Page 43 of The Rebel of Seventh Avenue

walks around the room quietly picking up a cushion, a picture, a book, an ornament. Slowly a big smile spreads across her face.

‘You’ve done a good job with this place. This is how it used to be. Glad to see you’ve come out of the cream phase.’

We are sitting in the studio of MacDougal Street, the day after Joseph’s funeral, the whole building fully refurbished and the top floor now converted into an apartment for me. My Fifth Avenue apartment, where I’ve been living until today, will be sold as soon as possible.

‘That was a reaction to coming back to New York after the war. I was tired and hardly able to get up out of my bed. Even though I’d been craving colour after all the drabness of the previous five years, surrounded by all my fabrics and cushions and ornaments, I couldn’t settle. The calming influence of cream muslin curtains, white bedlinen, and pale furniture somehow soothed me, slowed down the whirling mass in my head, let me rest and recover.’

‘Glad to see you kept the sewing machine.’

By one of the big windows is my mother’s sewing machine, the one I brought over from Edinburgh. It’s been fully restored and is working again, years of neglect having made it seize up. After the funeral yesterday, I used it to make the skirt of a new suit I’d designed. It was a folly, just the nostalgic foolishness of an old woman, my modern sewing machine is so much more efficient. But by sitting at that machine, I could close my eyes and think of my mother, hear her voice. Handling the fabric, cutting the threads, sewing in the zip, all helped pacify me and take away some of the melancholy after the funeral.

looks across at the wall where the large pinboard used to be. Now there is a big grid covering the whole wall of ten-inch square picture frames, each one holding a piece of fabric, ranging from the first years of Maison McIntyre to last season’s show.

‘It’s good to see these again.’ She puts her hand up and touches a frame with a red patterned fabric inset with threads of gold and silver, before she turns suddenly, her hands on her hips and declares, ‘You’ve got your colour back.’ And now she gives me that Jackson smile that I’ve so missed, something she doesn’t give away lightly.

But then her brow furrows and she comes over and sits beside me. ‘So, what’s all this about? I know you’ve been unwell, but you’ve been keeping me at a distance, and I haven’t really had the opportunity to come and give you a piece of my mind.’ She pauses to clear the emotion in her voice. ‘What with Joseph being so ill, you know I’d have been here if I could.’

I smile. ‘Don’t worry, I know that. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But first, how are you?’

She leans back in her chair and sighs. ‘I’m feeling mighty relieved and because of that I’m feeling mighty guilty. He’s no longer suffering and I’m thankful for that. I’m sad he lived such a closed life, shut away from the city he loved. But I’m proud of what he did, how he managed to make something good… something beautiful out of such pain.’

‘You did that, you helped him become that man.’

She turns her head and gives me a flat smile. ‘You’d have done it too.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so. You know how impatient and selfish I am. I’m no good with responsibility.’

‘You’d have learned it, I had to. You’d have managed.’

I close my eyes. It’s time to tell her. This guilt that’s been with me for so long is eating at me. It’s time I told my best friend the truth even if she never speaks to me again.

‘Am I a bad person to be relieved that I no longer have to take care of him?’ asks, her eyes bright. ‘I can’t say that to Audrey, she’s too judgemental.’

‘No, you’re not bad. I’d be thinking the same thing. You’ve done this for more than half your life. It’s time to get on, kick off your shoes and go dancing in a new dress.’

, aged seventy, is still as trim and lean as she was the day I met her, her hair now speckled with grey, always pulled back in a neat bun. She favours the two-piece suit; in fact, I can’t think of a day she isn’t in a suit. Today’s outfit is a brown bouclé highly tailored jacket with big brown toggle buttons and an orange lining, the pencil skirt showing its contrasting lining at the long slit at the back. She favours less colour than I do, most often seen in greys, browns or blacks with a trim of colour. I’ve never seen her wearing anything other than a formal suit or dress. God forbid she ever considers sportswear; I’ve never even seen her wear a Maison McIntyre cashmere jumper.

snorts. ‘Me dancing? I don’t think that would be very elegant, do you?’

