Page 3 of The Rebel of Seventh Avenue

Edinburgh 1902

The day there was an urgent knock at the door was the day my life began to form, the day the first permanent stitch was cast.

Two burly men hauled our mother through the door. Her left eye was bruised, her skin sweaty and the colour of crumpled calico, her leg set in a surprisingly neat and clean splint. Before we could ask about their grim expressions and the state of our mother, a woman strode in behind them. Everything about her radiated impressive authority, from her rigidly austere posture to the cut of her silk dress that probably cost more than every item of our imposed threadbare wardrobe.

The woman surveyed the scene in front of her.

Our one-room apartment may have been spotlessly clean, but our tenement block was old and crumbling, with damp walls and cracking plaster. This was a room that housed three people who couldn’t afford anything other than the necessary; we didn’t have a comfy chair for our guest, there was no sofa to recline on, no pretty bedcover to brighten the atmosphere. She would have seen , now lying on the only cot in the room, Netta standing open-mouthed at the range, her wooden spoon suspended above the frying pan, me with my back to the wall holding my breath, trying to become as small as possible. She’d have noticed the sparsity, the dim corners and worn floorboards, the cupboard with the door slightly askew.

Her face was quizzical as if she was unable to understand the life that we lived, so used was she to her own cushioned world of abundant light, well-aired rooms and plentiful food.

The men retreated whilst the woman walked over to our small kitchen table, pulling out the only proper chair in the room, and sat on it.

‘Children,’ she said, her voice wavering between command and plea. ‘Perhaps you could sit, I must discuss your mother with you.’

Netta and I glanced at each other before carefully sitting on the cot, close to . She winced, her face grey and clammy, her eyes too bright and her breath shallow.

‘I am Mrs Robertson, your mother’s employer.’ She gave us a pinched look that emphasised the dark circles under her eyes. ‘And you are…?’

Netta glanced at me, gesturing with her eyes for me to speak first.

‘I’m Maisie, ma’am,’ I stuttered, ‘and this is my sister, Netta… ma’am.’

Mrs Robertson gave us a condescending smile. ‘Now, you must listen to me carefully as I won’t repeat myself.’ She pulled herself upright, taut, as if she was a rubber band that had been pulled to its limits, waiting to be let fly. ‘Your mother has had an accident. Her left leg has been badly broken during a fall. The doctor has seen to her, put a splint on her leg and given her some laudanum. She mustn’t put any weight on the leg for at least four weeks. It will be your job to see that she does just that.’

She turned to our mother. ‘Now, Dorothy.’ Here she hesitated, uncertainty and insecurity beginning to seep from her pores, a marked contrast to the woman we’d let into the room. ‘I am sorry for all that has happened to you. The doctor tells me that you may have difficulty walking from now on.’ She swallowed loudly.

was quiet, her eyes narrowed in suspicion, waiting to hear what was to come next. Mrs Robertson fidgeted with the gloves in her hands, almost as if she was wringing out a wet handkerchief.

‘I saw what happened; I saw what my son did to you. I saw you fall.’ Her voice had dropped almost to a whisper.

My twelve-year-old mind began to gallop, I thought that my maw must have tripped over one of her son’s toys. Maybe, because of Mrs Robertson’s tone, maybe her son did it on purpose: a sly little boy putting a wheeled wooden toy in the way of a servant, just for fun, just to see what happened. That would be the worst of it, wouldn’t it?

said nothing, her hands balling up the edge of the sheet. I looked down at my lap, my legs swinging below the bed. The tension between the two women was almost a physical presence, as if there was a fifth person in the room. Eventually, Mrs Robertson broke that strain.

‘I saw him push you down the stairs.’

And then she relaxed, her hands setting the gloves still onto her lap, she bowed her head slightly giving a long and slow breath out. It was as if she’d just had a tooth extracted and now she could carry on with her life, the pain removed, and the problem solved.

The room was silent, the three of us waiting for more. Only the everyday sounds of our building intruded: a crying baby, a running tap, footsteps outside our door. I couldn’t look at , keeping my eyes on my swinging legs, the rhythm soothing me.

