The Memory Dress

Chapter Forty

FORTY

Jayne

“There is only one dress left in the sequence of sketches,” I say to Meredith. The two of us are nestled in her memory room, a pot of morning tea and a plate of custard cream biscuits keeping us company. She has said nothing of the letter from the crematorium, but I can see it on the floor where she left it, face down. “It’s the one that Diana wore to New York, according to the handwriting. To the CFDA Awards. I looked it up, it stands for…”

“Council of Fashion Designers of America,” Meredith says, finishing my sentence. “I don’t enjoy making this dress.”

“That’s the first time you’ve ever said that,” I point out, and wait for her to elaborate, but she falls silent. I give her the time she needs, just as I have learned to. She shuffles up a little straighter in her chair. “Everything is changing. Things are being done differently. It doesn’t suit me anymore.”

“At work do you mean, Meredith? How is it different?”

She stands and pulls the sketch away from the peg it’s attached to. “This dress makes them all sit up and take notice. It has a built-in corset and is lined in blue silk. It feels like butter in my fingers. It’s flawless, she is flawless. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look so sculpted.” She raises a hand and tucks her hair back behind her ear. “Her hair is different, too, slicked back, more modern. More beautiful than she has ever been, if you can even imagine it.” She traces a finger across the neckline of the dress. “Do you remember the pearl choker?”

“Incredible, wasn’t it?” I say despite the fact I have never seen it before.

“Then five matte blue satin rouleaux that cross at the back.” She turns the sketch over expecting to see them on the reverse of the card, but there is nothing there. “Incredibly difficult to get right.” She smiles then, more mischievous this time. “?‘The been there, done that New York fashion crowd stopped dead in their tracks,’ that’s what the press says. I must have read the cuttings a hundred times. They’ll be in this room somewhere.” She casts her hand around. “Along with that beautiful picture of us all at the palace before this dress and all the others are sent on their way.”

Then her face falls again. “It should be a career highlight, but it isn’t.”

“Why, Meredith? Can you remember what’s wrong?” I keep my gaze on the noticeboard dominating one of the walls. I don’t want her to feel watched.

“Everyone is worried she won’t come back.”

“Is that why you’re sad? You think you might not make any more dresses for the princess?”

“No. I don’t like James. He’s so different from William.” She starts to fidget in her chair, putting down her cup and saucer, then picking it up again. “Loves the sound of his own voice. Why can I always hear his voice above everyone else? He never consults me like William does.”

“What is James’s job, Meredith?”

Her eyes glass over and I can see she is visualizing something that is far beyond the four walls surrounding us today. “He insists on using shorthand, it’s always RSU and SA and CF. William always took the time to write his notes in full. How much sweeter the memory of this dress may have been if he had worked on it with me.”

“Oh, I see. And why didn’t he?”

She shakes her head. Her eyelids look heavy and I stop asking questions, knowing she needs to rest. Just as her eyes are closing, she mutters, “I’ve read those articles so many times. It’s the next best thing to being there, I suppose.”

While she sleeps, I dig a little deeper into the memory room. There is so much here, none of it in any discernible order, although I know it all makes sense to her. I find a stack of old newspaper cuttings. Wealthy-looking women with big, stiff hairstyles are pictured alongside some of the dresses I now recognize as the ones Meredith made. It doesn’t seem right to me. That they get to enjoy these incredible gowns with no appreciation of the sacrifice that was required to make them, the couple who devoted at least ten years of their lives together to bringing this fantasy to life—and at the expense of what?

There are other dresses too. A short pale blue cocktail dress embroidered with scrolls of glass beads is dated 1995, when Meredith and William were still juggling busy lives in London with a small child. I wonder how close they were to making their decision to leave the capital by then. Had they started to discuss it? As these gowns were bought and sold across the globe, new more wealthy women outbidding one another to step into the same slip of silk that walked the halls of Buckingham Palace or traveled thousands of miles on foreign tours—how then were Meredith and William settling into their new lives in Bath? As Fiona grew up, how much farther did their dresses scatter? Who was wearing them by the time Fiona disappeared from Meredith’s and William’s lives? Is this how Meredith traces her life, when she is looking at her newspaper cuttings and the faded photography that charts her own journey?

