The Dress (Everyday Magic Trilogy: Book 1) (4 page)

Mamma’s needle stopped moving. Her eyebrows shot up in an expression of alarm.

‘What a funny thing to ask,
tesora
. A
witch
? Why would you think that?’

Ella held up the jar.

‘Well, this, for instance. It’s not exactly normal, is it? How you collect all these bits of thread and put them in this jar and, every time you do, you mutter something to yourself under your breath. Like a kind of spell… Well, you
do
, don’t you?’

Mamma waved her hand dismissively.

‘Ah. That’s just a silly habit. Something Madaar-Bozorg used to do. It’s not a spell. It’s more of a superstition. Each time I come to the end of a bit of thread I say, “Bless this house and keep us all from harm.” I’ve been doing it for so long that I’m almost afraid to stop doing it now. You see? Silly nonsense, really.’

Ella frowned.

‘But what about the words you’re embroidering right now. The words you hide in the clothes… in the hems and the pockets. You used to tell me they were spells… Words to give people luck or special powers…’

Mamma sighed and smoothed her fabric on the table.

‘Again, Ella, habit. A thing I like to do. It makes me feel good about what I’m making for people. Something beautiful. Something… yes, well,
secret
. You remember, I told you these words were spells when you were very little, long before we had a shop, when I used to make things as gifts for the people who’d been kind to us. I was teasing you. We were just playing together. And yes, I suppose the words
are
a kind of magic. But only in the way that I put peppermint leaves and rose petals in your bathwater… to help you relax, to help you have sweet dreams… or the way that I tell you stories, like Madaar-Bozorg and her sisters told them to me, to help you to understand things, see things in a different way. Or the way I make
torta
and bowls of pasta like your father used to do…’

She looked at Ella. ‘Oh, I can see that I’m not convincing you. But you know, you could even say that the way we dress the shop window, to make a little bit of pleasure for our customers, is magic. Because the world is
full
of magic when you know where to look. It’s in the river, the way it moves and in that pot of basil on the windowsill, the way the leaves know exactly how to grow, how to create themselves… and,’ she patted the silk on the table, ‘it’s in this fabric, here, the way it has a flow and a feeling all of its own when I move my needle through it… But really,
tesora
, this magic is not an “Abracadabra, I turn you into a frog, I make you disappear” kind of magic. This magic is more like… like
love
…’

‘OK. I get that part.’ Ella tried to hide her impatience. Something didn’t feel quite right about this conversation. It was as if Mamma were weaving around them both a cocoon of soft colours - pastel blues, silvery pinks, a smudge of primrose-yellow - whilst somewhere underneath, she could feel a pulsing, a thrumming, something bolder - red vibrations, streaks of lightning-white and black jagged edges.

From the corners of the room, she imagined that she could hear voices and echoey laughter, insistent, repeating Mamma’s words in a way that sounded almost mocking:
Abracadbra, abracadabra. Magic, magic, lu-uuurve magic. 

She shivered.

‘But what I don’t understand, Mum, is these weird feelings I’m getting all the time now – colours and feelings  and… well, you know, really strange
vibes
?’ 

‘Yes, The Signals,’ said Mamma. ‘That’s what I’ve always called them. I thought you were starting to feel them too. You’ve heard people talk about sixth sense, I’m sure. And that’s what we have – you and me and Madaar-Bozorg and her mother before that and probably her mother before that… You see, your mind, Ella, and your body are very powerful instruments. You should always listen to what they tell you about the world. They’ll always serve you well…’

So why do I feel so cold, right now? Ella thought. Why don’t I trust what she’s saying? It’s not as if I don’t want to.

‘Mamma?’ she said and her voice sounded small, thin, afraid.

‘Yes,
tesora
?’

‘What about the box under your bed?’

Mamma’s face froze. She drew herself up straighter in her chair. 

‘What do you know about that?’ she said, quickly. ‘Ella, some things are very private.’

Ella felt Mamma’s green eyes reaching deep inside her.

‘Yes, Mum. I know. I wasn’t snooping. I promise.’ She made a quick gesture. ‘Honest. Cross my heart and hope to die…’

‘Don’t
say
that, Ella! I’ve told you before,’ Mamma snapped.