‘Just before Joseph broke off with me,’ I blurt out, ‘Mrs Marshall told me she’d take all her business away if I didn’t get rid of him. She saw us together.’ I hold my breath. This has been eating away at me for years, that I’ve been less than truthful to my friend, the one person who has been by my side since my first days in MacDougal Street, who has stuck with me through everything good and bad.

‘When Joseph said we shouldn’t see each other anymore, I was relieved.’

looks down at her hands, those long elegant fingers, the pale skin on her fingertips. ‘I know. I’ve always known that.’

I sit up straight, stunned at her response.

‘But you never said anything.’

She gives me a crooked smile. I can see that she’s holding in her emotion. ‘Why are you telling me this now? This was forty-five years ago. What Mrs Marshall said then made no difference to what happened. You’re getting yourself in a stew over nothing.’

I take a deep breath. ‘The sense of relief after he said he didn’t want to see me was…’ I twist the ring on my left little finger, twisting and twisting it. ‘It meant I didn’t have to face up to the bigotry, I didn’t have to make difficult choices, I didn’t have to defend my decisions. It was the easy way out.’ I want to get up and walk around the room, but I can’t.

‘I’d always thought we’d be together, maybe even get married. You know I made a dress…’ I feel my voice breaking.

‘He was ashamed of his inability to fight for your love, to fight for your relationship.’ ’s voice is quiet now, but there’s such passion in it that my eyes are beginning to prick with the emotion. I blink hurriedly.

‘And then, when his right leg had to be amputated, he was even more ashamed of his physical inabilities. He knew that you wanted to spend time with him, even if it was just as a friend, but in the end, he couldn’t do it. It was easier for him not to see you. To keep your relationship professional.’

I twist the ring on my finger harder and harder.

‘I have a recurring dream. The older I get the more often I have it. It’s of Joseph and a little boy. Maybe he’s five or six. They are sitting on the bench in Central Park where I first met Joseph. They’re happy, laughing and at ease. I think it’s our child.’

I’ve never told anyone about this dream. It’s so vivid that when I wake up I feel as if it’s just happened, as if Joseph and that little boy have just left the room.

now has tears in her eyes. ‘He told me that he used to have a similar dream, but it was you on the bench, with that little boy. He said it was your child, that you and he had a little boy.’

I feel as if someone has punched me in the heart, is now squeezing it so tightly that it’s stopped working. The pain is excruciating, a paralysing pain that means I can’t even breathe.

‘He only told me this on the day he died. Said he’d been having that dream for near on thirty-seven years. He knew there was nothing he could have done, so never told anyone.’

Just under thirty-seven years ago I found out that Joseph was Eveline Patience, when he threw me out and decided we couldn’t be friends.

gets up. She goes over to the sewing machine and sits at the table. She opens the drawer and pulls out a scrap of fabric. The machine is already threaded up and she begins to sew a pattern on the material. She talks as she sews.

‘He told me that leaving you was the biggest mistake of his life, but at the same time it was the best thing he could have done. He knows, considering the circumstances, that his life was as good as it could have been, and as much as he dreamed of a life with you, he knows it would never have worked out.’ She pulls out the scrap of material, cuts off the threads and brings it over to me, placing it on my lap. She’s embroidered a heart in red thread on the blue fabric.

‘Why are you suddenly moving back here? Seems like you’re making big changes, bringing the colour back, maybe becoming less of a recluse. What’s brought that on? I should be worried, but, actually, I’m relieved.’

I play with my stick, with the ebony top, the shiny knob that fits so neatly in my hand.

‘I have multiple sclerosis.’

She stares and then sits down too hard.

‘Shouldn’t you be in a wheelchair?’

‘That won’t be too far off.’ I sigh.

‘That why you need your stick?’

‘Yes.’

‘How long have you had it?’

‘I had my first episode right at the end of the war, just before you came over, but I didn’t find out it was MS until three years later. You remember I told you I had a bad bout of flu? I couldn’t get out of bed for two weeks. It was after that I was diagnosed.’

‘So it wasn’t the flu?’

‘No. I couldn’t walk. I had a bad episode.’

‘You get these often?’

‘More and more frequently.’

Her jaw is even more square than usual, her lips flat, her eyes blazing.

