Page 10 of The Rebel of Seventh Avenue

I stood across the street from the entrance to 130 MacDougal Street. For the last nine months, I’d walked past this building, on my way to and from work at the garment factory. A three-storey, red-brick townhouse with a cast-iron double porch over a shared brownstone stoop. The top floor had two unusual glass domes, with iron finials and scalloped edging on the roofs. Every day I’d wondered what those domes were for. Today there was a notice in the ground floor window:

Top Floor Studio

Suitable for an artist or dressmaker

Enquire within

The sign held me to the spot. Despite the exhaustion that was making my body ache, a stab of excitement compelled me to pull on the doorbell.

It was opened by a stocky man with an orange beard and thinning hair.

‘Yes?’ he queried, looking past me and then up and down the street.

‘I’m here about the studio.’

‘Just you?’ Again, he checked behind me.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Just me.’

He stared and then leaned forward slightly as if he was shortsighted and was trying to get a better look at me.

‘I’m a dressmaker. Miss Maisie McIntyre.’

He grunted. ‘I am Mr Franke. That’s spelled F R A N K E.’ He said this as if it was of utmost importance, before turning and leading me up the stairs. Following him up the three flights, I noticed that he kept hitching his trousers up. Every turn of the stairwell there would be another hitch, but he didn’t seem to know that he was doing it, almost like a tic, a habit he didn’t realise he had.

At the top of the stairs was a bright-red door, newly painted with a gleaming brass knocker. Mr Franke took a large ring of keys out of his trouser pocket, unlocked the door, and pushed it open.

‘Please,’ he said, gesturing towards a small vestibule with two doors and a small skylight in the ceiling. Taking the left-hand door, he led me into a large light-filled room glowing with the soft orange hue of the spring sunset. The daylight spilled through from two glass domes in the ceiling and three big sash windows overlooking the backyard of the building. The large octagonal domes had tall panes of glass on each side, the ceiling bearing an intricate white plaster rose on a background of fuchsia pink.

As I stared upwards, he continued. ‘The last tenant was an artist. He insisted everything be painted white except the ceiling of each dome must be pink. Please don’t be alarmed, I will paint it back to white.’

‘Oh, no! We must keep it. I like the colour contrast.’

He frowned. ‘Is a dressmaker an artist too?’ His German accent was suddenly very pronounced as if the idea of another artist was unsettling.

I smiled. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Oh.’ He hitched his trousers up again, blinking.

‘Do you find artists to be troublesome tenants?’ I asked, enjoying his discomfort.

‘Well…’ He shuffled and again pulled at his trousers. ‘Only that they tend to keep strange hours and I don’t like my other tenants to be kept awake.’

Just as he said this there was a wail from downstairs. The landlord looked up and reddened. ‘My daughter.’ He shrugged. ‘She is young.’

I began to walk around the room. The whitewashed floor and walls were shabby and in need of a coat of paint, but it was spotlessly clean, with little sign of the previous tenant. As I pictured exactly where I would put the cutting table, two large sewing tables, perhaps three tailor’s dummies, my heart rate accelerated, butterflies somersaulting in my stomach. I could clearly see the cabinet where I’d keep all my threads, in neat rows and colour order, I’d have a large chest with small, hand-sized drawers for any embellishments and adornments needed. Beads of every colour made from ceramic, glass, wood, porcelain, or jet. There’d be sequins, spangles, rhinestones, and seed pearls. Flowers made from silk, felt, tweed, gauze, and suede, buttons crafted from Venetian glass, ivory, polished wood, and metal. Every kind of fastening from hooks and eyes, snaps and button loops, belt, and shoe buckles. I pictured ribbons in all colours made from silk and velvet, and drawers full of gold and silver braid, perhaps some cord trimming. I could see the wall at the end of the room holding a large pinboard with swatches of fabric, maybe my latest sketches, there’d be room for a cupboard to keep all the rolls of material.

‘Miss McIntyre.’

I was pulled out of my reverie.

‘There is a kitchen, through here.’ Mr Franke opened a door at the far end of the room and showed me a tiny area with a sink and small range, a narrow cupboard to one side. ‘You can make your cups of tea in here.’

