The Forgotten Seamstress (31 page)

‘It won’t do any harm to snip the tacking,’ Jo said. ‘Look, like this.’

I watched, in awe of her dexterity, as she carefully released the stitches and delicately folded back the wide hem of the fabric to reveal the full width of the paper template below. It was just possible to make out the words ‘
My dear …
’
.

‘It’s a letter,’ we chorused.

‘Oh … my … God,’ I whispered. ‘Is it from her lover? The prince? Just imagine …’

‘We’ll soon find out.’

Because the paper had been cut up into shapes, the words and sentences were chopped up too and, frustratingly, some of the templates were blank. As we snipped away the tacking stitches on each side of the square, we shouted the words and syllables they revealed:

‘… and that the …’

‘… se arrangem …’

‘… my contro …’

‘… is war is mo …’

‘ … nce, May 1915 …’

‘Nineteen fifteen: it must be the Great War. And that word’s probably France. You know what this is?’ Jo looked across the quilt at me, grinning from ear to ear. ‘It’s a letter from the front,’ we said, almost in unison.

‘Bloody hell,’ I said, trying to control my excitement as I snipped around the next hexagon.

‘
… that I go to
…’
Jo read.

‘…
eep every night dr
…’

‘
Keep s …
’

‘It
is
to Maria,’ I shouted, reading out the next one. ‘Listen, it says, “
… eet smile … aria.
”’

Then Jo yelped, ‘It’s a
love
letter to Maria. Come and look at this.’

The ink was smudged and stained, but the words were clear to see: ‘…
afe. I love yo
…’

The four little syllables stunned us into silence. Finally I managed to gasp, ‘My God, do you realise, Jo, if this letter really is from the Prince of Wales, it proves that her story was true? She said the prince wrote to her, but I never imagined for one second that she would hide his letter inside the quilt.’

‘Steady on. We haven’t got any proof yet of
who
it’s from.’

‘There must be other clues. Let’s take all the pieces out so we see what the letter really says.’

She hesitated. ‘I’d be reluctant to do that right now. This is like an archaeological excavation, and we need to be careful not to destroy any evidence by mistake.’

I sat down again, struggling to curb my impatience. At last she said, ‘I’ve got an idea. We can avoid taking them out by photographing each template. Then we can assemble all the photographs on the screen and figure out what the letter says that way. What do you think?’

It was a brilliant plan. A couple of hours later, after revealing all of the templates with writing on them – twenty in all – and carefully photographing each one, we transferred the photos to my laptop and moved them around the screen like an old-fashioned computer game. When we finally got them into what seemed like the right order, they read:

… nce, May 1915 … My dear … to think … you witho … know yo … and that the … se arrangeme … beyond … my contro … his war is mo … rrible, and I may … ot retur … for ma … nths … But I wa … ou to know, a … aria,… that I go to … ep every night dr … aming of your sweet smile … and … of you … Keep safe. I love you …

‘But no signature,’ I said. ‘How frustrating. Do you think we’ve missed anything?’

Jo shook her head. ‘Only blank templates, none with writing on.’

‘It’s a beautiful letter,’ I said, reading the screen again, trying to elicit more clues. ‘A very educated hand, wouldn’t you say, hardly written by your average soldier?’

‘Even so, you can’t assume it was written by a prince,’ Jo said, stretching her shoulders with hands behind her neck. ‘Besides, he wasn’t allowed to go and fight, was he?’

‘He did go to France, just not to the front line.’ I sighed. ‘Oh, I don’t know. She’s such a mystery, this woman. We know she worked at Buckingham Palace. In my heart I’m sure the story about the baby is also true. Why would they have locked her away unless there was a secret they wanted to protect?’

Jo leaned back in her chair. ‘You know, what we’ve discovered this evening is extraordinary. Even if the letter is not from the Prince of Wales, it’s still a remarkable document. And what with those silks …’ she tailed off.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s even more important to get this thing properly cleaned and conserved, and to verify that these silks really are what we think they are. I know just the person. She’s a conservator and silk specialist. Used to work at the Warner Archive, and I seem to remember she wrote a thesis about the May Silks a while back.’

‘Sounds perfect. Is she in London?’

