That evening, I disappeared up to my room to work on the dress.
I sat in the centre of the floor with the dress on my lap, stitching the small flowers into the skirt of the dress with as much precision as I could muster. When I had made my Sunday best all those years ago, it had been a rush job to finish it as I would need it for Sunday service and Matron did not want us going in our standard uniform. This had been the first time that I had to put the time and effort into something, and I wanted to do it right. James had given me a task and I intended on carrying it out without going wrong.
The collection of other embellishments James had given me sat to my left and I debated whether or not to use any of the ribbons he had provided, but I did not know how. In truth, I had been so used to simple things that trying to create something grand and extravagant felt too foreign and difficult to even comprehend. I had wanted to do something simple, but the fabric James had given me did not lend itself to anything standard. It required an extravagance that I could not provide.
Still, perhaps the flowers would be enough, and I did not want to go too far, there were some rather questionable designs floating around. When I would watch through the windows of the orphanage, Charity and I would try and find the most ridiculous outfits we could amongst the sea of women and try to decide why someone would choose to wear something like that in public. It always appeared to be the rich people who wore the extravagant clothing, perhaps their way of showing off.
"Knock, knock!" William said right before he knocked twice on the door. His head poked around the door and he looked at me, grinning.
"Yes?" I asked, almost stabbing myself with the needle.
"What are you doing?"
"Take a guess."
"Hm." He slid into the room. "Sewing a brand-new waistcoat for the snowman."
"You wish."
William laughed and dropped down onto the floor beside me, picking up one of the strips of ribbon and tying it around his head. He created a small bow on the top of his head and smiled at me and even when I laughed, he did not take it off. Instead, he grabbed another different coloured ribbon and tied that one behind it even though the two colours could not be any less different. I watched him go through all the ribbon until he had all of them tied on his head.
"How do I look?"
"Do you really want me to answer that?" I said, laughing.
"That's just rude, Lizzie. I think, when we go back to see James on Friday, you should put one of these in your hair."
"And you're an expert on women's clothing now?"
"Of course, I am."
I shook my head, still laughing as he grabbed all the ribbons and tugged on the loose ends to untie them. He then dumped them into the floor in a pile and leant back on the palm of his hands, staring up at the ceiling. After a little while, he started to whistle a Christmas song to himself and I did my best to ignore him and focus on getting the glowers stitched onto the skirt of the dress.
To make sure the dress did not look a little odd or misshapen, I had decided that I would need to cover the entire skirt in the flowers else it would look odd. I had only a couple of days left to complete it and I wanted to make sure it was perfect before Friday. All I had to do was find the time to finish stitching the flowers onto it, even if took me all night I had resolved to cover the entire skirt in the small flowers. I did not need the other embellishments, but I did not want to leave them either.
With William still whistling to himself, I reached across the floor and grabbed onto the spare piece of fabric that I cut the original dress shape out of. A small square of it had been used to practice my flower stitching but the rest was in perfect condition. If I could find something to make with it, then I could use some of the other embellishments, like the buttons, but I did not know what to make. I had only ever made a dress and anything more was far beyond my limited skill set.
William looked down from the ceiling and reached across to take up one of the buttons from the pile. He turned it over in his hand and then flipped it into the air several times, catching it in his fist. After several successful attempts, he flipped it up into the air and missed it when it fell back to his fist. It bounced off his fingers and rolled across the floor, disappearing under the bed.
"You deserved that," I said.
"Don't be mean."
"You were the one throwing it in the air. I'm trying to do something very difficult and I cannot concentrate with you throwing the button into the air."
He stuck his tongue out at me. I watched him roll forward onto his hands and knees and crawl his way across the room and slide on his stomach until just his legs stuck out from under his bed. William pulled himself forward and I could hear him thumping around under the bed in search of the button which would have been impossible to see in the darkness.
"Ah-ha!" He cried after a little while. I watched him shuffle back on his stomach until he emerged from under the bed. He held up his hand and showed me the small black button but in his other hand, he held onto something else.
"What is that?" I asked.
"This was something Mother made for me when I was a baby, I wouldn't sleep without it. I'm not sure how it ended up in here."