All very well, but I wanted to be back in the studio, again walking around, again placing the imaginary furniture, finding a place for the scissors, needles, tailor’s chalk…

‘Please, Miss McIntyre.’ The voice was impatient, wanting attention.

‘Mr Franke.’ I sighed, clasping my hands together to hide my frustration.

‘You must see the other room. Come.’

The front room had three windows overlooking the street, ideal for a salon and a fitting room for my customers. I paced the room, envisaging a comfortable armchair, perhaps a sofa and a small table where I would serve my New York ladies their tea, there would be space to walk up and down in their new dresses, a few full-length mirrors placed along the walkway. No longer would I have to traipse around Manhattan, lugging precious bags filled with expensive fabrics to my small band of now loyal clients. They might complain at having to climb three flights of stairs, but I’d entice them with tea and cake and the fun of a fitting session in my own premises.

As I kept walking the floor, placing my imaginary furniture, designing soft furnishings to minimise the stark whiteness of the room, I could feel a whisper of something pulling me back to my childhood. At first I couldn’t catch it until, finally, it came to me – a homely clean smell, the smell that would be in our tiny tenement just after my mother had scrubbed the floors, making me feel secure and free of chaos.

As soon as I recognised it I knew that I would take the studio. Renting the whole floor would be expensive, fitting it out even more so. But I’d been frugal, putting money aside for this very purpose.

The landlord again hauled up his trousers.

‘Mr Franke, can your wife sew?’ I asked.

‘No.’ He giggled nervously. ‘Whoever heard of a wife who can’t sew.’

‘I wondered if you’ve ever tried a belt, or perhaps braces. Do you not get tired of always hitching up your trousers?’

He looked down at his waist. ‘My pants? No. My wife won’t have those items in the house. Some upset from her childhood.’ Pulling up the offending trousers, he expanded. ‘The belt buckle most specifically.’

I pushed away the rising images and circled him. As well as the black trousers, he wore a crumpled white, collarless shirt, sleeves rolled up and a shabby black waistcoat that was too short in the body so that the bottom of the shirt spilled out. ‘Well, as soon as I’ve moved in here you must bring me all your trousers and I’ll take them in for you. Then, at least, you won’t lose so much time hitching them up.’

With a bewildered smile, he said, ‘Perhaps I can speak to your husband about the rent.’

‘There is no husband,’ I said, holding my left hand up for him to see my bare fingers.

‘No luck?’ he asked.

‘No need, Mr Franke.’

‘Well.’ He looked down at his boots, so large they reminded me of a clown’s comedically big shoes. ‘I’m not sure that dealing with a woman is correct. Perhaps this isn’t a good idea.’ He gave an embarrassed shrug.

‘Would you deal with a woman if she gave you three months’ rent upfront?’

He blinked but said nothing.

‘Four months.’

Again, he blinked.

‘We’ll be quiet and clean and make sure the rooms are well-maintained. But mind, we’ll have important ladies visiting, so I hope you’ll be keeping the entrance and stairwell in good order.’

The orange-haired man scratched his head, then his beard, before making out to hitch up his trousers, and then stopping, his face reddening slightly.

‘Mr Franke, you know you won’t get a better offer.’

‘No, I don’t believe I will.’ His shoulders sagged and he put his hands in his pockets. ‘But there’ll be no animals and no parties. About that, I must be insistent.’

No animals I could promise, but no parties…

‘I wouldn’t dream of it, Mr Franke.’

I had to stop myself from flying down the three flights of stairs and onto the street. He didn’t need to know that I was afraid I might vomit at any moment, my own body surprised at my audacity. I ran until I hit the corner of Bleecker Street and stopped to catch my breath.

I’d done it. I’d pushed open another door. I could forget the garment factory, now I could work for myself.

