The Proof of the Pudding.

By

Angharad.

Mum was overjoyed at the marks I got for dressmaking. Mind you, the dress did look very nice, though I told you, in order to show it I had to wear a padded bra and heels, which meant some tights as well–oh and the petticoat thing as well, to stop it riding up.

The dress was a jersey material and it fitted like a glove, but then I knew it would, I made it. My Nan was dressmaker and she taught Mum how to sew and Mum taught me. I told you that my sister was more interested in kicking a stupid ball around with her friends than making anything, except a mess. She was bigger and stronger than me, although she was a year younger. She did punch Bradley Sprugg in the mouth after he threw my sewing project over the wall and Mrs Heathcote had to get the caretaker to recover it for me. In all fairness, Shelley my sister had offered to go and get it, but that would have meant climbing over a seven foot wall and I wouldn’t let her. She calls me Allie as well, my friends in the sewing class do it and so does my mum. Dad only does it when he’s making fun of me.

He doesn’t approve of me doing what he thinks is girl stuff. I think it’s much more just fun making things. He bought me some construction models–if I wanted to make things; they were all warplanes–so I swapped them with Shelley for the Barbie he’d bought her. See, we got things right in the end, though I think we got the wrong bodies.

When I modelled the dress at the last class, I had to wear all the girl’s underwear, Mum had even got me some matching panties to go with the dress and the slip, some of the girls laughed until I put the dress on. I got the best marks in the class because I used difficult material–jersey stretches when you sew it. Then they stopped laughing, except Franny Cooper–but then she hates me anyway.

Her mother tried to stop me from taking part in the sewing class, she claimed because it was essentially a girl’s class it gave them chance to discuss things that might be embarrassing in front of boys. The school put her right on that straight away. There were opportunities for girls to speak with teachers about personal issues several times in every school day–so I kept my place in the class and the school kept their equality and diversity policy intact.

The class had been instructed that we would put on a fashion show wearing our own dresses on the last afternoon of term. Lucy and Debbie persuaded me to take part and Mrs Heathcote thought I was very plucky facing the whole school in a dress. Actually, it was more than the whole school, parents had been invited as well.

The idea was that it gave parents a chance to see their kids doing something they’d been working on for the whole term. We had a school orchestra, several pop type groups, a choir and a poetry group. So if the music didn’t deafen them, or the poetry bore them to sleep, they had us on the cat walk as the finale. I must admit I was more than apprehensive.

My hair is quite long and I let Mum take me to her salon to get it cut–she said tidied up for the end of term show. I came away with an even girlier cut than I’d had before. Then on the way home she helped me choose some makeup to wear. I loved it, but Dad would go nuts if he found out.

But while he was watching football every night with Shelley on Sky sports, Mum was teaching me how to apply a bit of foundation, some eyeliner, mascara and blusher. I had to line my eyebrows a bit as well, and finally stick some coloured lip gloss after I’d powdered everything to keep it neat. By the Friday, when the show was, I could do it all myself and fairly quickly. As a treat she also gave me a thing of perfume, and with Shelley’s consent, I borrowed a couple of her bracelets–she never wears them, and probably won’t unless David Beckham starts doing it.

The morning of the show, Mum helped me paint my nails a dusky pink colour the same as my dress and my lip colour. I had to keep my hands in my pockets when we went out of the house in case Dad saw them–he’d have gone ballistic. I had my dress in a dress bag with my lingerie–pronounced lan-jer-ee so Mum said–my makeup and a couple of books in my backpack, plus Shelley’s silver bangles.

Mum took us to school and as we got out, Shelley asked me if I had her bangles. I patted my pack and she said, “Oh you can keep ’em, I never wear them.” I almost squealed with delight and hugged her. “Gerroff, you big girl,” she said pushing me away, but if anyone else called me anything like that, she’d have thumped them. The problem was she was never there when it happened.

We were sent to our special classes after registration and I finally felt safe pulling my hands out of my blazer pockets. “Ooh, I like the nails,” gushed Lucy and Debbie agreed. Franny Cooper didn’t and had to say out loud, “Oh look, it’s wearing nail varnish.”

“So are you,” accused Lucy.

“But I’m a girl,” riposted Franny.

“Can we have a recount on that,” Lucy fired back.

“Ladies, please–let’s just enjoy today–and Franny, leave Allie alone, it’s as much her day as yours,” said Mrs Heathcote who’d long droppd the pretence of my being a boy–except I was a boy, just not a very butch one. Of course Franny got her knickers well and truly twisted.

“I’m not going out there with that,” she declared pointing at me.

“Oh, okay, but your parents are going to miss out on you showing off your dress.” Mrs Heathcote was taking no prisoners and I think was as fed up with Franny’s posturing as I was.

“But I’m a real girl,” she protested.

“A real pain in the arse,” came from the other side of the room and everyone except Miss Cooper laughed loudly–she blushed, then flounced out of the room, catching her dress on the corner of a table as she went–there was the sound of fabric ripping and she threw it down and ran off in tears.

“Serves her right,” said Debbie, but I felt rather sad for her, especially her ripping her dress. Mrs Heathcote picked it up, looked at it and shook her head. Thank goodness it had been marked for the exam, that would have been a real tragedy if it hadn’t.

We spent much of the morning learning how to walk in a catwalk style, that’s exaggerated movements, with sudden turns and abrupt stops. As I had to do mine in heels, Mrs Heathcote made me practice in them, it made quite a difference.