‘Well, don’t tell me that magic is only about cooking and sewing and… and
love
,’ said Ella, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she could stop them. ‘Because that’s not the whole truth, is it? I saw you opening that box when we were moving here. I saw you taking out the candles and that big old book and a lot of other weird stuff… I’m not a little girl any more. I wish you’d just tell me…’

 Mamma sighed again, heavily. It was as if all the anger were seeping out of her. Ella felt it gently flowing away in long, muscular ripples.

‘
Tesora
, you have to trust me,’ she said, laying her hand over Ella’s own. Her touch was warm, soothing. Ella felt a tongue of mauvish light creeping through her fingers, reaching up as far as her elbows.

‘Trust me, Ella
-issima.
What’s in that box is
not
magic. It’s just props. You know, staging. Just like my old stage costumes. Candles, an old scrapbook that I made as a girl. Cards – tarot, I-Ching, Goddess – I’ll show you them all if you like. Old bags of herbs that Madaar-Bozorg gave me. But they are not something I play with any more. Do you understand? They are part of the past. Part of the Old Ways, the Old Country. We don’t need them.
You
do not need them. You have education, books, opportunities, so many ways to make the world bend in your direction. You can be anything you want to be. And we mustn’t make ourselves different, Ella, any more than we already are. This much I have learned – the hard way. So
carina
, you have to trust me… You mustn’t talk about magic or spells or any of these things to anyone else. Not Billy, not anyone at school, OK? Because they won’t see it the way we do...’

Ella felt the cold glitter of Mamma’s rings as she reached to stroke her cheek and cup her chin with her hand.

‘
Do you
understand what I’m saying, Ella?
Do
you? We
have
to fit in here. Sink… or swim…’

‘Yes,’ Ella muttered. ‘OK, Mum. OK.’

That night, Ella slept deeply behind the old curtain that Mamma had rigged up to divide their bedroom into two separate halves.

The curtain was a faded rose colour, with shepherdesses and sheep wandering all over it in gold brocade.

‘We can count these sheep,’ Mamma laughed, ‘when bad dreams come.’

 Ella dreamed of an autumn tide, its swell washing up against the stone walls of the city and in and out of the shop door. The water entered everywhere, smooth and brown as rippled silk. As it receded, it left behind a flotsam of jewels and feathers.

She felt herself rocked by the movement of the water. Her heart floated loose in her chest, like a water lily drifting above its long stem.

She lifted the hem of her nightdress and walked down the narrow stairs to the shop, over and over, over and over, the carpet squelching up between her toes.

The woman with the long hair had climbed down too, from her place high above the shop doorway, and she stood in the middle of the shop, smiling, her hair flowing over her shoulders and down over her bare feet, making miniature whirlpools on the wooden floor. 

In the distance, Ella heard the Minster bells chime three o’ clock. The woman pointed in the direction of the sound with her pale fingers.

‘Listen’ she laughed. ‘Sink or swim? Sink or swim?’

In the morning, there was no sign of Mamma. Ella poked her head around the dividing curtain. The bed looked unslept in. She made her way down the shop stairs, rubbing at her eyes.

‘Ta da!’ Mamma turned to her, spreading her hands vaudeville style. ‘What do you think?’

Ella saw that the window was finished. The mannequin had her hand on her hip and her head tilted at an angle, as if she were listening to far-off music. She was wearing a 1930s black cocktail dress with hundreds of tiny pearl buttons down the back. At her feet, shawls and scarves, which Mamma had twisted and coiled to imitate waves, spilled in brilliant colours. She’d positioned a silk umbrella so that you could almost believe the wind had snatched it, just a moment ago, out of the mannequin’s upturned hands, and from the ceiling she’d suspended paper leaves, each one turning gently on a single thread of silver.

Ella recognised the velvet hat stands, their haughty profiles newly adorned with plumes and headpieces. On the counter, a blue calfskin travelling case spilled sparkling necklaces and brooches.

She admired the new white labels, each inscribed meticulously in Mamma’s flowing copperplate script: ‘Sweet little 1930s ballerina brooch. £6,’ ‘1930s art deco crystal dress clips. Perfect for décolletage. £19,’ ‘Delightful 1950s lizard brooch. £11.’

There were gowns arranged along rails at each side of the shop and silk kimonos floating from the ceiling, their sleeves and skirts pinned like the wings of butterflies.