‘Oh, do keep still, child.’ Our visitor’s sharp tone made me blush, almost bringing tears to my eyes.

‘My family do not know I’m here,’ Mrs Robertson continued quietly.

took a breath as if she was about to say something, but she was interrupted by her employer.

‘And nor will they.’ Now there was steeliness in her tone before she again changed to remorse. ‘My family has ruined your livelihood. And for that I am sorry. Wilcox tells me that your husband left you years ago and that you rely on the income you receive from us.’ As she said this, one of the men returned carrying several large packages and a dark-wooden box with a handle on top. He left these on the table and looked to his mistress.

‘Thank you, Wilcox. That will do for the minute. Wait for me at the carriage.’ She dismissed him with a wave of her hand and he again left the room.

tried to draw herself up, a strange look on her face that I couldn’t understand, before wincing from the pain of the movement. She stayed half propped up on her elbows.

‘Girls, the doctor will visit regularly to make sure your mother is healing. He will keep a good eye on you, Dorothy. You have been a good worker, and a loyal servant in a time when our family is facing difficulties, when scandal could easily destroy us. I would like to repay you for your faithfulness, and also give you the best chance of a full recovery. Whilst you are recuperating, Wilcox will bring food, he will take your laundry and deliver it back the following day, he will see to it that you have enough coal to last for at least the next six weeks. On the table is a casserole from Cook, some eggs brought up from the farm this morning, two fruit cakes and a plate of Cook’s best scones.’

She stood up and turned to the table. ‘But you can’t live off my charity forever.’

Looking at the dark-wooden box she began to unclip the fasteners at the bottom. ‘I want to make sure that you have a way of supporting yourself, Dorothy, that doesn’t require too much physical effort. I am worried that your leg may not heal as it should, that you might find the strains of working in a house such as ours too much. To compensate, I have bought you the latest Singer.’ She lifted the coffin lid from the box to reveal a black and gold painted sewing machine. From the package beside it, she pulled out a small green booklet with a large red ‘S’ on the front cover. She read.

‘Singer Sewing Machine No. 28. Vibrating shuttle for family use.’ She began flicking through the booklet. ‘Apparently, it comes with two bobbins, two shuttles plus needles of various sizes. This booklet gives you full instructions, showing you how to use it. I will be sending you a package of other items you’ll need, such as pins, a pin cushion, a measuring tape, tailor’s chalk, cutting scissors, and threads of various colours.’ She put the book down. ‘I will also send over the wherewithal to complete your first commission. I know you are a competent seamstress; my lady’s maid tells me you have helped her with some of the hand sewing, so I’m sure you can master a sewing machine. Your timing is fortuitous; my dressmaker has recently had some trouble or other.’ Here she batted the trouble away with her hand, as if it was no concern of hers. ‘I will soon be needing new undergarments: new chemises, drawers and petticoat-skirts. I will provide you with enough calico, cotton and lace plus the required patterns, and my necessary measurements. If you prove proficient at making these I may commission further work, dresses and outer garments, and might even recommend you to the ladies in my circle. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’

I turned to . Her mouth was slightly open, her cheeks now flushed, and she was blinking very fast. If I hadn’t known my mother so well, I would have thought she was about to cry. But my mother never cried.

‘It should take about six weeks for your leg to heal if you look after it properly. As you will be unable to work during that time, I will see to it that your rent is paid. Now, girls,’ – and here she looked at me – ‘I expect you to nurse your mother with care. She is your breadwinner. She will be able to give you a good life if you let her rest and recover from this accident. And don’t you forget that it was an accident.’ She glared at Netta, to me and finally to . ‘Your mother tripped and fell down the stairs. If I hear a whisper of malicious gossip, I will know it came from you and I will simply take away my custom.

‘Once the six weeks are up, I will expect my new undergarments to be delivered within two weeks. That should be plenty of time to familiarise yourself with the machine and learn what’s needed. I know you are a good learner, Dorothy, I fully expect you to make the most of this opportunity.’

She stood and swiftly made her way to the door, before turning back and fixing her eye on .

‘You must never tell anyone who gave you this sewing machine, who paid for your doctor or provided your food. When you have finished the garments, you must never come to the house yourself; send one of your daughters. Nobody must know of this connection, not even the staff. They already know too much.’

