Page 38 of The Rebel of Seventh Avenue
1938
Netta decided that getting married in white would be ridiculous for a woman of her age. Instead, she wore a British racing-green silk velvet suit: a straight skirt that came down to the middle of her calves, a hip-length jacket nipped in at the waist with big gold buttons, and a high Chinese collar. She looked ten years younger than when she’d first arrived in New York, four years previously.
Finally, things had come good for Netta. My no-nonsense, practical, say-it-like-it-is sister who had a girlish blush on that once wearied face, was practically skipping down the aisle as she hung off the arm of her new husband, Eric Pound, whose own smile was so wide I was concerned his face might split in two.
‘You’d never think that man was the same grey, unobtrusive accountant who could hardly get a word in edgeways at Goldwyn Productions,’ Aidan whispered into my ear. ‘What has your sister done to him? Whatever it is, I’d like some of it.’ He winked at me as we linked arms.
‘Well,’ I said as we turned and followed Netta and Eric down the aisle and towards the back of the church, ‘it seems that hiking and spending Mr Pound’s not unsubstantial fortune is their secret.’
Aidan stopped dead in the aisle. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Falling in love on a canyon trail when you’re in your fifties. No.’ He shook his head, his eyes following the couple.
I shushed him as I pulled him along. ‘If you’d bothered to come over on the same ship as us you’d have known all this beforehand, instead of insisting on gossiping at the back of the church. Just because you’d rather woo your men friends over a martini and caviar, doesn’t mean to say that’s what everyone else wants to do. Poor Eric, used to sitting at a desk more than twelve hours a day, dealing with the likes of Harold Finerman, looking at figures well into the night. It’s no surprise that days out in the fresh air have turned him into someone entirely different.’ I leaned into Aidan. ‘To be honest, I find their constant chatter and incessant laughter quite exhausting. Sometimes I wish for the old Netta, always criticising. It’s less wearing.’
‘Don’t be such a grouch.’ Aidan play-punched my arm. ‘I thought you were happy for them.’
‘I am. I’m thrilled that she’s decided to come back to live here.’
‘Ah, now the truth comes out. You’ve had enough of the big bossy sister,’ he said, giving me a sideways smile.
‘Now, Aidan Cruickshank, I’m not rising to that,’ I laughed.
Los Angeles couldn’t keep Netta; the call from Edinburgh had finally been too strong, and she only agreed to marry Eric if he moved to Scotland with her. Delighted to find that he could move to colder climes, with a ready-made family in situ and grandchildren to bounce on his knee, he’d whooped with delight and declared himself a happily engaged man.
Now back in that freezing church in my home city, watching those two happy people bobbing down the aisle as if they were twenty-one, I couldn’t help but think of the stark contrast with Netta’s first wedding – heavily pregnant, in her Sunday best, nerves and no smiles, she and Duncan standing stiff and upright, flowers from the park, only Maw and myself present, straight home after the service to pie and cake. Second time around, no expense had been spared, Netta almost regal in her green outfit, discreet flowers, a constant relaxed smile, always touching Eric on the hand, sleeve, knee. I’d never seen her so happy.
We waved Netta and Eric off in their outlandish Rolls-Royce, and now, with Jessica’s hand in mine, my other on Aidan’s arm, we walked back to our hotel.
Being in Edinburgh for the first time in twenty-eight years, I hardly recognised the places I used to frequent: Richmond Place that had once felt homely now appeared shabby and dirty; the haberdasher’s on Cockburn Street, once so comforting, now gone and replaced with a sweet shop. With talk of war, everywhere felt nervy and even Jenners, the place that had soothed and comforted me, now seemed in limbo, unable to make up its mind. And finally, here we were at the North British, the hotel we’d found ourselves staying in.
As Oti took Jessica to get her tea, I slumped into a chair at the bar, desperate for a drink.