‘Tucked away in some village in Essex, I think. I can look her up.’

Ellie Bevan’s enthusiasm came bubbling down the telephone.

‘Wow. Double wow. If Annabel and Jo think they’re May Silks, they are probably right,’ she said, in a sing-song Welsh accent. ‘That’s extraordinary. If you can bring your quilt to me I can certainly try to verify them for you and at the same time see what we can do to clean and conserve it.’

‘When would be convenient?’

‘Next week?’ I could hear the pages of a diary being flipped. ‘Ah, I have a couple of hours free tomorrow morning, if that’s not too soon?’

‘Perfect.’ Her workshop wasn’t far from Holmfield so I could see Mum afterwards, and then go on to the cottage to finish sorting out the boxes.

There was still no news from Ben and, by now, after a few days of thinking about him and missing him, I was quite certain that I wanted to see him. Something felt unfinished: I needed to apologise properly and, hopefully, start again.

I texted:
I’ll be at the cottage this evening – are you free? I can promise log fire and a good bottle of wine! Cx

Ellie Bevan’s workshop was tucked away on the edge of an insignificant Essex town in a small industrial estate, a bleak place which appeared to be only part-occupied, judging by the boarded-up windows. Her premises were unidentified – a deliberate policy to avoid drawing attention to the valuable fabrics she housed. As instructed, I parked in the bay beside the funeral mason, and telephoned her. Soon afterwards, a short, dark-haired, blue-jean-clad woman in her middle years opened the door, welcoming me with a cheery smile.

The workshop, with its white walls, ceiling and floor, and brilliant overhead lights, had the intense, hushed atmosphere of an operating theatre. An enormous table dominated the centre of the room, covered with three long sections of faded pink damask on which two young women conservators were working, wielding their delicate instruments with surgical precision. Ellie explained that they were re-arranging the threads of the light-damaged silk in readiness for attaching a fine net backing to hold the delicate tissue in place. Much of her work was for public organisations like English Heritage and the National Trust, she told me, but they did get the occasional private customer.

She led me through to a room next door with another large table. ‘Now, let’s see what you’ve got,’ she said, pushing aside rolls of textile and piles of paper.

As we unfolded it out across the table, the quilt felt flimsy and fragile without its sheet backing and heavy wadding. Despite my attempts at cleaning, it still looked grubby and faded, but Ellie’s expert eyes were not deceived.

‘Well, that’s in a mess, but I can see it’s a very fine piece of work,’ she said approvingly, standing back and surveying it.

‘It’s the silks in the centre panels that Jo and Annabel were so excited about.’

‘Let’s make a start, then.’ She put on white gloves and trained her magnifying glass on the cream damask, exclaiming to herself: ‘Mmm … my goodness … how wonderful … quite extraordinary.’ After a few moments she said, ‘They were quite right, you know, this really does look like one of the May Silks.’

She wandered over to an untidy desk in the corner of the room, returning with a handful of loose sheets of paper, and a small booklet. ‘This is the brochure for a Warner Archive exhibition back in the nineteen eighties that I helped prepare,’ she said, handing it to me. ‘Unfortunately, the photos in the brochure are all in black and white, so to revive my memory I also checked online and printed these off.’

As she laid one of the photographs onto the quilt beside the central panel, I recognised it at once. ‘There it is! The very same pattern.’ It was a perfect match to the silk with its rose, shamrock and thistle design, and the garland of ribbons.

‘I think that’s pretty convincing, don’t you?’

She opened the booklet at the front page and read out loud:

In 1891 the Duchess of Teck announced that for the wedding of her daughter, Princess May, the dresses of the bride and bridesmaids would be of British silks, which were duly commissioned from the Silver Studio and woven by Warner Brothers. Sadly, the bridegroom, the Duke of Clarence, died only two weeks before the wedding. However, Princess May later became engaged to George, the Duke’s younger brother, and it was decided to use the so-called ‘May Silks’ for their marriage on July 6th 1893, instead. Her wedding dress was made from the finest white silk and silver thread with a rose, shamrock and thistle design, including May blossoms and true lover’s knots.

‘What a tragic story,’ I said. ‘But a triumph of royal pragmatism.’

