“It was, but your nan was a strong woman. Never did I know her to feel sorry for herself. Never.”
“Is that why she left? Because she was pregnant with my mom?”
“Yes. She could think of no other way to protect her child. It was considered a shameful thing, in those days, to be an unwed mother, and she could not bear the thought of her child suffering in any way. So she left for Canada, and she never looked back. We said good-bye, and I never saw or heard from her again.”
“Didn’t it hurt your feelings? She was your best friend, wasn’t she?”
“She was, but I knew it was for the best. At least, that is how it seemed at the time.”
“Did you never wish to see her again?”
“Oh, yes. I missed her terribly. But the years passed so quickly, and after a while I could not imagine how we should begin again. I expect she felt the same way.”
“Okay,” Heather said, though none of it really seemed okay to her, not least because she was almost totally certain that Miriam had told her only part of the story. How, exactly, had that Jeremy guy hurt Nan? Had he hurt her feelings—broken her heart? Or had Miriam been speaking in a literal sense? Just thinking about it was enough to turn her stomach.
“What of your second question? Your second ‘something,’ as you put it?”
“Oh, right. It’s a long story but I’ll try to boil it down to the essentials. I was talking with Daniel about my job, which I actually lost not so long ago, and how I wanted to try something new.”
“You are a journalist, are you not? Just like my Walter.”
“I’m not sure I’d ever dare to compare myself to someone like him. But thank you for even suggesting it.”
“Are you still a journalist?”
“I am, I guess. I lost my job at the magazine, and that got me thinking about what I really want to do. How I want to write about things that actually matter to me. So I told Daniel I wanted to write about the work Nan did at Hartnell, and what it was like to be an embroiderer and to work on the queen’s wedding dress. Only I can’t ask Nan about it, and I haven’t been able to find anyone else who was there, except, um . . .”
“Me.”
“Yes. I know you don’t give interviews, and I respect that, I do. Only I’m not sure how to write it without you.”
Miriam set her hands atop Heather’s, and the cool weight of them was like a drink of water on a humid July day. “Of course I will help you. That is what I was going to say.”
“Did Daniel tell you already?”
“Yes. I think he was hoping to ensure I would not refuse you. Such a dear boy.”
“And you’re fine with talking about your time at Hartnell? You’ve never discussed it publicly before.”
“Would you believe that I did? Only a few times, in interviews when I was just beginning to become known, but none of the people asking questions—none of the men, I should say—seemed to care. The better story, in their eyes, was that I had appeared out of nowhere, a sort of phoenix rising from the ashes of the war. And so my having trained and worked as an embroiderer for many years was at odds with their description of my overnight success. In any case, I stopped giving interviews after that.”
“Despite being married to a journalist like Walter Kaczmarek?”
“Despite that. We agreed that it wouldn’t be right for him, or his magazine, to run stories about me, and the only journalists I knew and trusted were the people who worked for him.”
“Didn’t you ever want to tell your side of the story?”
“But I did. It is there for anyone to see—there in my work.”
They sat in silence for a moment, and just as Heather was beginning to feel a little steadier and calmer, another worry descended upon her.
“Do you think Nan would mind? I won’t go into anything about her personal life. About that awful Jeremy or having to leave England. But would she be okay with my writing about the two of you and how you were friends? How you worked on the gown together?”
“She put your name on the box with the embroideries, did she not? She saved them all those years, and she left them for you to find, and if she had truly wished to shut the door on her time at Hartnell I believe she would have destroyed them long ago.”
“But she didn’t.”
“She did not, and you were the one who saw the ray of light peeking through, and you were the one to open the door. It is past time that she, along with all of us who made the gown, be recognized for our work. And I will help you do it.”