‘Poor Eric,’ I said as Aidan passed me my single malt. ‘How was he to know Netta and I used to work here? What would he have thought of us if he’d seen our younger selves all red in the face and sweaty with our raw hands and our wild frizzed hair?’ I looked around the bar with its views over the park. ‘Until we arrived two days ago, I’d never been upstairs, never seen these rooms. We only ever worked in the three underground floors that housed the massive laundry, washing great vats of linen and uniforms for the hotel and all the trains that passed through. How could he have known that walking into a suite overlooking the Scott Monument, with four-poster beds, bathrooms and well-stocked bars was so improbable to Netta and me, so bewildering and unnerving, that neither of us could speak? Eric thought he’d committed some terrible faux pas, and it took all our powers of persuasion to reassure him that he couldn’t possibly have us stay anywhere else.’
Aidan looked at me long and hard as he took a sip of his drink.
‘So, tell me. What is the sister of the bride going to do with herself now? Will you be hightailing it back to New York, back to the fast-moving world of couture, back onto that merry-go-round of two collections a year, holed up in your studio, never seeing daylight, hiding from your high-society customers?’
‘You make it sound like I’m a recluse,’ I said as I lit a cigarette. I looked at its burning tip, feeling lethargic. It was as if the wedding had taken up all my energy and I was ready to collapse. I sipped my drink.
‘This strange new Maisie,’ I said with a sigh, leaning back in my chair, ‘will hate it. The old Maisie, of course, would have loved it,’ I added quietly.
‘Who is this strange woman in front of me?’ Aidan asked with a look of mock concern on his face.
I smiled. ‘The whole experience with Mr Finerman seems to have shattered me, I’ve lost my taste for excitement, for the colour I love, for all that finery. I’m feeling like a forgotten rag doll that’s been thrown into a corner, all limp and dusty.’
‘I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your taste for a bit of drama.’ He leaned forward, grabbing my hand and squeezing it. ‘But, my darling, you did a marvellous job today, if I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought the old Maisie was back in town.’
I flopped my head against the back of the armchair, closing my eyes. I just wanted to curl up under a thick eiderdown and sleep. But I wasn’t sleeping either. After a couple of hours, I’d be wide awake, sitting fully upright in bed, wondering what to do. To distract myself I’d start designing – sketching and drawing, but my designs were flat and I’d have to take myself out onto the dark streets of Edinburgh and walk briskly, clear my head and make myself tired enough to collapse into my bed and get a few hours of leaden sleep.
‘What you need is a distraction,’ Aidan declared. ‘You need to do something completely different, and I think I’ve found the exact thing.’ He sat up straight, beaming like some proud schoolboy who’d secretly gone and won the top prize but wasn’t quite ready to reveal it to his parents. ‘Be ready tomorrow morning at nine o’clock sharp. We’re going on an adventure.’
Standing in the knitting room of a hosiery mill in Hawick in the Borders of Scotland, I was mesmerised: the hypnotic noise and the movement of the knitting frames, the cones of yarn jolting around, cashmere, lambswool, vicuna; the finishing rooms where rows of women were trimming, binding, linking and checking the finished items; the washing rooms where the men used large wooden paddles in huge vats of hot water to agitate the garments, the smell echoing those days at the North British; the drying room with racks and racks of underwear, pullovers, jackets and nightdresses; the extreme softness of the finished garments, softer than most because of the water from the River Teviot.
‘Aidan, you’ve gotten me here under false pretences.’ I leaned into his ear. He pulled back, winking at me, omitting to reply and wandered off to look at one of the machines.
For the first time in months, I was feeling a bubble of interest rise in me – my whole body alert, my brain beginning to come up with ideas, colours, patterns.
‘Uh-oh,’ Oti said as she walked towards me, a huge grin on her face. ‘Praise the good Lord. I haven’t seen that face for such a long time.’ She grabbed me by my shoulders and almost shook me in her excitement.