‘You make me mad, so mad ,’ she growls, like a lioness who’s trying to protect her cubs. ‘Why did you hide it from me? Am I not your friend?’ Now her eyes are red and her breathing erratic.

‘I was ashamed,’ I say, unable to meet her gaze. ‘I am ashamed. I thought you would see me as a failure. I’m Maisie McIntyre, I don’t have weaknesses.’

She grunts at this. ‘You’ve got plenty of weaknesses.’

‘But you didn’t need another burden. You had plenty of your own.’

‘So, this is why you’ve spent the last ten years working yourself into the ground, proving to the world that you aren’t a failure?’ She’s almost shouting now.

I nod slowly. ‘I thought by building a worldwide business, by creating something that was bigger and better than anyone else, no one would notice my physical failures. Be the biggest and the best and nobody will care if you’re a cripple.’

She stares. Contempt, anguish, love swirling all over her face. ‘You’re a dogonne idiot. You and Joseph were just a pair of dogonne idiots. You were like two children. Maybe you should have been together, you could have been idiots together.’ She runs both her hands over her hair until the back of her head is being supported by the palms of her hands. She breathes out heavily, slowly shaking her head.

‘It’s like you’ve had some kind of mania, as if you had to prove you could do this thing, take over the world, prove that Maisie McIntyre is better than anyone.’ She shakes her head again, then looks across at me. ‘Who else knows?’

‘Only my doctor… and Mandy.’

She rolls her eyes. ‘Oh, Maisie.’ Now a tear rolls down her cheek. ‘You didn’t even tell Aidan?’

‘Especially not Aidan. He’s not a man who can deal with illness. Haven’t you noticed he leaves the room at the first mention of needles or blood tests, he’s in bed with the lightest of colds?’

‘So, what happens now?’

My mouth twists in contemplation. ‘There’s so little known about this disease.’ I wave absently at my legs. ‘No real treatment. I just have to wait for the inevitable: a wheelchair and a gradual diminishing of my physical abilities. It won’t be pretty. It’s not as if living a healthy and fit lifestyle will keep it at bay, it doesn’t work like that. Some days my legs just won’t move, however hard I tell them to. I’m on this medical trial, on a very low-fat diet, which may slow the progression. I’ve been doing that since the war anyway, so it wasn’t difficult to do. People say it helps with the fatigue and maybe that’s why I’ve been able to stay fairly healthy up until now. I’ve occasionally had cortisone injections when I’ve had a relapse. But to be honest, it’s all a shot in the dark. There’s so little information that I sometimes think just hoping for the best might be the better option.’

‘So how are you going to continue working? Surely you don’t have the energy to be flying across the Atlantic a few times a year, to be in and out of the studio, down at the Colour Emporium warehouse in Brooklyn, visiting the shops across the country?’

‘It’s time to retire.’

throws me a great smile and says, ‘Praise the Lord. At last!’

‘I would have liked to die at my sewing machine, but my body isn’t even going to let me do that. I’ve finally realised that if I don’t slow down now, I won’t be on this planet much longer. I no longer want to be the head of such a big business. Deep down, I’m just an old woman who wants to make things.’ I rub at an aching pain in my jaw.

‘The paperwork’s all done, and I’ll be announcing my retirement in the next few days. Jessica gets control of the overall company and all of you, my loyal friends, get your fair share of the company you worked for. I’m also giving you the dress archive. I’m afraid that could be a burden, there are hundreds of dresses.’

raises an eyebrow before asking, ‘And Jessica?’

I sigh. ‘However hard I’ve tried to dissuade her, she’s determined that this is what she wants. I don’t think it will make her happy, but she will probably run it better than I’ve been able, and most likely make an even greater success of it than I have.

‘I’ve stipulated that although Jessica has ownership of all the real estate, the income must go towards a charity close to my heart, even after my death. You’ve heard of ClothesForce, the ongoing campaign to improve conditions in garment factories.’

‘I have. They do good work.’

‘Tori and I set that up in 1925 and it’s been funded by the income from the increasing amount of real estate I’ve acquired over the years. I always felt a little uncomfortable at what seemed like effortless income, and with all my guilt about what happened on the night of the Triangle fire, we set up ClothesForce. I never want another person to die from exploitation in the garment industry. That and I had to make sure Annina was safe. She was working in one of those factories at the time. I made damn sure inspectors visited more often than they should have done. It made me physically sick knowing she worked there; I had to keep an eye on her.’