I had been earning good money on my dress commissions, more than I had ever imagined I could. Mrs Marshall had been true to her word. Following the triumph of her new blue gown, she’d commissioned three more dresses and recommended me to her friends and peers. For the first time in her life, she’d been noticed, people listened to her and no longer invited her as just a companion of her husband or mother-in-law. Now she found that she was surrounded at the theatre interval, her mantelpiece thick with invitations and I was spending every spare moment designing, sewing or visiting new customers, sometimes an hour’s trolley bus ride away. Nights had been spent completing these commissions, days at the garment factory. It was no surprise I could hardly keep my eyes open.

But renting a studio, fitting it out, employing perhaps two seamstresses, and finding new clients to cover all those costs was something else. I may have opened another door, but I hadn’t made it through yet and it was already threatening to slam shut on me.

I hurried along the street, aware I was late for supper, but I couldn’t consider missing it – I had big news to tell, and I was glad of my friends to share it with.

The walk from MacDougal Street to West Houston Street, the move from the Village to Lower East Side was like watching a change in climate from hot to cold, from almost bohemia to certain poverty. The clothes fitted a little better on MacDougal Street, the heels a little higher. The street had discreet decorations, colourful shopfronts and artistic signs, the men wore bow ties and the children skipped. But as soon as I turned onto the great wide West Houston Street the atmosphere shifted. The noise of the street car, the hooting of car horns mingled with the smell of horse manure, the boys selling chewing gum on busy corners, the men sitting outside the bars with rolled-up sleeves, hats pushed back, a glass of beer in hand, the exotic aromas of the evening’s dinners whispering around my head. The voices were louder and less comprehensible, the waistcoats more threadbare, the children’s shoes more scuffed as they ran between the food carts. There was a stubborn vitality here that was in stark contrast to the one-dimensional world I’d inhabited in Edinburgh: it was noisy, vibrant and full of energy.

I arrived at the Bassinos’s building, a rickety tenement where the windows were not quite square to the walls. I could already hear , her husband and two other voices, all speaking at the same time, inside their second-floor apartment. Smiling at the noise, I made my way up the stairs to the Bassinos’s front door.

There were few things I missed from my life in Edinburgh, but gathering at the table for a family meal was one of them. Before Maw became ill, with her sleeves rolled up and her grey apron over her skirt, she would produce steaming tatty soup or great pots of stovies. She’d slam the pot on the table and, red in the face and her hair frizzing with the moisture, she’d serve up her plain but satisfying food with a ‘Get that down yer neck,’ and a strangely pleasing thump as she sat down hard on the only proper chair in the room. I could never start my food until I’d heard that whack of substantial skirt-covered rump against plain wood. When Maw was alive, mealtimes were noisy and laced with an unspoken togetherness, a restrained kind of love that smelled of foggy warmth and meaty gravy. Once she died, both mine and Netta’s kitchen skills were tested to their worst. The two of us hated cooking and produced dried-up, lifeless suppers that encouraged no cheer around the table. The first time I had been part of one of ’s family dinners I almost cried, remembering how much sitting around a table with family, friends and good food meant to me.

‘Maisie! Ragazza mia! Come in, come in!’ threw her arms up and gave me an enveloping, motherly hug, her soft, fleshy body so comforting, her dark hair smelling of the best of her home cooking. She ushered me into the room where I was hit with the rich, sweet smell of the sauce bubbling on the stove always producing a fizz of anticipation, a little tug at my stomach. Sitting at the crowded table were ’s husband, Matteo, their two children, Roberto and Annina, and four others: Matteo’s mother, Nonna Bassino, a tiny, shrivelled woman wearing black and an enormous smile, Isabella, ’s cousin, holding her recently born baby, her husband, Simondo, and another of ’s cousins, Irene, who we worked with.

was wearing one of her own handmade shawls, one of those beautifully knitted pieces with their tiny stitching and careful detailing that fascinated me: those striking designs that resembled the Fair Isle patterns. ’s shawls always matched the personality of the owner. Isabella’s coordinated with her colouring perfectly and enhanced her complexion, Nonna Bassino’s shawl was, of course, black but had flecked it with tiny sprigs of yellow flowers, delicate and discreet, befitting a widow but somehow displaying the same warmth that could always be seen in Nonna’s face.