I read how another long-sleeved ball gown changed hands several times before it was eventually bought in 2016 by the Fashion Museum, right here in Bath. The very one Meredith and I saw that day, back at the beginning.

I pick up the wonderful framed image of the Catherine Walker team at Kensington Palace in April 1997, pictured together a couple of years after Diana wore the last dress in the sequence to the awards ceremony in New York, an event I now know Meredith did not attend herself. And just a precious few months before Diana’s own death. I swallow hard at the horrible, unknowing innocence of the image. All those proud, smiling faces with no idea what was to come. The thought makes my stomach tighten. My eyes settle on Meredith then and I notice for the first time that her gaze is not directed at the camera. It is on William, when you might assume it would more likely be on the princess. She is the only one in the picture not quite smiling.

Why didn’t Meredith make that trip to New York when I feel sure she would have wanted to? Fiona was old enough to be left by then, and Meredith had trusted William to care for her alone before. I wipe the glass of the picture frame, releasing a plume of dust into the room. It doesn’t bother me like dust in my own apartment might. Everything in this room feels like it is a cherished part of Meredith and William, that it belongs here. To disturb it is one thing but to remove it would be unthinkable now.

I place the photograph back where I found it, spying a Christie’s catalog just underneath. I lift it and start to thumb through its pages, seeing again some of the dresses that feel so familiar to me now. I find a sheet of paper lodged inside the back cover. It charts every one of the dresses sold at the auction and the sum of money that each lot raised. I scan through the numbers and feel a swell of pride. The very first dress that Meredith ever worked on, the one worn to the fashion awards at the Royal Albert Hall, has raised a staggering six-figure sum. One dress is notable for its absence. Lot number 19, the dress that was gifted to Meredith and lies, still, in her bedroom. What might it be worth now, I wonder?

There is a small antique trunk on the floor, its catches sprung open. I gently lift its lid with my index finger, not sure what I’ll find hidden inside. It’s more dresses, tiny this time and made in playful colors for a special little girl. As I lift them from the trunk, they grow in size, some of the larger ones so pristine it’s as if they’ve never been worn. Each one has a sketch pinned to its collar or neckline, a loose outline of the dress that it became and the girl who would wear it. My eyes move back to the noticeboard, the photographs of Fiona there, transforming from a baby in her mother’s arms to a young woman, then nothing more, as if she is frozen in time. It’s subtle but I can see her in the sketches. The way the pencil has captured the determined arch of her eyebrows, the straightness of her back, and the slim contours of her body, the desire to impress in her face. It’s definitely her. I lift the first dress and hold it up to the window. Meredith did not save all her skills for Diana. The stitches are tight and neat, the hem perfectly folded, the scalloped edging on the collar carefully picked out in a contrasting color. It’s a wonderful show of love, captured forever without the need to say a word.

I replace it and my fingers find the glossy cover of an estate agent’s brochure for this apartment. It is dated with the year 2000, which I’m guessing must have been when William and Meredith viewed and then bought this place. I look at the images inside, the personality-free rooms, styled to sell. Nothing like they are today with their layers and layers of life. Decades of history and memories, the light and shade of a love affair and marriage that we have been trying so hard to piece together again.

“Ahh,” says Meredith, cracking her eyes back open. “I thought that was the answer to everything.” Her eyes fall on the apartment brochure. “A solution to all the worry.” There is no bitterness in her words, more a sad resignation that she was wrong about something that I simply don’t have the time to explore right now.

While she shuffles off to return our plates to the kitchen, I quickly google an email for Christie’s sales department and drop them a brief note, explaining the dress Meredith owns and asking how we might go about getting a valuation for it. It would be useful to know at least. I follow her into the kitchen. “Did you get a chance to read the letter I gave you, Meredith?”

She looks at me blankly, like she hasn’t got the faintest idea what I am talking about. I could fetch it now, we could read it and face together whatever the contents may be, but it will take time and sensitivity and much more thought, and I feel the pull to be with someone else. I want to put my own needs first today. Maybe I’m finally comfortable with the idea of that.

I briefly wonder, as I watch her rinsing the plates without using any soap, if I should stay and keep her company. Would she prefer me to?

No, actually, I don’t think she would. Not if she understood why I am cutting short our time together today. So, I say goodbye and leave because I want, more than anything, to spend the afternoon with Jake. And I think she’d approve.