When lunchtime came, I was too uptight to eat anything and stayed in the sewing room. Melinda was the last to go and once she had, I found Franny’s dress and examined the tear. Much of it was a seam, so that would be relatively easy to do on the machine if they had some of the right coloured cotton. The actual rip would be more difficult and I’d have to oversew it first with some invisible thread then try and sew it back together. It was under the arm, so it might just work.

I had an hour I reckoned and after winding the bobbin with the appropriate thread I pinned then tacked the seam and re-sewed it on the machine. It looked okay. I then wound a bobbin with invisible thread–this is that horrible stuff they sometimes use for hems–it’s like very fine fishing line but being clear it hardly shows at all.

I selected a zigzag stitch and sewed the torn edges twice. Then, and this was the fiddly bit, I started sewing the tear by hand with as small a stitch as I could manage. I finished about five minutes before the girls started coming back. Of course Franny appeared with her mother and the dress was removed from where I’d replaced it.

Then they went to look at the tear. “Where is it?” asked Mrs Cooper.

“Under the arm seam,” offered Miss Heathcote and they began to examine the dress. “That’s strange,” said Mrs Heathcote.

“You repaired it?” asked Mrs Cooper.

“No, it wasn’t me.” She glanced at me and I looked away.

“But Frances could wear it in your show.”

“Of course she can.”

“So who fixed it? I’d like to thank them,” asked Mrs C.

“I don’t know, it must have been one of the older girls, it’s a very neat piece of repair work.”

“I can hardly see it,” said Mrs Cooper. She handed it to Franny and told her to try it on. She came back wearing it and it looked okay, at least I thought so.

“So who helped repair Fran’s dress?” asked Mrs Heathcote looking at Lucy, Debbie and I.

“Allie was the last out, Miss,” said Melinda dropping me in it.

“What that fairy mended my dress?” gasped Franny.

“Seems like the good fairy in your case,” asserted Lucy standing up and staring at her opponent.

“Did you repair the dress, Allie?” asked the teacher.

I blushed pinker than the dress I’d soon be wearing.

“Um–is it all right, Miss–the repair I mean?”

“It’s brilliant, and in an hour.”

“I wasn’t hungry.”

“I’d have preferred you asked before you did it, but the work is first class, who taught you to do that?”

“My mum, I tore the leg of some new trousers and she showed me how to mend it so it hardly showed.”

“Well done, I wish I could give you extra marks for your exam, but it’s too late for that. But thank you.”

The rest of the class applauded except Franny who sulked, still wearing the dress. She couldn’t decide if she would take part or not. She wasn’t sure she should wear anything touched by a boy.

“If I’d repaired it, would you have worn it then?” asked Mrs Heathcote.

“Of course.”

“Well, be thankful I didn’t because Allie has done a better job than I would have. Now make your mind up, and it might be nice if you thanked Allie for doing it.”

She sat and sulked some more.

I walked over to her. “I know you don’t like me, but I didn’t think it was fair that you’d worked on it all term and then because of an accident you couldn’t wear it to show the rest of the school. It’s a lovely bit of sewing and looks good on you.”

Her scornful look softened and she almost smiled. “Yeah, you’re right, it’s too good not to show the rest of them, and yeah, it does look good. Yeah thanks.” I smiled and walked away–that was as much of an acknowledgement as I would get. Mrs Heathcote smiled at me as I went into her cubicle to change.

The classroom became a mass of chattering prima donnas as we all put on our glad rags and did our makeup and hair. Lucy was astonished at me doing my own makeup, and Debbie smirked at her friend’s goldfish expression. When I squirted my perfume into the air and walked into it, she nearly wet herself.

“Pity you don’t have pierced ears, I have some earrings that would look nice with that dress,” she said. She and Debbie whipped me off to the corner and the next thing, Lucy shoved a pin through my earlobe and after squirting a little perfume on to it, boy didn’t that sting, she shoved through the ear stud. They did the same to my other ear and it was as much as I could do not to cry.

However, by the time we did our fashion show to music from a CD, I’d forgotten all about it. I strutted my stuff with the best of them, waggling my bum and at one point stopping and lifting my long hair with my hands, then shaking my head, before some more exaggerated steps, turning sticking out my bum, hand on my hip and a few more waggles before walking back to the start.

“Wow,” commented Mrs Heathcote, “That was Allie strutting her stuff in a dusky pink jersey dress. She got top marks in the dressmaking project and I learned just before we started this afternoon that she gave up her lunch hour to help repair one of the other girl’s dress which had become torn by accident. Another hand please for, Allie.”

There were no prizes or anything, but we did get to circulate in our finery and I had several people come up and congratulate me on my dress and exhibitionism. I was talking to Mum and Mrs Heathcote when Mrs Cooper came up.

“Is this the young lady who repaired my Frances’ dress?” I blushed but Mrs Heathcote said I was.

“Thank you so much, she was so upset at lunchtime, please accept this as our thank you.” She handed me a gift wrapped parcel.

“I can’t, honestly,” I said.

“Please, make your daughter accept my gift,” she said to my mum, who looked sternly at me.

“Thank you, very much,” I said and nearly died of embarrassment. When I unwrapped it later, it was a sewing box with all sorts of goodies in it, needles, tape measures, reels of different coloured threads. It was brill.

“You’ll need to write and thank her for that, it’s worth a lot of money,” said my mum firmly.

So that’s what I did, though I signed it, A Allison.