She pointed to the triangular sections at each corner of the central panel. ‘This one is a different fabric. I haven’t got a photograph but I’m pretty sure it’s another May Silk.’ She read again from the booklet: ‘
Other designs by Arthur Silver, many of which featured a lily-of-the-valley design, were woven for use in the wedding trousseau
.’

She gave an appreciative sigh. ‘The fact that you have
two
designs here makes it even more likely. This has made my day! It’s certainly a first for me in thirty years of textile conservation.’

‘Does it need further authentication?’ I asked. ‘Miss Smythe-Dalziel talked about the need to study the weave structure, and strand testing.’

‘She’s right, of course. And we can certainly do that for you. I’d also like to trace the designs and match them against the whole repeat of the pattern, which is about this long’ – she held her hands about half a metre apart – ‘but I can tell immediately from what I can see from the weave, the pattern, and the fact that it’s obviously silk with silver threads, a bit tarnished now, of course, but obviously silver, and those three things are enough to convince me.’ She seemed transfixed, barely able to take her eyes from the fabric.

After a few long moments she turned to me: ‘Now, let me make you a coffee or tea and you can tell me where you found this extraordinary piece.’

As the kettle boiled in a small side kitchen, I tried to explain, in as few words as possible. ‘I inherited it from my granny but she was given it by someone called Maria who, we now know, worked as a seamstress at Buckingham Palace. She was later locked up in a mental asylum – Helena Hall, you’ve probably heard of it – and she was only released in the late fifties.’

Ellie looked doubtful. ‘The May Silks were woven long before, in the eighteen nineties. When did this woman work at the palace?’

‘She joined the staff when she was about fourteen, which would have been around nineteen ten,’ I said, making a quick calculation. ‘Shortly after that, the chief needlewoman went off sick and Maria was promoted. She talked about finding the fabrics in a basket in the needlework room, so they could have been collected and hidden away by her predecessor, some years before.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘How do you know all this?’

‘We discovered that Maria was interviewed by a sociology student at the University of Essex for a research project in the seventies, and I was lucky enough to have an afternoon listening to the tapes. She pretty much poured out her whole life story, but no one believed her. The hospital records have her as a delusional fantasist.’

‘How extraordinary. Was she really insane, do you think?’

‘On the tapes she sounds completely sane. And we traced the grandson of the friend who looked after her when she was released from hospital and he confirmed that at least part of the story was true. Maria and his grandmother both worked at Buckingham Palace together. But there are some parts of her story that we haven’t been able to prove yet.’

‘Such as?’ she prompted, raising an eyebrow.

‘Maria claimed she was locked up because she’d got pregnant with the Prince of Wales’s child. I know that really does sound like the fantasy of a madwoman, but take a look at this.’

We flipped the quilt over and I lifted the hemmed fabric at the back of one of the hexagons. ‘We found twenty of these and, rather than lift them out, we took photographs.’ I gave her the printout of the ‘letter’ that we had created. ‘We think it was sent from France during the First World War and was deliberately sewn into the quilt, to hide it.’

Ellie read it carefully. ‘Phew. I suppose you’re wondering whether it’s from the prince?’

I nodded.

‘Shame there’s no signature.’

‘I know. It’s so tantalising. We think she might have removed it on purpose, to conceal his identity.’

‘You photographed
all
of the templates?’ Ellie asked.

‘All those with writing on.’

‘And the ones without?’

What an odd question. ‘No, we didn’t bother with the blank ones.’

Ellie went to her desk again, and from a drawer she took a flat-ended smooth metal blade and a small torch. Examining each hexagon in turn, she carefully lifted the hems with the metal blade to reveal the template beneath and then placed her magnifying frame over the paper and shone her torch onto it from different angles. Five minutes passed, then seven, then ten, as she worked her way all around the border as I waited, wondering what she could be searching for.

Suddenly she shouted so loudly that it made me jump: ‘
Eureka!
Look at this.’

She took a couple of very long, fine pins, to fasten the fabric back so we could more easily examine the template beneath. At first all I could see was a blank piece of cream paper, but then, as she swivelled the beam of the torch from different angles, it became clear what she had discovered: an embossed mark, so flattened by wear and damp that it had become almost invisible, until highlighted by the bright, precise ray.