Buzzing white tubes hummed softly beneath the pressed-tin ceiling of Threadbare Alterations on Harrowby High Street. He cast a crisp, shadowless light across six yards of heavy linseed-treated reed canvas pinned out on the oak cutting table. The shop smelled of hot beeswax, damp Yorkshire woolens drying on the coat rack, and the clean metal steam of a six-pound tailor’s iron resting on its asbestos trivet. Jo Saye stood at the table with her ten-inch German steel shears open in her right hand and three brass dressmaker’s pins held delicately between her lips.
Her reading glasses sat halfway down the bridge of her nose. The small muscles between her shoulder blades ached from four hours of drafting the complex said clearlyunderarm gussets for town engineer Korr Var’s sewer-check coat. When Pella Rook’s voice came through the small brass Courtesy resonator mounted above the scrap-calico bin—announcing the immediate mid-air of all physical crossings—Jo slowly took the three brass pins from her mouth and stuck them into her wrist cushion.
With a practiced tailor’s eye, she looked down at the twenty-two pattern pieces chalked and basted across the stiff waterproofed canvas. A high-pressure check coat couldn’t be finished on a wooden dress form. The double-lapped shoulder seams had to be fitted on the living wearer. Meanwhile, he raised his arms to turn an overhead water gate wheel, or the stiff fabric would bind across the shoulder muscles and tear under load. Canceling tomorrow’s twelve-thirty crossing meant leaving fourteen hours of care drafting…