She pulled down her veil, tugged on her gloves and left as quickly as she had come in.

The three of us were silent for what seemed like several minutes. I was struggling to understand what had just happened, but I could tell by my mother’s wide eyes and her inability to speak that something important, something life-changing had just occurred.

Finally, threw her head back on the bed and let out a full-throated belly laugh, a bitter, unfamiliar laugh, that frightened me.

‘She would like tae repay me for my faithfulness.’ She spat the words out. ‘More like she wants tae pay me off, keep me quiet.’ Her tone was sour. ‘I’m not proud. I’m happy tae take what she’s giving. There’s plenty others who’ll give up that weasel of a son.’

I shivered at her hostility, so often her reaction to the mere hint of charity, to the suggestion that we were too poor to look after ourselves.

To distract myself, I moved over to the table to look at the sewing machine. To my untrained eye, it was a thing of beauty: the intricate gold decoration and swirling text painted on the black, smooth, rounded surfaces, the highly polished hand crank, the inlaid pattern on the metal panels. I ran my hand over the top of it and peered at each individual part, so intricate, delicate, and mysterious. I had never known an object of utility to be so exquisite.

Whilst someone else did our laundry and delivered our food, Netta went to work at her new job at the North British Hotel. Fresh vegetables in abundance, newly baked bread and more meat than we’d ever eaten in our lives meant that Netta lost her pallid look, healed quickly, and I learned the feeling of fullness after a meal. The plentiful food improved our mother’s mood so much that she appeared to quickly forget the hostility of our encounter with Mrs Robertson and the fatigue of her life before.

‘, you need tae stay in bed,’ I grumbled on yet another day away from school, the room shrinking in inverse proportion to the amount of time I spent there. I wanted to be at school, to learn, not entertain our mother.

‘Hmph,’ she muttered. ‘I’m bored, I need tae do sommit. I cannae stay here just looking at you.’

I too was bored. I’d cleaned everything, several times over, the dinner was cooked, waiting for Netta to come home, there was no longer any washing to do. Already had unwound two old pullovers and used the wool to knit a new cardigan for me, my doll had two new sets of clothes made from an old dress I’d grown out of and she’d re-trimmed Netta’s summer hat with the remaining dress fabric. All our socks were darned, and her torn petticoat mended. She was sitting up in her bed fidgeting. If she didn’t have some sewing or knitting in her hands she would always be restless. There was still one more week to go until she was allowed to put weight on her leg.

‘Why don’t we get the sewing machine out and see if we can make it work?’ I suggested. We’d both been eyeing up that dark-wooden box, with the handle on top, sitting on the table; it had been like a warder, watching us, perhaps waiting to see if we would disobey the doctor’s instructions, sneak on us, tell Mrs Robertson to take it back, its new owners not worthy of its beauty and value.

‘Aye. Lemme get at it.’ She wriggled to the edge of her bed.

‘No, you have tae stay there.’ I went over to the table and unfastened the clips before pulling up the deep coffin lid that covered the machine and putting it away behind the chair.

‘, you take the booklet and read it to me. I’ll lay out all the pieces on the table and we’ll work out which bits go where.’

I dragged the table as close to the bed as I could. I pulled out the shuttle, and the bobbin, we inspected the threads we’d been given, I found a needle and haltingly read the instructions showing me how to set it into the machine correctly. I spun the hand wheel slowly and we both watched the needle bob up and down. Then we learned how to thread the machine, discovering new words as we worked, wondering at the crisp, shining parts that we were handling. Next, we had to wind the silk thread onto the bobbin, place it in the shuttle and thread it. Finally, I dropped the shuttle into the base of the machine and pulling the lower thread up we were ready to sew.

read slowly, articulating each word as if she’d never heard them before. ‘Place the material tae be sewn beneath the presser foot, lower the latter, and commence tae sew by turning the hand wheel over towards you.’

