In which a fitting takes place...

A mountain lies ahead...

The car pulled up next into the shade of a lime tree, a blessing after the unusually hot sun for mid-April.  The weather hadn’t quite come out of nowhere, but it was sufficiently warmer than any day had been for months that the young lady in the passenger seat – pale and tired – could feel the sun’s fingers on her skin start to burn her cheeks.  Two and a half hours earlier, as she had set off, it had been sunny, but still cool, and she was still feeling the cleanliness of having swum half a mile in the cool of dawn.  As they had sped east, she fell asleep to the lulling voice on the radio, finally resting after a sleepless night. 

On arrival at the building, the cool interior was inviting despite the austerity, though once inside, the echoes of people singing, moving, created a quite cacophony of disorientating noise.  Arriving at a wall with a window in, the girl approached cautiously, determined not to stutter. 

The chap behind the counter smiled encouragingly and said ‘Hello!’

‘Hi, I’m here to meet A.D.?’

‘Ooo kay, I haven’t seen her yet today, but that doens’t mean she isn’t here, I’ll give her a call...Ah ha! You are in, may I send your visitor through?  Thank you.’ Turning to me, ‘please sign in.’

She signed in and pushed through the turnstile into a foyer with seats in.  Seating herself here, she looked around at blank walls, a disappearing staircase, several doors and a digital advertisement screen.  A few people floated through, passing from doorway to stair or vice versa.   

Eventually, through a door behind me a lady in black whisked through and said, ‘do you want to come through here?’

‘A?’

‘Yes, you haven’t been here before have you?’

‘No.’

‘Come on in!’

Into a corridor and in through the first door into a high-ceilinged room that held an explosion of colour.  A couple of rails held a few undergarments and costumes; a dress stand with a blue regency gown on stood in the corner; boxes of material were stacked under an enormous table in the middle of the left-hand wall, a rainbow rack of thread spools ranged along the back; a shelf held cartoon-style headdress-heads of animals; a book shelf over flowed with tomes next to a fitting area and mirror; industrial machines lined the right-hand wall and, above that, box after box above box filled with patterns, shoes, accessories and small props filled the wall right up to the ceiling.  Suspended above the large table were two items: a box of chocolates and a box for a champagne bottle.  Attached the chocolate was a note saying ‘ bad gift idea’, and on the champagne was ‘good gift idea’. 

The girl crept in behind A’s bustling motion, her suit-bag clutched in one hand, handbag pressed against her other side.  A offered  to get her a drink, and, quietly, the heat from outside still glowing on her cheeks, the girl asked for a glass of water and A avidly filled two glasses and joined her.

Knowing it was still a bit early for the actors to arrive, A continued bustling around looking at designs, and chattering about the performances that were coming up.  The school puts on about twenty-five productions a year; some of these were small, student-devised pieces, some were whole-year-group efforts with casts of forty-five, and everything else in the middle.  The three suits that the girl and her two fellow students were being asked to make were destined for their costume store, giving them something for a tall actor, a shorter but stockier actor and a small-all-over actor. 

Right on time, before the others had arrived, the girl’s actor, J, the tall one, arrived, smiling and genial; a willing model.  The girl shook hands with him, introducing herself to him in an attempt to try and calm her nerves, terrified that she would trip over her own feet or simply throw up. 

‘Shall we get started then?’ said A, still moving here and there sorting out other things. 

The girl undid the suit bag and handed the trousers to J, hoping her hands weren’t shaking to visibly, and explained how they were open at the back rather than the front.  Organising herself while J gingerly pulled on the green tweed, it became obvious that they were a snug fit around his dancer-muscled legs, but they went on and actually the girl was very pleased with how they fit around the waist.  The top area of the legs, however, that would have to be changed if he was to move and dance in them with any kind of ease.  She pinned on the braces and tucked in the seam allowance, turned up the hem, pinning them at the back to the level of his heel.

‘Is that ok to wear, apart from the top?’

‘Yeah,’ J looked at himself in the mirror, posing slightly.  ‘They’re good.  Though as you say, I wouldn’t want to dance in them just at the moment.’ He flexed his legs in a demi plié in fourth position, not feeling safe to do a full plié.

He smiled and she helped him into the waistcoat, which fit him beautifully.  His glance in the mirror was more impressed now – maybe green tweed appeals, the girl thought.

One of the girl’s friends turns up and the girl feels a little better, though still a little at a loss.

A curiosity caught the girl’s eye.  Across his back, the lines of the material’s pattern, that she has spent much time sitting precisely straight on the paper pattern, curved up slightly over his left shoulder.

‘Are you left-handed?’ She asked, intrigued.

‘Yes,’ he replied, surprised, ‘I am.  Why?’

‘Your left shoulder has more muscle on it, it has been used more than your right.’

‘Oh!  I carry my bag on my right, though.’

‘That has probably pulled it down slightly accentuated your left then.’

A finds this very funny and teases J about it. 

In the heat of the room, J asks if he can take the jacket off now, and the girl assists him after taking some photos, hoping they come out all right as her hands are still shaking.

Both of the others were now there and as J returned into his own clothes, two other actors arrived for them. 

The girl thanked J.  He smiled and said ‘no problem,’ and left.  The girl sat down gratefully on a chair and stayed to give her opinion on her friends’ fittings, feeling more confident in a chair and not the one surveying her own work any more.  She hadn’t fallen over and she hadn’t thrown up. 

Thanking A at the end, the three girls departed into the sunshine in quest of a place to have a drink and a chat. The streets were bustling, traffic of both automotive and human sorts, the heat seeping from the stone and tarmac.  The breeze is warm and it feels like waking from a dream, the past hour something that could have happened, or could have not, save for the dying butterflies in the girl's stomach.

Thinking back on her own fitting, the girl is unhappy with herself, but striving to counteract her negative thoughts with the fact that there was still work to be done and space for improvement.  One mountain surmounted.  The range remains, some traversed, the rest still to come.

Climbing from the car in the fading heat of the day after sitting through the traffic heading west, she was more than tired, eager to be on her own and away from the noise of the city. 

In the sitting room, her cat curled up wit h her, comforting and warm, not caring that her owner was trying to become a tailor despite her doubts. What did cats care for tailoring besides giving them a comfortable lap to sit on.  I must think like a cat for a while, thought the girl.  Let me be still, in a warm place and everything else is not needed or important for a few hours...