The room was an overcrowded muddle of pots and pans, haphazard chipped crockery, a few glasses, enamel jugs and mugs, a smattering of tin cutlery and an enormous glass pot of dried pasta. A range stove stood to one side with steaming pans and the noise of the bubbling sauce. This was the only living area in the tiny apartment for seven people, dominated by the table and all its occupants sitting on upturned crates, wobbly stools and Nonna on the one chair.

‘Maisie, sit down, please. Now.’ gave me one of her maternal glares. Then she repeated the same line she said to me every Friday evening. ‘You need feeding. You look so pale and too skinny. No Italian girl would be allowed to get so thin.’ She pulled me towards the table, her face creased with mock concern. ‘Those men, they won’t want someone who doesn’t have a little bit of flesh on them.’ She winked at me with her usual hint of mischief and sat me down.

‘ La cena sarà pronto tra poco. Bambini, lavatevi le mani! ’ Her voice was suddenly sharp, her eyes now tired as she shooed her children off to the sink.

’s pasta pomodoro was unlike any food I had ever eaten. The rich scent of tomatoes, the warm burst of basil flavour, they would all produce a living, breathing kind of joyfulness, a feeling that took over the whole body and gave it a sense of performance, as if everyone at the table, laughing amongst the steaming plates, was taking part in a heart-warming play with nothing but happy endings, as if nothing bad could ever happen to us.

‘I have news,’ I interrupted as we began piling up our empty plates.

The noise around the whole table came to an immediate halt and all faces turned to look at me. I chewed my lip, the butterflies in my stomach churning vigorously. If I gave voice to my plan it had to become reality.

‘I’ve decided it’s time to set up my own business. I’m going to leave the factory and rent a studio so that I can become a dress designer.’

Nonna and Isabella murmured their surprise, the two children stared at me uncomprehendingly, shook her head.

‘No, Maisie, how can you do this already?’ She shrugged, she gestured towards me, she stood up from the table. ‘This is not right. You are too young, you need a more steady head, you need to do your time and get more experience. Always, Maisie, in too much of a rush.’ Her Italian accent had become more pronounced, as if she was telling me off, just as she did Roberto and Annina, just as a mother would to her child.

‘, I’ve been sewing since I was twelve years old, I’ve made dresses for women of society in Edinburgh and now here in New York. I dress Mrs Marshall, Miss Milholland and Mrs Laidlaw and they pay well. I want to sew beautiful dresses for beautiful women.’

‘You want to sew dresses for rich women,’ retorted, a glint in her eye.

‘Well, yes, that’s true.’ I laughed. ‘But I won’t be shouted at by the factory foreman for not being quick enough, I’ll never again be locked in at my place of work.’ I gave her a shrug, doing my best to copy the gesture she used whenever she was teasing. ‘I want to sew in a place that’s full of light and promise, I want to pay the women who work for me a decent wage and let them go home on time to see their families.’

sat down again, putting her hands on her lap. ‘How will you do this, Maisie? How do you know how to run a business?’

‘I’ve found a studio that will let me do all those things,’ I said, avoiding the difficult question. ‘It’s too good to let it go. In fact, it’s perfect. If I don’t take it now, I know I’ll regret it. It’ll mean a lot of hard work, long days, and late nights, but it’s going to be the work I’ve always wanted to do. And’ – here I paused for effect, looking over to – ‘if I employ you as my first seamstress, then I know I will have the right person with me to help me run that business.’

There was noise of wonderment as the understanding of what I’d just said sank in. Isabella quietly translated for Nonna Bassino. As I watched Matteo’s mother open her mouth with happy shock, blanched and then she put her hand to her throat.

‘You mean I can leave the factory?’

I nodded. ‘I’m going back to the studio on Monday, just to see it in full daylight and double-check it’s everything I thought it was. I hope to sign the paperwork as soon as I can. I’ll need your help furnishing it, getting samples together and making it a place our customers want to be. If I’m lucky I can get possession of the studio sometime next week. Then we can start work.’

’s eyes filled with tears. ‘And you’ll pay well?’

