Things to Make and Mend Read Online Free Page B

Miss Button would say as she strode past their table of gloomy pattern-cutters. And Rowena would begin to pull the scarf slowly from her neck. But then, when Miss Button had moved on, she would stop. Style, allure, was important, particularlyat the end of the day when encountering boys from the school up the road. You would take your scarf off and put it back on again when the teachers were not looking. Sitting at your desk, you would wrap it several times around your neck, put your hands up to your round, moon-like face (your nails varnished apple green, your hair long and sweeping), and sigh. Sometimes you would put a Black Jack in your mouth and chew. Black Jacks were ironic. Eating Black Jacks (while sewing and wearing floating scarfs) was ironic. This was the tail-end of the dreamy Seventies. The punk look had begun to clash with that of the skulking hippy. Rowena and Sally still dressed somewhat feyly, like medieval ladies-in-waiting. They would peer at Miss Button through their long fringes and tap their green-varnished fingernails against their cheeks. Sally kept her packet of Black Jacks on her lap or behind the big Bernini sewing machine, and would take it out to share with Rowena when Miss Button was not looking. By eleven-fifteen the packet would be empty and they would feel slightly sick, mainly with themselves. Their needlework was not progressing. They had both been working on the same blouson for months. Sally had not even got as far as sewing on the neck interfacing.
    ‘Hey, Ro.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Do you think Miss Button’s got new eyeliner? A blue one? Not her usual lovely mud shade …’
    ‘Mm-hmm. I think it’s one of those glittery ones. You know, like those ones we looked at in Boots.’
    ‘Do you think she’s going out on a date?’
    ‘Well, who could resist? With that eyeliner on?’
    ‘I think she’s …’
    ‘Sally Tuttle,’ Miss Button’s voice snapped, interrupting her own dictation. ‘Are you with us? What was that last sentence about?’
    ‘It was about knots.’
    ‘It was not,’ Miss Button said. ‘It was not “abaht” knots. The knots sentence was two sentences back. Stop nattering and keep up.’
    Sally looked at Miss Button, sitting behind her de-luxe teacher’s sewing machine, wearing fluffy red earmuffs, like a helicopter pilot at the controls. Miss Button the rebel. As well as eyeliner and foundation, she was fond of lacy bras which she wore beneath slightly see-through cheesecloth blouses: her underwear was clearly visible in the summertime.
    ‘Say how ,’ Sally,’ Miss Button said with that flattening, teacherish attempt at humour. ‘ How now brown cow. ’
    ‘Haah naah braahn caah,’ Sally said.
    Miss Button sighed and contemplated the top of her head for a moment.
    Sally did use to try very, very hard, like Liza Doolittle, but her vowels would slip. And sometimes she wondered if her status as ‘fortunate girl’ was slipping too. Maybe she would have her grant rescinded, or be thrown out of school before she got a chance to do her exams. Perhaps the teachers would write reports on her. Fundamentally too common for St Hilary’s and will amount to nothing. But she didn’t really care that much. Because of her secret life, secret from everyone except Rowena.
    First life: schoolgirl.
    Second life: girlfriend.
    And she used to think about the ‘half life’ of carbon dating that they had discussed in History. The older something was, the less of a half-life it had. It was infinitesimally reduced. Or increased. Or something. Actually Sally was rather baffled by carbon dating. Half lives. Half a life. Second lives. A lot of people seemed to lead them though.
    *
    She has had to tell Sue and Linda about winning the award. There was no way to avoid it: it was all over the newspapers. I am the local woman made good, she thinks, the blood rushing to her face. I am the needleworker plucked from obscurity.
    ‘Good on you,’ says Sue. ‘I’m bloody jealous. I could