I did as she said, slowly turning the wheel. Gradually the cream calico scrap I was using moved towards the back of the machine. The gentle clatter of the moving parts, the eyelet jogging up and down, the jerking thread, the neat, straight stitches on the fabric. I had never seen anything like this. The continual motion of many connected pieces, the way each part of the machine worked in harmony to produce this neat line of thread became hypnotic. I felt as if I was caught in some kind of spell, the magic of the machine holding me in a strange state of suspension.

‘Come on, hen, show me.’ squirmed with impatience. I cut the threads and handed her the scrap of fabric. I’d folded it in half before I put it through the machine, and now I pulled it open to the stitch line, showing her the neat finish: no holes, no loops of thread, all in one straight line.

Quickly she put it down. ‘I dinnae care what the doctor says, it’s ma turn.’

At the beginning, wasn’t a quick learner. There were days when knots of thread had to be cut out of the shuttle carrier, needles snapped as she forced too much material through the machine, thread broke, fabric would end up puckered. But she was a methodical learner who never gave up, so that by the time the six weeks was up, she was fully proficient in using the machine, had understood when the thread’s tension needed changing, what size needle was required when. In time she would become an accomplished seamstress – she savoured mastering a skill, a skill that was beyond beating a carpet or polishing the brass.

Her first commission was delivered exactly on time and was steadily followed by more orders from Mrs Robertson and, eventually, other customers appeared on her recommendation. Nothing too showy to start with: shirts, underclothes, the occasional day skirt. would take me to these women’s houses to measure up; her leg never healed well enough to kneel or bend down for any length of time. So, I learned how to measure the body, understand where the tailoring was required. Then she moved on to show me how to pin and baste the pieces of garment, hand-sew a hem and how to cut pattern pieces to save the most material. Whenever I could get her away from the machine, I began to use it to make my own clothes, occasionally taking instruction from , but soon I was as capable as she.

One evening, after we’d eaten our supper and was finishing a pair of men’s pyjamas, we received a parcel. We were used to packages of fabric being delivered, it was a regular occurrence, and this was just as we were expecting: the material, pattern and threads required for a new garment. But we’d been waiting with a little more anticipation for this one. Mrs Balfour, a new customer, was giving our mother her first commission for an evening gown.

Clearing a space on the bed, I untied the string and pulled away the paper. Inside was a cloth of a bright tomato red. I carefully drew it out and spread the fabric across the bed. It was a colour never seen in that room, so bold, too brash, like a bloody gash on a sallow skin. Holding it up to the gaslight, I was surprised by the shine of it, how there seemed to be more than one colour, a sheen of a thousand different reds all gathered together. It had a smooth, waxy feel to it, oozing elegance and luxury, despite the audacious colour.

‘This won’t suit Mrs Balfour,’ I said, matter-of-factly.

‘What d’you mean?’ snapped at me, accusation in her eyes.

‘This would suit a woman with dark features and dark-brown hair. Mrs Balfour is pale; her face is like a white sheet. She’d look ill wearing this.’

‘How can you know that?’ She leaned towards me. ‘How can you know? When did you last go tae the Assembly Rooms for a dance?’ Her voice was mocking.

I looked at and shrugged. ‘I just know it. Look.’ I picked up the fabric and took it over to my sister. ‘Netta has dark eyes, darker skin than mine, and reddy-brown hair.’ I held the fabric up against her face. ‘See, this makes you look warm and healthy. But if I put it against ’s face’ – and here I did just that, against her pale skin and faded red, almost grey hair – ‘it makes you look as if you havenae seen daylight for weeks.’

She stared at me. ‘You cannae say that. It’s all blether. And who are you tae say what would suit our customers?’ She huffed in dismissal. ‘Mrs Balfour wants a dress in bright red, she can have a dress in bright red. She can have it in bright orange with pink spots, for all I care. She’s paying me tae make the gown she wants; she’s nae paying me tae have an opinion about how she looks, and ma daughter disnae have an opinion either. You just do as you’re told. Put that away and get ready for bed.’

Later, as Netta and I lay on our bedroll, waiting for sleep to come, she turned over and whispered in my ear, ‘What colour would suit her?’

I thought. I envisaged Mrs Balfour: a pale, big-boned woman, who stooped to hide her height. ‘A deep purple, but I’d use a velvet, not a silk.’

