The Dress (10 page)

Pure rage ran through her making her hand shake, as she reached up to dab the bitter gin away from her chin. Too much vermouth. She put in another jig of gin to bring it back. Really, this was not good enough. How many times – how many
times
– had she told Jones that keeping this bar stocked was to be the new housekeeper's first priority (the housekeepers were either useless, or kept leaving and were therefore always new)? Here she was mixing her
own
cocktails like a common barmaid and now she was expected to forage around for napkins, like a forest animal. She checked her watch and saw it was nearly half past six. Frank would be home shortly and she had not finished dressing. This was their big night. Joy needed to be dressed and relaxed when he got in, ready to hand him a Martini. Just how was she expected to do that, when her butler could not even organize some half-witted woman to press and starch half a dozen napkins for her cocktail bar? Was that too much to ask?

Furious, Joy clenched her fists, curled her slim frame into a hunched ball, then opened her mouth and roared Jones's name at the top of her voice.

Just at the very moment that her husband Frank walked into the room.

London, 2014

There was no email from the woman in Wisconsin whose aunt was Joy Fitzpatrick waiting for Lily when she got home, so she spent that evening and most of that night trying to track down the original dress online. She tapped in the designer's name – ‘Honor Conlon' – and hashtagged all the design and finish details she could find in the article: #RoseSilkTaffeta, #CarrickmacrossLace, #ExquisiteBeadwork, #50sDesignersNewYork, and even the ubiquitous #50sEveningGown, but while she trawled through thousands of similar dresses on hundreds of specialist dealer sites, Lily could not find the dress she was looking for.

The following morning Maisie Fitzpatrick sent her an email with a picture of her aunt attached. Lily's hand hesitated to open the file, knowing that the content of it could, literally, change her life. When she did click on the file, Lily ended up staring at the image in disappointed disbelief. It was a portrait studio shot of a woman in an enormous showy fur coat, dripping with probably every piece of jewellery she owned. She had a tight perm and a face like a startled hippopotamus wearing lipstick. This woman was as far removed from the elegant vision in the
Vogue
cutting as it was possible to be. Although Lily tried hard not to judge people by appearances, she was somewhat relieved to find that this terrifying-looking harridan was married to a man called Frederick and that he was from Cork – so they were definitely not related. She politely emailed back and said as much, but nonetheless Lily came away from the computer feeling crushed and stupid for having had such high hopes when the odds were so stacked against her.

It was time to give up, but before she closed down her computer, Lily realized she had been so caught up with finding a family link that she had forgotten to post her original blog featuring The Dress.

She attached the picture, adding the caption,
This lady has the same name as me – Fitzpatrick. Another Irish woman who loves her frocks
, before pressing ‘post' and resigning herself to that being the end of her connection to Joy Fitzpatrick and her glorious gown.

After all that emotional excitement, Lily decided she needed a coffee and a hardcore sugar hit to go with it so she picked up her bag and headed down Kilburn High Road towards Costa Coffee.

As she approached Old Times she paused, remembering the awkward look she had exchanged with Gareth at the funeral. She hadn't recognized him without his beard, and was afraid she must have looked straight through him. Now, she wasn't sure that she was ready to see him; being in the shop might bring back the memory of that awful day. Then she saw what was in his window.

Damn, she thought. There, on the shabby, boss-eyed fashion mannequin, looking down on a 1970s record player and a pile of dusty comic books was a genuine 1960s leopard print swing coat. She had to have it.

‘I thought you'd be in for that,' Gareth said, nodding at the window as soon as she walked in.

‘Take it down,' she said. ‘It's mine.'

‘Don't you want to know how much it costs?'

‘I'll give you a fiver,' she said, moving towards the mannequin to get it herself.

‘It cost me more than that to get it cleaned,' he said, smiling.

He looked odd without his beard, more grown-up or something.

Lily unashamedly sniffed the fabric and said, ‘Since when did you ever get anything cleaned? I'll give you fifteen.'

‘Tell you what,' Gareth was grinning now, ‘you can get the chai and croissants for a full month and we're even.'

