The new jacket trapped Ruth's elbow halfway to her face.
“That's not ideal,” Ruth said. “I do eat.”
Mara unfastened the calico cuff and tried again. This time the elbow rose, but took the shoulder with it. Ruth looked at the mirror, wearing the jacket over her ordinary T-shirt, and gave Mara a patient, discouraging smile.
“Tea?” she suggested.
“In a minute. I know what's wrong.”
Ruth held still while Mara changed the basting beneath the arm. It was Thursday afternoon. Two tables had become three in the workroom, with the blue dress on the second form and its empty box occupying the only clear patch near the sink. There was nowhere to put down a cup without deciding what it might damage. The wedding dress stood covered at the back.
“Try now.”
Ruth raised both arms. The jacket stayed at her waist.
“Oh.” She did it again. “That's much better.”
Mara laughed with relief. She had worked until one on this and spent the morning imagining it on a body that did everything she intended. Now Ruth turned, reached behind herself and lifted an imaginary plate from a high shelf. Mara watched the cloth give her room. This was what she'd wanted to show.
“Can I lift something heavier than air on Sunday?”
“A plate? Yes. Not the cake.”
“I wasn't going to bring the actual cake.”
Mara smiled and took the jacket off her. Ruth sat in her own clothes, rolling her shoulders. “And that one?” she asked, nodding toward the blue dress.
“We won't be putting you in it. It's too small, for a start.”
“I thought it might be.”
“It can demonstrate on the table. You'll do the living bit.”
Mara opened the blue bodice's fastening and settled the upper part on a padded support, keeping the skirt carried across the table. The outer sleeve was narrow, part of a long sweep from shoulder to hip. When she'd unpacked it she'd admired the way Clara had turned the blue cloth across itself. It had none of the straightforward shape of Mara's old eveningwear sketches.
She put a small roll beneath the sleeve and raised it a few inches while supporting the body. Inside, a folded panel opened below the arm. The outside barely changed.
Her hand stopped on the roll.
“Like mine?” Ruth asked.
“Like it in what it does.”
Mara lowered the sleeve. The fold settled into a long hooked point. At one edge a short wedge joined it to the side. She could remember cutting that wedge too narrow and having to start again because the seam had landed exactly where a woman's arm would rub.
She looked more closely, lifting only the loose lining flap. Two joins, offset rather than meeting at the armpit. The long panel went into the inner sleeve first, then the side; the outside closed over it last. She knew that awkward order. She had spent a whole Saturday finding it.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. I need to check something.”
She put the blue sleeve back on its support before she moved. The black case was upstairs where she kept the old work. She came down with her calico and the paper pattern beneath it. Ruth had stood to let her pass.
“I'm due back at four,” she said. “I said I'd mind my grandson.”
“Of course. I'm sorry.” Mara checked the time, forced herself to look at the new jacket instead. “Sunday at two, then. I'll pay you for today now.”
She made the transfer while Ruth put on her cardigan. The amount was modest, but it was her time and Mara had used it. At the door Ruth looked back at the crowded tables.
“Do let me know if Sunday's changed.”
“I will.”
When she was alone, Mara laid the old calico beside the blue sleeve without letting either drag. Her prototype was unlovely, brown at the folds, one section marked in green pencil because she'd run out of red. She could lift the arm and see the little opening beneath it; lower it and watch the cloth fold flat. She had thought it would make a useful small range. Dresses a woman could wear all evening without choosing between a clean line and being able to reach somebody.
A folded panel wasn't hers alone. People had been putting extra cloth under arms for longer than she had been alive. But this whole shape was hers: the long hooked piece, the wedge, the altered join order. On her pattern she had written M2—inner lift, move side join forward, and drawn the second cutting line where the first had rubbed. The technical pattern in the blue box followed that second line. Its copied working name, M2, sat beneath a later label code.
She put a tracing sheet over the two patterns. The shapes and notches met. She turned the paper, checked the wedge, then the place where the long panel stopped short of the waist. The blue bodice outside was different. Its working inside came from the tracing she had left Clara.
Her own notes were dated in March. The ordinary production sheet in the box put the blue dress in the winter range that followed, after the accusations had gone to the shops. Mara had been unpicking the samples she could no longer sell while Clara's people cut this in silk.
She sat down before her legs made her do it.
For years she had thought the abandoned range had simply stopped. She could remember packing it: the fold, the lid that wouldn't close, the little angry decision not to throw anything out. Now a part of it lay in blue across her table. It had gone to dinners. It had sat for a portrait. Someone had raised her arms inside it and enjoyed the freedom Mara had worked out in calico.
Elias knocked and came in carrying the mirror bracket she'd asked him to find. He was smiling. “Did it work?”
“Yes.”
He looked toward the new jacket, then saw what else she'd laid out. He put the bracket down.
“What is it?”
She showed him. First the fold opening, then her old pattern, then the later one. He followed her hands. When she reached the production date, his eyes went back to the blue dress.
“I didn't know,” he said.
“I know you didn't.” She couldn't bear another conversation about what he'd kept from her. This was cloth in front of them. “I gave her a tracing to look at. I never agreed she could put it into production.”
“Could somebody else have—” He stopped and looked at the joined shapes again.
“Changed it? Yes. They changed the outside. This is still the arrangement I made. I can show where it came from. I can't show you a seam that tells me who said what on a telephone.”
He sat opposite her. Neither touched the blue dress.
“I'm supposed to stand there on Sunday and show how her work led to mine,” Mara said. “It's the other way round in this piece.”
He looked toward the invitation pinned beside the door.
“I want to do it,” she said. “That's the part I can't get past. I still want the room and the women coming in and my name on the new things.”
He moved his hand toward hers. She put hers under it, holding on too hard.
“Noel needs to confirm the display arrangements tomorrow,” he said.
“Then he can come here. I won't demonstrate it as wholly hers.”
She took the invitation down before Elias left. She had only put it up the day before.