Netta continued working at the North British and when I left school at thirteen, I also started work with my sister: long, hard days in the steamy laundry rooms that I hated, my hands red and raw. I didn’t like the girls that worked there. They spent their days gossiping and giggling; all they wanted to do was bag a man and start a family so they could get out as soon as possible. I would have rather stayed at home and helped with her sewing, but there wasn’t enough work, nor was there enough room, and at thirteen you aren’t given a choice. You do the work you’re lucky enough to find and take the money handed to you.

Now that was making gowns out of more expensive fabric, she needed more space so that it could be better cared for and not get caught up in our laundry, dinner dishes and bedding. With the damp walls, rough wooden floors and mouldy plaster, we had to be careful that the fine silks and linens were not ruined.

But with three of us earning we found that we could afford to move into the next-door apartment giving us one extra room.

One additional room, when you’ve been used to living in one small space, felt as if we’d been given extra gravy with our dinner every day. could shut herself away in the bedroom with her bed, the sewing table and her new dressmaker’s dummy. Netta and I still shared our bedroll in the main living area, but we no longer had to listen to the light snores of our mother or block out the greasy gaslight when she had to stay up working late. With her door shut, the whir of the sewing machine was slightly muffled, and we didn’t need to worry about the possibility of treading on precious fabric when we were getting ready for bed. ’s room was kept religiously tidy: there was never a shoe out of place, her few clothes were neatly folded into the cupboard, and her bed was never rumpled, almost as if she never slept in it; the sewing machine was oiled and polished every week, the scissors and threads always put away; the dressmaker’s dummy stood in the corner of her room, the elegance of the half-finished gowns it wore always so out of place in that shabby but immaculately clean room.

Predictably, my sister soon met her husband. Duncan Wood was a carpenter at the hotel. She misinterpreted his good manners and tender gestures – a stolen daffodil from Princes Street Gardens, a pair of socks knitted by his mother – as creative and ambitious intentions. The truth was that Duncan was lazy in an oafish but endearing way, and had less money than we did. His family were so overcrowded in their home that he couldn’t wait to move in with us, thinking two rooms for just four people was nothing but the height of luxury. And just like the other girls in the laundry, Netta thought marriage was an easy way out of a life of drudgery and found herself married at eighteen because she was pregnant.

My relationship with Netta became more complex. Her desire to have five children and a continual life of wiping snotty noses and washing her husband’s dirty underwear filled me with dismay.

‘Don’t you think you’re just swapping one laundry for another?’ I said one afternoon, as we were hanging the sheets out in the yard at the back of the tenement.

Netta snorted. ‘I’d rather be washing ma own sheets than those of some la-di-dah gentleman who probably had sex on them three times the night before. At least I’d know who’d had sex on ma sheets.’ And here she shrieked with laughter.

I pegged the sheet with extra force. ‘But…’

‘Nae, Maisie, away with you and your dreams. This is our life; get on wi’ it.’ She picked up the tin of pegs and began walking up the stairs, back to our rooms. ‘Your heid is filled wi’ those lies from our cousin Aileen.’ She sniffed as she pushed open our door, me running after her.

‘Why would you say that? She’s in New York!’ I said. ‘She’s working in New York.’ I couldn’t help the wonder in my voice. ‘And it’s not in a laundry.’

‘She’s a lazy good-fer-nothin’. Aye, and that so-called husband of hers. I bet you, if you somehow’ – and here she rolled her eyes – ‘got yourself onto a boat to America, and went tae see her, you’d see she’s full of shite.’

‘No, no, no. You’re wrong.’ I opened the drawer of the kitchen table and took out a small pile of letters. I picked up the top one, took it out of the envelope and unfolded it.

‘Listen to what she says.’ I read out the letter.

I’ve started a new job in a chocolate factory. Donald is happy because whenever he kisses me, he can smell the chocolate. The girls in the factory say I’ll get sick of the smell, they say they never want to eat chocolate again, but they’re wrong. I wake up smelling of chocolate and I go to sleep smelling of it. My hat smells of chocolate, my petticoats and my handkerchief.

‘See,’ I said, folding the letter back into its envelope.