‘You’ve gone into one of your design frenzies, I can see it on your face.’ She laughed. ‘Aidan!’ she called out. ‘You were right, it’s done the trick.’
I looked from Aidan to Oti and back. Our guide, Mr Farquharson, elderly in a shuffling way, wearing his brown warehouse coat, didn’t seem to understand the laughter, seemed worried that he’d made some terrible mistake.
‘Have you two been plotting behind my back?’ I asked with mock outrage.
‘My darling, someone had to sort you out, it was obvious you’d lost your get-up-and-go. Of course, Oti knew who to call. Aidan, your prime fixer, at your service,’ he said, doing a sweeping bow.
I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t speak.
‘You see, Oti and I had been wondering where that ambitious, single-minded Maisie had gone, the one we all knew so well. Where did she go? The outspoken Maisie, the one who’s a little too casual with the truth, a little too willing to overstep the mark. We were terrified you were on your way to being middle-aged and boring.’ Again, he winked at me.
‘So we decided to do something about it, and here we are.’
Amidst the noise, the shuffle of the knitting frames, the perplexed stare of Mr Farquharson, and the great smiles of my friends, my eyes started filling up. I blinked furiously, trying to push away tears. Unwillingly, I was being bombarded by the emotions of the last six years: the death of Tori, the humiliation after his funeral, the arrival of Netta, the birth of Jessica, the difficulties of running a business from the wrong side of the country, Annina’s rape, leaving Los Angeles, the happiness of Netta’s newfound love and marriage, the support of Oti and Aidan, of being back in my home country.
‘Well, my sweet chicken,’ Aidan said, taking me by the arm and coaxing me away from the group. ‘Let’s not show our hand just yet. Let’s pretend that you need to go away and have a good think about this. Let Mr Farquharson think that you’re the weak link here and that I need to convince you that buying this company is a good thing. He believes you’re my wife, and that the Mrs wears the trousers, that my job is to persuade you that this is a sensible idea.’
I took a deep breath.
‘Oh no you don’t.’ Aidan put his chin up slightly and wagged his index finger at me. ‘Not a word. You know this is a surefire thing, and so do I, we all do. The deal is as good as done. We just need your say-so.’ He gave me a good hard stare, as if he was trying to dig the words out of me with his eyes.
‘But who will run it? Who will run the business?’ I asked.
‘You, of course, with the help of Eric.’
‘But he’s retired, he doesn’t want to do that,’ I said, avoiding the real issue.
‘Oh, don’t you believe it. He couldn’t be more excited. The man has been under the thumb of the Hollywood studios for far too long and finally he sees a project that he knows he can help make into something great. Look.’ He took me into a corner where it was a little quieter. ‘We have a war or we don’t, either way this factory is going to be busy. If we don’t have a war you’ll be able to make the cashmere that you want, ship it out to Oti in New York and we can properly expand the ready-to-wear business, as well as give Oti some of the finest cashmere fabrics ever produced. If we do have a war, well, I suspect we’ll be making uniforms or hosiery or something like that for as long as it takes, but if that’s the case we’ll make a killing. And when the war is over, you’ll have all these ideas that have been stored up in that clever head of yours and you can storm the world with Maisie McIntyre’s cashmere range.’ He spread out his arms, like wings, his palms open. ‘It’s a win-win situation, Miss McIntyre, and I suggest you grab it with both hands immediately.’
‘But what about you? Couldn’t you stay and run it? I’m not sure that country life is for me,’ I whined. Aidan was the fixer; this was a project that was more suited to his skills.
‘Oh no. If my family find out that I’ve been back to Scotland I suspect they’ll run me off to Timbuktu before I can pack my underwear. There are too many rumours about my lifestyle that don’t suit them. I’m better off back in New York where I can hide in plain sight, doing my dark deeds in dark corners.’
‘But where will I live?’ I asked. Another stupid question.