Across an alcove, Mamma had formed a sort of fitting room behind an old theatre curtain with gold tassels and fringe. She’d propped an antique mirror against the wall at the precise angle to catch your reflection and throw it back at you in such a way that your neck and legs appeared immediately longer.

The walls of the fitting room were painted deep red and hung with some of Mamma’s old publicity photos: a nineteen-year-old Fabbia Moreno sporting a bikini made of green crystals with a plume of emerald feathers sprouting from her head; a poster for The Songbirds and their ‘Sizzling, Scintillating, Sell-out Show’ with Fabbia at the centre of the line, caught forever in a high-kick, smiling and smiling; and this black-and-white close-up, Mamma’s personal favourite, dark hair flowing over pale sculpted shoulders, eyes downcast, full lips and the tiniest, most tasteful hint of cleavage.

As a little girl, Ella had loved these pictures, constantly asking questions about them: ‘Tell me again, Mamma, about Paris…’

Her dressing-up box had held bits of the old costumes.

Now, seeing them here on the changing room wall, she felt nervous, on edge in a way she couldn’t really explain.

Mamma was still moving around the shop, arranging pairs of shoes on a small table, their heels nested one inside another, their toes turned out, as if requesting the next dance. She’d made still-lives of gloves and handbags and compact mirrors and fan-shapes of handkerchiefs and scarves.

‘It’s beautiful, Mum. Much better than our old place.’

Mamma stopped and picked up an elbow-length green silk glove, laying it along her forearm like a favourite pet.

‘You think? You honestly think,
tesora
?’

Ella nodded. ‘I do. In fact, it’s wicked.’

Mamma laughed that deep throaty laugh of hers. ’
Wicked
? Ah, I like this new word. Wicked…’  She snapped open a pearlescent plastic compact shaped like a shell and patted at the shadows under her eyes.

‘Look at me!
Tsk
. What a sight. And still more boxes to do. Coffee. Let’s make some coffee...’

‘Mum, have you slept at all?’

‘Not really,
tesora
. My mind was too busy, too full of things to do.’

Ella followed her up the stairs.

‘You have to sleep, Mum. Why don’t you lie down for a bit and I’ll wake you in a couple of hours?’

Mamma turned mid-stair, frowning.

‘Because you have to go to school,
tesora
.’

‘Not today. It’s Saturday, Mum.’

As she watched her mother moving around the kitchen, selecting her favourite cups, delicate white porcelain with a gold rim, flicking stations on the radio, banging the filter of the coffee pot against the side of the sink to dislodge the old grounds, running water, Ella turned over the Mamma Problem in her mind.

She’d thought about it a lot over the past few years. Mamma’s tendency to work all hours at something, to forget to sleep or eat. Her organisational brilliance when it came to sourcing vintage clothes at fleamarkets and fabrics from wholesalers all over the country, scouring eBay for bargains and transforming junk-shop finds, coupled with her occasional inability to remember what day of the week it was.

Ella was different. She liked to have a carefully-drawn out timetable of all her activities at school so that she could be sure that she’d packed her bag the night before with the right books and PE kit, the envelopes with trip money or club money and even, where necessary, the right notes to the teacher, which she’d draft out carefully on the telephone pad and then ask Mamma to copy and sign in her own beautifully flowing handwriting.

‘So organised,’ Mamma would say, ruffling her hair. ‘But really,
tesora
, you worry too much.’

To Ella, everything about Mamma was a kind of contradiction: the dramatic outfits and red lipstick with her desire to fit in; her love of everything that was brave and colourful and different – in dresses, food, languages, people, places – with her respect for British people and their very reserved and careful British ways; and, of course, the secret at the heart of it all, the thing that Ella alone knew, that Mamma was only pretending to be Italian. 

She wondered how other people would react, here in this new sleepy city, to the opening of Mamma’s shop, her window displays, the photos in the fitting room and all her little eccentricities.

As Mamma pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and yawned and stretched her arms wide, circling them to release the ache in her shoulder blades, Ella felt that surge of feeling again. She wanted to protect Mamma from the raised eyebrows and the unfair bitchy gossip; but privately she wished that, this time,  her mum would just get a nice, quiet job - secretary or teaching assistant or something at least half-way normal - and then she immediately felt guilty for even thinking such things.