Netta put down her pile of laundry and, for a moment, she was my sister again, not some harried mother who never had time to take a breath. ‘Maisie, my wide-eyed sister, who has big dreams and high notions.’ Her voice was soft, just like when we would share a bedroll, just like when we’d whisper our dreams to each other in bed at night. ‘She’ll be living in some run-down tenement, doing the laundry just like you an’ me. Letters are for telling lies and the sooner you learn that, the sooner you’ll realise that this is the life we are supposed to lead. Now, could you get on and peel those tatties like you said you would?’

Some days, after a shift at the North British I’d have to bandage my hands, they were so red and raw from the long days in the steamy laundry rooms, stirring vats of stained bedsheets and wine-splattered tablecloths, the soap not agreeing with my skin, the heat exacerbating the irritation.

‘Laundry work isn’t for ma Maisie’s fine hands,’ would say as she gently rubbed Vaseline jelly into my hands. When the skin was too raw, I’d just watch at her sewing machine and draw my own designs in my pocket notebook, coming up with ideas that she would scoff at. Other days, when my hands were better, I’d be allowed to work on ’s commissions, but only under her steely, protective gaze.

‘Maebe one day those fine hands will be able tae give up the laundry and make those curious designs you spend your days drawing, those strange Maisie McIntyre dresses. One day they’ll be the making of you, never mind what Netta says.’

The rhythm of the needle, the treadle, the thread, these things smoothed out the rucks in my mind that a day in the laundry caused, the constant noise of Netta cooking, shouting at the girls, cajoling Duncan into helping with the chores. The softness of the material soothed the rough of my hands, the neatness of my stitches put away my resentment, giving way to a temporary calm.

Having the sewing machine meant that we could also make our own clothes. Previously we’d done this by hand, but now we could do it much quicker and, if I was clever, could make something that was a little more interesting than the traditional shirtwaist and skirt. But for Netta’s two girls, Ava and Carla, found the tiny armholes and collars too fiddly for her progressively arthritic fingers.

‘I’ll make them,’ I said.

‘Oh, nae you don’t,’ said Netta. ‘I’ll nae have you dressing ma girls in those fanciful clothes.’

I opened my mouth to protest but she continued.

‘I’ll nae have ma bairns in smocked dresses with ribbons an’ bows an’ all that fuss. We’ll be the laughingstock of the street.’

rolled her eyes at me on the sly, as Netta spoke, a complicit gesture that made me flatten my lips to suppress a smile.

‘If you make anything for them, you make sure they’re clothes that look exactly the same as every wee girl you see out there,’ Netta continued, pointing towards the road. ‘I wilna have ma girls standing out like some doll. Just because you like tae be different disnae mean that the rest of us do.’

It was at this point that I began to split into two, I became two different entities, two different people to fulfil two different roles. The first was Maisie McIntyre, the dutiful daughter who went to work at the North British, who put up with the monotonous, hot, mindless work, who came home and helped her mother with her dressmaking commissions. I was the one who went to the haberdasher’s to buy the materials and fabrics, who made clothes for the family that set us in our place in society, that made sure we looked exactly as everyone expected us to. The second was the Maisie McIntyre who spent her time in the laundry designing dresses in her head, using every spare moment to watch the women of Edinburgh and how they dressed. I kept my notebook with me at all times; whenever I saw a belt, buckle or bow that was interesting I drew it, only to find myself later designing a dress that I thought it would work on. I studied women’s shapes, what suited each type, and what didn’t.

I learned to shift from one Maisie to the other, to switch from duty to desire, from everyday grey to vivid colours, to change from necessity to want.

‘Maisie, I need you tae run a wee message down to Crawford’s. I’m in’ some o’ thon green ribbon tae finish the cuffs on Mrs Balfour’s new evening dress, some more o’ this green thread and I could be doing wi’ some new needles for the Singer. I’ve broken two already today. The tweed for Mrs Robertson’s jacket is causing havoc on the machine, it’s too thick.’

held out a piece of paper with a pencilled list and a few coins. She wheezed at me as she spoke. ‘I cannae go today. I’m no’ up to scratch. This cold disnae wanna shift.’