William crawled back across the floor and handed me the bundle of cloth that he had uncovered from under the bed. It was a series of different coloured fabrics that someone had stitched together to create a head and body. Both of which were a little misshapen, almost like our snowman in the garden. It looked well-loved with the colour of the fabric having faded and the white stitching coming unravelled between some of the fabric pieces. A small flap of fabric on the head stuck out.
Someone, most likely Mrs Atkinson, had sewed buttons on for eyes and it even had a stitched-on mouth that had started to come unpicked as well. There were arms and legs made out of different fabric for each limb and it just looked like a mishmash of different things. Regardless, the faded colour of the fabric and the unpicked stitching told me that William must have loved it an awful lot. It reminded me of some of the cloth dolls that some of the other girls would come back with.
When the moved back from their foster families, some girls came back with similar cloth dolls, but Matron always took them. Her reasoning would always be that they came with bugs from the country and she did not want them spreading through the orphanage. We all knew what happened to them, most of the time they were thrown into the brazier in the kitchen to kill anything on them. Some of the younger ones used to cry without them on their first night but more often than not, they got over it rather fast.
"How long did you use this for?" I asked.
"Four or five years?" I raised an eyebrow at him. "Seven or eight."
I laughed. "It's cute."
"Falling apart, though. I don't know how it got in here, I always thought it was in the attic."
"Maybe it fell out with the Christmas decorations or something."
"Maybe."
I handed him the cloth doll back and watched him turn it over in his hand, the button long forgotten on the floor in the pile. He seemed in awe of finding something he had loved so much of a child and I did not blame him. It had been made by his mother and it no doubt held a lot of special memories for him, I doubt he could bring himself to throw it in the fire if it came to it. Something that old and that well-loved did not deserve to just be discarded like that.
With William still fiddling around with the cloth doll, I returned to the flowers which I continued to stitch onto the skirt. I could not take my mind of the cloth doll alongside the extra strip of fabric I had from the dress. If I could get the doll from William, I might be able to mend him but I would need the time and with the dress taking up a large portion of that, I did not think it would be possible to complete before I had to go back to the orphanage. I could not take it with me.
Still, he had done so much for me throughout the week and I wanted to be able to return the favour. I had no money to buy him a Christmas present, but perhaps restoring the cloth doll would be enough to pay him back. It would not compare to anything he might get from his parents or even something he could buy himself, but it would be something. The last thing I wanted to do was not give him a present after everything he had done.
"I'll leave you to it. Can I keep this in here? I'll lose him if I keep in my room. He might end up being thrown under the bed again and he doesn't deserve that."
"Of course, this is your house after all."
"But this is your room."
"For the week."
He raised an eyebrow at me. "We'll see."
He stood up and walked to the small table near the window, placing the cloth doll down before leaving me alone. The light had all but faded except for a candle that I had lit when I first returned to my room to work on the dress. It was rather hard to work on the dress in this light and I did not want to make a mistake that would ruin the entire dress. Rather than make a mistake with the dress, I folded it up with the embellishments tucked inside and placed it on an armchair to keep it safe.
I balled up the leftover fabric and grabbed William's cloth doll from the table, perching on the edge of the bed with the doll in one hand and the fabric in the other. The cloth dolls would be a lot easier to work on by candlelight, but I did want to go wrong and end up ruining something that William had loved so much growing up. I crossed back to the dress and grabbed a pair of scissors, a second needle and the thread I had used to sew the dress together.
With the scissors, I cut out a small square of fabric out of the leftover blue, just big enough to replace the square that had started to come away from the rest of the fabric. I then cut that square off, leaving a blank space where I could sew in the new fabric. The candle flickered as I worked, and I found myself leaning rather close to it so I could see what I was doing. After cutting out any loose thread I threaded my own needle and started to mend all of the broken stitching.
I stitched until my eyes started to burn from the candlelight and the candle had burnt to no more than a stub. Not wanting to risk messing up, I put the cloth dolls, needle and thread onto the table and pulled on my nightdress. After crawling between the blankets, I leant over the blew the candle out, watching the trail of smoke in the darkness. I buried myself beneath the blankets, pulling them up under my chin to fight the cold.
It did not take long before I drifted off to sleep.
~~~
First Published - December 16th, 2020