He laughed. ‘Funny you should ask that. I’ve also found you the perfect place that happens to be up for rent just now. It’s a bit big, but I’m sure that won’t be a problem, you can fill it with your Colour Emporium delights and shock the whole of Hawick with your outlandishly colourful designs.’
Six months later, Aidan had returned, and we were sitting in the dining room that I had turned into my workroom. A room filled with bolts of colourful fabric, two sewing machines, three tailor’s dummies, two large worktables and a big pinboard covering one whole wall of the room, covered with cloth and knitted woollen swatches, buttons, brocading, a few ribbons and some sketches. A well-established fire kept the room warm.
‘Your own personal studio,’ Aidan said as he looked around him. ‘Very Maisie McIntyre.’ He turned back to me with a huge smile. ‘See, I knew we’d get the old Maisie back.’ A triumphant grin, chin slightly upturned, eyes narrowed in victory.
‘All right, Mr Cruickshank. You were right. A little time away from the mess and mayhem in America has brought me back to myself, but I’m not entirely sure how much longer I’ll last.’
‘Oh, come on. You’ve only been here six months; you need to give it a little longer than that. Scotland needs to know that their finest living couturier is in town and intends to do great things.’ He stood up and walked over to the window overlooking the garden. ‘But I’m concerned,’ he said less heartily. ‘If you have no dining room, how can you be wining and dining the good and the great? Shouldn’t you be holding great soirees to get to know your wealthy neighbours and your business rivals? Shouldn’t I be hearing stories of wild parties, outrageous outfits and breakfast at dawn?’ He turned to me, hands in his trouser pockets, a wry smile on his face.
I folded my hands on my lap. ‘I’ve had my fingers burned by wild parties.’
‘True.’ Looking down at his feet he continued. ‘I’m worried that you’re taking life too seriously. You need to make the most of what you have just now. If war is on its way, things aren’t going to be that much fun.’
‘Well, it’ll all be over by Christmas, that’s the word on the street,’ I quipped back in my best New York accent, not entirely believing the words that everyone was saying. In truth, I was worried that we were about to lose the colour in our lives, that everything would become drab and beige. I was beginning to wish I was returning to New York, that I could follow the threads that were gently pulling me back. But I couldn’t, I had a job to do, and I needed to make sure it was done properly.
‘So how does the textile community take to having a woman running the show in one of their larger mills?’
I twisted my mouth to one side, considering my answer. ‘They’re a bit wary, a little worried I have no idea what I’m talking about. I’ve learned to bring Eric with me whenever there are money discussions because they can’t quite understand that I hold the purse strings, but what they aren’t too pleased about is that I will insist on wearing trousers most of the time.’
He threw his head back and laughed aloud. ‘Why on earth is that?’
‘Women are not allowed to wear trousers in their mills and I, of course, have over-turned that rule in our mill because I don’t want to be seen as a hypocrite. It seems I’m a troublemaker.’
‘Glad to hear it. You wouldn’t be Maisie McIntyre if you weren’t up to no good. But tell me, how are the government contract negotiations going?’
I let out a long, frustrated sigh. ‘Protracted. If war happens we will be forced into making hosiery for the military. But it seems our prices are too high and our quality is too good. The big mills in the Midlands can produce what the government want at greatly reduced prices with bigger gauge machines; we can’t compete, but we must. If we don’t take on the contract we won’t be given access to yarn – it’s that simple. The gun is to our head.’ I leaned back in my chair and put my feet up on the table. ‘I’m sure we’ll come to some agreement but it’s so time-consuming. Even Eric is exasperated by the whole thing, and we may have months more of this to go. Drink?’
Aidan snorted. ‘It’s that bad? I just mention the contracts and you turn to drink?’
Without replying, I got to my feet and went over to a small cabinet in one corner of the room, took out two glass tumblers and poured us both a single malt.