I nodded again. ‘I’ll pay you three dollars more than the eight you’re already getting at the factory. You won’t need to work at the weekends, unless perhaps we’re too busy and I need some help. If you do want to earn extra money you can take some of the embroidery home at night; you’re much better at it than I am. And when we need to take on more girls, perhaps you could manage their workloads, help me train them up. You could become the fitter and oversee the workroom. Perhaps one day you could be the Premier.’

The tears now fell down her face. For the first time since I’d known , she was speechless. The whole table was dumbstruck; nobody said a word.

Suddenly worried, I asked, ‘Is that a problem?’

‘No!’ sobbed. ‘ Non è un problema. ’ She went off in a stream of Italian, incomprehensible words at high speed.

Finally, she wiped her face, smoothed down her hair, the dark tresses escaping from her usually tight bun, and sat up. ‘I am sorry I was cross at you. I’m sorry for crying.’ She sniffed. Her Italian accent was again stronger, as if she had reverted to her initial days of learning English. ‘I have hated that job as much as you. It’s much worse than the factory in Glasgow. I’ve been dreaming of doing the sort of work that you’ve been able to do with Mrs Marshall. I couldn’t be more…’ she searched for the word, ‘grateful. This will make our lives easier.’ She put her hand on her heart and looked at me with deep gratitude.

‘Mamma, Mamma.’ Roberto wriggled onto ’s lap, even though at the age of seven he was a little big for this. ‘Are youse a’right?’

Roberto’s accent, a mixture of Glasgow and Italian, having been born in Barga, Italy but brought up in Glasgow, always confused me, the contrast between ’s loud Tuscany accent and that odd Scots Italian always making me want to do a double take.

‘Oh yes my piccolo pollo, tutto è bellissimo .’ She gave her son a sloppy kiss on the cheek and popped him down on the floor.

‘But I do have a favour to ask of you,’ I said, slight trepidation in my voice. ‘I have to deliver Mrs Marshall’s latest dress by tomorrow afternoon and I’m running a little behind. I know you planned to go and see Matteo’s brother tomorrow.’ I winced a little, knowing my request was asking a lot of . ‘Is there any chance you could take my shift so I can finish the dress?’

A darkness flitted across her eyes and her jaw twitched, but she pushed it away, quickly replying, ‘Yes, of course, Maisie. We have to finish those new samples tomorrow, so one of us must be there. If I do this shift then I will take Annina and Roberto to see Marco on Monday.’ And then her eyes lit up. ‘And maybe it will be my last shift ever! Think of that. Yes, I will do it and I will pick up your pay packet for you too.’ Now she was speaking fast, her voice rising with excitement. ‘Oh, Maisie! You will never have to step into that terrible place ever again.’ She took my hands, squeezing them and then gave me a hug.

‘I almost forgot. I have something to give you.’ She pulled back and disappeared into the small bedroom before returning with one of her handmade shawls. ‘I made this for you. You never look warm enough. And if you insist on not eating then perhaps this will help.’ She thrust the shawl towards me.

Taking it from her I unfolded it and examined the pattern. It was different from her usual shawls. Normally she chose a pattern and repeated it throughout the shawl, but this one had several panels with each one having an entirely distinctive pattern and colour range. The designs were still the unique Bassino mixture of Fair Isle and floral inserts, but the colours were much brighter, unlike anything I had seen before. It was almost as if she had produced a sampler, showing off all her skills and ideas.

‘, this is…’ I didn’t know how to describe it without it sounding insincere. ‘This is the best knitting I have ever seen. The detail, the colours, the intricacy. It’s…’ And then I found my eyes filling with tears. Nobody had ever made anything like this for me. My mother used to make all my clothes as a child, but they were utilitarian, all made from basic cotton or rough wool, the standard dress with no embellishments. But this was a work of art, made with real love and by someone who understood me.

‘Oh, no, no, no.’ stood up, shaking her head and wagging her finger at me. ‘No more tears. Put it on, I want to see how well it suits you.’ She took it out of my hands and threw it over my shoulders.

‘ Bello . This is good. It suits you. Many colours and many patterns for the many faces of Maisie McIntyre.’ She held me at arm’s length and inspected me, approval on her face.