She raises an eyebrow at me. ‘You’re a sly thing sometimes, wanting everyone to think you’re just a greedy, ambitious woman.’

‘How about you? Now Joseph’s gone. What are you going to do?’

She looks up and around the room, slowly eyeing the ceiling lanterns, the surroundings recently painted with the very same fuchsia pink that was there when I first arrived, she notes the newly varnished wooden floor, the large oil painting on the wall behind us, an abstract of an apple orchard in full bloom with its pinks and whites, the luminous green grass, dark flowing waters of a nearby river.

‘I want to live somewhere as welcoming as this,’ she says wistfully. ‘Our house is still like a hospital. I don’t think I can stand it much longer. I need colour again; I need to make things again. You know? I’ve hardly made anything for over a year now. Not a suit, not even a piece of embroidery. It’s all been about caring for Joseph, administering medicine, making sure everything happens on time so that he didn’t get out of sorts. And I’d like to sleep. You know, I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since… I don’t know when. I’d like the opportunity to stay in bed all day.’

This is my friend. We haven’t sat down and talked like this in too many years. I’ve been hell-bent on conquering the world before my body gives up on me, she’s been caring for her brother, having retired from Maison McIntyre nearly eighteen months ago. I’ve never made friends easily, and of the very few friends I have, she has been the most constant, the most honest, the funniest.

‘Come and live here,’ I say.

She holds my gaze. I see a mix of emotions: amusement, fear, thankfulness, relief, astonishment. But she doesn’t answer, only getting up from her chair, a little stiffly, and walking over to the bag she left on the table. She pulls out a magazine.

‘Have you seen this month’s Vogue ?’ she says as she passes me the magazine. ‘There’s a portrait in there you should see. I’ve marked the page.’

I take the magazine and it falls open to a sumptuous black and white photograph of an elderly woman, a tiny stick of a woman with a ridiculous bouffant hairstyle. She’s standing in front of an austere marble fireplace, flowers in the place of a fire, huge silver candelabra on each end of the mantelpiece, a vase, possibly Ming, in the centre. She’s wearing a full-length pale duchess satin gown, straight cut and sleeveless with a square neckline, and matching full-length satin gloves. She has a dark velvet cape which she holds back with both hands on her hips, a look of defiance on her wrinkled face, her chin slightly pushed upwards, an enormous diamond necklace adorning her neck.

‘Mrs Rex Marshall,’ I whisper, ‘wearing Maison McIntyre.’ Something dislodges in my throat, I have to cough to cover it, tears pooling in my eyes.

I have had no contact with Julia Marshall since the day the Colour Emporium opened. Aidan always relishes telling me of her latest insults, I have been told how many people have been warned off me by my very first client.

‘Did you know about this?’ I ask .

‘Yes,’ she says, her eyes twinkling with mischief. ‘She and I worked closely on the dress and cape. It was a little bit of sanity whilst Joseph was so ill. Let me remember what it was to create again.’

‘You just said you hadn’t made a thing for over a year! Did you just flat-out lie to me, Otella Jackson?’ I ask in mock outrage.

‘If you were listening properly, Maisie McIntyre, I said I’d hardly made a thing in the last year. There’s a difference.’ She says this with her dark, beady eyes crinkled at the edges, flickers of light seeming to bloom across her face. ‘It was Annina who insisted I design and make the dress. She said that was the only way Maison McIntyre would take the work.’

‘And the photoshoot?’

‘ Vogue commissioned Cecil Beaton to shoot it for Mrs M’s birthday. He was the one who insisted she wear a Maison McIntyre design. He’d done his research, knew that it was you that launched her into society. He thought it was fitting for her to go back to her roots.’

‘She can’t have liked any of that.’

‘Apparently, according to Jessica Daves, there was an almighty ruckus. But that editor said she wouldn’t have her photographed in any other way. It was a Maison McIntyre dress or nothing.’ She laughs, leaning over towards me to pick up the magazine. ‘Wouldn’t you have liked to be a fly on the wall during that conversation?’ And then abruptly she bends over and rubs her knee. ‘Think I’m getting housemaid’s knee. I’ve done nothing but wash and scrub and clean for the last few days. Feel like I need to get the smell of death and illness and sadness out of that apartment.’ Gently she rubs the kneecap in a circular motion, soothing and hypnotic.