‘You're on,' Lily said, putting the un-cleaned coat over her shoulders, taking her purse out of her bag and running next door.

Ten minutes later they were sitting at the worn Formica 60s table that served as the Old Times counter.

‘I'm sorry about rushing off at the funeral,' he said. ‘To be honest, I found the whole thing a bit... weird.'

‘Yeah,' Lily said, not wanting to go there but trying to be polite, ‘funerals are weird.'

‘It's not that,' Gareth said. ‘It's just that... I'll miss him, you know?'

Lily nodded. She was feeling emotional but trying to hold it in. She knew Gareth, but not well enough to bawl in front of him. And her eyeliner wasn't waterproof.

‘I don't know if you knew but Joe used to come in here nearly every day. He was my best customer. If I wasn't busy I'd crank up the gramophone and we could play a few tunes.'

Lily shoved a croissant into her mouth to swallow the tears back.

‘The afternoon before he, erm, fell...' Gareth took a bite out of an apple Danish himself before continuing, ‘...he asked me to play him my John McCormack record. It's really rare – a 1916 recording – worth a fortune.'

‘Will you play it for me now?'

‘Sure,' Gareth said, reaching down under the counter. The record boxes front of shop had largely 80s
Top of The Pops
albums which nobody seemed to want. If collectors came in Gareth reluctantly took out his most precious finds for them but only if they asked and even then he usually priced them out of range.

No wonder he's always broke, thought Lily, with a vague sense of recognition, he won't part with the good stuff.

Gareth took the preserved record out of its plastic cover and placed it carefully on his record player. In a moment the scratchy, slightly high pitched tones of the old Irish crooner filled the shop.

Dear face that holds so sweet a smile for me,

Were you not mine, how dark the world would be!

I know no light above that could replace

Love's radiant sunshine in your dear, dear face.

It was her grandfather's party piece; he used to sing it to her.

The tears started pouring down her face again, and, as Lily reached into her bag and grabbed a handful of yesterday's tissues, the
Vogue
cutting came floating out of her bag and landed on the ground at Gareth's feet. He picked it up and, more to stop her crying than anything else, looked at the sheet and asked, ‘What's this?'

‘It's a dress I am thinking of making,' she said, wiping her cheeks.

The words had just come out of her mouth as a sort of excuse for why she had the computer printout in her bag. However, as soon as Lily said it, the idea seemed to claim her as if it was an absolute truth.

Gareth passed the sheet of paper over to her.

‘It's beautiful,' he said and as the word ‘beautiful' came out of his mouth he leaned down. For a split second Lily panicked, thinking he was going to kiss her. Except she wasn't quite sure if it was panic or that thrilling I'm-about-to-be-kissed feeling, because John McCormack was singing her dead grandfather's theme tune.

‘It looks pretty complicated,' he said.

‘Not really,' Lily said, a little put out by his tone. ‘I'm a trained fashion designer. I made plenty of dresses in college. Plus I'm altering clothes all the time. You know, for my work?'

The problem with Lily was that once she said she was going to do something, she simply had to follow it through. It was a pride thing; she could not let herself fail. As a result of this compulsion in herself, she was very careful about what she let herself take on. Lily kept her ambitions, her expectations of herself, manageable. It was one of the reasons she had never pursued the design career after college. Fashion was a risky business and the risk of failure was too great. The bad review sealed her deal and seemed to point her in a direction where she felt safe and certain, if unchallenged. Lily neatly diverted her ambitions into the world of vintage and succeeded at that. She won blog awards and had industry respect as an expert, but she never went after anything herself. Partly for modesty, but partly because she didn't want to put herself under pressure. Failing made people unhappy and Lily didn't like to be unhappy. However, the longer this conversation with Gareth went on, the deeper she could feel the idea of remaking Joy's dress embedding itself in her. Partly because she felt so emotionally drawn to its beauty but also, and very annoyingly, it felt as if the conversation with Gareth was challenging her. Less than a few minutes ago, making this dress had been a private, if crazy, idea, but now he was drawing words out of her it was making the whole thing real.

