Belle - Lesley Pearse [131]
‘What can I help you with, madam?’ the old lady asked, stopping what she was doing.
She had to be at least sixty, her face was heavily lined and her back was stooped. Yet despite her drab black dress with only a cream lace collar and cuffs to lift it, she had bright eyes and a warm smile.
‘I just wanted to have a better look,’ Belle said. ‘I love hats and your window display is so pretty.’
‘Well, thank you, honey,’ the old lady replied. ‘And you’re English too. I always think Englishwomen have such good taste.’
Belle chatted to her about the hats for some little while, then, because the old lady seemed pleased to have some company, she admitted how she’d dreamed of becoming a milliner and having a hat shop.
‘Fancy that,’ the old lady exclaimed. ‘I never met anyone before who wanted to learn to make them. Most folk think I go somewhere and buy ’em ready-made. They don’t know it’s a real art doing the moulding and then the sewing and sticking.’
Belle was prepared to flatter and praise the old lady just so she could stay in the shop and feel marginally less alone for a while. She admitted she had no money to buy a hat, but tried some of them on and marvelled at how beautifully made they all were.
‘It’s good to see them modelled on someone as young and pretty as you,’ the old lady said. ‘Now, I’m Miss Frank, and I was just going to make myself a cup of coffee. Would you like one too?’
‘I’m Belle Cooper and I’d love some coffee,’ she replied. It was only after she’d blurted out her name that she remembered she was supposed to be Anne Talbot. She couldn’t take back her real name, but she resolved not to divulge anything else.
‘I always wanted to go to England,’ Miss Frank said, as she opened a door at the end of the shop to reveal a small kitchen. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever get there now, getting too darn old. But I’d have liked to see King Edward and his palace. Then there’s that tower where they used to cut off kings’ and queens’ heads.’
‘King Edward died last year, and King George has been crowned now,’ Belle said. ‘I went to see the Tower of London once, it’s a scary-looking place. They have men in red and gold uniforms guarding it called Beefeaters. But no one gets beheaded now.’
‘I’m very glad of that,’ Miss Frank chuckled. ‘Beheading wouldn’t be good for my business.’
Belle laughed, the first time she’d really done so since leaving Martha’s.
‘That’s better, hearing you laugh,’ Miss Frank said. ‘I saw your face as you were looking in the window and you looked so sad and forlorn. Are you homesick?’
Belle nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak because the concerned question made her eyes prickle with tears.
‘Staying here with relatives?’ Miss Frank looked over her glasses at Belle as she spooned some coffee into a pot.
Belle nodded, then, noticing a head-shaped contraption in the kitchen, she asked if it was for shaping hats, just to move the conversation away from herself.
‘Sure is. I fill the bottom part with water and boil it up, like a kettle. I put the felt or the canvas over the top and the steam shapes the crown. The big one at the top is called a block – I have many different kinds for all kinds of brims and crowns. I’ll show you how it’s done after we’ve had our coffee, that is, if you’d like to see it.’
Belle stayed in the shop for almost an hour, and Miss Frank showed her all kinds of things to do with millinery. She displayed drawers full of ribbons and braids, boxes of artificial flowers, and more still of feathers. It was all fascinating, and Belle admitted how she used to draw hats all the time back in England.
‘If you feel like drawing some again, I’d love to see them,’ Miss Frank said. ‘I’ve been doing this for so many years I dare say I’m getting a bit stale. Angelica’s, the dress shop in Royal Street in the Quarter, buys hats from me, and she did say last time I saw her that she could do with some cheekier designs.