Handing Aidan his drink, I continued. ‘Truth is, I’m feeling a little out of place. This is supposed to be my home country, but I’ve become used to the fast, easy ways of New York, to the warm, benign weather of California, I’m now accustomed to a variety in my diet and a diversity in the people I meet every day. Winter in the Borders of Scotland, in a house with rattling windows and no central heating, is trying. Cook insists on feeding me mulligatawny soup far too often because she feels that, since I’ve lived in a foreign country, I must like spicy food. And when I asked her whether she could make me a pomodoro sauce to go with some spaghetti, she looked at me as if I’d suggested we eat her children for supper. And on top of that, my housekeeper couldn’t hide her initial horror at the colours I’ve used in the house; I’ve been experimenting and have painted the walls with what she calls “dark and eccentric” shades. I sent fabric off to the local seamstress to be made in curtains; she was so scandalised by the bright and wildly patterned material, she almost refused to do the job.
‘I’m a stranger in my own country.’
Aidan rolled his eyes. ‘Still the perpetual drama queen.’
I grinned. ‘You see, without you or Oti to keep me on my toes, I obviously lose my ability to see the lighter side of life. That’s why I need to go back to New York. I’m not sure that hosiery lines and factory workers, country houses and tweed skirts suit me.’
‘But look at you. All that fresh air and time with your daughter has made you all rosy-cheeked and blooming. No, I say you stay here, give that gorgeous daughter of yours a pony to ride and games in the garden. Make the most of a less complicated way of life and appreciate the beauty of all the nature out there.’ He gestured towards the garden.
‘Ha! Aidan Cruickshank, you wouldn’t know a piece of nature if it hit you on the head.’
‘Possibly true. However, talking of that gorgeous daughter of yours, where is she? I’ve missed her more than you can imagine.’
‘She’ll be down in the kitchen with Cook making you a cake – come on, let’s go and find her. I’ll give you a tour of the house on the way.’
I took him through the drawing room, parlour, and study before taking him upstairs, ending up in his own bedroom.
‘Very bohemian. I can see why people are scandalised. You just need a set of Fiesta dinnerware and we’ll be all set.’
I laughed, the first full belly laugh I’d had in months. ‘How well you know me. I had a full set of that very same dinnerware sent over and Cook finds it distasteful. Far too much colour for her liking and she says it’s cheap, which is true, but I like it. The good thing about cheap is it’s not expensive to replace. Wedgwood, which I find a little staid, causes a scene when it’s broken. Cook doesn’t care if she breaks one of the Fiestas.’
‘Sounds like you and Cook have a marvellous relationship.’
‘Yes, it’s one of mutual misunderstanding, but we seem to muddle along somehow.’ I sighed.
‘I get the feeling that you don’t like playing lady of the manor. No headscarf and pearls for you?’ Aidan teased.
‘I’m saying nothing,’ I said as we walked into the kitchen.
‘Uncle Aidan!’ Jessica yelled as she dropped her spoon into a large mixing bowl and ran over to him to give him a hug.
‘Whoa, hold it there, little Miss Jessica. As much as I love you and am in need of one of those special Jessica Smyth hugs, I love my suit more and I need you to go over to the sink and wash those particularly sticky hands.’ Aidan had stepped back and raised his hands in the air. ‘This is a brand-new suit from Savile Row, it’s on its first outing today. Buttery fingermarks won’t be good for it.’
The suit was a perfect dark blue in a beautiful cashmere wool. As he ran his fingers down the sleeve I couldn’t help but do the same on his other arm. Every piece of Aidan’s clothing was exquisite and put me and my slightly worn woollen trousers and cashmere pullover to shame. Jessica had spent enough time with Aidan not to be upset or offended by his reaction and dutifully went to the sink and washed her hands. Presenting them to Aidan for inspection, he turned them over and then picked up Jessica and whirled her around shouting, ‘And how is my favourite girl?’
She shrieked, he laughed, she giggled, and they both ended up in an ungainly hug and Eskimo kiss.