‘If we can't find the dress though, I can always help you source some materials. There's a fabric dealer I know in Somerset...'

‘You think I don't know where to buy antique silks?' Lily snapped.

‘OK, OK,' Gareth said, putting his hands up and laughing, somewhat nervously.

‘Sorry,' Lily said. ‘Still a bit sensitive, you know.'

Gareth had the urge to gather her into his arms and give her a comforting hug again, but it was out of the question.

‘No problem, I'm just saying I can keep my eyes open is all. Actually, I was planning to go up to the big antiques fair in Birmingham next weekend.' Then in a moment of pure madness Gareth found himself saying, ‘You could come along with me, if you like? There's a place I stay in, it's quite nice, actually. Clean, you know? Not expensive...'

Lily looked slightly taken aback.

‘Ah, I would,' she said, ‘only I'm
really
broke at the moment...'

Gareth blushed across his beardless face – he had known the beard was there for a reason. What was he thinking? A ‘clean' room. Not expensive. How creepy did that sound? Why couldn't he just have kept his stupid mouth shut?

‘Of course, of course.'

‘Another time?' she said.

‘Sure, sure.'

Rendered numb by his own awfulness Gareth then stood up, with a curious air of formality. ‘I should get some, you know, work to be done,' he said, desperate to claw back some dignity.

‘Thanks for the coat,' Lily said and as she walked out the door he called after her, ‘See you around.'

Lily noticed it was not, ‘see you tomorrow' but ‘see you around'. Ouch. Maybe she had been a bit sharp with Gareth – dismissive of his offers to help.

As she walked home Lily shook her head and said to herself, ‘What is
wrong
with you, Lily Fitzpatrick? Why such a
bitch
today?'

The truth was, she was still hurting after Joe.

It was late afternoon when she got in and Lily decided to run herself a hot bath, get into a pair of fleecy pyjamas (her one concession to modern slobbery) and sit reading a book until she could respectably call an end to this rotten day and start again tomorrow.

As the bath was running she gave her social media and blog a quick glance through. She had been neglecting both for a while and there was sure to be a massive backlog.

Sure enough, her blog email was jammed, and the comments on her post about The Dress that morning were already numbering twenty. She skimmed them, and was about to turn away when one of them, sent a couple of hours before, hit her like a hammer:
Joy Fitzpatrick was my grandmother. OMG! We could be cousins!

New York, 1958

‘What the hell is going on?'

Even as he said it, Frank Fitzpatrick wondered why he bothered. He knew exactly what was going on. His wife Joy was crouching beside the bar, roaring for Jones, and she was drunk.

‘You know what?' he said, loosening his tie and stepping over her as he went to the bar to pour himself a whisky. ‘I don't even care that you're drunk. I could use a night in anyway. Just do me a favour, will you, and leave Jones out of it? He's a decent man and he doesn't deserve your screeching histrionics, and now I come to think of it, neither do I.'

Right on cue the butler came in, answering his mistress's feral call.

‘Ah, Jones,' Frank said. ‘My wife here,' he indicated Joy, who had curled herself up into a small, sobbing dome of designer silk on the floor, ‘was just calling you in to say take the night off.'

‘Will you not need me to collect you after the party, sir?' the butler said, assiduously avoiding looking at his mistress.

‘Indeed not, Jones,' Frank said, downing his whisky and pouring another. ‘My wife and I will be having a cosy night in. As you can see,' and he looked down at Joy, ‘we're not really fit for company this evening.'

Jones coughed lightly and said, ‘Very good, sir, I'll prepare a cold plate for you and leave it in the kitchen before I leave.'

When Jones left the room, Joy stopped sobbing and she began to shudder with sheer rage. She rose up and, flinging her arms out like a swan taking flight, she screamed, ‘How
dare
you speak to me like that in front of Jones?!'

Frank poured himself another whisky, then held the bottle out to his wife.

‘Here,' he said, ‘why don't you drink it from the neck, dear? Be an honest drunk, at least.'