
“Only the one that’s still intact, and we haven’t used it since the war. Not even for storage. I’m not certain the beams he was going on about are very secure, and it’s far too dusty there, besides.”
“Will you promise me something?” he asked, hoping she would not notice the sheen of perspiration on his brow. “Do not agree to go into the tunnel with Thurloe. No matter how often he asks, don’t go. You’re right to think it isn’t safe, because it’s not. Ancient structures like that are almost never safe.”
“I promise. I do.”
“I don’t wish to seem as if I’m telling you what to do in your own hotel. Far from it. It’s only that I saw some things during the Blitz. Awful things.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, hoping she couldn’t see how they trembled. “I can’t tell you how many people we pulled out of bomb shelters that had fallen in on them. Shelters they had been told were safe.”
“I understand. Of course you’re right to worry. I promise I’ll stay away from the tunnel, and I’ll have a surveyor in to inspect it, too.”
“A sound idea,” he said, but the discovery was already weighing upon him. He would fret about it for the rest of the day, and he could taste it, already, in the shape of his nightmares to come, and short of begging her to have the tunnel filled in with concrete, he would not stop worrying until he had left the hotel. And even then he would worry, for what if she were to venture down there a year from now, having forgotten his warnings, and be trapped, buried alive, just as he had once—
Enough. “I mustn’t keep you,” he said. “I expect you’ll wish to hand out the copies to Cook and the others.”
“Of course, but you must keep one back for yourself.”
“Never mind me. I’ll buy another one. You should have this one framed—or would you like the original? I mean the original copy of my illustration.”
“Truly? I don’t know what to say. I shall treasure it, of course.” Her smile wide, her eyes alight with happiness, she rose on her tiptoes and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. “Thank you, Jamie. Thank you ever so much.”
He nodded, and then, before he could think better of it, “Would you like to come out for dinner with me one evening?”
“Yes” came her answer, so quickly he wondered if he might have misheard. “Yes, please,” she repeated.
“Wonderful.” And then, before he could think twice, “As far as where we might go . . . have you ever eaten Indian food?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t. Not proper curry, that is. Only kedgeree and things like that. But I would very much like to try it.”
“Excellent. There’s a restaurant not far from here that I quite like. Will you let me know an evening that suits?”
“I will. Thank you again. For the magazines, of course, but most of all for your beautiful portrait of the Blue Lion.”
Jamie followed her out of the office into the hall, and then he waited until she had vanished down the corridor before he turned to go upstairs. Though he knew Brooks was staring daggers at him, he ignored the man. In so doing he’d likely made an enemy, but he could not, in that moment, bring himself to care. Not with the memory of Edie’s delight in the Picture Weekly story so fresh in his mind, and not with her happy acceptance of his invitation to dinner still ringing in his ears. His regrets would keep for another day.
Chapter Sixteen
Edie
Wednesday, April 22, 1953
“Miss Howard? Edie? May I speak with you for a moment?”
Ivor stood at the threshold between Edie’s office and the front desk, and he was holding an enormous bouquet of bright pink lilies.
“Of course. Where did those flowers come from?”