‘Come and live here,’ I repeat.

She stops the circular motion, frowns, thinks, undoes a jacket button, does it up again. She’s blinking furiously, looking away from me, trying to hide her emotions.

‘We haven’t let out the apartment below yet. You could live there. Now that I’ve put an elevator in you can come up any time, housemaid’s knee or no housemaid’s knee.’

She’s still blinking, but now starts to flick through the magazine until she finds what she’s looking for. ‘You seen this?’ She holds up a photograph of a young model wearing a tunic dress with a hemline well above the knee. ‘You heard of Mary Quant?’

‘A little,’ I say, distracted by her lack of response.

‘You seen these tunic dresses? Seen how short they are? Just like you said all those years ago. I know I’m an old woman, but this is too much.’ She bats the picture with the back of her hand, clicking her tongue in disapproval.

I can do nothing but laugh. ‘Always a prude, Jackson.’

We’re silent, the unanswered question still hanging in the air.

‘If I live here, what are two old ladies going to do with themselves? We can’t just sit here and reminisce, that’s not a good thing to do. I need to be busy, making something, creating something. Can’t just sit twiddling my thumbs, I’ll be dead before you know it. Not going to waste this time, having been nothing but a nurse for the last year or so, I’ve got some living to catch up on.’

‘I wondered if you’d like to help me with something.’ I rub that ache in my jaw again.

‘You got toothache?’ asks. ‘You’ve been rubbing that jaw the whole time I’ve been here.’

‘Probably. I’ll get it seen to,’ I say, wanting to dismiss any talk of my health. ‘But I’ve been thinking about trying to recreate those shawls Rosa used to make. I’ve seen nothing on the market that comes anywhere near them. Annina tried but it wasn’t her strength, so I thought I’d give them a go. They’re complicated, intricate and full of colour, they remind me of Rosa and also have that connection to Scotland. I’d like to see if we could make them commercially viable.’

‘What? Two old ladies sitting here knitting. Are you serious? Sounds like you’ve gone and lost your mind.’ Her eyes are wide. ‘I was thinking about travelling a bit, going to some of those nightclubs down in Harlem, getting out of these suits and putting on a colourful dress, not cosying up with a pair of knitting needles and a ball of wool.’

I laugh. How good that feels. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of creating the designs here and when we were happy with them, we’d send them to Maura in Hawick and get her to make them up on the machines, using the soft cashmere. So, no, we wouldn’t be sitting here churning out shawls and scarves like two old women.’

She leans back in her chair. ‘Thank goodness.’

‘Don’t worry, I have every intention of making the most of the time I have left.’

I wake the next morning after the best night’s sleep I’ve had in months. Usually I wake in the night, my feet feeling cold and my legs almost paralysed. But I slept through; maybe all that reminiscing was good for me. My legs are better than usual. I know it won’t last but I’m going to make the most of it whilst I can.

Mandy is here to help me get up.

‘You got toothache?’ she asks.

I press into my jaw, momentarily relieving the dull pain. ‘I think so.’

‘I’ll make you a dentist appointment,’ she says as she puts my shoes down by my feet.

I look down at my shoes, my hateful shoes. I can no longer wear anything with a heel, I need to have sensible, stabilising shoes that help prevent me from falling over. I must concentrate when I walk now, I can’t even talk when I’m taking the stairs in case I’m distracted and then, no doubt, I’ll fall. I long for my everyday high heels that made my ankles look elegant, made me taller and improved my posture. Now I have these soft, rubber-soled fat flipper-like shoes that make me want to cry at the inelegance of them. I’d rather wear sneakers. How delicious it would be to wear a pair of those Converse basketball boots with an evening dress.

‘I’d like to take a walk today,’ I say.

Mandy looks at me quizzically. ‘You sure your legs are up for that?’

I nod. ‘Only a short one, but there’s somewhere I’d like to go, somewhere I’d like to walk to whilst I still can.’